[Log][Temari & Kiba][It is fucking freezing outside]
Who: Temari and Kiba
Where: Kiba's room, the Summer House of Awesome and Awkward
When: August 25th/26th 1988, the night following Obito's wake
What: Utterly crushed by the day, Tem seeks out someone warmer than her
Warnings: This log contains absolutely no banging. Not even makeouts. I am frankly disappointed in them.
Scuff after scuff, her soles shuffled against the pavement as Temari wearily dragged herself down the sidewalks that led to the house she’d called home all summer. The sounds were lost to the wind rushing past her ears and passing right through her ragged cable knit sweater. It had been howling all day, the air completely restless under the slate grey sky that was refusing to relinquish its rain. She was freezing but she kind of liked the feeling. After hours of being exposed to it, she could blame it for her scattered hair, her white, white skin and the raw red around her eyes and high on her cheekbones, for the blue tinge in her lips and the shaking and shivering of her hands. She liked having something tangible to pin it to. She liked that it distracted her and forced her to keep her head together, at least a little bit.
But mostly she liked how it had emptied the streets. The young guitarist had left her mentor’s house hours ago and wandered all over town but she’d barely seen a soul. Everyone seemed to be terrified of the potential downpour, bullied by the wind, but Temari just found that it suited her mood. Her turmoil was equally violent and intangible.
That was why (after she’d double checked that all the guests had left and assured Gaara that she really did have everything together and she really would make it home in one piece without him, after she’d cautiously locked the doors to Obito’s house) she had let the wind urge her steps towards the only person who’d ever really given her as good she gave in her storms.
Spike’s grave was small and undecorated, already half grown over with long grass. It had made her sad in an entirely different way when she’d realized that no one had visited him since the last time she’d wandered this way. But a big part of her was still so furious with him that she wanted to smash the headstone, so she supposed she understood.
They had spent hours together, watched the sunset through the clouds as Temari’s unsteady hands had pulled away the grass suffocating him and braided the long blades for no particular reason. They didn’t talk. Her feelings for Spike, her feelings towards their history, still hadn’t settled enough for her to be able to express them comprehensively. Sorting out that mess hadn’t been why she wanted to see him anyway.
Spike was, even just as a marker in the ground, a source of comfort to her; a person, now ashes, that had always seen and accepted all facets of her, even when she hadn’t been able to accept all of them herself, and therefore Spike was a person with whom it was acceptable that she be anything, including sad. She’d lay down with him in the new grass and still soft dirt and for the first time since Kakashi had stuttered through the news of Obito’s car wreck, she had allowed herself to believe it was true. Allowed herself to understand the full breadth and weight of the implications.
Wave after wave of grief, longing and loneliness flooded from inside her rib cage, spilling hotly down the sides of her face and clawing violently out of her throat until she was completely drained, dehydrated and raw. By the time she felt quiet again, empty and hollow like the guitar she had borrowed in Obito's living room, it was dark out. She hadn’t had the nerve to face the lights in the subways so she’d walked back across the city to get home. Always with the freezing wind on the back of her neck and passing so easily through her clothing that she felt naked.
It took her three tries to unlock the door, her fingers too stiff and numb to grip her keys, her entire body shaking too hard for her to coordinate slipping it into the lock. Finally she managed and stumbled into the front entry. Closing the door was much easier but somehow her shoelaces were the hardest yet. Eventually, she gave up on the knots and forced her feet free of the worn black canvas despite them.
The stairs were too daunting of a task for her exhausted muscles and smarting feet. Her bed would be cold and empty anyway, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she didn’t bother attempting them. Instead the blonde pushed through the half open door facing the stairwell, closing it just short of latching behind her. Continually graceless, Temari tugged her sweater over her head and shoved her jeans down her legs, each motion listless and mechanical until she was finally naked.
On another night, she might have asked permission, she might have double checked that the spare space in Kiba’s bed wasn’t already taken up by Kin or Haku, but tonight she didn’t care. Tonight, she didn’t feel polite. She didn’t feel accommodating. She sure as fuck didn’t feel fair. Had someone beaten her into that bed, which was entirely possible given that the bedside clock was flashing some time past midnight, she would have just shoved them out.
Without a word, she pulled back the covers and crawled between the sheets, not settling until her chest was pressed tightly against Kiba’s and she could feel the slow thrum of his heartbeat against her cheek.
“Please tell me a war story.” Her vocal cords were completely stripped and the words creaked out like a door pushing open against rusted hinges. She cringed from the sound to disguise a wince of pain as the swollen membranes protested further abuse.
He waited quietly as she arranged herself comfortably, worried by how cold she was, wrapping his arms around her and rubbing his legs against hers in an effort to return some warmth to them. As the self-appointed 'watchdog' of the house Kiba had a semiconscious need to know where everyone was, in a general sort of way. He liked to know who was likely to be coming or going. It ate away at him when somebody he'd expected home hours ago didn't turn up.
But he hadn't put a mental curfew on Tem's reappearance. She'd left early that morning, hours before the wake, and he'd known that it was going to be a long day for her.
So he'd half-waited up for her, always on the edge of sleeping, always keeping an ear out for her arrival.
She was exhausted; he'd known she would be - who wouldn't? Uzumaki had looked like shit when he'd arrived home, the others weren't much better off - but it was still saddening to hear the weary shuffle and drag of her feet, such polar opposite to her usual vim and verve. Somehow he hadn't been surprised when that sorrowful sound had edged closer to his door. He didn't know why. Kiba had watched her undress like some sort of automaton, vague blurs of movement in the dark, giving Akamaru a reassuring pat as the big dog made as if to move off the bed. Tem wouldn't mind his presence; she might even welcome it, in a way. 'Maru was always good to cuddle when one was feeling less than stellar.
Kiba tucked his head over hers, humming thoughtfully at her plea as he slowly woke up completely from his fretful half-doze. His hands tucked the covers around them more securely, making sure there was no chance of a cold draft cutting down the back of her neck before moving over her skin. God, she was freezing. Where had she been? How long had she been outside? He'd have to make sure she had some vitamins or something tomorrow so she didn't get sick. Though that was probably closing the barn door after the horse had bolted.
It was sort of funny, her asking for war stories passed onto him by a dead man - the last funeral he'd attended. He'd had his own Sergeant stripes by then. On the day it had felt a hollow reparation for the lack of the gregarious Sarge in his life, but Kiba had taken his duties seriously. He'd been a good soldier and leader, too, until repressed frustrations and minor annoyances all started blowing up in his face and he...ruined himself.
But he was coming back, he thought. Maybe it wouldn't work as well as it had back then, maybe he couldn't keep it up for long, but maybe he only needed a little bit, and only needed it now.
"Mmm. Let me see here," he rumbled, shifting slightly so he could hold her a little more comfortably, hoping her blood would take some heat so she didn't feel so much like a block of ice on his chest. "Well naw, seems t'me that me'n'the boys wuz doin' a recon mission through the for'st one day - jus' trav'ling alawng, doin' our thang an' keepin' outta mischief for once! - when, alla sudden, the front tyre on our jeep just- BANG! Blows right open! Wall, me'n'Young Walt - we called him that on 'ccounta the fact that we had three Walts in our troop, if y'can believe, three of 'em! All from Louisiana, too, th'oddest thang Ah sawed in the whole dang war - we hopped right off'f the back, takin' the oppotun'ty for a pitstop, if y'get what Ah mean, son, an' let the rest of the boys get t'work changin' the spare tyre on. We wuz all a bit nervous - this was real Charlie terr'tory, not a good place for four young Amer'can soldiers to be hangin' about, even if we reckoned ourselves handsome an' dashin' enough to wriggle our way outta most trouble, haw haw! Anyway, as Ah was sayin' - you really oughtn't let me get sidetracked like that, boy, we'll never get the dang story told at this rate! - me'n'Young Walt headed off inta the woods a little ways to take care'a some business, bein' real careful-like'a where we put them clodhoppers the Army told us wuz shoes..."
