[AIM Log] [Ends meet] [Kankurou + Temari] [Unfinished but closed]
Restless discontent hung about Kankurou’s room with the weight of the smoke that clouded the atmosphere. Tired and working against his body, mind skipping like a CD that wouldn’t accept the scratch-remover. Fathomless eyes sans makeup rolled to the clock as he wrapped up his Methodology final paper, nearly midnight. Not too bad. Working out a crick in his neck, niggles in his knuckles with consecutive cracks, he shifted to his feet with that odd marionette grace he mastered.
A simple long sleeve shirt slit partially down the front thrown on to match his black regimens, dark flannels easily allowing the weakest breeze in stride, he lumbered into the kitchen. No sleep would come for him anytime soon. Resigned to the fact, he rummaged through the cabinets for nothing in particular. Food maybe, perhaps drink.
In fact, the latter sounded attractive--hardly surprising. Perking, he simultaneously jiggled the handle of the fridge while toeing the bottom of the door to work it out of a long-accepted stuck spot.
Temari never limped. It didn't matter how tired she was, or how long she had been wearing shoes that had long been reassigned the label of torture devices, her steps were never anything less than perfectly controlled.
When it was the middle of the night on a school night though, she succumbed to a slow, more careful stride. There was no one to see it, and if no one could see it, then it didn't exist. And she could rationalize that her steps were aimed more to be quiet so as not to disturb her neighbors. She conveniently ignored the fact that she really didn't give a flying fuck about her neighbors' late night auditory comfort when it suited her.
Her sharp heels were suspiciously silent as she moved slowly down the second floor hallway to her apartment door. Her keys rested against her palm, fingers too weary to flip and jingle the metal as she might normally. She jimmied the lock in the way repetition had taught her would work and the bold slid, a sound too loud for the cottony feeling of a headache to tolerate. She clenched her teeth, the muscle in her jaw flexing faintly as she kept herself from wincing.
She stepped into her hallway and her nostrils immediately picked up the traces of lingering cigarette smoke. The cotton in her brain evolved, starting to pulse faintly. She suspected she had some kind of allergy to smoke; it gave her headaches if she started with a clear head, and helped prod migraines.
Once upon a time she might have scowled and stormed to Kankurou's room, throw open the door and tear into him. This time, she just closed and locked the door behind her, leaning against the wood panel as she bent to undo the clasps of her shoes before gingerly toeing them off.
Again the muscle in her jaw flexed as her feet went through the painful adjustment to flat after being squeezed into tight leather and propped up three inches for roughly twelve hours.
She padded barefoot, carefully (feet rolling as she stepped, trying to find the most comfortable position each time), down the hall. She stared at the floor as she made her way towards her bedroom, fully expecting the kitchen she was passing to be empty and for her brothers to again be behind the physical versions of their divide.
She'd been developing a love/hate relationship with doors lately.
Like a cat caught unawares just a moment too late to pick up on another’s presence, Kankurou’s head lifted from beyond the bulky door to gaze owlishly towards the source of being. No noise had alerted him somuchso as that simple understanding that suddenly he was no longer alone. Without active knowledge of having done so his walls went up, mask firmly in place with a cocked and practiced scowl as now narrowed eyes washed over his sister.
“You’re in late.” Obvious statements shrouded in the lowered husk of not having spoken all night. Honestly, it was average to early for her, so maybe he was just filling airspace. “Tch,” a muted slam resounded as his hip jarred the refrigerator door, two lemons loosely cradled in his fist, “y’going to bed?”
An innocent question. Stray accidental hope. So maybe he was half…what? Relieved, comforted, nurtured by her consciously unexpected arrival, though the feeling wasn’t anything he’d confront on the surface. If she went to bed, she went to bed, and he would too, albeit later and hopefully long gone enough not to dream.
Ingredients for his ritual gathered, he bussed the fruit to the table along with a cracked open tequila and shot glasses, two now wedged between his fingers as per chance she may stay. Unruffled, he sank heavily into a chair with bare toes curled into the thick wooden structures of the table’s familiar under workings, an arm slung over the back of his chair to leer at her carelessly.
The strange tension that had been steadily tying her shoulders into knots every time she came home these days, tightened. Another pain to add to her growing list. It was the sudden stiffness in her neck and the fragile state her brain had moved into that had her chin lifting and head turning to the side in slow motion. At least it felt like slow motion. The cynical part of her brain reminded her of the time she had gotten trashed when she was fifteen and had decided with her friends that a nice game of chicken with stolen cars would be a good idea. She still remembered the frame by frame of the two cars rushing towards each other and the conscious decision to just…let them collide.
