ransom notes keep falling from your mouth
author: jackie
genre: naruto. specifically, the AU beached_in.
notes: Based off of this drabble i wrote for theothethumper. :// i can't keep sunagakure from anything I write. A work of fiction, plz don't go ape on me for it.
-
For some reason, he tells Shikamaru his name. Kankurou. Shikamaru thinks it's a ridiculously complicated name, or it just seems so when they're trying to lug a girl heavy with drowning back onto the beach. Shikamaru wishes he'd never left home or that he didn't recognize the girl who went under so suddenly, or that the asshole on the risk would hurry up and call for help. The town is so quiet at night that he can hear water lapping on a dock half a mile down.
"Is she breathing?" Kankurou pulls his hood back and his sister shivers under their fingers before they drop her to dry land. She's alive, but Shikamaru doesn't know enough about her to determine whether that's good or not. After all, this chick still reminds him of Ino, and fighting with Ino is the only reason he walked onto this miserable patch of sand. He walked miles the other way once, too soon after they started life without Chouji, and Ino had one of her boyfriends drive along the beach until she found Shikamaru. She threw her arms around his shoulders and half cried, half screamed how he would never leave her like that again. They were a team and they both missed Chouji, but running away doesn't change what's happened.
"I was just walking." He had tried to explain to Ino. He felt like his collarbones would always be soaked with her crying and he wanted to add, "I won't run away from this." But he wasn't sure if that was true. Shikamaru doesn't want anyone to drown, but he's never learned how to save someone.
"I think so," Shikamaru gulps at that fear and tilts the girl's head back. She sputters up sea water and her eyelashes have salt on them when they open. Looking more dead than alive, she takes a moment before she recognizes him. He thinks she recognizes him, maybe, or she's still delirious from a lack of oxygen to the brain. Kankurou says her name in desperation then, but Shikamaru doesn't hear it for some reason or another. She looks like part of the sand when she's set back against it, hair splayed over the grains until the distinction between them is lost. There's salt that shimmers under the lights that pour over them from the boardwalk and her hands are splayed palms upwards, little wrists white and harmless under her tan lines.
"Let go of me, you perverts," she grumbles and tears her soaked form from them. Backing away, Shikamaru remembers her roughness and voice even more than her face and thinks it might be better if she's forgotten him. She struggles with her clothing as she stands, sand holding fast to the wetness of her skin. "What the hell happened?" She barely lets Kankurou explain.
"You fell-"
"Idiot! Somebody pulled me." She turns an accusatory look to Shikamaru but it's wasted, as if she already knows he rescued her.
"Technically. It's called a rip-tide." Shikamaru presses his salt cool hands to the back of his neck, adding to the nighttime chill of the tides. "Haven't you ever been in the ocean before?" She's evasive about the question and her brother answers for her, in an awkwardly lost tone as if he was the one who nearly drowned.
"No," Kankurou mumbles and nervously draws his hood back over his head. "Let's get something to eat." He beckons his sister after him as he starts back down the beach, but he doesn't seem to mind when she doesn't follow right away. She looks like she's waiting for him. Shikamaru turns his face up along the risk and he can see that the cripple that was watching them has left. He squints sleepily against the glow of the boardwalk lights and eventually follows, realizing she must recognize him somehow.
"Did you find who you were looking for?" Shikamaru twists the straw in his fingers, marveling at how out of place these siblings were. No local would buy a meal from a vendor at the posted price as these two did. She couldn't be more pedestrian if she walked down the street. It was her money, after all, so he didn't care if she was the one who was ripped off. He already saved her life, he thinks anymore would be overkill.
She sneers at the question, as if he needed another reminder that he was just a child around her. Her brother has lost sight of them completely, more engaged in his meal than anything else.
"Did you?" She counters viciously. Shikamaru shakes his head without thinking about who it could be that he's trying to find. He thinks when he first met the woman, it was probably Ino's new boyfriend, but he can't figure it out for sure. Sometimes it feels like he's still looking for Chouji- but that's stupid. Shikamaru knows where his friend's gone and he can walk the whole length of the continent's beaches and it wouldn't make any difference. He wishes he could have the driven goal a tourist as she has, or at least to have a point where remaining in the town is no longer necessary.
"I don't know," he confesses and his words are half lost under a shout from within the club they're standing by. The band's practice is lagging on into the deep of night. Shikamaru doesn't know how many questions he can ask her, but he knows she'll leave someday. It's a matter of when and he keeps trying to resign himself to push that when into the now. This girl and her brother and her search make him into something he's not- impatient.
"Who are you looking for?" Kankurou hears Shikamaru and stops midbite, waiting for his sister to give the response.
"My fiancee."
"Liar," Shikamaru grins. Her brother's face gives the girl away.
