[Action Log] [Shikamaru/Tayuya] [Closed] [A thousand cups of wine to drown in]
Backdated to 23rd April because the revision timetable for GCSE's is a literal hell on earth. Rated at PG-13 because a Tayu-log can't be rated any lower (charming lass that she is) and also another clean log for Adrien - he is getting better, folks.
With two supposed days away having stretched into some amorphous approximation of a week, to describe Tayuya as restless was probably a fairly apt description if ‘restless’ included morose attempts at tidying a suddenly furniture-filled room or darkly muttered words of a (probably) blush-worthy nature. Enforced contact with the two who had been unkind enough to the world as to spawn her had drained her energy, leaving her more sullen than her usual brand of volatile irritation, ready to snarl at the world. Today, she’d just hiss feebly and turn a stubborn back on the offender.
Mostly, her own mind was responsible for this gloomy mood, a trail of thought shadowing her as she tried vainly to ignore its presence. Accepting such a fact, even putting it aside for consideration, was unacceptable.
Dammit.
Tayuya threw the pillow she had been struggling to get into its case onto the glaringly high bed in disgust, tongue clicking behind her teeth in exasperation. This aura of domesticity - tidying and organising, rearranging and rummaging - set her spine to prickling and the oppressive heat in the room weighed her down further.
A muttered ‘fuck this’ escaping gnawed lips, she turned on her heel abruptly, the tattered hems of her jeans swirling around her ankles and threatening to trip her up as she stumped off into the kitchen. Forgoing shoes just for the hell of it, she allowed herself a brief side trip to the refrigerator to snag a six pack of disgustingly cheap, but wonderfully distracting beer before sliding out of her apartment.
Beyond being subtle now, Tayuya didn’t care who saw her as she rapped harsh knuckles on the door of number nine. So what if it had only been a week? - she only wanted someone to distract her from the housewife-mood that had probably been planted by her mother on the sly.
Beer and an irritating idiot would serve nicely.
If motivating Shikamaru to move during the winter was a task, the hot months brought with them impossibility that escalated with the degrees. His first April in Lysgar was no exception, tenfold worse than the airy lofts of the countryside.
At least the sun was going down.
He didn't know how long he'd lain strewn out on the couch, no longer fresh out of the cold (for Lysgar, normal) shower with a towel beneath his head on the armrest to protect it from the beached seaweed clumps of hair. Eyes just a sliver open, dry lips parted just slightly with hands splayed over his bare stomach, the fan beside him recycling stale air.
Balancing on the precipice between sleep and waking until the sharp drill triggered his heartbeat, that feeling like falling in dreams when you're not. Too sharp for regular visitors of number nine. Shikamaru rolled upright in a single fluid motion, settling his hands on his hips and rolling back his spine by means of a stretch, muttering something about nuisances and the bothersome levels of getting up. Bare feet gingerly padded beneath crème flannels, rumpling his hair--dry and stuck together now, disentangling it--until one hand came to the doorknob.
"…Oh. You're back." Lamely finished, owlishly blinking now at the girl who treated the halls like an extension of her own apartment in those bare feet. More importantly, at her luggage. A fine eyebrow scaled upwards, his expression one of confusion and mild distaste.
He stepped back to let her in all the same--his mother always did say he had no common sense--yet this was his favorite nuisance, after all.
Mulish brows snapped together, lips curling as the familiar blend of exasperation and irritation at his somewhat apathetical nature sidled back into the space within her brain that had been empty for the past week. A snort was emitted as she shouldered past him, sharp elbow catching him in the side, just out of spite. “Nice to see you as well.” A watered down version of her usual glare, only softened because she really fucking needed a haircut - the length was ridiculous now and the fringe was particularly annoying. As to why she didn’t just pin it back and out of the way…this was Tayuya. Hair skills escaped her.
And did she really look like the sort to have hair grips on hand?
He seemed to be half dressed more often than not in his everyday interactions, though dry and haystack-esque hair proved that she hadn’t interrupted any sort of bathing activity.
His haphazard greeting riled her sensibilities somehow - he clearly hadn’t improved through absence, but she beat it back down. Choosing not to follow that up, irritation was worked off and shown simply by her making her own unasked way to the table, dumping her prize down with a metallic chink and the promising sound of sloshing liquid within the cans.
“You’re still a wuss,” she started, pulling up threads of a conversation from weeks past and expecting him to understand. “I’m back. Beer.” He was a genius, so the clipped, erratic sentences were bound to make sense of course.
Tayuya folded her arms across her chest, backing up until the edge of the table rested against the small of her back, legs able to cross at the ankle now there was added support. Since she did actually possess a minute degree of subtlety, surprising as that may have been, the girl took the opportunity to scan him from beneath pseudo-casually lowered lids, watching him through dark lashes.
Faced with both her and her gift so abruptly, what would be his response?
His targeted side was plastered automatically by his hand, rubbing without really caring about the snipe as he pivoted and closed the door. Her entrance was enough to prove her staying, so he barely bothered being surprised that she didn't even check for prior company or roommates.
Genius enough to do the math--there was more drink there than social ounces--he merely trundled over her vague conversation and worked out the last of the more annoying knots in his hair, leaving the rest to gravity. "I never claimed to be anything to the contrary." Comfortable enough with her to amble on past without explanation, he nudged his bedroom door open while yawning. What time was it, anyways? Tossing a slightly-raised octave back her way as he rifled through his belongings, he dug out a flimsy, worn-through t-shirt. "I thought you were going to be--" returning to the kitchen, voice dropped "--gone just the weekend?"
Not that he'd counted the days. Nor regretted never requesting a number to check up on when he'd come to the conclusion that it was way too long to be considered even a long weekend anymore. He came to a slouching stop before her, thumbs hooked in the hem of his flannels with an expectant expression.
Tayuya hadn’t shifted from her lounging pose against the solid sturdiness of her backrest, eyes merely tracking his skinny frame’s path across the room before it was hidden from her sight. Left bereft of anything to focus on, she steadied a palm on the table’s corner, feeling the blunt bite as she swiped an idle thumb over the textured edge.
When he returned clothed (however thin the garment may have been) she tipped her head to one side, lips twisting in a vague expression that was hazy in its exact nature.
“Kind of depended on when my Dad could drop me back and he didn’t offer until yesterday. Didn’t leave me much choice.” It was habit now to paint the picture more one sided than it had really been - if push had come to shove (or swear to sensibility) all it would have taken were a few short, sharp words on her behalf and a mute parent would have driven her back, bed and all.
To try and explain that, maybe, staying home, staying away, had perhaps been the easiest option where the atmosphere wasn’t exactly comforting, but definitely familiar, would have been to difficult. In no way a family girl (or an anything girl, for that matter), Tayuya couldn’t and didn’t want to elaborate on how strange it had been to sleep in the room she’d grown up in again, with wallpaper faded and curtains changed, but still the same at essence, yet so damn alien. So much to try and say…
“Probably worried about traffic.”
…and left unsaid.
So much was left unsaid and conveyed subtly that their relationship was like a song without lyrics. Even if Shikamaru was used to studying his opponents in chess he had never translated it before to everyday body language, a place where signals often got lost in white noise to him, yet even still at her vague quirk did his own head cant slightly, eyes narrowing and brow furrowing. If he'd been looking for it, he may have translated seamlessly.
