[Log][Tem & Kibbles][I Cannot Quit You So Quickly - Part 2]
Who: Kiba and Temari (cameo from Akamaru!)
Where: Tem's bedroom, the summer house of righteous and awesome
When: Sometime between July 7th and 13th 1988
What: Tem and Kiba relapse. And then talk.
Warnings: SEXY SEXY FAIL, Furious banging, brain breaking miscommunication.
Kiba sighed neutrally, fingertips snaking idly through her hair in a somewhat tentative offer of comfort that went beyond their norm. This was not to say that they were stand-offish nor reserved around each other, but usually they found safety and a modicum of restraint in unspoken boundaries, a wordless agreement that this and this was allowed, but that and that was not. Every now and again, however, it felt like one of them almost crossed the line, and neither of them was sure where that would lead. Well. Kiba wasn't, at any rate. It was never something he'd had to deal with, after all.
Quiet moments between them like this made him wonder what it'd be like.
Pulling himself out of his head, Kiba forced himself to just relax and enjoy the silence, the way Tem's body felt stretched out over his, the feel of her lips on his skin. Guilt and confusion kept trying to knock; he ignored them. Why bother bringing himself down? That'd happen soon enough. "Mmm." Maybe if he tried hard enough, he could freeze time right about...now. That might be sort of nice for a while.
The blonde purred under the delicious stroke of fingers through her messy hair, her ribs shivering faintly with the vibration of the sound. She felt vaguely like a big cat taking a nap in the sun, that mix and level of drowsy, warm and content. Surely Kiba knew that he wasn't allowed to make her feel this flat out good in her skin, that he wasn't allowed to make her like him more and more whenever they spent time together. Especially when she knew how easily he could discard moments like these (the memory of that late night scuffle in the kitchen a few weeks ago leaked from her brain like melting ice, the cold water rolling drip by drip down her spine).
The hand that had been resting flat on his pectoral slid over his shoulder and up his neck to cup his jaw as she sat up a touch. Gently, she tilted his face towards her and pressed her lips to his, stealing a languorous kiss. Stealing a few more seconds of hazy bliss before she let it go. After a long moment, she pulled away but didn't settle back down against Kiba's solid frame.
Steadily, her soft green eyes hardened into a mildly perplexed frown. "So...What's up?" she asked inelegantly as the afternoon started to gel in her consciousness and she realized just how suddenly Kiba had appeared at her bedside. Kiba didn't really come upstairs often, and never to visit with her, without a specific reason or motivation. And given his earlier look of surprise, she somehow doubted today's motivation had been sexual frustration.
He wanted another kiss like that. Hell, when he thought about it, Kiba didn't think he'd ever been kissed that way before, by anyone. It sent slow, warm pulses down his spine to curl his feet, as if in a futile effort to lock it into him. He followed her up for brief, confused nanosecond before slumping back onto the pillows as nonchalantly as he could, tucking his hands behind his head with a sheepish smile. "Well. I just came up to borrow somethin' new to listen to," he explained, trying to find the right mood to laugh but somehow falling short of the mark. "Um. But. Got a little distracted." Yeah, and that was the understatement of the century. Was she angry? No, that wasn't it. But this was definitely a very weird atmosphere between them.
Possibly the fact that she was cheating on her boyfriend had something to do with it. And something in him tried to say that her doing so with him, while listening to him and getting off to a picture of him was a fairly important clue, but Kiba just couldn't quite bring himself to fit that into the puzzle. They were friends. Just friends. Sexy friends, to be sure, but still just friends. He didn't do the relationship thing, Tem didn't want one with him anyway. That was how it worked. And yet...
And yet, indeed. Kiba looked up at her, lips pursing slightly as he vaguely considered this conundrum. What had happened here? What was going on? What... "What is...this?" he queried softly, glancing at the rumpled bedsheets and the photo on the wall. His traitorous mouth took over as soon as he'd opened it, adding "And what about...Seb?"
And why did that name make him feel somehow dirty? Kiba didn't dislike Seb. Well, no, maybe he did. He was sort of interfering with his sex life, after all. Or had been. Should still be. He'd also dragged Tem away from Kiba's birthday party reasonably early, depriving him of the presence of one of his best friends. Yeah, that must be it. The presence of Tem's boyfriend in her life was dragging awkwardness and uncertainty between them even without being there.
Just another reason to steer clear of relationships, really.
Music? Kiba had wanted to come listen to records? Temari’s lightly swollen lips pulled into a bright smile that unveiled her usually well hidden dimples and she started to lean forward again, fully intending to steal his lips for a little bit longer. But he kept talking before she could stop him and his words punctured the moment of light-hearted joy that had swelled in her ribcage at the prospect of spending the rest of the evening listening to records and hanging out. They hadn't spent much time together over the past few weeks, not since he'd asked her to shave his mohawk. They'd seen each other plenty, what with the play and gigs and his birthday just last week, but it was never just the two of them and there was never really any sense of them connecting even with the crowd. She missed their friendship as much as she'd missed his body.
The sudden 'pop' of her mood echoed so loudly in her ears that for a second she thought it had come from outside rather than in. Her smile faltered and then fell all together as she sat up fully, a frown weighing down her face once more. She followed his gaze around the bed, stretched it to her tape machine and the clothes on the floor, added it to the feel of his body beneath her and soft within her, the smell of sweat, sex and the breeze filtering in through the open window. What is this? This particular moment was an accident, but only in that she hadn't intended it to happen, not that she retrospectively didn't want it to have happened. Beyond that...she didn't really know. She couldn't answer that for any of their encounters, and had deliberately avoided trying to. She'd thought Kiba had been as well. So why was he asking all of a sudden? Why did they suddenly need to be explained? And how was she supposed to explain something she didn't understand in a way that didn't scare him or hurt his feelings?
And what about Seb? The blonde guitarist sighed heavily and braced her hands on Kiba's ridged stomach as she pushed herself up onto her knees, disengaging their bodies. She moved off him, shifting to sit with her back against the wall running the length of her bed and facing the balcony. "This is..." she combed her mind for words, one hand mussing the short strands of her hair as she denied her urge to reach across Kiba to grab the pack of Marlboros on her bedside table. "I don't know, Kiba," she admitted finally. "This is, at the very least, the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Seb," she tried to joke lightly, head dropping back against the posters plastered to her wall. "But I've been thinking about breaking up with him for a while now anyway, so don't let that bother you."
He felt like a complete bastard watching the happy sunshine on her face flare and die - trust him to ruin such a rare miracle, right? - but Kiba was sort of used to that. He had this bad habit of letting people down. For some reason they seemed to keep expecting that to change, and he was trying, really he was, but right when he had what he wanted within reach something in him just flipped and it all ended up in ashes. No matter how much he wanted to hold onto it.
Before he really consciously knew it he'd turned and shuffled closer to her, curling around to put his head in her lap and link his hands over her knees. "Mmm." He could feel the sound rumble back at him off her skin, almost leaping back into his voicebox. He didn't want to let her go just yet. They never just...chilled out like this. Especially not naked, although for once that was really irrelevant. Kiba let his eyes drift shut, feeling his lashes drag down the skin of her thigh as he snuggled in a little further.
"Why? What's up?"
Kiba was somewhat surprised to find that he was truly, genuinely interested in knowing what was going on.