Bed. Her brain hurt too much for sleep, she'd just lie awake for a few hours and stare unfocused at the ceiling through half lidded eyes, anything more being too much of a strain.
Temari straightened her spine and moved into the kitchen, walking normally, like she'd never worn shoes a day in her life. She pulled out her chair and dropped gracefully into it as she pulled down the zipper of her coat and shrugged the leather off her shoulders.
"Drinking alone makes you a lush." She stated matter of factly as she deliberately ignored his question and settled her jacket over the back of her chair. The thin, steel bangles on her left wrist clicked together annoyingly as she moved. Steadily, she started to slide them off, one by one, and dropped them onto the table top as she waited for Kankurou to pour the shots.
A broad, Cheshire cat-like grin crawled over his lips with honeyed slowness as he tried to suppress it. Without fail, the sharp wit of their litter kicked in with an easy, “calling me a lush would force me to call you a hypocrite,” as the flats of his feet slid back to aide his leaning forward, fluently decanting into the shot glasses capped off with a roll of his wrist at the end each time to redirect precious alcohol around the lip of the bottle.
Scraping the chair closer to the table, he cuffed her share across before taking a lemon beneath his knife to portion out wedges right there on the tabletop. Ages ago such an act may have required lecture, if the lacquered surface wasn’t already marred with the deep gouges of use. Four quadrants later he batted the fruit to scatter in a seemingly practiced motion that sent a sliver of yellow within reach from every angle.
“Besides, I’d rather drink by myself than a band of idiots anyways.” Shot glass was taken up by the rims and directed to his mouth without ceremony, tipped back and swallowed without grimace. With the quick actions of a poker dealer he chased with a feline lick to his wrist, salt spread as he sunk his teeth into the closest lemon and coaxed the sour nectar along his tongue before sucking on his salted wrist.
In the downtime of his suckling his dark eyes settled upon her form over his forearm with an even stare. In all fairness it could be said that they all shared a penchant for an unbreakable stare, a talent that time and again forced prying outsiders’ eyes away, yet when shared between two of their fold it was a connection-inducing habit. Kankurou usually reserved these for arguments with Gaara, yet this was a Gaara-style study. Recommitting his sister to memory as certain curves and sharp edges had faded into the recesses of disuse before they faded away.
Lips licked idly as he lowered his wrist, he allowed his spine to crawl into slouch against the rickety chair with a slow exhale. “So really…how the fuck are you?” His expression sobered down, a slight knot in his eyebrow showing as he listlessly allowed the warmth to travel its first dose.
Years of drinking, some of those spent drinking together, with tequila forever being a prominent poison of choice, and they never could agree on the order of the three stage shots.
Temari dragged her tongue along the outside of the web of skin connecting her thumb and forefinger of her left hand, wetting the surface so that the salt she sprinkled on it would stick. Lemon wedge held between her left thumb and middle finger, her right hand settled a similar hold over her shot glass.
Her preparation took place as he took his first shot, now he stared at her waiting on her to catch up. She held up to his stare with self-confidence she knew no one else could match. Her tongue rasped her skin again, catching the grains of salt. The tequila followed with its familiar sting, she lowered her eyes so as to keep Kankurou's locked even when she tipped her head back to better accommodate the glass. As the burn coiled down her throat and into her stomach, she bit down into the flesh of the lemon. The sour juice met the tequila as it bounced, having hit the trampoline like bottom of her empty stomach, and forced it back down.
She pushed her glass back towards the center of the table. Her tongue pressed the lemon pulp to the roof of her mouth, squeezing out the last of the juice before she finally relinquished the now mutilated fruit.
"I'm tired." She replied, those two words being the only ones she could associated to every aspect of her current mental state. Physically, mentally, emotionally…she was just so tired. The tone was kept bland, bored, a strong attempt to suck out whatever power she'd given to her answer.
“No fuckin’ kidding.” A half eyebrow arched minutely, the tail end lost somewhere unknown with only the inner edges heavily accented, though the twist of muscles belied the action enough. Nowhere near as accented as Temari’s deadly arches yet just as cynical. “Don’t know why your body hasn’t copped out on you and forced sleep through a day of work yet.” Words bitten off carelessly, hiding concern as he methodically bit along his thumbnail to shear it off, having grown annoyed with jagged edges.
He knew he’d done it, been unable to wake for classes, but he had a worse eating and sleeping schedule than she, even if he consumed less coffee on the whole. He knew more or less that Temari came in at a relative same time, wasted none on stray activities, crashed and awoke for every new day.
