a/n: i was recently tasked with making a list of best romcoms ever (in my personal opinion) and so while doing research for that assignment, i watched a lot of films people online mentioned. one was Obvious Child (2014) which I loved and was inspired to write a shikatema piece in a similar situation. so this is based off that film (a few scenes taken word-for-word) and i promise the film is better than my writing, so if you haven't seen it, i'd 10/10 recommend.

never-ending, on-my-knees thank-you to apps, carol, and saber for the edits and thorough help. my betas are brilliant and are the only reason anything i do is even worth your time

please enjoy!


Fit n' Full


"I think I should leave."

"Well I think you should stay."

Temari narrows her eyes, but she's already too tipsy to make her glare pointed.

"And get fucked up with me. Right now. Right. Now." Tenten taps her credit card on the table as she staccatos each word, as though the plastic, barely heard above the bawl of the bar, meaningfully emphasizes her point.

"Uh-huh. Because your intentions are so pure."

"Oh what? You'd rather be at home alone on the couch thinking about how you're single again? Please. I'm trying to get laid here too," Tenten says, extending her card. "Come on, drinks on me."

Temari narrows her eyes at her friend even further, and then grabs the card in a huff and slides off her stool. "Not trying to get laid," she mutters to herself as she makes her way over to the bar. She isn't. She really isn't. But her friend's right too. She could always just go home to her empty apartment and sit on the couch running through different variations of what went wrong over and over (as she had been doing every night for the past nine days) until she inevitably passed out without a suitable answer and then woke up after a period that was always somehow both too long and not long enough, feeling like absolute hungover shit (whether she drank or not... as though unshed tears just stored themselves in her sinus cavity and in her temples, causing their own type of hangover that would keep happening until she actually cried them out). That was the other option. Option one.

Or option two: she gets "fucked up" with Tenten. Probably wouldn't get laid. Really should swear off men and sex (the idea of even looking at a man right now was its own kind of turn-off), but that didn't matter. Being here — not being alone — was the thesis she was trying to get to. The point she was trying to come around to. The crux of the ego-wound argument.

Wow. Maybe she was already tipsier than she'd thought. When was the last time she ate?

Temari steps up to the bar, pushing past more people than had been there thirty minutes ago when she'd been up before. She scoots over, kind of nudging someone aside, to get in front of the bowl of nuts dozens of people had been touching for the past few hours (or maybe longer, depending on how often they actually had to refill it).

"Sorry," she says, customarily to the body she'd moved aside a few inches to get at the nuts. She notices the person turn, but doesn't further acknowledge them. She'd said sorry.

"A vodka cranberry and a gin and tonic," she tells the bartender and then when he disappears, she grabs the bowl of nuts and pulls it close to her chest, grabbing a fistful and shoving them into her mouth.

She swallows without enough chewing, causing a slight, but passing, discomfort in her throat, and then quickly grabs another handful.

The person — the man, she can now recognize by their general shape out of the corner of her eye — she'd pushed aside earlier is still watching her.

"Satisfied?"

"Will you stop staring at me?" She says, mouth, again, full.

"I'm not staring at you," the annoying man responds, voice edged with something she can't quite identify. "I'm simply observing the natural marvel of this human woman consuming nuts... whole."

Temari looks over, frowning, working to swallow. The man is taller than she expects and she has to tilt her head back to see him with how close she is. Asshole. "I'm hungry."

"Well," the man says, quick, "I can see that."

"Oh? Didn't need to study biology to figure that one out?"

The man smirks. Hm. He has a good mouth. But his eyes are too dark. They're discomfiting to look at.

"I think it'd be observable to even the most casual Darwinian scholar... though obviously not immediately discernible to me when I was, against your wishes, standing in front of the bowl."

"Yeah, an educated man would've seen me coming."

"Yet I didn't."

Temari huffs and turns to face him more fully, bowl in one arm, her other elbow resting on the bar. "Your reference would've been more pointed if we were discussing evolution. Aristotle would've been better for a biology joke. Also, I gently pushed you aside and then apologized, so calm down."

"Elbowed in the ribs."

"Yeah right." She's smiling though (it's the alcohol, it's not by choice) and she takes the time to look him up and down. She doesn't know why she's being so mean. She hears it before she says it, but doesn't stop herself. She doesn't know... something about him just urges her to it. "Show me the bruise."

He keeps his eyes on her face, but is amused (interested, clearly) in her evaluating him. He's good looking and he knows it. He likes that she's seeing it. Ugh, so annoying.

Annoying.

She's smiling though.

"You want me to take my shirt off?"

Temari rolls her eyes and turns back to face the bar.

"What are you even doing here? You don't look like the type of guy to hit on drunk women in shitty downtown bars."

"I'm not hitting on women," the man answers, and he mirrors her position, facing the bar beside her. "And what about me seems out of place?"

She eats another nut — an individual one this time. "You're hitting on me."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"Do you want me to be?"

God, he's so annoying.

She can feel how annoying he is all the way in her fingertips. Feel it thrum into the corners of her mouth that she has to fight to keep from pulling up.

"The suit," she answers instead. The man backs away from the bar momentarily to look down at his outfit. "Corporate?"

"Something like that."

"Right," she licks her lips. "You don't fit in at all."

He looks at her for a moment and she paces it out from the edge of her vision. And then he rolls his eyes and looks over to the bartender walking toward them with her order. "You're right. I was supposed to meet someone. I've never been here before. And wouldn't come on my own."

The tender comes back with the two drinks and Temari extends Tenten's credit card, but before he can take it, the man leans closer to her. "Put it on my tab."

"That's really unnecessary. I'm not going to sleep with you." Temari responds, but she doesn't protest the action itself and instead slips Tenten's card into her jeans.

"Name?"

"Nara," the man says, "Shikamaru." The bartender nods and walks away.

"Nara," Temari repeats to herself, testing it out on her tongue.

"I don't want to sleep with you," he says as she gathers the glasses.

"Yes you do."

"You like to make a lot of assumptions about what I want."

"That's fair," Temari eyes him. She isn't even sure why she's going to say what she's going to say, but she's already ready for the next sentence. And the follow-up. He knows what she's going to ask, and she can see he's waiting for it too. "So then tell me: what do you want?"

He looks at her.

"I'd like my spot at the bar back, please. Preferably with the nuts."

"Oh, okay," she says, faux saccharine, "well this was fun." She takes one drink in each hand, and works, exclusively in response to his request, to keep the bowl of nuts pressed between her chest and her forearm. "I guess I'll just think of sleeping with you when I'm by myself then. Thanks for the drinks!"

She walks away before he can respond.

Though she knows he was expecting it. Wanting it, kind of.

She turns after a few steps, looking, coyly, over her shoulder.

He's leaning against the bar, watching her. Glint in his eye, he raises a glass to her.

She's smiling as she walks away.


She drinks more. And more. And then at that point, the nuts really don't help, no matter how many of them she eats.

She's having a good time with Tenten.

It's a good time just to be with people she loves.

She's not upset at her relationship ending. She's not. It never really felt like "it," you know? She wasn't in love. But she always just kind of thought... she wasn't in love yet. She cared about him. And liked how he fit into her life.

They had easy conversations and took their coffee the same way and liked the same movies. His friends were nice to her. The sex — though they hadn't had it in a while — was good.

But she'll admit (though she's felt otherwise since he left her) that she enjoyed it more than she was into it... Yes. That makes sense. That's what she means.

So it's fine. She's fine. She'll be fine!

Temari is a relationship person. She's been in long-term relationships for most of her adult life. She's alway independent and exists well without ever getting too into a relationship, which is maybe why they've lasted so long (because there is always enough healthy distance that you can't really see the cracks without getting closer, standing far enough away to misconstrue something perilous as salubrious), but none of that matters right now.

She's single now!

And she has a good job she started only a few months ago that she only heard about because Tenten worked in the same building and she found it fulfilling and liked her coworkers. And her apartment. And her clothes and her furniture and her body and her routine.

She's good. She's happy. She likes her life. Which isn't always an easy thing to do. But, despite recently breaking up, she feels good.

Also, you know, the alcohol. That helps.

By the time it's her turn to go get the drinks again, Temari has already long-decided she's going to look for the man again too.

She hasn't been thinking about him, but she's felt the light pulse of interest for the past forty or so minutes. As though she can feel him behind her, even though the bar isn't even visible from her table. But she does plan, without putting much thought into it, to buy him a drink.

She imagines she'll go to the bar, order him something and it'll be brought to wherever he is now (if he's not still standing there) and he'll know it was from her. And then he'll come find her and put a hand on her shoulder to turn her around (her back is facing out). And they'll speak again. He's annoying — but, like, in a hot way. She fantasizes that they'd argue (flirt) some more and then she'd follow him home (laughing off her half-serious-last-minute-vow-of-celibacy-slash-swearing-off-all-men she'd made on the way to the bar earlier).

And so she walks over to the bar, looking casually for him, smiling to herself at just how regular this all is: boy and girl meet in bar and drink and flirt all under some conventional custom that demands they do this for at least a few hours before they inevitably fall into bed for some mediocre sex that they'll both forget about six months from now.

But she doesn't see him.

And she looks — walks a full circle of the place before ordering, just in case.

"Who was the man who bought my drinks earlier?" She asks the same bartender when she ends back at the bar.

"I'm sorry, it's been busy tonight. I don't remember."

"Guy in a suit? Tall?"

"Yeah, sorry."

Oh. Well.

Temari orders for herself and Tenten,

She didn't really mean anything by it. Just a wayward fantasy. She's really not looking for anything. She'd just thought: maybe. But oh well. Not tonight. Not important. She's fine! She's good.


Tenten's train takes so long to arrive that by the time Temari is walking out of the station, it's started raining. She hadn't even noticed it was going to rain!

Her friend lives on the line right next to the bar (it was why they'd met there), but Temari has to walk at least half a mile to her station.

She crosses her arms over her chest and runs back to the awning extending over the bar, getting out of the way of the downpour.

It's not too late. Two hours until midnight. Late for her, but not for the life of a Friday night.

Temari sighs. It is, however, much too cold out. And the city is more empty than usual with the christmas populous vacationing.

She can't see the color of the clouds in the dark, but the rain doesn't seem like one of those easy drizzles that will go away if she stands there for a bit.

Fuck. Is it worth taking a taxi? She doesn't want to spend money on one. And they'll be almost impossible to catch in the rain like this.

Maybe she can ask one of the bartenders to call one for her? People do that, right? Call taxis on the telephone? She hasn't, but she's heard of it.

It's freezing. She pulls her coat tighter around her and, breathing clouds into the dark night, kicks her heels against the cement building while she waits.

And then — within magical seconds — she sees a yellow cab, its light still on, turn the corner down the street, heading right for her intersection. Temari steps out of the awning quickly, letting herself be pelted with the borderline-torrential rainfall, and half-runs to the curb, arm extended.

It's a one-way street, and the taxi is across it, but the driver sees her and slows before pulling to a full stop on the opposite curb. There are no open shops over there, so the light is limited, and in this rain anyway she can hardly make out the sidewalk, but she holds one hand over her eyes to keep the rain out and jumps off the curb to cross the street the moment the traffic lightens.

She waves at the driver to unlock the car — she's approaching from the traffic side — and then she opens the back passenger door and slips inside, already thoroughly wet and shivering.

She missed him. It was only half a second. Really, if she'd tried, if she'd looked up, she probably would have seen him.

But she'd missed him.

And so when she does see him, by the time her weight is already mostly into the car, and she couldn't back out without sitting and getting back up again, it's already too late to easily write it off. And she's already in the car only a moment before he is.

"Excuse me," she says as the long-legged man sits down. "This one's occupied."

The man turns — oh. It's the man from the bar.

He is about to respond, but stops momentarily when he recognizes her. She watches him take a breath.

There is a moment where neither of them speak. And then the moment breaks and she recovers. "What are you doing?!" She snaps, pushing back against the door, as far away from him as she can get. "Are you stalking me?"

The man frowns. He looks thoroughly unamused. "This is my cab. I just hailed it," he says, impatient and slow at the time. Patronizing, really. "You got into my taxi."

Temari tenses her shoulders. She's literally dripping onto these seats. A few minutes ago she was debating the worthwhileness of paying the cab fare, but now that she's inside the car, she thinks she'd rather spend more money just paying for him to let her take it than get back out and wait.

"Are you fucking kidding me? I hailed it," she responds instead, turning fully in the seat to face him.

The taxi really wasn't for her. Was it? It made much more sense that the taxi pulled up to him across the street (where he apparently was) than stopping for her that way.

But she didn't want to get out.

Or actually, maybe, he had never been there at all. After all, she hadn't seen him standing directly across the street! It was dark but it wasn't that dark! Maybe he was just waiting out the rain, saw it stop for her, and swooped in at the opportunity of a ride home.

She theorizes this aloud to him. "You weren't even at the bar," she says. "You left hours ago! What are you still doing here?!"

He sighs and falls back against the seat. "I've been there the whole time."

Temari huffs. She'd said (only to herself) annoying but hot earlier, but she'd take that all back now. Not hot. Not hot! Just annoying.

Really annoying.

"Where are we going?" The cab driver says. If he overheard any of the conversation — which he obviously did — he seemed to have no interest in weighing in as to who he'd stopped for or who he wanted out.

"Okay fine," she capitulates. Whatever. He's not worth arguing with. She's too tired. And too wet. And much, much too cold. "Let's just split it, okay? I just want to get home."

The man closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, pained, as though the contemplation of sharing a taxi is as bad as sacrificing a limb.

What a jerk.

Whatever. Whatever.

Without waiting for affirmation, Temari leans up and gives her address to the driver. The car is immediately put into drive.

"I'll pay for my ride and you pay for yours." She says, settling back in the seat.

"You live in the opposite direction. I'll be forty blocks further down than I am now," he complains.

Or maybe it's not quite a complaint. Maybe just a comment. He doesn't push it further, if that means anything.

Temari exhales. She looks out the window. It's starting to fog up.

"You were looking for me?"

She turns her head quickly back to him.

"No," she says a bit too fast. He looks at her and she doesn't like the way he's doing it. "Just." She swallows. "I would've bought your next drink to thank you. Make it even." He nods. "You know: not to owe you anything."

"You don't owe me anything."

She hums and looks back out the window.

"And I didn't leave."

She can feel him looking at her. She feels the flush of it in her neck. She doesn't turn back to him. "Then where were you?"

"You were with someone," he says.

"A friend."

"I didn't want to interrupt."

Temari swallows. Suddenly, she's not cold anymore. Slowly, she turns around, turning her body so that she's mostly leaning against the side door, facing him. "Oh, so you didn't want to come home with me?"

"I didn't say that."

She takes a deep breath, watching him.

The air has shifted. They can both feel it. She can tell, in the way he's looking at her mouth.

His eyes are so dark, she can hardly distinguish the pupil from the iris. Impossible, almost, in the added darkness of the taxi. The only light is whatever passes through the window.

"You did."

He takes a long breath. "In other words."

"Yes." She agrees. His hair is wet too. So are the shoulders of his coat. His hair is falling out of its tie. She wants, suddenly, viscerally in a way she hasn't felt with such urgency in a long time, to reach across the seat and pull the tie out.

