My Trip To... (ShikaIno)

The Last Day

All he could see was blue. An endless, dreamy blue that would reflect the clouds if he concentrated. He had always enjoyed that about her eyes. She could be his sky, even on the cloudiest of days. He knew he had it bad when he found himself gazing into her eyes rather than his precious sky. 

He was still no better off because now they held power over him. There was just something about the way she looked at him. She had been so down on herself and yet she had somehow turned the conversation around so she was complimenting him when he was trying to help her. He could never understand how people thought she was so selfish when she never stopped worrying about her friends and family first. 

He didn't know what he was thinking. For once, he just wasn't. Something happened when she turned her glassy, swollen eyes on him. Something in him clicked and there was no unclicking it. Just like there was no way for him to take the words back. Instead, the air suddenly became unneeded as he held his breath, wishing he could die at the happiest place on earth. 

Why couldn't his heart have given out on Space Mountain?

The signs had warned around the ride before they had entered. Obviously, he didn't have a heart condition for the ride to exacerbate. Yet here he was wishing he had a heart of a decrepit eighty-year-old if only to relieve him of this.

He wasn't even sure what this was. He could barely meet her eyes, yet he focused on the way her eyes skittered across his face and the way her bottom lip slipped a fraction of an inch down. Was it in shock? In disappointment? What was it?

"You what?" 

"I love you." It's like he couldn't stop now that he had started, even when every fiber of his being wanted him to stop. His mind was screaming at him to abort but his mouth had never been made for lies. 

- - -

"Shikamaru..." Ino couldn't believe what she is hearing. Disbelief penetrates her mind. Nothing had ever prepared her for this. It almost makes the world feel like it's spinning on an off angle. Why would Shikamaru ever love her? Didn't she name enough reasons as to why she was such a flawed human being only moments ago? Half of those reasons were only brought to her attention because of his complaining!

Yet here he was telling her that he loved her. How?

"As a friend...?" There was no reason for the smartest guy she knew to fall for her. Nobody had ever fallen for her so why would he?

"No, Ino," his intense eyes finally looked away then and Ino found she could breathe again. Just barely, though because now her heart was taking over the room where her lungs usually rested. It threatened to take over her chest cavity. It made her fingers shake and her brain flat line. Maybe that's why she let the next words tumble out.

"You're not just doing this to make me feel better, are you?" She sounds overly critical than she had first wished.

"Damn it, Ino. No," he shakes his head at her like she couldn't be any more ridiculous. 

She feels it too, especially with how he continues to avoid her eyes. She just wished he would look at her again. Maybe then she could read his eyes or make some sense of all this. Her brain was whirling with this new information. Suddenly all those moments from the last week started falling into places and make sense before her eyes. All those unexpected sparks she felt. All those brief, yet blazing touches. All those times she thought her chest would burst. They were now clear. 

A smile came upon her face and her eyes began to tear up again. 

"Shika."

"We can stay friends if you want..."