Author's Note: The things you absolutely need to know before you read another word!

1) Serious content warning - In this story Shikamaru and Ino are cousins, so the story is about incest.

2) This is a fanfiction… of a fanfiction (yes, I'm at that point in my life apparently). And if you haven't read the original, I doubt this makes any sense. Written with the permission of PSITeleport (original author) - about how I imagine the chaotic lives of their characters in Stories from the Vault: Summer Air going. You should read. Even if you don't read this, you should read. Between tone, detail, imagery, and textbook suspense, (if you can get past the subject matter) it's not just perfect for summer, I think it's also kind of perfect for Halloween. And for people who don't know what to do about the two year wait for the next season of House of the Dragon.

3) There are characters I use in name only to make the reading easier. I'll give you more info as I go, but that feels necessary to include.

4) And as always, I own nothing. Same old, same old.

And for anyone left, is there anyone left? I did so thoroughly try to turn you away before we even started. But if anyone is left, happy Halloween! Here's my ode to the season.


Part I: Autumn's Change

East coast evenings smelled of construction and changing weather far too early for Shikamaru. That is, as he was still in willing denial for the coming finals. But the windowless wall behind his head allowed cold to seep into his bones, an aching reminder that the seasons change, time refuses to slow, and hours of relentless studying would soon bare down on him, all so he could forget the grand total of a semester's acquisition in the two drinking weeks after.

College.

But denial remained a game of wills. And he was presently willing his body to stay perfectly still. To any round of the unwelcomed rotating visitors, Shikamaru hoped he looked fast asleep- perfect personification of please do not disturb; limbs tucked awkwardly into confines of the twin-sized bunk, eyes plastered in sleep from disuse, the seasonally appropriate image of sloth in the dying sun.

But, while he willed his body to absolute stillness, his mind toiled away - far beyond the weather, the work, and the anticipation. Staring into the bright, blinding light of acknowledgment. Of ownership. Of acceptance.

There were silent facts, clamorous secrets, concessions of truth he would only dare acknowledge in the furthest recesses of his subconscious - because he didn't need to tell her, did he? Truths about himself. Truths about her. A confession playing at the helm of each and every one, there's something I need to tell you. I need-.

"Hey, wake up. They're twenty minutes away. Turn on your phone."

Shikamaru supposed there was no willing that away, though he'd certainly tried.

With deliberate slowness, he rubbed the stillness from his muscles, inspecting the pains Choji was taking to try and turn their acrid gray hovel into something presentable. Soiled laundry shoved into their three-by-three carved-out space they called a closet. Empty bottles that were previously in said closet, now in the waste. One halfway full bottle of vodka on full display like an alcoholic's centerpiece. And what was that smell?

"Are you wearing cologne?" Shikamaru asked during a clumsy dismount from his bunk to sift through the floor of their closet for something to wear.

"I'm just trying to cover the smell of vomit."

Lofty ambitions and Choji's shame didn't seem to be enough.

"Didn't work," Shikamaru supplied unhelpfully. He lazily dislodged the old green suitcase from where he had wedged it between Choji's desk and the wall, inspecting the space behind for scuffs bad enough to incur a fee at the end of term. Nothing he couldn't hide with a little white-out.

Shikamaru took a breath, running through the rest of the day in his head, then reached for the console under the bed where his phone was alight with a dozen progress updates confirming Choji's earlier assertion. The last message read so yeah, that's why we're starting a Sabrina Spellman cult. If you want serious consideration, I'm going to need a quart of blood by Friday.

Her glib attempts at nonsensically baiting him into responding elicited a well-resented smirk and Shikamaru made to leave, ignoring Choji's disgruntled request for a tidied bed.

"Did you already say goodbye to your girlfriend?" Choji asked.

Sheets and chess boards crossed Shikamaru's mind, a mental image he immediately pushed away. "She knows I'm going home for fall recess."

"That doesn't sound like goodbye," Choji chastised, ever the gentleman.

"It's just a couple of days." And a weekend, and a day of class he was planning to skip entirely, and hey, half his classes were online so with luggage and wifi, he was set until Thanksgiving - perks of life in comp sci. But mild-mannered threats of a month's retreat weren't going to help his minimal effort escape.

They passed into a corner of the stairwell that perpetually smelled of bleach and hookups, and Shikamaru could already see them, just through the glass doors, loitering in the visitor's parking spaces with conspiratorial giggles. The new best friend - Sakura, with her stupid college pink hair and the stupid car that didn't mind sharing a ride whenever. And the blonde with perpetual dibs on that passenger's seat.

Ino was laughing at something, watching wayward freshmen' enthusiasm. In the setting October sun, she glowed, her hair almost hellfire. And for a scornful beat, Shikamaru stilled, unsure if he wanted to do this. They could still cancel; he could sleep the weekend away. Return to the arms of denial like a child to his blanket.

In his hesitation, she found his gaze and held it. Shikamaru was sure he could hear his best friend's spine crack as it aligned in an unnatural posture. Everyone was smiles and hugs and it's been too long. It really hadn't, not nearly long enough for his sanity.

"I can't believe you still have that," Ino teased, gesturing to his suitcase, "isn't the very yellow car bad enough?" She had always said his bag was both wretched and infantile, between the murky green and faded childhood logos. But Shikamaru had a soft spot for the way it traveled free on every major commercial airline. And he liked how easy it was to spot his very yellow car.

Choji coaxed the best friend with the lures of an unmissable campus Halloween bash in a speech so convincing it had to have been rehearsed. Sakura spun on Ino and asked why they couldn't just stay the rest of the day, blow out the night together, and get a fresh start in the morning. Ino raised an eyebrow at him in question and Shikamaru immediately put that plan in the ground.

He remembered how poorly she had handled that event the year prior. "Morning won't happen. It will be tomorrow night by the time we crawl out of bed and we'd both be hungover."

There was a mild round of jostling and whining, but eventually, Choji said, "it's nice that you two are going back for your family's haunted house."

"It's not," Shikamaru deadpanned, "it's one of the many mistakes of going to college within driving distance of family." Though, it was challenging to avoid family with one as large as theirs. This wasn't even his family – no blood relation whatsoever. But Ino's uncle Akira had declared that any relation of his favorite niece was family. Especially when that family had a car, which made a lot of work for Shikamaru, and a lot of hours in the car with his most complicated relation.

Ino said goodbye to her friend and Shikamaru tossed her the new GPS to set the way.

"Who still uses those," Sakura asked with a laugh.

"There's no internet near my Uncle's house," Ino explained, "and last time we got a little turned around a few hours outside the town."

Shikamaru loaded her bag and his while Choji offered a nervous goodbye, to Ino and just Ino, and not his lifelong best friend.

There were snacks and devices and promises she was not going to make him stop within the hour for a restroom. When the doors were shut, he deigned to validate her earlier cries for attention, "I hear you're starting a cult."

"So, your phone is working," she intoned with perfectly matched sarcasm.

"New app," he said, "no messages during naps."

"How's the girlfriend?"

He ignored her question and several subsequent related topics, all in that teasing tone until she bated him with mention of the weather and longing for another coast. And suddenly he was all sorts of opinions and grumbles about the cold and the construction. It was so mundane, talking about the weather. But maybe that was the trick to it. Maybe it was how easily it matched his thoughts from earlier that day. Maybe it was the driving, too many tasks all at once to focus on staying guarded.

Soon enough, his tongue was fully loose about his perceived toils of being a sophomore, the drinking, the coding, the late-night musings. And eventually, the girlfriend, that yes, he still liked, even if she was just a little too into golf. Halfway through describing her, Shikamaru remembered that he had been intentionally trying to avoid this very topic. Something haunted the surface of his skin when he checked the car's clock. Twenty-one minutes, that's how long it had taken her to win this game of wills.

"She sounds nice," Ino said, "computers, quiet, curt. She sounds like you."

He nodded and slipped silent again, measured. Those were exactly the words he needed to revive his caution. He didn't ask about her romantic entanglements. He didn't need to. He already knew they were broken up. Co-conspirator in the why.

Ino seemed to sense the shift in his caution and turned the conversation to Choji. Anything she needed to warn her friend about? It was a facsimile of concern, but he still found himself giving a snide response about pink hair dye. She took the opening, asking if he thought she should dye her hair purple, and he retorted that he couldn't care less what she did with her hair. And she maintained him right there for the next hour, in the rhythm of banter that kept the responses coming, but not close enough to run warnings through his mind.

