Haruno Sakura (goodwithscalpel) wrote in last_stretch,
@ 2009-10-13 21:16:00

Entry tags:

wip log; closed; can I have both?
Who: Sakura, Shino
What: Shino's protip to Conquering the World: Get along well with the women. When scorned, they make awesome weapons. (Translation: tea getting, talk, and gasp could it bonding?)
When: October 13th, afternoon
Where: Milky Dipper café
Warning(s): That café name. 8D Jen might strangle me, or maybe not. :D No warnings.

As far as bad weeks went, this one wasn't that bad. After all, there had been a party on Saturday. Which, granted, hadn't finished well. Maybe it had been the mix of the hangover, the memory of her friends fighting, the picture in her mailbox, the envy she felt towards some of Naruto's friends. The ones that had been there for him when she had bailed. But it hadn't been her fault, damn it. She'd been a kid. She was still barely out of childhood now, so she couldn't be accounted for that.

At least, that's what she kept telling herself. Even though she had still been jealous because the idea of a birthday party hadn't been hers.

Maybe because she wasn't that much of a party animal. Maybe because she prefered hot beverages to alcohol--although she could still drink most sturdy men under the table--and books to the company of a great amount of people. There were a lot of issues, and a lot of factors that influenced her in so many choices in her life. And she knew, deep down, that if she was miserable at all, she was the only one to blame.

Her brow furrowed; Suigetsu had called her a prude, and Ino said she had to take care of her virginity--Hah! What did they know, anyway? It was so easy to judge. Then again, she didn't really open up about these things with many people. Her reaction was different: listen, and then get defensive. Rather than explain, bite back with sarcasm and lame excuses.

'Whatever,' she thought, pouting behind the white scarf around her neck, 'at least I'll have a pleasant afternoon.' As that thought finished, she could already see the spot which she had humourously named The Agelena Place.

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-14 04:07 pm UTC (link)

"I think so too." She crossed the street with him, and entered the café. It was very cozy, with that hidden magical look beneath it, stars on the ceiling and the wonderful smell of coffee and tea. Not to mention that there was a table for two near the window, unoccupied, which had armchairs instead of simple chairs.

She let go of his elbow when they entered, keeping true to her word, and took as seat in one of the armchairs, after taking off her coat and scarf.

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strongsilentype
2009-10-14 11:13 pm UTC (link)

If there were one thing Shino could do well, it was force himself through social interaction to order tea. He'd gotten it down to a quick, quiet science, just the right words to get out exactly what it was servers needed to hear to get a pot of tea out as quickly as possible. Barely a moment had passed before he was unbuttoning the top of his own coat (he tended to keep layers on inside, but it felt impolite not to make the gesture) and slipping into his seat across from his pink-haired friend.

"...so."

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-14 11:29 pm UTC (link)

While Shino was asking for tea, Sakura's brain went on a tangent again. Things, details, new fact: they kept bunching up, flowing in and hitting her wave after wave. Neji and Naruto. Fighting. Fighting because they'd slept together. Ten months ago. And that was why they'd been so awkward. And why Neji kept seeming to avoid her whenever she had asked if he was okay.

If they had only told her. If. Maybe she wouldn't have been as angry, disappointed; maybe there wouldn't be a hole in her stomach and her heart wouldn't be in her throat, and maybe then she wouldn't have clung to the arms of the first neutral friend she had, and maybe she wouldn't have been about to consider blurting everything out, including a few litres of tears. (Except she wouldn't cry, she was not a crybaby anymore. She was a mature woman who could handle her two best friends having had sex while drunk and being in the middle of their whatever-it-was.)

She could've told Ino. Except Ino...Ino would have... She doesn't even know what Ino would've done, aside from hold her head and feed her pudding, and listen to her cry. And gods, she hated crying in front of Ino. Everything was such a mess. And having small crushes on both men involved did not help the matter at all -- she had no right to feel betrayed, and yet...

'Why can't I just find someone who I don't have an angsty past with, with whom sex wouldn't ruin everthing, and to whom the idea of loving me wouldn't seem impossible?' She sniffed pitifully, but caught herself when Shino returned.

