Disclaimer: None of it is mine. I own so very little, really. Must get a job…

Summary: Shikamaru muses on the “hooking up” of Team Ten.

Warnings: Threesome, implied sex both het and yaoi, minor death, and peanut butter.

A/N: Kinda a sequel/whatthehellquel to “Teddy”, this time from Shikamaru’s point of view. Sets up for the third one, which, as a side-fic to Self-Reliance, will be long and fluffy and ninety percent about Chouji and babies. Read “Teddy” before you go any further, or not a lot will make sense. Trust me.

Shikamaru’s POV, just ‘cause I swear he lives in my head.

I’ve always prided myself in my ability to understand. To be aware, to see the small things before anyone else did---I was used to living in this mode of no surprises, no hitches.

It goes without saying that the fact that I didn’t understand what Chouji saw in her just pissed me off.

Why Ino? Or, more specifically, why Ino and me?

Chouji and me---that I can understand. We’ve been unofficially together for years, even before we were filed together for Team Ten. We’ve been friends for so many years, I have difficulty remembering how things were before the chubby boy ended up in my life. Thinking of us together comes easily, simply. Chouji and Ino---not quite sure how that happened in the first place; my bets lie on Chouji seeing her as a wounded bird and caring for her in that way of his, and Ino accepting it simply because she’d never been loved before just for herself. I can understand that logic---cope with it, even.

But Chouji and Ino and me? It’s a difficult paradigm, and I don’t know what to make of it. It all just sort of…happened. One moment I’m perfectly sure that it’s just Chouji and me, and then I find him in bed with her---not doing anything, mind you, but still cuddling unrepentantly---and my first thought was that I’ve been dumped for the blonde.

Then, of course, they asked me to join them, and the rest is history.

I acquiesced to this change in plans, but I didn’t precisely care for it. Ino was my teammate. Chouji was my teammate, my friend, and my clandestine partner in cloud watching. Ino was just there. Had she kept to just Chouji, I would have been fine, but she leapt upon the idea of a threesome happily, clinging to me as if that were natural.

Did Chouji expect me to love Ino, too? Ino, with her wide blue eyes as deep and as giving as endless pools. Not in the romantic sort of way, either---bottomless and mysterious in the way that you knew the moment you tried to look at your reflection in those pools, your soul would be siphoned out with an unrepentant gurgle.

Soul-sucking bitch. And Chouji wanted to pursue some kind of needlessly complicated relationship with her? Teammate, yes…Chouji…goddammit, why couldn’t he just be happy enough with me? Forgive my indignation, but why bring Ino into the picture at all? We’ve been having sex for years, not exactly ‘boyfriends’ because Chouji is straighter than he lets on, and had my mother had any idea what my little Akimichi friend and I did during our private time watching clouds, I wouldn’t be walking straight for weeks. Although, I have to wonder at my mother…for normally being a hyper-perceptive woman, she certainly didn’t know a pretext when she saw one. Hmph. Cloud watching indeed. Yes, we still watched the clouds, but it hadn’t been our main activity since we were about fourteen.

But I digress. I wasn’t comfortable with Ino because I was not one to profess loving anyone. ‘Love’ is just too loose a word, too easily manipulated. It has become a meaningless word, too broad to properly convey the feelings attached to it. Even so, I knew I cared deeply for Chouji---he would gush about love, no doubt, but I like more precise terms. I cared for Chouji. I would put my life in peril for his good. I felt surly and empty when he was gone for extended periods. I was happiest when with him, watching clouds (or when engaging in activities that use cloud watching as a cover).

Ino was more complicated. I cared for her, I’d take a kunai for her, so on and so forth. She was my teammate, even if she now went on recon missions while I taught snot-nosed children. I didn’t allow my mixed feelings on her stop me from having sex with her, but I wasn’t jumping into the relationship with the same enthusiasm Chouji and Ino had. That’s just not my way. Chouji had learned that long ago, and he had enough romance in him to make up for my shortcomings in our relationship. Ino was just learning the hard way that I was not the easiest person to deal with…

Seeing as letting things alone was easier than dealing with them---in the same vein as sitting on the roof is easier than dealing with one’s mother---I let things slide for a while. I didn’t complain about sharing a bed with two other people instead of the more orthodox one partner; having Ino around made Chouji happy, and I wouldn’t deny him that. I wouldn’t deny that Ino is a beautiful woman, either, and she seemed to care for me as well, so I didn’t complain about this complex thing we now silently dealt with.