The smile found its way back to Temari's lips, a little one that was softer around the edges, as Kiba settled in her lap and one of her hands started idly combing its fingers through his short hair. Maybe Kiba was the cat, rather than her, she thought idly as she contemplated his unusual behaviour. For a heartbeat she wondered if he'd missed her too and was trying to make up for it with a sudden wave of affection. On the next she pushed the thought from her mind. If she started to think along those lines, she'd get her hopes up (for what, she was avoiding determining, but something). Hanging her hopes on Kiba was an all around bad idea because if nothing else, he didn't want them.
"A lot of things..." she replied contemplatively, eyes wandering back to the sky out over the balcony outside. "We don't really like each other's friends, we don't socialize in the same way, we're not interested in achieving similar goals...he doesn't show affection, even in private..." it was easy enough to enumerate the many ways in which their lives just were not syncing up, at all. But those were mostly all things that Temari would be willing to work on with the right person. She took a deep breath and decided to spit out the real reason. "When I'm with him, I feel like he's not actually interested in me as anything more than a concept. Like...I'm only worthwhile on an abstract level and the concrete reality, the flesh and blood, the bruises and scrapes, me as a woman underneath my ideals...I guess it sort of feels like none of that matters." But it mattered quite a lot to her. Temari was a woman who had fought tooth and nail for her recognized existence as a fully faceted human being and she was never going to let anyone take that away from her again. It was becoming clearer and clearer to her that, while Seb wasn't trying to limit her in anyway, he was judging the worth of each facet and picking the ones that mattered to him, rather than accepting the full package. This was irreconcilable to Temari, especially given they'd only been together for maybe a month and hadn't been particularly good friends in the first place.
"Huh." Kiba mulled his way through this for a while, enjoying the affectionate movements of her fingers through his hair and the lull of peace that had re-enacted its bubble around them. The more he heard about Tem and Seb's relationship, the less it made sense to him, and it really surprised him - almost to the point of shock - that she'd essentially shackled herself to a man who wasn't appreciative of all of her. Granted, there were a lot of depths and secret pockets to every aspect of her, and she probably kept most of them carefully hidden, but wasn't that sort of the point of a deep and meaningful relationship in the first place? To get to know the Significant Other better than anybody else, inside and out, mind-body-soul?
Or maybe he'd been reading too many of Kakashi's books and they were rotting his brain.
He reached around his head to wrap his fingers gently around her wrist, just liking the extra touch. "So why'd you guys get together in the first place?" It didn't occur to him that he was prying, or that Tem might not want him to be asking this sort of stuff. She'd tell him what she wanted to, and keep quiet on anything she didn't. Tem was pretty uncomplicated like that.
Temari hummed thoughtfully as she considered her answer to that particular question. She had a lot of reasons, complicated ones which explained why she'd started dating again in the first place and simpler ones that explained why Seb in particular, but she was in a slightly sticky situation when it came to explaining them to Kiba. If she had learned anything from her interactions with Sasuke over the past year, it was that it was very easy to hurt other people accidentally with poor word choice and seeing as it would be pretty easy to blame some of her more complicated reasons on Kiba, she needed to tread carefully.
"It was really just that he asked and I couldn't think of a reason to say no," she answered finally. "Our acquaintance circles overlap a bit in the areas I tend to neglect with my close friendships. For example, we're both avid news followers, so I thought it would be nice to build something with someone I could talk to about stuff like that. And he's quiet, which I like sometimes but don't indulge often because my normal circle is pretty outgoing," she explained quietly as she noted a mild color shift in the sky outside. "I didn't really have anything to lose in getting to know him better, and I had a reasonable amount to gain. Plus, Seb could have worked out great. That potential was still there in the beginning."
It was kind of weird to be discussing this with Kiba, especially given their earlier activities. But it was also kind of nice. They very rarely actually talked about anything and she'd always felt a touch slighted by that because he definitely talked to his other friends. But she was probably equally a fault in that, so there was no point to making a fuss about it. She'd just take what she could get and enjoy it while she had it, which about summed up her approach to Kiba altogether.
"But it's just not working out, huh?" Kiba pursed his lips and wriggled onto his back once more, looking up at her thoughtfully. Regardless of his opinion on Seb, he didn't like the thought of Temari being unhappy. She worked so hard for so many things and yet always made time to help anybody who needed her; surely it was only fair she get what she'd earned?
Except all too often that seemed to rest on other people. And people were selfish fuckers who denied Tem her rewards.
Kiba stretched over her knees, searching for the best way to phrase this. It wasn't easy - he was naturally biased, after all, and no doubt Tem knew that, but he really was sincerely trying to help. In his own weird little way. "So why does he do that? I mean, I'm not really sure what you're both trying to get out of this, but it kinda sounds like a bit of a hit-and-miss thing right now. Are you both pretty serious about it as a potential long-term relationship or is it a 'take it as it comes' kind of deal?" He realised he was frowning a little and tried to smooth it out but it wasn't working. Oh well; hopefully Tem would just take it as concern for her. Not that it was anything else, of course.
Not at all.
Temari was quiet for a long moment, fingers smoothing Kiba's hair back from his forehead as she simply looked down and tried to understand that look he was giving her. He was asking her such hard questions...she didn't even really like answering to this train of thought in her heaviest moments, and 'afterglow' certainly didn't fall into that category. Especially while Kiba was still lounging naked in her lap. She struggled for words and complete thoughts, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. Guilt was starting to settle like water in the bottom of her lungs, but not guilt for what she had actually done.
She was starting to feel guilty because Kiba seemed to care more about her relationship than she did. She was starting to feel guilty over not feeling guilty. "That's just the kind of person he is," she tried to explain, "and it was...I don't know, it was playing by ear but with serious consideration and intent." She turned away, eyes landing on the Black Flag poster above her bed. Suddenly 'Slip It In' sprung to mind and she felt mildly sick. Had she really become that girl? How had that happened?
She shifted uncomfortably and pulled herself out from under Kiba's weight before moving off the bed all together and clicking the stop buttons on her tape decks, followed by rewind. The tape whirled and spun in the mechanism, buzzing like insects in the quiet of the room. "The crux of the issue is..." she sat cross-legged on the floor, frowning at her machine. With a sigh she flopped down onto her back and stared at the ceiling. "I'm just not that into him."
He'd ruined it again. Kiba examined his hands as he tried to figure out the right thing to say in an attempt to salve it all, trying not to be distracted by the way she moved and the thoughts that played over her face, the way the sunlight filtered through the window frame and cast a crucifix pattern on her naked skin. Temari, the unintentional martyr of a cause she didn't even want. Kiba sighed and let himself look at her again, as neutrally as he ever could. How twisted was he to be glad that she wasn't into this guy, even if it was clearly getting her down? He told himself that it was because Seb obviously didn't appreciate what he had, and therefore couldn't be entirely good for her. He was just looking out for Tem's well-being, because he was her friend and that was part of the responsibility that went with it.
"That doesn't necessarily mean you gotta end it, though," he mused, half in line with his own thoughts and half in reply to hers. "I mean, if neither are you are going for the whole big settled life together, and you both know it, what's wrong with keeping after the same things you started with?" That probably wasn't the right thing to say, either. Kiba pulled a face, propping himself up on an elbow as his fingers toyed with the bedspread. "I'm not saying that right. What I mean is..." Well, what did he mean? What was he trying to say here? 'It's okay to be in an unsatisfying relationship as long as you both agree it's unsatisfying?' That was just fucked up.
"You know what, just ignore basically everything I said. I'm not exactly one to talk on the relationship front, anyway..."