Another heaved breath. His eyes hurt, signified by the way he nursed one with a fist before carefully dragging a finger pad along the lower ridge of one, swiping away vestiges of sleep sand. He topped off another shot each, spiting her habits by repeating his own, though he switched the lemon and salt this time so as to allow the salt to draw the bitterness from the fruit.
Riding on the contrail of his gasp for breath after drawing the fruit barren, he carried on into a sterner tone of voice vaguely reminiscent of their late father. “You really oughtta take a goddamn day off ev’ry once in awhile, I work too and ends’ll meet. I mean. Fuck, Temmy.” Emphatic on the curse, tired and resigned on her nickname. A dismissive gesture at nothing in particular, swatting away the atmosphere, maybe. Elaboration abandoned in favor of another shot lineup, busying time and space with motion.
It was her turn to stare, to readjust. He was exhausted and he was struggling, though she was sure she was the only one who'd ever notice the latter. It was in how he said her name. That name that threw her back to when she was four years old every time. She remembered it being said with innocent awe, it played like a record skipping in her nightmares. She heard it echo in the hollowness he spoke it now.
"Ends meet." There was a finality to the statement, this was a discussion that had never been up for discussion in the first place and that she would never indulge.
Her brain conjured up fractured sentences, 'the body adjusts', 'not that kind of tired', 'have you eaten today?', all of them never passing the test of her lips. Defensive, protective, concerned, all roiled with sickening turbulence in her stomach. She picked up her shot glass and tipped it back, intent on drowning the mess. She didn't bother to chase it this time.
Kankurou’s response was to rumble, deep in the back of his throat, a noise of dissatisfaction despite his lack of following up on it. He gave the alcohol time to settle, idly raking astringent bits of pulp from an already-drained quadrant to just plain eat. Well, it was something in his stomach, right?
He withdrew back into himself for a long moment, eyes downcast in thought as he tongued an eyetooth, formulating words for something he didn’t know how to convey right, nor knew why he wished to put it on the table. In the end he plucked out a related train of thought. “Gaara, I think he’s seeing someone.” An immediate twisted expression scowled his visage, hiding what his face might naturally do as his eyes returned to her.
Dry shot followed. It was a disbelief to him still, the sentence itself rung ridiculous in the air. Though the fact that he himself never usually reported on the antics of one sibling to another lest looking for backup in childhood--‘Temmy, Gaara ate my makeup again’--remained true, and really, who in this family wasn’t acting a little strange lately?
[OOC: Unfinished.]
A simple long sleeve shirt slit partially down the front thrown on to match his black regimens, dark flannels easily allowing the weakest breeze in stride, he lumbered into the kitchen. No sleep would come for him anytime soon. Resigned to the fact, he rummaged through the cabinets for nothing in particular. Food maybe, perhaps drink.
In fact, the latter sounded attractive--hardly surprising. Perking, he simultaneously jiggled the handle of the fridge while toeing the bottom of the door to work it out of a long-accepted stuck spot.
Temari never limped. It didn't matter how tired she was, or how long she had been wearing shoes that had long been reassigned the label of torture devices, her steps were never anything less than perfectly controlled.
When it was the middle of the night on a school night though, she succumbed to a slow, more careful stride. There was no one to see it, and if no one could see it, then it didn't exist. And she could rationalize that her steps were aimed more to be quiet so as not to disturb her neighbors. She conveniently ignored the fact that she really didn't give a flying fuck about her neighbors' late night auditory comfort when it suited her.
Her sharp heels were suspiciously silent as she moved slowly down the second floor hallway to her apartment door. Her keys rested against her palm, fingers too weary to flip and jingle the metal as she might normally. She jimmied the lock in the way repetition had taught her would work and the bold slid, a sound too loud for the cottony feeling of a headache to tolerate. She clenched her teeth, the muscle in her jaw flexing faintly as she kept herself from wincing.
She stepped into her hallway and her nostrils immediately picked up the traces of lingering cigarette smoke. The cotton in her brain evolved, starting to pulse faintly. She suspected she had some kind of allergy to smoke; it gave her headaches if she started with a clear head, and helped prod migraines.
Once upon a time she might have scowled and stormed to Kankurou's room, throw open the door and tear into him. This time, she just closed and locked the door behind her, leaning against the wood panel as she bent to undo the clasps of her shoes before gingerly toeing them off.
Again the muscle in her jaw flexed as her feet went through the painful adjustment to flat after being squeezed into tight leather and propped up three inches for roughly twelve hours.