He rambled on, smiling faintly as he dredged up Sarge's gregarious story-telling style and tried his best emulate it. The man hadn't actually spoken like that - he'd been from New York himself, with dreams of taking the bar exams before the Army had called to him and changed his mind. But every time he told one of his 'Nam stories, they were always in the same manner, and they seemed to stick with him more because of it. Kiba sent him a tenuous good-wish as he picked up the mantle of keeping this tale alive, in all its silliness and irrelevance. Sarge'd approve.
Temari’s shivering slowly increased as she warmed up, body moving out of frozen numbness, but then steadily started to subside again. Kiba’s skin almost stung hers with his body heat at first but it became more comfortable as she absorbed it. One by one, her exhausted muscles relaxed against his bones as she lay there, blinking quietly as she listened to him ramble on.
The story itself didn’t really matter to her, not at the moment (maybe in a few weeks she’d ask to hear it again, some later date when she’d actually be able to hear the story and not just the narration); she just wanted to listen to the steady rumble of his voice as he told it. Kiba always took on this All American accent when it came to 'The 'Nam Stories'; it was somehow familiar and outrageous all at the same time. The words became more like sounds through the mangled articulation and Temari could just listen without necessarily needing to be engaged in it, as if she was listening to top forty or country radio. It was interesting enough to hold her attention, keep her mind afloat, without demanding any actual thought.
Her conscious mind was suspended and she just soaked it in, even smiled a touch here and there when his intonation implied some kind of joke or comedic event had just transpired. She let herself calm down; let the slow thrum of his pulse and steady push and pulls of his breath act like a balm against her frayed nerve endings and sooth the jaggedness that had been disrupting her for days. Progressively, she thawed and started to unwind, nuzzling closer still when her body was soft enough to press more tightly to his frame and wrapping one of her arms around him, the other pinned to her side by the bed.
Like always when things shifted suddenly and violently in her life, Temari had been feeling increasingly weightless and insubstantial. But Kiba was heavy and he was solid, and she just wanted to grasp that for a little while. She wanted to feel weighed down and grounded, just for a minute. Long enough to catch her breath again, and then she'd remember that he was trying to be lighter. Then she'd let go and let the wind catch her again.
"An' Ah reckon that 'bout sums up the time Ah single-handedly saved th'Prime Min'ster of Micronesia with nothin' bar a purple feather boa, two pints'a methylated spirits, and a pair of knock-off Levi's," Kiba concluded after another good twenty minutes or so of Sarge's best circular rambling. He shifted to his back, taking Tem with him easily and rearranging them both to his comfort and satisfaction. One arm circled around her hips, holding her tightly to him, while the other drifted up to softly stroke her hair. It felt drier than it had the last time he'd had opportunity to play with it - he supposed vaguely that that made sense, if she'd bleached the dye for the musical back out again. He was always a little weirded out by the thought of using a household cleaner on your head, but that was the price of beauty. Apparently.
(He'd never really gotten that concept.)
It was sort of eerily quiet now that the story was over, but he was loathe to say anything else just yet. Temari wasn't here for words. She was here for...well, comfort, he supposed. And warmth, because she was still pretty damn chilled, even if she was feeling slightly more human now. Akamaru tilted his head back, snout ending up where Tem's shoulder was under the covers, and crooned encouragingly. Kiba hummed lightly in answer, lips pressing to the top of the born-again blonde's ear. "Mmm. Warmin' up, babe?"
The blonde stretched and shifted malleably with the larger body, not troubled enough to maintain even a shred of resistance. Maybe it was because Kiba’s body had become so familiar to hers since last winter and that made it easy for Temari to feel so comfortable she was boneless with him; maybe it was that Kiba simply had this effect on everyone. Whatever, the result remained the same and for a second Temari considered worrying about it. After all, she could count the people she felt perfectly comfortable with on one hand and each of them came attached to very specific circumstances in the fiercely reckless pump in her chest masquerading as a heart.
She sighed heavily into the thickening silence of the room, dismissing the sentiment threatening to well up in the barren cave of her ribs. Her friendship/non-relationship with Kiba was way too convoluted for her right now. Maybe she’d think about it next week, somewhere between New York and Mississippi, when she needed a tough problem that she could take action on, try to resolve, to distract her from her impotence in the face of the massive vacuum Obito’s death left in her life.
Akamaru’s nose poked at her shoulder through the covers and Temari wished she wasn’t quite so well pinned by Kiba’s body and blankets. She wanted to scratch his ears and bury her face in his fur but she couldn’t move and didn’t have the strength to struggle free. A soft answering grumble curled behind her sternum, words for the only almost-pet she’d ever had (she was really going to miss him when she moved out of the house, she realized with a sudden pang in her stomach, and the mornings they’d sleep in late together after Kiba had left for work) before she found words for his owner. “Yeah…a bit,” the sound was still hoarse but she spoke softly to ease the strain on her throat. “You’re a good space-heater,” she half-heartedly teased, head turning slightly so she could press her lips to his collar bone.
Kiba clicked his tongue authoritatively and the dog hauled himself off the bed with a grunt; no sooner was he off than he was up again, this time under the blankets with them and snuggling firmly into Temari's side. "He's better," his owner explained easily, knowing Tem wouldn't mind. "You sound like shit, for the record. Can I getcha anything to drink?" There probably wasn't much point offering her any food; if she was anything like him she'd refuse it anyway.
Times like these, your gut was too twisted to fit anything solid down it. Kiba could understand that.
It was sort of nice to just stretch out like this, with no agenda other than comfort and company. This was not an atmosphere they'd ever actually really had before, now that he thought about it. Always there'd been the tension and heat and furious energy that characterized their apparent chemistry; while that was fun most of the time, it was also frustrating and more than a little exhausting. This was...just pleasant. Sad times, to be sure, but a pleasant situation in the moment.
Thoughts and subconscious whispers tiptoed through his brain and Kiba felt lines he'd thought were clear in the sand blur under the onslaught of a moonless tide.
Oh, well. Tonight he didn't care.
It was in that exact moment that Temari came to realize that it wasn't just that she liked Akamaru, she flat out loved him. She shifted on Kiba's chest, inching slightly towards the dog as she wrapped her arm around him, scratching his shoulder through his soft fur. "Pft..." she scoffed absently at Kiba's comment "maybe your hearing is shit..." The banter was hollow, completely devoid of her usual bite as she leaned to smooch Akamaru's ears before shifting back to nuzzle into Kiba's neck. The words were habit, a brushoff she'd trained herself to deliver rather than necessarily meant. But she'd developed the habit specifically for moments like this, when she needed to protect herself but her usual armour was beaten down and busted apart. At the moment, she needed to protect herself from Kiba following up on why she sounded quite like she did. The guitarist was just too tired to be able to deflect any line of questioning, too worn down by the day to remember that maybe she didn't want to tell Kiba the full answer to that. Should he even ask. Which he probably won't, she realized quietly.
"I'm not thirsty," the weary blonde answered finally, whispering more than talking now to mask the shredded quality of her voice. She wasn't embarrassed exactly, but she found herself feeling a little shy now that Kiba had openly noted it. Water would probably do her throat good, but Kiba would need to leave to get it, she'd have to sit up to drink it...he might turn on the light...and if any of those things happened, Temari would have to get up, put her sweater back on and go upstairs. Because if that happened, Kiba would be able to see the metaphorical beating she'd taken today, she would be exposed, and then she wouldn't be able to just...be comfortable with him anymore. As soon as their normalcy crept into the room, she would have to steel her spine and walk away, go upstairs to her bed and continue to be lonely and cold because that was just the person she needed to be when the light was on and she could be seen.
She wanted him to stay with her, for the room to stay dark and for it to be ok for her to lean on him, for it to be ok for him to be a person she found comfort in. Just for a little while. They could go back to normal later, and then they could pretend this hadn't happened, that she'd never been here. Just like they always did with anything that happened between them in the dark.