He seemed...willing to listen. He actually seemed willing. Concerned. Friendly. Ino's words came back to her, and she pursed her lips. He was not creepy. And he was not interested. And even if he had been--if he had been interested, then the whole think of 'maybe he's a creeper with secret intentions' observation from her BFF did not do much to Sakura's ego. Course. Whoever was interested in her had to be a creeper. Obviously. And--

No, she needed to stop going on that tangent. Everything did not lead to her love life, and lack thereof. Even if a great deal of it was involved. The man in front of her was waiting for an answer, one she didn't have.

She sighed, and ran her hands nervously through her hair once, before leaning both elbows on the table and burying her face in her palms. "I don't know where to start. I don't even know if I want to disect it..."

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strongsilentype
2009-10-15 12:18 am UTC (link)

People's faces were like essays to Shino. They moved in a delicate beautiful script that almost no one else ever bothered to properly give much credence or thought to. In his time amongst the students of this university, Sakura had one of the more interesting faces to read. She seemed to teeter back and forth between an open book and a nearly complete mystery.

At the moment, she was fairly easy to get something out of; not a lot, but it was certainly there. The flutterings of her mind were dancing over her lips and forehead. The details were probably flickering in her eyes, but they were less important; they'd come with the words she eventually decided to speak. For the moment, as he slipped into his seat and carefully folded his arms on the table, Shino simply focused on the way lines shifted and fretted over her forehead. Things were tugging her in a few different directions, eyes flitting slightly before she buried her face in her hands and hid them from view. There was a lot of tension in her body, the quietly unassuming sort that only pulled itself into proper manifestation when the last little bit of unhappiness finally cracked over a person's shoulders. It was obvious she needed to get something out, that whatever was happening in her life was absolutely clogging her systems and all but knocking her out of being able to function properly in society.

"Start anywhere," he replied evenly.

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-15 12:29 am UTC (link)

Anywhere. Anywhere could be how she should not feel this way, because they were not to blame for the way her stupid heart tended to have crushes on the most inappropiate people. But it wasn't just that, it was also that her friends were both mad at each other--and now she knew why--and she didn't want to fix it, not this time. She just wanted tea, or booze, or hiding somewhere.

And, oh God, she'd told Naruto to come over this night. For movies, and talking about their unwanted presents. Oh God, how would she face that? How should she even start? Should she honestly be mad at him? He would ask why, and then she'd say it's because he didn't tell her, and he'd say it's not her business and he's not buying it, and then confessions would fly, and things would be known, and the next thing she knew, she'd be on a train back to Hokkaido, because she had gotten oh so used to the coward's way out.

But no. No. Not this time. She'd find away around it, find a way to get over it, and...She'd start with the basics.

"I received a strange picture in my mailbox the last week, and apparently so did Naruto--except his had fragments of glass, shards, in the envelope as well." That would've marked the start.

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strongsilentype
2009-10-17 03:17 pm UTC (link)

'Anywhere' clearly hadn't been the prompt she was looking for. It was written all over her body, this time more in her shoulders than her face. Shino could have mapped yet another tiny story in their tension and tremor, as what was clearly a downward spiral of thoughts inched them up in tiny, nearly invisible increments. Perhaps he shouldn't offer to take people to tea to discuss their feelings if he was clearly not very good at helping them open up. Then again, it wasn't like Sakura had no idea what sort of person he was; it would probably work itself out quickly enough how he could be most helpful.

Someone actually listening, he knew from personal experience, could be worth all the good advice in the world.

As the young woman finally stilled the little signs of tension, apparently coming to a conclusion about the best place to begin speaking, Shino bumped his glasses absently into place with a little nudge and settled in to watch her quietly. Her words were... certainly unexpected, although this registered only faintly on his own features. It was much more about keeping his energy forward, his dark eyes zeroed in on her, than about big emotional displays at the strange news.

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-20 11:52 am UTC (link)

She took another deep breath, and scrached the back of one hand with her short nails. "I know that getting paranoid is a bit extreme, but I mean--Naruto got glass, shards of glass. If this is the first step, I don't even want to know what the next will be. I just...want to figure it out before we start getting dead kittens in the mail or something like that."