She padded barefoot, carefully (feet rolling as she stepped, trying to find the most comfortable position each time), down the hall. She stared at the floor as she made her way towards her bedroom, fully expecting the kitchen she was passing to be empty and for her brothers to again be behind the physical versions of their divide.
She'd been developing a love/hate relationship with doors lately.
Like a cat caught unawares just a moment too late to pick up on another’s presence, Kankurou’s head lifted from beyond the bulky door to gaze owlishly towards the source of being. No noise had alerted him somuchso as that simple understanding that suddenly he was no longer alone. Without active knowledge of having done so his walls went up, mask firmly in place with a cocked and practiced scowl as now narrowed eyes washed over his sister.
“You’re in late.” Obvious statements shrouded in the lowered husk of not having spoken all night. Honestly, it was average to early for her, so maybe he was just filling airspace. “Tch,” a muted slam resounded as his hip jarred the refrigerator door, two lemons loosely cradled in his fist, “y’going to bed?”
An innocent question. Stray accidental hope. So maybe he was half…what? Relieved, comforted, nurtured by her consciously unexpected arrival, though the feeling wasn’t anything he’d confront on the surface. If she went to bed, she went to bed, and he would too, albeit later and hopefully long gone enough not to dream.
Ingredients for his ritual gathered, he bussed the fruit to the table along with a cracked open tequila and shot glasses, two now wedged between his fingers as per chance she may stay. Unruffled, he sank heavily into a chair with bare toes curled into the thick wooden structures of the table’s familiar under workings, an arm slung over the back of his chair to leer at her carelessly.
The strange tension that had been steadily tying her shoulders into knots every time she came home these days, tightened. Another pain to add to her growing list. It was the sudden stiffness in her neck and the fragile state her brain had moved into that had her chin lifting and head turning to the side in slow motion. At least it felt like slow motion. The cynical part of her brain reminded her of the time she had gotten trashed when she was fifteen and had decided with her friends that a nice game of chicken with stolen cars would be a good idea. She still remembered the frame by frame of the two cars rushing towards each other and the conscious decision to just…let them collide.
Bed. Her brain hurt too much for sleep, she'd just lie awake for a few hours and stare unfocused at the ceiling through half lidded eyes, anything more being too much of a strain.
Temari straightened her spine and moved into the kitchen, walking normally, like she'd never worn shoes a day in her life. She pulled out her chair and dropped gracefully into it as she pulled down the zipper of her coat and shrugged the leather off her shoulders.
"Drinking alone makes you a lush." She stated matter of factly as she deliberately ignored his question and settled her jacket over the back of her chair. The thin, steel bangles on her left wrist clicked together annoyingly as she moved. Steadily, she started to slide them off, one by one, and dropped them onto the table top as she waited for Kankurou to pour the shots.
A broad, Cheshire cat-like grin crawled over his lips with honeyed slowness as he tried to suppress it. Without fail, the sharp wit of their litter kicked in with an easy, “calling me a lush would force me to call you a hypocrite,” as the flats of his feet slid back to aide his leaning forward, fluently decanting into the shot glasses capped off with a roll of his wrist at the end each time to redirect precious alcohol around the lip of the bottle.
Scraping the chair closer to the table, he cuffed her share across before taking a lemon beneath his knife to portion out wedges right there on the tabletop. Ages ago such an act may have required lecture, if the lacquered surface wasn’t already marred with the deep gouges of use. Four quadrants later he batted the fruit to scatter in a seemingly practiced motion that sent a sliver of yellow within reach from every angle.
“Besides, I’d rather drink by myself than a band of idiots anyways.” Shot glass was taken up by the rims and directed to his mouth without ceremony, tipped back and swallowed without grimace. With the quick actions of a poker dealer he chased with a feline lick to his wrist, salt spread as he sunk his teeth into the closest lemon and coaxed the sour nectar along his tongue before sucking on his salted wrist.
In the downtime of his suckling his dark eyes settled upon her form over his forearm with an even stare. In all fairness it could be said that they all shared a penchant for an unbreakable stare, a talent that time and again forced prying outsiders’ eyes away, yet when shared between two of their fold it was a connection-inducing habit. Kankurou usually reserved these for arguments with Gaara, yet this was a Gaara-style study. Recommitting his sister to memory as certain curves and sharp edges had faded into the recesses of disuse before they faded away.
Lips licked idly as he lowered his wrist, he allowed his spine to crawl into slouch against the rickety chair with a slow exhale. “So really…how the fuck are you?” His expression sobered down, a slight knot in his eyebrow showing as he listlessly allowed the warmth to travel its first dose.
