[AIM Log] [Endless Dream] [Shikamaru + Tayuya] [Closed]
OoC: This takes place back on the evening of the 14th because there's only so long I can go without sleep there wasn't enough time to finish it then. Rated at a (light) NC-17 for sexual content, my attempts at fluff and just because Tayuya actually opens her mouth.
--
Tayuya blamed the sex.
Not for life in general (though irrationality came close to invoking just this) but for the way he actually seemed to be inciting a need for contact within her. Sated and sleepy, she had agreed to stay the night, but a shower to rid her skin of sweat and its ilk had been enough to send prickles of discontent through the pleasantly hazy mist clouding her mind.
Blaming the sex was a lot easier than admitting that, aside from encounters down in the basement or up on the roof (or even ones involving coffee and jeans), a niggling part of her mind suggested that, just maybe, he was worth making an effort for.
Since that kind of thought was taboo, Tayuya went back to blaming the sex for her lapse in judgement, even as she crossed the gap between her apartment and his gingerly. Hair damp and waving from the shower, the same grimy clothes thrown on over contrastingly clean skin, she was well aware that she didn’t pose a devastatingly attractive sight and somehow took satisfaction in that. Yes, she may have been entering his own sanctum, but she wasn’t going to bother looking good for him.
And so her pride was mollified - rebellion against actually carrying this through had been in the making, but placated by the idea that it was all his fault.
Him and the sex. It was all good.
--
Getting back into his apartment had been a stealthy endeavor. If anyone was asleep, he'd rather they stay that way and therefore skive off any questions regarding what he hoped wasn't writ clearly across his visage like a glow or guilty brand. Luckily, he was met with naught but an invalid Hana lost in deep, malaise-induced slumber on the couch with a pack of huskies far too empathetic to stir at his familiar presence.
After a mercifully cold shower that did nothing to ease his tensely knit muscles, he was re-clad in now fresh flannel pants and a well-worn, flimsy t-shirt that read; 'I'm out of bed and dressed, what more do you want?' They were…sleeping, after all, and he wasn't going to pad to the door in less lest Hana awake.
His irrational nerves swam in a strange sated state, like fizz escaping time to time from warm, flat soda. Haunting the door, he hesitated a moment after hearing the reluctant, giveaway plod through the paper thin walls to open the door. One hand balanced against the doorjamb, the other running through his hair for mere excuse to busy it, he gave her his put-out welcome scowl and stepped aside.
Voice lowered to a husk he was unfamiliar with having, he jerked his head towards the couch. "Kiba's sister, she's asleep." Then he padded off with the surreal silence of a stag in the thick of the woods towards his open room.
--
What was with the guy and his assumption that she would always follow where he led?
The thought directly translated as a potent, if futile glare aimed at his back before dark eyes slid gingerly over to the sleeping woman. Easy enough in her place to avoid the two wackos she lived with, but his apartment always seemed to be bustling. And had dogs.
While Tayuya was intrinsically tempted to dawdle, just to spite the suggestion she even wanted to follow him, the spur of actually being seen by anyone was the one to prick her onwards, sending her padding-on-nails after him.
This was new territory they were heading into now, even for her. Spending the night? Crashing in a partner’s bed, leaving in the muggy light of dawn with a hangover or just lack of interest in a body that had served its purpose - that she could deal with. Spending the night with a guy who, while enthusiastic enough in a physical sense, often bypassed her mouth to bestow kisses on her forehead instead was just…unheard of. Incomprehensible, but still she followed in his footsteps (hating every moment of it just in principle.)
The glower at his back increased as her confusion did. And so far, she hadn’t even said anything yet.
Probably because she didn’t trust herself. Or swears just didn’t seem to work on him.
Asshat.
--
Once safely within his meager haven, he frowned back at her less than expedient crossing. Then he gingerly fenced her in, not unaware of the severe difference between a mustang and a doe. He'd not corner her without wary. He was merely thankful for the fact that the residents of number nine knew well not to screw with territorial lines and enter without permission-nor at all, thus leaving locks obsolete.
In severe contrast to her mulishness, he was blessed with the ability to merely fall into comfort as though a girl in his room, a girl he had coital interest in, was no big deal. His bed, surprisingly nearly neat, was lined with sage blankets he easily fell into, feet firmly set on the floor. A heavy brown throw was folded beneath his soles; something he brought that had no use in the stifling heat of night.
Elbows fluidly ran against his parted knees, his automatic slouch easily taken up. Dark furrow alighting on her edgy form, he broke the heavy air by simply extending an arm to snake calloused fingers within the belt loop at her corresponding hip, drawing her in and setting his free palm on her other. A beat drifted by before his lips pressed to dark cotton covering the subtle swell of her stomach, hands more comfortably enveloping their favorite purchase.
It probably came off as cocky that he simply drew her in as he pleased, wordlessly. Maybe it was. Yet he took no notice of that when sliding into something that came so naturally when her sharp curves so seamlessly melded to his unyielding form.
--
More curious about her surroundings than she was letting on, Tayuya’s gaze swept about slowly from beneath half lowered lids, pupils unidentifiable against the relative darkness of shadowed irises. Muted earth hues met her gaze, a subtle display of tones to shadow her own riotous choices in mismatched disarray. His was the forest to her own painter’s palette and the base sense of a soothing underlying melody to the erratic complexity of an unstable counter-harmony in deliberate discordance rubbed her fur up in both the right and wrong way.
More perplexity. Wonderful.
Her undercover investigation of his sanctum was interrupted by the sudden snagging of the cloth at her hips, an insistent reel drawing her into the V-shape his knees made and her curse of protest held no real chastisement at all. The general lightning storm of their contact was dulled tonight, the desperate edge she had come to regard as usual between them smoothed and sanded away by their previous encounter. When tension levels weren’t set at overflow, the embers in the pit of her belly only served to warm her into gentle languor, a sigh escaping her lips as not-so-alien ones brushed against the curve of her belly - not a flat one, taut and trim, but one that spoke on an early chubbiness and a genetically womanly figure, as if to counteract her boyish hips and unremarkable breasts.
Lashes obscuring near to all of her eyes, Tayuya shifted, dislodging both lips and hands as, with careful slowness, she let herself sink to her knees onto the padding of his unused blanket. It must have been the lingering haze, but there was comfort in the feel of being nestled between wiry legs, the touch and brush where they connected anchoring her as she dipped her head, a warm exhale rippling over his shoulder before a hand found his collarbone and her lips found the spot under his ear where jaw and throat had their seam.
Languor was rare, but this sleepy sort of awkward affection made her head spin down into a chorus of muted strings and bass lines. Funny how everything came back to music, somehow.
--
An unexpected snag caught him unawares as her dusky lips contacted a weak spot he was unaware of possessing. A shuddering breath escaped the automatic constriction of his diaphragm as his thumbs dug into the hollows of her hips and fingers to her waist. One eye remained partially half-lidded, gazing at her surprising molasses-like acceptance with something not too far from awe.
Yet at the barest adjusting of her lips his sight surrendered to the heady warmth that spread through his previously cooling, evaporating body as his tongue moistened the corners of his mouth, dry-swallowing and venturing a hand further to swipe the backs of knuckles down the small of her spine. This was a pace that suited him. He could match a fever easily when the demands were wrought on his body, yet he always worked better with languid prepense.