"What did you call me?" Insults are probably a faster way of getting rid of a person, he thinks. He thinks too much, but he's used to the shouting. Her voice sounds worse when she yells and he wonders if she was kicked in the throat to get it that bad. "I'm not a liar," she snarls and catches him by the front of his shirt. She's tall enough that she can look him in the eyes and then some, and Ino never had any brothers so her punches weren't nearly so clean. Jaw aching, Shikamaru settles back on his heels but doesn't relinquish his question.
"My brother," the girl adds grudgingly.
"You?" Kankurou's scathing look is enough to tell Shikamaru there's another sibling to this mess. He prods at a couple teeth with his tongue, nervously checking their location. He doesn't want to admit that he liked the way the blow sounded against the muddy music in the background. It's weird to like the sound of a punch to your own face, or a girl with a guttural growl, or how bitter she looks when you remind her how you ran into each other again.
She hesitates on her next words, because it's obvious they mean something to her before they even happen. Shikamaru tries to devote his attention to her and the straw all at once, because while she's loud, she's not much for an audience. He likes that.
"You saved my life."
"Kankurou helped."
"Kankurou helped," she nods and acknowledges Shikamaru's modesty as quickly as he offered it. Neither of them are very comfortable with formal thank you's, though Kankurou looks rather proud of himself. Shikamaru tosses the straw in a foul smelling bin outside the club and she lingers there, leaning against the wall and listening with her chin tilted up as if it improves the noise. The way she stands reminds him of how his fingers were on her jaw when she was drowned. Shikamaru doesn't think she hears music and shoves his fingers in his pockets while the song breaks off mid key change. They're not a bad band, but they're not very good either.
"We can go inside," Shikamaru offers and, for once, wishes he could feel enthusiastic about anything at all. He's a little relieved when she shakes her head.
"Last time we tried that he smashed a fucking bottle." Kankurou explains, finishing his burger. She shrugs and pulls away from the wall. The white wood leaves little lines alone her bareback in the shapes of splinters, and Shikamaru wishes he could trace the marked skin with his fingertips. He feels like the color will rub off onto his hands, onto the doorknobs, onto Ino, and he'll be found out.
She gestures for Shikamaru not to follow them this time around, and he runs his fingers along the wall to feel the vibrations from the practice inside.
"Welcome back." Ino's chipping ice into glasses when Shikamaru returns. He stands in the entryway to the kitchen, watching the block of ice melt and warp their countertops and floor. Shikamaru looks around for their other housemate that's more prone to these menial chores.
"This must be an occasion."
"Fuck you, we need ice." And a mop. She hits the ice too hard and surges forward, little fingers sliding against the cold surface and fumbling for purchase. She grimaces and continues, shifting the cheap plastic cup in her hands. "Sakura says Lee saw you save some drowning girl." What really makes Ino's commentary worth it is all the vaugities.
"Sakura's here?" He decides to avoid the main topic, going to the hastily defrosting ice and dabbing his fingers in the puddles. It's still cold but not for very long with the night's humidity. Ino nods, gesturing to the back door. "Who's Lee?" She brings the ice pick down so hard that tiny bits of freezing shrapnel arch up and hit them in the face. Shikamaru tries to laugh, but the ceiling is too low and there's a funny thumping sound from above them that catches their attention. A few bits like snowflakes rain from the ceiling, but it doesn't seem to be an occasion to Ino.
"Naruto's friend with the crutch." Oh, that bastard on the risk. She wipes the ceiling particles and the water off her brow and straightens. Shikamaru can feel the remaining essence of chills radiate from the block and it makes Ino's veins stand out on her hands. He remembers how the veins stand out in her forehead when they have shouting matches.
"I didn't." He thinks it's all easier to keep the siblings from Ino or Naruto or Sakura. After all, Sakura suffers from xenophobia and Naruto claims everything as his own eventually. Except for Ino, she's for everyone. (When they're really angry with one another, Naruto leaves the phone number for confidential health clinics under her pillow.) He doesn't know Lee much at all, but he hates the cripple all of a sudden for revealing the siblings to his housemate. Shikamaru can still hear the practicing band in his mind and still see her jawline as she listens, and he figures her brother must be the one singing. He wonders if he looks like her or Kankurou and, Shikamaru wonders if this brother will smash a bottle in his face or tell him her name. He thinks it could be Lee's fault he never has those thoughts to himself again.
"Lee said he was sure it was you." Out of his three friends, Ino's just jealous all the time. When she isn't jealous, he thinks, she's fucking random guys, or she's being afraid Shikamaru will step out onto the main road and either get run over or hitch a ride away from her. He doesn't see why she cares so much where he goes and what happens to him since every night she shouts at him until he leaves her alone. Naruto suggests they get married.
