Room 504, Saturday Evening

[intraspective]

After a handwavy day of training that had left her tired and achy, but in a good mood, Ino was sprawled out on her bed, hair still damp from a shower, and making faces at the latest book she was attempting to read. For something that had the word 'basic' in its title... it wasn't very basic at all.

And the dictionary she was flipping through only helped so much. Geez. She considered writing to the author and complaining about false advertising.

Or maybe she'd just fling it at the wall. The thunk it made was very satisfying.

[Open~!]

Comments

[intraspective]

"Just wondering." Ino said cheerfully, playing with his hair. She went back to an earlier question. "How old were you when you started studying?" He couldn't have been really, really little if he'd started medicine around that time.

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"Oh, young," Kabuto replied vaguely. "Even before I was officially studying medicine, I would read everything I could about it. So you could say I've been studying it for as long as I can remember." He was answering....just not in the specifics she might have wanted. And he was happy to keep it that way.

[intraspective]

Ino took a moment to picture a really young Kabuto lugging around a medical textbook and reading it very seriously. Awwww.

"It's good that you knew what interested you though, right?" The tips of her fingers gently massaged his scalp, "I mean, I think that the shinobi who don't know what they want to go into have a harder time of it. Makes deciding what to learn harder."

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"It's always good when you know what you're doing. Wandering aimlessly, without goals, will not get you anywhere." Kabuto relaxed again, shifting a little to almost lean into Ino's hands.

[intraspective]

Ino grinned a little as his head pressed slightly against her hands. He clearly wanted her to continue.

"Mmm." She hummed a little, "My boss says though that you've got to have balance, even with hopes and stuff, and that it's important not to let your goal consume you." Or something like that anyway. Of course, Cable-san had also mentioned that you should 'help where you can' but Ino didn't think Kabuto would care about that.

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

Kabuto would never, ever let his goals consume him. Never, ever. Not him!

"Your boss sounds like a smart guy," Kabuto commented absently. His mind just wasn't on the conversation anymore. "Better than some, anyway."

[intraspective]

"Cable-san is awesome." Ino told him serenely. "You should talk to him at some point, just to see."

... was he starting to fall asleep on her?

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"I might." If only to gather some more information about him. "How are things going with your training, by the way?" Kabuto wasn't falling asleep; he was just thinking about several different things all at once, and it tended to make him seem...a little bit vague.

[intraspective]

Her hands continued rubbing small circles on his scalp. It was soothing. "Training? It's going fine." A pause. "Oh! Yondaime-sama got back to me. So we talked and he told me that he'd been kidnapped which is a pretty good reason for not returning my call sooner."

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"Kidnapped is a good excuse." Kabuto agreed very much with the soothing-ness. "Surprising someone managed to kidnap him. Wonder how they did it...he's very fast." That was a massive understatement.

[intraspective]

"No idea," Ino said with a small shrug, "he didn't want to talk about it. He mentioned that it was one of his husband's exs, and I think it's the same person that hurt Cable-san's face but that's just a guess."

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

Kabuto still couldn't quite process the 'husband' thing. Even though it was also kind of funny, it was so...bizarre. "Interesting. Maybe I'll have to talk to him sometime and see what I can find out."

[intraspective]

"If you do, you've totally got to tell me too." Ino told him, running her fingers through his hair. "All Cable-san would say that it was a 'friend of a friend'."

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"Sure," Kabuto said, grinning. "For the right price, I might share." He wasn't going to give the information away for nothing, afterall.

[intraspective]

"And what, do you think, the price might entail?" Ino wasn't surprised by this at all, and her lips curved into a smile. Her hands continued playing with his hair. "That's so definitely you."

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"Mm...I'm not sure yet. Something of equal value, though." Kabuto didn't mind being predictable, sometimes. There were some things that he wasn't about to change.

[intraspective]

"How do you judge equal value between a piece of information, and something else?" Ino asked curiously. "Isn't that hard?"

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"No, not really. It just takes experience." Kabuto crossed his arms behind his head.

[intraspective]

Ino rolled her eyes. "I was playing with that hair, you know." She poked him in the shoulder.

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"And?" he asked, to prove that he was immune to the hair-playing. No, really. He totally was.

[intraspective]

Suuuure he was. Ino fiddled with the bits that weren't trapped by his hands. "Don't you want me to keep playing with it?" She asked innocently, "You seem to enjoy it."

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

"Do I?" Kabuto asked, just as innocently. "How observant of you."

[intraspective]

"Well," Ino said with a fake pout, "if you'd really rather I didn't, I suppose I could find something else to entertain myself with..." One hand crept down to his side.

Poke, poke, poke.

[sound-loyalty.livejournal.com]

Kabuto twitched at the first poke, before he was able to bring himself under control again. "Oh? Are we starting that again?" He took one hand from behind his head, letting the faint blue glow of his chakra wash over it.

[intraspective]

She squeaked at the sight, but continued poking. "You're the one that seemed to get bored of me playing with your hair." Ino told him with a toss of her head.