Slowly, Temari rolled onto her side and then stood up to sink back down beside Kiba on the mattress. There was something weird in his tone, something she didn't recognize even though she would consider herself to be a bit of a connoisseur when it came to his voice, and it worried her. "Yeah, it does mean I have to end it," she argued gently, ignoring his brush off. The comment had gotten under her skin; she couldn't believe that Kiba thought settling for low level discontent just because it was there was ok, and she really couldn't believe he thought it was ok for her. How the hell had that gotten into his head?
"Take my word on this one," she continued with her patented 'Big Sis Knows Best' look, one hand reaching out to rub his shoulder while the other continued to lay idly in her lap "even if you're both conscious of it, stringing someone along like that can only ever cruel. If nothing else, keeping someone tied to you, when neither of you are getting what you want from each other, is depriving them from finding a person who can give them what they want."
"Besides, I deserve better than the mediocre," she added with an arrogant smirk, punching his arm lightly before finally giving in to her nerves and reaching for her pack of cigarettes.
This was better. This was shifting them out of uncomfortable analysis and giving her something to focus on other than the liquid self-loathing that was rising, wallowing and trying to drown her. "You deserve the amazing too," she made sure to note with a sharp look as she shook a paper stick from the carton and pulled it free with her lips, "and I'll kick your ass if I ever find out you settled for anything less." She smiled teasingly around the filter as she reached for her lighter, more an effort to pull herself back into a lighter headspace than to pull the sting from her threat. As she sucked the flame onto the tobacco, smoke curling around the inside of her mouth and shrivelling the lingering flavour of Kiba's lips, the moment started to distil in her head, and it suddenly occurred to her that maybe they weren't quite talking about the same thing anymore. So much for escaping that uncertain feeling after all.
Kiba pulled himself upright, one long arm hooking around its matching knee so he could balance his weight comfortably without falling to one side. He smiled wryly as her words filtered through several subconscious layers of protection and self-deceit he'd enacted without even really realising. The sentiment she expressed wasn't anything he didn't already know, of course, but it was one thing to be guiltily aware of it in the dark cloisters of your own psyche and another to have it coming from the lips of somebody he respected as much as he did Temari.
Especially when she had potentially been one of the people he could have been 'stringing along'.
Well, none of that had been intentional. Nor was his situation - or lack of a definitive one - with Haku. Maybe that was a cop-out excuse, a pathetic weasely attempt to justify it all, but it was still the truth. Kiba hadn't wanted to fall for anybody, let alone somebody who was totally not his usual type. And if it'd been as easy as realising that Haku was a guy, he wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. On the one hand he had Haku, sweet and kind and soft-spoken; someone who Kiba knew beyond any doubt wanted him - someone he could probably quite easily surround with himself and get the unconditional love he wanted - but also someone with one major barrier to a full relationship. On the other hand, he had - or had had, potentially at least - Temari, outspoken and vibrant and magnetic and hot; someone who got him all fired up and ready to burn, but that could also turn on him, because there was no way his jealous, possessive tendencies were going to be able to handle other men lusting after her (which Kiba was fairly convinced they would, because who wouldn't?) even if Tem didn't return the interest.
Either possibility was bittersweet, really. Was it really his fault that he was so confused about it all? No. Kiba didn't think so. But it was fault that he couldn't resolve it, and that was what he'd been trying to hide from for far longer than he should have. He'd had too much forgiveness from both of them, too much lenience. Even Hana hadn't been able to beat any sense into him, although both of them had certainly tried. It just wasn't that easy. There was no convenient mental switch he could throw that would pour all of this from one side to the other. Hell, even draining it would be a better option. As it was, it was balanced firmly in the middle and refused to budge until Kiba found the right key.
He shrugged, stretching his shoulders out, the dogtags hanging down his chest clinking as the movement sent them swaying. "'Amazing', huh? Heh. Thanks." Tem had too much faith in him. Everyone did. He'd done nothing to deserve it, hadn't earned it - although he wanted to, wanted to go back to being reliable and trustworthy because now that he'd lost that within himself Kiba could see how much it had meant to him - but these people kept giving it him. Even when he demonstrated time and time again that he wasn't worth it.
He certainly wasn't worth 'amazing'. And especially not worth being offered two sets of it, as if he had a right to choose. Well, not that Tem had offered herself, now that he thought about it. She was smarter than that. Stronger than that. That was fine, that was what he'd wanted. No relationships to muddy the waters. To 'cramp his style'...hell, who was he kidding? Kiba didn't have any style to begin with. He just didn't want that responsibility. Not yet. Not until he'd gotten himself a little bit clearer, a little closer to the person he needed to be to handle all of this.
It was just taking him longer than he'd thought, that was all. But subliminal misery was a surprisingly good motivator.
He didn't believe her. Temari wasn't quite sure what it was about what she'd said that he just did not believe, but she was convinced that there was something. She could see it written all over his body, in how he moved, how he wasn't looking at her. There was very obviously something she didn't know, some key component that she was missing that would have made sense of this moment. With mild effort, she was sure she'd be able to frame a lose idea of what exactly it was but...
She exhaled, a long stream of pale smoke curling from her lips towards the ceiling; she shifted, reaching out to set the cigarette against the rim of the ashtray on her bedside table where it continued to burn.
But that would take a big investment of time and energy. But that would mean getting even more emotionally invested in Kiba than she already was, which had already proven to be bad for her. But that was probably overstepping the lines Kiba had drawn in the sand between them, just as delving into her relationship with Seb had been crossing hers.
But above all else, she did want to be friends with him and Temari was just the kind of person who cared very deeply about her friends. But friends didn't leave each other alone when they looked this miserable, they tried to help.
But friends waited for each other to open up rather than prying, rather than figuring it out on their own and confronting each other. Friends were unconditional support, free of pressure.
Her hands settled, light with almost hesitation before strengthening, on either side of Kiba’s face and then forced him to turn and look her in the eye. She scrutinized him for a long moment, gaze hard, jaw tight and brain fuzzy with static. Temari had no idea what to say, but she felt irresistibly compelled to say something, anything. "I don't know what's haunting you, and I'm not going to ask," she started finally, barely able to hear herself over the voice in the back of her head pleading with anyone that was listening to please not let her fuck this up. "But I know that getting things out of your head helps resolve them, so I am going to say this: I'll always listen." Her thumb ran lightly over his cheekbone as she forced her jaw to clench again before she kept talking. Before she started saying things like 'you're not alone', or 'I can help you carry this', or other stupid things that would make her feel sappy and weak, or were promises she didn't know that she could keep. She'd probably already managed to make herself sound like a complete idiot anyway. Maybe she should have taken his brush off...
That last thought disappeared as soon as it passed through her head though; ignored as the standard flash of self-doubt that coloured every single action she'd ever taken and always managed to sound like the negligent condescension that coloured her father's voice whenever he spoke to her. She'd have regretted it later if she'd said nothing at all, so instead of fretting she pushed up the corner of her lips into a conspirator/comforting smile. She had a fall back plan anyway. If Kiba balked, Temari would just change the subject to some records she'd picked up recently that she'd thought he might like. Then they could move back into their comfort zone and both pretend that this conversation had never even taken place.
"I'd tell you if I knew," he replied quietly, then sighed and laid his forehead against hers, eyes closing as if to shut off any and all interferences from the outside world filtering through into his brain. "It's just such a mess." Rough fingertips scratched idly at the sprouting stubble on his jaw line, rubbing over his lips as Kiba tried to keep the damn things closed. Lately it seemed that every time he put them to use it ended up going horribly wrong.