Regardless, she's jealous enough not to press the issue, and Shikamaru almost marries her for changing the subject. "Sakura has a boyfriend. So go get Naruto off the roof before he kills himself, will you?"
genre: naruto. specifically, the AU beached_in.
notes: Based off of this drabble i wrote for theothethumper. :// i can't keep sunagakure from anything I write. A work of fiction, plz don't go ape on me for it.
-
For some reason, he tells Shikamaru his name. Kankurou. Shikamaru thinks it's a ridiculously complicated name, or it just seems so when they're trying to lug a girl heavy with drowning back onto the beach. Shikamaru wishes he'd never left home or that he didn't recognize the girl who went under so suddenly, or that the asshole on the risk would hurry up and call for help. The town is so quiet at night that he can hear water lapping on a dock half a mile down.
"Is she breathing?" Kankurou pulls his hood back and his sister shivers under their fingers before they drop her to dry land. She's alive, but Shikamaru doesn't know enough about her to determine whether that's good or not. After all, this chick still reminds him of Ino, and fighting with Ino is the only reason he walked onto this miserable patch of sand. He walked miles the other way once, too soon after they started life without Chouji, and Ino had one of her boyfriends drive along the beach until she found Shikamaru. She threw her arms around his shoulders and half cried, half screamed how he would never leave her like that again. They were a team and they both missed Chouji, but running away doesn't change what's happened.
"I was just walking." He had tried to explain to Ino. He felt like his collarbones would always be soaked with her crying and he wanted to add, "I won't run away from this." But he wasn't sure if that was true. Shikamaru doesn't want anyone to drown, but he's never learned how to save someone.
"I think so," Shikamaru gulps at that fear and tilts the girl's head back. She sputters up sea water and her eyelashes have salt on them when they open. Looking more dead than alive, she takes a moment before she recognizes him. He thinks she recognizes him, maybe, or she's still delirious from a lack of oxygen to the brain. Kankurou says her name in desperation then, but Shikamaru doesn't hear it for some reason or another. She looks like part of the sand when she's set back against it, hair splayed over the grains until the distinction between them is lost. There's salt that shimmers under the lights that pour over them from the boardwalk and her hands are splayed palms upwards, little wrists white and harmless under her tan lines.
"Let go of me, you perverts," she grumbles and tears her soaked form from them. Backing away, Shikamaru remembers her roughness and voice even more than her face and thinks it might be better if she's forgotten him. She struggles with her clothing as she stands, sand holding fast to the wetness of her skin. "What the hell happened?" She barely lets Kankurou explain.
"You fell-"
"Idiot! Somebody pulled me." She turns an accusatory look to Shikamaru but it's wasted, as if she already knows he rescued her.
"Technically. It's called a rip-tide." Shikamaru presses his salt cool hands to the back of his neck, adding to the nighttime chill of the tides. "Haven't you ever been in the ocean before?" She's evasive about the question and her brother answers for her, in an awkwardly lost tone as if he was the one who nearly drowned.
"No," Kankurou mumbles and nervously draws his hood back over his head. "Let's get something to eat." He beckons his sister after him as he starts back down the beach, but he doesn't seem to mind when she doesn't follow right away. She looks like she's waiting for him. Shikamaru turns his face up along the risk and he can see that the cripple that was watching them has left. He squints sleepily against the glow of the boardwalk lights and eventually follows, realizing she must recognize him somehow.
"Did you find who you were looking for?" Shikamaru twists the straw in his fingers, marveling at how out of place these siblings were. No local would buy a meal from a vendor at the posted price as these two did. She couldn't be more pedestrian if she walked down the street. It was her money, after all, so he didn't care if she was the one who was ripped off. He already saved her life, he thinks anymore would be overkill.
She sneers at the question, as if he needed another reminder that he was just a child around her. Her brother has lost sight of them completely, more engaged in his meal than anything else.
"Did you?" She counters viciously. Shikamaru shakes his head without thinking about who it could be that he's trying to find. He thinks when he first met the woman, it was probably Ino's new boyfriend, but he can't figure it out for sure. Sometimes it feels like he's still looking for Chouji- but that's stupid. Shikamaru knows where his friend's gone and he can walk the whole length of the continent's beaches and it wouldn't make any difference. He wishes he could have the driven goal a tourist as she has, or at least to have a point where remaining in the town is no longer necessary.
"I don't know," he confesses and his words are half lost under a shout from within the club they're standing by. The band's practice is lagging on into the deep of night. Shikamaru doesn't know how many questions he can ask her, but he knows she'll leave someday. It's a matter of when and he keeps trying to resign himself to push that when into the now. This girl and her brother and her search make him into something he's not- impatient.
"Who are you looking for?" Kankurou hears Shikamaru and stops midbite, waiting for his sister to give the response.
"My fiancee."
"Liar," Shikamaru grins. Her brother's face gives the girl away.
