Summary: He is her definition of living.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: I had the idea for this theme for a long time. It is just wording it that I struggle with, because sometimes my ramblings come out incoherently and unable to be understood.

Airing Theme Twenty-Eight: Wada Calcium CD3.

Honey

The Addict

Definition:

Side effects; (a) problems that occur when treatment goes beyond the desired effect.

(b) problems that occur in addition to the desired therapeutic effect.

Example – the side effects of a large intake of calcium tablets can be constipation, stomach pain, thirst, dry mouth, increased urination, nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite.

Or they can make you beautiful.

Shikamaru sees it once.

The pill rolls over the table as she furiously hits the brown labelled pot, sending it spinning in circles with no real reason to stop like somebody caught in an endless spiral. He finds it almost ironic, when he looks at her. But he says nothing. The one pill left is the thing that concerns him. It teeters on the edge of the table, not deciding whether to fall or not – and he finds it almost strangely symbolic of being on the edge of life – before he ends the silence as the damned thing finally hits the floor. It’s new and favourite low, away from grasping hands.

“You need to stop taking so many of those.” He whispers, as Ino looks down at it. Her face hardens as he speaks, her lips pursing into a thin line because what would he know about wanting to be beautiful and she does not need to spill out useless words to answer that. She would anyway, but the cold dark look in her freezing blue eyes lingers and it says enough without her shouting like it would make a difference.

“They make me look like a model.” She answers, the few words bordering on the corner of reason. He tuts at this, thinking how silly she is. He has never wanted people that have that desperate human need to be loved, and yet as pathetic as she is (and she is the most utterly useless thing he has ever seen in that sense) he cannot help but take pleasure in her company. He raises his eyes to meet hers, snapping his gaze away from the empty container.

“They make you look anorexic.” He says without really thinking about it. He sees her snap, something changing about her demeanour. Then he thinks it, this forbidden thing, and he wants to say it but she gets there first with something trivial and cuts him off quickly.

“They make people want me again.” She whispers. He wants to reply with a thousand, hundred, ten ridiculous little things but says none of them – because he doesn’t know how and she’s not the type to cherish small bursts of affection anyway, he reasons – and instead ugly words spill out. Words that hurt. Words that he doesn’t want to say. Not to this hollow shell of an Ino, this thing that once was. This thing he wants, even if nobody else does. To him, it doesn’t matter if other people care for her. But she doesn’t want to be abandoned again, and he senses her fear in each and every moment in the air he breathes and in her goosebump-covered flesh when he touches her softly in public places.

“Where is the girl I fell in love with?” Shikamaru asks quietly. She slips off the stall she’s sitting on and picks up the remainder of her meals for the past three months before placing it back in the pot. No wasted pill, no wasted beauty, no wasted Ino. Or whoever she was.

“She’s gone.” Ino replies tonelessly, without a second thought. The wicked curve of her new smile told him that long ago. But still it hurts to hear, and he wants her back again. With her old lively ways and stunning smile. He wants the way she loves everything, and everything loves her and there is nothing between them that needs fixing. The times when all they needed was each other, and not pills or magazine ideals she yearned for.

“I’ll get her back.” He decides it then. She’s not too far gone, he tells himself. Because if there was anyone worth the effort, it was Ino. They were just some stupid prescripted calcium pills, and they couldn’t be that hard to get rid of. They couldn’t be worth more than him to her. He wanted to believe it so badly. A life, a dream, a smile. Because Ino was worth everything he ever had a million times over and if things were different she’d do it for him too so many times it would break her heart. He tells it to himself until his eyes cross and his mind is in tatters.

“Waste of time.” She replies with no hesitation. He stands up, walks over and engulfs her in his arms. Because he doesn’t know what to say to that. The troublesome woman is always worth the time. He’d pull down the heavens for her if she asked for it and name every star as she pleased then carve his love into the moon just to please her. Because each and every kiss fills him with something he can’t explain, and he knows he loves her no matter what she looks like as long as she’s Ino. He wants her back more than anything.