As he joined her newest tryst of rants and raves, he couldn't help but wonder, did she know what she was doing? Was this all her master manipulation of the world around her, that kept him unable to turn her off? Or was this just his innate reaction to her, she in her wholly unconscious mode of chatter?

That frightened him more.

An hour in, and he violated his own terms of travel by pulling over on the pretense of needing to take a leak. He watched her gnaw at the end of a slim jim, shadows cast in his mind, and couldn't help but to think. To wonder. To worry. He wasn't sure, he never was around her. So, he threw her the keys and slid into the passenger's seat, telling her to make herself useful for a while. She sulked and he leaned back for maximal comfort. Let her, the fates, the night, whatever, determine what came next.

And let her mind suffer the extra tax of driving for a while. Maybe he could finally get ahead in the conversation.

City streetlights and vaguely familiar architecture turned to farmland, lurching in Ino's semi-erratic, unpracticed driving. Shikamaru passively observed the long stretches of neglected road and listened for the occasional creature howling off in the distance. He was amused by how closely the atmosphere resembled the state of his insides and decided it only fair to share his festive spirit, "know any ghost stories?"

She tilted her head towards him, "bored?"

Miles and miles that all looked the same, a minefield of avoided topics between them, no cell signal for the past thirty minutes. "Little bit," he replied honestly.

She hummed at his answer, "ever hear the one about the perfectly average woman?"

He made a sound meant to say no and sat back, studying her. She chewed her lip for a moment before straightening in her seat. "Alright. Well, she was an average woman, obviously."

Shikamaru clicked, trying to indicate that this was-thus far-a thoroughly unimpressive story.

Which only amused Ino as she settled into the rhythm of her voice, "average woman, average life. Part-time nurse, 9-5 husband, three kids, a house at the end of a cul-de-sac, as far as anyone could tell. To everyone around her, she was perfect, the poster of average American life."

"But?" He ventured.

She nodded, "always a but. Especially when things look perfect."

She would know. He would know.

"But," Ino paused for emphasis, "what you wouldn't know just from looking was how obsessed with perfect she was. As a young child, she had taken to counting and sorting. She could never have too many or too few of anything. She would count her friend's blocks and do the math. She needed ten yellow blocks, eight blue blocks, and five green blocks to have the perfectly average number of blocks. So, she swiped a couple of yellow blocks from a friend while visiting and threw three of her blue blocks in the trash. Everything had to be perfect."

For a moment, an image of Ino as a child came to mind, packing and re-packing her suitcase for just the right outfit.

"It stayed like that, counting and calculating," Ino continued, "she had an exactly average number of friends, found a regular boy. Not too handsome, not too ugly. Three children, a boy and two girls. A middle-class job that left time for school drop-off and pick-up. She could see her whole life in perfectly seasons, work her way to middle management with more paper pushing than patient tending, ignore her husband's two affairs, retire after her daughters were married and son had a job, spend the rest of her life playing bingo and doting on her husband. Outlive him by the average of eight years." She paused, "perfect."

"Doesn't sound that bad," Shikamaru muttered. she was under his skin. Not for any of the normal reasons in a ghost story, but for the way she had extracted his greatest ambitions from his mind and laid them out bare for examination, all with a tone of disgust.

"Maybe she was happy," Ino eyed him and Shikamaru schooled his expression into something he hoped looked unimpressed. "But one day an old habit returned, she started counting. See, she hadn't noticed it until just then, but three wasn't quite the right number of kids."

Shikamaru's hands clammed at the uncomfortable progression of that logic, as Ino hit a clump of dirt on the road at full speed, making his stomach literally lurch.

"Two wasn't enough either." She continued, unphased by her own terrible driving, "the perfectly average number of children in her neighborhood was two and a half. Every day she would count, and every day she would wonder, how to solve the impossible problem. Until, one day, while cutting the crust off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she heard her eldest screaming. She ran as fast as she could, rounding the back of her house, to the neglected area of their yard, more rock than grass. She took it in slowly, the ragged patches of grass, the still running mower, the stains of blood. Her daughter, hysterical on the ground, clutching what was left of her right leg. For a moment she was shocked, her mind racing with how to respond, then that shock turned to something else, something finally calm. She looked at her child, with half her legs, she looked at the kitchen knife in her hand, still slick with grape jelly. Her daughter screamed and screamed, 'mommy, mommy, help.' And mommy did, with a kiss on the forehead she promised her daughter, 'I'll make you perfect.'"

Ino let the space extend between them on the implication, "that night, after a vigorous bout of cleaning, and a touch-up to even out the lawn, the average woman tucked her perfect two-and-a-half children into their beds and slept the night through. The police were there in the morning, after having found the butchered remains of a little girl in the community compost. Well. Half of a little girl."

"That's pretty fucked up," Shikamaru said flatly, more than a little disturbed at the things that came out of Ino's imagination.

"Her neighbors thought so too. As she was arrested, everyone in her perfect little slice of suburbia was baffled. Wondered what kind of person could do this. She was a monster, a freak. They took comfort in knowing she was getting what she deserved, a life sentence in prison. But our average housewife, with her exactly average number of meals in a day, mates in a cell, days in the sun, she was happier than ever."

Happily trapped.

It was too close to home, but Shikamaru didn't want to let Ino know just how well she had done. "I thought I said a ghost story," he grumbled.

She took on a mockingly offended tone, "why don't you tell one then?"

"Maybe later," he said. The night was heavy and Shikamaru could feel the spirit of the holiday drawing figure eights on his skin as his mind lingered on that little home at the end of the cul-de-sac. Then about those terrifying words at the bottom of his subconscious. The things he resolutely was not going to tell her. And that he hoped she wouldn't be able to extract straight from his mind.

O O O

He was eighteen, and designated babysitter for trick-or-treating, in more ways than one.

"Wan."

Choji made a strangled sound and Shikamaru turned to where his friend stood in full god of thunder cosplay ogling his cousin's ass. Frankly, who wouldn't?

Ino was helping sort candy between plastic pumpkins to resolve some fairness dispute between the youngest Naras and the green and white striped cheerleader uniform rode up just enough to make the imagination run wild. Choji. Choji's imagination. Shikamaru had his imagination squarely in check, he wasn't thinking about it one bit. Or the fact they had the basement to themselves that night and the basement had a lock on the door.

Did it even count as a costume to just wear your uniform?

Then again, who was he to judge, having gone as guy without a costume for the sixth year in a row.

Ino rounded on him with a laugh, and he took a physical step back as she pointed to a toddler wrapped in toilet paper, "how about that?"

He stared at her like the maniac she definitely was, and she clarified, "wan? Mummy? Boo."

"It's a stretch. Licentious." Shikamaru said, wondering if she would point to herself for that one.

"Fun."

"You know," he made space for a little pirate chasing a superhero, "jokes make it hard to tell if you know the actual definitions. Rancor."

"Ino?" Choji had lost some of his nerve around her, but the mini skirt probably wasn't helping, "I thought you already took the SAT."

"Twice," she said, "I'm score hacking. Trying to get the verbal up."

"SATs. Cheerleading. Volunteer work. Summer internships. Little Miss Perfect's swinging for the Ivys." Shikamaru added.

She snapped back in sharp retort, "oh I'm sorry, did the Penn State genius say something?"

He grumbled, irritated. He wasn't sure how exactly she had stumbled on that morsel of information, she really seemed to know everything. Perhaps the same place she and her mother had heard that there was an alleged genius in the family with a perfect SAT score. Someone who would happily volunteer to help her prepare for her big test. Cue the babysitting.

Ino had messaged, announcing they had a long study date that weekend. And he had ignored both her text and her implication for the better part of a week. But Ino seemed genuinely committed to the study part of that threat, even when he added the clause of supervising the annual trick-or-treat adventures. Which alleviated several of his most immediate reservations about spending time alone with her.

It was vaguely surprising. Not that she was smart. He had known that in some twisted way since she toddled instead of walked. But the effort, the grind. She wanted to win, even with an impressive couple of test scores already under her belt.

Choji was chattering on about his own college plans, in what Shikamaru assumed was a long-winded offer of his own SAT tutoring services, when Shikamaru spotted an immaculate white lab coat and an oversized dog, walking in their direction.