Relaxing the shoulder that had involuntarily curled up at her advance, he lazed a hand upwards to brush at her nape with his finger pads, wading within the poison-bright kelp of her hair. He had a strange fascination with it, like the vivid splash of wildflowers haphazardly breaking the dull wheat of a field. It wasn't exactly as silken as it looked, more thick and strong and closer to heavy velvet.
At this rate, though, he was well aware that they were unlikely to get in bed and he was at risk of her deciding to pull him down to the floor with her. On that note, he spread his toes into the plush throw and pushed until the backs of his knees met with the angle of his bed. Hands weaving beneath her underarms, he lifted and pulled her back until her knees naturally splayed out over his covers, thighs meeting.
Well, that might have been more a self-boxing move against his plan of eventual sleep than he'd foreseen. Nevertheless, he sunk to his elbows, happy for their soft recess in comparison to their earlier nest.
--
So much for the intended ending of sleep (though maybe it would still occur.)
The damp drag of her hair against shoulders chilled from their foray into the shower made her twitch in vague discomfort, the heavy masses displeasing somehow when they weighed her head down and cooled her skin through convection. Such sensations were banished, however, water droplets forgotten as she closed her eyes in weary passion, eyelashes brushing the fine skin of his neck unintentionally.
Their slow gravitation forwards (backwards for him - opposites always theming their encounters) didn’t unbalance her so much as she found her centre in the support beneath her hips. Freefall instead of a plummet. A hand rested on his shoulder, one thumb sitting atop of the hollow where his lifeblood beat near to the surface. Even at rest, like this, his internal rhythm was slower than hers, a single beat only occurring once in every six if one compared their inner metronomes. Eyes closed like this, she mapped Shikamaru out - not so much as in skin and hair and warmth, but as in the rhythm running through his veins and tunes sung in motion…
…and she was lapsing towards the dreaded poetic, so she was going to stop now. Charcoaled depths, painted in darkened ores and beset by sooty lashes, were revealed, if only at half mast, and Tayuya took the opportunity to press a splayed hand against his chest. The steady pressure she exerted had nothing of her usual fire in it - instead, it held a peculiar demurity, a sense of shyness that was masked behind blank eyes and a smileless face. She may have been the one pushing him down, but there was nothing dominating in the action.
If he were confused by it, then that would just make them even in mentality.
She couldn’t even begin to explain this innate sense of knowing that, when push came to shove, he would win, regardless of her mouth or the strength in her punch. This ran deeper, touching the core of her psyche and it existed beyond the realms of her active comprehension. Tired of not knowing, not understanding, Tayuya did what she always did when faced with the unknown - ignored it. One knee resting on the bed for balance, vermillion strands hung down to curtain her actions, a blind drawn around the two of them as, with awkward intensity (but still looking him in the eye from shadowed optics because there was question lurking in their depths) she brought her slight weight to bear on him. Chest to chest, hip to hip, face to face. Any discrepancies in their height showed beneath the knee in their mismatched limbs, but the alignment was perfect otherwise and her consciousness sank down to where the bones of their hips rubbed in sharp discord at each other and how the pressure of compression on her chest was only a slight discomfort when she was faced with the obvious intimacy of the moment, even if she herself had initiated it.
The aversion of her eyes was slow before she attempted to cover the falter through the kiss she dropped on his mouth, slow and almost melancholy - a direct throwback to the lack of comprehension plaguing her.
--
And just how the fiery siren had beached herself like an ephemeral mermaid over his body, malleable and willing, he would never quite grasp. Maybe it had something to do with their union, or the first battle in their war being settled. Maybe she was luring him into a false sense of security.
Somehow, he didn't mind all that much. If she ended up somehow tricking him into defeat, he'd get her back in the next round. It wouldn't be such a bad hill to die on.
That in mind-damn thing, always running, he ascended a knee slightly between hers and lazily gave into the kiss. When his subtly strong pride won out over his desire to just lie easily he rolled over, tipping her jagged hips off his own to the inner side of the bed. Inner, pushed up against the wall as he had done only recently. His mind was always moves ahead of even his own conscious knowledge.
Yet he still managed to regain captivity of her mouth. Freed hand splaying over her cheek and neck as his other elbow dragged his feet fully onto the bed; he shunted down the covers only to draw just the sheet up over their hips. Somehow, he didn't see them staying there.
More out of desire to feel her body uncensored against his own than sexual advance, his hand fluttered down to hook beneath her shirt strap and ease it over the hard sculpt of her shoulder. Body adjusted at an angle looming over her, both sets of digits swept down to her stomach, prizing up the familiar pair of layers until he was forced to relinquish control of her mouth with a low gulp of air. That obstacle discarded, tongue argued past teeth to drag against her palate while his fingers worked sightlessly to get her denim out of his bed.
--
Following the flow of the path that he was laying down for them, Tayuya went with the movement. The silence weighed heavily on her, breath lighter and less forced than before, but the lack of sound made the encounter eerie albeit softer. Featherdown on snow. The quiet in the void. The drifting netherworld that juxtaposed sleep and the waking world.
It was strange how distant she felt.
The simple act of closing her eyes shut him out as much as it suggested at intimate trust and it was debatable which it was. Conscious thought was fading though in favour of a world where communication was written in skin on skin and the heat between two bodies.
This she could understand if she let herself drift.
Reservation made her movements slow, her own brand of unconscious introspection warming slightly even as her body reacted favourably. Harsh lines were no softer, but they did angle towards him. Pliancy didn’t come naturally, but the slight give was enough of a slant, perhaps. She’d get there someday.
For now, instinct was everything and, once again, she beat back the deeply-set instinct to shy away from baring anything. Why couldn’t he just fuck her with her shirt on? Misinterpreting his actions completely (for how could she understand a language from the other side of a mental world?) she arched into his touch with a deliberate provocativeness. This, she could do. If clothes were going, this path only had one end and she might as well assert herself a little - this melancholy languishing bemused her when it stemmed from herself and she disliked the feeling even more when it was self-instilled.
Slim fingers slid down at a difficult, but manageable angle between them to mirror his own actions, dextrous digits finding the waist of his garment and tugging at it pointedly (in a shameful reminder of her height, arm length was no where near sufficient to remove them on her own at this angle) even as she grazed her teeth against his tongue in a lazy challenge that was more for show than anything else.
They’d always performed a strange dance - at least this physical side could possibly hint at normal if you ignored her twisted logic and irrational mentality behind the seeming compliance.
--
Juxtaposed to her addiction to noise and melody, he was right at home with the silence of a snow-blanketed thick of forest, which his room and muteness seemed to mirror in these strange hours of darkness despite the thin walls. It heightened the other senses, the smaller sounds her body conveyed and the rustle of clothing and blankets. Clothing that was being peeled away in a torrent that he had somehow unleashed. He still had his goddamn shirt on and wasn't wearing boxers under there.
Taking advantage of her sphere of reach, he finished his own task on her first before acquiescing by tugging off his shirt, and really, did she have to curve into him so kittenishly like that? Like a slow licking fire this once innocent invitation was engulfing in its slow intensity, embers cracking into fresh spits.
