Warnings: Character death (past), violent imagery, blood, possibly disturbing imagery, implied sex. Short, but packs a punch? Or maybe makes now sense. I like it, anyway. Written for zhangsizheng.

FINE (I MISS YOU, BUT I'M)
by vernajast

asuma x kurenai...x shikamaru

(a story about the lies we tell ourselves)

The mark, he's sitting next to me. His skin isn't stubbled or bearded, but clean shaven. He smells of cigarette smoke, and maybe he's just come in from having one outside, and I wonder offhandedly if it's the same brand. Though it doesn't matter.

Like it doesn't matter that this isn't my normal type of work or that my belly's still shrinking and scarred from when the overly energetic little girl of a medic had tried...and why, why, why did they have to take him, too!

The mark shifts in his seat.

Kakashi. The idiot. He thought this would be good for me, that I could forget you in the maelstrom of blood and sex and (I miss you so fucking much) he really is an idiot.

I suppose I can forgive him that. We both loved you, in a way that doesn't quite make us sympathetic. Laughing, I follow the man who isn't you when he beckons. And then, it's over.

Pure adrenaline carries me back to the village afterward—after the stabbing and slicing and his torso was split wide open, ignoring the answering pang in my own. I kicked his face in and made sure to smile as his eyes swelled shut, because Konoha is nothing if not thorough in its vengeance.

If the door is unlocked when I return, if Shikamaru is curled on your pillow, I don't mind so much.

I learned the truth of vengeance from him, after all.

It's him I lazily fall into bed with, lazily fuck, and (I miss you so much, but...).

He loved you, too, you know? He mourns you as a father, while his own mourns the loss of a son, and that Sand girl never makes eye contact with either of us, and...

When he won't go home, I go out instead. (I miss you, but...you see...)

Some part of me hopes the next mark isn't a smoker. That he doesn't smile easily and won't hold me like that before bearing his pulse and then losing it (me, not him, I'm losing it).

So much blood and, Asuma, did you know there was so much blood in a single human being? And red, my vision's red and, ohhaha, love, yes, I know.

Kakashi is an idiot; I've said it before.

I don't need this. I need need I need and, dammit, you're the idiot.

(I miss you, but...you can see that I'm fine...)

[ .end ]