He and Choji turned similar shades of antisocial, attempting to make a 180 on their course of trick-or-treating. But not privy to the whole history of their high school experiences, Ino missed the message. And her cluelessness cost them the escape.

"Hey Freaks."

Shikamaru and Choji shared a look of defeat and muttered an unenthused, "Kiba."

Ino, who was starting to sense something askew, gave a nudge. Some irrational part of Shikamaru's brain wanted to shove her in his yellow car and drive away, but in hindsight, maybe it wasn't irrational.

Maybe he was being protective.

Maybe it was clairvoyance, wisdom without the experience to interpret. Magical foresight borne of fucking her. Who knew, but the question would live as a ghost in his mind for years to come.

Kiba fixed Ino with a leer, "haven't seen you before."

Ino hesitated, and Choji reluctantly said something along the lines of this is Ino. Kiba extended a hand, "nice to meet you, I'm -."

"A doctor?" She cut him off.

He looked dumb, trying to process her interruption. And she clarified, "your costume."

"Yeah. Dr. Frankenstein," Kiba clarified with a self-satisfied look as if he should be proud of the season's most cliche costume idea.

Ino, less unimpressed, smiled and asked with a slight gesture to the dog "is he supposed to be your monster?"

As Shikamaru watched their half-moment of small talk, an unbidden taste of resentment drifted across his mouth, and an image of her beneath him in that uniform came to mind. So quickly he couldn't blame her this time.

It was this oddly possessive breath that forced him to think about what was bothering him exactly.

Ino, making small talk, offering the dog a head scratch. And all Shikamaru could see was the head cheerleader and the quarterback on the day they met. And for some reason, his mood darkened.

He mentally recited that he didn't care, physically taking a step away. And another. And another. Leading the candy-collecting adventures elsewhere at an indifferent pace.

He didn't care. Why would he care?

It didn't mean anything. She didn't mean anything. She could talk to whoever she wanted, do whatever she wanted. And he would be on his merry way.

But he could never leave her, not really.

Stepping out of her picture-perfect moment, Ino scrambled to catch up, wide-eyed, and a little huffy at being left behind without preamble or invitation. Shikamaru didn't slow down as he rounded up the kids and Choji regaled the group with trivia about the development history of the different neighborhoods and where to go to get the full sized candy bars.

When they had walked another four blocks, and the kids - beside Choji -were gleefully running the block, Ino sidled up to Shikamaru's ill-tempered side and brushed his arm. He slid his eyes to her, a first acknowledgment since throwing his uncalled-for tantrum earlier.

"You didn't say goodbye to your friend."

He knew she was being deliberately dull, trying to bait him into explaining himself. So he just shrugged, "not my friend."

She leaned into his back, wedging her chin on his shoulder and pointing a finger to lightly indent his cheek, "Rancor?"

He irritably shoved her off but couldn't stop himself from acknowledging she got the word right. He was bitter. And he was left hoping she didn't understand why.

After another half hour wandering parent designated safe neighborhoods, he decided it was time to spoil everyone's fun and call it a night. True to his word, he spent the remainder of the evening drilling Ino, scoring practice tests, quizzing vocabulary, handing off passages, and barely speaking in between. Haunted by something he didn't want to disclose.

Shikamaru had conjured many an image over the years for Ino's revolving door of unnamed boyfriends. Hot, rich, athletically inclined. But seeing a viable prospect, a matched set, right there. The idea crept under his skin, in whisps on flesh. It breathed in hot and heavy breaths on his patience in a way that demanded self-examination.

It reminded him of a brutal and absolute reality of their disturbed connection. Another reason it wasn't real. Wasn't worth the sleepless nights. The breaking sanity.

Because every conspiratorial touch, taste, rush - was just two children playing dress-up under the heavy heat of changing seasons. That what they were existed precisely because of its horror. And without the worst of it, the bond that would forever keep their measured distance, he simply didn't fit in that candy-coated image of the cheerleader and the quarterback.

He was a fundamental insincerity that could only exist because of the vile aberrations they had become accustomed to, the sins he would never completely wipe his mind free of until she was gone. Permanently.

"Why didn't you like that guy from earlier, the one with the dumb costume?"

Her question reminded him that Ino was, there, entirely too close for the types of severance he was aspiring to. Shikamaru shrugged, not wanting to explain.

"Is he mean to you?" she asked.

"He's not mean," not in the way she probably meant. Shikamaru felt like a child being questioned about bullies at school, "we're just not friends."

"You don't like him."

"I don't like most people," a partial truth, the only truth he wanted to admit. "It doesn't mean anything."

But she had never been one to give up on getting answers, "what do you not like about him?"

Shikamaru resolved not to unpack his train of thought from earlier, or his high school social hierarchy philosophy, so he settled for an analogous confession to tamp her curiosity, "he's just different. He's the school golden boy. Perfect. And we're different." She watched him with big eyes, long blonde hair, and everything that fit just right, "you wouldn't understand." You're just like him. You'll end up with someone just like him.

But she scoffed at that, which broke into a giggle, then a gasp for air. For entirely baffling reasons, she was laughing. It didn't feel like mocking, she was too lost in it. When she could finally breathe, she asked, "Me? You think I don't know what it's like to feel different?"

He wasn't quite sure how to respond. Wasn't quite sure how to say, no, incest doesn't count. It's all the rest of you. It's that uniform.

"I hate that word," she spoke to the floor, suddenly small and nothing like Ino, "perfect. It's like being completely alone. Like no one in the world can see me." She pulled her legs in close and his hand moved automatically, pushing a strand of hair out of her face to reveal slightly damp eyes. Even between them, it was a strangely intimate gesture, and he was quick to remove his hands, but not move away.

Her vulnerability sat there as she watched him, confusing him, repelling him, binding him to her side. Forcibly unraveling whatever conceptions he had of her, of the quarterback at her side, of himself buried behind a computer screen. And he moved a bit closer, letting her use him to hide her face.

"Why Penn State? You could do better than state school."

"It's a good school, and Choji's going there," he replied.

"Why early admission?"

"It's easier."

"If you get in you have to go."

"That's how it works."

"But how are you so sure?" Ino spoke directly into his shoulder. And he shrugged, trying not to jostle her, not completely understanding the question or why she cared, "why not."

"It's your first decision," she explained, looking up slightly, "the first thing that's completely yours to pick, the thing that follows you around for the rest of your life. Becomes this brand for future opportunities, friends, competition. How did you just, pick?"

Her voice was still wrong. Too timid to be Ino. She sounded unsure, a million miles away from her normal bold radiance. His mind lingered on her question, trying to figure out what to say to fix her. So, he ushered her to answer for him, "why the Ivys."

She tilted her head so she could watch him, as if looking for teasing. But he gave her his attention, unnerved by the uncharacteristic unraveling at his side. Something softened in her face and relaxed in the way she leaned against him, "so I don't have to pick. A pedigree that lets me do anything, be anything." She shrugged, "even if I pick the wrong thing."

Her legs were splayed in front, her little uniform an afterthought of her position, watching him softly, undone in a way he had never seen before. In the overly yellow light of his basement, there were glints of fear through her pale lashes, and her eyes almost looked green. He wanted to lean in. He wanted to run a hand up long legs, pull at the hem of that stupid striped skirt, press up against all the soft and open parts of her and drink her in.

But she wanted something from him, something new, something different. Something he hadn't given her before. A game that didn't have rules just yet.

And never having been able to deny her anything, he confessed. "Early admission means no one can talk me out of state school." She didn't laugh, tease, or cower when he said, "I don't want to be the genius."

He leaned in and loosened his tongue for her that night. He told her his fears.

O O O

"Shika?" There was alarm in her tone, and he afforded her a measured moment of attention.

Ino furrowed her brow, "we're here?"

He took in the barely there expanse of rickety wooden buildings, shadowed in the night, broken in their headlights. He hadn't spent a ton of time around her family, but he knew what the ranch house should look like from previous visits. "You're Uncle appears to have re-decorated the entire town this year."

Ino wrinkled a nose at him and slowed her driving to the point the car could be outrun by a limping deer. Shikamaru could feel the grind of every cluster of dirt and rock in jolts of metal. She was trying to interpret their surroundings, one place at a time, searching for something she recognized. She came up short, pulling into the only building for miles with light at the windows, an unnecessarily large neon sign that flashed the word Motel. "I don't understand, I followed the…" Her voice trailed off as she fumbled with the GPS.