It's a little ridiculous. Okay. Really ridiculous.

But, of course, she's been drinking a lot. And now the cab is a little humid just with the temperature change.

And he's tough. A bit of a challenge.

Not her type at all. Not at all! He's attractive in a pretty-boy type (ew) and he's tall (which is worse). And he's smart in the aleck-y type of way she hates. But she finds it kind of a thrill too. And she really (really) likes his smile (his mouth). And his hands.

And going toe to toe.

"Sorry to disappoint."

"I didn't say I was disappointed."

"No," he muses, leaning back to face her too. "But I do remember you saying something about fantasizing about it on your own."

Temari smirks. "You remember that?"

"A little hard to forget."

"Oh? So you've been thinking about it?"

He huffs, half a laugh. "You talk to men like this a lot?"

So what if she does? "No," she answers honestly, "something about you brings it out of me."

He nods.

"Temari," she offers, extending her hand.

He glances down at it and then back to her. "Shikamaru."

Right. Right. She remembers it as soon as he says it.

His hand, when it takes hers, is warm.

"So," she ventures when she releases, "did you have a good night out?"

Shikamaru chuckles. "I went out for work, got stood up, got caught in the rain, and now am paying triple what I should've for a taxi just to take me on a tour of the city."

Temari rolls her eyes, but is smiling. "Date stood you up?"

"Work."

A shrug. "Those aren't mutually exclusive."

"If you're trying to ask if I have a girlfriend, the answer is No."

She tilts her head. "I've asked you to have sex with me. Twice. You think I'd be subtle in trying for your relationship status?"

Shikamaru purses his lips. That mouth. "You haven't asked me to have sex with you."

"In other words."

He exhales, long and slow, smiling at her turning the exchange around. Or maybe smiling at something else. "Yes." He agrees.

He's only mimicking her response from a few minutes earlier, she knows. Though they both know he's also circumventing it all and simply answering the question she hadn't wholly asked.

She'd been joking. But he knew that. And also not-joking. But he knows that too.

Easy, with him, isn't it? This kind of flirtation.

He's quick. In a way she isn't used to. Annoying, in a way she knows, given another twenty minutes of conversation, she'll be so infuriated with, she'll kick him out of this cab and directly onto the rain-slicked pavement. But she's biting her lower lip despite herself. And really, she was also not-joking.

Plus, they don't have twenty minutes. The taxi, as though on cue, pulls up to her street.

Temari reorients and directs the driver which stoop to park in front of. And then she finds the appropriate cash and hands it over to the driver, all without another word or glance toward Shikamaru.

And then, her heart pounding, she opens the door and slides out of the car. It's still raining, but it's lightened a bit.

She could easily close this door and walk upstairs and be done with tonight.

But she'll think about it for a while more, won't she? Maybe for a long time. Better to just do it and not regret it.

And so as soon as she gets out, she leans down into the open door, rain hitting her back, and meets his gaze.

"Well?" She asks. "Are you coming?"


Temari lays a towel beneath where their wet coats hang by the door and then comes to sit next to him on the couch, curling up to one side, knees by her chest.

"Are you okay?" He asks, folding the damp towel he'd used for his hair and putting it on her coffee table.

"Okay? Why wouldn't I be?"

Shikamaru turns to face her and she watches the bend of his leg, taking in the angle of it, his knee...

"You just got out of a relationship."

Temari huffs. "Are you trying to talk me out of having sex with you?"

It's been a long time (long) since she's had a one-night stand. She's surprising herself (she's surprised herself all night) but she does want it. She wants it.

He gives a small smile, soft, a little hesitant. "I'm trying to make sure you're okay."

"I'm an adult." She says, a little harder than she means to. "I can make my own decisions."

He scoots forward, reaches a hand out to her calf. His palms are large; his fingers long. She watches them fall upon her leg, feels the heat through her pants. "You're drunk."

"Not that drunk," she says (and means it). And she wants to mean it even more than she does. She wants this. She puts forward her leg a bit, closer to him, letting him move his hand up her calf with careful intention. "And so are you... and you don't seem to think it'll be a problem." She bites her bottom lip, eyes flicking down to his groin.

He watches her and then looks down to his lap and then back up at her. "It won't be."

She grins and brushes her bangs behind her ears. She's so turned on right now, she can feel her cheeks reddening with the excitement of it. She's been breathing heavily, hands shaky, for ten minutes and they haven't even kissed yet. "I get hornier when I drink," she admits, and then stops for a second to watch him watch her mouth. His eyes are so dark, they seem black in the light from the single lamp in her living room she'd turned on. "But it's also harder to make me come."

Shikamaru exhales half a laugh and then tightens his hand against her leg and uses his grip to pull her closer, pulling her leg over his lap until she's straddling him. "Okay," he says, hands on her hips. She lets out a breath as he leans up. "I can work with that."

"Yeah," she's grinning, leaning down, feeling his warmth, sharing his air, smelling the rain on him, fingers coming to the back of his neck, "good luck."

And then he kisses her. Or maybe she kisses him. She's unsure. It doesn't matter who started it, anyway.


It's hours later, long after they'd briefly fallen asleep and then risen and then fallen asleep again, that he is actually back on her couch, bending down to put his socks on.

It's still dark out and she's in an oversized men's tee that she knows goes down just far enough to give the tantalizing impression that she's not wearing underwear (which she's not, but he knows that). Cumulatively, they'd only slept for two hours, maybe. It's long before dawn, but he has to catch an early flight or something.

He'd warned her about it the previous night, but she's not sure whether it's just an excuse or not.

It doesn't really matter. She doesn't care (though if it is a lie, the obfuscation is completely unnecessary and vaguely annoying — since she had no expectations of him except to treat her well in bed, his attendance after that joint venture was not requested and he was free, if not urged, to leave as soon as they were done).

So Temari watches him put on his socks and tie his shoes and pull his (now-dry) hair back.

It's no longer raining.

They're quiet as he gets dressed and she leans against the entrance to the kitchen, backlit from its overhead light.

"You're beautiful," he says when he looks up at her. "Standing right there."

"Am I?" She smirks. "Only when I stand here? Not over there?"

Shikamaru smiles and then stands, ignoring her, tucking in his shirt and buttoning his pants. Ugh. It is four am. What a square. But she's still smirking; still watching him.

"Thank you," she says after a moment. He looks back at her. "For tonight."

"I believe I should be thanking you."

She exhales; laughs. The leaving is always the most awkward part. She'd forgotten about that.

"It'd been a long time," she says, "since I've had sex. Sex in general... But it's been a much longer time since I've had sex like that."

He blinks. He's all dressed. If he had another hour — fuck that, twenty minutes — she'd start undoing the buttons at the hollow of his neck like she had last night.

"I thought you just got out of a relationship?"

Temari shrugs. "I did, but there were a lot of sexless months leading up to that."

"In that case," he says, stepping forward to her, crowding into her and over her, reaching for her jaw, "I'm happy I could help." And then they're kissing again. She reaches up to him, opening her mouth more than she should at this moment, feeling his tongue slide between her lips.

God.

Shikamaru hums, and then exhales in a concluding, if reluctant, manner and moves his hands to her elbows, straightening back up. Temari, who hadn't even noticed she was up on her toes, falls with a sigh to her heels at his extrication.

"Go," she says, smiling kindly as she ushers him away.

He steps back and silently finds his coat from the hook next to the door.

"I'll see you," Shikamaru says, tone measured and sincere. It's an empty promise, and they both know it, but she smiles and lifts a hand in a wave nonetheless.

And then he's gone and she quickly loses the sound of his feet down the hall and down the stairs of her building.

Temari waits another minute or so, reveling in the silence of her apartment, in the exhaustion of her used limbs, of the weight of her body and the light pulse in the base of her skull. She feels better than she has in a very, very long time. She still may be a little drunk.

But whatever.

Tenten was right: this was just what she needed.


"That's such bullshit," Tenten moans, opening a second sugar packet for her coffee. "I take you out looking to get dicked-down myself and you're the one riding high this morning after having fantastic sex all night."

Temari would smile if her headache didn't seem to get worse the more she emoted (was that a thing? it felt as though if she frowned or grinned or looked any kind of way at all too hard that it exacerbated the pounding in her head). "I thought you wanted me to find someone? Trying to 'get me laid' were your exact words. And I never said it was 'fantastic'."

"Mm. No. I don't think I said that. I just wanted to get you out of your apartment." Tenten tastes her coffee, measuring the sugar level. "And you didn't have to. I saw the way you kept glancing around hoping to see him."

"I wasn't glancing around."

"Googly-eyes." Tenten takes a bigger sip of her coffee, seemingly approving the taste.

Temari sighs and leans forward, twirling her spoon around her mug as though to mix in additives even though her coffee was black. "Fantastic is a little dramatic. But it was quite good. Very good. And I'm glad we went out."

"Well, after I got home, I immediately left again, ate from two different food-trucks at midnight, and then fell asleep on top of my duvet."

"Two?!"

"Well. One. The one around my corner. And then Lee called and asked me to meet him at another one."

A pause.

Then: "where was Lee?"

"Blind date. Didn't work out."

Temari nods and takes another sip of her coffee.

"It's been a long time since we had a night like that."

"We're almost thirty," Tenten answers as though that's some kind of justification. Temari can't really remember the last time she went out-out (if going to one bar and not even getting sick was enough to count as "going out-out"). It had to be at least a few years ago.

Longer than that since she'd brought home a stranger. A "hook up" wasn't even a phrase that she can remember being attributed to her. Ever. She smiles to herself, crossing her legs and squeezing. She's still wet the way one is hours after sex despite showering already. She hasn't had that in a long time. She wants to say it to Tenten, but it seems too crass to vocalize.

"But it was good?" Tenten follows-up, as though aware Temari was thinking about the sex.

"Yeah." She swallows and looks up at her friend. She thinks of last night and then thinks of her ex. "It was."

"Good."

They sip their coffee silently.

A waiter comes by to top them off, but Temari waits until he's gone to speak again.

"Is dicked-down even a phrase?"

Tenten shrugged, picking up her coffee. "People say it."

"What people?"

"I don't know, people."

Temari hums and looks out the window at the cold, gray December morning.


She hasn't really been interested in sex recently — which may just be a consequence of drinking and eating a lot during this season, but she thinks it's important (and good for her!) that the one time she does masturbate, she thinks about that guy she hooked up with instead of anything from her past relationship.

That's a good thing, right?

Progress.


"I just think it's really shitty that he waited until right before the holidays to dump you."

"I think 'dumped' is a little strong," Temari says. "I feel like it was more mutual than that."

"Did he break up with you?" Kankuro argues, "or did you 'decide to go your separate ways'?"

Temari sighs. This is the last thing she wants to discuss on the last day of the year. Plus Taro dumped her over two weeks ago. She's seen Kankuro half a dozen times since then. She's ready to stop talking about this.

"He left me," she clarifies. "But 'dumped' seems to imply that I'm some sort of mess or creates the imagery that I'm a weepy pile of pity."

"What she means," Gaara says, not looking at either of them as he goes to open another bottle of wine, "is that she wasn't in love with him, so she's not heartbroken about it."

Temari bites her tongue. She hates when people speak for her — especially her younger brothers — but Gaara isn't wrong.

"It's just an asshole move," Kankuro clarifies, leaning forward and extending his half-empty glass to Gaara as the younger man comes back to the table with the new bottle. "And I didn't like him anyway. So I guess I'm not surprised."

"Finish your drink," Gaara instructs, going to fill Temari's glass instead. "I'm not mixing these."

Kankuro huffs, but downs his glass in two large gulps, and then extends it to Gaara once more.

Temari works to not be annoyed. This really is the last thing she wants to talk about. If she had any interest in talking about her sex life with her brothers ever, she would tell them that she already got the memo about the "under someone to get over someone else" rebound tip or whatever the saying was. And, fortunately (or maybe unfortunately?) like all of those fantastical (and lying) women's gossip magazines and media told her all her life: it worked. When she thought of Taro these days, it was missing the companionship more than missing the person. She felt fine sleeping by herself and embracing the entirety of her privacy. She didn't think of romance at all really, despite the onslaught of it during the holiday season.

"You don't like anyone though," Temari responded, belatedly.

"That's not true. I like your co-worker."

"My co-worker?" Temari rolls her eyes at this. "We're not co-workers. Tenten works in my building. And no. I've told you: No. Off-limits."

"I think she likes me."

"For her sake, I hope that's not true."

"Will she be at that thing you're going to?"

Temari shrugs. There is a New Year's Eve party she's leaving for in an hour. "Yes. And yes you can come, but the answer is still No." She raises her glass to her lips and then stops. It's actually not a bad idea. "Will you come too?" She asks Gaara. She thinks he might enjoy some of Tenten's friends. Her brother thinks about it and then nods. Content, Temari sips her drink. She's long-decided (as she does every year) that tomorrow will be the start of a much better year than the one before it.


Temari pauses in front of the mirror, looking at herself under the bright lights of her bathroom.

She looks tired.

She's been to so many events this past month, they've blended into each other. And, despite the season being virtually over now that everyone is back at work, she's surprised to find she's still being invited places.

This evening is a corporate lecture and then drinks for some morally ambiguous weapons manufacturer Tenten works for. Temari is just her date.

"Are you done yet?"

"One second!" Temari calls back. She should fix her makeup. Do something to make her look less exhausted.

She always remembers the winter holiday season as being quieter than most. Everyone she knows usually goes away — back to their families and hometowns — and the city shuts down in a way it doesn't for other events. She and her siblings only have each other, so they usually stay together, relishing the calm around them.

But this year feels so busy. Why is that?

Temari straightens. She's wearing tights and a skirt, but is otherwise only in her bra. She's wearing one of her nicer ones — it normally runs a little small, is white lace, and just fits her tits in a way that she thinks walks the line between lightly arousing and full-on sexy. But it's extra snug now. She turns to the side, taking in her body's profile in the mirror, and then comes back. She sighs. She feels heavy, even though she weighed herself yesterday and was the exact same weight as always.

She cups one breast at a time, adjusting them in the bra. She's wearing a white silk blouse, thin enough for the lace outline and pattern to be visible in certain lighting. Good for corporate evening events like this.

Ugh. Her boobs hurt. They're sore. Like, a lot. Are they bigger? Or is she just heavier? Her stomach feels normal, but maybe she is bloated and it's just showing up differently? But god they hurt.

Temari frowns. No. That doesn't make sense.

She ignores Tenten's call of her name and strips off all her clothes and stands on the scale. She's two pounds heavier than she was. That makes sense. Honestly, she's surprised it's so little. She'd weighed herself yesterday first thing in the morning before she'd even had a sip of water. Now she's eaten two meals. Okay. So no weight gain. Okay. Okay, she's just going crazy.

Usually with her period she would be cramping and hungry, which she doesn't think she has been. Actually, apart from right this moment, she hasn't felt any different than usual. Her schedule was off with her recent hormonal changes, so that's probably why she was getting her period now.

Temari quickly put her clothes back on. Her breasts were sore, that was all. She must be getting her period any second, so it made sense.

That's all it was. Nothing else — nothing outside of that — made sense. She wouldn't even let the word cross her mind (that's stoicism, isn't it? and she's always followed the stoics).