"I see." That was that, family matters best left to their participants. He knew how much he was irked by his own and had a fair clue as to her relationship with hers, so he pursued that no further. Instead he planted a hand on the table between her hip and hand, leaning forward and reaching the other arm around to drag her version of a care package back, umber eyes staring through her fringe. "So what's with all this?"
Tayuya quirked a brow in response, chin jutting in a half stubborn, half challenging gesture that mixed with flashing eyes to convey her warning that, should he make anything funny of her answer, bodily harm would come about as a result.
“I felt like seeing you.” It may have been clipped and gruff, the words more like weapons than endearments, but peculiar in their bluntness when it came to admitting want or its ilk. Her free hand hooked into the puckered edge of the plastic, on the other side to which he held, securing her ownership over the beverages. “And I wanted to find out just how shit you are at holding booze down myself.”
A tug of the hand pulled the six-pack away from his grasp and she cradled it in the crook of a bare arm, feeling the cool weight against her stomach as she eyed him levelly. For all her apparent calm her nerves were singing with nervous tension, hidden beneath the need to appear casual, to show no sign of weakness, leave no gap for ridicule.
“Problem?”
He must have been going soft, for those five words sent warmed pulses down his spine in waves, eyebrows threatening to rise off his brow before he steeled his expression, trying very, very hard not to smile. The very corners of his mouth quirked and twitched just slightly as he kept his voice level. "None at all."
Not that he really remembered much of his reaction to alcohol from his experience post phone message with Byakuya, just that it made him susceptible to actually losing chess, enough to alert him that he didn't want to be under such a loss of centeredness again anytime soon. When one hand lost its rest he replaced it lightly on her hip, canting his head to leave the ghost of an appreciative kiss on the side of her neck before moving away and swerving around a chair to laze back in, one foot planted with the other heel resting away.
"Though you're assuming I'll go along with it." Yeah, he'd grown used to downing whatever herbal concoction his mother ladled down his throat without complaint (within earshot). Yet he still wasn't one for really listening to anybody save Chouji.
Tayuya made no attempts to hide the sly grin that settled onto her face like a satisfied cat when lips brushed her throat - a week away had given her plenty of time to think as she’d lain listless and bored on a forgotten shade of forget-me-not blue eiderdown from years ago, and her conclusions had been such that she had come to think that, maybe, it wasn’t so bad to suggest she enjoyed such things.
Particularly if it encouraged him to do similar things more often.
Despite her usual distaste for chairs, she followed his example and actually seated herself. One bare foot rose up on a cocked knee to flatten its arch against her inner thigh, a lazy arm slung around the back of the chair - even while sitting she was skewed.
“Didn’t think you’d wanna lose to a girl,” she told him, tone almost as playfully malicious as her earlier grin had been. Practiced fingers cracked a beer open upon freeing it from its plastic confines, the spitting fizz from a can that had been shaken a bit on its journey home dusting the table lightly. A wrinkle of her nose was aimed in his direction, supercilious and superior. “Wimp. You’re such a pussy sometimes.”
He wasn't being scolded for that? Shikamaru watched her warily as she reclined in his wake, following that tone of voice. Slightly suspicious, yet shrugging it off as he waved a hand dismissively. "Tch, I wouldn't lose to a girl." Not that he felt the particular urge to prove himself, yet it looked as though she'd start the battle with him or not.
She fought dirty.
Eh well, rum and beer were vastly different and it wasn't as if he hadn't handled one socially before. He could play along in calculation and mediation. Drawing himself forward to notch elbows into the recesses of knees, he squared his shoulders and scowled in feigned boredom. "The hell does one win drinking, anyways?" He knew his own father often took a shot for each time his mother whacked him upside the head for spanking her, yet he liked to forget that and not try and figure out the game behind that, especially when Ino's father took a shot for each as well.
“Sure you wouldn’t,” came her glib answer, spoken over the rim of her beer in a cloying manner that was most eerie coming from our usual little bundle of grumpiness. Taking the piss clearly brought out her…well, not best side, but certainly a different one. “But I don’t have any assurances of that, moron.”
This banter was…pleasant. She couldn’t find another word for it. Light and wicked and fun…geez. She was slipping. Actively being disinterested and unfriendly was getting harder and harder each day, but who really gave? It wasn’t as if she lost anything by occasionally smiling when she was attempting to snip away at his ego, however unsuccessfully.
Clearly, some epiphany had been reached, however mundane. Heaven help us all.
Her smile turned feline-smug when he took the drink she’d been pressing on him - her haunches almost wiggled to back up the cat connotations, but it could have just been her making her seated position more comfortable while she took a derisive swig from her can.
“Well,” Tayuya told him helpfully, “If you’re left conscious, you win. Or you don’t fall off of your chair.” That could almost be counted as humour, couldn’t it? A spider web of creases marked the skin at the corners of her eyes, these laugh lines alien to the previously smooth surfaces there, though the laugh was still at his expense - taunting. “And don’t worry. There’re a few more packs down there so we can both get pissed out of our minds. Yours must be stuffy anyway.”
Lovely.
Shikamaru echoed his expression of distaste at her answer before shifting to one of half-exasperation as he worked the cap back and forth. "I still see no point." He tipped the heady, hissing concoction back nevertheless, screwing up his features when the fizz attacked his cheeks and nose. He didn't usually drink soda, when he sought caffeine it was in a more relaxing (and quiet), time-release tea form rather than a sugar rush.
Brushing the backs of his knuckles across his upper lip, he rolled his tongue against his palate before speaking. "In the meanwhile?" All right, maybe not such a grand idea to distract himself from pacing, yet this was all nonsense to him anyways and he was more keen on her than the drink.
This was alien and a little worrying in such--her smiling was a rare pleasure to see yet it put him slightly off ease. Like he was being led into a trap that he willingly treaded into, though really, knowingly participating in troublesome distractions was something he regularly did with her.
Thus he leaned back, draping an elbow over the back of his chair and sliding a leg forward to hook his ankle around her planted one with a hint of playfulness to follow up his question. Then he took another draught.
The look Tayuya sent him down her nose was practically scornful, with a blistering edge for his mentality when it served to make him this…bland in these fields. “Idiot.” Scathingly spoken, she rolled her eyes to alleviate the harshness of the comment, though the underlying sentiment was certainly of the party that he should give in to all of this. “If you don’t see the point, you’re thinking too much.”
Did he even ever stop?
A dab hand at this, Tayuya could and did take a gulp, unfazed by the tingling of the draught as it slid down. She liked the prickles, the bitter after taste, the exothermic heat it seemed to produce.
She shrugged, a roll and fall of the joints there as she nursed her can. The angle at which she was sitting meant that, with the inclination of her head, loose waves of crimson came to hang forwards, curtaining her head. If he cared to look, the vibrant vermillion had been ejected from her crown, a visible line of muted red appearing at her roots - telltale signs of her natural colour bleeding through since she hadn’t renewed the garish shade she had adopted as her own.
“Hear you’re losing a roommate.”
Kiba’s departure was surprisingly disturbing, but hadn’t really settled in yet. More of a distant thought for her since he was but a casual acquaintance, though the one who had caused hers and Shikamaru’s paths to meet, she knew that he and the lad opposite of her had shared history. Perhaps this was her form of a condolence.