Now his last barrier was draped haphazardly halfway down his hips. Giving into her endeavor would likely lead to an unplanned encore, that and he just wasn't too keen on it. Half naked was a natural state of being for him, not much further. Therefore he chose to ignore her attempt and instead hands found her shoulders, turning her onto her side facing from him and pulling her back flush against his chest.
His cheek came to rest against the warming mane of slick crimson, lips and tongue heatedly prowling her nape as fingers skated over her bosom. Middle and ring digit cupped curiously beneath the barest hint of fold beneath the breast not tucked against the mattress, palm fully swathing over the humble handful. His other arm was proving quite useless and so he left his bicep to cradle her cheek, knuckles retired against the pillow with his fingers curled naturally.
Before protest could be made, his hand, thumb circling her darkened nipple lazily, resumed its slow yet steady descent as palm smoothed down her ribs and stomach, pressing her more firmly against him and eliminating as many of the tiny gaps between them as he could. Finger pads quite easily draped beneath the swell of her stomach until pinky and index naturally slid along a smooth decrescendo, middle and ring brushing over neat, dark tufts.
Another shuddery breath welled up from chest to the back of his throat, escaping into her neck in a deep, indiscernible whisper.
--
Tayuya had long since decided that this was inherently unfair.
His loss of a shirt was greeted with approval, an asexual part of her simply gravitating towards another source of warmth, but his refusal to meet her own state of dress rankled her somewhat. The denial of, what she saw to be anyway, equality in attire unsettled her vague sense of balance, tipping the scales in his favour.
She would have directed a dissatisfied glare in his direction were it not for her gaze suddenly facing away from him in yet another surprising motion (he kept doing that to her…)
Worse yet was his admittedly gentle exploration of her. Perhaps because of the questioning fingers themselves, perhaps because the soft touch rattled her to the core too much for her to allow it freely, her spine hunched, body flexing forwards in an attempt to curl up around some pivotal point and guard sensitive areas. The touch on both breast and pelvic girdle rang chiming chords of embarrassment at her core, thought processes running along the lines of confusion at just why anyone would want to deliberately touch anyone else in such a private way.
Womanly shame - she certainly wasn’t the first, but it felt like it, the unintentional, but gut-wrenching feeling that would have been shame if she’d been more coherent. Society had had its wicked way with children, acting in some Victorian sense to convince them of the dirty aspects of sex and its utilitarian organs.
Inbuilt shame - even she wasn’t immune.
Despite the wicked shivers it sent up her spine, she curled that much further, only releasing her vertebrae from their coiled pose once a hand had caught his wandering one, wordlessly bringing it back up to her hip. Thank God he couldn’t see her face because her hot flush would only have added to her discomfort, and in this time, it was uncertain as to whether she’d be able to curb her inbuilt reaction and manage not to hurt him.
More likely than not, the guilty pleasure that came from the action had been what had spooked her most.
--
Shikamaru's brow was no stranger to being screwed and lined with furrows and any hue of annoyance, yet at her gradual fetal curl and final displacement of his hand, it knit up so deeply he actually felt the muscles work for once. His memory reeled back to her guarded shivering and familiar curling in on herself up on the rooftop.
'Don't even fucking think that I'm scared of this.'
Something was wrong and he couldn't ignore it anymore. Body working faster than his mind actively communicated, he drew up both the sheet and the comforter to her shoulder somehow almost simultaneously with turning her back to him. His entire body enveloped hers in a fiercely protective manner, one hand cupping the back of her head with his chin atop while the other splayed between her shoulder blades.
Useless words were just that, and none came, his mind swimming with questions that he pushed down despite himself. 'It's not like I haven't been there before and I'm not some fucked up chick you have to keep calm, or anything.'
Evidence that was usually so easy for him to weave together was laid out before him like an immense puzzle with too many pieces missing, some chipped. Chestnut bay focus blurred listlessly at the wall beyond a few stray strands of vermillion as if the answer might bleed forth if he concentrated hard enough.
His chest slowly expanded to the brim, deflating breathily as he allowed their visions of one another stay barred when he gave up. His voice wasn't his own, croaking out awkwardly and he immediately felt the burn on the rises of his ears.
"What am I doing wrong?"
Stupid, stupid. When did worry transcribe into insecurity? That wasn't what he meant. Yet groping at the recesses of his vocabulary, he could find nothing with which to amend.
--
Good question. Next question, please.
In answer, Tayuya closed her eyes tight enough that white light bled behind the lids from the pressure as, first, she stiffened at the protective embrace then fervently sank into the alien, but uniquely safe feeling of just being held by strong arms, even if her own were uselessly crushed between them.
How to explain…
It was all too easy to bury her face in his throat and let the maelstrom of half-formed gossamer threads of thought burn through her consciousness like molten strands of methril. What was he doing wrong?
He’s too soft…
He’s too slow…
He doesn’t get angry…
Her lame-assed reasoning sent her careening down a bleak helter-skelter in some twisted fairground, leading her to the suggestion that…maybe, it wasn’t him at all and she was the one at fault. Mucked up. Messed up. Lost in a whirlwind of want and automatic wariness.
She hated him.
She wanted him.
She didn’t understand him, and that just about summed it up.
“Fuck knows,” came the muffled answer, strained and taut with none of its usual sharp-edged clarity. “So just shut up and…” And what? Let go of her? Hold her? None of the above? A frustrated sigh emitted from gnawed lips gusted along hot skin. “Smartass, just use some of those damn brains of yours and leave it the fuck alone.” The swear counter was rising rapidly. She shifted in his arms, legs tangling with his in a gesture that conveyed her intent to stay, even if her voice was headily laced with hostility. A grumble rose in her chest in awkward, sleepy belligerence - wordless, but still there and that one step closer to whatever the hell counted as normal with her.
--
If Shikamaru had learned to listen to a woman when argument was on edge, he'd leave it. In fact, he had learned such a lesson very early on in life and the only woman he pushed it with was his mother before he then learned that toning out and grunting before leaving with a dismissive wave worked much less tearfully. Yet there was a time in his life when he had been argumentative, when he had sought to prove himself through words and it just never worked for him.
One thing he hated about himself was that when he actually tried to put his argument into words, when he was actually driven to a corner protecting his thoughts and raising his voice, he cried. Avoidance was a tactic that was easily tucked in indifference until it became second nature to him.
The strained tones of her voice might have been what chipped at his barriers. Another slow roll of breath worked its way out of his system as he relaxed his hold on her as knobby knees intertwined with his own wiry legs, hand taking to running through her hair while he craned his neck back, tipping forehead-to-forehead with her. That intense stare of his was remarkably toned down, umber irises tinged with olive and seemingly lighter in their dilation. He was biting back on his hind molars, causing the corners of his thin mouth to wind downwards only slightly.
His words came slowly, deliberately. "You've never been…shown much affection, have you." His hand withdrew minimally to ghost his thumb across her dark lashes, pad tracing lower from tear duct along the slide above the apple of her cheek. His eyes half-lidded, mouth hot with having kept it closed meeting hers and enjoying the fullness of her lower lip before parting reluctantly.
He managed a level, balanced expression and the husky baritone pitch of his voice served to hinder any misgivings it might betray him. "Tayuya, nobody here is keeping score. You know you could kick my ass. It's all right."