Wada Calcium CD3 tablets were made for calcium, so he reckoned they’d be good for bones from the beginning. He takes the last one, and she begs and pleads and screams – oh, how she screams – and keeps it for himself. Because if it could stop your bones from breaking, it might save your heart and everything else too. He mixes it in with a glass of water as soon as he gets home, watches it dissolve along with any self-worth he held then. He swallows it down. He feels sick. He sees what she means when she says it’s a ‘waste of time’.

He hates himself.

Definition:

Anorexia; a prolonged disorder of eating due to loss of appetite.

It’s not a disorder, it’s a blessing.

Ino sees it twice.

The smell of cigarettes lingers in the air, making her cough and choke as they sit outside the tent. She could think of a time when they made her reminiscent of Asuma, with his scent hanging in the air in the form of a dark cloud without the taste of the peppermint bubblegum he chewed afterwards to keep Kurenai happy. Her teacher had given her one once when she asked, and she knew Shikamaru still bought them. She’s tasted them on his lips on his tongue and in his mouth; and cried those nights because of the resurfacing memories, not that he ever knows. Yet he carries on, as always. Yet he calls her weight issues a problem.

“You need to stop smoking so many of those.” She tells him, her half-mockery of him cutting through the silence. She hates these missions alone with him the most for this first reason; his constant watching of her to make sure she wasn’t ‘pill popping’ as he liked to put it. Secondly because although he says he’s trying to give up (just as she should, apparently) he still stinks of smoke in the morning. Thirdly because for all his complaints, he still worships her every night in the tent, spreading her thin limbs like a goddess and loving her devoutly.

“They make me look good.” He half-mocks back in a sarcastic tone she doesn’t entirely appreciate. She cocks a finely threaded eyebrow, but doesn’t snap. She’s decides it’s not worth it. Instead, she inspected her manicured fingernails carefully, suddenly finding them much more interesting as she mulled over his words.

“Why don’t you want me to look good?” She muses weakly. Sure, they were just to help improve her bone strength, a prescription from the Godaime Hokage herself to help her toughen up a bit after missions where she had continuously had her bones broken each time. But when they could make her look so good, so like a girl off a magazine cover, why use them for that? They made her get rid of the things she ate, which were becoming scarcer with each passing day, when she took enough of them to make herself ill.

“Because I already wanted you as you were. Screw what everyone else thinks. You were the one who always said that, weren’t you?” He spits vehemently, suddenly, and it shocks her to the core. He can see betrayal etched into every inch of her flawless face, in her aching eyes and opened mouth and hitching breathing pattern. It hurts him, but when her face is like that and her bones stick out at all the oddest angles and she’s being just like her again he can’t help but love her all over again so he expects that feeling.

“You’re not the one everyone hates because of your supposed best friend.” She says, without much thought going into the callous words. They come out harshly, and this is not her night but she’s still smiling as he recoils from them. She knows she’s hit a soft spot, because he’s always talking about her problem like it was an addiction but he was the one giving himself lung cancer and at least she has some sort of excuse other than the memories she should have given up on six years ago. Because he can’t answer to that, she’s had the same thing happen because he was a teacher to both of them, and it’s not an excuse because of that fact.

“So you think anorexia will win them over?” He suddenly counters coldly, and the words hit her as sharply as a slap to the face. She automatically reaches for her bag, tips out the mirror and sees her reflection. Then for once, she sees it the same way he does. Her high-cheek bones aren’t beautiful. Her face is sunken in, hollow and deprived-looking. She lowered it and looked at her emaciated ribs standing out from under her short top, her twiggy legs and scarily pronounced ankles. She pales a moment, but convinces herself he’s wrong. That she’s right, that she’s not doing anything wrong, that she’s beautiful just like she wants to be.

“This isn’t anorexia. I’m just thinner.” She mutters, raising a hand and tracing it down her jaw line and feeling her chin jut out sharply. He supposes she still doesn’t see the problem, and he’s correct. She cannot see what is so sickening about the way she is right now, and she’s intoxicated by the promise of being more stunning than anybody has ever been. She’s in love with the idea of beauty, and in love with the idea of being in love and in love with him, even if she never says it. So why can he not understand her? Worry build in her throat chokingly.

