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chronicangelca · 25 days

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Link to this fic on AO3. Words: 2041 Date posted: May 7, 2019

Summary: "I didn't," he responds honestly, because Sai deserves to know. He does not deserve to be married to a secret and Ino can be mad at him if she wants but indignantly, Shikamaru can only think, You should have told him.

Shikamaru doesn't particularly like hanging out with Sai. It's not that Sai isn't a perfectly fine guy, he is, it's more that the guy has no sense of boundaries and no ability to read a room, and that Ino seems to expect Shikamaru to teach him these things. (He thinks that Chōji would be a much better candidate if she's that determined not to do it herself. Hell, even Naruto is better with people than Shikamaru is and that guy is a total idiot.) Plus, there's also the awkward fact that...

"You used to sleep with my wife," Sai says casually, as though commenting on the weather.

"Yeah," he responds, forcing his voice to be just as casual.

He and Ino haven't been a thing since they were 18, and they're both married now (him, newly, to Temari, and her to the man he's currently sitting at Ichiraku with after Ino made plans with him a month ago and then suddenly "came down with something," which at the very least Sai had confirmed to be true, she was vomiting all morning, but he suspects she was planning to cancel either way), and yet it is this thing that will probably haunt them both until they die. (He wonders if it can be a haunting if it is sweet. If it can count as a ghost if its sorrowful song is still tempting. There are times where he looks at his wife and he wonders what it would be like if she was somebody else, but he's never upset with how his life has come out because he does love Temari, he really does.) "She told you about that?"

"We make it our business not to keep secrets from each other," he says pointedly, taking a sip of his water. Shikamaru doubts this. Of all of Ino's virtuous qualities, she is not honest. She is not open. She is a book in an ancient, forgotten language with pages stuck together and a latch on the cover that requires a key that was lost a long time ago. Shikamaru thinks he might still be the only one who understands her language, but he doesn't have the key anymore. He can only look at her face and spout passages from memory and wonder if they still apply. Shikamaru has been thrust out into the same category as the rest of the world and it shouldn't sting as much as it does.

He cannot say this, though. He cannot pull at loose threads in someone else's marriage until it comes unraveled just because he still feels a sort of bitterness that it is not him. Not when his life is just as easy to pick at and his dreams are just as wont to come apart if they are too closely examined. "I guess I just didn't think it was that important to her," he lies, and it feels weird in his mouth. In contrast to Ino, Shikamaru makes it a point to be honest. He does not like fabrications.

Sai is quiet for a long time, continuing to simply sip his ice water while Shikamaru slurps up the last of his bowl of ramen. Finally, he says, back to a casual tone like he's just spotted a cloud in a neat shape that he wants Shikamaru to look at, "I occasionally suspect she might still be in love with you." Shikamaru chokes. He coughs for a minute and wipes at the broth on his chin and then stares at Sai with wide eyes.

"She doesn't make it obvious. She certainly hasn't said as much. I suppose she thinks the truth would hurt me," he elaborates, and he shoots Shikamaru a kind smile that doesn't really fit the conversation, but Shikamaru knows that he is trying his best. "So I suppose we do keep some secrets."

"Is it really a secret if you can read it so easily?" Shikamaru asks, because he doesn't know how else to respond. After all, Ino has never been able to keep a secret from him. He reads her too well, always has. Though she may not say what she is feeling, may even hide the text particularly well, he can see the way the lettering flickers through her blue eyes. He can read the words aloud to her in another tongue and she will crumble.

Sai shrugs his shoulders and places the money for his food on the counter, then takes another sip of his water which Shikamaru swears should be almost empty by now. Shikamaru lifts the bowl to his mouth to drink the broth from it and then pays his half, and the two of them get up to leave at the same time without verbally communicating it. He supposes payment should be enough of a cue. They walk in the same direction, which isn't actually toward either of their homes, so Shikamaru can't be sure where they're going. He thinks that they are going to have a long conversation, though. "If it isn't too invasive," Sai starts, and Shikamaru is sure it will be. "Could you tell me what it was like?"

He stops breathing for a second.

What it was like, he thinks, and he knows that Sai means his relationship with Ino but he wants to pretend that he is oblivious. He wants to pretend that he doesn't know what the other man is talking about just so he can push his answer off. Because he doesn't want to tell her husband that they were some of the best years of his life. He doesn't want to tell her husband that he really was in love with Ino and on a level he's still in love with her, too. He doesn't want to tell her husband that if he'd been able to choose when he was eighteen-- even when he was nineteen, twenty, for years-- his choice would have been Ino. He doesn't want to tell her husband that if she asked him to abandon his life and run away with her, he'd drop everything in a heartbeat. He doesn't want to tell her husband that Ino will always be a part of him.