Shikamaru studied her, unused to seeing Ino on edge about anything. It was a sight. He didn't need her to tell him she was lost but took the device from her frustrated hands. "So," he intoned in one belabored note, "we were going for Tristan drive. And instead, we're in a town called Tristan." He rummaged on his person to check what he already knew, "without phone signal."

"I put in the right address," she defended, looking more irritated at his passive accusation than guilty, "your thing is broken."

He sighed and checked the time, it was 2:36 AM. "Car or motel?"

Ino looked offended at both of those options, so he tried for reason, "we can't set a new destination without wifi. And even if we do find wifi, and frankly gas, it's already the middle of the night; are you up to drive another five hours?"

She wasn't accustomed to driving at all, and he could see the drain in the creases of her eyes and slump of her shoulders at the idea. He leaned back, self-satisfied with her concession, "so, car or motel?"

"You know," she unfastened her belt, "that's the least fun version of that question."

The suggestion sent spiders of anticipation through his veins, but he knew she was entirely too tired to take her alluded threat to its natural conclusion. "I don't have a yen," Shikamaru prodded, "but I might have a quarter if that would help the decision along."

Her gaze danced on his features for just a moment before turning the keys and swinging open the car door in a huff. Motel it was.

Shikamaru lingered, watching her wander the patio in receding neon, dancing pale strands of hair awash in his headlights. A premonition crept on the surface of his skin and his resolve tightened in the pit of his stomach, as he forced himself to study her ghostly pale in front of the green flashing lights of a worn-down motel in the middle of nowhere. He reached for his will, staring down that open door, then stepped out. He pulled their luggage from the trunk, then joined at her frustrated side.

The clerk was an aged woman, surrounded by Jesus-inspired paraphernalia and not interested in the slightest in acknowledging the two of them. Ino found a tone of voice she reserved for adults she wanted to suck up to, "hi. Maam. We're a little lost, see we were on our way to my Uncle's and there was the mix-up with the GPS and -"

"One room or two," the very unamused clerk asked.

Ino stumbled on her words, casting him a look, then nervously around at the mid-sixties stained décor and cracking plaster walls. Shikamaru could practically hear the wheels in her head turning as she suppressed a look of disgust. She gave a tight-lipped smile and replied, "one please."

The woman at the desk stared at her over thin-rimmed glasses, and made a discontented sound, as she exchanged looks between the two. Shikamaru could now hear the wheels in her head turning, "you married?" She croaked.

"Yup," Shikamaru stepped forward, draping an arm around a stunned-looking Ino.

The clerk directed her ire at him now, "to each other?"

Shikamaru tried for another sound that was supposed to mean yes, fixing Ino with a look to convey her part in the charade. She got halfway there, nodding exactly twice, like a resentful puppet on a string.

The clerk's eyes drifted to the hand he had around Ino then to Ino's left, and before she could say anything, Shikamaru cut in, "To each other. One year now. Do you have a phone we can use?"

"Phone's at the end of the hall, takes quarters. And that's forty-eight sixty-one with tax for one room."

Shikamaru fished in his bag for stray change, ushering Ino to let her Uncle know they'd be in tomorrow, and shoved cash at the clerk before she could make any additional lines of inquiry or requests. She glared at his offering like a bribe for sin, but Shikamaru doubted this place had much of a tourist industry and easy money was easy money. She slowly handed him change and a key, "that way. Check-out by ten." And Shikamaru was thrilled to leave her several steps behind.

He found Ino, who informed him in short, clipped tones that she had just gotten the answering machine, and he struggled to drag their bags across the thickly carpeted hallway to their room.

The door was sticky to open and Shikamaru could smell something cinnamon as he found a light switch. The room turned a dull orange and Ino walked to the bed to inspect a heavy quilt with pink and red patches.

Shikamaru knew she wasn't going to be the one to speak first, his options were to ignore her and leave her smarting or address it directly. Ignoring her seemed so much easier. But her irritation was palpable, like a living weight of dissatisfaction as she picked through each one of the dozen brightly colored cushions on the bed with careful inspection.

"Do you want to switch to car?" He offered.

She glared at him, "married?"

It was an extremely touchy topic with her, so he let pass the dozens of times she had put labels on him he wasn't so sure about, "did you want to be in your own room or not?"

Her frown remained as she diverted attention to inspecting the mattress for bedbugs, "you can't deny someone a room because they're not married. We're cousins for god's sake."

"God is the issue, cousins or not," Shikamaru said, "and yeah, yeah you can."

"There's no reason," she huffed, "it's just losing potential business."

Shikamaru helped her lift the mattress, "welcome to rural America city girl."

"Please. You grew up in West Coast suburbia."

She was right, but he had still spent more time in these types of towns than she had, a fact he let sit between them as she looked for the next thing to complain about. She seemed unnerved by his calm, used to being the one leading charge into the great unknown. "Give me something to sleep in."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes, "wear your own clothes. I brought your bag."

"Ew, no. I don't want my stuff touching this," she gestured to everything, and he threw her sweats and the Penn State hoodie he normally slept in, too tired to put up with stupid conversations.

She started removing clothing and he stared at the ground, "call your uncle again in the morning. Do you have quarters?"

"Who carries change? The only reason you had any is that you've been using that suitcase for a decade and a quarter is a gold mine for a ten-year-old," she huffed.

"I might have more in the car," he replied, making to leave, but she caught his elbow.

"Wait," she choked on the protest while eyes darted around the room. It really was bizarre to see her out of her element, out of control. Some weary part of his brain was intrigued by the change, and some exceptionally stupid part of him wanted to comfort her. Instead, he stood silent, until she stuttered out a lame excuse about being cold.

"Here," he tossed her the bedside Gideon, "maybe if you hold it long enough, you'll burst into flames."

Shikamaru had long stopped constructing expectations around her, she never knew how to stay in her box, never let him the peace of thinking he could guess what was coming next. And the very specific conditions they had ended up in did nothing to assuage that anxiety. But it was his reaction he found surprising, when she spent the night at an arm's distance. Sulking on her side of the bed, complaining occasionally, but otherwise uninterested in the rest of his company.

It bothered him. Like an itch he couldn't quite scratch, little legs crawling his skin with nothing there. She was finally acting like he had wanted her to act for fifteen years, but he craved something else. And his own reaction irritated him, a warning, a worry. He denied it. Resolved that this was what he wanted. And fell asleep with the three feet of distance she had managed to put between them on that queen-sized bed.

"Why don't you have a spare tire!"

Shikamaru's head throbbed in the immediacy of interrupted sleep. He dumbly rolled forward, eyes open just enough to watch Ino's tirade at the end of the bed.

"We have a flat! And you don't have a spare! And this stupid town doesn't sell tires. And it's going to take the tow company two days to get here and help us! And it's a workday so my uncle can't come to get us in this ridiculous place that's somehow nine hours away from where we were supposed to be. So why don't you have a spare tire!"

Shikamaru was reasonably confident that wasn't an actual question, "you've been busy."

"Shikamaru!"

He turned over, slumped into the luxury of a non-dorm-sized bed, and drew one of the many excessive pillows over his eyes, tempering the painful assault of her light. He could feel the ends of feathers in this one against his face.

"Shikamaru!"

"Sounds like we're stuck. Might as well sleep," he responded without moving from his dark.

He felt the tilt of poorly distributed weight on the bed. And was sure he could feel her hovering right above him, making the hair on his arms stand on edge.

Just slightly, he squinted a single eye open to take in her early morning intensity. She was still wearing his hoodie, he noticed. Just a few inches from him on the bed with slightly messy morning hair, and an instantaneous association arose that had him extremely glad that the front of his body was concealed, pressed down into the bed at the moment.

Finally, he mustered the strength to speak, "did you find food?"

And an hour later, over an unreasonably high stack of pancakes, caked in pure sugar, in the meager company of droning patrons who kept looking at the two strangers tucked into the corner, Ino revisited her tirade, trying again to impress on him the full extent of the 21st century they didn't have access to in this place.

"What do you want me to do about it," he finally asked.

"It's your car!" She snapped.

"You were driving."

"I was just following your GPS!"

"The one you set the destination for."