Years of drinking, some of those spent drinking together, with tequila forever being a prominent poison of choice, and they never could agree on the order of the three stage shots.
Temari dragged her tongue along the outside of the web of skin connecting her thumb and forefinger of her left hand, wetting the surface so that the salt she sprinkled on it would stick. Lemon wedge held between her left thumb and middle finger, her right hand settled a similar hold over her shot glass.
Her preparation took place as he took his first shot, now he stared at her waiting on her to catch up. She held up to his stare with self-confidence she knew no one else could match. Her tongue rasped her skin again, catching the grains of salt. The tequila followed with its familiar sting, she lowered her eyes so as to keep Kankurou's locked even when she tipped her head back to better accommodate the glass. As the burn coiled down her throat and into her stomach, she bit down into the flesh of the lemon. The sour juice met the tequila as it bounced, having hit the trampoline like bottom of her empty stomach, and forced it back down.
She pushed her glass back towards the center of the table. Her tongue pressed the lemon pulp to the roof of her mouth, squeezing out the last of the juice before she finally relinquished the now mutilated fruit.
"I'm tired." She replied, those two words being the only ones she could associated to every aspect of her current mental state. Physically, mentally, emotionally…she was just so tired. The tone was kept bland, bored, a strong attempt to suck out whatever power she'd given to her answer.
“No fuckin’ kidding.” A half eyebrow arched minutely, the tail end lost somewhere unknown with only the inner edges heavily accented, though the twist of muscles belied the action enough. Nowhere near as accented as Temari’s deadly arches yet just as cynical. “Don’t know why your body hasn’t copped out on you and forced sleep through a day of work yet.” Words bitten off carelessly, hiding concern as he methodically bit along his thumbnail to shear it off, having grown annoyed with jagged edges.
He knew he’d done it, been unable to wake for classes, but he had a worse eating and sleeping schedule than she, even if he consumed less coffee on the whole. He knew more or less that Temari came in at a relative same time, wasted none on stray activities, crashed and awoke for every new day.
Another heaved breath. His eyes hurt, signified by the way he nursed one with a fist before carefully dragging a finger pad along the lower ridge of one, swiping away vestiges of sleep sand. He topped off another shot each, spiting her habits by repeating his own, though he switched the lemon and salt this time so as to allow the salt to draw the bitterness from the fruit.
Riding on the contrail of his gasp for breath after drawing the fruit barren, he carried on into a sterner tone of voice vaguely reminiscent of their late father. “You really oughtta take a goddamn day off ev’ry once in awhile, I work too and ends’ll meet. I mean. Fuck, Temmy.” Emphatic on the curse, tired and resigned on her nickname. A dismissive gesture at nothing in particular, swatting away the atmosphere, maybe. Elaboration abandoned in favor of another shot lineup, busying time and space with motion.
It was her turn to stare, to readjust. He was exhausted and he was struggling, though she was sure she was the only one who'd ever notice the latter. It was in how he said her name. That name that threw her back to when she was four years old every time. She remembered it being said with innocent awe, it played like a record skipping in her nightmares. She heard it echo in the hollowness he spoke it now.
"Ends meet." There was a finality to the statement, this was a discussion that had never been up for discussion in the first place and that she would never indulge.
Her brain conjured up fractured sentences, 'the body adjusts', 'not that kind of tired', 'have you eaten today?', all of them never passing the test of her lips. Defensive, protective, concerned, all roiled with sickening turbulence in her stomach. She picked up her shot glass and tipped it back, intent on drowning the mess. She didn't bother to chase it this time.
Kankurou’s response was to rumble, deep in the back of his throat, a noise of dissatisfaction despite his lack of following up on it. He gave the alcohol time to settle, idly raking astringent bits of pulp from an already-drained quadrant to just plain eat. Well, it was something in his stomach, right?
He withdrew back into himself for a long moment, eyes downcast in thought as he tongued an eyetooth, formulating words for something he didn’t know how to convey right, nor knew why he wished to put it on the table. In the end he plucked out a related train of thought. “Gaara, I think he’s seeing someone.” An immediate twisted expression scowled his visage, hiding what his face might naturally do as his eyes returned to her.
Dry shot followed. It was a disbelief to him still, the sentence itself rung ridiculous in the air. Though the fact that he himself never usually reported on the antics of one sibling to another lest looking for backup in childhood--‘Temmy, Gaara ate my makeup again’--remained true, and really, who in this family wasn’t acting a little strange lately?
[OOC: Unfinished.]