"Okay." Kiba tapped fingertips softly over her skin, irregular rhythms in an irregular pattern that wandered from hip to spine to neck and back again with lazy motion. This quiet between them was almost eerie, he kept having to hold himself back from trying to fill it with their usual brash noise and energy. That wouldn't be right, though. That wasn't what they needed right now - well, what Tem needed.
The clock clicked further into the Witching Hour, and Kiba closed his eyes with a huff of a sigh as the space between them filled with metaphors and lines of plaintive poetry. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever have found that if he hadn't come here; sometimes, when it haunted him as he shivered and shook, he wondered if he might be better off without. Having a secret deep reflective side was such a pain. And all his self-loathing, self-destructive tendencies drove him in all sorts of directions in an effort to hammer on his shattered soul; Kiba had, in the past year, churned his way through an impressive amount of books to help in this quest. His high school English teacher would have been stunned at his new knowledge.
"The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas..." He nuzzled a bestubbled cheek lightly against hers as his now-awake brain mused and scuttled around itself, tossing imagery at him like an overeager child trying to be helpful.
It took Temari a moment to recognize that Kiba was speaking, a second more to realize he was reciting something, before finally recognition sent a hiccup of hesitation through the reflexive press of her cheek into the scratch of his. At least, partial recognition. It tickled something in the back of her brain, something that was sending tiny shocks to the bruised pulp in her chest. She squirmed faintly, suddenly uncomfortable but unable to pinpoint why or adjust herself to accommodate it.
"What's that from?"
Kiba had to think for moment himself. "Mmm. The Highwayman. Alfred Noyes." The road was ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor... What the shit was a moor, anyway? He'd always meant to look that up but never quite got there. Apparently it was purple, at any rate. He wondered why his subconscious had chosen to dredge up this particular work, and wondered how the fuck he'd managed to remember it after all these years. Yet another poem to look up when he had the time; now that it was in his head he'd have to read through it again and make sure he hadn't missed anything, like a compulsion cast upon him.
He pursed his lips faintly, feeling them yield under the faint pressure from Tem's cheek, noting with absent approval that she was much warmer now. That was good. He'd been so shocked when she'd first crawled in with him, although on reflection he wasn't really all that surprised. As if on belated action to his thought, his arm spread warm and wide over her back once more in an attempt to trap her into his body heat and warm the core of her. Was it as cold still as the rest of her had been when she'd come home? Kiba hoped not, although his own experience whispered that she probably was. That wasn't right. He didn't like to think of Temari hurting like that. If you kept yourself too cold for too long, there was all the nasty association of frostbite and gangrene; it was bad enough in reality but possibly even worse when it ate at the soul.
"You know it?" he asked mildly, noticing the sudden tenseness of her body - it was only very slight, but a moment ago she'd been all but melting into him, so the difference was fairly palpable.
The guitarist frowned as she sifted through the extensive filing cabinets of her memory. "Mmm..." she hummed vaguely into the pulse in his neck. Yes she knew it, she was sure she knew it, but why did she know it and what about it did she know? Her hips twisted faintly against Kiba's to the corresponding angle of the twitch her shoulders followed under the warm sweep of his larger hand on her skin. The press of his palm felt good, soothing to the fraying nerves just under her goosebumps, but in relation to the increasingly focused search going on inside her brain it was distracting and uncomfortable.
Bits and pieces of the poem were coming back to her, read aloud in the stutter of bored high school students and the over-dramatization of her teacher trying to engage them. She remembered thinking he was ridiculous, that they were all ridiculous and that the beauty of the story only came through when it was read quietly and honestly. She remembered hating it by the time they'd finished dissecting it. She remembered feeling cheated out of the mourning she'd felt when she'd read it on her own before-hand, being angry that the full picture had been cheapened by being forced to look at the threads that had woven the tapestry.
She remembered the woman being brutalized by the guards or whatever...and that when she'd seen the Highwayman coming back for her, like he'd promised, she'd shot herself so that the noise would warn him off.
She didn't remember her cheeks being wet though. Wha--
With a muttered expletive, Temari pushed away from the organic pillow of Kiba's bones suddenly and abruptly, shoving to the side Akamaru hadn't already claimed. Her spine steeled almost painfully as she pulled herself upright in the bed. Instantly she was cold again, suddenly missing the body heat she'd been enjoying and the covers that had fallen around her waist but it just served to highlight the scald of fresh tears slipping over her cheekbones. How the fuck was it even possible that she was still hydrated enough to cry. And why the fuck was she crying over some stupid goddamn poem she hadn't read in almost ten years? More importantly, why the fuck wasn't she stopping?
A trembling palm pressed hard into one of her eyes before scraping across the other, almost violently scrubbing away at the moisture sticking to her eyelashes and making a mad dash for her chin. Mortification crushed down on her shoulders and she resolutely faced away as one of her hands worked on clawing the sheets away from her legs. "I should-- go check on Anko," she muttered, voice shaking as badly as her hands as her lungs tripped and struggled to breathe normally.
"Not like that, you shouldn't," Kiba told her quietly. He followed her up, dragging the coverlet back over her shoulders and locking her back into his embrace firmly. Something in him festered about the speed with which she'd pushed him away; he throttled it down. He freed up one hand to cover hers, halting its frenzied movement and shifting his legs until she was wrapped nearly entirely in a cocoon of Kiba and bedclothes.
She was still so cold. Inside and out. He hated being able to feel that.
Tucking his head into her neck, Kiba hummed gently, feeling it reverberate against his cheek and jawbone. It was an old Scottish lullaby; his grandmother had sung it to him and Hana as kids when they were too fretful to get to sleep. He couldn't remember all the words, though he was fairly sure his father did. Mack was weird like that. Maybe he'd have to learn it himself one day. For now he supposed it was enough to know the lilt of the tune, the soothe of the melody line. "Hush, my dear, the gallopin' men, ride through the bracken and o'er the ben..."
Temari considered struggling, almost did as flee continued to fire desperately from her brain to her muscle fibres. The signal hesitated through her shot nervous system though, delaying her response until she was already too firmly held in place to be able to make a break for it. Belatedly her shoulders jerked half-heartedly but they just didn't have room to move with Kiba's arm wrapped around them and holding them tightly against his chest. Her legs twitched with a vague restlessness before finally she just pulled up her knees and let her forehead drop against them. It was clear that she wouldn't have been able to get away, even if she'd wanted to. And with Kiba's larger frame doing its best to completely envelop her...maybe she wasn't so inclined to leave after all.
Slowly her breathing calmed again, her lungs taking their cues from the ribcage pressing in to hers, and her panic subsided under the soothing buzz of Kiba's voice in her neck. But those damn tears kept rolling off her eyelashes and soaking into the blanket covering her knees. Temari was just too exhausted to rein the mess of emotion now roiling through her back in for the millionth time that day.
That stupid poem was just a rock thrown into a pond, its individual ripple didn't really matter much, but that ripple had started another one and so on and so forth and suddenly everything that had been abrading her nerves was unbearable and the only method she had to immediately cope with it was to let it physically pour out. All of her sadness for Obito, her anger at her father, her frustration with Sasuke, her confusion with Kiba, her longing for Anko, her reluctance to go back to school, her annoyance from the play, her embarrassment over acting like this, the overwhelming complexity of everything...It all melted together and flooded up from her gut. And then Temari found herself drowning in the worst feeling of all, impotence.
She felt small and stupid, colossally ashamed and completely powerless to control, let alone stop, her pathetic display. She cried quietly, each tear for something or someone, but ultimately, she cried her self-loathing. Maybe tomorrow Temari would latch on to that, grab hold of that self-hatred, rally herself around it as she had in the past and use it as a crutch to hold herself upright. But exhaustion was again throwing kinks into her method. Anger took too much energy and so as her eyes finally started to dry, she just felt tired and empty.