"So, what, are we just supposed to stay here for the next two days in the middle of nowhere?"

He shrugged, "unless you have a better idea." And she glared at him - he added that their stay would probably be a degree more tolerable if the locals didn't hear her insulting their home so openly.

The request had much the opposite intended effect, and she started listing everything you couldn't get in a small town as if that would motivate him to produce an alternative.

With the objective of shutting her up, Shikamaru switched to her vernacular, "let's make it a game."

His candor was rewarded, as her present complaint was forgotten and eyes took on a light of excitement.

"Let's call it the husband-and-wife game," he added, watching her flinch at the words, smile instantly gone, "two days. One time only. Never speak of it again."

It was the first time in fifteen years he was the one to propose a game and he could see the shift of power playing out on her face. He focused on eating pancakes, trying his best to convey a general sense of indifference regarding her response.

He was halfway through, when she asked, "how do you play."

Shikamaru turned slightly in their bench, clocking the calculated distance she'd put between them again, and making a mental note of the crease in her brow. She was trying to understand this situation, make sense of everything that had happened. He toggled the fork in hand like an idle pen, thinking, living in the temporary glory of being the game master as he declared his first rule, "no public complaining about being stuck in this town."

She balked at that but seemed to lose some of her edge at his flagrant under-use of power, "you're terrible at this."

He shrugged, "I'm open to suggestions."

A glint hit her eyes for just a moment, but he watched her quickly school the excitement away. He knew it wasn't the prospects of play holding her in reservation, it was the parameters, the nomenclature. So, he offered an alternative, "can I make up the rules as I go?"

"It's your game."

"Great," he shoved the still towering stack of pancakes in front of her, "rule two, finish these. Another bite might kill me."

In an effort to assist her in keeping the first parameter, and sate his own mind-numbing irritation at the monotony of a small town, they set to exploring. A ghost of rural America. Abandoned buildings, chained dogs, creaky windmills. Ino, coming around to the adventure in their circumstances rather than missed opportunities, started speculating about the possible haunted origins of every mold-covered structure that looked one windy day from collapsing, prodding him to fill in the details of the decrepit tales she spun from nothing. Which he didn't admit, was rather fun.

Eventually, she was recapping the whole of her semester, since seeing him last. Her thoughts on the whole major system, and defense for her latest change. Creative writing this time, with a minor in East Asian studies. A triad of hookups and slip-ups, that didn't mean anything. She proposed a minor amendment to the quality of their entertainment - making use of her supremely legal fake ID and the fact that middle-of-nowhere towns still had boxed wine in the store labeled store. A privately flattering request as he had been the one to teach her to drink a couple of years ago, and her inclination for that particular form of thrill only seemed to rear in his company. He proposed they do one better and break open the bottle he had brought as a gift for her family - who knew if they were going to see them at this rate anyway? They alternated taking long drinks anytime someone spotted something akin to a ghost story cliche.

A broken highway sign.

An old man staring at nothing, for no identifiable reason.

A creaking playground swing.

A wayward lawnmower that Ino insisted should count.

Train tracks they started to follow, flat for miles.

Ino was pure abandon and Shikamaru was quietly pleased as any semblance of her earlier inhibitions melted to rambling, then clingy amusement at his company. She wasn't quite the drunk college student she seemed at a glance, but Ino was a mess. A lost, chaotic mess. Screaming Japanese into the distance. Sliding in and out of his arms. Dreaming out loud in tones of pure ridiculousness.

And it was in this state, as they walked literal tracks to nowhere together, pushing each other to the next tragically inebriated state, Shikamaru also got to be a mess. A horrible, idiotic mess. All over Ino one moment, admitting that maybe he didn't really like his girlfriend the next, but hey, did it really matter? Muttering aimlessly about his cyber security courses. Making pathetic confessions into oblivion, fully indulging in the disoriented state of being with her.

Because there was no reason for pretense. They had never been perfect around each other. They were the opposite of perfect. They were abominations. Pure hedonism. Corruption. Sin. And entitled to it when together.

As the toxins hit his carb-loaded stomach, his body turned to fire, and he wasn't sure if there was anywhere in the world he would rather be. "Ino, there's something I need to tell you," he stumbled, confessions fresh and wild, "I need-"

"Food," she gasped, "we need food! We didn't eat dinner!"

They didn't! He had forgotten. They did need food. And in their drunken states, somehow stumbled back into the diner from earlier. Shikamaru put a twenty on the table and asked for food, and Ino giggled, "do you just carry around cash so you can show off?"

Shikamaru tried his best to accommodate the waitress' clearly irritated request for a bit more specificity.

"I like Halloween," Ino smiled, crawling half into his lap on the bench beside him, "be anything in the world, one night only. It doesn't even have to be real! What about you?"

Shikamaru did not like Halloween, never had. Dressing up had been too much thinking, too much effort for him and he didn't have a taste for sugar. But even his drug-addled brain knew she was looking for a bit of enthusiasm, "I like the scares."

"Horror movies!" She yanked his arm, "we've never done a horror movie marathon. Shikamaru. Let's do a horror movie marathon!"

"Sure Ino," was all he could manage, because something in that request had been slightly sobering. She started in, listing every horror movie she had ever seen, then every costume. His imagination was absolutely not in check as she explained that cheerleading uniforms made good back-ups when you're too busy to think of something because nobody knows you're actually a cheerleader and it's sexy enough, right?

In his exceptionally dumb state, Shikamaru agreed out loud to that question.

Which set off a fit of her giggling and he was drunk enough not to care while staring down a burger the size of his face; horny enough that when she leaned in and whispered, "I still have it," it lit a fire of boldness inside him. It was an idea he had been dancing in circles around one drink at a time, not sure if he wanted to go there. But he was emboldened and stripped of inhibitions. So, in a single movement, he caught her lips with his own, tasting the disgusting fried crap she'd been pushing around her plate since they arrived.

For just a second, she was pliant as he slipped a hand around her waist, melding into the form they had practiced for so many years in dark corners, alcoves, and bedrooms. Then her entire body turned rigid, her own slightly sobering moment. He immediately leaned back, returning to the slightly different fried flavor of his own food.

"Shikamaru?" She sounded so innocent and confused, as if she couldn't quite force her brain to put to words that he had just broken their biggest and oldest rule by kissing her in a public place in front of a dozen other patrons and a very put-out waitress.

"Town thinks we're married," he shrugged to his plate, "who's gonna tell."

"Someone could post," she stuttered, trying so hard to string logic together, "there could be a picture."

"With what internet?"

"There, could. We could."

He studied her frustrated expression as she played through the painfully slow details. To be fair, he had been thinking about it longer and had started thinking about it while far more sober. But he gave her a spell to sit in mind-addled silence, parsing it through.

When he was full and she still looked trapped in a paradox, he leaned over to try and help her process along, "come on little miss perfect, day and a half left to be anything you want."

And her eyes flickered with a moment of shared understanding.

O O O

Shikamaru couldn't say he had particularly liked college, more or less than anything else really. The days were long, the nights were longer. Dizzying substances of various strengths and blinding blue computer lights were forever aglow with undone work. And the work, well it was oddly suited for him. With nothing day-to-day counting for anything until the grand assessment of skill at the end of the term.

But there were so many people, everywhere, all the time. Especially that first year. Fresh faces so unburdened by rejection, too full of possibility to catch the cues of his introversion. Shikamaru's dorm became a revolving door for the others in his program, Choji's program, social butterflies in the building, and any number of other trial run companions.

So Shikamaru couldn't say he was entirely surprised when Ino walked through that revolution, on an oppressively chilly, late October's eve. They had become so close as high school ended. Too close. Too casual. She had slipped into his conversations, his DMs, his friend groups, his casual world musings. Why not his door? But he was surprised by his reaction. Relief. As if he had been waiting the semester away for her to finally come.

She didn't announce herself or explain, she just leaned into the wooden rail of his creaky bunk and asked if he had time to give her the grand tour. It didn't matter, she seemed to have permanent dibs on his time. But he gave all the normal protests in the preservation of his dignity. Who invited you? Don't you have anything better to do? Explore it yourself.

She was a magnet for excitement and it just so happened to be the night of the biggest party for the season – the campus hoot and howl. Once Shikamaru had coaxed a couple of drinks in her, context around her spontaneous visit started to spill. Her new friend - Sakura, who had the coolest pink hair, was coming anyway. Oh, and that guy from his high school came too. She wasn't sure why. Oh look! There he is, let's go ask!