Words dripping like honey with the onset of exhaustion, it was easy for something that might have otherwise sounded condescending to come across less provocative. Then, knocking himself down a peg, his first and second toe caught the hem of the opposite pants leg, tugging down as his other knee raised and somehow he managed to easily crawl out of his flannels, kicking them over the edge to crumple beneath the covers somewhere between the vertical angle of the bed and the floor.
--
…she was beginning to suspect that his smarts were exaggerated - which part of a threatening ‘leave it the fuck alone’ did he not understand?
Unluckily enough, her neck could only crane so far back and she was left pinioned in his intense gaze, spider web sticky in its efficiency for trapping her, holding her still. Too stiff and uneasy to even note the differences in his eyes (brown was brown and she left it at that) her spine stiffened in affront and indignation at what he finally said, breaking the silence.
How dare he.
His insinuations, however devastatingly correct, struck a sour note and she would have struggled, escaped there and then if his nursing of her lower lip hadn’t sapped at her energy and her anger in a manner she found irritating (and unfair) beyond belief.
Never. She would never admit that there had been anything less than satisfactory about the way she’d worked her way through her earlier years. Not a chance. Independence was precious, and to admit to a lack of said tenderness would be the same as saying that it was needed, missed. ‘Never’ summed it up pretty well.
Easily retreating behind her customary mask of blankess, Tayuya’s gaze was flat as he attempted to coax her out further. Of course she could kick his ass - Shikamaru was a scrawny excuse for a human being, but that wasn’t the point. The point was…
…that he was taking off his pants. Well, it wasn’t the original point, but the jolt of surprise at his action was enough to send a glimmer of lost bemusement through those darkened eyes. An even playing field - wasn’t that what she’d been asking for?
Faced with the battleground, however, Tayuya shifted again, indecision clear in the tilt of her head and the aversion of her eyes to a point beyond his face. Fuck affection. Fuck defensiveness. Fuck everything, but this.
In an act resounding with its lack of sexuality, Tayuya once more returned her face to its customary position at the juncture between where his shoulder met his neck, burying it there in a nest of wavily dry and overly red mane. The act of bringing all her hard angles to meet all of his equally sharp ones was one that was vaguely painful in the intensity with which she clumsily moulded herself to him. The sense of wanting to crawl inside his skin and simply hide there returned and while she would savagely deny that vague trembling in her limbs, when she was this close, it couldn’t be hidden.
“I hate you, sometimes…” was her unexpected mutter, words plucked at random from a strand of memory and chosen because of the core of truth wrapped up in it. That she hated him was true - what she defined as ‘hate’ was questionable, however.
--
The rate at which he almost, almost vaulted back at her the truth of his highly conflicting sometimes-feelings for her unsettled him deeply. It had not been on the tip of his tongue, it had practically gasped forth and had to be swallowed down again before he slipped up and bore his heart on his sleeve. No, he wasn't ready for that.
Since when did he ever not think before he spoke?
Besides, it was illogical. His feelings were illogical. Yeah, maybe Chouji and he had been automatically best friends the moment he spoke to him, but this was different. This was a girl. This was a different feeling, and he'd known her for all of maybe two months.
Forcing his emotions down like cod liver oil, he rolled his shoulders and relaxed his body further, instead focusing on how he was painfully aware of nearly every inch of her slightly lighter flesh against his own. It was comfortable. He felt no expected shame, nor was he robbed of control and catapulted into fresh-stocked desire.
This was an intimacy he never before fathomed.
His arms draped around her, slack despite the way his finger pads pressed pigments to flush along her back. Like a boy holding a firefly that was destined to die out with the coming dawn. He felt a need to both keep her here and up and walk out. What was that latter urge? Instead he closed his eyes, muscles unknotting slowly and one by one, lost in the ambience of their trance harmony.
A murmur was haphazardly thrown to the night. "Mmglad you've stayed."
--
Sleeping alone was cold, and he was warm.
Such was her justification to her pride as to just why she was still in his arms, in an embrace that compromised so much of what she’d held on a golden pedestal. Chill skin was warming rapidly and the resulting drowsiness atop of wire tight tension was an interesting enough combination to make her heave a sigh.
While this sharing bodily warmth thing was all good and well (one would never even catch her thinking the word ‘cuddling’) they weren’t exactly compatible in terms of frame and figure. He was bony and she had strange sharp edges to counteract her softer curves around stomach and hip, and the consequential collisions held too much discomfort to be allowed. Lazily, she wriggled in idle slowness until depression met jut. There was a certain careless satisfaction in making their bodies fit like some living, breathing jigsaw.
That and his hipbones were painful. Someone needed to feed him up.
…maybe she’d tolerate this closeness, just for tonight (she conveniently ignored the part of this encounter in which she’d felt the irrational urge to worm her way into his arms and never re-emerge.) The skin on her back twitched slightly under his ministrations, the tickling sensation setting up an idle protest before she subsided again, rubbing her nose lazily against the hollow at the base of his throat.
It wasn’t affection. Not at all. Just a gesture born from spontaneous action. Nothing else to it.
A crack of an eye opened, peering up in his direction from beneath twofold curtains - one black, one unholy red. “You talk too much,” she told him, the irony thick considering the lack of use the both of them had for verbal communication of any complexity. “Shut the fuck up.”
It sounded harsh, but Shikamaru was sure to have some grasp of Tayuese. He’d understand.
--
"Mm." The lazy coil of his signature smirk crept over his mouth at the light tickle evicted from what had to be her simply adjusting her head. Or at least, he'd let her think so.
Grip relaxed, her words assuring him. Not that they'd make any semblance of sense to a proverbial fly on the wall. Their bodies now loosely aligned without bone grinding in contact, he sank into the weight of dusk with her acknowledged presence. Maybe, with an ounce of hope, this might slip into habit, this languid draping of arms and legs and noses on necks.
Even her slightly fluffing, air dried hair was comfortable.
Drifting in and out of the fuzzy realm betwixt consciousness and sleep, it was some time still before he did indeed allow it to claim him. He'd trusted her long before she'd trusted him.
--
Trust was a funny thing, and strangely given.
While she’d have scoffed at the idea of him actively hurting her (or even attempting to because, hell, he was the scrawny smartass and she’d be able to pound him into the ground, no questions asked) her own restfulness evaded her. Elusive to that last, security wasn’t a common factor in her mentality and it certainly wasn’t associated with people.
A musician to the last, she could tell when he finally drifted off, the rhythms in his breath and heartbeat settling down to the pulse of an ocean. Her own sleep was little more than doze, half waking, half dreaming and unable to tell where phantom arms merged into solid ones.
He was a lucky one. If she’d fully sunk into sleep, he’d have been on the brunt of her…active subconscious. As it was, the circle of his arms prevented her from squirming too much and with her back to the wall, there was little chance of her falling out.
It was chilly dawn that finally roused her though, as well as the sinking feel of vague dread lurking in wait at the bottom of a sleepy mind. Sun meant morning. Morning meant waking. Waking meant that, fuck, it was her birthday.
That settled it. It took some dedicated manoeuvring, but she did manage to free herself from his grip in the end, hopefully without waking him and it was the work of but a moment to dress.
Talking wasn’t something she wanted to handle at present, not in this mood. The slight colouring of her collarbone before she pulled her shirt on was enough to hint at her feelings towards their…discussion the night before (or was it morning by then?)
Escaping seemed by far the better option. There was a moment though where her eyes lingered on him as she slept, idle fingers doing up her jeans, but no visible goodbye was given, either verbally or kinetically.
