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If I had to rate my boyfriend on a scale of guy hitting on you in the line of a Thunder Burger to total dreamboat, heartthrob lead of a major soap opera he would score in at a four.
Shikadai climbing in through the window after scaling a floor to get to me raises the number up a little, but his nonplussed and non-urgent movement docks everything way down.
That is what I do now. I rate arbitrary things in my head because I cannot talk about the super important ones out loud!
I watched my favorite soap opera but could not do a play by play to Sarada about any of the drama.
Thrice over I read the entire pile of magazines my mom harassed store owners about, even if she never understood the appeal of them.
Even still, I could not show my dad the awful fashion trends they were pushing to impressionable people and watch as he nods in confusion and agrees that I know better than the so-called professionals.
I did all my routines but without a voice I am, no matter what actions I take not Chocho.
I am a masquerade. An actress with the shittiest, smallest script.
So I wonder as Shikadai takes his sweet time getting to me if he feels like he is wandering into the bedroom of another woman instead.
At least that would be interesting. A cheating boyfriend, a slashed throat, a-
Shikadai would never do that. Too much effort to juggle two women. Plus, he's happy with me, wordless and all.
He shows this by not letting his eyes catch onto the gash of my throat. He looks into my eyes instead, observes and analyzes to see that the gold inside them has gone dull and dead.
He bypasses my sheets and the warmth they provide to get closer to my body heat, as close as he can get. He kisses the center of my nose and then leans his head against mines all lazy like.
"July really shouldn't have done that, you know. It was illogical to take those pills knowing the side effects would last well into the dinner party with the You Know Whos." He says, then tilts his head up to look at my gaze only to find it instantly blown-wide.
He…watched my shows? He never ever does that. Even when he is in the room with me and the serial is playing they go to the far background for him.
Usually he just ends up falling asleep with his head on my lap, and his face pressed into the soft of my belly.
Shikadai stays staring with those stupidly pretty Nara eyes of his always so deep of thought and devotion.
Ugh. I am a little bit distracted right now by his whole…ordeal.
The way he looks up me, and how his lips are the exact shape of my favorite snack and… does kissing work for healing?
Sakura said I should focus on that - healing. and not stress anything in the area surrounding my injury.
Shikadai is a strategist, not a medic, but I still open my mouth to ask him if smothering his face with mines was a bad idea right now.
Nothing. Nothing comes out. Not the question, barely a squeak passes between us and it reminds me quickly of my tragic fate as a heroine without speech.
I feel myself falling into despair. It feels dark because I close my eyes in shame.
It feels heavy, because the weight of the last few days - my failure in the mission, the hospital, the can't be fixed. Not yet. Not yet - it is crushing me.
I feel….tired.
"Hey. Chocho. Talk to me."
Shikadai's words wake me right up. My initial, childlike reaction is anger because anger is easy and my emotions were rotating through themselves anyway. Talk. Talk. The word repeats in my head.
Before I can snap I am met with the truth of his intention. Obviously not mocking, and always calculating. Shikadai did not slip up. He just didn't.
He was saying something I didn't understand, and that wasn't new in the slightest.
I spent my childhood asking him to clarify what the hell he is talking about (and cheating off his papers.)
I do the same now, hoping a head tilt was profane enough of an inquiry.
In response he reaches down between us and captures my hand in his, firmly taking control of one fingertip.
"Right here. Tell me what you're thinking." He says, tracing a path down his shoulder blade and over the expanse of his arm. His touch is far less lax than usual. It is like he didn't want me to expend the energy it took keeping my arms lifted.
Like….he knew my core was exhausted.
"Just trace it. I'll follow."
I can do this. I want to. I want to communicate with him, truly, so badly, and he is giving me the chance.
I take a deep breath and then nod.
I trust that his brain can easily track the letters I draw but as I tug it along his shirt sleeve, I stay steady and slow.
I trust that he'll know what I'm writing, but I bypass his shirt halfway through and carve my request against his exposed skin. A wrist, his knuckles.
I could have just wrote that I wanted him to hold me, because I really really did…but I talk and talk and talk instead.
I tell him that I may perish if he doesn't gather me into his arms for an eternity, and that I just may perish inside them all the same. But that I'd rather rot in his embrace than here in my lonesome. That-
He is smiling a quarter way through, and even though I'm rambling away for once he doesn't cut me off.
I think, in the end, he knows more of what I say to him than I do. My fingers go and go and then so do my eyes again, closing as I settle into him. As he pulls me deeper like I asked.
He hums, letting me know he still hears me. I doodle hearts between my script, like I did the corners of my notebook in class.
Those hearts always had so many boys' names inside them alongside mine. An actor here, a cute classmate there, but never Shikadai. I would have scoffed at the ideal of it.
Now I allow myself to be consumed by him and our little conversation.
"Not a good idea. You're too much of a screamer." Shikadai states ever so rudely. "You'd stress your throat trying to."
Pfft. As if it was my fault he did those things he did with his tongue. Besides. I could very well be quiet if I wanted to!
My protests are emphasized with a dramatic tapping, my manicure drumming along his palm and followed by his laughter.
When I arrived at the hospital, I didn't even get to a bed before Sakura had stopped what she was doing to get the last of the toxin out from my throat personally. Benefits of having a best friend whose mom is head medic, I guess.
Thing is, I didn't even want her to touch me. The immediate danger was removed but I still treated my throat like a containment zone.
I hated strangers examining me so much my parents had to firmly push my boundary to them of only being checked by Sakura because it panicked me so much to not even have a familiar hand hovering over my deepest scar.
Outside my door I heard a nurse whisper to another that I was a "diva" patient demanding an excellence of service i didn't even realistically need.
I thought to stir things up, play the part she prescribed me, and get her told off….but lost any mojo when I realized the only part I'd really be playing was frail girl writing a note with shaking hands, and letting someone else handle it.
Now, I didn't even think about it when Shikadai got close and laid his hand on me.
Not until I decided I wanted more and more of it then told him so twice. I insist a final time that he does something good with that mouth. That it, and the rest of them find their way south.
"Not gonna, you'd end up hemorrhaging somehow. But."
Shikadai was a master of the let down. He sweetens the rejection by saying words he never does, dipping his head and dripping his voice down into my ear. "I love you, Chocho. You're crazy asking for that now. Let's just talk about July some more, yeah? I'm not going anywhere."
I nod. I am really curious to know all the plots Shikadai is definitely overthinking about, all the ones he'll manage to predict in the future, and which character he thinks is the hottest.
I intend to get him to answer that last one if it is the last thing i do!!! But end up falling asleep halfway through his rant about why the mini shogi scene done at a park to build romantic and sexual tension didn't make sense. (How could anyone find someone hot when they make errors like that?)
I wake to him moving his things in, and the only thing I can do is stand up on wobbly legs and run my hand across his face.
"How mad was your mom about this decision?" I signed under his eye as good morning.
He only sighs deeply.
"And my dad?"
"……What a drag…"