Chapter 7: An idle engine

Despite the guy's laundry list of faults, it really wouldn't have been fair to call Kazu a bad conversationalist. He was, after all, currently shouldering a supremely awkward solo conversation with an embittered ex, an unimpressed girlfriend, and a similarly unimpressed ex-girlfriend's teammate watching it all go down with dispassionate neutrality. In another life, Shikamaru might have felt sorry for the guy.

"Well, it was nice seeing you." Kazu waved an awkward goodbye.

Ino might have quarter-raised a hand in tepid response, light eyes cold as glaciers. New Girlfriend's tremendously suspicious "who was that?" drifted back towards them as the duo left the pavilion. Ino had gone very still, an aura of displeasure so thick and heavy around her it ignited a jittery feeling in Shikamaru's gut, but he didn't comment on it. Once Kazu and company were a reasonable distance away, she pushed herself away from the bar and stalked off in the opposite direction.

Out on the dance floor swayed the happier half of their party. Shikamaru cast Chouji and Yurina a somewhat forlorn glance before getting up to follow Ino. She had his lighter, after all.

"God, that was awful."

Shikamaru looked up. It had been forty-three steps up the game stall lane before Ino said a single anything. She rubbed her arms, shivering against the dropping mountain temperatures. Shikamaru grit his teeth at how much of his awareness this sole fact took up, unzipped his light jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

"I shouldn't have acted like that," Ino continued, like an afterthought, turning to face him. She didn't mention the jacket; he didn't expect her to. "I should have been meaner to him. Or nicer. Like I was super angry about what he did or like it didn't matter at all and I was happily getting on with my life. Right?"

Shikamaru considered this carefully. At Ino's despondent appearance (another thing possessing far too much real estate in his mind), he ended up opting for some (undeserved) generosity. "Yeah, I don't know about that. I think you did pretty well back there considering what a shitty thing that guy did to you."

"Yeah." She let out a huff of a laugh, like she had been holding it in all day. "Really shitty," Ino said, looking almost relieved. "Really, really, really.

And despite Ino's tendency to complain about everything under the sun, Shikamaru was certain that this was the first and only time Ino had even overtly mentioned what Kazu had done to her. Shikamaru had known because of Sakura, because of Ino's mother, because of all those extra drinks on all those team nights out. But never from her. Ino was weird like that.

They passed a beat like that, in silence.

And then, like a stupor had been broken, Ino turned and finally noticed the stall they had been standing in front of for the better part of the last ten minutes. "Look, ring tossing! Let's check it out."

Shikamaru looked. It was your standard festival fare, complete with the little stuffed prizes hanging from the ceiling. He noted that the targets were a little further than the accuracy of the average person permitted, a classic carnival situation. But they weren't average people.

"Might be a little unfair considering your profession," he pointed out, ever the law-abiding citizen.

Ino grinned. "Don't let him hear you," she said in a conspiratorial sotto voce. "That grand prize is mine."

She walked over and paid her two thousand ryo, all flirty charm, and Shikamaru took her momentary distraction as another opportunity to savour a snuck-in cigarette, lit from a nearby lantern. The vendor sauntered over from behind the stall while Ino set up her throw. "Hey pal," he greeted in a sleazy, businessman sort of way. "You don't want to win the pretty lady a prize? You're letting her do all the work."

Oh, how little he knew about Shikamaru's work ethic. Or lack thereof. "Nah, she doesn't need my help winning anything," he pointed out lazily, gesturing toward the stand. There stood ol'-eagle-eye Yamanaka who, in the space of the last two minutes, had landed all five rings on the smallest, furthest targets in her allotted three tosses and was tapping one foot expectantly for her reward. She had been right; that grand prize was hers the moment she'd laid eyes on it.

The vendor was agape at this seemingly impossible accomplishment. "Wait a second, you're kunoichi, aren't you? That disqualifies you! You're getting nothing from me."

Shikamaru sighed and kicked at the signage. "Sorry pal. Your sign says nothing about shinobi."

"Ha!" Said Ino triumphantly, as if she hadn't been about two seconds away from fighting a man over a stuffed bear and pointed to the largest toy suspended overhead. "Write better signs next time and give me my prize."

That was how they ended up wandering through Tamba's crowded festival streets with both of Ino's arms (clad in Shikamaru's jacket) encircling a giant stuffed panda. Shikamaru kept pace beside her, hands deep in both pockets while she maintained a cheery, albeit inane, buzz of conversation. Shikamaru said nothing good, but nothing bad (nothing at all, really) as his contribution to the momentary truce.