Shikamaru had felt a heat rush over his already tequila-fueled form, Kiba.

Shikamaru had always assumed that Ino's very specific pattern of playing at boyfriend and girlfriend, pressed to his side on a whim, was a product of their situation and heinous dysfunction. Not that sporadic was her actual concept of dating. But as if the universe was mocking him -more likely punishing- Kiba had managed to get into college unfortunately close to Ino. After a summer in and out of each other's beds, Ino and Kiba had been circling each other for the better part of the year, always vaguely in the same vicinity.

And yet, Shikamaru wasn't sure that Ino knew she was in a relationship. Not in the way normal people understood the concept.

Ignoring the smell of weed and pizza, Shikamaru saw them in that golden picture frame as he had a year prior, a little too perfect looking, like they belonged in a portrait together. Her beauty and Kiba's overly rough teenage features, both so drunk, both so dumb. He saw her stumbling back slightly, but her pursuer was quicker, and a tad less clumsy.

Shikamaru joined them, listening, never feeling quite right in their Norman Rockwall proximity, but sensing the faultline they were built upon.

"I don't understand," she shouted over blaring Rhianna lyrics.

"Shikamaru!" Kiba threw his weight into what Shikamaru assumed was supposed to be an embrace. Through Ino, he had graduated from freak to his own namesake, and Shikamaru couldn't honestly say he preferred it.

Refusing to be deterred from her question, Ino shouted louder, "why did you come here?"

Kiba's perpetual excitement intensified, "Ino." He threw his second arm around her, "three of us. Forever?"

She was clearly trying to puzzle out how exactly that answered her question. The effort was abandoned, and she was prodding Kiba again, "hey, hey! Why did you come?"

Kiba fixed her with a wild look, much too like Ino for Shikamaru's comfort. He was radiant even through the dull goggles of college decadence, "marry me. I love you. You love me. Let's do it. Let's just get married!"

As quickly as he said it, Shikamaru was sure the alcohol in Ino's blood turned to ice. Because her joy fled, attention too clear as her eyes bored into Kiba. Shikamaru felt himself retreating, not sure what was coming next, but sensing she would soon need him. Be that to celebrate her newly impending nuptials or to drag Kiba's dead body away from the crime scene.

Kiba didn't seem to catch the nuance.

Maybe he didn't know her as well, maybe he was just drunker. But he continued his own death march, "it's perfect. You're perfect. We'll be perfect. We can live together. We'll graduate together. We'll get a house together. A dog, a big white one like my parents. Ino," Kiba reached for her rigid shoulders, "we could have kids. Like you. And like me. Hell, we could even have one like Shikamaru. Wouldn't it be great if they all went to the same high school where we met? And Shikamaru could have kids too who also go to my high school. And we could have big family holidays and stuff. And we could-" That was the last sound Kiba was able to drunkenly produce before he was in a full nose dive for the pavement, as his previous arm support made a wild dodge to the side.

While Kiba sprawled on the pavement, befuddled by this turn of events, Shikamaru watched Ino turn. And run.

He didn't doubt her abilities to find her way around; stay in one piece through the haunted evening, but he followed. He didn't call out to her, question the wild turns and detours, stop her when she reached the end of campus and kept going. Somehow, pure instinct drew her back to a coast, the smell of long-sitting pond water and sound of cicadas hit his senses long before he saw the pool. Finally still, he watched her in warning glows of fireflies, staring into nowhere. He took in her furrowed brow, balled fists, heaving chest, and haunted eyes. Fear, pure fear. An emotion he rarely saw on her haunted features, but one he immediately recognized.

Instead of offering comfort, empty words of acknowledgment, he sank to the ground a few feet away from where she stood, between grit and soil, forcing his eyes to study the dying lights that passed for stars so close to the city. His calm seemed to unnerve her, and he could feel her staring.

"Tired," he explained, without looking up, "too much running."

After a dozen breaths, he heard her join at his side, no acknowledgment of the fact she was getting dirty to do so. "You can barely see anything," she said eventually.

He made a sound of agreement, refusing to acknowledge that she had been reading straight from his thoughts again. They sat in silence, and his mind was forced to think of it. Suns. Radiant, brilliant suns. Among the brightest beings in the universe. Near vanished behind city lights. And they all just accepted it as normal. But was it right? For something so bright, so remarkable to be dulled by something so mundane.

"I used to imagine it," she said, "dramatic and ridiculous declarations of love. Marriage. Kids. Whatever."

Shikamaru knew what she meant, a sort of collective experience, dreaming about the story your parents and Hollywood packaged for you before you really knew what it meant. They used to talk about it together, between kisses and touches they claimed were for said future partners.

He would understand horror. Guilt. Some sort of irreparable trauma they had imparted on each other. But he didn't understand her fear. "He was just drunk," Shikamaru said, not quite sure why he was defending the guy.

"I don't want it," she said eventually, "the perfectly normal life exactly like the one we lived. And our parents. And their parents before them. That looks fine while everyone's miserable. I don't want to have to stop dreaming."

They were quiet after that, until then the lingering effects of her drunkenness reared and he heard her laughing. An uncontrollable fit of wild sounds. His intoxicated state responded, joining her abandon in reverence of the ridiculousness of it all. "I have no idea what I'm doing," she admitted, between fits of giggles as she revealed the string majors she was now considering switching to.

"I don't care what I'm doing," he admitted, recounting days he barely remembered, as he secretly waited for her to join this new phase of existence. When suddenly, because they were one year older, she was supposed to have direction, and he was supposed to have purpose. It was alright to admit these things under the spotlight of a blood-red moon and expanse of the universe as their witness, but only to each other.

When she climbed on top of his lap between laughs, running hands through his hair, pressing different types of confessions against him, dreaming between drunk kisses, he knew none of her requests were in service of future partners.

And when he obliged, taking her back to his horrible wooden bunk, he knew this wasn't about him or her or them. Or the rancid waterfront. Or the traces of tequila between their lips.

For her, this was about freedom. For him, this was about the jerk from high school and a green pin-striped cheerleader's uniform.

O O O

Shikamaru was heavy on her, a tight arm around her waist as she followed him into the game. Between smothering kisses pressed on her lips, her jaw, her neck, and her collar, he was sure they were leaving a trail to remember, a small town of witnesses for two college kids drunk on hormones in the night.

But then. Wasn't that the point?

The hotel's clerk, framed in her shrine of religion, fixed them with an abrasive scowl as they stumbled into the screaming front door. And a wildly rebellious streak, free from sober sensibilities, had Shikamaru slipping a second hand to steady Ino for a deep kiss. He reveled in the weight of the judgmental stare, little did she know the particular style of heinous she being forced to bear witness to. Frankly, Shikamaru wasn't sure all the religious sensibility in the world could clean a soul of what everyone in the room knew was coming next.

When Ino asked him what he wanted that night, he knew it was to see her. He wanted her secrets, the pieces of herself even she didn't fully acknowledge. He wanted her completely undone. Just this once, if this was the last thing when he could be anything.

She obliged under the press of his roving mouth and hands as he peeled his clothes from her body, and he wondered if anyone else had ever convinced her to give up control of the game she pioneered. It was a wonder, something out of his most elicit dreams, the ones he denied having, and his body responded in perfect turn. Mouth pressed against one of her ribs, he heard the slur of his own confession, "I need you."

When he was spent, a million miles high, he found the skin of her hip with his own, and a place for his face in her neck as he pulled her close. There was a line of tension through her form, so used to being touched, but never held, not like this. This was a type of intimacy even they had never crossed. But she was tired, and endorphin ridden, so eventually, she relaxed into the contours of his body with a contented breath.

It was unadulterated bliss. And Shikamaru barely slept.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he had made a mistake. But drunk on mid-tier wine, freedom, and her - he just couldn't figure out what. After all, wasn't that the point of the game? But fear lingered, standing over him with an open hand and a scythe.

When sunlight spilled, framing her blond as an ironic halo, he pictured her as his greatest mistake. The type he would make over and over because there was no where else the fates led. And because he was still pretending he could be anything, he pretended to be alright with that. He pretended he wasn't afraid. He thought about what else he wanted to pretend.

