Archive of Our Own

Later, Sakura would say that it all started with the first nap. Ino would argue that it began shortly later than then, after a joint mission. They both would turn to look at him and squint, as if accusing him without words of some needlessly convoluted seduction scheme. 

That, of course, wasn’t true at all. Or at least, it didn’t begin that way. 

It started like this: him, in Ino’s bedroom, playing shogi against himself, absentmindedly eavesdropping on one of Ino’s weekly gossip-complaining-girl-talk sessions with Sakura. For whatever reason, they liked to have him there with him, despite making no effort to speak to him at all. During these conversations, he was regarded little more than one would a coat hanger in the corner of the room, but the one time he’d tried to leave, he was glared into submission. 

He still didn’t know why he was ushered into these chats every Saturday without fail, only to be sat off to the side like some emotional support animal, but he didn’t see the harm in it. It kept Ino placated, made time for him to formulate strategies to use against that old man of his, and was a surprisingly efficient source of village intel. Which was most definitely why Ino started them in the first place, now that he’d considered it. 

“Bullshit, is what it is,” Sakura was saying, painting her pinky nail a verdant green. “He keeps adding hours to my shifts. ‘Oh, Sakura-san! Do you have some time today? There’s an idiot in Special Trauma who rearranged his organs messing with space time manipulation seals. It shouldn’t take long at all; just five hours!’ Like, fuck off. We both know you’re doing this because you’re mad that I’m a woman, a third your age, and a step away from being your superior.” She rolled her eyes with a huff. It looked strange on her face, given that there was currently a sheet mask covering it. 

“Men,” Ino pronounced with a sneer, and an expression of half sympathy and half commiseration formed on her face. 

“Yeah,” Sakura agreed, her grievances visibly replaced in the moment for vindication. They high-fived, very careful not to ruin their freshly applied nail polish. Shikamaru kept tactically silent.

“Anyways, why can’t you get Tsunade-sama to kick him out on his ass?” Ino asked. She was now coating one of Sakura’s toenails with what Shikamaru recognized to be a shinobi-grade, clear nail hardening polish. 

“You clan kids are a bunch of nepo babies,” Sakura marveled with no heat. She laughed darkly under her breath. “Like hell I’m going to use my position as Shishou’s apprentice to get rid of people I don’t like. For one: when she finds out, and that is when, she’ll be… ugh.” Sakura shivered. “Disappointed in me.” 

Sensitive to the disapproval of authority figures as ever. Shikamaru moved his silver general and put his imaginary opponent’s king at check. 

“And two: I am not going to give this asshole the satisfaction of knowing that he got to me, let alone the pleasure in the knowledge that he annoyed me into effectively telling on my mommy.” Sakura sneered; little creases formed in her face mask at the facial expression, and Ino tutted under her breath, reaching up to smooth it out for her. 

“Stubborn. Are we certain that I’m the boar here?” Ino asked, capping the bottle of clear polish and leaning back to review her work. 

Sakura snorted. “Please. As if you aren’t just as, if not more so, pig-headed than I am.” 

Ino pointed a delicate pointer finger at Sakura’s forehead; her eyes nearly crossed attempting to focus on it. “Shut up, Forehead. So what are you going to do about this asshole?” 

“I’m going to ignore him.” 

“What?” Ino said. “You know that never works. Remember how that worked out with Ami?” 

Ami: their Academy classmate who dropped out three years in, when her civilian parents realized just what the occupation of a child soldier mercenary for an autocratic dictatorship entailed. The last time Shikamaru had seen her, she’d looked bitter and stifled by her job as a waitress at her family restaurant—and judging by the gaudy ring on her finger working in tandem with her simple, colorful clothing to form a larger picture, her pushy, rich fiancé as well. 

It seemed as if Ino and Sakura remembered Ami too. After a short five seconds of recollection, they made identical expressions of consternation at each other. 

“Ugh, yeah.” Sakura sighed. “But it’s either this, or just knocking his head off his shoulders. And that’ll definitely get me sent up to Shishou’s office.” 

“Just harass him back,” Shikamaru said, resetting the shogi board. He heard Ino and Sakura turn to him, staring blatantly. He really didn’t tend to talk during these things; they probably thought he tuned them out. 

“...How?” Sakura asked. “He’d just report me and get me in trouble. Despite that any punches I would throw would be entirely warranted, that motherfucker.” 

“Not physically, oh respected and honorable physician,” Shikamaru said dryly, moving the last piece into its rightful place. He turned to face Sakura and Ino, leaning back onto his hands. 

“How then?” Ino asked, the narrowing of her eyes saying a silent I know you’re drawing this out just to be lazy, you incorrigible bum. 

“Be petty. Go into his office and move every piece of his furniture three inches to the left. Rotate any framed art or posters on his walls very slightly, so they’ll be subtly but irritatingly off-center. Use invisible chakra scalpels to cut through his belt whenever he’s talking to an administration higher up. Find the women he’s interested in and seduce them first.” Shikamaru shrugged. “Things like that.” 

“Shika,” Ino said with admiration. 

“Shikamaru,” Sakura breathed. She shuffled closer and tugged him into a short but firm hug, before pulling away to place her hands on his shoulders. It was like a full-body embrace by a petite grizzly bear. The perfect balance between pressure hard enough to feel it and the adequate amount of space given to prevent the sensation of being trapped. “You genius!” 

“People have called me that before, yeah,” Shikamaru agreed, a little dazed by the scent of her mild, pleasantly floral body wash and the fact that he was close enough to smell it on her skin. Curse these teenage hormones. 

“I am going to make his life a living hell!” Sakura declared cheerfully, pumping a fist exuberantly into the air. Ino and Shikamaru dutifully applauded. 

A shadow fell over Shikamaru, lowering the brightness of his view of the back of his eyelids. 

“Hrrh,” Shikamaru complained, flopping his arm in grievance. 

“Why are you napping in the middle of a training ground? There are way better napping spots, you know,” said a familiar voice. 

Shikamaru cracked open an eye to confirm what he’d already known the moment he’d heard that voice. Haruno Sakura, hands on her hips, blotting out the sun and looking down at him with an amused quirk to her lips. 

Shikamaru squinted up at her through his nap-induced blurry eyes. Holy fuck. 

“You look like shit,” he said. 

And it was true. There was a weariness in her bloodshot eyes, the slightest of slouches to her typically perfect posture. Exhaustion lined her face, and he could practically see the tight knots in her shoulders. It’d been a week or two since he’d seen her last, which wasn’t unusual, despite their shared friend circle and village. Konoha was a big place. But really, it was a stark contrast to the way she’d looked so content and relaxed as she talked shit with Ino, her rosy cheeks glistening with hydrating skin essence under the light of Ino’s obnoxiously too-bright bedside lamp that she obstinately refused to get rid of. 

“Wow, Nara,” Sakura said flatly. “You sure know how to flatter a girl.” 

Shikamaru leveraged himself up into a seated position once he saw that she wasn’t going to leave to find another unoccupied training ground or forcibly kick him out of the premises. “Long day?” he presumed. 

“The fucking longest.” She sighed, rubbing her eyes tiredly. 

“That misogynist doctor fuckface?” Shikamaru asked.

“That misogynist doctor fuckface,” Sakura confirmed, lowering herself into a crouch to be at eye level with him. “He’s become convinced that I’m the reason why everything in his life is going to shit. Which it is, but he doesn’t have any evidence to prove it; I was careful. Still—he’s been pinning me with more and more overtime hours.” 

Shikamaru squirmed an inch to the left, evading the sunlight that had shone into his eyes when Sakura moved. “Guy still sounds like a jerkass,” he muttered, trying to find the perfect position. 

“He is.” Sakura’s eyes were wide with a hint of unhinged mania. “He implied that the reason why I became a medic was because I wanted to impress a boy. He made a pass at me in front of my work friends by slapping my ass, ‘as a joke.’ He called me a pretty little thing in front of Shizune-senpai,” she hissed, vibrating in place with the power of both fury and caffeine. 

Slowly, Shikamaru tilted his head. He considered her words, turning them over in his mind. He blinked once, deliberately. 