She finishes getting dressed this time, slipping on her shirt and a jacket before walking back to where Tenten was waiting in the living room, long-dressed and only slightly annoyed.

"Your period?" Tenten asks when Temari has to hold her chest as they go down the stairs of her building because it hurts too much when her breasts bounce.

"Unfortunately. Bad this month."

"Did your boobs always hurt?"

Temari buttons her coat on the walk to the train. "Never before this. But I don't know. Everything has been different since I came off birth control."

"Sucks, doesn't it?"

"What?"

Tenten huffs, smiling, as though the answer is obvious: "being a woman."


She gets tipsy off one glass of champagne and likes the flush of it in her cheeks. She lets some guy who shares a cubicle with Tenten flirt (a little poor, little platonic) with her. She feels lightheaded. And it feels good.


"Tenten."

Her friend, a few paces ahead of her, halts and turns around.

Temari is stopped in the street. "My breasts. They're really hurting. They're really sore." If she simply steps too intently on the ground, she feels it all the way in her chest.

Tenten inhales sharply. "Um. Okay. Hospital-hurting?"

Temari shakes her head.

"Okay." Tenten exhales. Her breath clouds under the streetlights. "Temari. Uh. When I was, uh, you know, when I was nineteen, that was the first—"

"You told me."

"Do you think?"

A beat. There are three yards separating them. Temari wants to yell, as though there were oceans between them, but when she opens her mouth, the words barely come out. "I don't know."

"Okay."

They're two blocks from Tenten's apartment and so Tenten steps back, fishes into her bag, and then pulls out her keys.

"Okay," she repeats, pressing the keys into Temari's open hand. "Go upstairs. Drink as much water as you can. Or maybe some juice too. Whatever I have there. I don't know. Maybe water, like, waters it down? I don't know. Just drink liquids. I'm going to go to the pharmacy around the corner. It should still be open. I'll get a test."


Temari doesn't know Tenten's computer password, but there is guest account access, and so she logs on there first thing and immediately looks up her symptoms.

She's alert, but everything feels dull. Like her panic isn't even something she's experiencing, but something — an entity — she's standing next to. She knows — knows — that running an internet search is never the right move and will only cause greater panic, but she needs to do something. Temari isn't a theorist. She's never cared for philosophical pursuits. She wants tangible, knowable answers. She needs to know and she needs to know now.

But she also wants nothing to do with the knowledge. She wants to stay as far away from the answer (if it really is what she thinks it is) as she can.

She scans her eyes down one webpage after another. She paces to the kitchen and drinks half a gallon of milk — which she hates — just to get more liquids inside her.

She has to pee. She's been peeing a lot, actually. Does that mean anything? The internet says so. But she thinks she's just been increasing her water consumption more than usual lately to combat the month of parties and events.

It feels like when she tried study-drugs in college. Like everything is too knowable but too far away at the same time.

Oh god.

Tenten takes longer than expected (has time slowed)? And by the time she shows up, Temari has almost thoroughly decided it is too ridiculous and improbable to be worth a test.

Tenten comes with five different brands of tests though. She's tried two stores and bought out every single one they had.

Each pack comes with two tests. They decide, after some mildly panicked debate, to be methodical (she's always organized, if that means anything or carries any weight in this exact moment). For the tests that require she pee on them, they lay out a towel with post-its below each test denoting its name, time, and respective symbology. And then she has two cups for the two tests that are strips.

And so she urinates, slowly, and puts one test beneath her at a time, and then hands it to Tenten, who lays it on the towel, making sure the testing part itself doesn't touch anything lest there be any argument of compromise. And then she pees into the cups. And still has enough to finish just in the toilet bowl.

Tenten puts on a timer and they wait and two minutes pass and then three and then they check again.

All ten come back positive.


It's too cold and Temari hadn't worn her warmest coat as she wasn't expecting to be outside for a long period. She leaves too quickly to borrow one either.

And so she walks down city blocks cold. Ears numb. Nose running.

They'd used condoms. They had. She remembers. She'd seen them in her trash the following morning, tied off. She remembers, a few years back, a condom ripping inside her and how it came all the way down her partner's penis — like, his penis came through it. It was obvious that it had ripped. They'd noticed right away. There wasn't question to it.

But the condoms in her trash a few weeks ago... they'd been properly tied and dealt with, right?

And he — Shikamaru — had never been inside her without a condom.

She feels sick.

Snow from a light snowfall a few days ago remains against some of the trees near the edge of the park.

Temari alternatively is caught between curling into a ball and taking off running. Her body doesn't feel like hers. She feels foreign and removed. She feels heavier despite no discernible weight gain.

They wore a condom every time. No, no, they definitely wore a condom!

She was only temporarily off birth control anyway. And they had told her to be more careful (and, she wants to footnote, when they'd told her that, she'd told Taro — but it didn't matter anyway, because she hadn't even been having sex with him, so she hadn't thought much on it). And regardless — regardless, they had told her it was likely that it would be months before she was even regular, much less fertile. Her eggs were only starting, messily, to ovulate again. It was supposed to be months. Months, right?

But whatever. Whatever. They wore a condom! She'd always wear a condom with a stranger!

Well. Okay. Okay. She had blown him without one. He's stuck those fingers she's found so attractive earlier and now felt repulsed by inside her without protection. His tongue had been inside her so many times without a dental dam or diaphragm (she only even had a vague idea of what those words meant — it wasn't the 1950's anymore!). But they hadn't used them. And the point — right, the point — the point was that she used a condom to protect against conception, but was also so sure she wouldn't get [she couldn't even say the word] because the doctor had told her it was almost impossible right now... and so they'd used a condom, but in the end, that condom was for STI's more than anything. But that was also stupid because she knew they could be passed through oral sex and yet there had been oral sex without any protection! Oh god.

She was so stupid.

Her legs hurt. She's walked into a different neighborhood by now.

How could she let this happen?

God. There isn't any thunder, but it's been gray out for weeks. And so she isn't even surprised when it begins to drizzle.

Really, it could've been drizzling this whole time and she may not have noticed.

How could this happen?!


"You are definitely pregnant."

Temari nods, moving her knees aside so the doctor can easily step by her, letting the door close behind her.

"I understand," the doctor says as she takes a seat, "you recently had had your birth control device removed?"

Temari swallows. "I'd hit the five year mark, so it was just, kind of, routine."

"But you said that you..." the doctor flips a page in the chart Temari had filled out two hours before. "You weren't trying to get pregnant."

"No. This was not planned."

"Oh? Did your OB have any reason for not reinserting the IUD?"

"Um, yeah, I'd had some ovarian issues a few years prior. And so he'd said something about re-regulating my period before taking any other steps."

"Hm." The doctor frowns. And then she shuffles the papers and puts them down. "I'm sorry this was a surprise. It's always really difficult, good or bad, when something like this is unexpected."

The room is white and sterile. It smells like all hospitals and clinics smell, though maybe a little more muted than she's used to.

"I just." Temari swallows again. Her mouth is dry. "This isn't like me." She looks at her lap and then back up. The doctor waits, patient. Temari waves a hand, as though dismissive. "I'm sure you've heard this before."

The doctor is careful with her words, working them to be kind. "I've heard it all."

"I'm just. I'm usually more pragmatic. Hot-headed maybe, but not, not-not careful. I plan. This. Just. This isn't like me." She's aware of how neurotic she sounds. Of how desperate for something other — for some reason — that she knows she can't get to.

Nothing feels clear right now. Everything is unfocused.

"I know," the doctor says. Though she doesn't know, does she? She doesn't know Temari. "This is scary. And a lot to take in. But I am here to help you and to talk about your options when you're ready for that."

"I'm ready. I'd like an abortion." That feels insensitive. "I don't. I, uh, don't mean it as though I'm ordering something in a drive-thru. I just." She swallows, again. "I want an abortion."

The doctor nods. Patient right. Yes, heard it all before.

"It's important that you put a lot of thought into this," she says. "And that the decision is all yours. Which is why today I'm really just here to provide you with all the information you need about abortion and about other options."

"Yes," Temari says, taking measured breaths, hand spread carefully on her thighs. "I have put a lot of thought into this —" she's thought of nothing else for three days — "and this is what I need to do."

The doctor nods and rolls her chair back a few inches to face her desktop. She opens a calendar on the screen.

"Okay," she says, glancing briefly back at Temari's chart and then looks at her computer. "Normally we'd base the date of conception around the start of your last period, but since you weren't regular, is there any chance you know the date of conception?"

"December thirteenth."

"Okay, very precise. That puts you at... a little over three weeks along, which is pretty early. In fact, it's too early to get the procedure done with us."

"Okay."

"It means you need to wait. I'd like to set the appointment for two weeks from today... that'll put it on the nineteenth. Does that work?"

Temari exhales deeply. She hadn't even realized she'd been holding her breath. As though, maybe, there was some fear that they would tell her No. As though, maybe, she was too late, or something had changed, or something was wrong.

She feels dizzy.

Hazed and relieved all at once.

"January nineteenth?" She repeats. And through the repetition, recognizes the date for the first time. "No, um. That's my brother's birthday. And my mother's..." Temari stops. She doesn't know what to say. She doesn't know what she should say. And so she says nothing.

"Sure," the doctor moves on, not probing the half-finished sentence. "That's a Friday," she ventures, clicking on her calendar. "Our next available is that following Tuesday, the twenty-third?"

"Oh, I have a work thing that night. How long does the procedure take?"

"You should be in and out within an hour, but we strongly recommend you take the day off and rest. Does the next day work?"

Temari swallows. Her mouth is so dry! "Yes," she nods, "that works."

"You have time," the doctor reassures her. "If you are okay with it, then we can do that Wednesday."

Temari nods again.

"Okay," the doctor writes down the date on a card and hands it to Temari. "Give this to the receptionist outside and she'll schedule you."


Temari goes back to her office after her appointment, but doesn't make it into more than the building's lobby.

Tenten and Lee find her in the lobby's coffee shop, sunken into one of the velvet armchairs. Tenten sits as Lee goes to the counter.

"How're you doing?"

Temari wishes she could sink lower in the chair.

"Yeah," Tenten supplies. She'd texted Tenten the date as soon as she left the doctor's office. But she hadn't responded to any of the follow-up texts. "Did they give you a hard time?"

Temari shakes her head.

And, seemingly understanding that she doesn't want to speak, Tenten waits.

"Did it hurt?" Temari poses after a minute. Her fingers, laced, rest on the top of her stomach. She doesn't feel anything there. Anything inside her at all is too removed for her to understand.

"My abortion?"

"Yeah. The snipping."

"There is no snipping."

"I know." She'd read all about it. "But take me through it anyway."

Tenten takes a deep breath. And then levels her eyes at Temari's until she has the other girl's full attention.

"The whole thing takes less than five minutes. But they'll talk to you for a while. And then you will have some cramping. But it's just like mild period cramps."

They're quite for another minute. The information is not new. Not even particularly informative. Temari has spent all of her time in recent days doing what research she can. But it's helpful to hear it from someone, especially someone she trusts. She kind of wants Tenten to repeat it. Just to hear it one more time.

"You look pale," Lee interrupts the silence with his arrival, setting down whatever drink he'd ordered for her (apparently they hadn't wanted anything of their own). He pushes the mug to her. It has whip cream.

"Thanks." Sarcastic.

She sits up and reaches for the drink. She licks at the whip cream.

"How often do you think about it?"

It was different for Tenten. She'd been in love with her partner. And then, not long after, he'd died. It was different. And she feels offensive, almost, for having asked the question. Tenten — and Lee — didn't often talk about it, and maybe bringing it up — comparing an abortion preceding such circumstances to her own botched experiment with a condom — was cruel.

She asks it though. Because she doesn't know who else to ask.

Tenten, at least, doesn't seem offended. And Lee gets quiet, looking at neither of them.

"I think about it sometimes. Once in a while." Tenten takes a breath and blinks. "And then I get really sad for our teenage selves. But," she shakes her head, "I never regret it."

No one says anything for a moment. Then: "did you ever tell your mom?"

"God no. She thought I was in class." Tenten laughs, a little sad, remembering.

"Are you going to tell your brothers?" Lee asks.

Temari licks her lips. "I don't know. I haven't decided."

Her phone buzzes and she pulls it out to look at the message.

"Ugh. They're asking where I am." She drops her phone to her lap and rubs her eyes, groaning loudly. "It's ridiculous that I have to go back to work right now. How am I supposed to get anything done?!" Her friends watch her, but say nothing. "I know if I told them, they'd let me go home. And I want to tell everyone. I want everyone to know. But I also absolutely don't want anyone to hear about it or know about it or look at me differently at all."

She huffs, falling back into the chair.

Another text comes in.

"Fine." Temari rallies, reluctantly, and pulls herself out of the seat.

"I'll get this to-go," Lee takes her drink, standing with her.

Temari waves him off. "No, no, I got it. It'll give me another minute before I have to go up there."

They all stand and her two friends begin the extensive trek across the lobby to the elevators while she turns to go ask the barista for a to-go cup.

It only takes a few seconds to transfer the drink from a mug to a cup, but by the time she's turned, her friends are no longer in her line of sight and, worse, through the big glass windows that serve as the walls of her building's lobby, she sees Shikamaru walking toward her building.

Oh, shit. Oh shit oh shit.

Temari turns around in half a panic, facing the coffee counter again, eyes closed as though maybe she'll be unrecognizable now that she too can't see anything — she feels unrecognizable enough as it is. But she's really not far from the security desk at all and even over the low hum of people walking around her, she can hear him come and ask for her and hear the guard — traitor — say she'd gone to the coffee shop and then a moment later he's behind her and saying her name.

She turns, slow (slower than socially normal).

Shikamaru. Yes. That's him.

She'd forgotten his last name (had she ever learned it?). But yes. That is him. Right there. Right here.

He's not as tall as she remembers (sure, maybe she'd been a little overly dramatic in accentuating their differences), but he looks at her like she remembers (intently, like he has something purposeful to say).

"Shikamaru," she says, feeling a name she'd been going over in her head for days come out on her tongue. It feels different, importantly, though she doesn't know how to articulate that. "What are you doing here?"

He blinks. Yes, dark eyes. Long lashes. His mouth. Right. That mouth.

He smiles, vaguely, rubbing the back of his neck. "You said you worked here." It's a little sheepish.

Nervous, she thinks.

Nervous, she likes.

"Oh, right. Well, uh, welcome."

He looks away for a second. She feels the edges of a smile creep up and tries to fight it.

"How was your trip?"

He looks back. "My trip?" And then understands. "Right. It was for work."

"So... good?"

"Perfunctory."

She tilts her head. Okay.

He licks his lips. Blinks.

Another pause. And then: "I, um, I heard there's a new restaurant down the street that's supposed to be good. Do you want to, maybe, come get something to eat?"

His mouth. She can't stop looking at it.

"Oh, uh —"

"When we met," he continues, "I remember you saying you enjoyed dictating your own restaurant reviews before you read the critic's. And I figured this one was new enough that you hadn't had a chance to go."

"Oh no," Temari says, a hand to her face. "Wow, I don't remember that. What an egotistical thing to say."