“I can see you again. All Ino ever wanted was to be beautiful.” Shikamaru replies, his words nearing silence. He could come out with a thousand gorgeous whispered words of praise for her, and he never had. Perhaps that was what led to this. Not Sakura abandoning her again for a statue of a man who loved neither of them and never had. He believed that sometimes.

“No, she wanted you to be in love. She’s not coming back.” He hears her refer to her old self in the past-tense, and it shatters whatever is left of the heart she claimed long ago. He’d been in love all along, even if he’d never told her. Even if he’d barely mentioned the word. Even if anything. He’d loved her more than anything – and in the depths of his aching chest – there was a part of him that still did, even seeing this monstrous version of what he supposed was once her. Or something like that, anyway. She was such a contorted illusionist it was hard to define the difference between dreams and reality.

“When was the last time you lived for yourself?” She questions. She drops the mirror to the ground, watching it smash into pieces. She doesn’t care about bad luck, or things that go bump in the night. There is no magic in fractured fairytales, the remnants of life like her dead eyes and his breaking everything. So staring in the mirror and wishing to be the fairest girl in all the land would make no changes unless they suddenly stopped living like this.

“When was the last time someone made me feel this way?” He retorts, though not harshly. Then she looks up, and all thoughts are wiped away. He’s beginning his second cigarette and not taking tablets like her, but she can’t help it. Only one word comes to mind. Beautiful. A beauty she could never match up to. He was perfect, and he belonged to her once. When she was Ino. Some people said beauty was only skin deep, but they were wrong. Every time she looked at him after that simple inquiry, she could see it was much deeper.

When she gets home, she inhales before tearing open her cupboard and taking out the prescription and what remained of her addiction. She turns on the tap and lets it run over the paper and ink, removing any way of gaining the stupid calcium tablets and mashing the paper to a pulp to stop her from doing it again anyway. Then with a final, begrudging smile she went to the small bathroom her apartment had and tipped each and every pill down the toilet before pulling the chain. This was final. This was giving up. This was true beauty.

This was her love for him.

Definition:

Addiction; (a) compulsive physiological and psychological need for a substance.

(b) an instance of this being a person with multiple chemical addictions.

No chemicals needed, to each other they are the most addicting thing of all.

They see it together.

They’re fading out, like hopes in the darkest moments and a heartbeat in the nights of the ancients with violet and black streaking their sight. Unable to see themselves clearly, and they’re fading out without saying what they’re missing once. Because it’s just an addiction, an obsessive habit they can ignore for a day or two until they meet again. Once, she tries to figure out what it is that made her feel this way. But she only stumbles on her words, tripping over the things she doesn’t want to tell him. The things they don’t want to hear.

“What made us this way?” She whispers into his shoulder blades over and over, until her voice is hoarse because he doesn’t know what to answer her with. Nicotine and drugs are nothing. He wants neither. What he wants is her, and the way her blue eyes sparkle and burn him. He’s sure she’s going to bring herself down, and him and everything around him with her, but he doesn’t care. Not right then. Because he can’t say each other. No, it’s not that. Anything but.

“Nothing.” He finally says, his words almost assuring. Almost true. Together right then they are a croaking mess – colliding only in similar heartbeats – and she makes him feel. She’s got him brainwashed, and now he’s more confused because nothing is just a word. Nothing is this pummelling thud in his chest, her fiery kisses and them. It’s not true, it’s just a word. But he’d say it over and over, if it would make her stay. He’d say anything. Do anything. Just for her. Because she’s infatuated with loving and being loved, but with everyone else she’s never managed to stay too long. She’s not promising anything better than an addiction. But right then, she’s enough and being with her is better than dying alone. Those are the fake reasons. Really, he just likes pumping his cigarettes full of her starry eyes and feeling her slip under his skin and he’s addicted to everything that she is. Not that she’d ever hear him say it.

“We can’t depend on nothing.” She treds gently with her unusually soft-spoken words. Truth lingers behind the veil of her sentence; that in these cold dirty bed sheets in the abandoned apartment hidden somewhere off Kumogakure summarised by raindrops, cigarette smoke and the touches of each other. They are almost most comfortable in the arms of each other, pinned together by nothing in particular and dreaming. He is her definition of living.

