Fourth Meeting

Shikamaru awoke to the sounds of someone using expletives in what he was sure were four different languages. Momentarily confused, he looked around the room; images of Hello Kitty in all types of questionable positions only made the memories of the night before more difficult to recollect. They scampered away from him, hiding behind mental crevices and cracks. He figured there was a reason why he'd repress them.

Something in his pocket vibrated. He dug his hands inside and retrieved his phone, an unknown number flashing on the screen. He answered.

"What?"

"We're calling for Temari. We wanted to inform her that her bags have arrived at the Osaka station." At that, the other end hung up, leaving Shikamaru even more thoroughly confused. He had a terrible feeling that he should have remembered something vitally important. But he didn't.

He yawned as he stretched, catching a glimpse of the watch on his wrist. Ten AM. Too early for him on a weekend. That explained the fogginess in his mind, the blanket that refused to be lifted, which rarely occurred and only during the instances he'd let his friends, especially Ino, talk him into drinking.

At the thought of Ino, the blanket wrapped itself tighter around his brain, making any coherent thought even more impossible. He smacked his lips, felt his tongue laden with the guck of a night's sleep, stood, and headed towards what he assumed was the bathroom. Too sleepy to take notice of the sounds that came from the other side of the door, he wrenched it open.

And suddenly all the memories he'd repressed flooded his brain as he stood staring at a very naked Temari.

He couldn't help it when he said, "So you are a natural blonde."

And he was very sure she couldn't help it when her fist connected with his jaw.

He waited for Temari to finish using the bathroom as he nursed his swollen, probably disconnected, aching jaw with a damp cloth. He moved his mouth experimentally and winced at the pain.

Who knew girls could hit that hard?

He was lucky she hadn't used any karate moves. After that little display of strength, he had absolutely no doubt in his mind that she had studied the martial art—and very well.

She stormed out of the bathroom clad only in a towel, a brush in one hand and clumps of blonde hair in another. She glared at him, eyes narrowed pinpoints of boiling anger.

"Why did you do that?"

He moved his jaw again, testing his ability to speak. "Trust me, I didn't do it on purpose. I was too sleepy to notice someone was in it."

She was unconvinced. "Right."

He shrugged. Truth was, he couldn't care if she believed him or not. He was starting to remember the wedding he had witnessed, the ache in his chest returning with a vengeance. No amount of arguing with a half-naked woman, no matter how hot she was, was going to distract him.

It seemed she didn't really care if she believed him or not, either. She harrumphed and began to attack her hair with the brush, trying to detangle the knots in her hair.

"Don't just stand there," she said, pausing for a moment. "At some point, this towel is going to fall right off and you're going to get caught staring again, and then I really am going to have to kill you."

She was right. Shikamaru took her advice and went into the bathroom to get cleaned up and get as far away from her as possible without looking like he was trying to run away. Even though really, he was trying to run away.

The bathroom was as foggy as his brain had been only minutes before. Not bothering to check himself in the mirror, he ran the shower, climbed in, and let the cascading water drench him as he let his mind go.

Ino. What was she doing now? On her honeymoon with his best friend, probably having morning sex while waiting for room service to show up with a disgustingly large breakfast to feed the three stomachs Chouji had. At the thought, Shikamaru grimaced, partly because he felt terrible for thinking so badly of his greatest friend and partly because he meant every word.

He didn't want to dwell on it anymore. In fact, he wanted to stop thinking about Ino as much as he could. Burning her picture was the first step in healing.

Yeah, right. What a load of shit. He loved the woman; people didn't just stop loving people because they wanted to. Marrying someone else was a good enough reason to stop loving her, but then again, that wasn't working out well, either.

"Fuck," he said, scrubbing his skin with the soap he hoped Temari had opened earlier and wasn't just something left over by previous visitors. "Fuck. Fuck."

What else was part of the healing process? Crying? Punching things? Rebounds? Sleeping with other women? Drinking the misery away?

Acceptance.

There was a loud pounding on the door and then Temari's voice, "Get out. We have to go get my shit from the station. Stop fucking moping."

He stopped fucking moping.


"Where are we having breakfast?"

Temari, he realized, asked questions to grate his nerves. She spoke, in general, to grate his nerves. Much of her actions since he'd met her had all been to grate his nerves. Of that, he was sure. There was no possible, conceivable way that there could be another explanation for why she always seemed to smirk at him, suggest vulgar things, and want to make him punch himself in the face, repeatedly.

"We aren't having anything."

"Fine. Guess you're treating me to lunch."

"All I'm going to do is get your stuff back and make sure you're on your way to wherever it is you're going."

"Fukuoka. And if I remember correctly, I threatened your manhood or life or something if you didn't accompany me on my way."

They were crossing a busy intersection at that point but that didn't stop him from standing right in the middle and glaring at her with all the intensity he could muster at such an early time in the day. Which, to be honest, wasn't much. Intensity, that is.

"I'm not going anywhere."

She kept walking as she said over her shoulder, "I'd start walking if I were you. Japanese drivers are far from the most patient."

"I'm not moving."

"Suit yourself. The only person who is going to be in any pain is you. I know how to get to the station."

The pedestrian crossing light began to flash red, warning Shikamaru that he had only a few seconds to make it across.