Slipping out of a house with four residents and a pack of fluffballs was easier than she had thought it would be.
--
Tayuya blamed the sex.
Not for life in general (though irrationality came close to invoking just this) but for the way he actually seemed to be inciting a need for contact within her. Sated and sleepy, she had agreed to stay the night, but a shower to rid her skin of sweat and its ilk had been enough to send prickles of discontent through the pleasantly hazy mist clouding her mind.
Blaming the sex was a lot easier than admitting that, aside from encounters down in the basement or up on the roof (or even ones involving coffee and jeans), a niggling part of her mind suggested that, just maybe, he was worth making an effort for.
Since that kind of thought was taboo, Tayuya went back to blaming the sex for her lapse in judgement, even as she crossed the gap between her apartment and his gingerly. Hair damp and waving from the shower, the same grimy clothes thrown on over contrastingly clean skin, she was well aware that she didn’t pose a devastatingly attractive sight and somehow took satisfaction in that. Yes, she may have been entering his own sanctum, but she wasn’t going to bother looking good for him.
And so her pride was mollified - rebellion against actually carrying this through had been in the making, but placated by the idea that it was all his fault.
Him and the sex. It was all good.
--
Getting back into his apartment had been a stealthy endeavor. If anyone was asleep, he'd rather they stay that way and therefore skive off any questions regarding what he hoped wasn't writ clearly across his visage like a glow or guilty brand. Luckily, he was met with naught but an invalid Hana lost in deep, malaise-induced slumber on the couch with a pack of huskies far too empathetic to stir at his familiar presence.
After a mercifully cold shower that did nothing to ease his tensely knit muscles, he was re-clad in now fresh flannel pants and a well-worn, flimsy t-shirt that read; 'I'm out of bed and dressed, what more do you want?' They were…sleeping, after all, and he wasn't going to pad to the door in less lest Hana awake.
His irrational nerves swam in a strange sated state, like fizz escaping time to time from warm, flat soda. Haunting the door, he hesitated a moment after hearing the reluctant, giveaway plod through the paper thin walls to open the door. One hand balanced against the doorjamb, the other running through his hair for mere excuse to busy it, he gave her his put-out welcome scowl and stepped aside.
Voice lowered to a husk he was unfamiliar with having, he jerked his head towards the couch. "Kiba's sister, she's asleep." Then he padded off with the surreal silence of a stag in the thick of the woods towards his open room.
--
What was with the guy and his assumption that she would always follow where he led?
The thought directly translated as a potent, if futile glare aimed at his back before dark eyes slid gingerly over to the sleeping woman. Easy enough in her place to avoid the two wackos she lived with, but his apartment always seemed to be bustling. And had dogs.
While Tayuya was intrinsically tempted to dawdle, just to spite the suggestion she even wanted to follow him, the spur of actually being seen by anyone was the one to prick her onwards, sending her padding-on-nails after him.
This was new territory they were heading into now, even for her. Spending the night? Crashing in a partner’s bed, leaving in the muggy light of dawn with a hangover or just lack of interest in a body that had served its purpose - that she could deal with. Spending the night with a guy who, while enthusiastic enough in a physical sense, often bypassed her mouth to bestow kisses on her forehead instead was just…unheard of. Incomprehensible, but still she followed in his footsteps (hating every moment of it just in principle.)
The glower at his back increased as her confusion did. And so far, she hadn’t even said anything yet.
Probably because she didn’t trust herself. Or swears just didn’t seem to work on him.
Asshat.
--
Once safely within his meager haven, he frowned back at her less than expedient crossing. Then he gingerly fenced her in, not unaware of the severe difference between a mustang and a doe. He'd not corner her without wary. He was merely thankful for the fact that the residents of number nine knew well not to screw with territorial lines and enter without permission-nor at all, thus leaving locks obsolete.
In severe contrast to her mulishness, he was blessed with the ability to merely fall into comfort as though a girl in his room, a girl he had coital interest in, was no big deal. His bed, surprisingly nearly neat, was lined with sage blankets he easily fell into, feet firmly set on the floor. A heavy brown throw was folded beneath his soles; something he brought that had no use in the stifling heat of night.
Elbows fluidly ran against his parted knees, his automatic slouch easily taken up. Dark furrow alighting on her edgy form, he broke the heavy air by simply extending an arm to snake calloused fingers within the belt loop at her corresponding hip, drawing her in and setting his free palm on her other. A beat drifted by before his lips pressed to dark cotton covering the subtle swell of her stomach, hands more comfortably enveloping their favorite purchase.
It probably came off as cocky that he simply drew her in as he pleased, wordlessly. Maybe it was. Yet he took no notice of that when sliding into something that came so naturally when her sharp curves so seamlessly melded to his unyielding form.
--
More curious about her surroundings than she was letting on, Tayuya’s gaze swept about slowly from beneath half lowered lids, pupils unidentifiable against the relative darkness of shadowed irises. Muted earth hues met her gaze, a subtle display of tones to shadow her own riotous choices in mismatched disarray. His was the forest to her own painter’s palette and the base sense of a soothing underlying melody to the erratic complexity of an unstable counter-harmony in deliberate discordance rubbed her fur up in both the right and wrong way.
More perplexity. Wonderful.
Her undercover investigation of his sanctum was interrupted by the sudden snagging of the cloth at her hips, an insistent reel drawing her into the V-shape his knees made and her curse of protest held no real chastisement at all. The general lightning storm of their contact was dulled tonight, the desperate edge she had come to regard as usual between them smoothed and sanded away by their previous encounter. When tension levels weren’t set at overflow, the embers in the pit of her belly only served to warm her into gentle languor, a sigh escaping her lips as not-so-alien ones brushed against the curve of her belly - not a flat one, taut and trim, but one that spoke on an early chubbiness and a genetically womanly figure, as if to counteract her boyish hips and unremarkable breasts.
Lashes obscuring near to all of her eyes, Tayuya shifted, dislodging both lips and hands as, with careful slowness, she let herself sink to her knees onto the padding of his unused blanket. It must have been the lingering haze, but there was comfort in the feel of being nestled between wiry legs, the touch and brush where they connected anchoring her as she dipped her head, a warm exhale rippling over his shoulder before a hand found his collarbone and her lips found the spot under his ear where jaw and throat had their seam.
Languor was rare, but this sleepy sort of awkward affection made her head spin down into a chorus of muted strings and bass lines. Funny how everything came back to music, somehow.
--
An unexpected snag caught him unawares as her dusky lips contacted a weak spot he was unaware of possessing. A shuddering breath escaped the automatic constriction of his diaphragm as his thumbs dug into the hollows of her hips and fingers to her waist. One eye remained partially half-lidded, gazing at her surprising molasses-like acceptance with something not too far from awe.
Yet at the barest adjusting of her lips his sight surrendered to the heady warmth that spread through his previously cooling, evaporating body as his tongue moistened the corners of his mouth, dry-swallowing and venturing a hand further to swipe the backs of knuckles down the small of her spine. This was a pace that suited him. He could match a fever easily when the demands were wrought on his body, yet he always worked better with languid prepense.
