Apartment Above the Boards, Monday Night

[intraspective]

It would be a damn dirty lie for Ino to even pretend she wasn't really into what was out of Taylor Swift's new album. She totally was. No shame.

"My castle crumbled overnight," she sang while scrubbing the floor. Cleaning the kitchen wasn't very glamourous but it was pretty important. "I brought a knife to a gun fight."

Ino was pretty sure she'd win in a case like that. She was also reasonably sure Taylor would too, if she cared enough.

Still, misdirection was a useful tool. She leaned back on her heels and stretched, smiling at where Silly watched her from the counter.

"And I know I make the same mistakes every time
Bridges burn, I never learn, at least I did one thing right
I did one thing right
I'm laughing with my lover, making forts under covers
Trust him like a brother, yeah, you know I did one thing right
Starry eyes sparkin' up my darkest night
My baby's fit like a daydream
Walking with his head down
I'm the one he's walking to
So call it what you want, yeah, call it what you want to…

She was possibly going to sing this song until the kitchen sparkled. It was catchy.

[For ze boy, please!]

Comments

[puppy_fair]

Zack knew that look. And he was pretty sure she knew the look on his face, in turn.

"Yeah," he said, at length. "Yeah, I'm sure."

[intraspective]

Yeah, she did.

Ino didn't sigh. Though she wanted to.

"Alright," she said quietly. "Then..."

It was a pretty different song she picked this time. Less a slap to the face, but still... hard.

"Looking at it now
It all seems so simple
We were lying on your couch
I remember
You took a Polaroid of us
Then discovered (then discovered)
The rest of the world was black and white
But we were in screaming color
And I remember thinking…"

[puppy_fair]

Zack's breath wasn't coming any easier after song number two. Funny, that. He listened in silence, looking somewhere in the general direction of his toes, and then he ventured, "Any particular reason you like these most?"

[intraspective]

That... was not a question Ino really wanted to answer, no.

Still, they were talking and that was... she didn't want it to stop, even though she didn't want it to happen at the same time.

(Feelings were stupid. And complicated.)

"They're catchy," Ino said, though that wasn't all it was. "And they're things people can relate to."

[puppy_fair]

"They are that."

Zack was certainly finding a lot to relate to in these ones. He didn't think for an instant that was the entire reason, though, and that on its own was chewing at his head. He didn't want to ask. He really didn't want to push.

But he had to.

"You relate to them?"

[intraspective]

Wow, my, her nails were fascinating. She was going to have to repaint them later, wasn't she? Maybe a teal...

Maybe a purple. She hadn't done purple for a while.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I do."

[puppy_fair]

Zack nodded a little, ignoring the way it felt like his guts had just been kicked in. It wasn't a surprise. It really, really wasn't.

That didn't make it hurt less. But it wasn't a surprise.

"Are we ever going to talk about it?"

[intraspective]

Ino watched him again. It was tempting to say she didn't know what he was talking about. Or to try and laugh it off and ask why they'd talk about the songs she'd been singing.

But she knew damn well what he was asking.

Her shoulders tensed, pulling in slightly, just a little. Gods, she didn't want to.

"Here's another song," she said, her voice coming out a little too tight. "Okay?"

She didn't give him a chance to interupt her. Just went:

"You and I walk a fragile line
I have known it all this time
But I never thought I'd live to see it break
It's getting dark and it's all too quiet
And I can't trust anything now
And it's coming over you like it's all a big mistake"

[puppy_fair]

Zack's mouth had opened, but she'd started singing before he could get a word in edgewise.

He wished she hadn't. But he closed his mouth again and listened, and now there were tears pricking at his eyes to go with that inability to breathe. He swallowed. He forced himself to inhale.

He closed his eyes and slumped in the shoulders.

"This isn't working," he said, trying not to sound half as small and defeated as he felt. "Is it?"

[intraspective]

no wasn't looking at him. She didn't want to see if his face matched his voice.

She hated what they'd become.

"It--It ain't," she said, feeling brittle and empty and angry, back when Rosa had first found her, stopped her from... well. It didn't matter now. "Not the way it's supposed to."

[puppy_fair]

"So," he said, and hated repeating himself, but he had to. On this, he had to. "Do we talk about it, Ino? What we're doing... this... all of this... is just making it worse."

It was. He didn't think she could deny that. Not if she was paying half as much attention as he was.

"I think maybe it's too much for both of us."

[intraspective]

Ino was silent, weighing her options.

"So, what, we just give up?"

[puppy_fair]

Zack shook his head a little.

"What we've been doing already feels too much like giving up," he said, carefully. "I was thinking instead of us both pretending nothing is wrong... we... I don't know. We do something about it."

[intraspective]

She glanced at him now, carefully, eyes half-hidden behind her hair (it was doing it's damnedest to escape from the braid she'd stuffed it in).

"We... fix it?"

[puppy_fair]

"We have a couple of options," he replied, quietly. "We keep going, and it never gets better. It's been over a year, Ino... If it hasn't gotten better now, it never will. Not doing it this way. We give up, we... I don't know... cut our losses and get on with our lives. Or..." Deep breath. "Or we talk. About what we both need. Because I know I'm not the only one bleeding out right now. And we try to fix ourselves so that we can fix us."

[intraspective]

She flinched again.

At this point, it wasn't healthy, but she wasn't sure what she'd do if they just decided that... that was it, it was over. They were over. End of story.

"I...," It felt like pulling nails out of her chest to say it. "I'd rather talk than...."

She couldn't say it.

[puppy_fair]

"It's hard," Zack said softly. "Talking. I know. We've never been good at it, not really. But back before..." Before. She knew before what. "... We didn't need to talk. Things have changed since then, I guess."

[intraspective]

"You've gotten better at it," Ino said, not sure when that had happened. Not sure why. Not sure how to feel about it. Grateful, maybe.

[puppy_fair]

"I spent a lot of time talking during my time on the run," Zack admitted, shrugging his shoulders a little. "Kind of one-sided, but it kept us... kept me going."

Cloud hadn't been going. Cloud had been comatose. Zack knew that, but it was still hard to wrap his head around it.

[intraspective]

Cloud was going to get better, find a nice ninja person, and be happy, damn it.

"Yeah," she said, looking down. Ino took a breath. Talking, huh? "I... I only really talked a lot in Aerith's church. While you were gone."

Well, she'd talked a lot to everyone else, but she hadn't said much. If that made sense.

[puppy_fair]

Zack nodded faintly.

"Until I got out, I didn't do much talking at all. In my own head, maybe." He glanced up. "Maybe now I'm trying to make up for lost time."

Which didn't explain just how hard it was to talk in general, now that he was safe again. But it seemed like a nice thought all the same.

[intraspective]

It was a nice thought.

"There's a lot of lost time," she said softly.

[puppy_fair]

"Almost too much lost time," Zack agreed. And then he inhaled. Exhaled. Looked quietly at her for a minute before he said, "Damn it, Ino. Are we even the same people anymore?"

[intraspective]

Despite everything, her mouth curled in a slight smile.

"Sometimes yes," she said, "and sometimes no."

[puppy_fair]

Zack laughed softly at that, in spite of everything.

"I haven't decided if it's the yes moments that make the no moments harder, or if it's the other way around," he confessed.