Like all things momentary, however, it was doomed to end. It happened like this:

"Oh. By the way, I owe you one for earlier," Ino said suddenly, slowing to inspect a candy stall's wares. She picked up a peppermint stick and paid the vendor while Shikamaru waited for her. Then she sauntered back over to where he stood and stepped right into his personal space. Standing devastatingly close, Ino tilted her chin up towards him. Like that night, came the anxious memory, minus the buzz of Shikamaru's porchlight and their night of drinking. Like she was going to kiss him.

He froze at the unexpected invasion of his airspace, the drop of her blue eyes to his mouth, the what the fuck feelings all of the above were inspiring inside of him. Until Shikamaru felt her fingers pluck the cigarette pack from his front pocket and swap it for the peppermint stick.

Ha, breathed his simultaneously relieved and disappointed mind. He should have known. He should have been angry.

"There," said Ino, patting his shirtfront with a teasing smile on her lips. "A substitute for your oral fixation."

Shikamaru narrowed his eyes at her as the elderly store vendor shook his head at their display. Ino stepped innocently back, spun on her heel, and walked off.

Was this happening now? Were they joking about this already? Shikamaru hadn't gotten the memo.

Luckily, Shikamaru had taken the precaution of tucking a spare smoke behind one ear, since he didn't have nearly enough energy to rescue his pack from her. He slipped it between his lips as he set off after his teammate, reached for Asuma's lighter in his back pocket, remembered that Ino still held it hostage and frowned with utter defeat. Seriously. When was this day going to be over? Ino slowed to a halt in front of him, looking back over her shoulder. He cast his gaze about for a light among the many lit lanterns speckling the dim street.

Shikamaru felt the unlit cigarette slip away as Ino tugged it from his lips, producing Asuma's lighter from some mysterious somewhere upon her lightly-dressed person and lighting it. Shikamaru didn't like her doing that. It made him a distinct shade of weird that he wasn't comfortable with.

"You're doing that a lot today," he pointed out, shoving both hands deep into his pockets.

"It's for Asuma-sensei's birthday, remember?" She reached up and inserted it back between his parted lips, the action revealing a brief glimpse of the faint swoop of collarbones, the top swell of her breasts under her shirt in the glow of the lantern light. She relinquished the lighter with two open-palmed hands. "Hey Shika," Ino asked. "Do you still hate me?"

Shikamaru sighed around his cigarette, leaving the lighter in her hands. It belonged to her too, after all. This kind of thinking was exhausting, and he never really ran on a full-charge anyway. "I don't hate you. You just don't take anything seriously, do you?"

"Then what about the opposite?" The look on her face was inscrutable.

"Of hating you?" It was more a comment than a question. Ino nodded.

And he would have answered, really. Shikamaru had even exhaled a mouthful of smoke in preparation and looked at Ino squarely in the face—fuck, she was standing so close—but his response was never meant to be. A crack resounded in the air; the night lit up in a dazzle of light. Fireworks.

"There you guys are!" Came Yurina's soft voice, Chouji in tow. "We've been looking everywhere for you. We wanted to tell you that the—"

Another boom finished her sentence; there was a burst of brilliant colour.

"—fireworks were about to start," finished Yurina with a smile. The four of them tilted their heads up to watch the display, but Shikamaru kept thinking about neutrality like it was an old friend he never saw, about once-a-month visits plus the occasional team outing or family gathering. About being back in a place where he was absolutely certain of what Ino and him were and what they most certainly were not. But mostly he kept thinking about the stupid way his heart had beat a little faster at the sight of those two small bones curving gently towards the dip of Ino's chest and realized that he was probably just screwed.

Ino drove them home. Chouji's driving privileges were temporarily revoked on account of the three beers he had downed somewhere among all the festival food. Shikamaru was permanently banned from behind the wheel after that one time he had fallen asleep on the highway and almost killed them all. Yurina only had her learner's permit.

"Stop one," announced Ino, glancing over her shoulder at the duo in the passenger seats.

Chouji thumped the back of her headrest affectionately. "Thanks, Ino. You're the best."

"You're more than welcome. And don't forget the 5000-ryo fee I charge for designated driving."

"She's kidding," added Shikamaru, catching Yurina's distressed look in the rearview mirror.

Chouji chuckled. "I'll swing by and pick it up tomorrow. Is 10 okay?"

"Don't worry about it, Chouji. I'll drive it over in the afternoon. Your mom wanted me to bring over some hydrangeas anyway."

Shikamaru quashed the urge to look at her. Her words made his common sense tingle. But Shikamaru's common sense hadn't been working too well of late.