Relaxing the shoulder that had involuntarily curled up at her advance, he lazed a hand upwards to brush at her nape with his finger pads, wading within the poison-bright kelp of her hair. He had a strange fascination with it, like the vivid splash of wildflowers haphazardly breaking the dull wheat of a field. It wasn't exactly as silken as it looked, more thick and strong and closer to heavy velvet.
At this rate, though, he was well aware that they were unlikely to get in bed and he was at risk of her deciding to pull him down to the floor with her. On that note, he spread his toes into the plush throw and pushed until the backs of his knees met with the angle of his bed. Hands weaving beneath her underarms, he lifted and pulled her back until her knees naturally splayed out over his covers, thighs meeting.
Well, that might have been more a self-boxing move against his plan of eventual sleep than he'd foreseen. Nevertheless, he sunk to his elbows, happy for their soft recess in comparison to their earlier nest.
--
So much for the intended ending of sleep (though maybe it would still occur.)
The damp drag of her hair against shoulders chilled from their foray into the shower made her twitch in vague discomfort, the heavy masses displeasing somehow when they weighed her head down and cooled her skin through convection. Such sensations were banished, however, water droplets forgotten as she closed her eyes in weary passion, eyelashes brushing the fine skin of his neck unintentionally.
Their slow gravitation forwards (backwards for him - opposites always theming their encounters) didn’t unbalance her so much as she found her centre in the support beneath her hips. Freefall instead of a plummet. A hand rested on his shoulder, one thumb sitting atop of the hollow where his lifeblood beat near to the surface. Even at rest, like this, his internal rhythm was slower than hers, a single beat only occurring once in every six if one compared their inner metronomes. Eyes closed like this, she mapped Shikamaru out - not so much as in skin and hair and warmth, but as in the rhythm running through his veins and tunes sung in motion…
…and she was lapsing towards the dreaded poetic, so she was going to stop now. Charcoaled depths, painted in darkened ores and beset by sooty lashes, were revealed, if only at half mast, and Tayuya took the opportunity to press a splayed hand against his chest. The steady pressure she exerted had nothing of her usual fire in it - instead, it held a peculiar demurity, a sense of shyness that was masked behind blank eyes and a smileless face. She may have been the one pushing him down, but there was nothing dominating in the action.
If he were confused by it, then that would just make them even in mentality.
She couldn’t even begin to explain this innate sense of knowing that, when push came to shove, he would win, regardless of her mouth or the strength in her punch. This ran deeper, touching the core of her psyche and it existed beyond the realms of her active comprehension. Tired of not knowing, not understanding, Tayuya did what she always did when faced with the unknown - ignored it. One knee resting on the bed for balance, vermillion strands hung down to curtain her actions, a blind drawn around the two of them as, with awkward intensity (but still looking him in the eye from shadowed optics because there was question lurking in their depths) she brought her slight weight to bear on him. Chest to chest, hip to hip, face to face. Any discrepancies in their height showed beneath the knee in their mismatched limbs, but the alignment was perfect otherwise and her consciousness sank down to where the bones of their hips rubbed in sharp discord at each other and how the pressure of compression on her chest was only a slight discomfort when she was faced with the obvious intimacy of the moment, even if she herself had initiated it.
The aversion of her eyes was slow before she attempted to cover the falter through the kiss she dropped on his mouth, slow and almost melancholy - a direct throwback to the lack of comprehension plaguing her.
--
And just how the fiery siren had beached herself like an ephemeral mermaid over his body, malleable and willing, he would never quite grasp. Maybe it had something to do with their union, or the first battle in their war being settled. Maybe she was luring him into a false sense of security.
Somehow, he didn't mind all that much. If she ended up somehow tricking him into defeat, he'd get her back in the next round. It wouldn't be such a bad hill to die on.
That in mind-damn thing, always running, he ascended a knee slightly between hers and lazily gave into the kiss. When his subtly strong pride won out over his desire to just lie easily he rolled over, tipping her jagged hips off his own to the inner side of the bed. Inner, pushed up against the wall as he had done only recently. His mind was always moves ahead of even his own conscious knowledge.
Yet he still managed to regain captivity of her mouth. Freed hand splaying over her cheek and neck as his other elbow dragged his feet fully onto the bed; he shunted down the covers only to draw just the sheet up over their hips. Somehow, he didn't see them staying there.
More out of desire to feel her body uncensored against his own than sexual advance, his hand fluttered down to hook beneath her shirt strap and ease it over the hard sculpt of her shoulder. Body adjusted at an angle looming over her, both sets of digits swept down to her stomach, prizing up the familiar pair of layers until he was forced to relinquish control of her mouth with a low gulp of air. That obstacle discarded, tongue argued past teeth to drag against her palate while his fingers worked sightlessly to get her denim out of his bed.
--
Following the flow of the path that he was laying down for them, Tayuya went with the movement. The silence weighed heavily on her, breath lighter and less forced than before, but the lack of sound made the encounter eerie albeit softer. Featherdown on snow. The quiet in the void. The drifting netherworld that juxtaposed sleep and the waking world.
It was strange how distant she felt.
The simple act of closing her eyes shut him out as much as it suggested at intimate trust and it was debatable which it was. Conscious thought was fading though in favour of a world where communication was written in skin on skin and the heat between two bodies.
This she could understand if she let herself drift.
Reservation made her movements slow, her own brand of unconscious introspection warming slightly even as her body reacted favourably. Harsh lines were no softer, but they did angle towards him. Pliancy didn’t come naturally, but the slight give was enough of a slant, perhaps. She’d get there someday.
For now, instinct was everything and, once again, she beat back the deeply-set instinct to shy away from baring anything. Why couldn’t he just fuck her with her shirt on? Misinterpreting his actions completely (for how could she understand a language from the other side of a mental world?) she arched into his touch with a deliberate provocativeness. This, she could do. If clothes were going, this path only had one end and she might as well assert herself a little - this melancholy languishing bemused her when it stemmed from herself and she disliked the feeling even more when it was self-instilled.
Slim fingers slid down at a difficult, but manageable angle between them to mirror his own actions, dextrous digits finding the waist of his garment and tugging at it pointedly (in a shameful reminder of her height, arm length was no where near sufficient to remove them on her own at this angle) even as she grazed her teeth against his tongue in a lazy challenge that was more for show than anything else.
They’d always performed a strange dance - at least this physical side could possibly hint at normal if you ignored her twisted logic and irrational mentality behind the seeming compliance.
--
Juxtaposed to her addiction to noise and melody, he was right at home with the silence of a snow-blanketed thick of forest, which his room and muteness seemed to mirror in these strange hours of darkness despite the thin walls. It heightened the other senses, the smaller sounds her body conveyed and the rustle of clothing and blankets. Clothing that was being peeled away in a torrent that he had somehow unleashed. He still had his goddamn shirt on and wasn't wearing boxers under there.
Taking advantage of her sphere of reach, he finished his own task on her first before acquiescing by tugging off his shirt, and really, did she have to curve into him so kittenishly like that? Like a slow licking fire this once innocent invitation was engulfing in its slow intensity, embers cracking into fresh spits.
Now his last barrier was draped haphazardly halfway down his hips. Giving into her endeavor would likely lead to an unplanned encore, that and he just wasn't too keen on it. Half naked was a natural state of being for him, not much further. Therefore he chose to ignore her attempt and instead hands found her shoulders, turning her onto her side facing from him and pulling her back flush against his chest.