The hook and slide of bony ankle around her own made her toes flex involuntarily, the thin ligaments showing along the instep of her foot briefly before they subsided and didn’t look so skeletal, prominent as they were when held like that. A shadow of a smile before she looked deliberately bored, the only sign of acknowledgement being the movement of her toes to swipe lazily at the soft material of his pants.
"Tch, no kidding. Pain in the ass." Overthinking it, that is. If so many people, such as pretty much the entire building, found it so amazing, there had to be some small merit. He liked the taste well enough, his father giving him half-pint samples every Friday of his childhood; it just wasn't something he ever cottoned onto. Especially in lieu of feeling practically fatherless with his old man haunting the bars more than his home, yet that was a touchy subject and so he derailed his train of thought back to the siren serving the drink.
Leaving him nearly tempted to reach out and run his fingers through her hair if he didn't know better (touching Tayuya's hair unawares was a bad idea when she had a beverage in hand) and she hadn't directed the conversation to Kiba. He frowned into his can for a moment, running his fingers through his own hair instead.
"Mm, yeah. Place's going to be significantly lonelier, though I believe we'll still have dogs and Hana since she has the job here. Chouji seems to be working longer; too, at least his school break's coming up."
Rather than looking back up, he took a longer drink. Shikamaru could be more than asocial, caring little about developing new ties, yet the company he kept was all true and blue and they meant everything to him. Lifting his head, he offered a small smile while drawing his chair a little closer, knees inter-tangling lightly. "There's sure to be lots of situational changes with the weather and school letting out though, it's only to be expected. Besides," he licked his lips, creasing his eyes minutely in the hint of a deeper, somewhat wry smile, "you're here for now."
What that meant he didn't fully grasp, only that she'd somehow weaseled into the ranks of his inner ring.
Tayuya rolled her eyes, though it lacked any real exasperation - more a formality that was expected of her by now. “Still keeping three of the furry things? Hard luck there.”
…they weren’t so bad - they’d practically been friendly when she and Hana were up on the roof though that was probably directly proportional to the ear scratches she had dealt out.
Geez. Her boy was lonely. Kind of, sort of, maybe? She wasn’t exactly skilled at ascertaining such things, but the clues were in his eyes, his tone…way back (or so it seemed) when they’d first been abandoned in a room together, conversation had been awkward on both halves. Though hardly as actively antisocial as she was in that he didn’t discourage people from approaching, there was a willingness to settle with what he already had that she’d picked up on.
Unwilling to soften in front of him enough to soothe the lad, she settled for a condescending pat on the head instead, though her fingers took the time to test the texture of his hair before the appendage retreated and her expression warned him that it had never happened. “Poor boy,” she told him dismissively, shifting conversation onwards as she set her now empty can down, eying the next one with a pensive expression unfocusing her eyes.
Dark pupils slid sideways, watching him from the corner of her vision with sceptical suspicion at the words he’d graced her with in all the ambiguity.
“God.” Exasperation tinged her tone, a tooth biting into the corner of her lower lip briefly as she knocked her knees against his, enough to make the joints ache where sharp contact brought skin covered bone into contact with an equally hard partner. “You make it sound like I’m going somewhere. Fucking idiot.” Her sigh was noisy, an eloquent statement on exactly what she thought of foolish men who came out with silly comments like that. “You’re not so bad and you’re decent in bed-“ (even if they’d never actually carried anything out in bed and had preferred household appliances instead) “-so unless you piss me off, you can probably convince me to keep you for a bit.”
The verbal diarrhoea surprised even herself and she pulled back, the fleeting expression of disgust more aimed at herself than anyone else. Like a bird settling ruffled feathers back into place, she looked away at nothing in particular, setting her face in messy profile with wisps of hair everywhere and chin slightly tilted up to reveal the thin press of her lips (to hold back words?)
“Whatever. Fewer people in your apartment means fewer people to bother us.”
No, she hadn’t forgotten the Ino incident - probably never would, just as she would never continue to blame him for it.
The manner by which he had come to glean information about Tayuya was in shallow dives, an albatross picking off tiny minnows with the great shadow of some unknown, intimidating leviathan leagues and leagues below. Each time she let a fraction more spill out she retreated as though burned, harboring something he could only begin to fathom.
It invoked his first real desires to put his mind to work, to try and evaluate the multiple tiny little soft spots to ascertain which were untouchable buttons and which he could get away with to chisel his way in.
She must have spellbound him with that first melody, for she put him through all kinds of out of sorts.
Silent gratitude for her…could the word 'comfort' even be associated with the angular, sharp-tongued girl? Whatever it was, he spared her the pain of being reminded she even did it by simply taking strength from it and shrugging off whatever had inspired the action.
Yet he couldn't help but falter at her monologue. It had been one sentence, yes, but far more verbose in Tayuese than her natural, clipped speech. He'd only meant he was uncertain of her plans and future, of when she'd flutter off next. Even if it was only for a weekend-turned week. He wasn't about to correct her, an embarrassed Tayuya usually led to frozen projectiles, yet he could only look at her unstilted in a quiet sort of appreciative awe. Then he snapped out of it, forcing a yawn to screw his face and resettle the mood.
"Makes things less troublesome, if you put it that way."
He then polished off the dregs of his beer with a cryptic smirk and reached for another. He may be growing fond of being a kept man, but he was not going to lose to a girl.
A sideways on look greeted his casual acceptance of her words and while nothing relaxed visibly, some wire thin knot of something akin to worry undid within her chest. Thank fucking God he hadn’t pressed further into the box with the tightly closed lid because she might have just had to hit him. Again. Which was, of course, never good, however satisfying.
The brief look he gave her though…unsettling in its peace.
Peace and Tayuya had never been included in any one situation together where music hadn’t erased the repelling force that usually forced the two apart - they simply didn’t compute. To see such a sensation on his face…it made her uncomfortable and her eyes darted back to their surveillance of nothing in particular, chin raised that much higher.
The yawn broke the stiffness in the air and only then did she swivel her neck on its axis, letting it return back to its default position as a smirk covered any softness of lip that might have developed in those awkward minutes.
Beer. Beer was good. Beer erased all of this and left fluffily blank memory behind.
She followed his motion, fingers curling and gripping as she sat back in her seat, knees bumping his challengingly.
“I’ll drink you into the ground, boy,” was her final, confident premonition of the none too distant future.
Only time would tell whether it would come to pass or not.
When they had worked their way through her immediate supply and refreshed from next door, Shikamaru found himself more compliant and less complaintive, blood infused with heat and a swimming quality to his head that forewarned of trouble should he decide to stand quickly and walk a straight line. Yet for all of his lack of alcohol-staving weight and experience, he still felt rather grounded and…normal. No excessive chatter, cheer, laughing fits, desire to cuddle or weep.
Still not seeing the real point here, he mentally declared all of this an expensive, heady-tasting pain in the ass. At least he was relaxed, if not mildly annoyed, which was a simple state of being for him in the first place. One thing he could say in its defense was that it seemed to shut up the constant train of thought to a more manageable flow, though that in particular had caused him to lapse more easily into daydreaming in the past fifteen minutes that'd earned him at least three elbows to the ribs to keep drinking.
"Woman," damn, his mouth was dry, "You satisfied yet?" That deeply-etched frown in his still boyish face deepened as he rested an elbow on the table, fingers rubbing at a temple with a can loosely dangling from fingertips extending from the other elbow on his knee.