He narrows his gaze ever so slightly. "You don't remember?"

"No."

"When we met?"

"No!" She says, a little too quickly. "I remember." She takes a breath, mouth open. "A lot of things."

His mouth morphs into a smirk that she feels in her toes.

"A lot of... things?"

"I don't mean it — I just mean." She stops, swallows. "I remember when we met."

She remembers what he's insinuating — really, it's all she's been going over in her head for days, but she doesn't care about the sex right now. Instead, she's been trying her utmost to remember every single second. Trying to piece together some answer that she's long already, unknowingly, lost. Was there semen in the condoms in her trash? She hadn't looked before she'd thrown the whole thing away. Did any of them slip off? She believes she'd rubbed herself off against his cock before it was inside her, was there somehow viable sperm in his pre-cum that snuck... up?

No, stop. Finding an answer is not the point. She remembers, that's the point. That's what they're discussing.

"Well," Shikamaru ventures, still half-smirking, half-smiling at her. He's bright. And nothing at all like her. "Do you have time for a quick lunch?"

Oh. So, he was asking her out?

"No," she says, "I don't have time right now." She squeezes the strap of her bag, as though for emphasis. "I was actually just on my way back upstairs."

"Sure," he says, looking past her and then back down. She can see wisps of hair near the base of his skull. The long line of his neck. "Well, in that case. When you're done, maybe, or when you have time, I'd like to take you on a proper date."

Okay. Right.

"I'm, um, I'm sorry." She takes a long breath. "I'm not really looking for anything right now." She works to get the words out, watching him watch her. "I just got out—"

"Yeah, " Shikamaru breathes. He moves back so incrementally, she hadn't even noticed when he first stepped forward. "I remember."

She thought he'd wanted to be a rebound. Considering how quick and easy it all went — and how quickly he got out of there the next morning.

Obviously, she'd thought about seeing him. Speaking with him. Looking him up. Going back to the bar and explaining the situation and begging them for a surname.

But it was casual, right?

She needed it to be casual.

"It's just not a good time," she says, which may be the understatement of the century.

Shikamaru's smile doesn't falter. But she feels its difference. She feels different, standing next to him now.

"Sure," he repeats. And then says it again. "Sure. Okay. Well. It was good to see you."

She feels dizzy again. "Yeah," she says, and it sounds distant. "You too. You look, uh, good."

Shikamaru nods his head once in parting, and then turns around, taking long strides away from her.

Temari is watching him leave, and so she sees her friends when he passes them too. Apparently they hadn't missed anything. Great.

"Shit," Lee's eyes are wide as they walk quickly over to her. "That's the guy? He's really cute."

Temari watches Shikamaru, the expanse of his back, his gray coat, still visible through the glass.

"Yeah, okay."

"Like, really cute."

Absently, without meaning to or thinking about it in any way at all, Temari puts a hand to her stomach. She watches him on the street until he turns left and away from their building.

"See?" Tenten stage-whispers to Lee, "I fucking told you: googly-eyes."


Work is hard. It's a good distraction, but the moment she is assigned anything more than a meaningless, purely administrative task, she finds she cannot concentrate. Organizing her files and responding to most emails takes little attention, but as soon as she is required to do something of substance, it feels like she's grasping at straws.

She stays in her office and thinks about how much work she can let pile up before it becomes a problem.

It's just two weeks.

She does have one event she is mostly in charge of planning (an assignment far outside her actual job description), but most of that is, luckily, administrative. Just calling and ordering and scheduling. Her actual job is as a liaison between private organizations and foreign service workers, but she's been assigned this event mostly, she thinks, because she's the only younger woman in this office and the event is about Women's Health (in essence, though it's also really just about a man).

So she has one thing she must, actually, do.

But it's just two weeks.

It's just a minor chapter in her life. Not something to breeze past or forget about. But in two weeks, it'll be over. Her body will be like it was before. And it'll be after. She won't be like she was before, not in every way, but she won't be like this anymore.

Just two weeks.


She doesn't feel guilty about the decision. She wants that big and bold and plastered on some marquee in the ongoing biography of her life.

She has firm beliefs about the world and this decision — the rightness — of having an abortion now isn't something she feels guilt about.

It's not something she believes one should feel guilt about. But knowing that (thinking that, believing that) and actualizing that aren't necessarily the same thing.

When she imagines other futures — when she imagines how quickly, how easily, her life can change if she just doesn't... act (and it is easier, isn't it, maybe, to not act than to act? even if the end result is much, much harder) — she's not meaning to say she's questioning her decision. She's not. She's in absolutely no place to be a mother. She doesn't want to be a mother yet.

But she still thinks about it. She fantasizes about it in a way that one imagines a potential future with a pang of desire to live it for a moment but no will to live it for a lifetime. The desire to see the future: see a child, see her features, her love, her body, the life she wants to provide for someone. She thinks about this. All the time.

But she's not regretting anything. She's not guilty. But still she thinks about it. She thinks about everything. All she's doing all the time is thinking. And it's miserable.


"Maybe it means something?" Lee poses over dinner that night.

Temari frowns. "Means what?"

"That he showed up today, right after you came back from the doctor."

"Oh, okay, so it's a sign from the universe or from the higher beings or our creator or whatever that I'm supposed to keep this baby and we're going to go start our happy lives together raising lots of children on a farm out in the country with a white fence and a pet goat?"

"Exactly," Lee says.

"I think," Tenten shoots Lee a look, "that all it means is that he wants to get his dick sucked again by a hot blonde who made him come once."

Lee frowns. "So you don't think it's a sign he's hoping to meet up again with the drunk girl he impregnated?"

Temari rolls her eyes.

"Surprisingly, I don't." Tenten opens one of the boxes of takeout and scoops some onto her plate. "Also, I don't think him looking for Temari at her place of work is really," she puts down her food to mock the air quotes, "a 'sign' of anything. I think he probably just liked fucking her."

"Okay." Temari interjects. "You're both being a little unfair. He asked me on a 'proper' date when he knows I'll sleep with him after, like, five minutes of talking. If anything, he's hoping to talk more before getting his dick sucked."

"Romantic," Tenten replies, picking up a piece of broccoli with her fingers and plopping it into her mouth.

Briefly, momentarily, Temari remembers the actual fellatio. And then she's thinking about that. She feels hot. Uncomfortably so, as though the heat has been turned up too high. A little sweltering.

Does she look hot? Tenten is taking a big gulp of water while watching her. Is she sweating?

She needs to stop.

"I think," Lee pulls her from whatever ridiculous trajectory she'd been going down, "in all seriousness, maybe... you want to tell him."

Tenten puts her glass down. "No! No, why? Why? You don't, you don't owe him anything. You don't even know this guy."

Lee's right. Maybe — maybe — she wants to. She's certainly thought about it.

"I don't know," Temari posits slowly. "Maybe he deserves to know? I mean. It's both of us, right? He'd know if I didn't go through with it."

Lee puts a hand on her forearm. "If I got someone pregnant, I'd want to know."

Temari laughs. "If you got someone pregnant, I would also want to know. The whole world would want to know."

"Guys, come on." Tenten snaps, a little louder than she seems to mean to, as she gets quieter right away. Regardless though, she has their full attention. "Stop it with the crazy jokes. Why do you care whether he needs to know or not? You are the one who has to get this procedure, pay for it, wear the fucking diaper pad with the big wings, okay? Do you think if he was pregnant he'd be worrying about you right now? No. He'd be trying get that fucking thing out of his body. Goddamit! You guys, we already live in a patriarchal society where a bunch of weird old men get to legislate our vaginas! You just need to be worrying about yourself and..." she stops, wine glass already in hand, "why are you two looking at me like that?"

Lee laughs, low, "everything you're saying is valid. But you're scaring my dick off. Anyway," he squeezes Temari's arm, "if your gut instinct is to tell him, I say do it. Because he seems sweet."

She smiles, more restrained now, maybe, then she was a minute ago.

They're both right.

Well, maybe Lee wasn't. But Tenten was right.

She didn't owe him anything. Telling him is only hurting him. All it could serve to do is make him feel some of her burden. But she doesn't think it'd alleviate any of hers. It's not like she was carrying some definitive quantity — some x amount of weight and he could take a few pounds off her. He couldn't take anything from her. He wouldn't share it as in taking some of her share. There would just be more of it. And then he'd have his own to carry.

So, what? Tell him solely to make him suffer? So that he can panic too? So that he can have something to think about too?

And that's the best case scenario. Worst case is, well, much worse.

She's right to not say anything, probably.

Or maybe Lee had said something substantial. And maybe Lee was right all along. About some things.


Temari smooths her hands down the front of her pants, working to get the line from her tucked-in shirt less visible.

Then she walks from one end of his office to the other.

Gaara's space isn't big in comparison to regular office sizes, but for his building, it was probably massive.

She didn't know. But it was an educated guess from everything she knew about government buildings.

It's not as though she could go look around. That's part of why she hated it here: she had to be escorted everywhere. She couldn't even go to the bathroom without calling someone from security guard to walk her from his office to the toilet. What kind of trouble could she even get into? Especially right now at six in the morning when everything was silent and all the doors locked and she probably couldn't steal state secrets even if she wanted to. The fact that they even let her alone in her brother's office unattended spoke solely to his status and not to any trustworthiness on her part as a taxpayer.

Didn't they know she held a (midline-low) security clearance for her job? It was a non-profit, sure, but she'd still had to go through the process.

She paces from one end of his office to the other again. And again. It's early and she's a little weary, but she's anxious as she waits for her brother.

She figures breakfast is easiest. It's easier, right?

Temari pulls out her phone and rereads his text. It said he was running late and to wait in his office. No further information.

What was the point of meeting so early if he was going to be late? She'd happily have taken the extra half-hour of sleep.

No. No. She's decided to tell him and that's more important than the slight inconvenience of waking up a little earlier than usual.

She wants to tell him. She does.

It's not about owing him anything. It's not about debt or obligation. It's about love. She loves him. And this is a huge moment in her life that she doesn't want to keep from him. And she especially doesn't want to keep anything from him (or Kankuro) that would be kept out of what is really only personal embarrassment. They wouldn't be disappointed in her, probably. They'd want to help. Or so she imagines; so she hopes.

It's not easy though. She hasn't actually told anyone yet. Well. Anyone that wasn't the doctor. Tenten and Lee were always there. She'd never sat down and said it to someone else.

And she wants to tell her brothers.

Or at least she wants to tell Gaara.

Temari paces around the office, along every wall in a square this time.

Gaara is the most well-rounded. The wisest. Though it feels wrong to keep something like that from one of them, especially Kankuro... plus, it had just been her and Kankuro for so long, caught in the twisted mind games of their father that ostracized them against their younger brother.

Oh god! Is that a part of this?

Is that why she was having the procedure and wrestling with the idea of childbirth and talking to her brothers?!

Oh fuck. She feels sick. She hadn't even thought of their father (had worked, for years, to not think of him). She's nauseous. Is this just morning sickness? Is it real? Or is she actually going to be sick?

Temari puts a hand out to catch her weight, steadying herself on Gaara's desk.

She feels pale. Does she look pale?

Temari pushes her hair behind her ears and looks around. Ugh. It is just like Gaara to not have a mirror in his office. She knows Kankuro would. That's so ridiculous. What if he has food in his teeth before a meeting? Surely national security people care about stuff like that too?

With a huff, Temari falls back into Gaara's leather desk chair, sliding down in it until she's only leaning her shoulder-blades on the back of the chair, butt at the edge of the seat, and feet planted firmly on the ground. She hadn't put her hair up yet and her bangs fall in her face and so she purses her lips to try to blow them out of her eyes.

Where the fuck is her brother? She's losing all desire (was there ever desire? no — she was losing all will or drive) to have any kind of serious conversation this morning.

Plus, why say anything? She didn't want to. What could Gaara even say? Sorry that sucks? Yeah yeah, she already knew that.

And how could he not have a mirror?!

Temari slips her phone from her pocket and turns on the camera to check her teeth as though she might have food from dinner last night left over in her gums despite having brushed twice since then.

She's surreptitiously (or maybe, wholly blatantly) baring her teeth, slumped all the way down in the chair, when the door opens and Shikamaru walks in.

"What?!" Temari balks, dropping her phone as she scrambles to sit up. "What are you—"

Shikamaru looks as surprised as she is, immediately stepping back, half-holding his hands up in the air as though she has a firearm trained on him. "I'm not stalking you." He says deftly, ready for her to (once again) accuse him. He's holding a filing folder bursting with papers in one hand.

Temari blinks a few times, as though he isn't already in focus. He lets her look, lowering his arms carefully, and waiting for her to speak.

"How'd you know I'd be here?"

Shikamaru frowns, though there is a trace of amusement behind it, and tilts his head. "I think it's pretty apparent that you're the guest here." He pauses. "This isn't your office."

He doesn't pose it as a question.

Oh.

Does he feel that?

The thrum?

The way her pulse picks up when he looks at her like that.

Can one feel a thrum like that? Biologically? Like, with no sense to it? And not because she's lost her sense? A thrum because his DNA is inside her? Because his sperm is in her uterus at this very moment?

God, what the fuck is wrong with her. She doesn't even think she was this attracted to him when they were having sex.

Temari swallows and backs up as though he is posing a threat (she just isn't sure what that threat would be).

Shikamaru watches her, slow, amused, seemingly not put out by her stepping even further away from him even though they're already on opposite sides of the office. She knows it's rude. She's being rude. But she doesn't know what else to do. He still isn't saying anything.

"What are you doing here?" She asks finally.

He takes a moment. And then: "I work here." Carefully, as though she really had a gun raised, he lifts a badge with his free hand, just drawing attention to where it's attached to his front pant pocket.

"Oh." Yes. Right. Obviously. She swallows and only then realizes that her mouth had been open. Temari gestures to the lanyard with the guest pass around her neck. "I'm visiting."

Shikamaru smirks softly. "Yes. I can see that." He lifts the papers in his hand. "Is, um, Gaara here?"

No. Gaara's not here.

Temari watches him. She feels the corner of her mouth tugging. "Do you want to go get breakfast?"


She takes him to a place across the street where she'd been intending to go with her brother before she texted him to cancel. Or maybe he takes her, because he walks with her directly there. They get a table in the corner. She comes here a fair amount and he says he does too.

Maybe he's been here before when she was here? Maybe they've crossed paths dozens of times before, two ships and all, and they had just never intersected before now? Would she have noticed him? All government boys in suits look the same.

Though now, sitting across from him, she finds it hard to believe she would've seen him before and not taken notice. He's hard to look away from: the weight of his dark hair, the heaviness of his brow and lashes and the way they frame his eyes that have interested her since the first time they met.

He doesn't say anything as she looks at him, letting her take her time. He doesn't seem uncomfortable under her scrutiny — if anything, he seems mildly entertained — and she knows it's weird; she knows it's, honestly, inappropriate, but she takes her time taking him in.

The waitress brings them coffee — hers just drip, his with three shots of espresso.

"Do you always drink so much caffeine?" She asks, finally, wondering aloud more than seeking the answer.

Shikamaru licks his lips, watching the steam rise from his cup. "I haven't slept yet."