Eventually, a guy’s got to come in off the roof, though. The day came when I finally confronted Chouji on what my position was in this threesome, because I certainly wasn’t the center, and I certainly wasn’t the female aspect. I almost had to wonder if I was just a throw in---that this relationship was really about Chouji and Ino. Maybe Chouji simply didn’t want to tell me to leave, and Ino wasn’t one for complaining about another man in bed.

“What am I, Chouji?” I finally asked, boxing him in with a look that forbade his running away. He was making lunch, and therefore couldn’t abandon the kitchen for safer ground. “Some kind of---some kind of sex toy?”

He had the decency to splutter.

“A sex toy?”

“Right, so I’m not pretty enough to be a sex toy,” I admitted, miffed at the minor complications. Neji, Sasuke, and even Naruto---certainly sex toy material, bounced between lovers like a rare treat. But me, Nara Shikamaru, he of the thick hair, laziness, and squinty eyes? Not so much. I was perfectly aware that I wasn’t precisely the catch of the day (I was the minnow the fisherman brought back to his dog out of sheer hate of waste), but I felt…or I didn’t feel… “You know what I mean.”

“No,” Chouji said firmly, blinking. “I don’t think I do. Sex toy? What did I miss?”

“I---“ Frustrated---because wasn’t it obvious?---I harrumphed a loud sigh and looked away, trying to piece together a better plan of attack. I hated repeating myself (and calling myself a sex toy more than once daily went against some personal codes), but I needed Chouji to understand where I was coming from. I’d let this strange little relationship go on far too long as it was; Ino was getting cozy, and now she was thinking that I’d do things with her when it was just her and I alone. I wasn’t precisely against my teammate’s whims, but I didn’t particularly like the slant she was coming from: because we’re together now, right? You, me, and Chouji. A regular little family…

Maybe we were playing house. But---but that was it right there! Take the ‘playing house’ metaphor: Ino was the daddy, going out to work every day, Chouji was the mommy, making sure dinner was on the table when Daddy Ino got home---and on top of all the strange gender problems we were already juggling, where did that leave me? The dog? The---the lazy uncle who happens to sleep with mommy and daddy?

Why was it that I was the only one sighting a problem with this setup?

I decided not to beat about the bush. “She’s going to want children sooner or later.”

“And?” Chouji asked, unruffled as he continued to make his sandwich. “We both have clans that need continuation, me especially, seeing as the Akimichi is such an old name.”

“And---and what? We both screw her, and if the kid is bony and squinty, it’s a Nara, and if it’s wide and happy for no goddamn reason, it’s an Akimichi?”

“It wouldn’t matter either way,” Chouji said, shrugging as if this was a negligible problem. I found myself seething, and not at all sure why I was so angry about it. Wasn’t like I…wanted…no, not at all. “I’d love the child whether or not it’s mine by blood.”

…was I not using clear enough terminology? Was I somehow being vague, unreasonable?

“Chouji---how can we raise a kid? Two dads and a mom---if one can even call that blonde creature with an astounding amount of testosterone a woman---how---I disbelieve that we---and---fuck, I can’t even complete my own sentences.”

“Try to take it bit by bit,” he advised wisely. “Don’t worry, you can take it slow. Not like I’m going to run away halfway through or anything.”

“Fine, I’ll lay it out. One, it is outrageous to think that our families will simply turn a blind eye to this. Your family, perhaps, as nothing seems to ruffle an Akimichi. My mother…” I rubbed my forehead, certain that a headache equal to the mass of the entire Akimichi clan combined was rapidly swelling between my temples. I swallowed hard, knowing full well what mommy-dearest would do if she somehow found out that my roommates played double-duty as the other two components to the Team Ten bisexual threesome. “…my mother will make sure neither of us will have children ever again. And Ino’s parents---knowing Inoichi, he will undoubtedly think that we’re raping his precious only daughter. He’ll probably supply my mother with the necessary pruning implements.”