Sadly, for all her brash resolve, Tayuya had not the physicality to deal with any of the foreign substances she was positively certain that she should have been able to knock back in her own mind. Lazy fingers traced the convex side of a bottle, still vaguely dewy from its incarceration within a refrigerator, and a smattering of damp on a callused pad made her frown slightly.
…it might have been a slightly lopsided frown considering her cheek was very firmly pressed against the solid smoothness of the tabletop, veils of red hiding the valleying of brow and tightening of lips.
“Nah.” A swipe of tongue along dry lips. “You haven’t lost badly enough yet…and…”
The sentence sounded incomplete, some important ending hovering behind a loose tongue and a looser mind. The skinny, dark topped figure across from her was starting to dissolve at the edges - skin and umber and cream flannel all falling into each other.
A set of fingers curled in bemused confusion as Shikamaru suddenly gained dark stripes, ones that didn’t go away when she blinked in a languid attempt to rid her vision of the strange things. The comprehension of eyelashes and heavy, heavy lids didn’t occur to her until her eyes had drifted closed and didn’t open again.
Fingers fell from the bottle, resting half-flexed on the table in an open handed baby’s reach, done for today. Just today.
"…Tch." As much as he knew that look, that alcohol-induced heavy onset of dreams, he was proved he really didn't when she slipped under. Tayuya wasn't a cute girl. Her young face was well-trained as his was to look uncaring in looking peeved, her edges were rough and coloration insulting. Yet knocked out as such, small lips slightly parted, cheek smushed and hair tousled…
He may have admitted temporary cuteness if he didn't know better, or feared reprimand if he so much as thought such an atrocity. Instead he rolled his shoulders and got up with a labored sigh, collecting empty beer vessels with the expertise of a boy who'd cleaned up drunken messes for years. To that fact he was indifferent when he paused, slouched, and extended a hand to brush Tayuya's crimson-stained forelock behind her ear before making off to the kitchen to dispose of things while it slowly dislodged itself to cover her face again.
It was always Chouji who cared for Ino if she fell asleep at an inopportune time in an inappropriate place, yet Shikamaru made do when he drew Tayuya's shoulders up and stooped down, lacing her arms around his neck to hold her wrists together over one shoulder before scooping his free forearm beneath her thighs to hoist her side-saddle against his front.
Once situated in his bed and covered--shucked of her jeans, she'd likely whack him upside the head for that come dawn--he found himself a comfortable position to sit in. It felt too strange to sleep if she had foreign substances in her system.
It was the foreign substances in his that eventually lulled him there without conscious notice, slipping in and out quietly he gleaned enough not to be too complaintive once sunlight spilled in and he found himself lazily watching her, head tipped back against the wall with a palm on her rising and falling covered stomach.
A very slight smirk graced his lips as he traced the skull and cross-swords embellished on the front of her gift shirt. For that, he might not complain that his thigh was asleep due to her restless legs having repositioned awkwardly.
A feather light touch across the fabric over her breastbone was what roused Tayuya halfway from a dream she couldn’t remember and a sleep she didn’t recall slipping into. The tell tale clue of some sort of semi consciousness having been reached was the slight furrow that immediately creased her brow, even before a sliver of pupil contracted to a pinprick in objection to the sunlight filtering through a window that wasn’t her own.
While not completely alien surroundings, it was still disturbing enough to awaken in a bed that wasn’t her own…and just why was there a hand on her stomach?
For that matter, where were her pants?
Such disturbing thoughts were swiftly cast aside in the favour of ‘ow, fuck that hurts’ in quick response to the pounding headache that lingered at the peripheries of her consciousness. Unwilling to wake up further and allow the nagging discomfort to filter in further through layers of dream and sleep, she let that eye slip closed, nudging the hand on her chest away with irritated drowsiness.
One leg already somehow mysteriously draped over his (how on earth did that happen?) she turned onto stomach side with the ginger, sleepy slowness of one who knew a hangover was creeping up on her and unwilling to aggravate it further, burying her face further into his pillow to hide from the light.
“I like my room better,” was her only, grumbled comment into the fluffy muffler before a pained sigh that put a sleep disturbed dog to shame in its eloquence.
"I'm not a pack mule, Tayu, and bed is bed." Actually, that wasn't quite Shikamaru's motto, but it was less troublesome saying that than 'couch is bed and field is bed and barn loft is bed' and so on and so forth. His swatted hand joined the other to crick his knuckles in a gesture full of disregard towards a gesture any who didn't know Tayuya may have taken offense to.
Shifting to lay on his back beside her (how did they always end up in polar opposite directions?) he clasped his fingers behind his head, idly turning his profile towards her to nose her hair, as her face was hidden. Eyes at half mast with that lazy smirk, his voice draped in honey effortlessly boasted; "Just for the record," permeated with a yawn, "I was left conscious."
“Pfft.”
Even Tayuya’s grumbling was done into the pillow and one wondered exactly how she was breathing. Then again, the girl was fond of being perplexing. Or intimidating. And since she’d never managed the latter with Shikamaru, she was forced to go with the first.
Luckily for him, with her face in the pillow, she couldn’t see his dismissive gesture. More growling would have ensued.
She both ignored and quietly resented the gentle attack at her composure, feeling the movement against her hair and squinching herself internally at it.
“Whatever,” she told him gruffly (whoever suggested anything along the lines of ‘grumpy’ or ‘sour grapes’ would have been right, but unable to live long enough to savour their triumph.) “I went easy on you this time because you’re so fucking lame most of the time.”
The redhead sniffed and attempted to worm her way further into the pillow - stabbing sunlight was not something she wanted to deal with this early on.
Too lazy to pursue the subject or really even muster the will to care, he rolled over slightly and pried her shoulder back, worming himself against her front with his other arm snaking beneath his pillow to further pillow her.
"You smell like beer."
His nose urged at her neck beneath her chin, head canting to the side to lip at her neck slowly yet persistently. Subconsciously he withheld from touching her too much, the memory of her reaction to their sleepover back in February still faintly puzzling him.
Not like women made sense in the first place. "Last time I listen to you, woman." Nonetheless, she'd been away too long, their meetings had been too sparse, her loss too disarming once he'd been landed with the comfort of her body just that one time.
He figured it unwise to ruffle her in such a state, yet his fingers wrought themselves in the less glaring roots of her hair to pull firm, holding her fast in silently staking his claim.
She made a protesting sound in the back of her throat, something like a whine directed at being forced further away from sleep, but the sound and subsequent vibrations down the line of her neck subsided when distracted with new sensations that were more alluring, that much more agreeable than the discomfort sunshine caused.
Shikamaru and his habit of manipulating her like a living doll… - part of her grumbled that he should at least ask before controlling her limbs and her position so, but the other side of her laughed outright at the thought. As if he ever would.
Lazy bugger.
The petulant whine, however surprisingly low in pitch, faded off into a softer, indistinct sound as she was gradually placated, hands and arms loosely trapped between her chest and his. With nowhere else to go, she really had no choice other than to press palms up against his sternum - no choice at all in the matter.
“Fuck you.” An automated response, flat and hard, but rather ruined by her slow wiggle, an undulation of body and limbs to shift herself that much closer to him. “As if you ever listened anyway.”
The pull on her hair resulted in her face turning upwards, rising from its usual chin down-brow furrowed position to better suit his intentions.