She gave a lazy stretch, and he let her roll onto her back as he watched her senses wake one by one, reacting to the sounds of morning, dodging the smell of his breath on her face. She pried her eyes open just enough to try and understand what she was seeing, a little more when he ran a hand up the curve of her back, and fully awake when he tasted that early morning confusion on her lips. Sour, but he was lost in the concept of this being her rawest form, before she had time or thought to dream and preen.

She silently watched him, caustic remark stilled in uncertain glass eyes. As though his confidence was diminishing hers, putting her on edge.

It was pure incongruity, that this fearless person could look so unnerved. Suddenly, Shikamaru was unsure, upset, desperate for time to freeze, to extend forever in that moment. So, he reached for her again. Creating a dome of denial through lust, hiding from the relentless ticking of the clock, stealing from everything sensible and right.

Ino slid away from his grip for just a moment, while his skin burned in frustration for the missing touch. But she was watching his eyes as if trying to peer straight into his mind, where secrets were normally so easy for her to access. The calculating look on her face wrong for her, as was the caution. Her senses certain something wasn't quite right. She was sober now, trying to understand again, searching for something, hiding from something else.

But around each other, neither of them truly had the word no in their vocabulary or their actions. She studied his body in the sunlight. So focused, as the green nail of her middle finger traced his stomach, chest, lines of his collar and face. Shikamaru wondered if he was something of a disappointment in broad daylight, they place they never went together. But when her hand found the back of his neck his lips found hers again and she melded into his body's every request.

Despite having had each other in every way their twisted teenage minds could conjure - hers particularly creative and never out of inspiration - as he pressed her onto her back to watch and taste in the full light of day, he sensed they both knew this was something they hadn't done before. A line they could only cross with both eyes open. A compound of a mistake some years ago, when they had allowed each other to become fully realized people, hopes, dreams, fears, and all. A memory nothing short of a concussion would free them from. More dangerous than anything they had done before, still, he had been staring at that door for so long, its blinding light was the most natural thing in the world.

The morning from that point on was a flash of lightning, happening too quickly to process anything beyond the spectacle. The clerk's knowing hum of judgment as they checked out, eyes still probing for sin – if she only knew. The overly natural space of touch between them in the final hours of anonymity. Ino shouting her good riddance to that horrible little town not even worth being on the map, the spectacle of roadside assistance when it made its grand entrance.

They both agreed to go back to campus, too tired for left-over festivities.

Shikamaru went silent while driving, consumed by anticipation, and she prodded him several times for what was on his mind. He lied every time, not ready to share, not sure if he ever would, if he even could. He had crossed a line. One he would pay for, in hearts and spades. Best-laid plans were nothing in the face of human choices and he was a walking debtor. The toll would come. She would read it on him.

She always did eventually.

She lost a bit of interest when urban began to sprawl, roads turned to asphalt, and cell signal returned. But when, so lost in his suspense, Shikamaru forgot a signal or missed a stop sign, Ino quietly stared at him, confused. Frustrated there was a part of his mind she still wasn't privy to. He was clad fast silent, unwilling to help her get there this time, robbing time itself for all it would give.

Just in the student parking lot, she leaned across him, using proximity where words were failing. She had an arm on his shoulder and one on his door, "what!"

He could tell her, he should tell her, like he practiced. Just get it over with. He was already halfway there. But the words wouldn't form and all he could do was nod to the front of the dashboard.

A flash of pink on the far of the lot had Ino sliding several feet away, then bounding out in reunion. Shikamaru spotted Choji a bit further out and wondered if Sakura had actually gone home.

"I can't believe you two got lost," Choji marveled a half hour later. Ino just enthusiastically nodded at him, too busy with her meal that finally wasn't, die by the age of forty, diner food to respond.

"If I got stuck in a town with my cousins we'd kill each other," Sakura added.

"A creepy little town. Without internet. On Halloween?" Choji marveled, "it sounds like something right out of a movie." They hadn't mentioned which creepy little town, on the obscure chance someone stupidly decided to visit.

"Were you freaking out?" Sakura asked.

"It was gross," Ino replied, and Shikamaru thought she might be underselling her reaction to the whole thing, "but Shikamaru was pretty calm."

Choji beamed, "Shikamaru is always calm."

Ino's face disagreed, but not her voice. He knew why and his insides churned, already thinking about how to change the topic.

"You missed the craziest part," Sakura giggled, "Ino was the one driving. You never drive."

At this Ino frowned, some silent exchange between her and her friend. And then her eyes narrowed, "You're right. I don't." She sat back from her lunch, burying herself in her phone.

And he knew. He knew. But he still tried to dig himself out of this grave. "What have you two been up to? Were you here the entire time?"

Sakura's cheeks matched her hair. She went on about still wanting to see the local med school, one of the best programs, and what if one of the professors was on campus, an early introduction would make a whole application. Choji was only too accommodating to lead the way. Shikamaru following just behind noticed a few steps out the door that their little crew had become a trio.

He breathed a long, ragged draw, that left him feeling suffocated. His feet were lead, but there were things he needed to say, things they both already knew, the toll to pay. He turned back, taking the seat across from where Ino was sitting, ramrod straight. She didn't look at him when she asked, "why don't you have a spare tire?"

He couldn't bring himself to lie. She was too smart for that. But he couldn't bring himself to spell it out either. Instead, he was silent.

"You know," Ino's voice had a clear edge, "when you look up the town Tristan online, there's one review. An angry woman who complained for like half a page about this place at the end of the world without internet, cell signal, or tires at the general store. Where she couldn't even stay with her fiancé at the local motel because they weren't married yet. She said in all caps, never come here. Three times."

Ino leaned back, finally eyeing him, "I looked it up, and apparently, it's not that hard to mess with a GPS. Just need some basic programming skills. And who carries cash? And I don't normally drive, so I didn't recognize that wrong turn, in completely the opposite direction. Shikamaru." She asked him for the third time, "why don't you have a spare tire?"

There was no world where she didn't put it together eventually, he had been intentionally obvious. He matched her gaze, sick on his own words. "Because then I would have had to key two tires."

She looked baffled, too deep in her denial to process the implications of his confirmation. Lost in the faith she had in his gravity, "you? You did this?" Her jagged words clawed at him, and he fought for every ounce of self-composure and indifference he could manage.

"You-," her voice cracked, "why?"

"I wanted to play a game," he managed in a barely measured tone. The words were rehearsed, but still poison in his mouth, "the husband-and-wife game. It was the only way."

"You could have asked."

"You would have said no."

And then he saw the fear, the distance in her expression. He thought she might hit him. Scream. But when Ino stood and walked away, without another word, that was clearly the inevitable.

Shikamaru was stone. His petrified lungs failed him as some violent ache filled him. Nothing existed except him and the vacant emptiness of the universe as witness.

It must have been hours later when Choji found him, frustrated that the girls had to leave early. Confused that Ino had insisted they needed to get back that night. Concerned that his friend had suddenly turned near catatonic. The obvious explanation, Choji declared, was that Shikamaru was exhausted, a product of failed adventures. But sleep wouldn't come for Shikamaru for the second night in a row, he could only stare painfully at the ceiling, vaguely remembering that he never got around to telling his ghost story.

A story about a little boy, standing alone in a little house.

Until suddenly he wasn't.

Until suddenly there was someone in his space. A girl, a ghost. For a long time, he wasn't sure what to think about her. She was intrusive and a little too excited. He sort of liked when she was around but hated her when she was gone and he was left with the stain of their choices like a shadow on his soul.

She only visited him in the dark, and he came to realize that this was because there could be no space for them in the light of day. They were simultaneously too close and too far apart. She had no reason to remember him, and he tried to forget her.

And he could. Sort of, he could lock the memories of her behind a door. Open and close it only when she was around, name her and their attachment for nothing more than their faulty decisions.

Until he couldn't. When the wain of adolescence made for the independence of decisions, in the light of an SAT-ridden basement, he spent the night talking to her. Laughing, confiding, befriending. All without touch, taste, or taboo. And suddenly, he couldn't explain her anymore, name that clear distinction between them. He didn't understand how people so different on paper could create lasting company.

It was worse a year later when she made a habit of catching rides with her pink-haired friend to visit him. When talking nights away became as regular as trips to his bedroom. She lingered for him, in the smell on his pillow, in her wild takes that were somehow relevant to every other conversation, in the constant messages that spread the expanse between them.