It ended up with him here, leaning into Temari's comfort after talking about her relationship with her boyfriend. Which was where they'd ended up - where he'd led them - after they'd ended up banging like rabbits.
It ended up pretty fucking uncomfortable and downright depressing, actually.
He decided to banish it, to try and wrestle himself back to where he should be with this. He wasn't down and moody. He wasn't sad and lonely. He sure as hell wasn't jealous. He didn't have any right to be either of those things in the first place, therefore he would not be. Humming suddenly, Kiba sat back up, eyes opening to blink around the room, smiling wryly at the endless stream of cheerful sunshine pouring ecstatically through Temari's window. "Man, what the fuck're we doin' inside on a beautiful day like this, huh? We should'a gone to the beach," he yawned, stretching his arms wide and twisting his shoulders until they popped. When he could look at her again without getting all metaphysical and philosophical and shit, Kiba pulled a ridiculous face and tangled his fingers through his hair. "Too late now."
Too late for what?
(Fuck his deep-and-thoughtful side. Fuck it right to hell.)
She let her hands drop as Kiba moved away, reaching for her cigarette instead of whatever piece of him was closest. Temari sucked a long drag as Kiba took the long way back around to his standard persona. She didn't mind, she was having a bit of a hard time looking at him right now as well. Mostly due to shame. A bone deep shame for having wanted to kiss him until he felt better, for having wanted almost desperately to just wrap her arms around him and pull him into her ribcage and keep him for herself, not share him with these dark spaces or the other people who'd sprung into her mind the second he'd uttered the word 'mess'.
At his sudden and almost abrasively happy mention of the weather, Temari turned her attention back to the sky outside and exhaled long and slow. One by one her nerves steeled as her brain relentlessly reminded her that she wasn't some wishy washy female, that she was above the pathetic displays of sentimentality that she had almost let herself sway into. That she wasn't nearly weak enough to be suckered into these games of possession, these fucked up situations that turned her into a prize and pitted her against a noodle spined trophy girlfriend. She was better than people who made her feel like she was the deal of the week at some big-box store in the suburbs that was being price checked against the competition. Cheap, but somehow not cheap enough.
She hummed blandly in reply as she sucked on the paper filter again. The punk wanted to laugh all of a sudden, but mostly just at herself and the realization that the voice in her head that was shrieking so self-righteously sounded just about as pathetic as the one caught behind those soft emotions that had flooded her stomach moments ago. Maybe this was a sign that she was growing up, she wondered shortly as a sharp exhale cleared her lungs and shoved off her sudden inability to reconcile herself with who she thought she wanted to be. This afternoon was just getting more and more fucked up by the second.
Why the fuck couldn't he have just knocked? she thought finally, grinning suddenly as the sheer ridiculousness that had started this whole chain of events dawned on her. She dipped her head back, her smile taking in a short laugh at the face he was making. Fuck it. The blonde twisted and leaned towards him, pressing her lips lightly to his for a heartbeat before she retreated and stood. "Maybe," she agreed as she toed at some of the clothes on the floor, the last dregs of her cigarette dangling from her lips, "but it's not too late for the balcony."
Aha, she reached down and pulled a threadbare Clash t-shirt from the floor, the white cotton so worn it was semi-translucent and as soft as a newborn kitten. The shirt was pulled over her head, the hem managing to just barely cover her behind, and the sleeves rolled up to the splitting seams before she swung one of her legs over the windowsill on the other side of the room. She paused on the beam, shoving her messy hair out of the way so that bright green eyes could pin Kiba as her lips smirked around the Marlboro logo. "Coming?"
"Heh. Yeah. I'll meet you there," Kiba promised, glancing down at his lap with another face before searching the floor for his own clothing. Where the fuck had his shirt gotten to?! Screw it, he didn't need it anyway. Pants were sort of key, he didn't want to accidentally scar Hina (again) by wandering around in nothing bar a used condom. He resisted the sudden crushing urge to steal the cigarette out of Tem's mouth - he wasn't entirely sure whether he was jealous of it or her and that was a dangerous line to be on the wrong side of - and struggled into his jeans to slouch out of the room.
And almost over Akamaru. Whoops...sorry, buddy. "Hey, mutt. Whatcha doin' listening at doorways, huh? I thought I taught you better than that," he remonstrated teasingly as 'Maru fell into heel towards the upstairs bathroom. "On second thought...nope, that's exactly what I taught you. Heh." Once again the poor dog was shut out as Kiba took care of the....what had Tem called it that one time? The 'sticky evidence'. Apt.
He washed his hands off before sighing heavily and bracing them on the washbasin. A glance in the mirror confirmed that he was totally rocking the 'just had wildly unexpected sex with my housemate' look and he half-heartedly tried to ruffle his hair back into some kind of order. It was still short, but had a tendency to stick up in random directions if he didn't keep it under wraps. Maybe he should just give in and go back to his buzzcut. Zaku's hair reigned supreme in this house, anyway. Aliens and all...
"Coming, mutt?" Kiba bent to give Akamaru a thorough scratching, smiling softly as the dog's big brown eyes closed in delight. Man, it was really gonna suck going back to the dorms after a summer together again. Who was going to keep him company in the middle of the night and the bastard hours of the morning when nobody else was awake?
Maybe he'd just hang out in the common room, playing with the phone, getting advice from the dial tone.
Wandering back into Tem's room, man and dog hopped the windowsill to join her, faces turning up to the sun in near-perfect synchronisation. Kiba stretched out over the balcony, twisting briefly to flick a smile back in the blonde's direction. "Haha, between us we almost have a full outfit!"
With a neutral shrug, Temari continued out into the sunlight. She leaned against the rail for a long moment, idly watching the birds on the telephone wires as she pulled at the last of her tobacco before flicking the butt into the street below. Idly she wiped her hands off on her shirt and then stretched out her neck and her back, shoulders and spine popping faintly as she shifted. Finally she hummed in tune to the twittering of the birds and wandered to the lounge chair she’d set out here ages ago. Despite how wrecked things were becoming in her head, her body still felt languid and delicious. Weirdly relaxed in exactly the way she’d wanted.
The width of the long seat was straddled before she reached down to fish Lo Siento’s case out from underneath it, the cover flicked open under nimble hands. The curves of her hollow wooden body settled comfortably between her thigh and her breast, the instrument’s back humming sweetly against Temari’s hip bone as her thumb glided contemplatively over the strings. Her fingers stuck lightly to the board and she scuffed them over her shirt once more before trying again.
She looked up from her fingers on the frets when she heard the scuffling of feet and paws over the window sill, and smiled a bright welcome to Akamaru. “Hey puppy,” she greeted, smooching his nose when he wandered over to inspect her. “Clothes are for squares,” she snarked back absently to Kiba while scratching at the large dog’s pointed ears. Akamaru quickly lost interest in her attention though (a trend in the Inuzuka clan?) and she plied at her strings once more as he went to settle closer to Kiba.
Her fingers picked out a few progressions until one sounded familiar and she latched on to it, “Everytime I'm walkin' down the streets some pretty mama start breakin' down with me…stop breakin' down, yes stop breakin' down…” she purred blandly, her strumming falling off the strings to incorporate light, but sharp strikes against the guitar’s wooden body. “The stuff I got'll bust your brains out, baby….Ooh,” she cast Kiba a sly smirk “it'll make you lose your mind.”