His cheek came to rest against the warming mane of slick crimson, lips and tongue heatedly prowling her nape as fingers skated over her bosom. Middle and ring digit cupped curiously beneath the barest hint of fold beneath the breast not tucked against the mattress, palm fully swathing over the humble handful. His other arm was proving quite useless and so he left his bicep to cradle her cheek, knuckles retired against the pillow with his fingers curled naturally.
Before protest could be made, his hand, thumb circling her darkened nipple lazily, resumed its slow yet steady descent as palm smoothed down her ribs and stomach, pressing her more firmly against him and eliminating as many of the tiny gaps between them as he could. Finger pads quite easily draped beneath the swell of her stomach until pinky and index naturally slid along a smooth decrescendo, middle and ring brushing over neat, dark tufts.
Another shuddery breath welled up from chest to the back of his throat, escaping into her neck in a deep, indiscernible whisper.
--
Tayuya had long since decided that this was inherently unfair.
His loss of a shirt was greeted with approval, an asexual part of her simply gravitating towards another source of warmth, but his refusal to meet her own state of dress rankled her somewhat. The denial of, what she saw to be anyway, equality in attire unsettled her vague sense of balance, tipping the scales in his favour.
She would have directed a dissatisfied glare in his direction were it not for her gaze suddenly facing away from him in yet another surprising motion (he kept doing that to her…)
Worse yet was his admittedly gentle exploration of her. Perhaps because of the questioning fingers themselves, perhaps because the soft touch rattled her to the core too much for her to allow it freely, her spine hunched, body flexing forwards in an attempt to curl up around some pivotal point and guard sensitive areas. The touch on both breast and pelvic girdle rang chiming chords of embarrassment at her core, thought processes running along the lines of confusion at just why anyone would want to deliberately touch anyone else in such a private way.
Womanly shame - she certainly wasn’t the first, but it felt like it, the unintentional, but gut-wrenching feeling that would have been shame if she’d been more coherent. Society had had its wicked way with children, acting in some Victorian sense to convince them of the dirty aspects of sex and its utilitarian organs.
Inbuilt shame - even she wasn’t immune.
Despite the wicked shivers it sent up her spine, she curled that much further, only releasing her vertebrae from their coiled pose once a hand had caught his wandering one, wordlessly bringing it back up to her hip. Thank God he couldn’t see her face because her hot flush would only have added to her discomfort, and in this time, it was uncertain as to whether she’d be able to curb her inbuilt reaction and manage not to hurt him.
More likely than not, the guilty pleasure that came from the action had been what had spooked her most.
--
Shikamaru's brow was no stranger to being screwed and lined with furrows and any hue of annoyance, yet at her gradual fetal curl and final displacement of his hand, it knit up so deeply he actually felt the muscles work for once. His memory reeled back to her guarded shivering and familiar curling in on herself up on the rooftop.
'Don't even fucking think that I'm scared of this.'
Something was wrong and he couldn't ignore it anymore. Body working faster than his mind actively communicated, he drew up both the sheet and the comforter to her shoulder somehow almost simultaneously with turning her back to him. His entire body enveloped hers in a fiercely protective manner, one hand cupping the back of her head with his chin atop while the other splayed between her shoulder blades.
Useless words were just that, and none came, his mind swimming with questions that he pushed down despite himself. 'It's not like I haven't been there before and I'm not some fucked up chick you have to keep calm, or anything.'
Evidence that was usually so easy for him to weave together was laid out before him like an immense puzzle with too many pieces missing, some chipped. Chestnut bay focus blurred listlessly at the wall beyond a few stray strands of vermillion as if the answer might bleed forth if he concentrated hard enough.
His chest slowly expanded to the brim, deflating breathily as he allowed their visions of one another stay barred when he gave up. His voice wasn't his own, croaking out awkwardly and he immediately felt the burn on the rises of his ears.
"What am I doing wrong?"
Stupid, stupid. When did worry transcribe into insecurity? That wasn't what he meant. Yet groping at the recesses of his vocabulary, he could find nothing with which to amend.
--
Good question. Next question, please.
In answer, Tayuya closed her eyes tight enough that white light bled behind the lids from the pressure as, first, she stiffened at the protective embrace then fervently sank into the alien, but uniquely safe feeling of just being held by strong arms, even if her own were uselessly crushed between them.
How to explain…
It was all too easy to bury her face in his throat and let the maelstrom of half-formed gossamer threads of thought burn through her consciousness like molten strands of methril. What was he doing wrong?
He’s too soft…
He’s too slow…
He doesn’t get angry…
Her lame-assed reasoning sent her careening down a bleak helter-skelter in some twisted fairground, leading her to the suggestion that…maybe, it wasn’t him at all and she was the one at fault. Mucked up. Messed up. Lost in a whirlwind of want and automatic wariness.
She hated him.
She wanted him.
She didn’t understand him, and that just about summed it up.
“Fuck knows,” came the muffled answer, strained and taut with none of its usual sharp-edged clarity. “So just shut up and…” And what? Let go of her? Hold her? None of the above? A frustrated sigh emitted from gnawed lips gusted along hot skin. “Smartass, just use some of those damn brains of yours and leave it the fuck alone.” The swear counter was rising rapidly. She shifted in his arms, legs tangling with his in a gesture that conveyed her intent to stay, even if her voice was headily laced with hostility. A grumble rose in her chest in awkward, sleepy belligerence - wordless, but still there and that one step closer to whatever the hell counted as normal with her.
--
If Shikamaru had learned to listen to a woman when argument was on edge, he'd leave it. In fact, he had learned such a lesson very early on in life and the only woman he pushed it with was his mother before he then learned that toning out and grunting before leaving with a dismissive wave worked much less tearfully. Yet there was a time in his life when he had been argumentative, when he had sought to prove himself through words and it just never worked for him.
One thing he hated about himself was that when he actually tried to put his argument into words, when he was actually driven to a corner protecting his thoughts and raising his voice, he cried. Avoidance was a tactic that was easily tucked in indifference until it became second nature to him.
The strained tones of her voice might have been what chipped at his barriers. Another slow roll of breath worked its way out of his system as he relaxed his hold on her as knobby knees intertwined with his own wiry legs, hand taking to running through her hair while he craned his neck back, tipping forehead-to-forehead with her. That intense stare of his was remarkably toned down, umber irises tinged with olive and seemingly lighter in their dilation. He was biting back on his hind molars, causing the corners of his thin mouth to wind downwards only slightly.
His words came slowly, deliberately. "You've never been…shown much affection, have you." His hand withdrew minimally to ghost his thumb across her dark lashes, pad tracing lower from tear duct along the slide above the apple of her cheek. His eyes half-lidded, mouth hot with having kept it closed meeting hers and enjoying the fullness of her lower lip before parting reluctantly.
He managed a level, balanced expression and the husky baritone pitch of his voice served to hinder any misgivings it might betray him. "Tayuya, nobody here is keeping score. You know you could kick my ass. It's all right."
Words dripping like honey with the onset of exhaustion, it was easy for something that might have otherwise sounded condescending to come across less provocative. Then, knocking himself down a peg, his first and second toe caught the hem of the opposite pants leg, tugging down as his other knee raised and somehow he managed to easily crawl out of his flannels, kicking them over the edge to crumple beneath the covers somewhere between the vertical angle of the bed and the floor.
