Stimulus, Response

Title: “Stimulus, Response”
Author: antilogicgirl
Universe:A side-story to “Radio Tokyo”
Series: Naruto
Pairing: Shikamaru/Karin

Summary: Nara Shikamaru did not have time for dating. He didn’t have time for women. His research was his life, and nothing could tear him away. That is, until his professor brought him a new assistant.

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Author’s Note: Originally, this was called “Love in the time of Anthrax”, but that might be a little too sappy. Honestly, this story is full of angst, hissy-fits, etc. It is by no means sweet. So, if you’re feeling frustrated, irritated, and maybe a little bitchy, read on. Here, you’ll find kindred spirits. Beware the evil plot devices: blood, alcohol, and sex.

Divided into “Stages”, this story proceeds like an experiment, which it essentially is. Because really, this is a pairing that no one else has done. At least, I haven’t seen it. Hurray for crack. And if you read any of the previous story, “Radio Tokyo” (still in progress), you’ll understand why Shikamaru is a grad student and working with bacterial colonies…if not, this might not make much sense.

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Stage 1: Initiation

The room was brightly lit by long rows of fluorescent bulbs, ballasts humming as they provided power. This low, steady drone was the only sound in the room, other than that of the digital camera’s shutter and the clicking of long, graceful fingers on the keyboard of his computer. Only a few days earlier, he had been forced to discard an entire box of specimens, simply because one of his friends was having a pity-party. Now, as he used the microscope’s camera to photograph one of his bacterial colonies at various magnifications, he finally felt like things were getting back on track.

As he reached up to scratch his dark head, he remembered how his original estimation had been that he might be set back by a month in his research, but it looked at the moment as if it was only off by two weeks. The electronic shutter clicked once again as he pressed the button, his dark eyes glancing across the table at all of the other specimens. This was taking forever; he was going to be here well into the night. Yet another image cropped up on the screen, and he flicked his gaze back to the monitor. Taking a note on the growth of the spherical bacteria, he sighed.

Then, a new sound echoed through the room. The doorknob rattled slightly before it turned completely, after which the orange-painted thing swung open, and admitted his major professor. Sarutobi Asuma was a large man, who carried at least one pack of cigarettes with him at all times. He currently had one tucked behind his ear, while he incessantly flicked his Zippo lighter open and shut; a nervous habit he indulged while he was in places where he was not allowed to smoke. Dark brown eyes immediately found their target. “Ah, Shikamaru,” another flick of the lighter punctuated Shikamaru’s annoyance at being interrupted. Every moment that he was distracted was another that he would have to spend in the lab. He might seriously need to think about wiring that doorknob with an electrical charge. That way, he might actually get some work done.

But he had a good sense of self-preservation, so he wasn’t about to tick off the man that had his dissertation—and consequently, his career—in the palm of his hand. Asuma also had a sadistic sense of humor, so Shikamaru figured he’d better leave the door alone. “Good evening, Asuma-sensei. What brings you here?” Well, he’d tried to keep his tone civil, but when he was speaking through clenched teeth, it didn’t really work out. One dark eyebrow rose only slightly before lowering, and he saw a familiarly vicious smile form over the large man’s beard.

Laying a hand over his heart in a gesture of mock hurt, Asuma pouted, “You wound me, Shikamaru. Is that the kind of tone you should use when I bring you a present?” His professor obviously took pleasure in the resulting look of confusion on the younger man’s face. The way his smile widened spoke volumes. As puzzled as he was at the moment, he only became more so when Asuma leaned out of the door, beckoning to someone outside.

Two seconds later, Shikamaru was staring dumbly at a girl that barely reached Asuma’s shoulder. She had pale skin, obviously dyed red hair that hung down into her face, and glasses. The girl looked back at him mildly, remaining silent as she stood in the doorway. It was too soon to pass any judgments, but Shikamaru was leaning toward the word “mousy” to describe her, unless you counted the hair. That fire-engine red color was the only remarkable thing about her, it seemed.

“Karin,” Asuma said pleasantly, “this is Shikamaru. He’s my only Ph.D. student this year. Shikamaru, this is Karin. She’s a pre-med student. Up until last week, she was working in the lab three doors up the hall. Her professor had…an accident, so we needed to find her more work. She’ll be assisting you.” For a long moment, all Shikamaru could do was blink, staring in shock.

