Sakura pilfered a fun-size Starburst from Kiba's backpack and tore the wrapping open with her teeth, her free hand holding her phone. Two little squares fell out, one orange one pink, and without a twitch of her gaze she pushed the pink one across the table.
Delighted, Leon took it.
"You two are gonna give me so many cavities." Kiba wrinkled his nose and plucked a grape from whoever brought the grapes. "And I hate dentists. Who the hell looks atta mouth and goes 'hey, I'm gonna drill your teeth now,' like yeah, go ahead, stab my gums while you're at it. People go ta' school for that and they end up rich as shit for it." He sighed, then paused. "I was goin' somewhere with this." In a trailing mumble, "Sore wa nanideshita ka?"
"You were whining because I gave my boyfriend candy."
"Masaka," he gasped. "Shino, she used the 'b' word!"
"You keep stealing her hoodies," Shino responded. Beside him, Claire took a bite of her sandwich, considered it, and nodded before continuing to chew. "It's what you deserve."
"So you're just gonna act like you don't have any either? I've been in your room—"
"For what? Stay out. Why? You'll lose your tool kit again."
"That was YOU?!"
Claire used an apple slice to gesture in front of her. "I'll trade this pudding cup for that pocky."
"Is that butterscotch?"
"Churro!"
"Oh, mess me up." Kiba tossed her the pocky, argument already half-forgotten, as he reached for Shino's water bottle. "Churro flavor. Crazy."
Leon peeled the wrapping from his Starburst as the waves of easy chatter washed over him. It was still quieter at the table under the staircase even with them migrating over, and he'd been bracing himself for awkward silences or stilted conversation that could come with any merging friend group. But Claire had always been outgoing and Kiba talked enough for three people, and he shouldn't have been surprised the two of them made the group-clumping so easy. Shino didn't seem to mind the bigger group either, at least, Leon didn't think so—he was almost as hard to read as Sakura, but he did talk a little more.
Now that his lunch group had grown from two to five—a crazy jump, he knows—and the nosy looks they'd been getting from the rest of the cafeteria had died down to the occasional passing whisper or lame rumor, he was glad things were more comfortable. Him and Sakura had only been dating a couple weeks now, yeah, and he was pretty sure he had it down to pat in telling the difference between her real-bored face and fake-bored face despite them being practically the same face.
Either way, he didn't mind figuring her out. It gave him an excuse to tell her she was cute every time she asked what he was looking at.
"So what do you guys usually get up to after school?" Claire tore open the pocky packet and offered it around the table. They were strawberry, and Leon immediately took one. He had to, they were pink. "Fridays after school, especially."
"Uh, babysitting? If our aunt and uncle need it." Kiba tilted his head as he peeled off the top of the pudding cup. "'sides that, lots of big things happen on Fridays—art shows, art show afterparties, fight nights. But today? Eh..."
"A lot of people are out of town this week," Shino said.
Kiba scratched his cheek. "Yeah, and Mr. Dad left last night. I dunno, we'll probably end up on the couch. Or the gym."
Mr. Dad?
"The car needs an oil change," Sakura mentioned.
"You're sayin' that like I'm supposed to know what that means."
"Do you guys live together?" Claire asked, and Leon raised his head as he tried to pry off the candy stuck to his teeth. "Just 'cause it's either that or you're over at each other's a bunch, and it sounds like you know a lot of the same people?"
Kiba hummed around a spoonful of pudding and quickly swallowed. "So, maru de, we transferred over from Japan, right? The three of us've known each other a long time and by the time we're in junior high, we ended up as kinda delinquents, if you can believe it."
He flashed a wide grin and Claire's mouth formed a small 'o' around her snack. She was hooked and rightfully so, but Leon couldn't help but feel a little off. Maybe a couple weeks ago he would've brushed it off (or used it as another excuse not to ask Sakura out because that was another bullet point in the list of how they were in completely different leagues), but he still thought about the parking lot sometimes, and how Sakura wore those cuts and bruises like a second skin.
Being delinquents answered a lot of his questions, but...