"All nighter?" She hums, elbows on the table, and brushes a thumb over her own jaw to mimic the shadow of facial hair he's sporting. "That explains this."

He chuckles and looks up at her. "And you?"

"Oh, I shaved."

He smirks and his eyes glint despite their shadows. But he's tired. She can see it in a way she hadn't noticed before. And then, with no hesitation, she asks if he shaves every day. It's a weird question, especially at this moment, but she'd wondered, and so she'd asked it.

He nods, amused. "Usually in the morning. But I haven't been home yet."

She wonders, for the briefest second, about what is growing in her stomach. But she tries not to go down that road (though, sometimes, if she's on her own for too long, it's all she thinks about... not about changing her mind, just about her life and the possibilities and the greater meaning of everything).

"You should adhere to a better sleep schedule."

"Oh?"

Temari leans heavier onto her elbows. "In my experience, you don't sleep enough."

"Your experience?"

"In the two times I've met you."

"I think there was a third in there."

She thins her lips and shakes her head. "Mm, no I don't remember that."

"Last week? Forgot already?"

She smiles, mirroring him. "No. You must have been talking to someone else."

Shikamaru exhales. "You're right. I'm sorry. It's hard to keep track of all the women I sleep with who later reject me."

"Oh we all just blend into one? Is that because they're all blondes?"

"Something like that." He looks away to take a long sip of his drink.

She watches his neck as he swallows, eyes careful, though she isn't sure what exactly she has to be careful about.

"You said you worked in business," she says when he puts his mug down.

"I didn't. You just assumed."

"You look a little young to work in that building. Shouldn't you be in school or something?"

He frowns, eyes her. "I'm the same age as Gaara."

"Oh god." Temari drops her head. She'd been joking! "You're so young." She groans. "I can't believe I slept with a child."

"Didn't seem to mind it then." When she looks up, he's not even smirking, just watching her patiently, which is somehow worse than him being purposefully annoying (though she knows it is purposeful).

"Stop being so cocky."

"There's a difference between being cocky and being honest."

"Yet you like to always run with the former."

Shikamaru sucks his teeth and puts his elbows on the table, leaning close, but, gracefully, looking out at the rest of the restaurant. "I'm not in school. I dropped out of my doctoral program four years ago to start this job."

"What were you studying?"

"Generally, history of mathematics, but it's a little more convoluted than that."

"Stimulating."

He looks back at her. "International relations that much more interesting?"

International relations. Huh. "You looked me up?"

She thinks of the stupid picture of her on her company's website and the commercial biographical paragraph next to it that cited facts about her devoid of all genuine personality.

"Had to distinguish you from all the other blondes."

She huffs a laugh.

Is now a good time? To say something? Want to distinguish me?: you got me pregnant.

The words — their phrasing and intention — don't even make it into her throat.

"I didn't realize I was one of so many."

He takes another long sip of his coffee and then replaces it gracefully to the saucer. He is quite graceful. In the annoying kind of way she always wanted to be but hadn't naturally finessed. She wasn't clumsy or anything — measured — but there wasn't an inherent beauty to what she did. Not like with him.

"I looked you up because I like you."

Temari swallows and meets his eyes.

Is now a good time?!

She looks away.

"Shikamaru," she starts. She doesn't know how to end though. She doesn't even know what the middle of the sentence should be! "I—" She looks back. He's looking at her. Easily and openly and she feels it in her stomach. "If you wanted a picture of me, you could've just asked."

He smiles and leans back in his chair. "You're troublesome."

"Yeah," she agrees. More than he knows. "It's a good thing you like it."


He's not her type.

He's not!

But she likes his shoulders and their line as they walk down the street.

Other people they pass would think they're a couple, wouldn't they? Would they be? Maybe if they'd met differently.

If they'd met differently, would she have taken him home?

Yes. She knows without having to think about it more. Yes. Yes.

She's imagined dozens of conversations between them all conjured with heavy reliance on her imagination (after all, today was the first time she'd spoken to him in any semi-serious way). But even with all the heavy-lifting her imagination has been doing over the past few weeks, she is coming up short right now in front of him.

She can't get there, over that final hurdle, from her brain to her tongue out her mouth.

"You didn't ask how I knew Gaara," she says when they arrive back at the entrance to his office building.

Shikamaru shrugs. "You look like him," he says. His breath clouds in front of her. His lips are wet from where he'd licked them to stay warm. "I didn't recognize it when we met, but. Plus, you have the same last name."

"Younger brother." She supplies, though he's clearly aware of that.

Shikamaru blinks and then gestures to the front doors. "Still need to see him?" He's wearing dark gloves that he hadn't had last week, but his scarf and coat are the same. The same he'd worn in her apartment, wet when she'd hung them to dry a month prior. "I can take you up?"

Fucking escort rule.

"No. Thank you." She swallows. "But I, I need to —" say it, say it. He's waits. And she chokes. Just say it!

"What are you doing tomorrow night?" He's the one who asks it.

Stop supplying things, she wants to say. Stop trying to fill in something for me. Stop assuming what I want.

But he's doing nothing wrong and she doesn't know how to put words to anything (as though she's ever struggled to articulate anything before!).

"Nothing."

He licks his lips again and then gives a small laugh when he notices her watching his mouth.

"Can I take you to dinner?"

She opens her mouth again. It's the same, isn't it? It's not about owing or debt or obligation. Like with Gaara — well. No, not anything like with Gaara. No, no, it's actually not the same at all. It's not about love. Love. It's just. Maybe. Maybe someone to go through this with.

—though that. It's not. She's always been better alone. And even then, it's not like she is alone. Tenten will be with her. She and Lee have discussed it with her over and over, ad naseum, as much and as little as she wants. So would her brothers, if she wanted.

It's just.

She wants to tell him. That's all. No specific reason for it (on the contrary, against all reason and rationality!), but she wants to nonetheless.

"Sure," she answers, on instinct more than anything, without even thinking about the answer. She hadn't realized she'd stepped closer, but she must've, because suddenly she has to tilt her head back to look at him properly.

He looks down at her, eyes glinting. He's happy. And so, really, is she.

Entertaining this is kind of foolish — she's not looking for anything. It's hard to imagine a worse time, really.

But still, foolishly, stupidly, she finds herself smiling all the way to the train.


Is arousal supposed to be present this early in a pregnancy? Like, as a result of a hormonal shift? She knows it's something that is supposed to happen later, and has only ever heard that the beginning of pregnancy does nothing but exhaust you and make you sick... but are you supposed to be, generally, mildly, turned on?

Well. General and mild — even arousal and turned-on — are nicer, tamer ways of putting how she feels right now: horny.

All she's been doing all day is thinking about him. When she sits at her desk, she imagines him kneeling below it, a hand on either knee, pushing them apart. When she waits in the conference room after a meeting, she digs her hands into the lip of the table and imagines she's being bent over it.

It's a (nice?) distraction, vaguely, though it's also not conducive to anything else she's try to work though.


"Oh," she glances at the clock. It's only been a few hours. "What's going on?"

She doesn't ask how he got her number (Gaara? Something more nefarious she doesn't want to inquire on?).

"I have to cancel," he says. She has no idea where he is or what his office (if he's even there) looks like (she doesn't even know if he has one!), but she imagines him still in his suit, maybe standing by a window, looking down on the pavement where they were walking earlier this morning. "Something came up."

"That's vague."

He exhales. "Can we reschedule?"

"You asked me out and cancelled on me all in the span of six hours."

"I know," he breathes, voice intent, "but I'm serious about seeing you again."

Temari pushes back her chair and walks toward her own window, nodding as though he could see her. "Mm, right. Well don't worry. Better for you. You wouldn't've enjoyed tomorrow night."

Quick, "why not?"

"I never have sex on the second date."

He laughs and, even though it's not loud or booming or vibrating, she feels it swell into her and reverberate all the way into her teeth.

"You're right. If you're not going to put out, I guess there's no point."

She can hear his smile through the phone. Her neck feels hot. She has a plethora of responses she could pick up with — and, if they had met any other way, she might have — but she bites her tongue. This is not helpful. None of this conversation has been conducive toward anything in her life right now.

"It's Gaara's birthday Friday," she options after a moment. It's quite unlike her brother to celebrate himself at all, but he has a new partner who'd organized something at a quiet bar downtown. "I can't go with you, but...?"

There's a noise on his end, like he's changing his phone from one ear to the other. "I'll be there then." He's still smiling.

She tries to picture the corner of his mouth, but can't get a clear image.

Needs more studying, maybe.


Life, which had briefly lost its grounding, becomes less disorienting as time goes on. Rather than being unmoored, it feels as though, maybe, before, she wasn't simply bobbing, but was tied to a rope the whole time. As though, before, the rope was not nonexistent — she wasn't alone — it was just slack. And now, as she treads, the rope gets tighter and tighter and is pulling her back, dragging, slowly and patiently through the water to safety.

Work distracts her, and now she is able to focus more. She's more even, more level than yesterday or the day before or the day before that (weeks, floating on her back, skin burnt by the glare of the sun).

She doesn't go to the gym, despite the doctor advising she stick to her old routine, but she's staying steady. And counting the time.


Gaara's hand flattens silently on the cloth table. It has the equivalent effect of another man slamming his fist down: Temari stops whatever she was saying and straightens her shoulders.

"Is there something you wanted to talk about?" He asks, slow, when she meets his eyes.

Temari glances to the left, where Kankuro is disappearing into the bathroom.

They're having breakfast to celebrate Gaara's birthday, just the three of them. They're at a slightly overpriced place she hasn't been to before.

Carefully, Temari looks down at her brother's hand and then back at him.

"No," she says. The words — any words — which have formed in her throat, around her tongue, in the past, don't even make it further than a flash across her mind. No, she doesn't want to say anything. At least right now.

Gaara keeps his eyes on her, considering something, and then they're interrupted by the waiter clearing their plates.

"I met Shikamaru Nara at your office on Monday," she says casually as the waiter leaves.

"Oh?"

She folds her napkin from her lap to place in front of her. "What do you think of him?"

It's venturing and pointed — they both know it. Normally, she might be a little more tactful. But she wants to know too. She's curious. More than she's embarrassed.

Gaara blinks and then exhales, clearly concluding and accepting that whatever meaningful conversation he was expecting was not going to happen. He wasn't like their brother — he wouldn't pry for whatever other topic she pointedly wasn't addressing.

He thinks it over for a moment before answering.

"He's very intelligent," Gaara opines, "in his work especially. And he's underutilized. He could be doing more. But he is too young and too... lazy, to push for it."

Hm. Lazy surprises her. Vaguely. He's been determined about seeing her. And, in her very limited experience, he was a rather... proactive(?) lover (if that was even a good word for it).

"Do you like him?" She asks. Gaara thinks about this too before answering, which in anyone else would be portentous of the forthcoming answer, but for her brother only means he's taking her question seriously, even if she was trying in her affectation for flippancy.

She's about to clarify that she means if he likes Shikamaru as a coworker, nothing more, but then Kankuro is back and sitting down at the same time Gaara says Yes.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, I like Shikamaru Nara."

Kankuro balks. "Shikamaru Nara? Fuck that guy. Total asshole."

"You know him?!"

How small is this place!? They're supposed to live in a fucking metropolis.

Kankuro leans back in his chair, shaking his head. "Went on a few dates with one of his friends and he was always around."

"Always around...?"

"Not like that, like —" Kankuro mulls on it for half a second. "Like he's one of those guys with strong ideas about things. But he also hates talking about them. So he just always seems like he's judging you quietly."

Hm. He seemed to talk to her easily. Maybe she has everything all wrong. Or they're talking about two different people.

"Strong ideas," Gaara repeats, slow.

"Yeah," Kankuro says. "This was a few years ago, but if I remember, the girl I was seeing used to make fun of him because he wanted to get married and settle down. And right away. Like he thought dating was a waste of time. And he knew where he wanted to live and how many kids he wanted to have and in what order he wanted to have them. And he'd say that stuff even as a young kid."

"Oh," she's dug her nails into her thigh without noticing and she has to work to relax the tensing of her quads. She didn't even realize she'd been holding her breath too. "Yeah. That sounds like a lot."

"He was. Two kids, girl then boy, I think. Could be misremembering. Maybe he knew something about the world we didn't. But more likely he was just an asshole. Hm. Why are you asking about him?"

"I, uh, just met him at Gaara's office the other day."

"He's not your type at all."

"Excuse me?"

"I didn't mean that, but." Kankuro waves a hand as though to firmly dismiss the idea, sitting up to put his elbows on the table as the waiter comes to deliver the check.

She swallows, licks her lips. "What is my type then? Enlighten me."

"Jocks," Kankuro answers easily. "Ambitious jocks."

Temari exhales and laughs, stretching her hands wide underneath the table. "I don't even know what that means."

As Kankuro takes the check, she looks over to Gaara. He's smiling softly, listening without contributing, but is looking away. Temari bites the inside of her cheek and, after Kankuro has put his card down and slid the check to the edge of the table to be picked up, she changes the subject to their weekend plans.


"Nothing harder?" It's asked by some man she's been talking with, but Temari waves that guy off as she sips her water, chewing absently on the top of the straw. No, nothing harder. Not right now.

She's watching him from behind. He's easily recognizable with that hair... the back of his neck; the line of his shoulders. They must have crossed paths dozens of times before, but the thought of its possibility (its inevitability) is so unimaginable, she can't quite believe it. How could she have crossed his path and not seen him coming even peripherally?

She wants to touch it, to close the few yards between them and reach up to his ponytail and pull out the tie. She remembers, vaguely, having wanted to before. She remembers, though she may be making it up, having done it before.

Carefully, Temari takes a long breath and then holds her inhale, as though pulling something in as deeply as she can all for the greater effort to push it out and rid herself of everything foreign inside her.

And then, when her chest hurts and her throat burns, she exhales until she's all out of air and shakes herself free.

Maybe she should have gone for something harder?

Temari straightens from where she'd been leaning on the bar and takes her glass of water over to one of the low tables in the corner, sitting down so her back is to the wall.

She knows less than half the people here — but the people she does know she knows well. It's inevitable that she'll be pulled into conversation soon enough, but she's not feeling up for much talking right now. It's been a long day (a long week, a month... hell, it's been a long year and they're not even a full three weeks in) and she's tired. The balls of her feet hurt and her neck is sore, as though the weight of holding her head up for this long has finally begun exacting a price.

Ten minutes later, without a word, Shikamaru slides into the seat to her left and then pushes a drink in front of her. She eyes it. She hasn't stopped drinking. She has no reason to. And she knows, regardless, the popular medical opinion these days is that minimal drinking isn't bad even if... She blinks. Swallows. Without looking at him, she pushes her water aside and sips at whatever he brought her. A gin and tonic. She can't remember if she'd ordered it the last time they were at a bar, but she likes them, so it doesn't matter.

Everything is okay. It's all okay. Nothing right now really matters. None of it.

She glances at him next to her. He's watching the people before them.

"What came up?"

They haven't spoken since he mysteriously got her number and called to cancel their date. He'd texted her earlier today, but she hadn't responded.

She's asking why he'd cancelled earlier this week and, even though she knows without further context the question is unclear, he understands her anyway.