Then, the gears in his head began to slowly turn, and he tried to protest. “But I don’t need—“ The wry glance Asuma gave him was all that was necessary to cut him off. They both knew that if he was going to get finished by the deadline he’d set for his research design, Shikamaru would either have to live in the lab, or have an assistant. Not that he would ever admit it aloud…

After grumbling a few curses under his breath, he muttered, “Fine. She can stay.”

Asuma gave Karin a nudge into the room, causing her to stumble, and he shut the door as he left, without any parting words. This entire situation made Shikamaru want to pull his hair out. Now, he was going to have to waste time training this…this…kid. Karin didn’t look to be more than nineteen. He could feel a headache coming on; this was not his week. First there was all that crap with Sasuke and Sakura, and now he had to deal with having some stupid undergraduate assistant that probably didn’t know the difference between a pipette and a petri dish.

--

Karin set her bulky black backpack down near the door, and took a step forward. For a few seconds, she looked over the young man who was still sitting on the stainless steel laboratory stool. His lab coat was a pristine white, dark hair pulled back from his thin face in a high, messy ponytail. He was looking at her with a very disdainful expression that marred an otherwise attractive face. Always one to trust a first impression, Karin decided quickly that he was just a little too uptight. He also did not seem keen on her being his assistant. Shaking her hair out of her face, she said in a flat, frank tone, “You don’t want me here, do you?”

Shikamaru smirked a little before snorting, “Well, at least you’re perceptive.” Karin gave a little shrug, and watched Shikamaru reach into his lab-coat’s pocket. He pulled out a brown hair-tie and tossed it in her direction. “First thing’s first. Get that crap out of your face. If you don’t, you won’t be able to see what the hell you’re doing, and if you contaminate my specimens, I’ll kill you.” Karin caught the rubber band and made a noise of disbelief. Shikamaru rolled his eyes as she pulled her hair into an untidy ponytail at the back of her head. Despite her best efforts, the thing could not seem to capture several stubborn chunks around her face.

“There.” Karin said, a drop of sarcasm in her voice. Neither the statement, the performance of the required act, nor the tone in which she said it drew even a hint of reaction from the older man. Shikamaru turned back to his computer, where an image was displayed.

“All right,” he said in a bored tone, adjusting his glasses for a moment and then opening a file that held a large amount of what appeared to be raw research data. “What we’re doing today is photographing these colonies. This is the sixth generation, and each stack of petri dishes have either been exposed to different substances to see how it affects their growth and genetic composition, or have been set aside as the control group. Now, repeat that back to me in layman’s terms.”

Karin leaned against the shiny black surface of the lab’s counter. Imitating his toneless voice, but keeping a smile on her face, she said, “We’re taking pictures of the bacteria in the dishes. This is the sixth time you’ve done it. Each of the stacks of little glass dishes have bacteria in them that you’ve exposed to different shit. You’re trying to figure out how the different kinds of shit slow down or speed up their growth, or if they become crazy, fucked up mutant bacteria instead. One stack hasn’t been exposed to anything.” Tilting her head to one side and smiling sweetly, Karin’s voice became sugary. “How’s that?”

--

Shikamaru sucked a tooth, for a moment contemplating the cattle prod that was in a locked cabinet on the other side of the room. No, he couldn’t do that, even if he wanted to. Instead, he just said, “Peachy. Now go and get the other microscope and set it up right here.” He pointed to another workstation, only a few feet away from where he had been seated moments earlier.

Smiling sweetly, Karin bowed low. “Yes, master,” she said in a tone of mock reverence before going to the equipment locker. He said nothing. She must, he decided, be trying to get a rise out of him. Well, she’s going to have to try a lot harder than that. After all, most of the time, Shikamaru was too lazy to get angry with anyone. It took a lot to piss him off.

Twenty minutes later, the room was blissfully quiet, the humming of the lights, the camera shutters, and keys clicking the only sounds to be heard. He was just getting settled into the quiet when Karin got up from her stool. At first, he put it out of his mind. She must have to take a piss. But it was not long before she was seated next to him again, fiddling with a set of headphones and a small MP3 player. His prayers that the music would be quiet went unanswered as Nine Inch Nails blared, loud enough for Shikamaru to understand the lyrics from five feet away.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”

--

Karin was just getting into her groove. The work wasn’t too hard, and now that she had something other than the sound of fluorescent lights buzzing in her ears, she could really get down to business. The second computer was hooked up to the microscope she was using, and each of the high-resolution images displayed on the screen was numbered and saved, according to what Shikamaru had already written on the petri dish. She reached for another dish, but stopped when she felt something approach her head. A hand reached over yanked the earphone right out of her left ear. “Hey!” she yelled, her head swinging around, eyes glaring at him from thick black frames. “What the hell did you do that for?”