Why couldn’t he have continued on being lazy so sleep could have continued? Not that she was really complaining, but…but…
Tayuya failed to come up with any definition more fitting and gave up, closing her eyes again in a vaguely welcome defeat.
Men.
With two supposed days away having stretched into some amorphous approximation of a week, to describe Tayuya as restless was probably a fairly apt description if ‘restless’ included morose attempts at tidying a suddenly furniture-filled room or darkly muttered words of a (probably) blush-worthy nature. Enforced contact with the two who had been unkind enough to the world as to spawn her had drained her energy, leaving her more sullen than her usual brand of volatile irritation, ready to snarl at the world. Today, she’d just hiss feebly and turn a stubborn back on the offender.
Mostly, her own mind was responsible for this gloomy mood, a trail of thought shadowing her as she tried vainly to ignore its presence. Accepting such a fact, even putting it aside for consideration, was unacceptable.
Dammit.
Tayuya threw the pillow she had been struggling to get into its case onto the glaringly high bed in disgust, tongue clicking behind her teeth in exasperation. This aura of domesticity - tidying and organising, rearranging and rummaging - set her spine to prickling and the oppressive heat in the room weighed her down further.
A muttered ‘fuck this’ escaping gnawed lips, she turned on her heel abruptly, the tattered hems of her jeans swirling around her ankles and threatening to trip her up as she stumped off into the kitchen. Forgoing shoes just for the hell of it, she allowed herself a brief side trip to the refrigerator to snag a six pack of disgustingly cheap, but wonderfully distracting beer before sliding out of her apartment.
Beyond being subtle now, Tayuya didn’t care who saw her as she rapped harsh knuckles on the door of number nine. So what if it had only been a week? - she only wanted someone to distract her from the housewife-mood that had probably been planted by her mother on the sly.
Beer and an irritating idiot would serve nicely.
If motivating Shikamaru to move during the winter was a task, the hot months brought with them impossibility that escalated with the degrees. His first April in Lysgar was no exception, tenfold worse than the airy lofts of the countryside.
At least the sun was going down.
He didn't know how long he'd lain strewn out on the couch, no longer fresh out of the cold (for Lysgar, normal) shower with a towel beneath his head on the armrest to protect it from the beached seaweed clumps of hair. Eyes just a sliver open, dry lips parted just slightly with hands splayed over his bare stomach, the fan beside him recycling stale air.
Balancing on the precipice between sleep and waking until the sharp drill triggered his heartbeat, that feeling like falling in dreams when you're not. Too sharp for regular visitors of number nine. Shikamaru rolled upright in a single fluid motion, settling his hands on his hips and rolling back his spine by means of a stretch, muttering something about nuisances and the bothersome levels of getting up. Bare feet gingerly padded beneath crème flannels, rumpling his hair--dry and stuck together now, disentangling it--until one hand came to the doorknob.
"…Oh. You're back." Lamely finished, owlishly blinking now at the girl who treated the halls like an extension of her own apartment in those bare feet. More importantly, at her luggage. A fine eyebrow scaled upwards, his expression one of confusion and mild distaste.
He stepped back to let her in all the same--his mother always did say he had no common sense--yet this was his favorite nuisance, after all.
Mulish brows snapped together, lips curling as the familiar blend of exasperation and irritation at his somewhat apathetical nature sidled back into the space within her brain that had been empty for the past week. A snort was emitted as she shouldered past him, sharp elbow catching him in the side, just out of spite. “Nice to see you as well.” A watered down version of her usual glare, only softened because she really fucking needed a haircut - the length was ridiculous now and the fringe was particularly annoying. As to why she didn’t just pin it back and out of the way…this was Tayuya. Hair skills escaped her.
And did she really look like the sort to have hair grips on hand?
He seemed to be half dressed more often than not in his everyday interactions, though dry and haystack-esque hair proved that she hadn’t interrupted any sort of bathing activity.
His haphazard greeting riled her sensibilities somehow - he clearly hadn’t improved through absence, but she beat it back down. Choosing not to follow that up, irritation was worked off and shown simply by her making her own unasked way to the table, dumping her prize down with a metallic chink and the promising sound of sloshing liquid within the cans.
“You’re still a wuss,” she started, pulling up threads of a conversation from weeks past and expecting him to understand. “I’m back. Beer.” He was a genius, so the clipped, erratic sentences were bound to make sense of course.
Tayuya folded her arms across her chest, backing up until the edge of the table rested against the small of her back, legs able to cross at the ankle now there was added support. Since she did actually possess a minute degree of subtlety, surprising as that may have been, the girl took the opportunity to scan him from beneath pseudo-casually lowered lids, watching him through dark lashes.
Faced with both her and her gift so abruptly, what would be his response?
His targeted side was plastered automatically by his hand, rubbing without really caring about the snipe as he pivoted and closed the door. Her entrance was enough to prove her staying, so he barely bothered being surprised that she didn't even check for prior company or roommates.
Genius enough to do the math--there was more drink there than social ounces--he merely trundled over her vague conversation and worked out the last of the more annoying knots in his hair, leaving the rest to gravity. "I never claimed to be anything to the contrary." Comfortable enough with her to amble on past without explanation, he nudged his bedroom door open while yawning. What time was it, anyways? Tossing a slightly-raised octave back her way as he rifled through his belongings, he dug out a flimsy, worn-through t-shirt. "I thought you were going to be--" returning to the kitchen, voice dropped "--gone just the weekend?"
Not that he'd counted the days. Nor regretted never requesting a number to check up on when he'd come to the conclusion that it was way too long to be considered even a long weekend anymore. He came to a slouching stop before her, thumbs hooked in the hem of his flannels with an expectant expression.
Tayuya hadn’t shifted from her lounging pose against the solid sturdiness of her backrest, eyes merely tracking his skinny frame’s path across the room before it was hidden from her sight. Left bereft of anything to focus on, she steadied a palm on the table’s corner, feeling the blunt bite as she swiped an idle thumb over the textured edge.
When he returned clothed (however thin the garment may have been) she tipped her head to one side, lips twisting in a vague expression that was hazy in its exact nature.
“Kind of depended on when my Dad could drop me back and he didn’t offer until yesterday. Didn’t leave me much choice.” It was habit now to paint the picture more one sided than it had really been - if push had come to shove (or swear to sensibility) all it would have taken were a few short, sharp words on her behalf and a mute parent would have driven her back, bed and all.
To try and explain that, maybe, staying home, staying away, had perhaps been the easiest option where the atmosphere wasn’t exactly comforting, but definitely familiar, would have been to difficult. In no way a family girl (or an anything girl, for that matter), Tayuya couldn’t and didn’t want to elaborate on how strange it had been to sleep in the room she’d grown up in again, with wallpaper faded and curtains changed, but still the same at essence, yet so damn alien. So much to try and say…
“Probably worried about traffic.”
…and left unsaid.
So much was left unsaid and conveyed subtly that their relationship was like a song without lyrics. Even if Shikamaru was used to studying his opponents in chess he had never translated it before to everyday body language, a place where signals often got lost in white noise to him, yet even still at her vague quirk did his own head cant slightly, eyes narrowing and brow furrowing. If he'd been looking for it, he may have translated seamlessly.
"I see." That was that, family matters best left to their participants. He knew how much he was irked by his own and had a fair clue as to her relationship with hers, so he pursued that no further. Instead he planted a hand on the table between her hip and hand, leaning forward and reaching the other arm around to drag her version of a care package back, umber eyes staring through her fringe. "So what's with all this?"