“We use protection,” my dear, utterly bewildered friend pointed out. “I don’t have to have children for my clan. I mean, there’s always my elder brother, Choichi, and---“

“And I want children!” I snapped finally, feeling like nothing more than a sulky child to have said it. Chouji looked shocked at first, briefly disorientated that Nara Shikamaru, he who complains loudly about troublesome children on a daily basis, would say such a thing…but then the shock melted into sympathy, and he lowered the knife he’d been spreading peanut butter with, sighing. My innards slid uncomfortably at his gently prodding expression, because of all things bothersome in the world, sympathy was the worst. It held no real purpose save to make me miserable for eliciting it in the first place.

“You want kids, Shika?” Chouji asked softly, running a hand through his lion-like mane of red-gold hair.

Ah, well, that was it, wasn’t it? Cards on the table, there it was in spades. No wonder I took strategy over games of chance…the shuffles never worked to my favor, imaginary or real. There was a reason I refused to play strip poker.

“Yes,” I said stiffly, shoving my hands deep in my pockets. “Why would I have spent the last six years of my life teaching snot-nosed brats ninjutsu if I didn’t like them?”

“I always thought that since you…”

“That since I am, for all accounts and purposes, misogynistic, that I wouldn’t want kids? Think about it next time, Chouji. They’re only troublesome once they’ve become women.”

“I’m sorry. I guess…” Chouji lowered his head, his expression peeling into something vague and soft that I didn’t like the look of. “…I guess I didn’t really take your thoughts into consideration. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t precisely make my thoughts known, either,” I replied gruffly, praying like mad that he wasn’t going to make this into something gooshy and particularly mushy that would require hugs to smooth out. Not that I minded hugs, but Chouji tended to mope when these sort of things got shoved on him. The boy was a full-out glob of emotional super-glue: the moment someone around him felt something, he instantly empathized, their mood sticking to him. He could be such a woman sometimes, especially when it came to anything emotion-based.

“Look, I know it’s complicated. I know…that maybe you should just stay with Temari and me with Ino, but…Shika…” he paused, took a large bite from his sandwich, and squinted at me with his slanted almond eyes. “You’re like this sandwich.”

“Sexual undertones aside, how the hell am I a sandwich?”

“No, not the sandwich I guess…all of us are the sandwich, but you---you’re the peanut butter.” Chouji peeled the two slices of bread apart, jabbing a finger at the lumpy nut spread as if it was intrinsically important.

“Peanut butter,” I echoed dubiously.

“Peanut butter,” he agreed. “Don’t give me that look! I’m dead serious! I think you’re peanut butter!”

“Everything is food to you,” I deadpanned, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Not everything…” he attempted to reply.

“Most things,” I argued.

Chouji flushed a bit. “Most things, yeah…but it really is easier thinking in those terms.”

“You’d better have a good explanation for this one,” I told him darkly, settling down on a stool beside the kitchen counter. I glared at him briefly, making him quail a bit and blush. I had to wonder what the glare reminded him of, for his sweet chipmunk-cheeks to pinken like that. Probably reminded him of the one time he’d withheld sex, and I’d sat on his dresser and glared at him until he caved and dragged me to bed. Blushing, he took another bite of his snack, as if forcibly reminding himself to stay on topic. I smirked.

“I do, I swear,” Chouji said around his mouthful. “A sandwich is the perfect allegory for our team. See, Ino and I---we’re both real normal and plain, like bread without anything on it. Naruto would be toast---bread that’s a little crispy, right?---and Sakura would be a sweet roll with a kinda bitter filling. Sasuke…I dunno. Something you’d make bad children eat because it’s supposed to be good for you, but in all reality you just want to see the weird faces they make.”

“Why am I not a carbohydrate?” I asked, which made him laugh. He licked his fingers tentatively, turning it over in his head.

“You, a carbohydrate? You’re definitely something with a lot of protein in it---too skinny to be a good carb. Chunky and sticky at all the wrong times---totally peanut butter. But, for two pieces of plain old bread like Ino and me, the chunky and sticky is needed. Nobody would want two pieces of white bread all by themselves, but nobody can say no to a good peanut butter sandwich! You…” he gestured vaguely, having trouble putting his thoughts into words. “You stick us together. Figuratively.”