"Family." He says without saying more.

It's fine. It doesn't matter if he doesn't want to flesh it out anymore.

Married with two kids, she thinks, looped on repeat in her mind, like she is seeing the words written out right behind her eyes. Nothing matters.

"Your brother's been eyeing me."

She swallows. Looking at her two glasses on the table, his elbow and forearm easily fall into her area of sight.

"Yeah?" she breathes, warm even as she doesn't want to be. He's sitting a little too close, isn't he? His arm is almost pressed against her. She can feel the heat coming off him. "I heard you're well acquainted with both my siblings."

He laughs, low. He doesn't ask her what they've obviously been discussing about him. "It's a surprise we didn't meet sooner."

Temari takes a slow sip of the cocktail. "We wouldn't've worked."

Not that they would now. Not with these circumstances.

"No?"

"I was in a relationship," she says instead of anything else she might say.

"I remember."

"And one before that."

Shikamaru inhales and turns to look at her. She works to ignore the way it tugs at the corners of her mouth.

Was it always like this? When they met, when she sat next to him, dripping wet in that taxi, was she feeling this way? Like her heart was pounding so hard, he'd feel it vibrate through the whole air between them? The floor beneath their feet?

"That is, generally, how dating works."

"Don't be smart."

"Don't be assumptive."

She can't help the smirk this time. "Maybe."

"You're a serial monogamist?"

"I wouldn't say that."

Shikamaru ignores her, leaning less than half an inch closer as he shifts to look back out before them. "Surprising."

She wouldn't describe herself that way, but she doesn't argue the denomination further. "Why's that?"

"You seem too independent. Too self-sufficient."

Where does he get that? They hardly know each other at all.

"And you?"

He takes a sip of whatever he is drinking. Looks like some kind of scotch or bourbon orx something (she doesn't really know the difference).

"Single, usually." He says, voice low, even though the words themselves are casual.

"Oh?" She hums, "sex with random women more your thing?"

She doesn't know why she's flirting. She doesn't want to be, even as she poses the question knowing how to say it in a way where they both feel the condescension (and the buzz) beneath it.

"Never, actually."

"Hard to believe."

He leans back. She can see the top of his thighs now.

Buzz. Yes. That's the word. A buzz, to the tips of her fingers, under the beds of her nails.

"Well, maybe in college," he clarifies, musing on it. "At a party, once."

"A party? Like in a bedroom upstairs kind of thing?"

She glances up in time to see him blush, which is surprising and endearing in a way that she hates. Is she tipsy off half this drink? Or is the universe telling her she needs to be drinking much more to numb whatever is happening right now?

He must have felt the flush, and her observation of it, because he doesn't orally respond, but they both have the answer to her rise anyway.

"So normally you're more of a traditionalist — call two days later, sex on the third-date — kind of guy?"

Shikamaru shrugs. "I wouldn't say that." He licks his lips. "Unlike you, I don't adhere to any specific rules."

"Rules?"

"Your second-date no-sex rule."

She laughs. Right, no sex on the second date. She'd said it so off-the-cuff, she'd forgotten about it in the interim. Right, right. Temari finds herself grinning, tilting her head to look him over. Maybe drink more?

"Oh no," she says, low, forcing him, slightly, to lean closer. "Dates two through four are strictly off-limits."

"Hm." He mulls this over. "And five?"

"Sex, but no spending the night."

"Naturally. And six?"

"Spend the night, no sex."

Shikamaru smirks and watches the liquid in his glass swirl as he rolls the bottom edge of it over the table.

"So why do one and five weigh differently?"

Temari hums. "It's a new set of rules," she says. Why is she even saying any of it? Why isn't someone — anyone — stopping her? "I haven't really implemented them yet."

"You haven't?"

"No."

"So I'm the first person with whom you've set such specific limitations?"

"Oh no," casual, waving her hand, "not you. We haven't even gone on a first date yet, so they haven't been implemented in totality."

His smirk, if anything, sets deeper as he rubs a hand to the back of his neck. "So I still get to take you on a first and fifth date?"

"Slow down," what a hotshot. She leans back, away, and he doesn't follow. "Unsure if you'll get either at this point."

A laugh. "Oh. And to clarify: this is not the first date then?"

"No."

"So... the times we met before, where do those... prequel, negative Y-axis dates fall in the expectations of sex? Just for the record."

Slow, Temari looks over to meet his eyes. She licks her lips and she watches his gaze dart down, for only half a second, to her mouth.

Right.

He feels this too, doesn't he? The air? The floor? Vibrating.

Temari holds her breath as she stands up. She feels like her whole body is out of her control in a way she's never felt before. It's different than with the pregnancy. Or maybe because of it. All she knows is that she's never, never, not been in control like this. This isn't at all who she is. This — this — is dangerous.

"It's my brother's birthday," she says quickly, ignoring (or trying lamely to justify) Shikamaru's surprised face. She looks down, and then away, and then steps back, out of her seat and away from the table. "I should go talk to him."

She turns, easier with her back to him, to walk away until she finds somewhere else where the air is different, stiller; quiet.


Half an hour (less?) later, she's standing beside the two occupied bathrooms waiting for one to open up. She has to pee (she's still been peeing, like, so much) and feels like both bathrooms have been occupied too long. She can hear water running in both, but neither seem to be close to opening.

She's about to knock on one when it opens and Gaara's neighbor walks out.

They exchange small, slightly awkward nods and half-smiles as Temari steps aside from in front of the door to let the woman walk out of the restroom, which is not so easy in the narrow hall. And then, as Temari steps into the restroom, hand already going to pull up the hem of her dress, the other bathroom door opens and, as she turns to close hers, there is Shikamaru.

He's not stopping to look at her or even doing anything to make any specific impression.

He's just opening the door across from her. And she's sees him before he sees her.

She's not thinking, not really. She has to pee. Her throat hurts. She might cry. But she's not thinking. Not of anything.

She'd looked around for him earlier — she'd been looking, casually, vaguely, since she left him — but he'd left. Or she thought he'd left.

But here he is (he keeps doing that: staying) and the entirety of this moment and consideration has only been half a second but she's already stepping between the doors on either side of this hall and walking into his space, pushing him back in the bathroom and throwing her arms intently around his neck in one quick movement.

She's feels like a live wire; electric. Like any touch will kill them both.

By the time Shikamaru sees her, she's already halfway to him. And he's surprised — mouth open to speak — when she brings her lips to his.

But he finds the rest easily, inhaling, and then kissing her back, hands on her spine, her shoulders, pulling her closer, pulling them away from the door to let it close behind her.

Yes, she thinks, opening her mouth against him, pressing her breasts into the wide expanse of his chest, inhaling the same air, yes.

He's devouring. Devouring. She isn't even sure what she means by the term. He's just kissing her. And she's turned around, lifted onto the counter, knees opening, his buckle hard against her stomach. But it's devouring. She doesn't know what she means! Is he devouring her? Is she consuming him, bit by bit? Bite by bite?

She doesn't know. She doesn't know anything.

All she wants is this: his hot breath on her neck, his teeth brushing quickly against her skin as his hands slide under her dress. He groans her name into her shoulder. She wants him closer, wants him inside her, wants to stay here, one hand palming her breast heavily, hot and bothered and desperate for sex in a way she hasn't felt in a long time. She's sweating. She's lightheaded.

Devouring.

She brings his mouth back to hers, licking into it, pulling his lip between her teeth.

She hasn't done this — hasn't had this since —

Fuck.

Wife. Two kids. Girl and boy. In that order.

In that order.

Temari, almost violently, pushes him away. Hard enough that, even with his weight, he stumbles back, caught wholly off balance.

"I can't," she says, chest heaving, leaning back, slipping with one hand in the sink. She's never felt more sober. Or more stupid.

Shikamaru blinks. He's also panting. His mouth, red, is hung open.

"Okay," he breathes, confused. "We don't have to. You kissed me."

Fuck. Fuck!

"I, um." She can't think. She has no idea what she is meaning to say or what she wants. Her pulse pounds in her ears, drowning out everything else. She just wants everything to be clear. Everything used to be so clear! Right and wrong and good and bad. And now nothing makes sense. She wasn't tied. She was still unmoored! Except "unmoored" implies listless. She's not listless. She's unanchored in the middle of a fucking hurricane. "I can't do this. I can't have sex with you."

He gains coherency, cohesion, posture (maybe things he never lost, she's just too wrecked to identify his solidness) before her. "Temari," he says, slow, annoyed. He runs a hand through his hair, mostly undone by her hands. "I'm not just trying to sleep with you. I am genuinely interested in..." he sighs and closes his eyes for a second. "Why are you making this so difficult?!"

It's obvious you want to fuck me too is what he's trying to say, isn't it? Or even, maybe, it's obvious you like me too.

As in, maybe, simply: stop fighting it.

Stop. No. She doesn't have any idea what he's trying to say. She has no idea what he means or, really, what she means.

"I'm not making anything difficult. This just isn't the time!"

She says it louder than the means. Loud, like she's angry. And she is, isn't she? Angry. Angry at him.

It's his fault, isn't it?

And then, under his breath, as though to himself, he says: "so hot-headed."

"What did you say?!" She snaps.

He really doesn't know her at all.

Huh. Yeah. Okay. They know nothing about each other. That's exactly why they shouldn't be doing this and they shouldn't be in each other's lives anymore than they already are. He's not special to her. He was just a guy whose attendance got blown out of proportion by an accident that neither of them meant to happen. He's just a man. And she really doesn't know anything more about him. What the fuck has she even been trying for?

"Never mind," she says, having worked through it as quickly as she'd snapped at him. Temari jumps off the counter and quickly walks past him to the door, speaking without looking at him. "I'm sorry I kissed you. That was unfair. I should go." And Shikamaru steps aside in time for her to push open the door with ease and take off down the hall.

Her tone was definitive and left no room for argument, but she's kind of surprised he didn't try to argue anyway.

Good, she thinks. Easier.

She walks steady on instinct only (if she thinks about the action of one foot in the front of the other, her knees are so wobbly, her ankles so weak, she thinks her legs might give out) and leaves without saying goodbye to anyone.


"I don't think you're wrong," Tenten, says, voice so much more patient and kinder than usual, that Temari can tell she's working hard for the effect. Her friend leans forward to brush a hand through Temari's hair, pulling some behind her ear and out of her face. "There's nothing wrong with that. Your hormones are all over the place, right? And you said the sex was really good. Wanting more of it, even if it feels irrational, does make sense."

Tenten leans back to her side of the couch and waits for Temari to respond, but Temari has nothing to say. She wants to say too much, and everything she wants to say is contradictory to itself. She wants it but also means none of it. She takes a sip of her coffee instead.

Tenten has the radio playing low in the background.

"There's no rulebook for this kind of thing," she continues after a pause. "Whatever you decide to do is up to you — there are no wrong or right answers."

They both look at Lee, expecting him to say something encouraging, but he, maybe rightfully, stays out of it.

Ha. Temari smiles as she slips down, lying lower on Tenten's couch. Safe bet.

"Yeah," she says finally. "I just..."

"You don't have to tell him." Tenten repeats for the umpteenth time. "It'll be okay."

"I know," Temari says quickly. She knows. It will be. Everything will be okay.

She doesn't touch any of the pastries Lee had gone out to buy.


Sunday comes slowly.

Temari stands naked in front of the mirror. Her breasts hurt more than ever before and her body feels heavier, but nothing in the mirror has changed. Her stomach looks no different than it had last year or the year before that.

She presses her hands into her lower belly, pushing against her uterus, trying to feel for something she knows is impossible to feel.

It's only a few more days. The last weekend of this. In one week, she will be standing here again in a completely different position from now. Her body really will be the same as it was last year or the year before that.

And then, maybe, in a few years, she'll stand here again (or in a different mirror in a different apartment in a different city) and her stomach will look different and she'll be ready and wanting that in a way she doesn't right now. And she'll feel safe and loved and happy.

Temari sighs, long, and watches her shoulders in the mirror. She straightens and lengthens her neck, standing tall. She's not unhappy now. That's not what she means.

She tilts her head, watching the angles of her cheekbones and jaw and the set of her lips.

It's a slow Sunday. She doesn't see anyone and she goes to sleep early.


She has an event Tuesday night. One of those medium-sized work functions that require her to wear lipstick and be charming for an hour or two longer than she usually has the energy for. And she'll be presenting the honoree, so she spends most of the preceding day working on her speech, figuring out how she wants to approach the issues she is meant — and wants — to speak about.

And she and her coworker leave the office early to stop by the supplier of the award itself and pick up the laser-engraved glass item. It's on the other side of the river, not quite far from her usual haunts, but inconveniently located and hard to get to, which is the only reason they even take a taxi from work instead of the train (plus the company credit card).

It's a coincidence — absolutely without any design or prior awareness — that she sees Shikamaru. There is no overlap between anything she knows either of them to do (though, as pointed out and on repeat consistently through her head, she really doesn't know anything about him at all) and absolutely no reason she would otherwise expect to see him, but here he is.

It's only a second as she's exiting the store, box in hand, and attempting to walk the ten steps or less to where her coworker waits for her in the taxi, but she sees Shikamaru right away. He's walking down the street and, if she'd come out two seconds later, she would've collided with him head-on.

"Shikamaru," she exhales in surprise more than anything.

He stops. He has a cigarette he's almost done with and without saying anything, he drops it onto the pavement.

"Temari," he says. He's looking at her intently. Watching her, almost, like she's something to be wary of.

"What are you doing here?" As though she owns this sidewalk, as though she's affronted he'd be here without permission.

"I could ask you the same question."

He's in the coat she's seen him wear before. The same coat that'd hung by her door.

She blinks. He's hard to look away from him. Like she's pulled into him even though his eyes are so dark, looking at them for too long hurts. She's always thought that. At night in a crowded bar and now mid-afternoon on a sidewalk.

"Oh, um," she's caught off guard — though there is no reason (no reason!) for her to require guarding at all — and she gestures over to the taxi waiting for her. "Running errands."

He lifts his head, almost as a nod, and then just looks at her, waits for her to say something.

She has something else to say, but she doesn't know what it is, just that she's supposed to say something. Maybe ask him something? Hear him answer something she wants to know? But no words come out.

"Do you have time to—"

He's interrupted before he can ask anything by her coworker leaning out the window of the cab and calling her name.

They both turn.

"Come on," her coworker says, "let's get out of here."

"Sorry," she exhales, looking back to Shikamaru. "I have to—"

"Yeah," he says, definitive. Definitive about what?

She can tell right away he's seeing something that absolutely is not there.

"It's work, there's nothing — it's not," she stops. Justifying something that makes no sense and is absolutely without reason for her to answer to. She swallows. Shikamaru's not looking at her any more. "I have to go."

"Right," he says knowingly. It's not smug, like she used to find him, but pompous and thoroughly infuriating nonetheless.

Right what?! Right nothing. He's misunderstanding. As though seeing her in public accompanied by one member of the opposite sex in any way is reflective of a romantic or sexual decision. What kind of backward, out-dated assumption is that?! Not that she owed him anything anyway. Not that she owed him any kind of explanation. They weren't together. If anything, after she'd left him in that bathroom last week, she'd have thought he'd want nothing to do with her.