Tayuya quirked a brow in response, chin jutting in a half stubborn, half challenging gesture that mixed with flashing eyes to convey her warning that, should he make anything funny of her answer, bodily harm would come about as a result.
“I felt like seeing you.” It may have been clipped and gruff, the words more like weapons than endearments, but peculiar in their bluntness when it came to admitting want or its ilk. Her free hand hooked into the puckered edge of the plastic, on the other side to which he held, securing her ownership over the beverages. “And I wanted to find out just how shit you are at holding booze down myself.”
A tug of the hand pulled the six-pack away from his grasp and she cradled it in the crook of a bare arm, feeling the cool weight against her stomach as she eyed him levelly. For all her apparent calm her nerves were singing with nervous tension, hidden beneath the need to appear casual, to show no sign of weakness, leave no gap for ridicule.
“Problem?”
He must have been going soft, for those five words sent warmed pulses down his spine in waves, eyebrows threatening to rise off his brow before he steeled his expression, trying very, very hard not to smile. The very corners of his mouth quirked and twitched just slightly as he kept his voice level. "None at all."
Not that he really remembered much of his reaction to alcohol from his experience post phone message with Byakuya, just that it made him susceptible to actually losing chess, enough to alert him that he didn't want to be under such a loss of centeredness again anytime soon. When one hand lost its rest he replaced it lightly on her hip, canting his head to leave the ghost of an appreciative kiss on the side of her neck before moving away and swerving around a chair to laze back in, one foot planted with the other heel resting away.
"Though you're assuming I'll go along with it." Yeah, he'd grown used to downing whatever herbal concoction his mother ladled down his throat without complaint (within earshot). Yet he still wasn't one for really listening to anybody save Chouji.
Tayuya made no attempts to hide the sly grin that settled onto her face like a satisfied cat when lips brushed her throat - a week away had given her plenty of time to think as she’d lain listless and bored on a forgotten shade of forget-me-not blue eiderdown from years ago, and her conclusions had been such that she had come to think that, maybe, it wasn’t so bad to suggest she enjoyed such things.
Particularly if it encouraged him to do similar things more often.
Despite her usual distaste for chairs, she followed his example and actually seated herself. One bare foot rose up on a cocked knee to flatten its arch against her inner thigh, a lazy arm slung around the back of the chair - even while sitting she was skewed.
“Didn’t think you’d wanna lose to a girl,” she told him, tone almost as playfully malicious as her earlier grin had been. Practiced fingers cracked a beer open upon freeing it from its plastic confines, the spitting fizz from a can that had been shaken a bit on its journey home dusting the table lightly. A wrinkle of her nose was aimed in his direction, supercilious and superior. “Wimp. You’re such a pussy sometimes.”
He wasn't being scolded for that? Shikamaru watched her warily as she reclined in his wake, following that tone of voice. Slightly suspicious, yet shrugging it off as he waved a hand dismissively. "Tch, I wouldn't lose to a girl." Not that he felt the particular urge to prove himself, yet it looked as though she'd start the battle with him or not.
She fought dirty.
Eh well, rum and beer were vastly different and it wasn't as if he hadn't handled one socially before. He could play along in calculation and mediation. Drawing himself forward to notch elbows into the recesses of knees, he squared his shoulders and scowled in feigned boredom. "The hell does one win drinking, anyways?" He knew his own father often took a shot for each time his mother whacked him upside the head for spanking her, yet he liked to forget that and not try and figure out the game behind that, especially when Ino's father took a shot for each as well.
“Sure you wouldn’t,” came her glib answer, spoken over the rim of her beer in a cloying manner that was most eerie coming from our usual little bundle of grumpiness. Taking the piss clearly brought out her…well, not best side, but certainly a different one. “But I don’t have any assurances of that, moron.”
This banter was…pleasant. She couldn’t find another word for it. Light and wicked and fun…geez. She was slipping. Actively being disinterested and unfriendly was getting harder and harder each day, but who really gave? It wasn’t as if she lost anything by occasionally smiling when she was attempting to snip away at his ego, however unsuccessfully.
Clearly, some epiphany had been reached, however mundane. Heaven help us all.
Her smile turned feline-smug when he took the drink she’d been pressing on him - her haunches almost wiggled to back up the cat connotations, but it could have just been her making her seated position more comfortable while she took a derisive swig from her can.
“Well,” Tayuya told him helpfully, “If you’re left conscious, you win. Or you don’t fall off of your chair.” That could almost be counted as humour, couldn’t it? A spider web of creases marked the skin at the corners of her eyes, these laugh lines alien to the previously smooth surfaces there, though the laugh was still at his expense - taunting. “And don’t worry. There’re a few more packs down there so we can both get pissed out of our minds. Yours must be stuffy anyway.”
Lovely.
Shikamaru echoed his expression of distaste at her answer before shifting to one of half-exasperation as he worked the cap back and forth. "I still see no point." He tipped the heady, hissing concoction back nevertheless, screwing up his features when the fizz attacked his cheeks and nose. He didn't usually drink soda, when he sought caffeine it was in a more relaxing (and quiet), time-release tea form rather than a sugar rush.
Brushing the backs of his knuckles across his upper lip, he rolled his tongue against his palate before speaking. "In the meanwhile?" All right, maybe not such a grand idea to distract himself from pacing, yet this was all nonsense to him anyways and he was more keen on her than the drink.
This was alien and a little worrying in such--her smiling was a rare pleasure to see yet it put him slightly off ease. Like he was being led into a trap that he willingly treaded into, though really, knowingly participating in troublesome distractions was something he regularly did with her.
Thus he leaned back, draping an elbow over the back of his chair and sliding a leg forward to hook his ankle around her planted one with a hint of playfulness to follow up his question. Then he took another draught.
The look Tayuya sent him down her nose was practically scornful, with a blistering edge for his mentality when it served to make him this…bland in these fields. “Idiot.” Scathingly spoken, she rolled her eyes to alleviate the harshness of the comment, though the underlying sentiment was certainly of the party that he should give in to all of this. “If you don’t see the point, you’re thinking too much.”
Did he even ever stop?
A dab hand at this, Tayuya could and did take a gulp, unfazed by the tingling of the draught as it slid down. She liked the prickles, the bitter after taste, the exothermic heat it seemed to produce.
She shrugged, a roll and fall of the joints there as she nursed her can. The angle at which she was sitting meant that, with the inclination of her head, loose waves of crimson came to hang forwards, curtaining her head. If he cared to look, the vibrant vermillion had been ejected from her crown, a visible line of muted red appearing at her roots - telltale signs of her natural colour bleeding through since she hadn’t renewed the garish shade she had adopted as her own.
“Hear you’re losing a roommate.”
Kiba’s departure was surprisingly disturbing, but hadn’t really settled in yet. More of a distant thought for her since he was but a casual acquaintance, though the one who had caused hers and Shikamaru’s paths to meet, she knew that he and the lad opposite of her had shared history. Perhaps this was her form of a condolence.
The hook and slide of bony ankle around her own made her toes flex involuntarily, the thin ligaments showing along the instep of her foot briefly before they subsided and didn’t look so skeletal, prominent as they were when held like that. A shadow of a smile before she looked deliberately bored, the only sign of acknowledgement being the movement of her toes to swipe lazily at the soft material of his pants.