“Literally, too, sometimes,” I muttered---mostly because I knew it would make him blush more. It did; he rubbed at one tattooed cheek---the spiral almost level with his current skin-tone---and attempted not to squeak. Still so shy about his tangled relationship with Ino and me, regardless of how he acted behind closed doors.

“No, I mean---well, yeah, but…but that’s not the point.”

“You had a point?” I queried with feigned curiosity, taking a slice of bread from the loaf to show that it could be eaten plain. Plain bread was fine. Not as exciting or filling, I agree, but still…still doable. Even if plain bread didn’t equal with little peanut butters running around…little peanut butters? Shit. This is why I didn’t use Chouji’s terminology…

“I could stay with just you,” Chouji said levelly, seriously. “An open-faced sandwich is still a sandwich. But---but that other piece of white bread is just hanging out there by herself, getting ungrateful bites taken out of her, and I really think we need her to finish our sandwich properly. All three components---the two slices of bread and the peanut butter---they go together.” He waved his half-eaten sandwich at me like an admonition. “Together, Shika! We’re a team, a sandwich!”

I leaned my elbows on the counter, sighing at Chouji’s earnestness.

“I can try,” I said finally. “…mendokuse…you, the woman…all so troublesome…”

He leaned in and gave my forehead a peanut buttery kiss, ignoring how I muttered and wiped my face as if I thought he’d passed on cooties or something equally as worrisome.

“Not everything is troublesome, Shika. We---all three of us---we can do this, come kids and enraged parents, and---and everything else!” He put his hands on his hips. “We need peanut butter for our bread, Shikamaru.”

And Chouji is usually right, damn him.

I was right, though, this time. Ino eventually got pregnant. The blow of reaction was softened considerably due to My Plan: I’d decided early on in this strange relationship that certain measures would have to be set into place to keep my mother from pruning anything necessary to my propagation. The first, and easiest to convince my teammates into, was the marriage of Akimichi Chouji and Yamanaka Ino. Yes, marriage. Two bachelors and a young woman living together was chancy, racy, something the mothers would tut-tut about when they saw one of us grocery shopping. On the other hand, a married couple forced to put up with their long time friend, a practiced bachelor and lazy schoolteacher---that was plausible, and would leave the tut-tutters sighing that sweet Ino would put up with such a vagrant do-nothing in her household. Ino would copycat that practiced sigh, carefully leaving out that said vagrant more than made up for being a lazy do-nothing.

So they got married. I was the best man, and I let them have their wedding night together without even feeling the least bit bitter about it. It was…comforting, in some odd way, to see them both so happy, even if we had decided that this marriage was something for convenience’s sake. I had my own beard, as it was…slightly less convenience than their marriage, to be sure, but still a necessary fraudulence.

I had Temari. Or Temari had me; never quite worked out which side it was, but we needed each other---me because if I was totally unattached, questions would be raised, and if she was unattached to a man, her younger brother would have a fit (and nobody was about to cross Gaara when it came to the matter of his elder sister’s love life; she would have a man, and she would have children to pass on their name to, and that was the end of it). Temari didn’t love me any more than I loved her. She was touchy and flighty, bad-tempered and used to getting her way. She was a looker, but she also had a penchant for hitting and biting, so I didn’t spend a lot of time in her bed, despite being her ‘boyfriend’. I lived with the Akimichis, and I can truthfully say I was happiest there, even if it was tangled and more than a little troublesome to maintain.

When Ino did get pregnant---sometime during the first year of her marriage, though no one was quite sure if it was ultimately Chouji’s or mine---everyone was thrilled. And, better yet, there was no penis-pruning or drunken arguments with my father because it was assumed without a doubt that it was her husband’s child. As usual, my plans had worked out without a hitch, every element tweaked into place like a master puppet show that I quietly, lazily commanded. As a strategist, I like being in control. The lack of control in Ino’s pregnancy, then, grated on my nerves like a sonuvabitch.

The moment he knew of the pregnancy, Chouji was all beaming grins twenty-four-seven, doting on her utterly. And me? I didn’t…didn’t mind the idea. Had to think about it for a long time, had to do some personal planning (the least of which included what I was going to tell my folks if that baby turned out looking like a Nara; I was banking on my father being too drunk to care either way, and a “gee, whoops! Wonder how that happened?” being enough for my mother), had to do what someone more spiritual than I would call soul-searching, but what I fondly dub ‘brooding’. Not that it ended up mattering, though. Not that my approval, disapproval, or general disposition at the idea of raising a child with my two closest friends, teammates, and lovers would matter at all, since control was out of our hands from the beginning.