Stroking his thumb over the palm of her captive hand, Kiba continued to hum and croon, odd snatches of lullabies and soothing melody that fluttered up from memory before drowning beneath the next. Akamaru whined tentatively for a bit before settling down, head tucked onto his forepaws as he watched them in canine worry, but Kiba couldn't spare the time to reassure him. Temari came first for the moment. And it hurt something in him to see her this crushed, like she was on the verge of being snuffed out, stamped out on the uncaring pavement of life as random event and misfortune shoved her down and trampled over her without remorse.
He released her hand gently to hitch at his battered old trackpants so he could shift his legs more easily, feeling the slight protrusion of her spine as it pressed tightly against his chest even as he pulled her closer to him. Kiba's lips moved lightly over her shoulder, an action less a kiss than another thread of contact between them, something else to anchor them together in the moment. For once, in fact, a kiss that meant nothing more impure than affection, that had no intentions attached to it other than comfort and support.
"Hey now," he murmured as he felt Temari's eerily silent weeping cease slowly, closing his eyes against her skin. "You're exhausted. Come back to bed?" It wasn't really a question. Because there was no way he was letting her go yet. Not like this.
For a long moment, Temari just breathed. Deep breaths that pushed her ribs into Kiba's, with the occasional hiccup or sniffle as she blinked against the coverlet. Cautiously, she wiped her face against her knees, worried that if she pressed the faintly swollen skin around her eyes too hard she'd pop whatever membrane had sealed her tear ducts and she'd start leaking all over again. She was convinced that her entire face had grown disproportioned and disgusting and she made a mental note to wash the sheets tomorrow seeing as all that gunk was now transposed to them. Her shoulders shuddered with an airy and bitter laugh as she realized just how utterly mundane of a concern that was.
With a faint groan, she lifted her head and turned to press her cheek to Kiba's forehead, the hand trapped at her shoulder sliding gently through his thick hair. This was bad. This hadn't been what she'd imagined would happen when she'd walked through Kiba's bedroom door instead of her own. This wasn't what she'd wanted to happen. But damn if she wasn't grateful for it.
She hummed faintly, an affirmative sound though she didn't answer overtly. Kiba was just...damnit, he was just being too nice, he was being too god damned perfect at the moment and she really didn't want to acknowledge it. That would make it real, which would make her reaction to it real and fuck. How was it possible for them to get even more complicated?
I am so fucked.
"Do you have any tissues?" she whispered finally, pulling away slightly (her fingers untangling from the back of his head) and cautiously wiping her eyes a little more thoroughly.
He nodded and uncoiled himself from around her, content that she wasn't going to run if he let go now. With a bit of awkward shuffling he was free of the bedclothes and off the bed, padding over to his desk and hunting around for the half-crushed pocket-pack of tissues he kept there just in case. In case of what, he didn't know - Kiba wasn't much given to weeping, even at the worst of times - but right now they were coming in handy so he didn't bother stopping to question Providence. He passed the packet to Tem and hauled hismelf back under the covers, curling around her almost protectively to scratch Akamaru's drooping ears.
"You're sure you don't want a drink?" he asked again, worried that she was drying herself out too much, worried that she'd fade away to a crumpled husk by the morning if he didn't take care of her. It was sort of scary how easy it was to automatically fall back into Sir Saviour Mode again, to reattach that need to make sure his pack group was safe and cared for and in one piece.
The fact that it was Tem was merely incidental. Right?
...Right?
I am so fucked.
The blankets fell from her shoulders again as Kiba let them go, but her still shaky hands were mildly pro-active this time, catching them over her breasts and tucking them under her arms. It took Temari a moment to fumble with the plastic packaging but finally she managed to pull out one of the tissues and blew her nose as discreetly as she could before wrestling out another one to dry her cheeks. Part of her was amazed that she'd been able to hold a chord at Obito's house earlier, even fisted shut around the soiled tissues her hands quaked.
Shaggy blonde hair fell into her eyes as she shook her head at the disgraceful sight and rattled a theoretically calming breath through her lungs. Wastebasket...overly bright and glassy green eyes cast midly around the room and the breath was expelled on a sigh as the trashbin was discovered over by the desk. Had it been her room, she would have just left the tissues on the bedside table and thrown them out in the morning but...that was kind of a gross habit, especially for someone else's room. She shifted heavily and slid across the mattress, immediately missing the pressure of Kiba's limbs and the warmth of the blankets as she pulled out of them and stood. The first step wobbled slightly, feet tender from all the hours of walking she'd done in her battered baseball sneakers, but the second was better. Her fist opened, the crumpled balls falling in with scrap paper and an empty pack of cigarettes, and she stared at them for a long moment before dragging her fingers through her hair, shoving it away from her face.
"No," she answered finally, not really sure if she was negating the offer or her earlier decision. Hands neutrally on her bare hips Temari glanced first towards the door, a dark panel with a slightly lighter outline implying the hall beyond, and then back towards the bed, the shadows of sheets and the faint gleam of the streetlights peeking through the almost closed curtains and bouncing off every available surface. She was standing, she was halfway to the door, she could leave. She should leave, if only because of the tone of Kiba's invitation to stay from moments ago, because of how her stomach had reacted to it, all heat and butterflies.
The wind howled in through the open windows, pushing aside the curtains and icing over every available surface of Temari's body. The young woman gasped sharply, arms leaping to cross tightly over her chest as goosebumps shivered and crawled over her skin and then practically sprinted back to the bed. Fuck it, outside of bed was cold.
She crawled back under the covers, careful to avoid hitting Akamaru and settled tightly against Kiba again, exhaling contentedly as the sheets shielded her from the air and trapped their combined warmth. Rolling onto her back, the blonde shoved her messy hair out of her face again and looked up at the concerned stare Kiba was still giving her, clearer now that she was closer and the curtains were letting in more streetlight. "No," she repeated, sure now of what she meant as one of her hands reached up and settled on his prickly jaw. "I don't want you to leave."
Before Kiba had the chance to get confused by her explanation, she leaned up and pressed her lips lightly to his. He would have insisted, she could tell, and resorting to honesty was her only chance of curbing this peculiar new facet of Kiba's personality.
He tucked her underneath him gently, lips trailing down her jawline soothingly before he whuffed a sigh into her neck. "Then I'm not leaving." Even as he said it, Kiba wasn't really sure how much he was promising with four simple little words, but that wasn't important right now anyway. Any confusion could be clarified later, when she wasn't hurting and everything had a chance to settle. For now it was just reassuring that he could hear and feel the thrum of Temari's pulse where it beat steadily close to his ear, could hear the steady in-and-out of her breathing as it calmed from her latest bout of weeping.
Was it enough for her? Really, he had no way of knowing. That was what both intrigued and frustrated him about people in general, about Tem in particular. Unless they told you so you never had any idea. And even then there was always that nasty little spectre hanging over them, the one that whispered and cackled that they might be lying. It was hard to take the leap of faith to just trust someone, to take them at their word. Kiba was usually loathe to do so, despite any evidence to the contrary, and it sometimes bothered him when people seemed to innately trust him. Even the ones who - supposedly - knew him. How could they see what sort of person he was and still put that sort of faith in him? God knew he wouldn't have. But still he seemed to collect people who wanted him to be good, to be worth the worry and the effort and the care, and he had enough of a conscience left to hate himself when he let them down. Hina, Haku, even Sakura to extent...they all seemed to think he was just rough around the edges, a ragged cloak over something worth keeping.
Kiba wanted to think they were right, but was forced to concede that they probably weren't.
And now Tem was here, seeking comfort and a rock to anchor herself to. Tem, one of the strongest people he knew, wanted his strength to prop her up for a while. It left him scrambling to cobble together enough of an illusion of such to fool her into thinking he was worth it, because if he didn't she might fall too far and shatter. Not matter what, he couldn't let that happen. Kiba's friends were his foundation, his lifesaver. He didn't help them out of any sense of decency, oh no. He just couldn't afford to let them slip under, for his own sake. Temari wanted him to stay? Kiba would stay. He'd stay and pretend he was worth the time, that he was good enough for this, until she was patched up enough again to be able to handle it when he proved her wrong.
He could taste the sweet and salt of her skin as his lips pursed in self-recrimination. Yeah, he was an asshole.