"Tch, no kidding. Pain in the ass." Overthinking it, that is. If so many people, such as pretty much the entire building, found it so amazing, there had to be some small merit. He liked the taste well enough, his father giving him half-pint samples every Friday of his childhood; it just wasn't something he ever cottoned onto. Especially in lieu of feeling practically fatherless with his old man haunting the bars more than his home, yet that was a touchy subject and so he derailed his train of thought back to the siren serving the drink.
Leaving him nearly tempted to reach out and run his fingers through her hair if he didn't know better (touching Tayuya's hair unawares was a bad idea when she had a beverage in hand) and she hadn't directed the conversation to Kiba. He frowned into his can for a moment, running his fingers through his own hair instead.
"Mm, yeah. Place's going to be significantly lonelier, though I believe we'll still have dogs and Hana since she has the job here. Chouji seems to be working longer; too, at least his school break's coming up."
Rather than looking back up, he took a longer drink. Shikamaru could be more than asocial, caring little about developing new ties, yet the company he kept was all true and blue and they meant everything to him. Lifting his head, he offered a small smile while drawing his chair a little closer, knees inter-tangling lightly. "There's sure to be lots of situational changes with the weather and school letting out though, it's only to be expected. Besides," he licked his lips, creasing his eyes minutely in the hint of a deeper, somewhat wry smile, "you're here for now."
What that meant he didn't fully grasp, only that she'd somehow weaseled into the ranks of his inner ring.
Tayuya rolled her eyes, though it lacked any real exasperation - more a formality that was expected of her by now. “Still keeping three of the furry things? Hard luck there.”
…they weren’t so bad - they’d practically been friendly when she and Hana were up on the roof though that was probably directly proportional to the ear scratches she had dealt out.
Geez. Her boy was lonely. Kind of, sort of, maybe? She wasn’t exactly skilled at ascertaining such things, but the clues were in his eyes, his tone…way back (or so it seemed) when they’d first been abandoned in a room together, conversation had been awkward on both halves. Though hardly as actively antisocial as she was in that he didn’t discourage people from approaching, there was a willingness to settle with what he already had that she’d picked up on.
Unwilling to soften in front of him enough to soothe the lad, she settled for a condescending pat on the head instead, though her fingers took the time to test the texture of his hair before the appendage retreated and her expression warned him that it had never happened. “Poor boy,” she told him dismissively, shifting conversation onwards as she set her now empty can down, eying the next one with a pensive expression unfocusing her eyes.
Dark pupils slid sideways, watching him from the corner of her vision with sceptical suspicion at the words he’d graced her with in all the ambiguity.
“God.” Exasperation tinged her tone, a tooth biting into the corner of her lower lip briefly as she knocked her knees against his, enough to make the joints ache where sharp contact brought skin covered bone into contact with an equally hard partner. “You make it sound like I’m going somewhere. Fucking idiot.” Her sigh was noisy, an eloquent statement on exactly what she thought of foolish men who came out with silly comments like that. “You’re not so bad and you’re decent in bed-“ (even if they’d never actually carried anything out in bed and had preferred household appliances instead) “-so unless you piss me off, you can probably convince me to keep you for a bit.”
The verbal diarrhoea surprised even herself and she pulled back, the fleeting expression of disgust more aimed at herself than anyone else. Like a bird settling ruffled feathers back into place, she looked away at nothing in particular, setting her face in messy profile with wisps of hair everywhere and chin slightly tilted up to reveal the thin press of her lips (to hold back words?)
“Whatever. Fewer people in your apartment means fewer people to bother us.”
No, she hadn’t forgotten the Ino incident - probably never would, just as she would never continue to blame him for it.
The manner by which he had come to glean information about Tayuya was in shallow dives, an albatross picking off tiny minnows with the great shadow of some unknown, intimidating leviathan leagues and leagues below. Each time she let a fraction more spill out she retreated as though burned, harboring something he could only begin to fathom.
It invoked his first real desires to put his mind to work, to try and evaluate the multiple tiny little soft spots to ascertain which were untouchable buttons and which he could get away with to chisel his way in.
She must have spellbound him with that first melody, for she put him through all kinds of out of sorts.
Silent gratitude for her…could the word 'comfort' even be associated with the angular, sharp-tongued girl? Whatever it was, he spared her the pain of being reminded she even did it by simply taking strength from it and shrugging off whatever had inspired the action.
Yet he couldn't help but falter at her monologue. It had been one sentence, yes, but far more verbose in Tayuese than her natural, clipped speech. He'd only meant he was uncertain of her plans and future, of when she'd flutter off next. Even if it was only for a weekend-turned week. He wasn't about to correct her, an embarrassed Tayuya usually led to frozen projectiles, yet he could only look at her unstilted in a quiet sort of appreciative awe. Then he snapped out of it, forcing a yawn to screw his face and resettle the mood.
"Makes things less troublesome, if you put it that way."
He then polished off the dregs of his beer with a cryptic smirk and reached for another. He may be growing fond of being a kept man, but he was not going to lose to a girl.
A sideways on look greeted his casual acceptance of her words and while nothing relaxed visibly, some wire thin knot of something akin to worry undid within her chest. Thank fucking God he hadn’t pressed further into the box with the tightly closed lid because she might have just had to hit him. Again. Which was, of course, never good, however satisfying.
The brief look he gave her though…unsettling in its peace.
Peace and Tayuya had never been included in any one situation together where music hadn’t erased the repelling force that usually forced the two apart - they simply didn’t compute. To see such a sensation on his face…it made her uncomfortable and her eyes darted back to their surveillance of nothing in particular, chin raised that much higher.
The yawn broke the stiffness in the air and only then did she swivel her neck on its axis, letting it return back to its default position as a smirk covered any softness of lip that might have developed in those awkward minutes.
Beer. Beer was good. Beer erased all of this and left fluffily blank memory behind.
She followed his motion, fingers curling and gripping as she sat back in her seat, knees bumping his challengingly.
“I’ll drink you into the ground, boy,” was her final, confident premonition of the none too distant future.
Only time would tell whether it would come to pass or not.
When they had worked their way through her immediate supply and refreshed from next door, Shikamaru found himself more compliant and less complaintive, blood infused with heat and a swimming quality to his head that forewarned of trouble should he decide to stand quickly and walk a straight line. Yet for all of his lack of alcohol-staving weight and experience, he still felt rather grounded and…normal. No excessive chatter, cheer, laughing fits, desire to cuddle or weep.
Still not seeing the real point here, he mentally declared all of this an expensive, heady-tasting pain in the ass. At least he was relaxed, if not mildly annoyed, which was a simple state of being for him in the first place. One thing he could say in its defense was that it seemed to shut up the constant train of thought to a more manageable flow, though that in particular had caused him to lapse more easily into daydreaming in the past fifteen minutes that'd earned him at least three elbows to the ribs to keep drinking.
"Woman," damn, his mouth was dry, "You satisfied yet?" That deeply-etched frown in his still boyish face deepened as he rested an elbow on the table, fingers rubbing at a temple with a can loosely dangling from fingertips extending from the other elbow on his knee.
Sadly, for all her brash resolve, Tayuya had not the physicality to deal with any of the foreign substances she was positively certain that she should have been able to knock back in her own mind. Lazy fingers traced the convex side of a bottle, still vaguely dewy from its incarceration within a refrigerator, and a smattering of damp on a callused pad made her frown slightly.