Killing himself would only please Temari. So he crossed as quickly as his two legs could carry him, which took as long as it did for the lights to stop flashing. Drivers began honking their horns at him, making his sour mood turn downright foul.

The station was a lot further than he remembered it being. Of course, the walk from the station to the love hotel with a loud woman in a white, drenched shirt following his heels probably made him walk a lot faster than he was used to.

Finally, they reached the station. Temari didn't utter a word as she stalked past him and through the double doors. She didn't pause to check if he was heading inside with her, and Shikamaru was perfectly content with that. When he was sure she was safely inside and could no longer see him even if she turned around, he spun on his heels and headed straight to the lonely bench in the middle of the sidewalk, conveniently placed there for lonely souls like him to find.

Peace and quiet. He didn't even remember what those two words meant. Peace had left him the moment he'd seen the giant ring on Ino's finger, and quiet had disappeared when he had the misfortune of sitting in Temari's seat on the train station.

It appeared that Shikamaru's miserable status in life was all because of the female breed of the human species.

Just his luck.

He would be the one to somehow land some crazy woman (probably a feminist) that followed him around and made his life miserable. Should have figured it out when one of his best friends was a loud, obnoxious, vain, shallow blonde stick of a girl; when his first chess opponent had been some eleven year old girl from Osaka who was so vulgar she acted as if she'd had dirt for food; when the love of his life turned out to be a woman who could never return the sentiment because her heart belonged to another. Actually, he should have thrown in his cards when he was old enough to understand that yelling and ordering others wasn't the only way a mother could show her son how much she loved him.

It wasn't fair. He wasn't a bad guy; sure, he was lazy and nonchalant about things he shouldn't be nonchalant about; and he had a really bad habit of picking naps over chores and ditching school over graduating top of his class; and maybe a tad bit cocky and chauvinistic. But he wasn't terrible. In fact, he was actually a really nice guy. He was a loyal friend, disgustingly smart, kind and considerate, a good role model when he wasn't cutting class or playing hooky at work.

So what had he done to deserve everything that had happened to him so far?

"You don't even try to run away very far. You're really bad at this."

Shikamaru was only mildly surprised to hear Temari's voice. He felt her take a seat beside him, the heat from her body oddly comforting.

"I don't bother trying. Goes against my principles."

"All I've figured out about you is that you're a lazy good-for-nothing. And you're in love with someone who doesn't love you—but that makes up about half the world's population anyway, so I don't really want to rely on that as an accurate description of you."

He couldn't help the sigh that escaped his mouth. "Did you come back just to bother me?"

Temari nodded. He heard it, even as he still refused to look at her. "That's right. Couldn't get enough of your brooding, taciturn disposition or that permanent little line between your eyebrows."

"Why are you going to Fukuoka?"

"My family lives there," she answered easily.

"You don't seem like a country bumpkin."

She laughed. It was a surprisingly musical sound, like the bell of an old bike, rusted but still working properly. "I'm not. And you don't seem like a genius, but you are."

"How do you know?"

"I know a lot of things."

"You're really aggravating."

"So are you." She was silent, allowing Shikamaru a moment of reprieve to stare at the clouds that were far better off than he was, drifting off at their own pace, no unrequited love to hinder their path. Then,

"You're going to find someone else to love again."

He surprised himself when he answered, "Not like Ino, I won't."

She sighed, clearly exasperated, but obviously trying to mean well. "No, probably not. But you'll love them in a different way and they will love you, and sometimes, that's even better."

"Have you ever been in love?" he asked, in an effort to distract her and change the subject. He dared himself to turn his head.

She wasn't looking at him. Instead, her eyes were focused on something far beyond the horizon, something invisible to him and the crowds that were starting to rush by them. "No. Not yet." She stood suddenly and blocked the view of the sky as she positioned herself in front of him, staring down her nose. "I've forgiven you."

"I didn't realize I needed to be forgiven."

"I've forgiven you for being such a little bitch. We can start on our way."

"Look—"

She rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm, short nails finding a way to dig into his skin. "You're going to try to get out of it but you won't. I'm going to irritate you until you concede into going with me all the way to Fukuoka. You'll say really idiotic things about women and I'll beat you up and you'll pretend that when I punch you, it hurts, and I'll know that you're actually turning black and blue. I'll teach you some things about life you never thought you would learn and you'll slowly get over Ino—that's her name, right?—and when you finally get rid of me, you'll be able to face another day without contemplating forty different ways of killing yourself."

He pried her fingers off him. "I'll pass."

"Aren't you glad I rarely take no for an answer and you rarely take an opportunity to fight back?"

"You've known me for a grand total of twenty-four hours."

"Don't flatter yourself," she said, forcing him to stand. "It took less than that to figure you out."

He didn't want to admit that there was a sense of excitement growing in his belly at the prospect of doing something he never thought he would. And he really didn't want to admit that he was glad he'd met her, and that he was going out into the unknown with her, this strange, magnificent girl with hair like straw and eyes that made the deepest ocean stir.


AN: Please, please, please review! It strengthens my resolve to try and churn out a new chapter.

Also, due to NaNoWriMo, updating this November may not be happening... so please forgive me.

But I will be trying to finish this before I'm off to Korea and January, and if that doesn't happen, this story will DEFINITELY be finished before I go off on study abroad in Japan sometime in March.

LOVE YOU ALL, and thank you guys soooo much!