Maybe he does. At least, he looks uninterested in her right in this moment.

It's only a second, but he must see the irritation in her eyes, or perhaps he just has no further desire to continue, because he ducks his head away and starts on again, walking past her.

"See you," he says, as customary and bland as one might say to passing a twice-removed acquaintance.

Temari stays standing on the pavement for another moment.

She doesn't turn to watch him walk away.

She isn't sure what she's feeling or what she's quite upset about.

But she's upset.

"Temari," her coworker calls, smug and irritating and attempting to be playful in a different way than she ever found Shikamaru.

She sighs, readjusts the box in her hand, and turns to finish her walk to the waiting taxi.


He's right, vaguely, which only serves to irritate her more.

Her coworker does, in a lateral and uncomfortable way she should've seen coming, hit on her.

They're discussing women's healthcare and sexual education in their own homes versus in other countries, and she doesn't find it arousing, but he reaches out a hand anyway. But she's removed from it and she's hardly paying attention in the first place, so she bats his hand off her knee without even thinking about it.

She's working, organizing and reorganizing last-minute details. But she spends most of the night in mild conversation, thinking about how much more she'd rather spend it with Shikamaru.

It doesn't really make sense. She's repeated, over and over, that she doesn't know him. She's only had one, maybe, substantive conversation with him (though when almost all of their dealings revolved around conversation about the possibility of sex, it seemed, if anything, to be a conclusory and biased theory toward conversational merit). But she can't stop thinking about him.

Thinking about him on the street and how he's never tasted like cigarettes. About his coat and the set of his mouth. And his anger (if that's what it was) with her. And about what Lee had always said.

She owed him nothing. Being with him — even attempting to try something — would only complicate both their lives in a way that she really can't justify. He didn't fit in her life — in fact, he'd wedged in a piece and thrown it all out of whack. It's much better — solid, steady — to move on from this and start over for both of them.

But she thinks about how sheepish (cute, really) he'd been when he'd come to ask her out. And she thinks, nonstop, how much more she'd rather be with him right now than with anyone else, even herself.


It's past midnight when she leaves the office. She'd long-since sent her coworker home (which he didn't push hard against, post-rejection) and she'd just been pacing back and forth, reading and reworking her speech for tomorrow.

And thinking, mostly.

She thinks about what she wants to say. To him, to the world; to herself.

She walks to the train. It's bitterly cold out. There is more wind than usual for this time of night. But she's wrapped up against it, head lowered against the cut of it, hands deep in her pockets. And it's not far.

The train platform is empty when she gets there. Still cold, but much easier without the wind. Without thinking too much of it (although all she's been doing for so long, for so, so long, is thinking), Temari pulls out her phone.

It's late. Too late. Unfair, in a lot of ways. But a lot is unfair. And she's standing on this platform alone. And she doesn't want to be.

"It's Temari," she says as soon as the message tone beeps. "I'm really sorry about today. And last week. I'm really," she exhales, nervous, "really sorry." Her hands are shaking, as though she's facing him, as though she's saying this to a person and not just a recorder. "I never should've, just." Another moment. She swallows. "I saw you and I got nervous. And I was just, uh, taken by surprise."

She inhales again and holds it. How long do these voicemail messages take? Don't they go out eventually? Like, running out of tape?

Obviously it's not a tape recorder — it's something in some cloud or in the ether or wherever phones do whatever it is they do, but — ugh! Are they going to cut her off?! They should. No amount of time is enough.

"But I have something that I need to talk to you about. And I've been meaning to talk to you and I, uh," she closes her eyes, "I don't want to leave it on your voicemail. So, um, will you call me back please?" Her breath, when she exhales, shakes. "Thank you." She doesn't even know what she's thanking him for.

She hangs up. Her hands, probably from the cold, are still vibrating. It's just cold. It's so cold.


She gets off and changes to the local two stops early. She moves on something akin to autopilot, although it's not as natural as that, and it is, genuinely, intended. She's just... unsure why she's ending up here.

It's late. And she's being unfair here too. But it doesn't stop her.

She gets out and walks the remaining blocks to his apartment. She knows the door code. The elevator is empty, the halls silent in the nighttime hours.

He has one of those new doors too with a keycode. She isn't sure if that's safer than an actual key. But it doesn't matter. She knows that one too.

"Hello?" He calls when she opens the front door. It's asked loudly, warily, and with slight irritation.

"It's me." She slips off her shoes and then keeps walking.

Kankuro is sitting up in bed when she finds him. But he has a book open and the light on, so at least she didn't wake him up.

"What are you doing here?" He asks, tone intent and concern clear. "What time is it?"

"After midnight."

He frowns and scoots up higher in bed. He'd been reading a play he'd told her about a few days ago. Some murder thing.

"What's wrong? What's going on?"

She can't remember the last time she came into his (or anyone's) home like this in the middle of the night. Maybe, she thinks, she never has.

Usually, she pushes through it. Usually, she stays by herself. Usually, she's alone.

"Hey," she says again, standing in the doorway to his bedroom. She starts to unbutton her coat. "Can I come into bed with you?"

Kankuro frowns, but doesn't deny her. Then he sits all the way up, "yeah," he says, dog-earing the page he was on and putting his book aside. He scoots over. "Come on."

Temari drops her coat to the floor and crawls onto the bed.

"I can take the couch," he says, but she comes in closer so that their shoulders are pressed together and it stops him from moving away.

"No," she says, voice smaller than she wants it to be, "don't. I don't plan on staying."

She slips under the covers and her brother wraps an arm around her, pulling her closer into him, and for the first time in a long time, she feels the beginning of tears making their way into her throat. She works hard to keep them from spilling over; works to keep the corners of her mouth from turning down. She inhales, trying to keep it at bay, but her inhale through her nose sounds like a sniffle.

Kankuro leans over her, squeezing her in. "What's going on? Talk to me."

She leans down. "I'm pregnant." She wipes at her eyes. "And I'm having an abortion."

She hasn't said it aloud to anyone before. Not like that. Not just openly and frankly and without intermixed qualifying words. Tenten was there. When they called Lee, Tenten was the one that actually said it. At the doctor's, she'd asked for a test. Every time she's even tried to say it before, she couldn't get the words out.

But she wants to get them out.

So she says them like that: frankly and shakily. And her breathing moves her shoulders and her brother exhales and hums, bringing his free hand to pet her head, gently playing with her hair.

"Thank god," he half-laughs. "I thought you were going to tell me you were dying!"

"What?" Temari laughs, mostly just from the surprise, and wipes at her eyes again, "No." When she glances up, Kankuro is smiling kindly, sadly, down at her. "God," she breathes, "I was so scared to tell you. I've been so scared to tell anyone."

"Oh Temari," he speaks slowly, "you should never be afraid to talk to me."

"I just." A long breath. "I'm scared, I was scared, that you'd be angry. And very disappointed."

Kankuro hums through his exhale, hand running through her hair. "I'm neither."

When they were younger, she'd been the reliable one. She'd shouldered what he needed borne. She'd stood taller, maybe just because she was older, maybe because of something else. And she knows — she knows — that she's loved. And respected. And protected. She's full. But. Still. Knowing that and knowing that are two different things.

It's so humiliating to be here. To be in this position... and to be so scared of this position. Both horrify her. Both are humiliating — both are monstrous.

"Look," her brother says, then he straightens a bit, readjusting to her weight against him. "I — I can't believe I never told you this. But when we were in college, my girlfriend had an abortion."

She snaps her head up to look at him. "Ikuyo?!"

"God no, no," Kankuro laughs, "a girl I was seeing for only a few weeks. Before Ikuyo. You never met her."

"Oh," Temari exhales, less shaky now. "I didn't know."

"I didn't tell you." He looks away, remembering something. "Actually, I didn't even know until later. I only found out two years ago when I bumped into her. We had coffee and she told me."

"She didn't tell you then?"

He shakes his head. "I saw her up by the park and she asked if I could talk a walk. I thought we were just going to catch up, but she opened with it right away." Kankuro thinks about it for a moment. "It seemed like it was weighing on her, you know? Like she'd been waiting to find me for a long time. But it shouldn't have. It was her choice to make."

Temari takes this in.

"I mean," he says, "I was an idiot then."

"You're an idiot now."

He laughs. Then leans over to gently bring his lips to her temple.

"The only thing I regret," he continues when he straightens, "is that she had to go through that by herself. I mean, we were eighteen. I'm not mad she didn't tell me. I don't even know if I would've reacted well. So I'm not... mad that she didn't give me the chance to. I just. I — for her, I wish she hadn't been alone."

Temari thinks of Tenten. And Lee. And Kankuro. And imagines that she won't be alone. And that this girl probably wasn't either. But then she thinks about it more. Imagines the hospital room and those shitty gowns and the cold metal speculum she thinks they'll put between her legs like during a check-up, holding her open.

"Even if you were there," she says slowly, "it's something she goes through on her own."

"I know," Kankuro responds quickly. "But, I... I wish I could've done something, you know? Just told her, you know, that it was going to be okay." He huffs. "Though, again, I like to think I would've reacted that way. But, as you've so kindly pointed out, I was an idiot."

"I pointed out the present tense."

He laughs softly.

There is a pause. His room is warm. Her body hurts. But it feels like a relief. Like the ache is a product of being held so tightly for so long and it's only now, with the anticipation of saying anything to anyone gone, that she can relax and feel the pain in a way she hadn't before.

"Taro's?" He asks softly after a moment.

She says nothing, not answering. Instead, Temari closes her eyes and slides lower on the pillows, further onto her brother's shoulder, wrapping her arms around him.

She hasn't held him like this since they were children.


Temari stands next to the coffee cart. Her hair is pulled tightly back, bangs pinned away from her face. She holds a hot paper cup in one hand, forearms pressed across her stomach (as though pushing her coat against herself will stop the cold), and in her other hand she looks at her phone.

No message. Shikamaru hasn't called back. Or texted. Or responded to her in any way.

She hates the way the lack of it makes her feel. Wrong, somehow. Anxious. If she could just — she doesn't know — Explain sounds blasé. And makes her feel as though she's been misunderstood, and that's not right. Or perhaps, or isochronous, as though she must justify herself. And she doesn't think that's right either.

More, she hates the way she thinks about it at all.


Temari drinks coffee and rereads her speech and edits it more and changes some things. She thinks about how lucky she is, in the end, to make the choice she's making; to have the love and opportunity she has. She's feeling better. It's only been a few hours, but she feels better than she has in a long time. Long, it feels like, like she almost forgot.

Not good. But. Better. She feels right. Better.


"Um hello, it's me again, calling you again." She paces from one side of her small office to the other, kicking her feet out as though there were pebbles there to move down a road. She swallows. "Wow, uh, I can't remember the last time I left messages for a person that wasn't related to work." Mm. "Right. Well." She swallows again. Glances at the clock on the wall. "I'm going to be here until five and then we're having a fundraiser in the Main Center downtown at seven. You should stop by, if you feel like it. I'd, uh, like you to stop by, if you can." She exhales. "I promise I won't leave with anyone else in a taxi unless that person is you. You know, if you're going in the same direction. Or something." Half-a-joke with zero landing. She regrets it as soon as she says it. Wow. Fuck. Okay. "Goodbye."

Temari hangs up and hits her phone to her forehead.


She has a page she takes up to the podium, but it's mostly for the run-down of the numbers and his CV.

"Thank you all for being here," Temari says into the microphone. There are lights on her and she feels flushed beneath them, although she's cold and surely pale. Her dress cinches in at her waist and it feels like its tightness is helping ground her. Like a hefty belt holding her straight. "What a gift it is for us to have here so many generous advocates, humanitarians, and volunteers who have donated their time, money, and work to those who need it most in the international community."

She sounds steady. She is steady.

She introduces herself.

Before her are tables set up and people in cocktail attire — silk and tights and ties — watching her. Better-than-average wine in their glasses and bellies waiting for the dinner-part of the night to begin.

She can make out the faces — it's not a theater, and it's only a small event — and she sees Tenten and Lee standing off in the shadows, smiling at her.

"And it is an honor for me," she says, "to introduce our Honored Guest of the evening."

She glances at her notes as she says the dates since he started working in Women's Health.

And when she looks up, behind the array of faces watching her, she sees Shikamaru Nara standing in the back. He's half in shadow, but she can see him clear enough.

Okay.

She smiles, softly, and he catches it. He's still wearing his coat.

Her legs, behind the podium, shake. Just a bit. Just until she can shift her weight and readjust. She's okay. She's okay.

Temari continues speaking, smiling around her words, rounding out clear pronunciation.

They're giving an award to one of their donors that is really only just a certification to make the recipient feel good and encourage him (and hopefully others) to continue to donate more.

She reads off the paper, cites the donor's achievements in women's health in indigent communities. Their funding and access to gynecological practitioners and sexual education.

She's up here, she knows, she's said — she thinks about often —, because she's a woman. And while her organization has many employees across the world, the office in this city only consists of men and one other woman forty years her senior. It's problematic, she knows, and, in fact, derides. But she knows the work is good. And she likes her work. And so she'd accepted her role as introducer despite having only the most general relationship to the program.

They wanted a woman, right? They wanted a young woman. They wanted her.

Temari swallows. Steels herself. Looks at him in the back for a moment, and then down at the rest of the people before her.

"And before I let you hear from him, I want to say one thing."

She inhales. Glances over, for only a second, at Tenten. Her friend nods in encouragement and she finds it surprisingly easy to continue on.

"I don't normally speak about my personal life, especially to all of you, who are not here to celebrate me."

The event's guests, who hadn't necessarily had a noticeable noise to them before, suddenly get quieter.

"However, I just wanted to take the time to emphasize how important this work is to communities. Over the last few weeks, in anticipation of tonight, I've been learning how influential organizations that are providing care to women are. How impactful prioritizing women's health and family planning and education is to a community."

She takes a beat, looks down, and then straightens her shoulders and looks back up.

"In high-income countries, one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetimes. That means women you know, women you love and trust and care for, women you pass on the street, women you work with or come home to, myself included, have been in this position."

She blinks and briefly, for only a second, looks at him. And he's looking at her, mouth, slightly, open.

"And, as we all know, there are many reasons women make this choice. Some for health concerns, financial or home burdens, trauma; some pregnancies are simply just... unintended."

From the edges of her line of sight, she can see he's still looking at her.

"And those of us here today are blessed and privileged to have access to make that decision because of where we are. We don't have to travel a hundred miles on foot to see a doctor who is willing to provide necessary healthcare. Our health and life choices are not decided by others because of the access we have. That is not the case for most women in the world. Rather, those women and those communities are reliant on people like all of you, like this organization, to provide them with care."

Temari stops, looks out directly to where Shikamaru was standing, but doesn't see him this time.

"It is admirable and necessary work. And learning about it over these past few weeks has been inspiring. I thank you all for coming here and supporting it."

There is a moment, and then someone claps loudly.

Temari smiles — relief — and opens her mouth.

"And with that brief diversion into a semi-personal topic I have not quite figured out how to appropriately discuss," some laughter, "let me quickly cede my position on this stage to our distinguished guest of the evening."

Her heart is pounding as she steps away from the podium. She's clapping as the donor they're all here for walks on stage.