“Do you want me to kill him,” he said. It was not delivered in the inflection of a question. 

Sakura huffed a laugh, dragging her hands down her face. “Maybe later,” she said into her palms, sounding amused. Shikamaru hadn’t really been joking. 

“Haruno Sakura,” he said, tossing half-formed murder plans to the back of his mind. She peeled her hands from her face to look at him, askance. He made direct eye contact as he pronounced, “Take a nap.”

Sakura groaned, and wearily, she said, “I fucking wish. But I’ve got a report to fill out in three hours, and a poisoned patient to check up on in five.”

“Then I’ll wake you up in three hours. Come on, Sakura.” 

Her expression twisted in indecision, before her eyes caught on the blanket he was currently sitting on. She blinked and snorted in amusement. Shikamaru could tell she was imagining Shikamaru climbing a hill, holding a bundled up blanket under his arm before he laid it out, walked little circles like a dog settling into bed, and immediately fell asleep. 

“My clan keeps secret blanket caches in every nap spot you can conceivably think of,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “Grass can get itchy.” 

Sakura snorted. “Figures you Nara only work for the motivation of being more comfortable while lazing around.” 

“Are you going to sleep or not?” 

Sakura’s eyes flicked to the baby blue blanket, then back to Shikamaru. She swayed closer, nearly falling for the temptation, before gathering herself and leaping to her feet. 

“No! I will not be swayed. I have to keep being awake. It’s all a part of my plan, see. If I faint from sleep deprivation during my shift, people would end up finding out about Yamaguchi’s abuse of power and shitty attitude! Then, they fire him, promote me, and pat me on the back. ‘Sakura-san, it must have been such a trial, dealing with that asshole! As a great and accomplished medic, I feel as if you deserve a commendation! You’re awesome, Sakura!’” She laughed derangedly, her hands on her hips. 

“I regret to inform you of this, but that’s a shit plan, Sakura.” So shit in fact, that Shikamaru was certain she wouldn’t have even considered it, had she been in her right mind. She was far smarter than anyone ever tended to give her credit for. 

“What! No, it’s a great plan!” Sakura defended. “Asshole McFuckface gets booted out of the hospital, I never have to deal with his shit ever again, and I get praise. Positives all ‘round.” 

“For one, this’ll require you to be dead on your feet for approximately four days before your sleep deprivation resistance training gives out. I’m sure you can extrapolate from there, the consequences of lengthy and constant exhaustion,” Shikamaru said, raising his index finger. “Secondly, if you faint during a surgery, with your chakra still inside your patient’s network, what do you think will happen to them?” 

Shikamaru watched the cogs in Sakura’s head turn sluggishly, before they clicked into place. “Oh,” she said. “Oh yeah.” 

“Yes, oh yeah,” Shikamaru returned dryly. 

She frowned, raising her hand to hold her chin in thought. “But I really hate the thought of quitting, now that I’m thirty hours in,” she muttered. 

Shikamaru blinked. “Thirty hours in,” he echoed. 

This was so troublesome, Shikamaru was kind of in awe of it. 

Heaving an enormously tormented sigh, he shifted aside, making enough room for a second body. He narrowed his eyes at Sakura. 

“Take a nap, Haruno,” he said, once again. 

“Shikamaru…” Sakura’s eyes flitted from the free space to Shikamaru’s eyes, then back, caught in between her exhaustion and stubbornness. Then, she straightened her spine, apparently choosing stubbornness. “No.”

“Just lie down,” Shikamaru sighed. He patted the space on the blanket next to him invitingly. The fleece was sinfully soft to the touch. The Nara spared no expense when it came to naps. 

But Sakura remained unyielding. Her hands on her hips, she glanced at the space cleared for her, then stared back down at him disapprovingly.

"You loathsome temptress," Sakura reviled, eyes narrowed in distrust. "You’re using your terrible wiles against me!"

Shikamaru tamped down his amusement. He let his eyelids fall half-mast, and shifted his body language—his entire body turned toward her, open and inviting, dark eyes fixed unerringly onto her own, he cocked his head, baring his throat. His voice lowered to an alluring purr, Shikamaru murmured, “Do you think you can resist?”  

There was an uncomprehending pause as Sakura stared at him. 

“Yes,” she said, in a tone that implied an unspoken you idiot tacked onto the tail end. Her cheeks, however, were pinker than her typical healthy flush. 

“Three hours,” Shikamaru cajoled, channeling Ino. “Can’t you imagine? Closing your eyes, letting your fatigue fall away from your shoulders as you drift into unconsciousness… No paperwork, no patients, no more constantly being on the edge of chakra exhaustion. Just you, me, and the sun warming you into sleep.” 

Sakura’s blinking was coming more slowly, now; he could practically see the lethargy dragging her eyelids down. For a moment, she swayed on her feet, before finally folding to her knees shuffling over into the space he’d created for her. But instead of lying next to him, she shifted so their bodies were perpendicular, shoving her head into his lap and glaring up at him imperiously, as if she were the one granting him some favor, instead of the other way around. 

“Fuck you,” she grumbled, and closed her eyes, dropping off into sleep almost immediately. She sighed softly, and it was like all the tension in her body had left her all at once with it. 

“You’re welcome,” he said, a smirk on his face. Sakura said nothing in reply, mumbling words unintelligibly in the manner of those who sleep talk. 

Sakura’s pink hair splayed over his thighs, fine and pale; he gathered a lock of it between his fingers, curious, and was unsurprised to find it silky and well-kept. He tucked it behind her ear carefully, unwilling to wake her. She made a soft snuffling sound, turning to his touch. 

Shikamaru pulled his hand away, instead moving it behind himself to lean back on. He laid his other hand over Sakura’s eyes, so the sun wouldn’t disturb her rest; a barely perceptible line between her brows melted away. 

He tilted his head back to regard the white, puffy clouds in the blue sky. He had three hours to pass. Without access to a shogi board, cloud watching would suffice as a way to entertain himself. 

Three hours later, Shikamaru woke Sakura up. He observed with amusement as Sakura scrambled to her feet, blustering that he “should’ve woken her up twenty minutes earlier!” as she rushed to get herself in order. She set off with a chakra-enforced burst of speed, and cracked the dry earth under her foot with the force of her takeoff. 

As he watched her back shrink in the distance, he noted to himself that she’d been determinedly avoiding meeting his eyes the moment she’d woken up. So she was embarrassed about her sleep deprivation-induced boldness, before falling asleep. Shikamaru hoped it’d be gone by the time they met next; Sakura had turned out to be a very pleasant nap-buddy, and he was wondering what it’d be like if he were asleep as well. 

Shikamaru knocked perfunctorily on the door—unnecessarily, really; he wouldn’t have even made it to the Hokage’s residence if he were hostile, what with the five ANBU guards he’d seen blended into the shadows on his way in. But his father had been insistent on having him understand the importance of politeness and how positive impressions could make or break alliances in their lessons, so he would go through the motions, despite that Shikamaru was absolutely certain that the Hokage couldn't care less. 

“Come in,” came the Rokudaime’s voice. 

Shikamaru eased open the dark oak wood door, and stepped through into the office. He blinked, but didn’t falter in his stride at the sight of Sakura, who was standing in front of the Hokage’s desk. She looked well; the half-moons of exhaustion were gone from their place under her eyes, and she stood straight, alert and unfatigued. She was also burying her nose into a mission scroll, determinedly not looking up at him. 

Ah. Still bashful then? Shikamaru hoped she’d get it out of her system soon enough, considering the high possibility that they were about to be assigned on a joint mission. He knew Sakura would be able to remain wholly professional if necessary, but he preferred the missions they shared where they exchanged easy, playful banter as they worked together swiftly and efficiently. 

“Shikamaru-kun,” Kakashi greeted. “Lovely to see you. You were a few seconds away from becoming tardy.” 

Shikamaru didn’t need to say anything to that glaring piece of hypocrisy; Sakura was already looking up from her scroll to squint incredulously at her sensei. He stepped closer to the desk to pick up his own scroll—identical to Sakura’s in every way, from what he could see—and solemnly said, “I wouldn’t dare to be late for a meeting with the Hokage, Rokudaime-sama.” 