Ino miscarried late in the fourth month. Chouji was on call on a mission---in the Lightning Nation, no less, days away from Konoha and any contact. Ino had been bitching about stomach aches and spotting for days before the morning she woke up screaming, but I hadn’t…hadn’t taken into account…I…

I didn’t see the miscarriage coming. Even when I realized that she was bleeding---God, she bled; the sheets were soaked with it---and even as I carried her to the hospital, I didn’t think---I didn’t think that we’d actually lose the baby. It’d been so early, so new yet…Ino had been so proud that she’d finally begun to show, a slight, snug fullness that quietly heralded a growing baby. And then---poof. Gone in a wash of foul-smelling blood. Come before its time, with Chouji out of the nation and me with no idea how to comfort a woman grieving her stillborn child.

The doctors called it a spontaneous abortion, something labeled and dire and unavoidable. I called it hell.

It was probably one of the worst days of my life, and I am taking into account the days I spent heading a team into the debacle known as Let’s Rescue the Uchiha Bastard. They wouldn’t let me in her room at the hospital---didn’t “former teammate” slide neatly into the “family member” category? I was certain it would, and I made loud, threat-filled protests on the matter---so, in something of a haze, I went back home to clean up. The last thing Ino needed to see when they discharged her was her bloody bed, and if I couldn’t make it better or comfort her in a way that would help, I’d clean up what had been left behind.

Our room stunk of something dead, thick and hard to breathe through. Scowling, I stripped the sheets and crumpled them in a hateful ball, the sick abstract art of dried blood on the mattress making my stomach turn. I scrubbed at the blood spots until they faded to pink-brown, stained forever. I flipped the mattress over so that it was neatly tucked away, gone but by no means forgotten. I made potato soup for dinner, being by no means the master chef Chouji was, but still having the rudimentary skills of boiling and basting in place. I had dinner by myself in the hospital waiting room, hating that no manner of scheming could get me in to---to what? To comfort Ino? To hold her? To stroke back her white-blonde hair and tell her that everything was going to be alright, as Chouji undoubtedly would? I wasn’t like that, and we both knew it. I didn’t know how to be like that, gentle and personable and---and genuine about it. For me, that was nothing but mechanical movements.

Ino was sent back home the day after that. Chouji was still gone, and I was at an utter loss when it came to what to do, what to say. Unflappable, unenthused, indifferent me---I was sallow-faced and drawn, jittery with the fear that I’d lose Ino as well as the baby. Ino didn’t say anything---not a word from that pale, plucked flower of a girl---and I was left to wonder what I should do. I didn’t want to go into her room---going into Ino’s room meant I would have to talk to her, and I will not enter a conversation where I neither know what to say nor how to say it---so I puttered around the house, realizing that when you wanted to do nothing, there are an infinite amount of things available to keep your hands busy.

I did laundry. Load after load of laundry. I did all the laundry in the house, twice. It was my responsibility anyway---Chouji cooked, Ino did the miscellaneous topical cleaning, and I did everyone’s laundry. It kept bloodshed and strife out of our day-to-day lives, and the least troublesome the mundane went, the happier I was on a whole. So I did laundry. I washed the bloody sheets a whole of eight times, but the stains were still there, as if laughing at me, my misfortune, and my inability to make things work like I planned. Life gave me initiative, gave me something to fight for and shine through, and I ended up with genin teams two-thirds the way dead and miscarried babies. I started to wonder if I’d get anything that wasn’t aborted halfway through, in my life or my career. Such promise, and then such a resounding, bloody crash. I should’ve been used to the disappointment by that point. I ended up throwing the sheets away.

Akimichi Chouza came by that afternoon---I was infinitely thankful to the big man; he was as close to a substitute Chouji as Ino was going to get at the moment---and he stared unapologetically at the towers of folded clothes lining the living room. I didn’t make excuses, didn’t try to shrug off my sudden need to keep busy as a ward against that unnamed emotion clawing at my chest. I just pointed to Ino’s room (marked by the sign “Our Room”, but I daresay Chouza knew about my Plan to begin with, and just saw fit not to complain about his son’s life choices), and made tea.