…it might have been a slightly lopsided frown considering her cheek was very firmly pressed against the solid smoothness of the tabletop, veils of red hiding the valleying of brow and tightening of lips.
“Nah.” A swipe of tongue along dry lips. “You haven’t lost badly enough yet…and…”
The sentence sounded incomplete, some important ending hovering behind a loose tongue and a looser mind. The skinny, dark topped figure across from her was starting to dissolve at the edges - skin and umber and cream flannel all falling into each other.
A set of fingers curled in bemused confusion as Shikamaru suddenly gained dark stripes, ones that didn’t go away when she blinked in a languid attempt to rid her vision of the strange things. The comprehension of eyelashes and heavy, heavy lids didn’t occur to her until her eyes had drifted closed and didn’t open again.
Fingers fell from the bottle, resting half-flexed on the table in an open handed baby’s reach, done for today. Just today.
"…Tch." As much as he knew that look, that alcohol-induced heavy onset of dreams, he was proved he really didn't when she slipped under. Tayuya wasn't a cute girl. Her young face was well-trained as his was to look uncaring in looking peeved, her edges were rough and coloration insulting. Yet knocked out as such, small lips slightly parted, cheek smushed and hair tousled…
He may have admitted temporary cuteness if he didn't know better, or feared reprimand if he so much as thought such an atrocity. Instead he rolled his shoulders and got up with a labored sigh, collecting empty beer vessels with the expertise of a boy who'd cleaned up drunken messes for years. To that fact he was indifferent when he paused, slouched, and extended a hand to brush Tayuya's crimson-stained forelock behind her ear before making off to the kitchen to dispose of things while it slowly dislodged itself to cover her face again.
It was always Chouji who cared for Ino if she fell asleep at an inopportune time in an inappropriate place, yet Shikamaru made do when he drew Tayuya's shoulders up and stooped down, lacing her arms around his neck to hold her wrists together over one shoulder before scooping his free forearm beneath her thighs to hoist her side-saddle against his front.
Once situated in his bed and covered--shucked of her jeans, she'd likely whack him upside the head for that come dawn--he found himself a comfortable position to sit in. It felt too strange to sleep if she had foreign substances in her system.
It was the foreign substances in his that eventually lulled him there without conscious notice, slipping in and out quietly he gleaned enough not to be too complaintive once sunlight spilled in and he found himself lazily watching her, head tipped back against the wall with a palm on her rising and falling covered stomach.
A very slight smirk graced his lips as he traced the skull and cross-swords embellished on the front of her gift shirt. For that, he might not complain that his thigh was asleep due to her restless legs having repositioned awkwardly.
A feather light touch across the fabric over her breastbone was what roused Tayuya halfway from a dream she couldn’t remember and a sleep she didn’t recall slipping into. The tell tale clue of some sort of semi consciousness having been reached was the slight furrow that immediately creased her brow, even before a sliver of pupil contracted to a pinprick in objection to the sunlight filtering through a window that wasn’t her own.
While not completely alien surroundings, it was still disturbing enough to awaken in a bed that wasn’t her own…and just why was there a hand on her stomach?
For that matter, where were her pants?
Such disturbing thoughts were swiftly cast aside in the favour of ‘ow, fuck that hurts’ in quick response to the pounding headache that lingered at the peripheries of her consciousness. Unwilling to wake up further and allow the nagging discomfort to filter in further through layers of dream and sleep, she let that eye slip closed, nudging the hand on her chest away with irritated drowsiness.
One leg already somehow mysteriously draped over his (how on earth did that happen?) she turned onto stomach side with the ginger, sleepy slowness of one who knew a hangover was creeping up on her and unwilling to aggravate it further, burying her face further into his pillow to hide from the light.
“I like my room better,” was her only, grumbled comment into the fluffy muffler before a pained sigh that put a sleep disturbed dog to shame in its eloquence.
"I'm not a pack mule, Tayu, and bed is bed." Actually, that wasn't quite Shikamaru's motto, but it was less troublesome saying that than 'couch is bed and field is bed and barn loft is bed' and so on and so forth. His swatted hand joined the other to crick his knuckles in a gesture full of disregard towards a gesture any who didn't know Tayuya may have taken offense to.
Shifting to lay on his back beside her (how did they always end up in polar opposite directions?) he clasped his fingers behind his head, idly turning his profile towards her to nose her hair, as her face was hidden. Eyes at half mast with that lazy smirk, his voice draped in honey effortlessly boasted; "Just for the record," permeated with a yawn, "I was left conscious."
“Pfft.”
Even Tayuya’s grumbling was done into the pillow and one wondered exactly how she was breathing. Then again, the girl was fond of being perplexing. Or intimidating. And since she’d never managed the latter with Shikamaru, she was forced to go with the first.
Luckily for him, with her face in the pillow, she couldn’t see his dismissive gesture. More growling would have ensued.
She both ignored and quietly resented the gentle attack at her composure, feeling the movement against her hair and squinching herself internally at it.
“Whatever,” she told him gruffly (whoever suggested anything along the lines of ‘grumpy’ or ‘sour grapes’ would have been right, but unable to live long enough to savour their triumph.) “I went easy on you this time because you’re so fucking lame most of the time.”
The redhead sniffed and attempted to worm her way further into the pillow - stabbing sunlight was not something she wanted to deal with this early on.
Too lazy to pursue the subject or really even muster the will to care, he rolled over slightly and pried her shoulder back, worming himself against her front with his other arm snaking beneath his pillow to further pillow her.
"You smell like beer."
His nose urged at her neck beneath her chin, head canting to the side to lip at her neck slowly yet persistently. Subconsciously he withheld from touching her too much, the memory of her reaction to their sleepover back in February still faintly puzzling him.
Not like women made sense in the first place. "Last time I listen to you, woman." Nonetheless, she'd been away too long, their meetings had been too sparse, her loss too disarming once he'd been landed with the comfort of her body just that one time.
He figured it unwise to ruffle her in such a state, yet his fingers wrought themselves in the less glaring roots of her hair to pull firm, holding her fast in silently staking his claim.
She made a protesting sound in the back of her throat, something like a whine directed at being forced further away from sleep, but the sound and subsequent vibrations down the line of her neck subsided when distracted with new sensations that were more alluring, that much more agreeable than the discomfort sunshine caused.
Shikamaru and his habit of manipulating her like a living doll… - part of her grumbled that he should at least ask before controlling her limbs and her position so, but the other side of her laughed outright at the thought. As if he ever would.
Lazy bugger.
The petulant whine, however surprisingly low in pitch, faded off into a softer, indistinct sound as she was gradually placated, hands and arms loosely trapped between her chest and his. With nowhere else to go, she really had no choice other than to press palms up against his sternum - no choice at all in the matter.
“Fuck you.” An automated response, flat and hard, but rather ruined by her slow wiggle, an undulation of body and limbs to shift herself that much closer to him. “As if you ever listened anyway.”
The pull on her hair resulted in her face turning upwards, rising from its usual chin down-brow furrowed position to better suit his intentions.
Why couldn’t he have continued on being lazy so sleep could have continued? Not that she was really complaining, but…but…
Tayuya failed to come up with any definition more fitting and gave up, closing her eyes again in a vaguely welcome defeat.
Men.