Kakashi’s eye twitched. Shikamaru was uncertain if it was directed at the fact that everyone in this room knew Kakashi himself had been late to an uncountable number of meetings with two of the three Hokages that had served during his long tenure as a shinobi, or at the title. It had been nearly an entire year since the end of the Fourth Shinobi War—and therefore, the inauguration of the Rokudaime Hokage, Hatake Kakashi—and Kakashi was still very vocal about how little he appreciated the burden of the hat falling onto his head. 

Shikamaru could sympathize. But honestly, if he were abruptly made Hokage after the end of a war spanning the entirety of the Elemental Nations, he would’ve just straightforwardly faked his death to get out of it. 

The moment passed, and Kakashi cleared his throat. “Back to the matter at hand,” he said, steepling his fingers. “I’ve decided to assign you both to an A-rank in Iwa. A trade-relevant town got hit with a rockslide, and Iwa’s requested medical support.”

“Iwa. Asking for help,” Sakura said doubtfully. “From Konoha.” 

Her disbelief was justified. After the Third Shinobi War, and that whole “Konoha’s Yondaime single-handedly slaughtering a thousand Iwa-nin and forcing an armistice” thing, Iwagakure wasn't afraid to say that they weren't overly fond of Konoha. Hell, the last time Shikamaru had come across an Iwa shinobi before the Fourth War, she’d looked as if she were stuck between running like a bat out of hell and divesting him of his use of his lungs via a gratuitous number of stab wounds. 

“Well, we are at peace.” Kakashi shrugged, looking mildly skeptical himself. He had witnessed the end of the Third War, Shikamaru recalled; he had the feeling that Kakashi had had many encounters with Iwa-nin that were much more hostile than his own. “And we are known for our medics. You, for example. As you’re both the Godaime’s apprentice and a talented medic, you’re optimal to send as a diplomat and aid.” 

Sakura flushed a light pink, the way she always did whenever she was complimented by people she respected. Shikamaru watched her blush grow, as she realized his eyes were on her. 

“Oh, uh—” Sakura fumbled with her words. “Why send Shikamaru then?” 

“He’s the Nara clan’s head-to-be. It’s good practice,” was all Kakashi responded with. Left unsaid was that Shikamaru was more of a bartering piece to assure Iwa that they thought they were important enough to send a clan heir. 

“Anyway,” Kakashi said, “I don’t think it really needs to be said, but this is a pretty important mission to preserve the good faith between our villages.” Shikamaru read in between the lines: don’t fuck it up. Kakashi smiled, his eyes forming crescents—it was still a little strange, to see both of them at once—and made shooing motions with his hands. “Now get out of here, kiddies. I have paperwork to ignore and porn to read.” 

They got out of there. As the door clicked shut behind them, they began to walk in tandem down the halls. Sakura was looking ahead, but didn’t turn to look at Shikamaru, which gave away more than she meant to. Sakura liked to make eye contact; she was personable that way. 

“Asshole doctor guy give you a break yet?” Shikamaru asked, hands in his pockets. For some reason, he was interested in the answer. 

Sakura started, green eyes flicking to glance at Shikamaru before darting away again. “Huh? Oh. Yeah. The medical board mysteriously caught wind of his abuse of power and harassment of nurses a few days ago. He was fired on the spot. Last I heard, he was being shipped to Kiri.” 

“Kiri?” Shikamaru was impressed. “How did you manage that?”

“With methods that no one will ever be able to prove,” Sakura hummed. There was a small, vicious smile on her lips, Shikamaru noticed with a sidelong glance. He looked away before his gaze could linger and be caught. 

She stopped walking, and Shikamaru halted with her. She whirled on him, and eyes lowered, she said, “Sorry about the ‘napping on you’ thing.”

He tilted his head. This was what all this evasion was for? 

“And the complaining about my coworkers. And also calling you a ‘loathsome temptress’. That was kind of uncalled for,” Sakura barrelled on, a flush rising high in her cheeks. 

Shikamaru regarded her with amusement. He had the feeling she’d continue all day if he didn’t stop her. “Sakura,” he said, cutting her off in the middle of another apology. “It’s fine. You needed it, I didn’t mind; it’s fine.” 

“It is?” Sakura’s fingers were twisting the hem of her shirt as she looked up at him, a furrow in her brow. Then, “It’s not too troublesome?” 

Shikamaru knew that a mild Everything is too troublesome wouldn’t be as well received by Sakura in the headspace she was now, as it would’ve been by Ino or Chouji. So, carefully, so he wouldn’t give anything he didn’t mean to away, he said, “No. Never.” 

Sakura sighed in relief; that consternated line between her eyebrows smoothed away. For all Shikamaru’s reputed genius, he had no idea why this had perturbed her so much, but he was glad to see that the tension in her shoulders had melted away. “Okay,” she said, more to herself than him. "Okay."

"But if you're interested in a repeat, I wouldn't mind," Shikamaru said. Sakura's head snapped to look at him, her eyes very round. 

“What?” she sputtered. 

“I’ll see you at 0700, Sakura,” he called, waving a lazy farewell as he passed through the entrance. 

When I’d said I would be willing to sleep with Sakura again if she were interested, Shikamaru thought blearily, a little delirious from blood loss, these were not the circumstances I’d imagined it happening in. 

“Sit down,” Sakura commanded, even as she took charge and propped him up against a cave wall, unzipping him out of his chuunin vest and exposing him to a sudden gust of cold air. “I’m going to perform the diagnostic jutsu now.”

Shikamaru made a wheezing noise of consent. 

Sakura was in her element. Eyes piercing with focus, the green glow of chakra from her hands casting her concentrated expression into sharp relief, she looked the most at ease he’d ever seen her. Like with a life in her hands, she was settled in her own skin, absolutely certain of her ability to coax it back into perfect health. 

That sort of confidence—it was… 

Shikamaru felt Sakura’s chakra transition from lightly probing for internal injury to seeping into his chakra system, sweeping over his injuries and healing with pinpoint precision. He blinked hard, clenching his teeth to keep himself to moving when he felt his broken ribs shift into realignment and begin to mend together. He very carefully did not breathe as his collapsed lung began to reinflate. 

Sakura rocked back onto her heels and gave him a once over, surveying her work. She nodded to herself. “You’ll live,” she said, patting him on the chest, right where she’d laid her hand just moments before, when she had been rearranging his skeletal and respiratory systems. 

Shikamaru groaned, and he let his head fall back and lightly thud against the stone wall. 

“This is so fucking troublesome,” he grumbled lowly. 

Sakura huffed a sigh in agreement. 

An hour after they’d crossed into Iwa, they’d been ambushed by a group of six enemy combatants—a mercenary group, looking to sabotage the tenuous peace between Konoha and Iwa, was Shikamaru’s theory. Just those six would’ve been manageable, if it weren’t for the fact that there was a seventh, hidden with a stealth jutsu. 

He hadn’t known to look for a seventh; he was immobilizing three others with his shadow possession while Sakura was dispatching the other half of the group. He had been concentrating on keeping his hold on their shadows tight, like a rope pulled taut, so he could wrap it around their throats with his shadow strangulation jutsu. 

She managed to sneak up on him, clipping him hard on the abdomen before he reacted instinctively and lashed out with a lance made from his shadow, stabbing through her head and killing her instantly. 

After a moment of silence, Sakura heaved herself to her feet. She walked to the mouth of the cave, tilting her head up to the sky. "Sun's setting," she noted, making her way to the center of the cavern. "Might even snow. Fucking Iwa." 

"Fucking Iwa," Shikamaru echoed emphatically, now only a little winded. 

There was the distinctive puff of an item being unsealed from a storage scroll. Shikamaru lolled his head towards the sound, and he found Sakura setting up a small fire and a bedroll. 