The two walked to Yurina's front door, hand-in-hand. Ino nudged the truck back into gear and pulled out onto the street before it shut behind them. "I have the worst headache," she said, a little embarrassed. Shikamaru didn't answer. Somehow, it didn't feel safe to engage in any form of conversation with her tonight; he would take the defensive route. Once upon a time, he'd remarked on her ability to anticipate his strategies and Shikamaru wondered if, even after all those years apart on the battlefield, she still knew how to do it. If he had let himself get rusty and lax, comfortable in their acquaintance, and Ino had never stopped knowing his next move.

"The silent treatment, really?" She gave him a sidelong eye-roll. "Don't be mad at me, Shikamaru."

"I already told you I wasn't."

"You said you didn't hate me. There's a bit of a difference." Shikamaru raised an eyebrow and waited for her to go on. "Well, one's a little more long-term than the other, for starters."

Shikamaru gritted his teeth. "Look, Ino, I'm really tired. We can have our talk or whatever tomorrow, but all I'm down for right now is bed. You can drop me off here."

Ino pulled over into the ditch in front of Hirama-san's bungalow, smooth as silk, and didn't bother turning the engine off like she was going to drive away immediately. Shikamaru hated that he noticed this.

"Thanks," he offered neutrally, opening the car door.

Something made him pause there, the lingering feeling of an unspoken something that needed to be said, but damn it if he knew what it was. So instead, Shikamaru just shut Chouji's car door and walked the fifteen paces and seven steps up to the entrance to his apartment, fumbling for his house keys in deep pockets.

Shikamaru had just turned the knob when Ino ran up behind him.

"Wait," she said, holding out his jacket in front of her. "I forgot to give this back."

He felt uneasy again, and reasoned in about four milliseconds flat that it had to be her. Had to. The night felt empty and open and he, stone-cold sober and without excuses. The feeling forced the words from his mouth.

"Look," Shikamaru started wearily, nerves frayed from her presence at his side all day. "I know we got into a lot of weird stuff right after you got out of it. It's not the way I wanted things to go with us. Ever."

For once, Ino was quiet, taken off guard by his words, and watched him.

"What I wanted to ask is if we were alright. Okay."

"That's what I was asking you. In the car."

Shikamaru grit his teeth. "And my answer is your answer. Does that make sense?"

A beat. She gave a nod.

"And are we? Okay?"

"Yeah, of course," Ino answered finally, but that could have meant a lot of things.

Shikamaru closed his eyes, pressing the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "What I mean is: are we okay-okay?"

Ino just watched him with that almost criminally beguiling tilt of her head, sort of sure she knew what he was asking but waiting for him to say it first.

"We're just… close, well, you know that. And when things are like that, it gets pretty easy to cross back and forth over boundaries. And that kind of messes with things."

That's what Shikamaru said. Because he couldn't very well say that crossing back into normal could be just as colossally shitty as crossing out into nothing, even though that summed up the rest of the feeling that was desperately trying to struggle past the prison of his restraint.

But how ludicrous was that? Crossing out into nothing meant nothing nothing and they had twenty-odd years, Chouji and the best damn sensei ever between the both of them. And that was not counting anything recently. There was so much more riding on this than Shikamaru's annoying, knee-jerk sentimentality. Maybe Temari had been right about him. Buzz killer. He felt unbelievably selfish, thinking like that.

"Yeah, when you put it like that," Ino responded, but that could have meant a lot of things, too. Then she smiled a small twist of a smile and he was sure she knew exactly what he meant. "But I never think about things like that, Shika."

"No, you don't," agreed Shikamaru. And they sort of stood there for a beat.

Then, Ino closed the distance between them in one step, leaned upwards and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. The kind of blurry, friendly-romantic one he had truthfully expected from her. Then another, with twice the heart, and then she was kissing him. In the periphery of his vision, he belatedly noted that she had turned the engine of Chouji's truck off.

Shikamaru would always remember the way the smooth curve of her cheek pressed perfectly into the palm of his hand, how she arched up against him, and he could have stood there kissing her all night and thinking about all the puzzle-perfect ways they fit together, how Ino was all soft curves against his hard angles, brash and driven where he was lazy and easy, how she never, never thought about any the things he spent too much time thinking about. All night. He could have stood there all night.

But then Ino broke the kiss, their first sober, uncomplicated kiss, moving to step back and Shikamaru knew that the next thing would be to echo her movements and step away, back into the grey and nebulous region of normal they had been permanent residents in for what felt like ever. And that simply wouldn't do. It wouldn't do at all.

So instead, he said: "Wait. What are you doing tomorrow?"

And Ino laughed lightly and stepped forward again to run her fingers up over his chest and replied: "Having breakfast with you, hopefully." Hopefully, Shikamaru agreed, cheesy statements aside.

Then she pushed him through the front door, and he grabbed her wrists on the backward motion and tugged her in after him.

/