They talked for a couple hours. I folded towels. Chouza came back out much later, his usually cheerful face drawn, and I didn’t blame him. He had lost a grandchild, hadn’t he? I’d lost something, too, something much more difficult to slap a name to, but my own shock was acting as a helpful buffer that numbed me from the feelings that would come later, once Chouji was back and this mess was in his hands, not mine. Chouza clapped a hand on my shoulder---between his large hand and my thin shoulder, I almost lost my balance---and shook his head, looking pale and subdued despite his blindingly red hair.

“Not doing well, is she?” I cautiously offered, thinking that that was neutral enough ground. It was stating the obvious, so how could anything be drawn from that? No, Ino was not well. Ino was curled up in bed among freshly laundered sheets, crying soundlessly and without tears, and the laundry and I were not helping.

“No,” Chouza said quietly. “The hardest blow a woman can feel is that of losing a child. Ino’s sleeping, though she asked for you to be there when she wakes up. Wants to talk to you about contacting Chouji, I’d imagine.”

“Yeah,” I said tonelessly, and added something pungent to the tea I was brewing. I had no idea exactly what the herb was, seeing as I knew the recipe from sight---it was a Nara family concoction that I’d watched my father make perhaps a million times, a mild sedative that calmed the nerves and induced a sleepy torpor. Dad laced it in Mom’s tea whenever he sensed a bitch fit coming on. Maybe it’d stave off a little of Ino’s mourning process, so she could save it for Chouji. He’d help her through it. It wasn’t---wasn’t that I was callous, but…

“Talk to her, Shikamaru,” Chouza advised in that Buddha-like way of Akimichis. He patted my shoulder again---nearly pitching me forward and into the pot of boiling herb-stuffs---and shuffled to the door with a sigh. He left without saying anything more, and I had to say I agreed. Not much to say at this point; nothing constructive, at least. I finished the tea and set it to steep, cycled the laundry, and steeled myself to face Ino. Drumming my fingers on the countertop out of nervous habit, I ran through my options and found them less than promising.

I couldn’t say “I’m sorry”, because I hadn’t done anything wrong (unless one considers the possibility that I had fathered the now-dead baby a prime offense; I didn’t think my sperm was to blame for the miscarriage, but I’m a schoolteacher, not a medic-nin, so I could always be wrong). I couldn’t say “it could be worse”, because the only worse scenario would have included her death, and then she wouldn’t have cared either way about losing the baby. I couldn’t say “we can try again”, because though it was true, I don’t think that another quick impregnation was what she had in mind. And God knew I couldn’t say “buck up, dammit”, because that would have gotten me slapped. At that point, I would’ve deserved it.

I decided on silence. I’d take the black side of the board, and she could have the first move with the white side. I put a couple cups and the teapot on a tray, musing over my lack of options. This was worse than my first mission as a chuunin. Far worse. At least I could fight in that scenario, but this---this was what, fighting my own shadow? I was helpless, and I didn’t like it.

Ino was asleep, as Chouza had said. She’d curled up in one of Chouji’s shirts---it was so big on her it was a wonder it didn’t fall off altogether---and she was more or less tumbling out of bed, tangled in sheets and whimpering from nightmares. I sighed and set down the tray, gathering her sweaty limbs into my arms to put her back into bed. Ino latched onto me instantly, tightly burying her face into my chest and starting to cry.

And I gaped. Blinked, gaped, and tried to think of something to say, because awkward pats would not help me here. I kissed her cheek, a dry peck, and wished I had the curves and warmth needed to console her.

“Shh,” I said, because isn’t ‘shh’ what you’re supposed to say when someone is on the edge of lapsing into well-deserved hysterics? “Shhh, Ino…”

“The baby’s dead,” Ino whimpered, and I had to say that that was somewhere to start. As long as she was stating the obvious, I didn’t have to…

“I know,” I said, flailing for something to say. “I---I’m sorry.”

She whimpered miserably, her pupiless blue eyes swimming with tears. I sat down on the corner of the bed---she wouldn’t let go of me, and I was far from being muscular enough to lug a full-grown woman around for long periods of time.