Where: Tem's bedroom, the summer house of righteous and awesome
When: Sometime between July 7th and 13th 1988
What: Tem and Kiba relapse. And then talk.
Warnings: SEXY SEXY FAIL, Furious banging, brain breaking miscommunication.
Kiba sighed neutrally, fingertips snaking idly through her hair in a somewhat tentative offer of comfort that went beyond their norm. This was not to say that they were stand-offish nor reserved around each other, but usually they found safety and a modicum of restraint in unspoken boundaries, a wordless agreement that this and this was allowed, but that and that was not. Every now and again, however, it felt like one of them almost crossed the line, and neither of them was sure where that would lead. Well. Kiba wasn't, at any rate. It was never something he'd had to deal with, after all.
Quiet moments between them like this made him wonder what it'd be like.
Pulling himself out of his head, Kiba forced himself to just relax and enjoy the silence, the way Tem's body felt stretched out over his, the feel of her lips on his skin. Guilt and confusion kept trying to knock; he ignored them. Why bother bringing himself down? That'd happen soon enough. "Mmm." Maybe if he tried hard enough, he could freeze time right about...now. That might be sort of nice for a while.
The blonde purred under the delicious stroke of fingers through her messy hair, her ribs shivering faintly with the vibration of the sound. She felt vaguely like a big cat taking a nap in the sun, that mix and level of drowsy, warm and content. Surely Kiba knew that he wasn't allowed to make her feel this flat out good in her skin, that he wasn't allowed to make her like him more and more whenever they spent time together. Especially when she knew how easily he could discard moments like these (the memory of that late night scuffle in the kitchen a few weeks ago leaked from her brain like melting ice, the cold water rolling drip by drip down her spine).
The hand that had been resting flat on his pectoral slid over his shoulder and up his neck to cup his jaw as she sat up a touch. Gently, she tilted his face towards her and pressed her lips to his, stealing a languorous kiss. Stealing a few more seconds of hazy bliss before she let it go. After a long moment, she pulled away but didn't settle back down against Kiba's solid frame.
Steadily, her soft green eyes hardened into a mildly perplexed frown. "So...What's up?" she asked inelegantly as the afternoon started to gel in her consciousness and she realized just how suddenly Kiba had appeared at her bedside. Kiba didn't really come upstairs often, and never to visit with her, without a specific reason or motivation. And given his earlier look of surprise, she somehow doubted today's motivation had been sexual frustration.
He wanted another kiss like that. Hell, when he thought about it, Kiba didn't think he'd ever been kissed that way before, by anyone. It sent slow, warm pulses down his spine to curl his feet, as if in a futile effort to lock it into him. He followed her up for brief, confused nanosecond before slumping back onto the pillows as nonchalantly as he could, tucking his hands behind his head with a sheepish smile. "Well. I just came up to borrow somethin' new to listen to," he explained, trying to find the right mood to laugh but somehow falling short of the mark. "Um. But. Got a little distracted." Yeah, and that was the understatement of the century. Was she angry? No, that wasn't it. But this was definitely a very weird atmosphere between them.
Possibly the fact that she was cheating on her boyfriend had something to do with it. And something in him tried to say that her doing so with him, while listening to him and getting off to a picture of him was a fairly important clue, but Kiba just couldn't quite bring himself to fit that into the puzzle. They were friends. Just friends. Sexy friends, to be sure, but still just friends. He didn't do the relationship thing, Tem didn't want one with him anyway. That was how it worked. And yet...
And yet, indeed. Kiba looked up at her, lips pursing slightly as he vaguely considered this conundrum. What had happened here? What was going on? What... "What is...this?" he queried softly, glancing at the rumpled bedsheets and the photo on the wall. His traitorous mouth took over as soon as he'd opened it, adding "And what about...Seb?"
And why did that name make him feel somehow dirty? Kiba didn't dislike Seb. Well, no, maybe he did. He was sort of interfering with his sex life, after all. Or had been. Should still be. He'd also dragged Tem away from Kiba's birthday party reasonably early, depriving him of the presence of one of his best friends. Yeah, that must be it. The presence of Tem's boyfriend in her life was dragging awkwardness and uncertainty between them even without being there.
Just another reason to steer clear of relationships, really.
Music? Kiba had wanted to come listen to records? Temari’s lightly swollen lips pulled into a bright smile that unveiled her usually well hidden dimples and she started to lean forward again, fully intending to steal his lips for a little bit longer. But he kept talking before she could stop him and his words punctured the moment of light-hearted joy that had swelled in her ribcage at the prospect of spending the rest of the evening listening to records and hanging out. They hadn't spent much time together over the past few weeks, not since he'd asked her to shave his mohawk. They'd seen each other plenty, what with the play and gigs and his birthday just last week, but it was never just the two of them and there was never really any sense of them connecting even with the crowd. She missed their friendship as much as she'd missed his body.
The sudden 'pop' of her mood echoed so loudly in her ears that for a second she thought it had come from outside rather than in. Her smile faltered and then fell all together as she sat up fully, a frown weighing down her face once more. She followed his gaze around the bed, stretched it to her tape machine and the clothes on the floor, added it to the feel of his body beneath her and soft within her, the smell of sweat, sex and the breeze filtering in through the open window. What is this? This particular moment was an accident, but only in that she hadn't intended it to happen, not that she retrospectively didn't want it to have happened. Beyond that...she didn't really know. She couldn't answer that for any of their encounters, and had deliberately avoided trying to. She'd thought Kiba had been as well. So why was he asking all of a sudden? Why did they suddenly need to be explained? And how was she supposed to explain something she didn't understand in a way that didn't scare him or hurt his feelings?
And what about Seb? The blonde guitarist sighed heavily and braced her hands on Kiba's ridged stomach as she pushed herself up onto her knees, disengaging their bodies. She moved off him, shifting to sit with her back against the wall running the length of her bed and facing the balcony. "This is..." she combed her mind for words, one hand mussing the short strands of her hair as she denied her urge to reach across Kiba to grab the pack of Marlboros on her bedside table. "I don't know, Kiba," she admitted finally. "This is, at the very least, the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Seb," she tried to joke lightly, head dropping back against the posters plastered to her wall. "But I've been thinking about breaking up with him for a while now anyway, so don't let that bother you."
He felt like a complete bastard watching the happy sunshine on her face flare and die - trust him to ruin such a rare miracle, right? - but Kiba was sort of used to that. He had this bad habit of letting people down. For some reason they seemed to keep expecting that to change, and he was trying, really he was, but right when he had what he wanted within reach something in him just flipped and it all ended up in ashes. No matter how much he wanted to hold onto it.
Before he really consciously knew it he'd turned and shuffled closer to her, curling around to put his head in her lap and link his hands over her knees. "Mmm." He could feel the sound rumble back at him off her skin, almost leaping back into his voicebox. He didn't want to let her go just yet. They never just...chilled out like this. Especially not naked, although for once that was really irrelevant. Kiba let his eyes drift shut, feeling his lashes drag down the skin of her thigh as he snuggled in a little further.
"Why? What's up?"
Kiba was somewhat surprised to find that he was truly, genuinely interested in knowing what was going on.