She paused, and looked out the window for a bit. Avoiding her companion's smart look, and her own doubts. "It would've been easier if maybe it all didn't happen today. Finding out the reason behind their fight, and now...tonight, I'm supposed to meet Naruto--I don't even know how I'll react. I don't know if I'll hit him for not telling me, or what. I don't--it's like our friendship is a fragile little thing, and that every time I want to get angry at him, I feel like I shouldn't because the fact that I always left when I was a kid is my fault. And then I get jealous because he has other, better, friends, that stick by him and write and leave notes, and I don't even know how close to him he thinks me to be anymore..."

She looked down at her hands, words falling out of her mouth, fast. "I love my friends. Even when they annoy and anger the hell out of me, I love them. And I have--I can't stop feeling guilty for whatever pain I caused him, but god, I was only thirteen. People at thirteen don't have brains to beging with, so I just..."

A sigh. "I'm just barely learning self-suficiency at twenty years old, and it's embarrassing, yeah, compared to how my other friends are all independant and great, but I take my time. I take my time, and I'm still in a coccoon, and I'm afraid of taking my time because I feel like that's another thing they--he--could blame me of."

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I see your cocoon metaphor. :|

strongsilentype
2009-10-23 09:13 pm UTC (link)

Words fluttered quietly around his mind, as they were wont to when faced with someone emotionally venting. They stuck to him and fluttered off, swirling like a large cloud of insects, occasionally worming their way into his consciousness like parasites breaking the skin. Like a skilled entomologist, Shino sifted through the flutter of tiny wings to mentally tag each flickering thought. It was the easiest way to wade through the deluge of most conversations: allow, classify, analyze, comprehend.

The idea of dead kittens in the mail was certainly a facetious one, most likely more to prove a point than anything else. Shino let it brush past him, face as immobile as ever. As the words swarmed more, a confusion of missing details (like not being able to count the number of legs as something flashed past), he filtered the information with other indicators; the way Sakura dragged nails over the back of her hand, the glance out the window, the rapid firing of her lips as she stared down at her hands.

She was lost in the romantics of the story. The emphasis on the word 'love,' on a childish age, on inventing problems and excuses and complicating things in her own mind so that she could justify her emotions rather than getting them organized... The young Aburame took it all in without a word, without much of a tick or change to the calm knowing look he was fixing on the woman on the other side of the table. The closing sentiment of the rather rambling little monologue brought the slightest tug to his lips. His shoulders dropped a hair, intensity of his gaze falling back to a more comfortable and bearable level of friendly watching.

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you liked it

goodwithscalpel
2009-10-23 11:32 pm UTC (link)

"It's silly, isn't it?" she asked, deflating a bit after venting out. Were it any other person, maybe she would've said more. But she also wanted to hear him say something, too.

And aside from that, their tea arrived. Sakura filled up her cup, and took it to her lips, holding it with both hands to warm her palms. Breathed in the aroma, letting it relax her a bit, and then blowing softly to cool it off a bit before taking a sip.

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strongsilentype
2009-10-25 02:34 pm UTC (link)

The tea was a good segue for not saying something overly snappy. Shino was so much better at social interactions with women than with men, but every now and then he felt a gut instinct to say something less than flattering rising in his gut. The tea provided a welcome distraction to construct a more tactful answer. Taking the pot carefully once Sakura was done to help himself, the young man allowed the silence to draw itself out between them until he'd finished serving.

"...I wouldn't say it was silly. Why?" he preempted slightly, giving a slight tilt to his head as his eyes flicked from the tea cup to the girl across from him. "Because it's something you've decided is important."

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	goodwithscalpel 2009-10-25 06:27 pm UTC (link)
	"You can criticize if you want. Anyone else would say I'm making something out of nothing here," she muttered around the rim of her teacup. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	goodwithscalpel 2009-10-25 06:28 pm UTC (link)
	"You can criticize if you want. Anyone else would say I'm making something out of nothing here," she muttered around the rim of her teacup. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	strongsilentype 2009-10-25 06:59 pm UTC (link)
	"Emotional truth is not something to be criticized," Shino replied in his usual flat monotone. Clearly this wasn't something he himself fully understood, but he'd read enough textbooks to know what modern science thought about a great variety of topics. "An individual defines the relevance of the rest of the world to his or her own life." (Reply to this)(Parent)

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