She caught his eyes and looked abashed. "You're low on chakra," she said. "You still have enough to circulate for warmth, but it'd be stupid to; collapse from chakra exhaustion is very likely to occur." She looked up at the cave’s ceiling, evading meeting his gaze. It was a shame that the fire's light was so dim; he would've liked to see the flush on her face. "I'd recommend. Uh. Sharing body heat. With your mission partner." 

Shikamaru had deduced that this would happen the moment they'd stepped into the cave. Still, he laughed. "Why does that sound like a line pulled directly from one of Jiraiya-sama's books?" 

"Oh Sage," Sakura said prayerfully, annoyance winning out against embarrassment. "Shut up." 

Shikamaru obliged, gathering himself to his feet and joining her in front of the fire. "Should we sleep now?" he asked. 

"Unless you have reason to believe that they have reinforcements willing to finish what they'd started," Sakura replied. 

"No," Shikamaru said, "It took a bit, but I just remembered their faces from the Bingo Book. A ragtag group of just seven missing-nin, who'd defected during the Fourth War. It's probably just a personal vendetta, and you know how most people get, with vengeance." His mouth twisted in ironic amusement. He didn't include himself in that majority. 

"Makes them irrational," she said, completing the thought. She knelt and crawled into the bedroll, sequestered herself off to the side, trying to take up the least amount of space she could, which didn't mean much when the piece of bedding was very clearly meant for one person. 

"You're big spooning?" Shikamaru said laughingly, pulling his hair from its tail. Wouldn’t want it to irritate Sakura too much, after all. 

"It's going to start snowing soon, and you're the chakra deficit one here," Sakura grumbled, looking past his ear. "Haul ass, Nara."

He exhaled in amusement and proceeded to do just that. 

Once he’d settled into the bedroll, it was quickly made apparent to him how tense Sakura was. The entire front of her body was plastered against him, emanating a comfortable warmth; chest to back, thigh to thigh. With how close they were, Shikamaru could feel the evenness of her breaths as they brushed against the nape of his neck, the total relaxation in her frame that spoke of conscientious effort. 

“Stop thinking so hard,” he murmured, her warmth already seeping into his muscles, turning his thoughts thick and syrupy. Sakura made a short noise of indignation, almost an I’m trying! 

Shikamaru decided to help her out. He took a hold of her wrist; she let him move her arm, and he slung it over his waist. Sakura’s fingers briefly tightened on the jut of his hip—in surprise, he thought—before relaxing, her palm of her hand a brand of heat even through the layers of clothing between their skin. 

Shikamaru’s eyelids fell shut, and he soon drifted into sleep. 

He awoke, feeling languidly comfortable. He was warm, well rested, and indolent with lingering drowsiness. This was why Shikamaru loved sleeping. 

He curled into the body he was holding. Soft and yielding flesh, underscored by hard muscle. Warm, was all his sleep-addled mind could sigh, as he slid a hand over the dip of a waist to rest on a flat abdomen. 

Sleepily, he pushed closer, until his face was pressed against something fine-textured and soft. Hair. He brought his hand away from her stomach to brush it out of the way, and his fingertips trailed over the first knob of her spine. He leaned in, and brushed a featherlight kiss against the nape of her neck. 

He cracked open an eye, and found a head of soft pink hair in front of him. Still caught in the liminal space between dream and reality, his lips parted to say, “Sakura.” 

It was then that his eyes cataloged that Sakura’s shoulders were tense, hiked up to her ears. She seemed to be holding her breath. Conclusion: he was not dreaming anymore, and she had been awake when he had kissed her whilst half-asleep. 

He did not freeze. He did not stop breathing. Suddenly very, very awake, he thought quickly because what the fuck Shikamaru, it would become very awkward very quickly if you admitted to your good friend that you sometimes dreamed of waking up next to her in the morning!

Grabbing hold of a plan of action, Shikamaru swallowed the name in his mouth and sleepily murmured, “Temari,” instead.

He let it hang in the scant space between them, before he said, quietly, “Ah.” 

“Yes, ah!” Sakura sat up, letting their shared blanket fall to her waist as she turned to face him. Her cheeks were flushed a furious red. 

“Sorry,” Shikamaru offered lamely, sitting up as well. He finger-combed through his hair, pushing it back and out of his eyes. “Fuck. Sorry—I thought you were—”

“Temari!” Sakura snapped. “I know! I could tell when you—!” Her face, impossibly, became even redder. 

Shikamaru tilted his head at her tone. “Really, sorry,” he said sheepishly. “We broke up not long after the war, and I guess… Yeah.” 

“Oh,” she said. She stared at him in silence, and he stared back helplessly. Fuck. The last time Shikamaru recalled being this stressed was when he’d been trying to think of ways to permanently incapacitate an immortal missing-nin terrorist.  

“Well.” Sakura stood up, walked over to the small fire that had kept them warm the previous night, and kicked dirt over the already dead ashes of firewood, all the while not making eye contact with Shikamaru. “We should get going.” 

He looked up at her, and stepped away from the bedroll. When Sakura reached forward to roll it up, he gently wrapped his fingers around her forearm, stilling her. His eyes skated over her facial features, trying to discern her expression. It wasn’t discomfort, or anger, or even displeasure—he knew what those looked like on her face. 

It was contemplation, he realized. Reflection was what caused the moue of her lips, the tension in her brow. But Sakura was still herself; she tilted her head up, raising her chin implacably, and met his eyes evenly. 

“Sorry,” he said finally, again. 

“It’s fine,” she replied. It sounded sincere. 

But Sakura carried that thoughtfulness with her throughout the rest of the mission as they journeyed to their destination and she healed those Iwa villagers; even their trip back to Konoha was spent in silence, save for the sounds of their body flickering as they hopped from tree to tree. 

Shikamaru had the sense that she’d come to a conclusion by the time they reached Konoha’s gates. She smiled, a small, lovely thing, and clapped him on the shoulder. Even without chakra, her strength was nothing to scoff at; he nearly doubled over from the force of it. 

“See you around, Shikamaru,” Sakura said cheerily, and bounded away—off to her apartment, presumably, to write her mission report. 

Shikamaru stared after her, feeling like he was on the back foot. Izumo, who had ducked out of his guarding post, patted him on the back. 

“Good luck, kid,” he told him sympathetically. 

Shikamaru opened his eyes as a force gently collided with his stomach. 

“Hey,” he said. 

“Hey,” replied the pink head resting on his abdomen. Then, “Stop flexing trying to look at me; I’m trying to sleep, here.” 

Shikamaru dropped his head back down onto his makeshift pillow, made out of a folded up spare blanket. “Is this going to be a thing?” he asked her, eyes trained on the rustling leaves overhead. 

“Yeah.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I always did sleep best with other people with me,” Shikamaru mused. Then, he easily dropped back into a doze, comfortable with the breeze in his hair, the scent of clean forest air, and the warm weight of another person on him. 

It became a bit of a habit. 

Whenever Sakura needed a reprieve from her duties, she came to him to nap. From then on, it escalated. 

Given Sakura’s terrible sleep schedule, their meetings increased in frequency, so they’d meet every couple of days. Then, as Shikamaru began to receive an increasing number of requests on his thoughts of an international Shinobi Union and unsubtle proddings asking how he’d feel about being a “planner and owner of Konoha’s representative seat—hypothetically, of course, Shikamaru-kun!” from Kakashi, he began to dodge his responsibilities in Sakura’s office at the hospital, taking catnaps on her strangely cozy couch while she filled out paperwork in comfortable silence. 

He began visiting not just to sleep, but to talk about whatever came to mind, their topics ranging from village politics, work, past missions to Ino's latest attempts to covertly persuade Sai into viewing her romantically, the story of just how Shikamaru deciding to take a nap in the middle of tending the Nara deer had ended up with them mistaking his hair for grass, and even the terribly inaccurate telenovelas with whirlwind romances between stalwart shinobi and swooning civilians that Sakura watched in morbid amusement. One day, he found a shogi board on a small table—one he’d never seen before—with two chairs set across from one another, on either side of it. He’d laughed aloud in delight, at the tangible mark of his presence in Sakura’s personal life; he lingered in her mind as she did in his. 

"You like it?" she'd asked, something pleased and smug in the set of her mouth. 