Shikamaru pulled the MP3 player from her pocket and switched it off. “I like it quiet.” The device was quickly and deftly snatched back, and the power restored. Pretentious fucker, Karin thought, wondering where the hell he got off. Besides…

“I hate silence.” She said with something of a hiss. Pet Sematary by the Ramones bounced around the room, and before she could put the little earbuds back into her ears, Shikamaru made another grab at the little music player, which only caused her to jump up from her seat, holding it out of his reach. Her voice rose to a near shout as she asked, “What is your problem? Your girlfriend not giving you any?” Why the hell else would someone be that tightly wound?

He waited only half a second before responding, “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Shocker…” Karin said, her mouth curling into a smirk. “I never would have guessed.” No, it was not surprising at all to her that he didn’t have a girlfriend. If he had, the son of a bitch would not have immediately resorted to such drastic measures to get her to turn down the music.

His dark eyes narrowed. “You’re a grade-A bitch, you know that?”

A cat-like grin spread over her face, making her look rather evil, actually. “And you need to get laid.” While he looked as though he’d like to argue with that, Shikamaru just huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. His bottom lip stuck out like that of a petulant child, lending him an air of annoyed cuteness. “All right…” Karin said after a moment of staring at him thoughtfully, “Now that we’ve been properly introduced…Karin the super-bitch, and Shikamaru, king of sexual frustration, how about we get back to work and you cut me some goddamned slack?”

Deflated, he sat down. “Fine…ceasefire.”

--

While Shikamaru would never admit to it out loud, he had found Karin to be an efficient, hard worker. Once she got down to actually doing what he told her to, and not poking fun at him or otherwise being a complete bitch, she actually was decent to be around. This decision was reached primarily because of the fact that rather than leaving the place at midnight, they got out of the lab at nine o’clock.

This was not to say that he found her to be a pleasant person in general. No, Karin was most certainly a bitch. She reminded him of what his mother would have been like in her younger years, if you added in a liberal sprinkling of swear words. “See you tomorrow, Shikamaru.” Karin said when they reached the door to the building, where the two parted ways.

“Yeah.”

--

Stage 2: Stimulus

If someone had told him a month ago that he would be this frustrated after knowing someone for less than forty-eight hours, Shikamaru would have laughed in the speaker’s face. However, a month ago, he did not know Karin. The day before, she’d actually been all right to work with after she buckled down. Tonight, however, she received so many calls on that stupid glittery purple cell-phone that Shikamaru had confiscated the thing and removed the battery. Karin was currently griping under her breath, just softly enough that he could not hear what she was saying.

“Shut up and get back to work,” he groused, shoving his glasses up his nose for what had to be the fiftieth time in the last three hours.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” the red-head’s voice was nearly at a pitch that only dogs could hear, and her shrill tone was not doing anything good for his mood. Shikamaru closed his eyes for a moment, trying desperately to keep his face and voice even and free of annoyance. Honestly, he couldn’t put a finger on what was wrong with him. Usually it took a long time for someone to be able to get under his skin the way this woman seemed able to do.

He turned on his stool, resting one elbow on the black Formica countertop, and replied flatly, “I’m your boss.”

Her immediate and very acidic response to that was to say, “No you aren’t. I work for Professor Sarutobi. So do you, so I don’t see how that makes you any better than me.”

A slow smile began spreading over Shikamaru’s face, and he was starting to feel rather spiteful. Perhaps this was the only way to really deal with Karin? He did not usually enjoy being mean to people, but maybe it was necessary. And as far as he was concerned, she deserved it. “I am your supervisor. This is my research for my dissertation. As such, I reserve the right to treat you any way I damned well please. If you have a problem with that, I’m sure that Shino can use some help in the entomology lab.”

--

For a long moment, Karin was entirely speechless. While she knew it was going to happen sooner or later, she’d hoped that this guy would get the stick out of his ass and grow a sense of humor before threatening to kick her out. She had rubbed her last supervisor the wrong way, too, but he had more patience. Finally, when she had stared at him, open-mouthed, for nearly a full minute, she muttered, “Sure. Whatever,” before settling back down and getting back to work. Things went well for a while, but then she started humming. This turned out to be a mistake, as the man revealed just how short his fuse really was.