But he'd warned her of that before.
Where: Kiba's room, the Summer House of Awesome and Awkward
When: August 25th/26th 1988, the night following Obito's wake
What: Utterly crushed by the day, Tem seeks out someone warmer than her
Warnings: This log contains absolutely no banging. Not even makeouts. I am frankly disappointed in them.
Scuff after scuff, her soles shuffled against the pavement as Temari wearily dragged herself down the sidewalks that led to the house she’d called home all summer. The sounds were lost to the wind rushing past her ears and passing right through her ragged cable knit sweater. It had been howling all day, the air completely restless under the slate grey sky that was refusing to relinquish its rain. She was freezing but she kind of liked the feeling. After hours of being exposed to it, she could blame it for her scattered hair, her white, white skin and the raw red around her eyes and high on her cheekbones, for the blue tinge in her lips and the shaking and shivering of her hands. She liked having something tangible to pin it to. She liked that it distracted her and forced her to keep her head together, at least a little bit.
But mostly she liked how it had emptied the streets. The young guitarist had left her mentor’s house hours ago and wandered all over town but she’d barely seen a soul. Everyone seemed to be terrified of the potential downpour, bullied by the wind, but Temari just found that it suited her mood. Her turmoil was equally violent and intangible.
That was why (after she’d double checked that all the guests had left and assured Gaara that she really did have everything together and she really would make it home in one piece without him, after she’d cautiously locked the doors to Obito’s house) she had let the wind urge her steps towards the only person who’d ever really given her as good she gave in her storms.
Spike’s grave was small and undecorated, already half grown over with long grass. It had made her sad in an entirely different way when she’d realized that no one had visited him since the last time she’d wandered this way. But a big part of her was still so furious with him that she wanted to smash the headstone, so she supposed she understood.
They had spent hours together, watched the sunset through the clouds as Temari’s unsteady hands had pulled away the grass suffocating him and braided the long blades for no particular reason. They didn’t talk. Her feelings for Spike, her feelings towards their history, still hadn’t settled enough for her to be able to express them comprehensively. Sorting out that mess hadn’t been why she wanted to see him anyway.
Spike was, even just as a marker in the ground, a source of comfort to her; a person, now ashes, that had always seen and accepted all facets of her, even when she hadn’t been able to accept all of them herself, and therefore Spike was a person with whom it was acceptable that she be anything, including sad. She’d lay down with him in the new grass and still soft dirt and for the first time since Kakashi had stuttered through the news of Obito’s car wreck, she had allowed herself to believe it was true. Allowed herself to understand the full breadth and weight of the implications.
Wave after wave of grief, longing and loneliness flooded from inside her rib cage, spilling hotly down the sides of her face and clawing violently out of her throat until she was completely drained, dehydrated and raw. By the time she felt quiet again, empty and hollow like the guitar she had borrowed in Obito's living room, it was dark out. She hadn’t had the nerve to face the lights in the subways so she’d walked back across the city to get home. Always with the freezing wind on the back of her neck and passing so easily through her clothing that she felt naked.
It took her three tries to unlock the door, her fingers too stiff and numb to grip her keys, her entire body shaking too hard for her to coordinate slipping it into the lock. Finally she managed and stumbled into the front entry. Closing the door was much easier but somehow her shoelaces were the hardest yet. Eventually, she gave up on the knots and forced her feet free of the worn black canvas despite them.
The stairs were too daunting of a task for her exhausted muscles and smarting feet. Her bed would be cold and empty anyway, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she didn’t bother attempting them. Instead the blonde pushed through the half open door facing the stairwell, closing it just short of latching behind her. Continually graceless, Temari tugged her sweater over her head and shoved her jeans down her legs, each motion listless and mechanical until she was finally naked.
On another night, she might have asked permission, she might have double checked that the spare space in Kiba’s bed wasn’t already taken up by Kin or Haku, but tonight she didn’t care. Tonight, she didn’t feel polite. She didn’t feel accommodating. She sure as fuck didn’t feel fair. Had someone beaten her into that bed, which was entirely possible given that the bedside clock was flashing some time past midnight, she would have just shoved them out.
Without a word, she pulled back the covers and crawled between the sheets, not settling until her chest was pressed tightly against Kiba’s and she could feel the slow thrum of his heartbeat against her cheek.
“Please tell me a war story.” Her vocal cords were completely stripped and the words creaked out like a door pushing open against rusted hinges. She cringed from the sound to disguise a wince of pain as the swollen membranes protested further abuse.
He waited quietly as she arranged herself comfortably, worried by how cold she was, wrapping his arms around her and rubbing his legs against hers in an effort to return some warmth to them. As the self-appointed 'watchdog' of the house Kiba had a semiconscious need to know where everyone was, in a general sort of way. He liked to know who was likely to be coming or going. It ate away at him when somebody he'd expected home hours ago didn't turn up.
But he hadn't put a mental curfew on Tem's reappearance. She'd left early that morning, hours before the wake, and he'd known that it was going to be a long day for her.
So he'd half-waited up for her, always on the edge of sleeping, always keeping an ear out for her arrival.
She was exhausted; he'd known she would be - who wouldn't? Uzumaki had looked like shit when he'd arrived home, the others weren't much better off - but it was still saddening to hear the weary shuffle and drag of her feet, such polar opposite to her usual vim and verve. Somehow he hadn't been surprised when that sorrowful sound had edged closer to his door. He didn't know why. Kiba had watched her undress like some sort of automaton, vague blurs of movement in the dark, giving Akamaru a reassuring pat as the big dog made as if to move off the bed. Tem wouldn't mind his presence; she might even welcome it, in a way. 'Maru was always good to cuddle when one was feeling less than stellar.
Kiba tucked his head over hers, humming thoughtfully at her plea as he slowly woke up completely from his fretful half-doze. His hands tucked the covers around them more securely, making sure there was no chance of a cold draft cutting down the back of her neck before moving over her skin. God, she was freezing. Where had she been? How long had she been outside? He'd have to make sure she had some vitamins or something tomorrow so she didn't get sick. Though that was probably closing the barn door after the horse had bolted.
It was sort of funny, her asking for war stories passed onto him by a dead man - the last funeral he'd attended. He'd had his own Sergeant stripes by then. On the day it had felt a hollow reparation for the lack of the gregarious Sarge in his life, but Kiba had taken his duties seriously. He'd been a good soldier and leader, too, until repressed frustrations and minor annoyances all started blowing up in his face and he...ruined himself.
But he was coming back, he thought. Maybe it wouldn't work as well as it had back then, maybe he couldn't keep it up for long, but maybe he only needed a little bit, and only needed it now.
"Mmm. Let me see here," he rumbled, shifting slightly so he could hold her a little more comfortably, hoping her blood would take some heat so she didn't feel so much like a block of ice on his chest. "Well naw, seems t'me that me'n'the boys wuz doin' a recon mission through the for'st one day - jus' trav'ling alawng, doin' our thang an' keepin' outta mischief for once! - when, alla sudden, the front tyre on our jeep just- BANG! Blows right open! Wall, me'n'Young Walt - we called him that on 'ccounta the fact that we had three Walts in our troop, if y'can believe, three of 'em! All from Louisiana, too, th'oddest thang Ah sawed in the whole dang war - we hopped right off'f the back, takin' the oppotun'ty for a pitstop, if y'get what Ah mean, son, an' let the rest of the boys get t'work changin' the spare tyre on. We wuz all a bit nervous - this was real Charlie terr'tory, not a good place for four young Amer'can soldiers to be hangin' about, even if we reckoned ourselves handsome an' dashin' enough to wriggle our way outta most trouble, haw haw! Anyway, as Ah was sayin' - you really oughtn't let me get sidetracked like that, boy, we'll never get the dang story told at this rate! - me'n'Young Walt headed off inta the woods a little ways to take care'a some business, bein' real careful-like'a where we put them clodhoppers the Army told us wuz shoes..."