"Like it?" Shikamaru had picked up a black king, smoothing his thumb over the wooden piece. He'd looked up from it to meet Sakura's eyes, and smiled, slow and warm. 

"I love it." 

This continued on for three months, until Ino finally pinned him down for a talk. It was inevitable, really—Shikamaru was more surprised at how long it took, than anything else. 

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Nara?" she demanded, sitting cross-legged on his chest. 

"Trying to sleep?" he tried, attempting to squirm away, to no avail; Ino was no Chouji, but she had her own substantial amount of muscle. At the thought, he stopped moving and squinted up at her. "I’m not one of our retrieval targets, you know. You tried to recruit Chouji into helping you?” he accused. 

“He said that I was the best for the job, and that he’d just get in the way.” Ino shrugged, digging the heel of her shoe into his side aggravatingly. Chouji was right: Ino was their team’s interrogator for a reason, and wasn’t placed with them just for her Yamanaka clan jutsu, or their established clan alliance. She was like a shark with blood in the water, when it came to intel. 

“Chouji has always been a bit of a soft touch,” Shikamaru agreed. 

“Don’t change the subject, Shika-deer,” Ino said, narrowing her eyes as she prodded him unerringly in the Adam’s apple. Shikamaru hissed, rubbing at the abused spot with a wince. 

“It’s not like I’m doing anything bad, or overly suspect,” he said, defeated. It was best to give in as quickly as you could, when arguing with Ino. 

“It’s suspect enough that I’m here, though,” she pointed out. “We both know how you are. You don’t go searching for people who don’t come to you first, outside of work matters. The fact that you visit her office out of your own free will every week says volumes.” 

“Ugh,” Shikamaru grumbled, “I hate when you get all psychoanalytical.” 

“What do you think you’re doing, Shikamaru?” Ino asked again, letting the remark slide. 

“Is it so hard to believe that I might just like her? That I just want to see her?” he asked. Ugh. Saying it out loud, out of the safety of his own head, was so strange. “Like” felt like too small a word. 

“I know that, idiot.” Ino rolled her eyes. “I know what you look like when you like someone—I was there for every one of your crushes. I also know how you get, with your relationships.” 

“Temari broke up with me because she hated the distance,” Shikamaru protested. 

“Temari broke up with you because she hated the distance and because that Kusa diplomat who was harassing her was murdered mysteriously in his own home, found dead to a wound that didn’t match any kind of blade anyone knew and had edges resembling what your shadow needles leave on your enemies,” Ino retorted. “The only reason Kakashi-sama let you off scot-free with that one is because that guy was grossly incompetent, and everyone was happy to see him leave.” 

“He was also embezzling Alliance funds during wartime,” Shikamaru commented. 

“Nevermind that!” Ino waved her hand dismissively, sharply, as if to cut off his deviation from the matter at hand. “Sakura’s civilian born, Shikamaru! If Temari—who grew up alongside a jinchuuriki with a faulty seal, mind you—can’t deal with your habit of dropping dead bodies at people’s feet as a sign of affection, what makes you think Sakura can?”

“Well, her sensei is a Hatake: Hatake Kakashi, at that,” Shikamaru reasoned. 

They sat in thoughtful silence as they mulled over that. The rumors about Hatake Kakashi’s ruthlessness had decreased in circulation since he’d been forced out of ANBU and into becoming a jounin-sensei, but they had not disappeared entirely. Shikamaru recalled being ten years old and sneaking behind a fusuma door, utilizing the chakra suppression technique he’d read about in a book, eavesdropping in on his father and his teammates recollect in low tones, the way Konoha’s last Hatake had bodily thrown himself against the barrier seal protecting Konoha over and over, wild-eyed and not seeming to even notice the chakra burns charring his clothes and skin, once he’d heard what his sensei intended to do on the night of the Kyuubi Attack. Hatake, Chouza said, had left Lichtenberg figures on those who were fool enough to get in the way of his indiscriminate, crackling white chakra. Shikamaru had had no context, so he’d only put it all together seven years later, when he was seventeen and Naruto told him about his parentage. 

Ino nodded. “Yeah, I’ll give you that,” she granted. “But even if she’s okay with it, that doesn’t mean she’ll reciprocate your feelings.” She canted her head. “There’s Sasuke to account for as well.” 

“I think he’s too busy frolicking about the Elemental Nations to have the time to come home and become my love rival, Ino,” Shikamaru said dryly. He interlocked his fingers, setting his hands on his chest. He had the feeling he’d be here for a while. “And if she doesn’t return my feelings… Well. It’s not as if I can force her to.” 

Ino tilted her head, and she inclined her body down to examine him more closely, nearing closer and closer, until their foreheads bumped against each other and Ino’s pale, pupil-less eyes were staring directly into his. Shikamaru glared at her balefully. 

“You like her,” she said, sounding surprised, leaning back to her previous, irritating position. “Really like her. When did this begin?” 

Shikamaru thought back to the first mission he and Sakura had been assigned on together after she’d received a little over six months of the Godaime’s training and was deemed B-rank ready. He remembered breathing too quickly from panic and exertion as he applied pressure to the weeping wound located dangerously close to his femoral artery—a lucky stab that had been too quick for him to see coming. He remembered Sakura: her focused green eyes and steady hands and unshakable calm as she moved his hands aside and replaced them with her own, and his flesh began to knit back together under her soothing, knife-point precise chakra. 

Shikamaru remembered this, too: Sakura, shaking him by the shoulder to keep him from falling unconscious from blood loss, laying a grounding hand against the side of his throat. 

“Look at me,” she’d commanded, voice unrelenting. At that moment, her eyes looked less spring grass and more like hard chips of emerald set into her face. “There are three other enemies tracking us. Don’t fall asleep now, no matter how much you want to, you lazy Nara; we’ll die. Do you hear me? Look at me.” 

Shikamaru had looked at her. She was bleeding sluggishly from a head wound, and a bright trail of red traced down the side of her wan face. There was a wide streak of dirt on her face, under the curve of her cheekbone, from when she’d smashed through a mud wall jutsu, and a shard of bone in the half-open pocket of her chuunin vest, from when she’d punched through the rib cage of the user of said mud wall jutsu as well. Her mouth was set into an unbending line, her clenched jaw betraying her outward calm before she consciously relaxed it; and her eyes were unyielding, inexorable, unconquerable. 

Beautiful, Shikamaru had thought breathlessly, and was nearly bowled over by the force of the realization, the strength of his desire. 

He had looked at her. She had set him up high in the trees for a vantage point to keep their enemies still with his shadows, so that she’d be able to kill them all, wielding her impossible strength with brutal, elegant grace, and from the run back home to any time they’d met then onwards, Shikamaru had been unable to stop looking. 

“A while ago,” he answered finally, realizing he’d been silent for too long. 

Ino, ever discerning, looked like she’d caught more than he meant to reveal. “Years,” she determined. “It’s been years. Did Temari know?” 

Did Temari know. Ha. 

“I told her, when we began dating. She said she didn’t mind keeping it casual, and would let me go gracefully when Sakura came to her senses.” Shikamaru felt a fond smile curl on his lips, before it faded away as he mused, “Temari never said, but I think that’s why she really broke up with me. Because she was tired of looking at me and finding me always staring at her.” 

“You told Temari? And dated her anyway?” Ino said in disbelief. She slapped his chest. “Shika!” 

“I didn’t think it’d get serious on either of our ends!” he said defensively. Then, ruefully, “I think I was a pretty shitty boyfriend, anyway. Long distance isn’t really compatible with my laziness. It’s a miracle she still considers me a friend after we broke up.”

“You may be a possessive, lazy, chain smoking asshole at times, but you’re not a terrible boyfriend, Nara Shikamaru,” Ino said, patting him on the same spot she’d slapped earlier. Perhaps she was referencing the two day long relationship they'd had, when they were eight. Ino had been curious to see how different a romantic relationship was from friendship, and Shikamaru hadn’t cared enough to protest against it. “You’re smart enough to know that any woman willing to put up with you is a woman to fear.” 

Sakura could probably crack him like an egg, was his first and foremost thought. 

