Happy belated New Year, loves, and thank you for the continued support into 2015!
Just another reminder to any new readers that I write a lot more actively on tumblr, recently I've been filling one-word prompts as excerpts almost exclusively on tumblr. Some I'm bundling and uploading onto ffnet, but most will be found there.
Toodles and have a great day.
It was always around the same time, just as the leaves began to crisp and detach themselves off the branches. When vivid green faded to red and then a crusty brown, reduced to nothing beneath their feet. How Shikamaru sometimes wished he could be that way – detached, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his eyes just lifted to see her.
Temari. With her head angled upwards, her teal eyes always a touch fascinated with the changing of seasons, as the months blurred from one to the next. There was that sparkle he'd learned to love, he'd grown to search for, that always found its way into her otherwise steeled gaze.
She truly was beautiful – with the sun catching her skin, facets of pink and gold lit with each ray.
With deft fingers, she caught a leaf in her grasp; half yellow, half orange. She held it up in brief fascination – and it was in those moments that Shikamaru remembered Temari's love for nature. It was something not many got to see, an aspect only surfaced when her soldier persona was stripped from her. But it was there, right now, in front of him; laid bare.
He loved her.
And that was why it was always hard to say goodbye.
She turned to him, then, and for a moment he thought she might offer the leaf to him. But she instead kept it cradled carefully in her palms. Shikamaru doesn't question it, nor question the half grin, half grimace on her face. He knew her well enough, knew that she was feeling it, too, despite the brave front she made. Despite the past teasing words, the past methods to disguise the loneliness the next months would bring. She'd admitted it once – only once – that the months that followed weren't the same without him by his side. It took only once, once where she didn't hide behind scathing teases – the reluctance to leave behind a fake smile. He didn't even know when it had begun to be a fake smile, but all he knew was that he could read her like a book. He probably always had. And thus, when the smile didn't reach her eyes, he knew.
Now, it wasn't quite like that any longer. No longer was the hanging question – will she stay? When will it be permanent? Just like other parts of their relationship, it remained unspoken, drifted down the valley, and allowed to let itself fall into place. Not that he didn't want that, he did – oh God, he did – and she knew, but she couldn't. Temari didn't have to say it, but he knew.
And she stood there, Temari, with a leaf in her hand and a half-sad smile on her face. She looked like she had more to say, as she always did just before they parted. But the hint in her expression wiped away, so fast he couldn't quite register it. She instead gave a smile, just a soft one – an upturn in the corner of her cheek.
It doesn't reach her eyes.
"I'll see you in six months, then?"
Sooner, he thought.
"Okay."
The smile only carved itself deeper in her features.
She hesitated.
His mind screamed. Screamed to ask her to stay, to ask her to be with him permanently; no more hopping back and forth and feeling as if half of him was missing. God he didn't even know when he'd gotten this bad, this crazy, but he needed her. He needed her like the air he breathed, needed to hold her like the way she cradled that leaf in her hands, needed her with him because he didn't know what he was without her.
He swallowed, and let those thoughts go down the river.
"Bye, then," she said quietly.
He kissed her. It took a single finger under her chin to angle her upwards, and with that same spark as she regarded the falling leaves, she gazed at him. His tongue brushed her lip and for a moment, a split second, it was perfection: with autumn around them and nothing but silent buzzing in their ears. But they broke apart, and her eyes fluttered open – and the façade is gone, the loneliness set in, and he can't bring himself to ask her to stay.
"Bye," he said instead.
And it was not until she was several yards away, did he sigh and push his hands back into his pockets. Autumn swirled around him, with the promise of winter on its heels, but at least he had the memory of her lips – against his – to keep him warm.