“We can try.” He whispers in her ear, her collarbone, in between kisses and her tears. She’s given up smiling, and she’s given up acting too – after wondering if fake smiles could buy her way into hearts, then gaining only his – because acting can’t buy anything worth it, anymore. Except him, because he’s always worth it underneath his complaints and her whining.

“Nothing only leads to nothing.” She stifles her sentence as she laughs it out with a half-grin, the first he’s seen since they turned twenty and he turns and leans his head into her chest because he can’t tell her that pains him. The lows are worth it for the highs, he supposes, and his shattering is worth her smile. He reaches up to touch her moist lips with dry fingers, then moves once more to claim them with a quick kiss. He has trembling fears behind secrets, and she knows it, even if she pretends not to with strength.

“Then why do you want it?” He asks, without much feeling. Her eyes show nothing but sunny halcyon days right then, and he wouldn’t want it otherwise. She smiles, flashing pearly white teeth and giving him a cryptic answer. He wouldn’t expect otherwise.

“Because it’s the thing keeping me alive.” She half-lies with her strange form of a confession. You could never expect straight answers from Ino anyway. She wouldn’t tell him that she wouldn’t give it up even if the Hokage herself offered her far-off countries from gut-wrenching wars, like coins of gold and shimmering gems in her hand. He supposed something like that would be completely untruthful anyway. But the little things gave her away. Sometimes, when she put on her earrings and batted her eyelashes at someone she needed to for their latest mission he could see that she was intoxicated with being elsewhere because anyone could tell that she didn’t really care for the target at all. Not that it mattered to them. She was pretty, gloriously so, and any girl with a stunning smile could make it somewhere even if she’d forgotten how to act because of a boy with kisses that felt like swallowing calcium pills.

“Do you love me?” He asks suddenly, his chest almost heaving and digging his nails into his fist under the off-white sheets. He leaves half moon scars on his hands in the morning, reminding him of it – and her sudden shocked expression when he looks back and she’s looking away to hide her heart – and all of a sudden he can feel her almost not breathing.

“Do you believe in love?” She counters as she avoids the question. He reaches out to her again, tracing her jaw line with trembling words and dreaming that she was something burning like bleach coursing down the back of his throat with his fingertips rubbing away any doubt in her mind as he slid back into a small child with scraped knees that were so much easier to heal. Her fingers reach out in return, tracing hearts on his stomachs. Ghosts of truth, almost-there, never quite existing. Like them. It’s not a question of love; it’s a question of whim and addiction because she doesn’t like the word and because he’s right. She breaths narcissism and looks, he breathes addiction and cigarette smoke – and they’re back at square one – even if neither ever says it. She’s wearing the same poise as yesterday with a different tablet, and he’s behind the glass like always, looking at her with blank eyes and lips without words. There is nothing to say to nothing, when he can’t reply in the right way.

“You are my definition of nothing.” He cries, tears sliding down his cheeks without any warning and he collapses backwards into her. She’s waiting for his fall, and picking him up and treating her new addiction with more care than she’d treated any other one. It was obvious. He’s never been just an afterthought, a toy, anything borrowed or unneeded. Not to her.

“Same here.” Shikamaru tries to say it uncaringly. He can see the shadows beneath her eyes, the essence of himself in her blackened veins, in every shattered smile. He opens lifts the heavy lids of his eyes and kisses her lips, consuming all they were, and sees what she can. He holds her trembling hands and they see things together. The unsaid things, which would span centuries just to be spilt out from their lips over time.

They are addicted to each other.

Then there is him, and her, and they are addicts.

This will be slightly confusing to most people still, most likely. But I actually don’t mind the way it came out. I suppose it’s a pit poetic. But even so, this is probably my favourite one of all those I have written so far. Even if as always, it may seem slightly out of theme. I blame google, which I used for research on the pills and their effects as well as various web dictonaries which I credit now for using. Point being to this piece, anorexia is not beautiful and smoking is not good for you sort of rolled into one. Also, it was a super-fast update, so I suppose my cousin (The Queen of Idiots, otherwise known as Super-Sweet) cannot complain.

Reviews are loved. :)