“Does that include you?” Shikamaru raised an eyebrow, forcing himself not to think about the circumference of her defined biceps. 

Ino flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I’m on the top of the list, dumbass,” she told him imperiously. 

“Of course,” Shikamaru said agreeably. 

Ino hesitated, which was a warning sign in itself. She never hesitated, not when she had something to say. And she never didn’t have something to say. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, voice probably smaller than she’d meant it to be, by the way she viciously bit her lip after speaking. 

There were a few. The first was that she was ride and die for Sakura (as opposed to her relationships with Chouji and Shikamaru, which were ride or die), and he sort of doubted that she’d be able to keep his feelings a secret from her. 

The second was very obvious. 

“Can you honestly say to me, to my face, that had you known, you would not have meddled every time you had the chance to?” Shikamaru deadpanned. During those years, Sakura had been focused singularly on self-improvement—he hadn’t wanted to distract her in any way with his affections. Besides: if they ever got together, he wanted it to be naturally, at their own pace. 

The insecurity in Ino’s face, which didn’t suit her at all, faded. A smirk crossed her lips. “And if I had, you would be dating Sakura by now,” she crowed. 

Shikamaru allowed that. Reality had a tendency to bend to Ino’s will. 

“In all seriousness though,” Ino said, her mouth thinning to a stern line, “you have to treat Sakura well, you hear? She’s my flower girl. But I guess I can give her to you for safekeeping. Don't ruin this; don't ruin her.”  

“I know how to count my blessings," Shikamaru said quietly. "I won't."

“That’s all I can ask for, really.” She sighed, climbing to her feet and relieving him of the weight on his chest. He inhaled deeply, glad for the reprieve. 

“I’m surprised at how long it took for your interrogation, actually," Shikamaru said, also standing up. "I had expected you'd come flying at me with a kick to the face after the first week."

"I was preoccupied with a mission," Ino said dismissively, hooking her arm through his easily, dragging him along with the ease of practice. 

"You've been in-village since May," Shikamaru said, puzzled. 

"Self-assigned mission," she clarified. "It took a few months to see any significant results. My target was very, very oblivious." 

"Mission success, then?" 

Ino smirked, a smug little thing practically dripping in self-congratulation, and tugged down the fabric of her turtleneck to reveal a red, mouth shaped mark on her neck. "Mission success," she confirmed. 

Shikamaru laughed aloud. 

Shikamaru leaned against the balcony railing as he stared out into Konoha’s cityscape, trusting it'd be able to hold his weight. He raised his cigarette to his mouth, and sucked a breath of nicotine into his mouth, holding it in his lungs for a moment until he could feel the burn, before exhaling it out in a cloud of smoke.

"That shit'll destroy your lungs, you know."

He took another drag, not bothering to look back. He knew who the owner of that voice was. He lazily blew a smoke ring, watching as it began to lose its shape and dissipated into the open air. 

"Don't really think I'll live long enough for lung cancer to catch up to me, Sakura," Shikamaru said. 

Sakura scoffed, stepping closer and placing a small, warm hand between his shoulder blades. "Not if I have anything to say about it," she huffed. 

Then, easy as anything, she pushed medical chakra into his back and through his lungs, where it circulated for several seconds. Then, Shikamaru hacked a hard cough, and felt something thick come up his throat. It would’ve been disgusting to just spit it out onto the floor, so he finally turned to face Sakura and blinked at her questioningly through slightly teary eyes. 

She jerked a thumb to their right, indicating an empty ceramic flower pot on the floor. He obligingly leaned over it, and spat. What looked like a glob of black tar stared back up at him from the bottom of the pot. 

"That's a year's worth of lung damage induced by smoke inhalation," Sakura told him, sidling up next to him. "You're welcome." 

Shikamaru regarded it in silence, before leaning back against the railing and taking another drag from his still lit cigarette. She made a disgusted noise and reached forward, pinching its orange end between two fingers unflinchingly, pulling it away from his lips to toss it over her shoulder. 

"You're not allowed to smoke in my apartment," Sakura informed Shikamaru, halting his fingers from reaching inside his pocket, where he kept his smokes. His hand fell to the railing, fingers wrapping loosely around the guardrail. He kept his eyes trained on the sun's slow descent. 

"What's got you so maudlin, Shikamaru?" Sakura asked quietly. 

He said nothing, for a moment. His fingers tightened infinitesimally around the railing, itching for nicotine. 

"Mirai said her first words today," Shikamaru said, low. 

He could hear the delighted smile in Sakura’s voice as she said, "That's great! Kurenai must've been excited. What were they?"

Shikamaru couldn't stop himself from pulling the cigarette box from his pants pocket and tapping one free. "We're not inside your apartment," he said, before placing it between his lips. He cupped a palm half-over his mouth to protect it from the wind as he rummaged through his chuunin vest’s many pockets. 

A hand entered his vision. 

“Just this once,” Sakura said. Then, she snapped, and in a show of impeccable chakra control, a small flame appeared at her fingertips. Shikamaru bent low and leaned towards it, lingering until the cigarette caught. He stood straight again, but didn’t take a drag; he just kept it in his mouth, smoke trailing from its burning end. 

“Shika,” he said finally, taking the cigarette between his fingers. “That was her first word.” 

Sakura tilted her head. “And you’re upset,” she observed. 

“If Asuma-sensei were here,” he began, quiet, “he would’ve been so, so smug. ‘You have no excuse to dip from babysitting duty now. You’re practically socially obligated to spoil the hell out of her,’ he’d have said.” 

“As if you don’t already!” She laughed. “Ino’s told me about the toys you’ve bought her.” 

Shikamaru felt a smile tug at his lips, and he ducked his head. “Ten thousand ryo isn’t that excessive of a price to pay for a doll.” 

“It really, really is,” Sakura deadpanned. Contemplation washed over her face as she lowered her gaze, and said, “I didn’t lose anyone personally in the war. There was Neji, but I wasn’t really close to him. The closest thing would probably be…” 

She trailed off. Shikamaru touched the inside of her elbow lightly, drawing her eyes, and she continued her thought. 

“Sasuke,” Sakura breathed. “He’s alive, and yet I mourn him as if he were dead. The conflict of loving the boy he was in my head and hating the things he’s done as a man is almost enough to make me wish…” She shook her head. 

“Anyway,” Sakura said, forcibly lightening her tone, “what I mean to say is that I understand. But that’s the thing about grief, isn’t it? We can’t change what’s already come to pass. We just have to live with the consequences, and continue onward into the future.” 

“The future, huh?” Shikamaru felt irony twist the corner of his mouth. “Well, the king is the most important piece on the board for a reason.” 

“That’s a given,” Sakura replied, though she blinked at the non sequitur.  

Their conversation tapered off into comfortable silence. They lingered in it, Shikamaru taking languid pulls of his still lit cigarette, and Sakura apparently content to watch the sun set. 

“I should get going,” Shikamaru said regretfully, extinguishing the cig against the metal railing. He considered the butt for a moment, before placing it in his pants pocket. Pushing away from the balustrade and shifting his body weight onto his palms to leap onto the railing in a crouch, he applied chakra to the soles of his shoes so he wouldn’t fall to his death. He hesitated. 

Sakura noticed. “What is it?” she asked. 

He expelled a harsh breath, and internally told himself to get a grip. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a pendant, hooking a finger through its chain, and let it drop to its full length, presenting it to her. 

She took his offering, turning it over in her hands. He knew what she saw: a circular wooden ornament with the Nara clan symbol carved into it, framed by a pair of delicately arching deer antlers. There were painstakingly detailed engravings of branches of sakura blossoms twining around the antlers, as if they were vines of ivy. 

“A token,” he responded. “For if you ever want to visit the compounds. You can just show that to the guards, and they’ll let you through.” 

Sakura smoothed her thumb over the curve of an antler’s crown. “This means something that you’re not telling me,” she said, mind sharper than the edge of any kunai in his arsenal. 

“Remuneration, for semi-breaking in,” Shikamaru said, lying by omission. 