The smile found its way back to Temari's lips, a little one that was softer around the edges, as Kiba settled in her lap and one of her hands started idly combing its fingers through his short hair. Maybe Kiba was the cat, rather than her, she thought idly as she contemplated his unusual behaviour. For a heartbeat she wondered if he'd missed her too and was trying to make up for it with a sudden wave of affection. On the next she pushed the thought from her mind. If she started to think along those lines, she'd get her hopes up (for what, she was avoiding determining, but something). Hanging her hopes on Kiba was an all around bad idea because if nothing else, he didn't want them.
"A lot of things..." she replied contemplatively, eyes wandering back to the sky out over the balcony outside. "We don't really like each other's friends, we don't socialize in the same way, we're not interested in achieving similar goals...he doesn't show affection, even in private..." it was easy enough to enumerate the many ways in which their lives just were not syncing up, at all. But those were mostly all things that Temari would be willing to work on with the right person. She took a deep breath and decided to spit out the real reason. "When I'm with him, I feel like he's not actually interested in me as anything more than a concept. Like...I'm only worthwhile on an abstract level and the concrete reality, the flesh and blood, the bruises and scrapes, me as a woman underneath my ideals...I guess it sort of feels like none of that matters." But it mattered quite a lot to her. Temari was a woman who had fought tooth and nail for her recognized existence as a fully faceted human being and she was never going to let anyone take that away from her again. It was becoming clearer and clearer to her that, while Seb wasn't trying to limit her in anyway, he was judging the worth of each facet and picking the ones that mattered to him, rather than accepting the full package. This was irreconcilable to Temari, especially given they'd only been together for maybe a month and hadn't been particularly good friends in the first place.
"Huh." Kiba mulled his way through this for a while, enjoying the affectionate movements of her fingers through his hair and the lull of peace that had re-enacted its bubble around them. The more he heard about Tem and Seb's relationship, the less it made sense to him, and it really surprised him - almost to the point of shock - that she'd essentially shackled herself to a man who wasn't appreciative of all of her. Granted, there were a lot of depths and secret pockets to every aspect of her, and she probably kept most of them carefully hidden, but wasn't that sort of the point of a deep and meaningful relationship in the first place? To get to know the Significant Other better than anybody else, inside and out, mind-body-soul?
Or maybe he'd been reading too many of Kakashi's books and they were rotting his brain.
He reached around his head to wrap his fingers gently around her wrist, just liking the extra touch. "So why'd you guys get together in the first place?" It didn't occur to him that he was prying, or that Tem might not want him to be asking this sort of stuff. She'd tell him what she wanted to, and keep quiet on anything she didn't. Tem was pretty uncomplicated like that.
Temari hummed thoughtfully as she considered her answer to that particular question. She had a lot of reasons, complicated ones which explained why she'd started dating again in the first place and simpler ones that explained why Seb in particular, but she was in a slightly sticky situation when it came to explaining them to Kiba. If she had learned anything from her interactions with Sasuke over the past year, it was that it was very easy to hurt other people accidentally with poor word choice and seeing as it would be pretty easy to blame some of her more complicated reasons on Kiba, she needed to tread carefully.
"It was really just that he asked and I couldn't think of a reason to say no," she answered finally. "Our acquaintance circles overlap a bit in the areas I tend to neglect with my close friendships. For example, we're both avid news followers, so I thought it would be nice to build something with someone I could talk to about stuff like that. And he's quiet, which I like sometimes but don't indulge often because my normal circle is pretty outgoing," she explained quietly as she noted a mild color shift in the sky outside. "I didn't really have anything to lose in getting to know him better, and I had a reasonable amount to gain. Plus, Seb could have worked out great. That potential was still there in the beginning."
It was kind of weird to be discussing this with Kiba, especially given their earlier activities. But it was also kind of nice. They very rarely actually talked about anything and she'd always felt a touch slighted by that because he definitely talked to his other friends. But she was probably equally a fault in that, so there was no point to making a fuss about it. She'd just take what she could get and enjoy it while she had it, which about summed up her approach to Kiba altogether.
"But it's just not working out, huh?" Kiba pursed his lips and wriggled onto his back once more, looking up at her thoughtfully. Regardless of his opinion on Seb, he didn't like the thought of Temari being unhappy. She worked so hard for so many things and yet always made time to help anybody who needed her; surely it was only fair she get what she'd earned?
Except all too often that seemed to rest on other people. And people were selfish fuckers who denied Tem her rewards.
Kiba stretched over her knees, searching for the best way to phrase this. It wasn't easy - he was naturally biased, after all, and no doubt Tem knew that, but he really was sincerely trying to help. In his own weird little way. "So why does he do that? I mean, I'm not really sure what you're both trying to get out of this, but it kinda sounds like a bit of a hit-and-miss thing right now. Are you both pretty serious about it as a potential long-term relationship or is it a 'take it as it comes' kind of deal?" He realised he was frowning a little and tried to smooth it out but it wasn't working. Oh well; hopefully Tem would just take it as concern for her. Not that it was anything else, of course.
Not at all.
Temari was quiet for a long moment, fingers smoothing Kiba's hair back from his forehead as she simply looked down and tried to understand that look he was giving her. He was asking her such hard questions...she didn't even really like answering to this train of thought in her heaviest moments, and 'afterglow' certainly didn't fall into that category. Especially while Kiba was still lounging naked in her lap. She struggled for words and complete thoughts, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. Guilt was starting to settle like water in the bottom of her lungs, but not guilt for what she had actually done.
She was starting to feel guilty because Kiba seemed to care more about her relationship than she did. She was starting to feel guilty over not feeling guilty. "That's just the kind of person he is," she tried to explain, "and it was...I don't know, it was playing by ear but with serious consideration and intent." She turned away, eyes landing on the Black Flag poster above her bed. Suddenly 'Slip It In' sprung to mind and she felt mildly sick. Had she really become that girl? How had that happened?
She shifted uncomfortably and pulled herself out from under Kiba's weight before moving off the bed all together and clicking the stop buttons on her tape decks, followed by rewind. The tape whirled and spun in the mechanism, buzzing like insects in the quiet of the room. "The crux of the issue is..." she sat cross-legged on the floor, frowning at her machine. With a sigh she flopped down onto her back and stared at the ceiling. "I'm just not that into him."
He'd ruined it again. Kiba examined his hands as he tried to figure out the right thing to say in an attempt to salve it all, trying not to be distracted by the way she moved and the thoughts that played over her face, the way the sunlight filtered through the window frame and cast a crucifix pattern on her naked skin. Temari, the unintentional martyr of a cause she didn't even want. Kiba sighed and let himself look at her again, as neutrally as he ever could. How twisted was he to be glad that she wasn't into this guy, even if it was clearly getting her down? He told himself that it was because Seb obviously didn't appreciate what he had, and therefore couldn't be entirely good for her. He was just looking out for Tem's well-being, because he was her friend and that was part of the responsibility that went with it.
"That doesn't necessarily mean you gotta end it, though," he mused, half in line with his own thoughts and half in reply to hers. "I mean, if neither are you are going for the whole big settled life together, and you both know it, what's wrong with keeping after the same things you started with?" That probably wasn't the right thing to say, either. Kiba pulled a face, propping himself up on an elbow as his fingers toyed with the bedspread. "I'm not saying that right. What I mean is..." Well, what did he mean? What was he trying to say here? 'It's okay to be in an unsatisfying relationship as long as you both agree it's unsatisfying?' That was just fucked up.
"You know what, just ignore basically everything I said. I'm not exactly one to talk on the relationship front, anyway..."