He rambled on, smiling faintly as he dredged up Sarge's gregarious story-telling style and tried his best emulate it. The man hadn't actually spoken like that - he'd been from New York himself, with dreams of taking the bar exams before the Army had called to him and changed his mind. But every time he told one of his 'Nam stories, they were always in the same manner, and they seemed to stick with him more because of it. Kiba sent him a tenuous good-wish as he picked up the mantle of keeping this tale alive, in all its silliness and irrelevance. Sarge'd approve.
Temari’s shivering slowly increased as she warmed up, body moving out of frozen numbness, but then steadily started to subside again. Kiba’s skin almost stung hers with his body heat at first but it became more comfortable as she absorbed it. One by one, her exhausted muscles relaxed against his bones as she lay there, blinking quietly as she listened to him ramble on.
The story itself didn’t really matter to her, not at the moment (maybe in a few weeks she’d ask to hear it again, some later date when she’d actually be able to hear the story and not just the narration); she just wanted to listen to the steady rumble of his voice as he told it. Kiba always took on this All American accent when it came to 'The 'Nam Stories'; it was somehow familiar and outrageous all at the same time. The words became more like sounds through the mangled articulation and Temari could just listen without necessarily needing to be engaged in it, as if she was listening to top forty or country radio. It was interesting enough to hold her attention, keep her mind afloat, without demanding any actual thought.
Her conscious mind was suspended and she just soaked it in, even smiled a touch here and there when his intonation implied some kind of joke or comedic event had just transpired. She let herself calm down; let the slow thrum of his pulse and steady push and pulls of his breath act like a balm against her frayed nerve endings and sooth the jaggedness that had been disrupting her for days. Progressively, she thawed and started to unwind, nuzzling closer still when her body was soft enough to press more tightly to his frame and wrapping one of her arms around him, the other pinned to her side by the bed.
Like always when things shifted suddenly and violently in her life, Temari had been feeling increasingly weightless and insubstantial. But Kiba was heavy and he was solid, and she just wanted to grasp that for a little while. She wanted to feel weighed down and grounded, just for a minute. Long enough to catch her breath again, and then she'd remember that he was trying to be lighter. Then she'd let go and let the wind catch her again.
"An' Ah reckon that 'bout sums up the time Ah single-handedly saved th'Prime Min'ster of Micronesia with nothin' bar a purple feather boa, two pints'a methylated spirits, and a pair of knock-off Levi's," Kiba concluded after another good twenty minutes or so of Sarge's best circular rambling. He shifted to his back, taking Tem with him easily and rearranging them both to his comfort and satisfaction. One arm circled around her hips, holding her tightly to him, while the other drifted up to softly stroke her hair. It felt drier than it had the last time he'd had opportunity to play with it - he supposed vaguely that that made sense, if she'd bleached the dye for the musical back out again. He was always a little weirded out by the thought of using a household cleaner on your head, but that was the price of beauty. Apparently.
(He'd never really gotten that concept.)
It was sort of eerily quiet now that the story was over, but he was loathe to say anything else just yet. Temari wasn't here for words. She was here for...well, comfort, he supposed. And warmth, because she was still pretty damn chilled, even if she was feeling slightly more human now. Akamaru tilted his head back, snout ending up where Tem's shoulder was under the covers, and crooned encouragingly. Kiba hummed lightly in answer, lips pressing to the top of the born-again blonde's ear. "Mmm. Warmin' up, babe?"
The blonde stretched and shifted malleably with the larger body, not troubled enough to maintain even a shred of resistance. Maybe it was because Kiba’s body had become so familiar to hers since last winter and that made it easy for Temari to feel so comfortable she was boneless with him; maybe it was that Kiba simply had this effect on everyone. Whatever, the result remained the same and for a second Temari considered worrying about it. After all, she could count the people she felt perfectly comfortable with on one hand and each of them came attached to very specific circumstances in the fiercely reckless pump in her chest masquerading as a heart.
She sighed heavily into the thickening silence of the room, dismissing the sentiment threatening to well up in the barren cave of her ribs. Her friendship/non-relationship with Kiba was way too convoluted for her right now. Maybe she’d think about it next week, somewhere between New York and Mississippi, when she needed a tough problem that she could take action on, try to resolve, to distract her from her impotence in the face of the massive vacuum Obito’s death left in her life.
Akamaru’s nose poked at her shoulder through the covers and Temari wished she wasn’t quite so well pinned by Kiba’s body and blankets. She wanted to scratch his ears and bury her face in his fur but she couldn’t move and didn’t have the strength to struggle free. A soft answering grumble curled behind her sternum, words for the only almost-pet she’d ever had (she was really going to miss him when she moved out of the house, she realized with a sudden pang in her stomach, and the mornings they’d sleep in late together after Kiba had left for work) before she found words for his owner. “Yeah…a bit,” the sound was still hoarse but she spoke softly to ease the strain on her throat. “You’re a good space-heater,” she half-heartedly teased, head turning slightly so she could press her lips to his collar bone.
Kiba clicked his tongue authoritatively and the dog hauled himself off the bed with a grunt; no sooner was he off than he was up again, this time under the blankets with them and snuggling firmly into Temari's side. "He's better," his owner explained easily, knowing Tem wouldn't mind. "You sound like shit, for the record. Can I getcha anything to drink?" There probably wasn't much point offering her any food; if she was anything like him she'd refuse it anyway.
Times like these, your gut was too twisted to fit anything solid down it. Kiba could understand that.
It was sort of nice to just stretch out like this, with no agenda other than comfort and company. This was not an atmosphere they'd ever actually really had before, now that he thought about it. Always there'd been the tension and heat and furious energy that characterized their apparent chemistry; while that was fun most of the time, it was also frustrating and more than a little exhausting. This was...just pleasant. Sad times, to be sure, but a pleasant situation in the moment.
Thoughts and subconscious whispers tiptoed through his brain and Kiba felt lines he'd thought were clear in the sand blur under the onslaught of a moonless tide.
Oh, well. Tonight he didn't care.
It was in that exact moment that Temari came to realize that it wasn't just that she liked Akamaru, she flat out loved him. She shifted on Kiba's chest, inching slightly towards the dog as she wrapped her arm around him, scratching his shoulder through his soft fur. "Pft..." she scoffed absently at Kiba's comment "maybe your hearing is shit..." The banter was hollow, completely devoid of her usual bite as she leaned to smooch Akamaru's ears before shifting back to nuzzle into Kiba's neck. The words were habit, a brushoff she'd trained herself to deliver rather than necessarily meant. But she'd developed the habit specifically for moments like this, when she needed to protect herself but her usual armour was beaten down and busted apart. At the moment, she needed to protect herself from Kiba following up on why she sounded quite like she did. The guitarist was just too tired to be able to deflect any line of questioning, too worn down by the day to remember that maybe she didn't want to tell Kiba the full answer to that. Should he even ask. Which he probably won't, she realized quietly.
"I'm not thirsty," the weary blonde answered finally, whispering more than talking now to mask the shredded quality of her voice. She wasn't embarrassed exactly, but she found herself feeling a little shy now that Kiba had openly noted it. Water would probably do her throat good, but Kiba would need to leave to get it, she'd have to sit up to drink it...he might turn on the light...and if any of those things happened, Temari would have to get up, put her sweater back on and go upstairs. Because if that happened, Kiba would be able to see the metaphorical beating she'd taken today, she would be exposed, and then she wouldn't be able to just...be comfortable with him anymore. As soon as their normalcy crept into the room, she would have to steel her spine and walk away, go upstairs to her bed and continue to be lonely and cold because that was just the person she needed to be when the light was on and she could be seen.
She wanted him to stay with her, for the room to stay dark and for it to be ok for her to lean on him, for it to be ok for him to be a person she found comfort in. Just for a little while. They could go back to normal later, and then they could pretend this hadn't happened, that she'd never been here. Just like they always did with anything that happened between them in the dark.