"What did you call me?" Insults are probably a faster way of getting rid of a person, he thinks. He thinks too much, but he's used to the shouting. Her voice sounds worse when she yells and he wonders if she was kicked in the throat to get it that bad. "I'm not a liar," she snarls and catches him by the front of his shirt. She's tall enough that she can look him in the eyes and then some, and Ino never had any brothers so her punches weren't nearly so clean. Jaw aching, Shikamaru settles back on his heels but doesn't relinquish his question.
"My brother," the girl adds grudgingly.
"You?" Kankurou's scathing look is enough to tell Shikamaru there's another sibling to this mess. He prods at a couple teeth with his tongue, nervously checking their location. He doesn't want to admit that he liked the way the blow sounded against the muddy music in the background. It's weird to like the sound of a punch to your own face, or a girl with a guttural growl, or how bitter she looks when you remind her how you ran into each other again.
She hesitates on her next words, because it's obvious they mean something to her before they even happen. Shikamaru tries to devote his attention to her and the straw all at once, because while she's loud, she's not much for an audience. He likes that.
"You saved my life."
"Kankurou helped."
"Kankurou helped," she nods and acknowledges Shikamaru's modesty as quickly as he offered it. Neither of them are very comfortable with formal thank you's, though Kankurou looks rather proud of himself. Shikamaru tosses the straw in a foul smelling bin outside the club and she lingers there, leaning against the wall and listening with her chin tilted up as if it improves the noise. The way she stands reminds him of how his fingers were on her jaw when she was drowned. Shikamaru doesn't think she hears music and shoves his fingers in his pockets while the song breaks off mid key change. They're not a bad band, but they're not very good either.
"We can go inside," Shikamaru offers and, for once, wishes he could feel enthusiastic about anything at all. He's a little relieved when she shakes her head.
"Last time we tried that he smashed a fucking bottle." Kankurou explains, finishing his burger. She shrugs and pulls away from the wall. The white wood leaves little lines alone her bareback in the shapes of splinters, and Shikamaru wishes he could trace the marked skin with his fingertips. He feels like the color will rub off onto his hands, onto the doorknobs, onto Ino, and he'll be found out.
She gestures for Shikamaru not to follow them this time around, and he runs his fingers along the wall to feel the vibrations from the practice inside.
"Welcome back." Ino's chipping ice into glasses when Shikamaru returns. He stands in the entryway to the kitchen, watching the block of ice melt and warp their countertops and floor. Shikamaru looks around for their other housemate that's more prone to these menial chores.
"This must be an occasion."
"Fuck you, we need ice." And a mop. She hits the ice too hard and surges forward, little fingers sliding against the cold surface and fumbling for purchase. She grimaces and continues, shifting the cheap plastic cup in her hands. "Sakura says Lee saw you save some drowning girl." What really makes Ino's commentary worth it is all the vaugities.
"Sakura's here?" He decides to avoid the main topic, going to the hastily defrosting ice and dabbing his fingers in the puddles. It's still cold but not for very long with the night's humidity. Ino nods, gesturing to the back door. "Who's Lee?" She brings the ice pick down so hard that tiny bits of freezing shrapnel arch up and hit them in the face. Shikamaru tries to laugh, but the ceiling is too low and there's a funny thumping sound from above them that catches their attention. A few bits like snowflakes rain from the ceiling, but it doesn't seem to be an occasion to Ino.
"Naruto's friend with the crutch." Oh, that bastard on the risk. She wipes the ceiling particles and the water off her brow and straightens. Shikamaru can feel the remaining essence of chills radiate from the block and it makes Ino's veins stand out on her hands. He remembers how the veins stand out in her forehead when they have shouting matches.
"I didn't." He thinks it's all easier to keep the siblings from Ino or Naruto or Sakura. After all, Sakura suffers from xenophobia and Naruto claims everything as his own eventually. Except for Ino, she's for everyone. (When they're really angry with one another, Naruto leaves the phone number for confidential health clinics under her pillow.) He doesn't know Lee much at all, but he hates the cripple all of a sudden for revealing the siblings to his housemate. Shikamaru can still hear the practicing band in his mind and still see her jawline as she listens, and he figures her brother must be the one singing. He wonders if he looks like her or Kankurou and, Shikamaru wonders if this brother will smash a bottle in his face or tell him her name. He thinks it could be Lee's fault he never has those thoughts to himself again.
"Lee said he was sure it was you." Out of his three friends, Ino's just jealous all the time. When she isn't jealous, he thinks, she's fucking random guys, or she's being afraid Shikamaru will step out onto the main road and either get run over or hitch a ride away from her. He doesn't see why she cares so much where he goes and what happens to him since every night she shouts at him until he leaves her alone. Naruto suggests they get married.
Regardless, she's jealous enough not to press the issue, and Shikamaru almost marries her for changing the subject. "Sakura has a boyfriend. So go get Naruto off the roof before he kills himself, will you?"