"When we were fifteen, there was a lot of talk about us needin' a change of pace. Mr. Dad—Sakura's dad—s'been in this city for work, so we came to live with him at least 'til we graduate high school. He's me and Shino's, uh, sore wa nanda?"
"Temporary guardian," Shino answered.
"Yeah, that." Kiba shrugged. "So we live together, have a dog, share a car."
Sakura's phone screen lit up on the table, and she peered down. "We can get the engine oil from Jade Vine Customs."
A dark brow cocked above dark lenses. "For free?"
"Free enough."
"Huh, that actually clears up a ton." Claire leaned forward on her forearms, half a pocky stick stuck out the corner of her mouth. "And! If you guys aren't doing anything tonight, you should hit up the arcade with us!"
"Yeah!" Leon shook himself out of his head and smiled. "One Friday a month we go to Round Six, play whatever, then pool all our tickets together at the end. Unless we all decide to hold out for one of the bigger prizes, we split them even. Chris comes most of the time, but he's having dinner with some Air Force recruiters."
Sakura looked back up and glanced at both his and Claire's faces before turning towards her friends. No words were spoken and for a moment it was just the three of them in an orbit of their own, but then Kiba was back to flashing them his wide grin as Shino adjusted his glasses and her eyes were back on them, dark and indifferent as always.
"Sounds like fun," she answered.
"Hell yeah it sounds fun!" Kiba swung a pointer finger around. "And bring some tissues to cry into when I kick every single one of your asses at skee-ball!"
A round of boos circled the table as he got pelted with candy wrappers and balled up napkins.
::
The rough calluses on her hand settled against Leon's softer one as he twined his fingers with hers when they ambled down the rows of claw machines. It seemed arcade nights would worm their way into her usual schedule and had the addition of the "Ultimate Skee-Ball Championship" with the last of their credits before they hit the prize corner. For now, though, when Kiba and Claire latched onto a new zombie shooter and Shino hung back to make sure Kiba wouldn't find a way to break the game, she had a little while to walk around with her boyfriend, the blacklights glowing the whites of their shoes.
Her boyfriend. The new phrase was still odd on her tongue.
Leon ran a thumb over the back of her hand and smiled when she looked at him.
"What kind of games do you like?" He asked. One claw machine was full of small toy carrots with cat faces on them, and the one directly across from it carried stubby dinosaurs. "I know I sound like a total jock when I saw I always play the basketball ones first."
Sakura's lips quirked as they peered into another machine chock full of Hello Kitties.
"Shino says I'm a jock," she mentioned. She supposed she'd been the most physical out of the three of them, never starting fights but always finishing them. "I wouldn't mind basketball—maybe I'll try one of the claws since we're here, but you'll have to tell me about the other games."
"You've never been here before?"
"Never been to an arcade."
"Wait." He blinked and stopped at the machine filled with Pikachus. "Really?"
She hummed lightly and glanced around.
Neon splashes of planets and moons and green aliens ran across the arcade's black walls and the carpet underfoot was reminiscent of the old bowling alley one of Kakuzu's informants worked out of, but instead of colorful tacky ribbons they were colorful tacky squares. The mini-golf course next door was dinosaur-themed and, if she saw correctly, just as blacklit and neon as here and the laser-tag place in the next building over.
It was busy tonight. She saw families with smaller kids here and there, but there were a lot more people around her age. Laughter mingled with too-loud game music and special effect gunshots that sounded nothing like the real thing—a kid dragging a bear almost as tall as him passed them by, someone shouted from one of the fake motorcycles that tilted from side to side, a small crowd was cheering around a guitar game blaring an 80s rock song she was sure she heard somewhere before.
"You never got the chance to be a normal kid."
Her eyes flickered.
Arcades weren't familiar. Comfortable. She didn't know how many exits there were or where the security cameras were set up, but what she did know was that she shouldn't even be thinking about those things here. But Dad's gym had three octagons and four hidden routes out the building, Jade Vine Customs was an enormous garage with ceilings tall enough to have overhead walkways in addition to whole walls of bulletproof glass, Hiruko Tattoo was stocked with more than just tattoo guns, and RAIN already had security built into its name.