"Okay." Kiba tapped fingertips softly over her skin, irregular rhythms in an irregular pattern that wandered from hip to spine to neck and back again with lazy motion. This quiet between them was almost eerie, he kept having to hold himself back from trying to fill it with their usual brash noise and energy. That wouldn't be right, though. That wasn't what they needed right now - well, what Tem needed.
The clock clicked further into the Witching Hour, and Kiba closed his eyes with a huff of a sigh as the space between them filled with metaphors and lines of plaintive poetry. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever have found that if he hadn't come here; sometimes, when it haunted him as he shivered and shook, he wondered if he might be better off without. Having a secret deep reflective side was such a pain. And all his self-loathing, self-destructive tendencies drove him in all sorts of directions in an effort to hammer on his shattered soul; Kiba had, in the past year, churned his way through an impressive amount of books to help in this quest. His high school English teacher would have been stunned at his new knowledge.
"The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas..." He nuzzled a bestubbled cheek lightly against hers as his now-awake brain mused and scuttled around itself, tossing imagery at him like an overeager child trying to be helpful.
It took Temari a moment to recognize that Kiba was speaking, a second more to realize he was reciting something, before finally recognition sent a hiccup of hesitation through the reflexive press of her cheek into the scratch of his. At least, partial recognition. It tickled something in the back of her brain, something that was sending tiny shocks to the bruised pulp in her chest. She squirmed faintly, suddenly uncomfortable but unable to pinpoint why or adjust herself to accommodate it.
"What's that from?"
Kiba had to think for moment himself. "Mmm. The Highwayman. Alfred Noyes." The road was ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor... What the shit was a moor, anyway? He'd always meant to look that up but never quite got there. Apparently it was purple, at any rate. He wondered why his subconscious had chosen to dredge up this particular work, and wondered how the fuck he'd managed to remember it after all these years. Yet another poem to look up when he had the time; now that it was in his head he'd have to read through it again and make sure he hadn't missed anything, like a compulsion cast upon him.
He pursed his lips faintly, feeling them yield under the faint pressure from Tem's cheek, noting with absent approval that she was much warmer now. That was good. He'd been so shocked when she'd first crawled in with him, although on reflection he wasn't really all that surprised. As if on belated action to his thought, his arm spread warm and wide over her back once more in an attempt to trap her into his body heat and warm the core of her. Was it as cold still as the rest of her had been when she'd come home? Kiba hoped not, although his own experience whispered that she probably was. That wasn't right. He didn't like to think of Temari hurting like that. If you kept yourself too cold for too long, there was all the nasty association of frostbite and gangrene; it was bad enough in reality but possibly even worse when it ate at the soul.
"You know it?" he asked mildly, noticing the sudden tenseness of her body - it was only very slight, but a moment ago she'd been all but melting into him, so the difference was fairly palpable.
The guitarist frowned as she sifted through the extensive filing cabinets of her memory. "Mmm..." she hummed vaguely into the pulse in his neck. Yes she knew it, she was sure she knew it, but why did she know it and what about it did she know? Her hips twisted faintly against Kiba's to the corresponding angle of the twitch her shoulders followed under the warm sweep of his larger hand on her skin. The press of his palm felt good, soothing to the fraying nerves just under her goosebumps, but in relation to the increasingly focused search going on inside her brain it was distracting and uncomfortable.
Bits and pieces of the poem were coming back to her, read aloud in the stutter of bored high school students and the over-dramatization of her teacher trying to engage them. She remembered thinking he was ridiculous, that they were all ridiculous and that the beauty of the story only came through when it was read quietly and honestly. She remembered hating it by the time they'd finished dissecting it. She remembered feeling cheated out of the mourning she'd felt when she'd read it on her own before-hand, being angry that the full picture had been cheapened by being forced to look at the threads that had woven the tapestry.
She remembered the woman being brutalized by the guards or whatever...and that when she'd seen the Highwayman coming back for her, like he'd promised, she'd shot herself so that the noise would warn him off.
She didn't remember her cheeks being wet though. Wha--
With a muttered expletive, Temari pushed away from the organic pillow of Kiba's bones suddenly and abruptly, shoving to the side Akamaru hadn't already claimed. Her spine steeled almost painfully as she pulled herself upright in the bed. Instantly she was cold again, suddenly missing the body heat she'd been enjoying and the covers that had fallen around her waist but it just served to highlight the scald of fresh tears slipping over her cheekbones. How the fuck was it even possible that she was still hydrated enough to cry. And why the fuck was she crying over some stupid goddamn poem she hadn't read in almost ten years? More importantly, why the fuck wasn't she stopping?
A trembling palm pressed hard into one of her eyes before scraping across the other, almost violently scrubbing away at the moisture sticking to her eyelashes and making a mad dash for her chin. Mortification crushed down on her shoulders and she resolutely faced away as one of her hands worked on clawing the sheets away from her legs. "I should-- go check on Anko," she muttered, voice shaking as badly as her hands as her lungs tripped and struggled to breathe normally.
"Not like that, you shouldn't," Kiba told her quietly. He followed her up, dragging the coverlet back over her shoulders and locking her back into his embrace firmly. Something in him festered about the speed with which she'd pushed him away; he throttled it down. He freed up one hand to cover hers, halting its frenzied movement and shifting his legs until she was wrapped nearly entirely in a cocoon of Kiba and bedclothes.
She was still so cold. Inside and out. He hated being able to feel that.
Tucking his head into her neck, Kiba hummed gently, feeling it reverberate against his cheek and jawbone. It was an old Scottish lullaby; his grandmother had sung it to him and Hana as kids when they were too fretful to get to sleep. He couldn't remember all the words, though he was fairly sure his father did. Mack was weird like that. Maybe he'd have to learn it himself one day. For now he supposed it was enough to know the lilt of the tune, the soothe of the melody line. "Hush, my dear, the gallopin' men, ride through the bracken and o'er the ben..."
Temari considered struggling, almost did as flee continued to fire desperately from her brain to her muscle fibres. The signal hesitated through her shot nervous system though, delaying her response until she was already too firmly held in place to be able to make a break for it. Belatedly her shoulders jerked half-heartedly but they just didn't have room to move with Kiba's arm wrapped around them and holding them tightly against his chest. Her legs twitched with a vague restlessness before finally she just pulled up her knees and let her forehead drop against them. It was clear that she wouldn't have been able to get away, even if she'd wanted to. And with Kiba's larger frame doing its best to completely envelop her...maybe she wasn't so inclined to leave after all.
Slowly her breathing calmed again, her lungs taking their cues from the ribcage pressing in to hers, and her panic subsided under the soothing buzz of Kiba's voice in her neck. But those damn tears kept rolling off her eyelashes and soaking into the blanket covering her knees. Temari was just too exhausted to rein the mess of emotion now roiling through her back in for the millionth time that day.
That stupid poem was just a rock thrown into a pond, its individual ripple didn't really matter much, but that ripple had started another one and so on and so forth and suddenly everything that had been abrading her nerves was unbearable and the only method she had to immediately cope with it was to let it physically pour out. All of her sadness for Obito, her anger at her father, her frustration with Sasuke, her confusion with Kiba, her longing for Anko, her reluctance to go back to school, her annoyance from the play, her embarrassment over acting like this, the overwhelming complexity of everything...It all melted together and flooded up from her gut. And then Temari found herself drowning in the worst feeling of all, impotence.
She felt small and stupid, colossally ashamed and completely powerless to control, let alone stop, her pathetic display. She cried quietly, each tear for something or someone, but ultimately, she cried her self-loathing. Maybe tomorrow Temari would latch on to that, grab hold of that self-hatred, rally herself around it as she had in the past and use it as a crutch to hold herself upright. But exhaustion was again throwing kinks into her method. Anger took too much energy and so as her eyes finally started to dry, she just felt tired and empty.
Stroking his thumb over the palm of her captive hand, Kiba continued to hum and croon, odd snatches of lullabies and soothing melody that fluttered up from memory before drowning beneath the next. Akamaru whined tentatively for a bit before settling down, head tucked onto his forepaws as he watched them in canine worry, but Kiba couldn't spare the time to reassure him. Temari came first for the moment. And it hurt something in him to see her this crushed, like she was on the verge of being snuffed out, stamped out on the uncaring pavement of life as random event and misfortune shoved her down and trampled over her without remorse.