"Well, I'm sure if anyone could get it, you would," he starts, because that, at least, is true. It is an easy truth to grant. "Being with Ino is like... I guess it's a lot like smoking a cigarette. It's a rush. It's a chemical soup. It leaves its permanent imprints on your brain and your body and the way that you think. It's not like they become your whole life, but they become a part of your life. An important part, a part you might change everything for if you had to. Even after you quit, a part of your life is always dedicated to getting another one. To taking another breath. To catching the secondhand."

"And is that what this is? Spending time with me? Is it catching the secondhand?" He asks, apparently in the spirit of genuine inquiry. Shikamaru does not think that Sai is a particularly jealous man. He could tell him right now that he was in love with Ino and that he'd leave his wife tomorrow to be with her (which at this point he does not think is true-- his life with Temari has become the default; the normal; the way that things are, even if they aren't really the way that things have to be anymore) and Sai would probably just nod along and accept it because he is a selfless man, a good husband, and if Ino would accept that life then Sai would too because all he wants is her happiness.

Shikamaru shakes his head and laughs a little bit to clear the air. "No, I don't think so." He doesn't need to bear witness to the life Ino has built without him. "You're a good man, Sai. She deserves a good man."

This seems to pique Sai's interest again. "Are you not a good man?" He asks, and Shikamaru isn't sure how to answer that question. He isn't sure how to explain that on a fundamental level, he doesn't really think so. He doesn't think he can be. He can't explain what allows Sai and Naruto and Chōji and countless others all to be good men when they have had the same life experiences as Shikamaru, would likely make the same choices without questioning themselves as they are trained to do as shinobi. He only knows that they are all inherently good and something within him is tainted in a way he cannot fix or even properly see.

He knows this is not the answer that Sai wants, and yet he does not like lying, so he chooses to gift Sai with a form of release instead. "You seem pretty determined to give your wife away," he jokes, although he doesn't think this phrasing is quite right. You don't give Ino away. Like waves lapping at the shore, she comes and goes as she pleases until one day she dries up and leaves you dehydrated.

"I suppose I'm more interested in why you did," he shoots back, and Shikamaru feels his heart stutter. So she didn't tell him everything. She told him that we loved each other, that we were together, but she didn't tell him how we came apart. She didn't tell him about our tragic ending which paved the way for his happy ending. For her happy ending. For everyone's happy ending, I suppose.

"I didn't," he responds honestly, because Sai deserves to know. He does not deserve to be married to a secret and Ino can be mad at him if she wants but indignantly, Shikamaru can only think, You should have told him. "I don't think I ever would have been capable of giving Ino up. I don't know how anyone could be," he says. He thinks it's the most honest he's been all evening. "We started dating when we were fifteen. We didn't tell anyone about it because it was forbidden. Children of the Yamanaka clan cannot be with children of the Nara clan, and neither of us could have been with a member of the Akimichi clan, either. It jeopardizes the InoShikaChō trio that our families have perpetuated for hundreds of years. And there's so little our families cared about more than tradition. When we told them, we didn't really have a choice. So, no, I didn't give her away."

He knows that he shouldn't be bitter. Things are better this way. He has a pregnant wife waiting for him at home and she has a husband who would die for her.

But he can't help it, damn it. He can't help it because he would have happily been the husband who would die for her, and she could have been his pregnant wife, and if they'd never told anyone-- if they'd just eloped one day and announced it to their families then when there was nothing they could do about it-- everything would be fine. Maybe not better, but it'd be different and it'd be okay. He misses her so much sometimes it aches and even as he loves his wife, is in love with his wife, he knows that a part of him will always belong to Ino and that's not only unfair to both of them, but it's unfair to the wife he loves.

Sai lets them stay in quiet for a long time, and really, he is the one in total control of this conversation. Shikamaru has never felt so much like he was at another person's mercy before, but he knows now that he is a mouse stuck in a trap and begging for death.

"I'm glad, you know," he says eventually, and Shikamaru nearly jumps though it is not that sudden. "I suppose I should be jealous, but it makes me happy that there is someone else who loves my wife as much as I do. She needs more people who care so deeply for her in her life. I think that she often feels tragically unloved and alone, even when I am in the room with her. So I suppose, on a level, she needs you."

#Darla writes #Naruto #Nara Shikamaru #Sai #SaiIno #ShikaIno #POV Third Person #Awkward Conversations #ShikaTema mentioned

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