--
…she was beginning to suspect that his smarts were exaggerated - which part of a threatening ‘leave it the fuck alone’ did he not understand?
Unluckily enough, her neck could only crane so far back and she was left pinioned in his intense gaze, spider web sticky in its efficiency for trapping her, holding her still. Too stiff and uneasy to even note the differences in his eyes (brown was brown and she left it at that) her spine stiffened in affront and indignation at what he finally said, breaking the silence.
How dare he.
His insinuations, however devastatingly correct, struck a sour note and she would have struggled, escaped there and then if his nursing of her lower lip hadn’t sapped at her energy and her anger in a manner she found irritating (and unfair) beyond belief.
Never. She would never admit that there had been anything less than satisfactory about the way she’d worked her way through her earlier years. Not a chance. Independence was precious, and to admit to a lack of said tenderness would be the same as saying that it was needed, missed. ‘Never’ summed it up pretty well.
Easily retreating behind her customary mask of blankess, Tayuya’s gaze was flat as he attempted to coax her out further. Of course she could kick his ass - Shikamaru was a scrawny excuse for a human being, but that wasn’t the point. The point was…
…that he was taking off his pants. Well, it wasn’t the original point, but the jolt of surprise at his action was enough to send a glimmer of lost bemusement through those darkened eyes. An even playing field - wasn’t that what she’d been asking for?
Faced with the battleground, however, Tayuya shifted again, indecision clear in the tilt of her head and the aversion of her eyes to a point beyond his face. Fuck affection. Fuck defensiveness. Fuck everything, but this.
In an act resounding with its lack of sexuality, Tayuya once more returned her face to its customary position at the juncture between where his shoulder met his neck, burying it there in a nest of wavily dry and overly red mane. The act of bringing all her hard angles to meet all of his equally sharp ones was one that was vaguely painful in the intensity with which she clumsily moulded herself to him. The sense of wanting to crawl inside his skin and simply hide there returned and while she would savagely deny that vague trembling in her limbs, when she was this close, it couldn’t be hidden.
“I hate you, sometimes…” was her unexpected mutter, words plucked at random from a strand of memory and chosen because of the core of truth wrapped up in it. That she hated him was true - what she defined as ‘hate’ was questionable, however.
--
The rate at which he almost, almost vaulted back at her the truth of his highly conflicting sometimes-feelings for her unsettled him deeply. It had not been on the tip of his tongue, it had practically gasped forth and had to be swallowed down again before he slipped up and bore his heart on his sleeve. No, he wasn't ready for that.
Since when did he ever not think before he spoke?
Besides, it was illogical. His feelings were illogical. Yeah, maybe Chouji and he had been automatically best friends the moment he spoke to him, but this was different. This was a girl. This was a different feeling, and he'd known her for all of maybe two months.
Forcing his emotions down like cod liver oil, he rolled his shoulders and relaxed his body further, instead focusing on how he was painfully aware of nearly every inch of her slightly lighter flesh against his own. It was comfortable. He felt no expected shame, nor was he robbed of control and catapulted into fresh-stocked desire.
This was an intimacy he never before fathomed.
His arms draped around her, slack despite the way his finger pads pressed pigments to flush along her back. Like a boy holding a firefly that was destined to die out with the coming dawn. He felt a need to both keep her here and up and walk out. What was that latter urge? Instead he closed his eyes, muscles unknotting slowly and one by one, lost in the ambience of their trance harmony.
A murmur was haphazardly thrown to the night. "Mmglad you've stayed."
--
Sleeping alone was cold, and he was warm.
Such was her justification to her pride as to just why she was still in his arms, in an embrace that compromised so much of what she’d held on a golden pedestal. Chill skin was warming rapidly and the resulting drowsiness atop of wire tight tension was an interesting enough combination to make her heave a sigh.
While this sharing bodily warmth thing was all good and well (one would never even catch her thinking the word ‘cuddling’) they weren’t exactly compatible in terms of frame and figure. He was bony and she had strange sharp edges to counteract her softer curves around stomach and hip, and the consequential collisions held too much discomfort to be allowed. Lazily, she wriggled in idle slowness until depression met jut. There was a certain careless satisfaction in making their bodies fit like some living, breathing jigsaw.
That and his hipbones were painful. Someone needed to feed him up.
…maybe she’d tolerate this closeness, just for tonight (she conveniently ignored the part of this encounter in which she’d felt the irrational urge to worm her way into his arms and never re-emerge.) The skin on her back twitched slightly under his ministrations, the tickling sensation setting up an idle protest before she subsided again, rubbing her nose lazily against the hollow at the base of his throat.
It wasn’t affection. Not at all. Just a gesture born from spontaneous action. Nothing else to it.
A crack of an eye opened, peering up in his direction from beneath twofold curtains - one black, one unholy red. “You talk too much,” she told him, the irony thick considering the lack of use the both of them had for verbal communication of any complexity. “Shut the fuck up.”
It sounded harsh, but Shikamaru was sure to have some grasp of Tayuese. He’d understand.
--
"Mm." The lazy coil of his signature smirk crept over his mouth at the light tickle evicted from what had to be her simply adjusting her head. Or at least, he'd let her think so.
Grip relaxed, her words assuring him. Not that they'd make any semblance of sense to a proverbial fly on the wall. Their bodies now loosely aligned without bone grinding in contact, he sank into the weight of dusk with her acknowledged presence. Maybe, with an ounce of hope, this might slip into habit, this languid draping of arms and legs and noses on necks.
Even her slightly fluffing, air dried hair was comfortable.
Drifting in and out of the fuzzy realm betwixt consciousness and sleep, it was some time still before he did indeed allow it to claim him. He'd trusted her long before she'd trusted him.
--
Trust was a funny thing, and strangely given.
While she’d have scoffed at the idea of him actively hurting her (or even attempting to because, hell, he was the scrawny smartass and she’d be able to pound him into the ground, no questions asked) her own restfulness evaded her. Elusive to that last, security wasn’t a common factor in her mentality and it certainly wasn’t associated with people.
A musician to the last, she could tell when he finally drifted off, the rhythms in his breath and heartbeat settling down to the pulse of an ocean. Her own sleep was little more than doze, half waking, half dreaming and unable to tell where phantom arms merged into solid ones.
He was a lucky one. If she’d fully sunk into sleep, he’d have been on the brunt of her…active subconscious. As it was, the circle of his arms prevented her from squirming too much and with her back to the wall, there was little chance of her falling out.
It was chilly dawn that finally roused her though, as well as the sinking feel of vague dread lurking in wait at the bottom of a sleepy mind. Sun meant morning. Morning meant waking. Waking meant that, fuck, it was her birthday.
That settled it. It took some dedicated manoeuvring, but she did manage to free herself from his grip in the end, hopefully without waking him and it was the work of but a moment to dress.
Talking wasn’t something she wanted to handle at present, not in this mood. The slight colouring of her collarbone before she pulled her shirt on was enough to hint at her feelings towards their…discussion the night before (or was it morning by then?)
Escaping seemed by far the better option. There was a moment though where her eyes lingered on him as she slept, idle fingers doing up her jeans, but no visible goodbye was given, either verbally or kinetically.
Slipping out of a house with four residents and a pack of fluffballs was easier than she had thought it would be.