He released her hand gently to hitch at his battered old trackpants so he could shift his legs more easily, feeling the slight protrusion of her spine as it pressed tightly against his chest even as he pulled her closer to him. Kiba's lips moved lightly over her shoulder, an action less a kiss than another thread of contact between them, something else to anchor them together in the moment. For once, in fact, a kiss that meant nothing more impure than affection, that had no intentions attached to it other than comfort and support.
"Hey now," he murmured as he felt Temari's eerily silent weeping cease slowly, closing his eyes against her skin. "You're exhausted. Come back to bed?" It wasn't really a question. Because there was no way he was letting her go yet. Not like this.
For a long moment, Temari just breathed. Deep breaths that pushed her ribs into Kiba's, with the occasional hiccup or sniffle as she blinked against the coverlet. Cautiously, she wiped her face against her knees, worried that if she pressed the faintly swollen skin around her eyes too hard she'd pop whatever membrane had sealed her tear ducts and she'd start leaking all over again. She was convinced that her entire face had grown disproportioned and disgusting and she made a mental note to wash the sheets tomorrow seeing as all that gunk was now transposed to them. Her shoulders shuddered with an airy and bitter laugh as she realized just how utterly mundane of a concern that was.
With a faint groan, she lifted her head and turned to press her cheek to Kiba's forehead, the hand trapped at her shoulder sliding gently through his thick hair. This was bad. This hadn't been what she'd imagined would happen when she'd walked through Kiba's bedroom door instead of her own. This wasn't what she'd wanted to happen. But damn if she wasn't grateful for it.
She hummed faintly, an affirmative sound though she didn't answer overtly. Kiba was just...damnit, he was just being too nice, he was being too god damned perfect at the moment and she really didn't want to acknowledge it. That would make it real, which would make her reaction to it real and fuck. How was it possible for them to get even more complicated?
I am so fucked.
"Do you have any tissues?" she whispered finally, pulling away slightly (her fingers untangling from the back of his head) and cautiously wiping her eyes a little more thoroughly.
He nodded and uncoiled himself from around her, content that she wasn't going to run if he let go now. With a bit of awkward shuffling he was free of the bedclothes and off the bed, padding over to his desk and hunting around for the half-crushed pocket-pack of tissues he kept there just in case. In case of what, he didn't know - Kiba wasn't much given to weeping, even at the worst of times - but right now they were coming in handy so he didn't bother stopping to question Providence. He passed the packet to Tem and hauled hismelf back under the covers, curling around her almost protectively to scratch Akamaru's drooping ears.
"You're sure you don't want a drink?" he asked again, worried that she was drying herself out too much, worried that she'd fade away to a crumpled husk by the morning if he didn't take care of her. It was sort of scary how easy it was to automatically fall back into Sir Saviour Mode again, to reattach that need to make sure his pack group was safe and cared for and in one piece.
The fact that it was Tem was merely incidental. Right?
...Right?
I am so fucked.
The blankets fell from her shoulders again as Kiba let them go, but her still shaky hands were mildly pro-active this time, catching them over her breasts and tucking them under her arms. It took Temari a moment to fumble with the plastic packaging but finally she managed to pull out one of the tissues and blew her nose as discreetly as she could before wrestling out another one to dry her cheeks. Part of her was amazed that she'd been able to hold a chord at Obito's house earlier, even fisted shut around the soiled tissues her hands quaked.
Shaggy blonde hair fell into her eyes as she shook her head at the disgraceful sight and rattled a theoretically calming breath through her lungs. Wastebasket...overly bright and glassy green eyes cast midly around the room and the breath was expelled on a sigh as the trashbin was discovered over by the desk. Had it been her room, she would have just left the tissues on the bedside table and thrown them out in the morning but...that was kind of a gross habit, especially for someone else's room. She shifted heavily and slid across the mattress, immediately missing the pressure of Kiba's limbs and the warmth of the blankets as she pulled out of them and stood. The first step wobbled slightly, feet tender from all the hours of walking she'd done in her battered baseball sneakers, but the second was better. Her fist opened, the crumpled balls falling in with scrap paper and an empty pack of cigarettes, and she stared at them for a long moment before dragging her fingers through her hair, shoving it away from her face.
"No," she answered finally, not really sure if she was negating the offer or her earlier decision. Hands neutrally on her bare hips Temari glanced first towards the door, a dark panel with a slightly lighter outline implying the hall beyond, and then back towards the bed, the shadows of sheets and the faint gleam of the streetlights peeking through the almost closed curtains and bouncing off every available surface. She was standing, she was halfway to the door, she could leave. She should leave, if only because of the tone of Kiba's invitation to stay from moments ago, because of how her stomach had reacted to it, all heat and butterflies.
The wind howled in through the open windows, pushing aside the curtains and icing over every available surface of Temari's body. The young woman gasped sharply, arms leaping to cross tightly over her chest as goosebumps shivered and crawled over her skin and then practically sprinted back to the bed. Fuck it, outside of bed was cold.
She crawled back under the covers, careful to avoid hitting Akamaru and settled tightly against Kiba again, exhaling contentedly as the sheets shielded her from the air and trapped their combined warmth. Rolling onto her back, the blonde shoved her messy hair out of her face again and looked up at the concerned stare Kiba was still giving her, clearer now that she was closer and the curtains were letting in more streetlight. "No," she repeated, sure now of what she meant as one of her hands reached up and settled on his prickly jaw. "I don't want you to leave."
Before Kiba had the chance to get confused by her explanation, she leaned up and pressed her lips lightly to his. He would have insisted, she could tell, and resorting to honesty was her only chance of curbing this peculiar new facet of Kiba's personality.
He tucked her underneath him gently, lips trailing down her jawline soothingly before he whuffed a sigh into her neck. "Then I'm not leaving." Even as he said it, Kiba wasn't really sure how much he was promising with four simple little words, but that wasn't important right now anyway. Any confusion could be clarified later, when she wasn't hurting and everything had a chance to settle. For now it was just reassuring that he could hear and feel the thrum of Temari's pulse where it beat steadily close to his ear, could hear the steady in-and-out of her breathing as it calmed from her latest bout of weeping.
Was it enough for her? Really, he had no way of knowing. That was what both intrigued and frustrated him about people in general, about Tem in particular. Unless they told you so you never had any idea. And even then there was always that nasty little spectre hanging over them, the one that whispered and cackled that they might be lying. It was hard to take the leap of faith to just trust someone, to take them at their word. Kiba was usually loathe to do so, despite any evidence to the contrary, and it sometimes bothered him when people seemed to innately trust him. Even the ones who - supposedly - knew him. How could they see what sort of person he was and still put that sort of faith in him? God knew he wouldn't have. But still he seemed to collect people who wanted him to be good, to be worth the worry and the effort and the care, and he had enough of a conscience left to hate himself when he let them down. Hina, Haku, even Sakura to extent...they all seemed to think he was just rough around the edges, a ragged cloak over something worth keeping.
Kiba wanted to think they were right, but was forced to concede that they probably weren't.
And now Tem was here, seeking comfort and a rock to anchor herself to. Tem, one of the strongest people he knew, wanted his strength to prop her up for a while. It left him scrambling to cobble together enough of an illusion of such to fool her into thinking he was worth it, because if he didn't she might fall too far and shatter. Not matter what, he couldn't let that happen. Kiba's friends were his foundation, his lifesaver. He didn't help them out of any sense of decency, oh no. He just couldn't afford to let them slip under, for his own sake. Temari wanted him to stay? Kiba would stay. He'd stay and pretend he was worth the time, that he was good enough for this, until she was patched up enough again to be able to handle it when he proved her wrong.
He could taste the sweet and salt of her skin as his lips pursed in self-recrimination. Yeah, he was an asshole.
But he'd warned her of that before.