Slowly, Temari rolled onto her side and then stood up to sink back down beside Kiba on the mattress. There was something weird in his tone, something she didn't recognize even though she would consider herself to be a bit of a connoisseur when it came to his voice, and it worried her. "Yeah, it does mean I have to end it," she argued gently, ignoring his brush off. The comment had gotten under her skin; she couldn't believe that Kiba thought settling for low level discontent just because it was there was ok, and she really couldn't believe he thought it was ok for her. How the hell had that gotten into his head?
"Take my word on this one," she continued with her patented 'Big Sis Knows Best' look, one hand reaching out to rub his shoulder while the other continued to lay idly in her lap "even if you're both conscious of it, stringing someone along like that can only ever cruel. If nothing else, keeping someone tied to you, when neither of you are getting what you want from each other, is depriving them from finding a person who can give them what they want."
"Besides, I deserve better than the mediocre," she added with an arrogant smirk, punching his arm lightly before finally giving in to her nerves and reaching for her pack of cigarettes.
This was better. This was shifting them out of uncomfortable analysis and giving her something to focus on other than the liquid self-loathing that was rising, wallowing and trying to drown her. "You deserve the amazing too," she made sure to note with a sharp look as she shook a paper stick from the carton and pulled it free with her lips, "and I'll kick your ass if I ever find out you settled for anything less." She smiled teasingly around the filter as she reached for her lighter, more an effort to pull herself back into a lighter headspace than to pull the sting from her threat. As she sucked the flame onto the tobacco, smoke curling around the inside of her mouth and shrivelling the lingering flavour of Kiba's lips, the moment started to distil in her head, and it suddenly occurred to her that maybe they weren't quite talking about the same thing anymore. So much for escaping that uncertain feeling after all.
Kiba pulled himself upright, one long arm hooking around its matching knee so he could balance his weight comfortably without falling to one side. He smiled wryly as her words filtered through several subconscious layers of protection and self-deceit he'd enacted without even really realising. The sentiment she expressed wasn't anything he didn't already know, of course, but it was one thing to be guiltily aware of it in the dark cloisters of your own psyche and another to have it coming from the lips of somebody he respected as much as he did Temari.
Especially when she had potentially been one of the people he could have been 'stringing along'.
Well, none of that had been intentional. Nor was his situation - or lack of a definitive one - with Haku. Maybe that was a cop-out excuse, a pathetic weasely attempt to justify it all, but it was still the truth. Kiba hadn't wanted to fall for anybody, let alone somebody who was totally not his usual type. And if it'd been as easy as realising that Haku was a guy, he wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. On the one hand he had Haku, sweet and kind and soft-spoken; someone who Kiba knew beyond any doubt wanted him - someone he could probably quite easily surround with himself and get the unconditional love he wanted - but also someone with one major barrier to a full relationship. On the other hand, he had - or had had, potentially at least - Temari, outspoken and vibrant and magnetic and hot; someone who got him all fired up and ready to burn, but that could also turn on him, because there was no way his jealous, possessive tendencies were going to be able to handle other men lusting after her (which Kiba was fairly convinced they would, because who wouldn't?) even if Tem didn't return the interest.
Either possibility was bittersweet, really. Was it really his fault that he was so confused about it all? No. Kiba didn't think so. But it was fault that he couldn't resolve it, and that was what he'd been trying to hide from for far longer than he should have. He'd had too much forgiveness from both of them, too much lenience. Even Hana hadn't been able to beat any sense into him, although both of them had certainly tried. It just wasn't that easy. There was no convenient mental switch he could throw that would pour all of this from one side to the other. Hell, even draining it would be a better option. As it was, it was balanced firmly in the middle and refused to budge until Kiba found the right key.
He shrugged, stretching his shoulders out, the dogtags hanging down his chest clinking as the movement sent them swaying. "'Amazing', huh? Heh. Thanks." Tem had too much faith in him. Everyone did. He'd done nothing to deserve it, hadn't earned it - although he wanted to, wanted to go back to being reliable and trustworthy because now that he'd lost that within himself Kiba could see how much it had meant to him - but these people kept giving it him. Even when he demonstrated time and time again that he wasn't worth it.
He certainly wasn't worth 'amazing'. And especially not worth being offered two sets of it, as if he had a right to choose. Well, not that Tem had offered herself, now that he thought about it. She was smarter than that. Stronger than that. That was fine, that was what he'd wanted. No relationships to muddy the waters. To 'cramp his style'...hell, who was he kidding? Kiba didn't have any style to begin with. He just didn't want that responsibility. Not yet. Not until he'd gotten himself a little bit clearer, a little closer to the person he needed to be to handle all of this.
It was just taking him longer than he'd thought, that was all. But subliminal misery was a surprisingly good motivator.
He didn't believe her. Temari wasn't quite sure what it was about what she'd said that he just did not believe, but she was convinced that there was something. She could see it written all over his body, in how he moved, how he wasn't looking at her. There was very obviously something she didn't know, some key component that she was missing that would have made sense of this moment. With mild effort, she was sure she'd be able to frame a lose idea of what exactly it was but...
She exhaled, a long stream of pale smoke curling from her lips towards the ceiling; she shifted, reaching out to set the cigarette against the rim of the ashtray on her bedside table where it continued to burn.
But that would take a big investment of time and energy. But that would mean getting even more emotionally invested in Kiba than she already was, which had already proven to be bad for her. But that was probably overstepping the lines Kiba had drawn in the sand between them, just as delving into her relationship with Seb had been crossing hers.
But above all else, she did want to be friends with him and Temari was just the kind of person who cared very deeply about her friends. But friends didn't leave each other alone when they looked this miserable, they tried to help.
But friends waited for each other to open up rather than prying, rather than figuring it out on their own and confronting each other. Friends were unconditional support, free of pressure.
Her hands settled, light with almost hesitation before strengthening, on either side of Kiba’s face and then forced him to turn and look her in the eye. She scrutinized him for a long moment, gaze hard, jaw tight and brain fuzzy with static. Temari had no idea what to say, but she felt irresistibly compelled to say something, anything. "I don't know what's haunting you, and I'm not going to ask," she started finally, barely able to hear herself over the voice in the back of her head pleading with anyone that was listening to please not let her fuck this up. "But I know that getting things out of your head helps resolve them, so I am going to say this: I'll always listen." Her thumb ran lightly over his cheekbone as she forced her jaw to clench again before she kept talking. Before she started saying things like 'you're not alone', or 'I can help you carry this', or other stupid things that would make her feel sappy and weak, or were promises she didn't know that she could keep. She'd probably already managed to make herself sound like a complete idiot anyway. Maybe she should have taken his brush off...
That last thought disappeared as soon as it passed through her head though; ignored as the standard flash of self-doubt that coloured every single action she'd ever taken and always managed to sound like the negligent condescension that coloured her father's voice whenever he spoke to her. She'd have regretted it later if she'd said nothing at all, so instead of fretting she pushed up the corner of her lips into a conspirator/comforting smile. She had a fall back plan anyway. If Kiba balked, Temari would just change the subject to some records she'd picked up recently that she'd thought he might like. Then they could move back into their comfort zone and both pretend that this conversation had never even taken place.
"I'd tell you if I knew," he replied quietly, then sighed and laid his forehead against hers, eyes closing as if to shut off any and all interferences from the outside world filtering through into his brain. "It's just such a mess." Rough fingertips scratched idly at the sprouting stubble on his jaw line, rubbing over his lips as Kiba tried to keep the damn things closed. Lately it seemed that every time he put them to use it ended up going horribly wrong.