--

It was the worst possible song for any person to hum, and in the lab, the sound of I’ve Got You, Babe was more than he could take as it echoed through the room. Far from being a fan of Sonny and/or Cher, Shikamaru dragged his glasses from his face, dropping them onto the counter before turning to glare at Karin. “Is it possible for you not to annoy the living hell out of me for five minutes?” Of course, the second she turned her head toward him, and he saw that insidious smile, he knew. “Goddamnit to hell!” He growled, “Who put you up to this? Asuma did, didn’t he?”

“What?” Karin asked, shoving a fall of hair away from her face. She honestly looked as if she did not know what he was talking about.

Shikamaru stared. What on Earth? Was she serious? Could she just naturally be that annoying? Why would anyone be like that if they weren’t being paid or otherwise bribed to be so? “Were you put on this planet to make me go completely insane, or have you simply decided that it’s your mission in life?” Shikamaru managed to refrain from reaching out to throttle the woman senseless. In doing so, however, he squeezed the slide he had been holding so tightly that it shattered, driving the shards of glass into the palm of his hand. While he would later reflect upon why he did not feel the pain, at that very moment, all he could think of was just how nice Karin would look with his hands around her neck.

--

The staring contest between them stretched out, each passing second seemed to increase Shikamaru’s anger, bringing him closer and closer to boiling over. Silence reigned, until a soft noise like water dripping pulled Karin’s attention away from his glaring face. Her dark eyes grew wide when they trailed down his arm to the floor. The dripping sound came from a trickle of blood that had begun to make a small pool on the floor. Alarmed, she immediately jumped off of her stool, taking him by the elbow and dragging him over to the sink. “What the hell is wrong with you, woman?” He barked, only to have his own bloody hand shoved into his face. “Oh…”

He watched in an apparent of state numbness as Karin filled a glass bowl with water, after which she proceeded to immerse his hand, pushing up his sleeve. She worked silently, her touch gentle, yet firm. This was something that you couldn’t teach in class. Handling patients, what they liked to call a ‘bedside manner’, was something that each physician always learned on their own. Quietly, she said, “Keep your hand there. I’m going to go and sterilize some forceps.” Face grave, she collected the materials she felt that were needed. Gauze, tape, antiseptic spray, and ointment came from the first aid kit, and she grabbed a pair of latex gloves from near the sink. When the autoclave was through steaming the forceps, Karin retrieved them, as well. She could feel him watching her every move, and for a little while, she wondered what he thought of her.

--

Was this the same woman that was making him want to rip out his own hair after strangling her to death? Shikamaru thought that maybe she was one of those people that only showed their best side in a crisis. Every movement was carried out with efficient, silent grace, and Karin looked as if she were truly meant for this kind of work.

Once a sufficient amount of blood had washed away from his hand, Karin dumped the water down the drain and set the bowl aside to be sterilized. “Now, hold still, Shikamaru. This is probably going to hurt, but I don’t want to sever any of your tendons…” Well, that isn’t a happy thought…He gave a nervous nod, and Karin got to work. Six shards of various sizes were removed from his hand only a few minutes later. The antiseptic spray stung, but as he flinched, he heard her say, “Sorry,” before she continued to work, her grip loosening until he barely felt it at all.

The ointment was applied just as gently with a swab, and Karin wrapped his hand in gauze before taping it. He slowly flexed his hand, wincing slightly at the pain, but finding it merely a bit stiff.

--

“You should see a doctor,” she said, still looking at the bandage. Even with all of the glass removed, there was always a chance that one of the tendons or muscles could have been damaged beyond what she was able to see.

Shikamaru shook his head, “I’m fine.”

When Karin looked up at him, her eyes focused and sharp, he blinked in surprise. What reason would he have for not listening to her? Her grip tightened on the uninjured portions of his hand. “Why are you so stubborn?”

He snorted. “I could ask you the same question.”

Karin’s dark brown eyes narrowed, and she let go of his hand suddenly. “Fine. Do whatever you want. But if you can’t use your hand, that just means all this work’s going to take longer.” She moved away from him, going back to her stool and pushing her glasses up her nose, promptly ignoring his very existence. Fucking uptight, arrogant prick…

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Author's Note: So, how is it so far? Feed the review monster, for it is hungry.