... A normal kid, huh.
She hadn't gotten to be one back in Tokyo, either. Didn't get a chance to be—not when the only way to brush up her fighting was running off gangs that either wanted her in or wanted her gone, not when she was looking over her shoulder for Dan—
The hand around her's tightened.
She blinked and focused back on Leon and the worry apparent in the slight downturn of his lips.
"You okay?" He murmured, and she couldn't understand how sometimes his eyes could be so full, brimming with things like fondness, concern, excitement, joy. "You were thinking hard for a sec."
"You could tell?"
"Well, if you're saying it like that, I'm definitely getting better at it." He lifted his free hand to brush a couple loose strands behind her left ear, the one riddled with scar tissue from that old, old incident that still made Dad frown. "You... You know, if there's anything you want to talk about, I'll always be around."
His soft smile tugged at a string in her chest, and even in the low lights she could tell his cheekbones had taken up that dusting of pink she was starting to realize he saved for her.
"Mm." She closed the few inches of space between them and pressed a short kiss against his blush. "Still sweet."
He darkened red.
"I was just thinking about which claw I should try first," she said, pulling him back down the row. "Pick one."
"I get to pick?"
"Whichever you like most."
He swung their linked hands and tugged until she glanced back at him and his pale blue eyes that twinkled just as brightly as the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on the ceiling. "But how am I going to pick if I've already got you?"
Sakura blinked.
A space laser blast pinged out from somewhere to her left and a clatter of automated bowling pins echoed from her right, and she only just managed to cover her mouth with the back of her hand before her laughter had the chance to join the noise around them.
"Do you write these down?" She questioned once she could properly breathe again.
"I'm a hundred and ten percent authentic."
"Lucky me." She nudged at his shoulder. "Pick."
"Fiiiiiine," Leon relented with the most put-upon sigh he could muster. "Let's find a good one."
She lent an ear to his claw machine explanations as they made their rounds around the rows, though she was still grasping for why people got so invested in these small prizes in relation to their relative pricing. But she guessed that was the appeal of arcades in the first place: the fun.
She glanced down at their joined hands.
(And maybe the company, too.)
"—but they're still pretty rigged. It's not impossible, but it's either you're good at it or you use all your credits trying to get the dumbest looking snake in the prize pile." At the sight of her raised brow, he chuckled. "Casey was way younger and really wanted it—oh! Here, what about this one?"
He pointed to one full of dog plushes. They came in all sorts of colors though she didn't think she could identify all the breeds—if they were meant to be different breeds? They were all shaped like small bread loaves after all, and at this point, Kiba would probably laugh and tell her to stop overthinking.
They weren't in her shitty apartment anymore. But that didn't mean they weren't in something worse.
"Sure."
Sakura noted the flashing blue lights all along the machine's metal frame and the flimsy-looking four pronged claw. She swiped her game card in the slot—six credits, what a scam—and the lightest touch on the joystick sent it swinging like it was in its own personal earthquake.
"Yeah," he said when he spied the furrow between her brows. "Totally rigged. I mean, there's a bit of luck that goes into it too, so I hope you've got a lot of it."
Luck. She never liked that word.
She shoved down her wince at this round's waste of credits as she idled over a plush about halfway to the drop box and watched the most pathetic attempt at trying to claim it. Plushes weighed next to nothing—and even these couldn't grab onto it? The claw slid off like water and left her to witness its mocking troop back to its starting position.
She narrowed her eyes and took a second swipe the millisecond she was allowed.
"Uh oh." Leon crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against the side of the machine. A couple kids ran past them. "Don't tell me we've already found your basketball game."
"We can play the actual game after this."
"This might be one of those play-til-you're-out-ers."
"I'll stop if I make it to five attempts."
"If? I love the confidence."
She hummed and in the next round, she tried for a plush closer to the drop box and managed to loosen it from the pile. She didn't even look at the empty claw's return, instead eyeing her target as she twirled the card between her fingers and waited.