Sakura’s side eye said she knew that he was deflecting, so he crooked his fingers beckoningly. He waited until she obligingly stepped forward, and he gently held her chin between his index and thumb to tilt her head downwards, so he could press a light kiss against her forehead, right over her Yin Seal. 

Shikamaru pulled away, after a moment. Sakura’s green eyes were wide, and her cheeks were very pink. 

"Thanks for listening," he said, rising to his full height. He knew his face was doing something unbearably soft. Sakura made a strangled sound, as she rapidly regained her faculties. 

"You—!" was all Shikamaru managed to catch before it was carried away by the wind as he leapt off the railing, body flickering mid-air away into the direction of his clan compound. 

Shikamaru rested his chin on his palm as he surveyed the shogi board. He was sitting in their favored spot, out next to the engawa. Through the open doors, he could hear the rustle of leaves as wind swept through the trees. The sun stretched forward, its light reaching and casting warmth onto his left shoulder. 

He took a pawn between his fingers and moved it a space forward. Clack.  

Shikamaru’s opponent moved his lance, taking a pawn. Clack.  

A series of blows were exchanged through the sounds of wooden shogi pieces striking the board; otherwise, the room was filled with tranquil silence. They didn’t tend to speak during their games. He and his father were alike, in the way they believed a game of shogi could speak far louder than any verbal conversation. 

“Old man,” Shikamaru said, quietly, “I gave her a token.” 

The slightest of pauses. Then, clack. 

“You probably know already,” he continued, “but I gave it to her two months ago. She hasn’t visited yet—a mission. It’s only a matter of time before she does.” Shikamaru hesitated. “I haven’t told her what a token means.” 

Another pause—longer, this time. Clack. 

Shikamaru didn’t look up; he could visualize, in his mind’s eye, the expression on his father’s face. The way amused exasperation would play across his otherwise unreadable face—how his raised eyebrow would tug at the old scar on his temple.  

He ducked his head. “I know, I know,” he muttered, feeling chided despite the lack of any verbal disapproval. “But I’ve been pining for four years. I feel like I should be allowed a little cowardice.” 

“I’m not an idiot, though,” Shikamaru continued. “I know she’ll learn what it means—what it implies, for my feelings for her—sooner or later. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I like what we have. This could make us or break us, but…” Shikamaru felt a smile curl on his lips. “I’m feeling optimistic about my chances.” 

“Besides—If I don’t tell her, Ino inevitably will.” He grinned fondly against his hand. “Meddlesome woman.”

Clack. Clack. Clack. The sound of his yukata shifting as he reached over the board to take his opponent’s defeated pieces. The tranquil quiet returned, punctuated by birdsong. Shikamaru glanced to the side, and he saw a tokkuri and a pair of cups sitting on a tray. 

“Oh—I talked to kaa-san about this too, and she told me how you gave her hers,” Shikamaru recalled, taking the flask in hand to pour a generous amount of sake into the cups. He laughed, as the memory folded out in his mind’s eye; it was an effort to not spill any of the alcohol. “Did you really throw it at her in the middle of an S-ranked mission?” 

His snickering continued on, unhindered, only tapering off into a sigh when the memory of his mother’s mirthful grin as she told the story of their courtship began to shift into that smile of quiet, enduring grief she wore so often, nowadays. 

It didn’t suit her face. She was supposed to be towering over his father, brow twitching with irritation, hands on her hips, as she nagged at him for his drinking problem with no true rage. But that picture was only made whole with—

Shikamaru cut that line of thought off before it could begin to run away from him. He tilted his head back, and he stared at the ceiling, studying the wooden beams holding the roof upright and feeling as if he were scraped hollow. 

He closed his eyes for a long moment, as he drew a deep breath into his lungs. In. Out. 

Shikamaru opened them again, and looked back down at the board. He took a piece between his fingers. King stared up at him in stark, black kanji. His finger thoughtfully traced the character, following the stroke order with ease. 

He set it down with a muted clack. He picked up a cup of sake and drank its contents; then, after grabbing its pair, reached over the board to slowly pour it over his opponent’s piece stand, which had no pieces in hand on top of it. 

“Your favorite brand,” Shikamaru said wryly, tapping the damp piece stand with a finger. With that, he rose to his feet. He bowed his head. “Makemashita,” he said, admitting defeat with a wave of his right hand over his piece stand. 

Shikamaru may have been able to lead his opponents through meticulously formulated strategies, countering and incorporating any possible retaliating plays, but he didn’t think that it was possible to win against an opponent you were also playing as. Even if said opponent was an impression of his father’s shogi tactics and habits. 

“Thank you for listening,” Shikamaru said quietly, and the fusuma doors slid shut behind him with a shick. 

Shikamaru’s eyes blearily blinked open at the sound of a quiet knock—from the direction of his window, he recognized. He turned over in his bed to look at it, and he found a shadowy figure sitting on his windowsill. 

It was really, truly, far too early for this. 

Shikamaru, hassled by the thought of actually getting out of bed to open the window, shaped a tendril of shadow to curl around the lock latch and tug it free. As it swung open, a cool breeze followed after the visitor as they slipped into his room quietly, abating when they turned around to close the window again. The entire room was bathed in shadow, but that didn’t matter much; Shikamaru could see in a pitch black room as well as he could in a sunlit one. 

“Hey,” he greeted, voice low and throaty with sleep, “any of that blood yours?” 

“Yeah,” Sakura grunted, shrugging her chuunin vest, spotted and streaked with blood, off her shoulders. He politely averted his gaze when she pulled her skirt up to unclasp her kunai holster. "Not bleeding anymore, though." 

Shikamaru leveraged himself onto his feet with a sigh. "Follow me," he said, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. 

He grabbed a soft shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He led her to the door, then to the bathroom. Once they were inside, he dragged a bath stool from inside the cabinet underneath the sink. He sat down on it, facing the door, listening to the squeak of the shower's faucet as it turned, then the pitter patter of running water. 

Shikamaru rested his chin against his palm, elbow propped up on his knee, focusing on not falling back asleep. Then, Sakura’s voice, barely audible over the noise of the shower: "Talk to me."

"Oh." He blinked hard, realizing her tone was strained. He reconsidered his day. "Well," he said, tapping his fingers against his cheek in thought, "our Hokage finally cornered me. You're currently speaking to the planner of the Shinobi Union."

A pop! sound as she uncapped a bottle. She snorted. 

"I know," he said, wry. "I went to pick up a few documents for clan matters, but when I arrived, Kakashi-sama was already there, lounging around and reading porn, easy as you please." Shikamaru paused. "The next twenty minutes are a blur. I ended up re-swearing my allegiance to Konoha and agreeing to the three different administrative positions. I'm eighty percent sure that I'm the Hokage’s aide now. I didn't even know that the Hokage had an aide."

Shikamaru still wasn’t entirely certain the past six hours were not a figment of his imagination. Hatake Kakashi was a scary, scary man. 

Sakura laughed, and the sound made relief swoop through his chest. 

“You need me to keep going?” he asked. 

“No,” she said, “but thanks.” 

There was a moment of silence—or as much silence there could be, when a conversation was taking place in the shower; Shikamaru recognized it as Sakura cherry picking her words before speaking. 

“I was in Kusa,” she began. “Medical relief again.” 

There was something she wasn’t saying; Shikamaru could hear it, in the hitch of her voice, the way the end of her fragmented sentence cut off too early. 

The shower knob squeaked as it turned, then there was the sound of light feet stepping onto the shower mat. Shikamaru observed the bathroom floor with great interest, very aware of Sakura's nakedness behind him. He'd lived in this house his entire life, and he'd somehow never realized how fascinating and perfectly shaped the bathroom's tiles were. 

"I spoke to Sasuke," she said, and Shikamaru forcefully wrenched his thoughts back to the present. 

"We talked about a few things. The village, his defection, the whole 'trying to kill me on more than one occasion' thing, Naruto… We never had much in common, outside of Team Seven. The entire conversation took only twenty minutes. It was kind of funny, actually; I could tell he was bracing for me to start shrieking in his ear and invading his personal space, like the good old days."