It's only a few seconds. Half a minute at most by the time she's leaving the stage. But when she looks out over the audience, Shikamaru is gone. Really gone.

Suddenly panicked, she descends the stairs and heads straight toward the exit.

He —

She blinks. Turns. Circles. She fists her hands.

Nothing.

Temari leaves the room, walking out of the main exit, but no one is out there. She walks quickly, her shoes loud on marble flooring, echoing in the emptiness of the hall. The muffled sound of the party and speech are drowned out by her rapid breathing.

She keeps going, into the lobby, out the front doors, emerging onto the sidewalk.

She looks left. Right.

But he's gone.


"Are you okay?" Lee asks as soon as she's back in the main hall. "You're shivering." He wraps his suit jacket over her bare shoulders. It's below freezing out, but she had hardly noticed.

"Yeah," Temari breathes. Her throat burns. Her eyes feel dry. January is too cold for this. It's... too cold. "Yeah, I am" she says again.

Yeah, she is.

Tenten rubs her arm both in comfort and support.

She hadn't said it explicitly out there, but she'd said enough. Purposefully, it was enough for him.

"You were amazing," Lee whispers, throwing an arm her.

"Thanks," she breathes.

Better to know in the end, right?

"Definitely the best of your office parties I've ever seen," Tenten chides, and Temari smiles.

Together, in slow steps, they walk back into the room and watch the rest of the donor's speech.


It was hard to get to sleep, but when she finally did, she slept better than she'd imagined she would've.

She'd regretted it, a bit, all night — replayed her decision over and over. But also she was so, so relieved to have done it. To have said it and to have that worry — that concern — over. Even if she probably should've done something differently. It was too late now. And that was a huge relief to feel: the relief of being unable to change the past.

And, as she'd repeated: better to know, in the end.

She wakes up a little later than usual.

She feels the same. Her body doesn't hurt. It doesn't feel foreign or other. Really, if pressed, it doesn't feel any different than it may have two months ago.

It did — for weeks — everything felt different. But it isn't. And, while some things will be, most things won't.

It'll all be okay. Today will be okay. And afterwards she will be done. And go from there, right?

She takes a bath and looks at her body through the water.

She washes her face; shaves her legs.

There's no protocol for this, she supposes. She doesn't need to groom or do her hair or anything akin. There's no wrong answer. But she does so anyway, pulling her hair out of her face and putting on a bra and underwear underneath her loose slacks and a sweatshirt from Gaara's college she doesn't remember stealing.

She doesn't look bad. She doesn't look tired. She looks no different than she did yesterday.

With a long, deep breath, Temari gathers the last bit of her things and leaves her bedroom.

Tenten is in the kitchen, having spent the night, and already has coffee brewed and a muffin she must have gone out to buy.

Temari isn't hungry, but she picks off a piece of the top.

"Am I supposed to eat?"

Tenten leans against the counter and shrugs. "I don't remember."

They laugh softly and then sober. "They're going to knock me out," Temari recites, remembering the white wording on the pamphlet she'd studied.

"Yeah," Tenten says. She watches Temari, head tilted. "Are you okay?"

Temari pauses. She is mostly sure she wasn't supposed to eat. She puts the plate onto the counter. And swallows.

"I am."

"Good."

"He left."

"I know." Tenten thins her lips. "Maybe have one more bite. Just in case."

Temari huffs, mostly in jest, and grabs the mug of coffee Tenten is extending her.


"Let's go up to fifth." There are more cabs passing there than on her residential street.

Temari digs her hands into her pockets. It's so cold, she has to fight to urge to jump up and down to stay warm. "We can just take the train —"

"No," Tenten cuts her off, grabbing her elbow and starting to pull her down the block. "We're aborting in style."

Temari huffs, but doesn't resist the tug, stepping in close until Tenten relaxes her grip. Her friend stays holding her arm though.

She's not as nervous as she thought she'd be.

It's an easy Wednesday morning. Few cars are out and they only pass one other person on her street.

It's only going to be three blocks. But as soon as they turn the corner, Shikamaru is there, walking so quickly, he almost bumps into them.

"Oh," Tenten exhales, stepping back on reflex. "Shikamaru."

He's standing there. Looking down at Temari. Face pale and lips slightly parted.

"Uh, hey," he says.

"Hi."

Tenten leans back further, as though to give them some semblance of space.

"Hi," he repeats. Then he looks over to Tenten and greets her too.

Tenten gives him a thin-lipped smile.

"I, uh, was hoping to catch you," he says, eyes meeting Temari's. Her breathing quickens. "You weren't at your work —"

"You went to my office?"

"—and they said you were out today."

She takes a slightly shaky breath, uncomfortable. This is awkward. "You caught me."

"Yeah." He looks between the two of them again. "Could we maybe talk for a second?"

Temari swallows. She feels pale and cold and anxious on her feet. She wants to tell him that she has a phone. He could've called. He could've asked.

"I can't right now," she says. "Actually, I'm — uh, we — are headed to the clinic right now."

Shikamaru nods. Unsurprised, almost, though perhaps he just hasn't understood. He looks at her, and then at Tenten. And then back to her.

"Right. I, uh, thought, if it was all right with you... and, uh," he nods to Tenten, "you, um, maybe I could go with you?"

Temari swallows. She looks down and then back at him.

"Yeah," she says, deep from her throat. "I'd like that."


He has a car, which is unusual for locals, and he insists on driving her although it's surely harder to find parking near the clinic than to have simply taken the subway.

But at least his car is warm.

They ride in silence. Tenten had left them with a hug and instructions for Shikamaru to get her number and keep her updated.

After she left, they hadn't really spoken. Temari looks out the window, mostly, and brushes some dust from inside the passenger door.

Shikamaru is nervous, maybe more so than she is, and she can feel it thrumming from beside him.

As expected, it takes him a few minutes to park.

"They say it's under an hour." She says as he turns off the car. They're in a two-hour tow-away zone. "And most of that's talking."

"Yeah." He agrees. Then quickly supplies: "I read about it."

"Right." She licks her lips. And then undoes her seat belt and gets out of the car.

They walk side by side down the street to the clinic.

He holds open the door and she smiles a little awkwardly at him.

She's not upset he's here. She's not. Not at all.

He stays beside her as she checks in at the front and then goes to sit with her against the far wall. He takes their coats and sets them on an empty chair on the other side of him.

Temari works hard to keep her breath even. She's not scared. She's just. It's just a lot. But it's just this morning. And then by this afternoon some chapter of her life, in some way, will be over.

She blinks and focuses down on the papers they'd given her.

Her basic chart. One she'd filled out last time, she thinks. A few more pages where she'll have to sign consent.

"You can look, you know," she says when she notices Shikamaru purposefully avoid watching her write down her health information. "Not really any secrets here."

He exhales and glances over. Takes in the few things she's jotted down. The one disease she knows ran in her mother's side of the family (though she is sure there are more her parents just never told them about).

She thinks, in an offhand and obtrusive way, that if they weren't here — if she and Shikamaru were at another doctor's appointment for a different path after a different choice — they'd both be filling out forms. She thinks about that a lot, actually. Especially since knowing him more. Especially since... well, since him. But that's not happening today. Not now. Now, it's just her.

And then, without looking at her, Shikamaru leans forward, elbows on knees.

"I'm sorry I left last night."

His words are soft, but come out a little raw. Like they hurt his throat.

He's not looking at her. Temari looks at his neck.

"I just..." he takes a long breath and she watches how his whole back rises and falls with it. "I didn't know what to do."

She blinks. "Neither did I."

"It's not—" he huffs and sits back up, but still is looking down, though she knows he can see her in his periphery now. "It's not an excuse. It was wrong. And I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Temari licks her lips, momentarily resting the clipboard on her lap. "I also made a very extreme move last night."

He laughs, low, and looks at her. "You did," he agrees, "but, it was an asshole thing to do on my part."

She finds herself, just a bit, smiling. "It was."

He smiles too and leans back in his chair.

"I think we're both just trying to figure it out," she adds. She means it. "I know I haven't been easy," she swallows, and looks at him seriously. She's been trying (had been trying, for weeks) to figure out what to say, and yet somehow, even though he knows, the words don't seem to come any easier. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier."

"No—"

But she cuts him off. "I kept trying, I just didn't. I didn't know how. And." She stops. Opens her mouth and closes it again. Her hands, even with the support of her lap where they're holding the edges of the clipboard, shake. "I couldn't get it out, you know? I couldn't... get the words. I kept losing them."

"You didn't have to." He responds quickly. And then he pauses. "I mean. I'm glad to know. I. I don't want you to think you shouldn't have. I want to know, Temari. But you didn't — you didn't have to." He takes a long breath, flexing and then fisting his hands and then opening them again. "There was no wrong choice for you to make. You know that, right? I would've done whatever you wanted."

She swallows. "I know."

Even though she doesn't. She just wanted to think so.

"I was going to tell you though."

She needs him to know that. Needs him to believe it.

He nods, fingers now dancing on his knee.

She watches his hand for a moment and then looks back up to his face. "Are you, um, okay, with..." she gestures with one hand to their surroundings, "I mean?"

Shikamaru exhales sharply, as though the entirety of her statement is ridiculous. "Of course! I— yes. Yes, I am."

"You just." She stops and turns his body to look at her more fully. "I know you want a wife and kids. Two kids. A girl and a boy, in that order." She repeats it easily, repeats it like it's commonplace, because she's been repeating it to herself just like that for days.

He exhales pointedly again, this time in half a laugh. "You heard about that?" Shikamaru looks, for a moment, down to her knees, her chart, and then glances back up at her. "I do want a family," he answers, "but not tomorrow."

He smiles. And so does she.

Slowly, but not hesitantly, Temari reaches out to touch his hand.

Without looking, he lifts his to take the back of her hand and cover it with his own. He's warm, even though his skin is so much paler than hers, ashen almost, especially right now, and he rests their hands, one on top of the other, on his knee.

He only lets her go when they call her name.

"I'll be right here," he says at the door to take her back.

And then, slowly, she steps into him and, carefully, he pulls her into his body. Her head buries in his chest, soft and warm and steady. She presses her ear to his shirt and waits for a second until she can hear the thrum of his heartbeat. She stays for only a moment. The nurse who called for her waits beside them silently, patiently.


She's half-awake, looking up at the foam ceiling tiles, when she hears them speaking to her. It feels like the sound is traveling slow. Not warped like it's underwater, but slow, like someone's toying with a record.

She knows the doctor is back and telling her they're going to start, but she feels nothing more than the general pressure of someone touching her.

Temari blinks, slow, and feels, or maybe imagines, two lines of tears falling from the edges of her eyes down to the table.


"There were a lot of women in the recovery room," she says as Shikamaru comes back into her living room holding a mug of hot chocolate. She didn't have any ingredients to make it, but wanted something hot and sweet, so he'd run out and then, in a way that would normally annoy her (wasted cups and unnecessary dishes to wash) but now feels right, transferred the drink into one of her mugs.

"Oh?" He says, coming to sit on the opposite side of the couch from her, feet planted firmly on the ground. "I think they usually schedule all their operations on the same days."

She takes a sip. She feels drowsy. And foggy. But she's not ready to go to sleep yet.

Her stomach hurts. Low, in her uterus, exactly like they'd warned her. It's not horrible (though she suspects it'll be worse the more the anesthesia wears off), but still a constant ache.

"Good?"

He means the hot chocolate.

She holds the cup up and nods. Her back is pressed to one arm of her couch, socked-feet in the middle.

Last time they were on this couch together, he was getting her pregnant.

She smiles, softly, to herself. It's not even a joke, much less a good one, but she finds it comical nonetheless.

She wonders if he's thinking the same thing.

He doesn't seem to be though. Or at least nothing in his demeanor points to any arousal or humor, not even a fleeting wayward memory.

No. On the contrary, he seems anxious. Unsure, maybe.

"I might fall asleep," she says, holding the mug close to her chest. "In a little while."

"You probably should." He glances at her, blinks under his heavy lashes. "I'll stay, if that's okay?"

"Yes," she says. It's a little halted.

"Would you like to lie down?"

Temari inhales. Nods.

"I can move —"

"No."

He's expecting her to scoot lower, she thinks, vaguely, but instead she puts the mug carefully on the coffee table and shifts all the way around so that her head is on his side of the couch.

Shikamaru doesn't say anything, but grabs one of the throw pillows and puts it on his lap, helping her adjust as she gently rests her head down, lying on her back to look up at him.

He looks down at her.

They say nothing.

Just look at each other.

She's glad, she thinks, that it was him.

Glad, she thinks, but doesn't say — isn't ready to say to him — that he was the stranger she met.

Slowly, slow so she can stop him if she wants to, he lifts his hand and then carefully pulls the ties from her hair until her hair is long and loose on the pillow. And then, with sure fingers, he brushes his hands through her hair, combing through it in gentle movements, never looking away from her.

"Want to watch a movie?"

"If you want to."

She shrugs, or shrugs as much as she can lying down on her back like this.

He leans forward, shifting her a bit, to grab the remote on the coffee table.

"I've been thinking," she ventures when he comes back down.

"Hm?"

"Trying to count our dates."

Shikamaru looks down again and smiles. "Sounds hard. The classification criteria seems to change pretty frequently."

"It's a really tenuous task."

He smirks softly. She really does like that mouth. "Last I remember, I thought we hadn't actually gone on one yet."

Temari blinks. Suddenly, without warning, she feels very sleepy.

"Yeah," she agrees, "I did say that."

"You did."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Or maybe this is our fourth."

Shikamaru laughs. "Our fourth?"

Temari takes a long breath, blinking slowly. "It's the fourth time we've hung out."

"Hung out," he repeats, glancing up at the still-off television. Then he smiles. Big. Then bigger. Bigger, maybe, than she's ever seen before.

He brushes his hand through her hair, thumb rubbing lightly on her forehead.

"I think about you all the time, Temari." He says, serious. "I'm not asking for anything right now — I'm. I just. I wanted you to know that: know that I think about you. All the time."

She sighs. She hears him. Or maybe she hadn't heard anything and made it all up.

"We can have our fifth date when I wake up," she says, airy.

He laughs. And looks down at her, eyes bright. "I think you'll be feeling more up for a fifth date tomorrow. Or maybe the next day."

Temari hums. His hand feels nice in her hair. "Right," she answers. She has to close her eyes. It's not against how bright his smile is or anything else, right? She's just tired. "When I wake up in a few hours, it'll just be a continuation of the fourth," she finishes, lids fluttering.

"I'll be right here," he says, and she can feel him still looking at her even though her eyes are closed. "And I'll be here for the fifth tomorrow," he says, hand moving back and forth, fingers brushing her skull, "or whenever you're ready. I can even leave and come back..."

Temari chuckles lightly and then huffs and, eyes still closed, rolls onto her side, turning to face into his stomach.

"Okay," she agrees.

Shikamaru takes a long breath and sinks lower into the couch when he exhales. She can feel the loosening of his muscles in his thighs and tummy against her. And then his breathing evens out and his hand keeps its pace and, without fully realizing she's doing it, she falls asleep.


a/n: thank you all for reading!

come talk to me about it ❤️