“Have you been taking your medication?” I asked, if only for something to distract her from crying.

“No,” Ino said quietly. “I haven’t hurt much.”

I would have argued, but the point was moot.

“Take them regardless,” I told her in my best Teacher Voice---it left the least room for discussion. I handed her a cup of tea, rifling around the bedside desk until I found the painkillers the doctor had prescribed. After a bit of manhandling---childproof my ass; those containers are God’s way of making sure stupid people die---I popped it open and offered her two nondescript white pills. Ino swallowed them dutifully, eerily quiet for a long moment. If she had been hoping I’d strike up the conversation, she should have known better.

“I wish you could have been there,” Ino said softly. She crawled close to me again, wrapping her arms around me and leaning her cheek against my chest, sighing. She was too tired to be hysterical; her tears were no longer loud or forceful, just a wretched dribble that I couldn’t seem to stop with mere presence.

“Not technically family,” I agreed, glad that she wasn’t going to be loud at me. If she’d been inconsolable through hysterics, I don’t know if I would have been able to do anything save for gaping like a landed trout. “I tried to tell them I was the only person you’d want in there except for Chouji, but my protests fell on deaf ears.” I smirked a bit. “The hospital staff will soon find that the entire men’s bathroom has been sabotaged, because I had no better way to vent.”

She looked up at me, and I couldn’t tell if she was shocked or wearily amused. “What did you do to the bathroom?”

“Ah,” I said demurely. “Nothing much. The toilets overflow whenever someone turns on the hand-dryer, and the sinks are permanently stuck on issuing boiling hot water. I figured that’d be bothersome enough to voice my frustration at not being allowed in with you.”

“Sakura will know it was you who did it,” Ino said, closing her eyes and leaning into me. Her entire body was lax, the painkillers and the tea obviously making quick work of smoothing over her ails. “I kept yelling at her to let you in…said some things I probably shouldn’t have, so Forehead Girl probably knows about you, me, and Chouji, now. Can’t say I really care what Sakura knows…she wouldn’t tell anyone.”

There was a stretch where neither of us said anything---me because I didn’t have anything useful to offer, and Ino because she was exhausted and talking to me was ultimately low on her list.

“My stomach hurts,” Ino said after another long silence. I dropped my hand to cup the soft curve Chouji’s huge shirt all but hid. Her stomach was still swollen, but it felt flat without the tiny body that had been growing there. She warmed to my touch, placing her hands over mine.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. Like ‘I love you’, ‘I’m sorry’ just didn’t cover it. The terms were too loose, too malleable…not enough. Why can’t language be whipped into communicating the most important things we want to say---here I was, desperate to say something right for once, and I couldn’t because language wouldn’t function for me.

“…it’s not the end of the world,” said Ino, and I was left to wonder if she was going to parrot everything I’d decided I was not supposed to say. “We can try again. Maybe I can carry the baby all the way to term next time. This time…maybe it was a trial run? A---a mistake?”

“Not a mistake!” I groaned. “A baby is never a mistake! Yes, the baby died, but that wasn’t our fault---especially not your fault---the doctor said it didn’t have a heartbeat when we brought you in; it might’ve been sick to begin with, or something might have been genetically wrong---it wasn’t your fault.”

“Shika…” She twined her thin arms around my waist, crying again into my shirtfront. “Thank you.”

I didn’t ask what she was thanking me for---for staying with her, for doing all the laundry, for attempting to convey some sort of comfort, for being a friend, for being a lover, or simply for trying my damnedest to accomplish all these things. I doubt she really knew what she meant, because she was asleep again just minutes after that. I laid down so that we were in a more comfortable position, but I didn’t dare get up and leave. She was clinging too tightly, too desperately, like I was something she needed to assure her that the monsters under the bed wouldn’t come out. If Chouji was her teddy, I was some sort of security blanket. Teddies are great to have, cute and comforting and soft, but blankets were more of a need. Without the blanket, the monsters would come---the security blanket, even if it was threadbare and smelt bad, was a necessary barrier against everything dark and insidious.

So that’s what I was, I realized. Different, but still integral to this complicated, bothersome relationship.

I stroked back Ino’s short blonde hair and held her while she slept.