"You're so into this," he said as the claw opened to drop nothing but air. "Even if you've never been to an arcade before, was there anything you played for fun?"
Sakura swiped away six more credits then pocketed the card in the back of her jeans. "Fun," she murmured. She grasped the joystick. "Once a week I would go to a pool hall until I made ten, fifteen thousand yen. Around a hundred American dollars. I didn't mind learning the tricks." The claw whizzed over to the plush she'd readjusted before, let it still, and tapped the pick-up button before she tore her eyes from the machine for the first time since playing.
Leon's arms had loosened, one hand almost poised to reach out. The long sleeves under his blue mechanic shirt were bunched at his elbows and his gaze flickered all over her face, across her cheeks and brow and nose bridge and chin, lingering for the briefest moments on that scar Naruto cried for hours over, his blood on her hands and his tears in her hair.
The claw dropped its prize down the chute just as he opened his mouth, and they both turned when the blue lights started to flash with yellows and oranges and purples, too.
She took the dog loaf—a tan one that had to be a shiba—and held it up to Leon's chest until he took it.
"Do you just want me to carry—"
"It's yours."
"Mine?"
"You picked."
Sakura tucked her hands in her hoodie pocket and committed to memory how that one toy no bigger than their hands could make him look so happy. He had his questions. He'll keep having them the longer he stays around, and she knew she wouldn't be able to answer most of them anytime soon. He'll get frustrated. He'll get upset. And down the line, he'll realize he deserves better than this, better than her, and live a better life that won't get to haunt him.
"You never got the chance to be a normal kid."
Leon snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to return her earlier peck with one of his own. "I think I'll put it up on my dash."
"I'm sure it'll make Chris laugh."
"He's just jealous he doesn't have the coolest girlfriend."
A ghost of a smile touched her face as she slipped her hand back into his. But for now, she'd be selfish. "Let's play a few rounds of basketball before we find everyone else."
He grinned, his grip warm as he pulled her over to the other end of the arcade.
(And later, she'll hate herself for thinking she could have sweeter things.)
::
Kisame pulled up the family chat when it lit up his screen—the one with him, the kids, and Konan—and blinked at the picture Kiba sent. Well, the picture of a photo booth strip with an awful lime green frame and Round Six - Family Fun For Everyone! in bubbly font at the end.
The first photo was of a blond boy grinning wide next to Sakura who had the tiniest quirk to the corner of her mouth, his face smushed against hers as he held up a stuffed shiba plushie between them. In the second, an auburn-haired girl poked her head in with a grin from the right with Kiba doing the same from the left, except he'd hooked a disgruntled Shino under one arm to pull him in too.
Kiba was a blur in the third one as the photo snapped in the middle of Shino throwing him over his shoulder. Auburn was in the middle of a shout as she grabbed onto Sakura's shoulders and Blond threw his arms out like his first instinct was to catch.
None of the boys were in the last photo. Auburn cry-laughed as she held onto Sakura's arm, whose lip was curled further up as she looked down at the pile that was probably at their feet.
"Itachi! Itachi, look!" Kisame whispered as he turned his phone towards his partner. "They have friends!"
Itachi looked up from his scope. "It's nice to see them with their classmates." He tilted his head. "Is that one the boyfriend?"
"Maybe? If he is, he seems like a good kid." Kisame raised his eyes to the shoreline in the far distance and to the cruise ship docked at the port. "Head count."
"Five armed at loading, approximately thirty personnel on board. Shift change in twenty, and I have the route for us through maintenance." He moved to stand, slinging his rifle across his back. "Ready?"
"Yeah." Kisame typed out a quick text before slipping his phone back into the inner pocket of his tactical vest and starting to tread a silent path through the island night. "Hope Greece won't mind the bodies that wash up in the morning."
Me: Cute!!! [11:24 pm]
Me: U guys better hve won lots fo tikce ts [11:24 pm]
Me: {red heart emoji} [11:25 pm]