It ended up with him here, leaning into Temari's comfort after talking about her relationship with her boyfriend. Which was where they'd ended up - where he'd led them - after they'd ended up banging like rabbits.
It ended up pretty fucking uncomfortable and downright depressing, actually.
He decided to banish it, to try and wrestle himself back to where he should be with this. He wasn't down and moody. He wasn't sad and lonely. He sure as hell wasn't jealous. He didn't have any right to be either of those things in the first place, therefore he would not be. Humming suddenly, Kiba sat back up, eyes opening to blink around the room, smiling wryly at the endless stream of cheerful sunshine pouring ecstatically through Temari's window. "Man, what the fuck're we doin' inside on a beautiful day like this, huh? We should'a gone to the beach," he yawned, stretching his arms wide and twisting his shoulders until they popped. When he could look at her again without getting all metaphysical and philosophical and shit, Kiba pulled a ridiculous face and tangled his fingers through his hair. "Too late now."
Too late for what?
(Fuck his deep-and-thoughtful side. Fuck it right to hell.)
She let her hands drop as Kiba moved away, reaching for her cigarette instead of whatever piece of him was closest. Temari sucked a long drag as Kiba took the long way back around to his standard persona. She didn't mind, she was having a bit of a hard time looking at him right now as well. Mostly due to shame. A bone deep shame for having wanted to kiss him until he felt better, for having wanted almost desperately to just wrap her arms around him and pull him into her ribcage and keep him for herself, not share him with these dark spaces or the other people who'd sprung into her mind the second he'd uttered the word 'mess'.
At his sudden and almost abrasively happy mention of the weather, Temari turned her attention back to the sky outside and exhaled long and slow. One by one her nerves steeled as her brain relentlessly reminded her that she wasn't some wishy washy female, that she was above the pathetic displays of sentimentality that she had almost let herself sway into. That she wasn't nearly weak enough to be suckered into these games of possession, these fucked up situations that turned her into a prize and pitted her against a noodle spined trophy girlfriend. She was better than people who made her feel like she was the deal of the week at some big-box store in the suburbs that was being price checked against the competition. Cheap, but somehow not cheap enough.
She hummed blandly in reply as she sucked on the paper filter again. The punk wanted to laugh all of a sudden, but mostly just at herself and the realization that the voice in her head that was shrieking so self-righteously sounded just about as pathetic as the one caught behind those soft emotions that had flooded her stomach moments ago. Maybe this was a sign that she was growing up, she wondered shortly as a sharp exhale cleared her lungs and shoved off her sudden inability to reconcile herself with who she thought she wanted to be. This afternoon was just getting more and more fucked up by the second.
Why the fuck couldn't he have just knocked? she thought finally, grinning suddenly as the sheer ridiculousness that had started this whole chain of events dawned on her. She dipped her head back, her smile taking in a short laugh at the face he was making. Fuck it. The blonde twisted and leaned towards him, pressing her lips lightly to his for a heartbeat before she retreated and stood. "Maybe," she agreed as she toed at some of the clothes on the floor, the last dregs of her cigarette dangling from her lips, "but it's not too late for the balcony."
Aha, she reached down and pulled a threadbare Clash t-shirt from the floor, the white cotton so worn it was semi-translucent and as soft as a newborn kitten. The shirt was pulled over her head, the hem managing to just barely cover her behind, and the sleeves rolled up to the splitting seams before she swung one of her legs over the windowsill on the other side of the room. She paused on the beam, shoving her messy hair out of the way so that bright green eyes could pin Kiba as her lips smirked around the Marlboro logo. "Coming?"
"Heh. Yeah. I'll meet you there," Kiba promised, glancing down at his lap with another face before searching the floor for his own clothing. Where the fuck had his shirt gotten to?! Screw it, he didn't need it anyway. Pants were sort of key, he didn't want to accidentally scar Hina (again) by wandering around in nothing bar a used condom. He resisted the sudden crushing urge to steal the cigarette out of Tem's mouth - he wasn't entirely sure whether he was jealous of it or her and that was a dangerous line to be on the wrong side of - and struggled into his jeans to slouch out of the room.
And almost over Akamaru. Whoops...sorry, buddy. "Hey, mutt. Whatcha doin' listening at doorways, huh? I thought I taught you better than that," he remonstrated teasingly as 'Maru fell into heel towards the upstairs bathroom. "On second thought...nope, that's exactly what I taught you. Heh." Once again the poor dog was shut out as Kiba took care of the....what had Tem called it that one time? The 'sticky evidence'. Apt.
He washed his hands off before sighing heavily and bracing them on the washbasin. A glance in the mirror confirmed that he was totally rocking the 'just had wildly unexpected sex with my housemate' look and he half-heartedly tried to ruffle his hair back into some kind of order. It was still short, but had a tendency to stick up in random directions if he didn't keep it under wraps. Maybe he should just give in and go back to his buzzcut. Zaku's hair reigned supreme in this house, anyway. Aliens and all...
"Coming, mutt?" Kiba bent to give Akamaru a thorough scratching, smiling softly as the dog's big brown eyes closed in delight. Man, it was really gonna suck going back to the dorms after a summer together again. Who was going to keep him company in the middle of the night and the bastard hours of the morning when nobody else was awake?
Maybe he'd just hang out in the common room, playing with the phone, getting advice from the dial tone.
Wandering back into Tem's room, man and dog hopped the windowsill to join her, faces turning up to the sun in near-perfect synchronisation. Kiba stretched out over the balcony, twisting briefly to flick a smile back in the blonde's direction. "Haha, between us we almost have a full outfit!"
With a neutral shrug, Temari continued out into the sunlight. She leaned against the rail for a long moment, idly watching the birds on the telephone wires as she pulled at the last of her tobacco before flicking the butt into the street below. Idly she wiped her hands off on her shirt and then stretched out her neck and her back, shoulders and spine popping faintly as she shifted. Finally she hummed in tune to the twittering of the birds and wandered to the lounge chair she’d set out here ages ago. Despite how wrecked things were becoming in her head, her body still felt languid and delicious. Weirdly relaxed in exactly the way she’d wanted.
The width of the long seat was straddled before she reached down to fish Lo Siento’s case out from underneath it, the cover flicked open under nimble hands. The curves of her hollow wooden body settled comfortably between her thigh and her breast, the instrument’s back humming sweetly against Temari’s hip bone as her thumb glided contemplatively over the strings. Her fingers stuck lightly to the board and she scuffed them over her shirt once more before trying again.
She looked up from her fingers on the frets when she heard the scuffling of feet and paws over the window sill, and smiled a bright welcome to Akamaru. “Hey puppy,” she greeted, smooching his nose when he wandered over to inspect her. “Clothes are for squares,” she snarked back absently to Kiba while scratching at the large dog’s pointed ears. Akamaru quickly lost interest in her attention though (a trend in the Inuzuka clan?) and she plied at her strings once more as he went to settle closer to Kiba.
Her fingers picked out a few progressions until one sounded familiar and she latched on to it, “Everytime I'm walkin' down the streets some pretty mama start breakin' down with me…stop breakin' down, yes stop breakin' down…” she purred blandly, her strumming falling off the strings to incorporate light, but sharp strikes against the guitar’s wooden body. “The stuff I got'll bust your brains out, baby….Ooh,” she cast Kiba a sly smirk “it'll make you lose your mind.”