He couldn't understand the problem, not completely. Not until he found a girl in his program. Someone like him, who fit in all the boxes of compatibility with him. He invited her into his life as a replacement for the girl. No, the one before was just a placeholder. The new one was the real match.

But she didn't feel quite right under him, and his mind drifted. Worse, she didn't fill those gaps quite right, know how to read the thoughts right from his mind, speak to the heart of his words. See him. Hear him. All the compatibility in the world, and he was disenchanted.

The boy was haunted by the space in-between, with someone he wasn't meant to have. Someone he knew there was no place on heaven or earth for him to have. Someone who would live like a ghost over any chance of permanence.

Shikamaru was haunted by the intimacy, by the friendship, by the casual contact, by the comparison – by the fear she was irreplaceable. Both as lover and friend. Their behavior could no longer be explained as teenage hormones, and that lack of explanation ate away at him from the inside out. He was terrified, that she could be the beginning and end of normalcy for him. That he would never function without her by his side offering to see right into his soul. That he might be an addict, desperate for any part of her available to him. Constantly waiting for the moment his desperate lips tasted her.

He had accidentally told her that he needed her. But he didn't say the more important half of that declaration. He needed her. Which meant he needed to get rid of her. Permanently this time.

And Autumn was the season for change.

He knew he would never be able to let her go. So, he needed her to run. Set him free of her own accord, her own decision.

He needed to scare her.

So, he blinded himself on her light until he could act, keep the door open to smother their childhood in the shadows of autumn's change. End the light for good.

He knew what terrified her. That she threw herself at the world's embrace, but when someone reached back, she cowered. That she was fearless when the world was her playground, but when the ground tipped in indecision, she was lost. That she loved to dream, big, wild, limitless dreams - so when someone else started writing her story for her, threatening her sense of freedom she ran. Because Ino couldn't survive in a cage.

And Shikamaru knew that when she told him these secrets - let him touch her sharpest edges, faulty lines - it had been in confidence, a singular point of understanding between life's oldest confidants. So he conjured up the worse thing he could ever do to her - take her to the edge of the world, without friend or escape, and tell her to play wife. Because what else could she do, with nowhere to run? He took over the story and broke every single rule they had ever made together. He dragged her into a game. One he knew she would never normally consent to play.

He destroyed her faith in the only person she had ever deigned to trust. And did it all while telling himself that he was setting her free, setting them both free. Free from the ghosts of each other.

Because they both needed to be done before they destroyed each other. Set on a violent collision course as her orbits in his life became increasingly irregular and unpredictable.

Shikamaru swung out of bed, searching in the dark November cold for that remaining, half-filled bottle of vodka, desperate for a dreamless sleep.

Ino didn't visit again, contact him in any way. She avoided the Naras, he the Yamanakas. And Shikamaru was convinced he had done the right-the absolutely necessary thing. Until he dragged his miserable form to his girlfriend's bed and realized he didn't like her any more than he had four weeks prior. That he could still only think of Ino.

He realized something then about that haunted little boy hiding in the dark. That his ghost, for all her fear and frights, had been keeping him company. Drifting through life at his side for so long that the little boy didn't remember what it was like to be alone, didn't remember what it was to be lonely. That feeling returned easily to him now, and in the dark, it almost breaks him.

O O O

Shikamaru tilted his head to the right, trying to use the back of the car seat to plug his ears. He was extremely tired of the backseat debate about whose batman costume was better exactly. Made so much worse by the limited vocabularies of a four- and six-year-old. He knew it was a mistake to let them go in the same costume. His wife reached across the car to offer a reassuring squeeze to his leg.

They had both agreed it was a better neighborhood for trick or treating, it was safer and the higher median income meant less candy and more strange career-centric items. He found the toothbrushes on 75th downright blasphemous, but if it meant tamping the sugar rush for the next week, it was worth it.

His phone told him it was time to turn as if the ivy-covered iron gates weren't obvious enough. The man in the iron booth waived him through without preamble, he was a regular. At that point, it was row upon row of perfectly manicured homes and lawns, and his wife stared lustfully, verbally dictating each and every change to the neighborhood - the new style of stone walkways, and water-scaping, imported bamboo displays. Shikamaru could barely tell one house from the next, much less the minutia of changes in yard displays from one visit to the next.

Five minutes of twists and turns and he pulled right in front of a house at the end of the cul-de-sac. The garden rotated between perfectly in-season flowers, today it was a checkerboard of yellow and purple pansies.

He helped the four-year-old out of the car seat, and the six-year-old bounded as quickly as his little legs would move for his cousin. His second cousin. These types of distinctions were silently important to Shikamaru. The door was always open during the day, the neighborhood was that safe. There were excited shouts and in-character reenactments already happening inside.

Shikamaru didn't knock either. He watched silently as Kiba swept one of the kids into a flying motion, calling for his wife to hurry up. She appeared at the top of the stairs with a vague look in her eyes, the one she'd had ever since her youngest was born and she switched to working part-time, telling herself all the while it was just for a little bit, just an extended maternity leave of sorts.

It was why Shikamaru never knocked, he couldn't help but to look for it. That haunted look, when he was half convinced she was thinking about which of her children she wanted to dismember and toss into the community trash system. When she finally spotted Shikamaru's oldest, running trying to launch himself into the air from the couch, something focused in her expression, and she found him hugging the door, watching.

She said hello by passing off the baby in her arms, who was already whining to be held by Unke Shika, then a kiss on the cheek. She didn't linger, she never did.

Shikamaru studied Yukio, the youngest of their collective hoard. Every time he visited he searched the boy's features. Of all her children, this one looked like Ino reincarnated. And it bothered him, stoked an irrational fear. That she had accomplished the impossible. That she and Kiba already had exactly 2.5 children. It wasn't possible, he told himself, they were too careful.

Ino lingered next to her husband, an idle hand stroking their dog's head while children ran in circles. They were discussing the safest neighborhoods to visit that night.

In the end, she could never outrun that picture-perfect moment. Because Ino was fast but clumsy. Dreams, she had eventually learned, weren't enough to keep her from falling into other's plans and ideas when she stumbled.

And the quarterback was a fast runner.

They were still Normal Rockwall; porcelain Precious Moments frozen in their little slice of suburbia.

And nobody seemed to notice the ghosts surrounding the perfectly average woman.

After all, their home was too expensive to be haunted. And nobody checked under floorboards, not when they were custom hardwood. Ino didn't dress up for Halloween this year, not when she and Kiba were already such a convincing Daisy and Tom, the perfect costume to conceal Frankenstein and his monster.

But Shikamaru was no Gatsby. He was her sickly cousin hugging the periphery of her glamorous life. There was nothing caviler when he found her in corners, the basement, the study, or caught in his headlights at a disgusting motel just out of town.

He knew Ino had only returned to him because she had become the pawn for another. And he was a willing game of escape. Because, he realized, he really did need her. He had bound his experience of the world to her. Her ghost never left. He shifted from a lingering absence in the arms of others to passive resentment. He came over and over to any place she would have him to break the laws of nature in stolen moments, so he could play at average in all the others. So, in the chaos of being constantly surrounded, he wasn't alone.

He could never truly be normal and she was destined to be exactly as perfect as everyone thought she was.

They were haunted souls gasping for a breath of the living, to go on pretending for five more minutes. Even on this night of ghosts, zombies, and shattered souls, it was only with each other they could escape the feeling of being freaks. No. Not escape. There was no escape for them. No place for them. Just temporary relief.

These were the new ghosts they cast upon each other and their families. The real reason he drove all the way up to her neighborhood every year.


Author's Note: Part two of the author's note, because if anyone is still reading at this point, clearly nothing I say is going to stop you. So… thank you wonderful, wonderful person 3. Also, I would like to extend all of my gratitude to PSITeleport for allowing me to write in your world, this is honestly the most fun I've had writing in a long time – family drama, who knew? If the 1% of the 1% are here who are following The Second Chance and want to know if it's abandoned. Then you ask good questions. Idk. What I do know is that the outline kept exploding and I'm not posting anything until there's at least a second draft done. Let me know what you thought of this story, because we are so far out of my normal writing comfort zone, I feel like an explorer traversing the stars who needs HQ to let me know if I'm on the right track or if we need to change course.