One of those conversation topics was not like the others. "What," Shikamaru said flatly, but she ignored him. 

"Do you know what the very first thing he said to me, upon seeing me?" she asked. He could hear rustling, as she toweled herself off and began to change into her—or rather, Shikamaru's—clothes. “It wasn’t 'Hello, Sakura,' or 'How are you, Sakura?' or even an 'Are you okay? You're coughing up blood, Sakura.' It was, ‘How’s Naruto?'"

Shikamaru decided against telling her that Sasuke and Naruto were in some kind of love with each other, and outsiders didn’t register to them when they were together—they didn’t register to them even when they weren’t. Sakura was oblivious to a great deal of things, (un)fortunately, but he knew she was very aware of how her teammates were about each other. 

She sighed. “I looked at him, and realized I was tired. Tired of being second best, tired of being in love with the idea of someone in love with me. So, I gave him up.”

Shikamaru realized he wasn’t breathing, and took a deep breath. “Did you give up on love, too?” he asked softly.

He could feel her gaze on the back of his neck, like a brand. Shikamaru spared a thought to muse that it was pretty deranged of him, the way that he wouldn't have minded if her eyes seared him, as long as they were on him. 

"No," Sakura said, in a deliberately thoughtful tone, "I’ve not gone quite that far.” 

A light touch to Shikamaru’s shoulder, and he stood up, setting the bathstool off to the side and opening the door. She slipped through the open door, and a nonchalant “Not yet, anyway,” floated down the hall after her. 

Shikamaru stared after her for a moment, then followed her. 

When he arrived under his bedroom doorway, Sakura was sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed, knees tucked to her chest. Her pink hair made dark with water and curling very slightly at the ends, and dressed in his shirt, which had a scoop neck that revealed the hollow of her throat and the dip of her collarbones, she looked soft and comfortable—something pulled directly from Shikamaru’s idle daydreams of domesticity. 

There was a towel in her hand. With an easy strength and a precise aim, she lobbed it directly at his face. He caught it before it made impact, and settled on the edge of his bed, sitting cross legged so he wouldn’t have to have Sakura between his legs. 

Wordlessly, Shikamaru began to towel dry her hair, rubbing the moisture out with quick, efficient motions. Absentmindedly, he noted that she smelled like him—though really, that should’ve been obvious, given that she’d probably used his shampoo. She smelt of pine, with undertones of her own clear mint scent. They sat like that in tranquil silence: Shikamaru focused on his task, and Sakura relaxed under his hands, loose and at ease. 

“Hey,” Shikamaru said softly, nudging her lightly. He tossed the damp towel onto a chair. “Time to go to sleep.” 

Sakura hummed, rising to her feet and climbing into his bed. She wriggled underneath the covers and settled in like she was meant to be there. He slid into bed beside her, turning so they’d be facing each other and meeting eyes. 

Shikamaru huffed a laugh, as he thought about the way she refused to meet his eyes after the first time they slept together. “What ever happened to the Sakura who got all bashful when it came to sharing a blanket?” he teased. 

She groaned, yanking the duvet up to cover the lower half of her face. “Shut up,” she ordered, sounding embarrassed. Her ears were pink. “Past Sakura had her reasons, okay?” 

“She did?” Shikamaru asked. He’d assumed it was one of those things that he wasn’t supposed to mention, for fear of swift retaliation in the form of a chakra-enforced fist. 

“Well,” Sakura began, pulling the covers away from her face and back over her chest, “I would accuse you of being purposefully obtuse, but I do get that civilians’ societal norms must seem totally foreign to you clan folk. So, as mortifying as this is to say out loud, I guess I have to explain it to you.” 

“Do tell,” Shikamaru prompted. The moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating a slice of her cheek and hair. 

“The way I grew up, I learned that the only circumstances that an unmarried woman and a man would share a bed would be on her marriage bed,” Sakura said, turning onto her back to stare at the ceiling. 

Shinobi also had their own societal norms about bedsharing, actually. Most didn’t stay until morning on seduction missions, unless the operation demanded it to keep cover, for the risk of staying so unguarded next to a stranger—no matter how perfectly harmless or innocent they seemed. Shinobi made it a general rule to only sleep with people they trusted absolutely, so more often than not, they shared their beds with decades-long friends and comrades. 

The only people Shikamaru trusted enough to share a bed with were Ino, Chouji, and Sakura. 

"You still believe that?"

"Of course not. That line of thinking was a narrative created to promote chastity and the patriarchal definition of virginity or whatever." Sakura scoffed. "It’s just hard to shake off, after years of believing it.” 

Shikamaru contemplated it. “Marriage, huh…” 

Maybe it was because he was cloaked under the familiar cover of darkness. Maybe it was the cadence of Sakura’s voice, the warmth she radiated as she laid next to him, the consistent rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Maybe it was that he'd held onto these feelings close to his chest for so long, he'd become tired of keeping them secret. Shikamaru didn't know. But for some reason, all his previous reservations, fuelled by fear of rejection and losing what they had, fled him. 

A teasing smirk pulled at the corners of his lips, and he spoke, half joking and half not, “Wanna fall asleep next to me every night?” 

“Fuck off,” Sakura said immediately, in reply. He swallowed a laugh. 

A beat of silence. Shikamaru let it stretch longer, until—

“You’re not joking,” she realized, turning to face him again. Her eyes were wide. “What the hell.” 

Shikamaru shrugged, still smiling. Sakura smacked him, thankfully without chakra—he deeply appreciated the lack of broken bones and organ damage. 

"Why are you proposing to me when we're not even dating?!" she demanded. She paused in thought, like she was rapidly reviewing the past few months. Shikamaru could see the whites of her eyes. "We're not dating, right?" 

"We're not." Sakura relaxed at the confirmation that she hadn’t been unknowingly a part of a romantic relationship for the past several months. “But I have been trying to subtly convince you to consider me as a romantic prospect for the past half year or so." 

She stared at him in disbelief. He met her regard evenly, and felt mirth play about his lips. He caught her gaze flicking down to his mouth before they flitted back up to his eyes. 

Sakura heaved a world weary sigh, dragging a hand down her face. “You could have saved me hours of wondering if you were flirting or just like this to all your friends,” she muttered. 

“No,” Shikamaru said, amused, “it’s just you.” 

He was fascinated to see that Sakura’s face had managed to redden to a degree that he could see it in the darkness of the room. 

There was a moment of quiet as she fought for words. Then, something seemed to occur to her.

“Were you seducing me with our naps?” Sakura asked incredulously. 

"Tried and true Nara clan courting technique," Shikamaru affirmed. 

“Ugh,” she muttered. “You would. So what was the pendant? When I showed it to the guards, they had this really weird look on their faces.” 

“Declaration of intent,” Shikamaru responded, “and a claim of sorts. Everyone who saw it will know that you’re being courted by a Nara clan member, and if a suitor from another clan wishes to court you, they’ll have to discuss it with me. Or more accurately, the Nara clan head, which is also me.”

Not that any negotiations with him would bear any fruit for them. Shikamaru had confidence in his ability to intimidate anyone away from coveting what was his. 

“So it’s basically your dibs in physical form,” Sakura observed flatly, because in essence, that really was what the token was. 

“Hey,” Shikamaru protested, “I spent two weeks on that thing. I think it deserves a bit more credit than that.” 

“You carved it?” Sakura blinked in surprise. She reached into her shirt and pulled it out, tilting it to the moonlight. She followed a wavy line of the Nara clan’s symbol with a finger. “You did well,” she complimented. 

Shikamaru looked away for the first time in their conversation. “Thanks,” he said, flushed. 

“But really, you just gave it to me when you knew that I didn’t know what it meant?” 

“You knew it held some kind of implication, and you accepted it anyway,” Shikamaru pointed out, because saying, I knew you’d say yes, regardless of if you did or didn’t know, was a bit much, even for him. 

“Presumptuous,” Sakura muttered, pink in the cheeks. 

“Was I wrong?” He smirked. 

“Is there ever a time when you stop being such a smartass?” Sakura asked, and then she grabbed the collar of Shikamaru’s yukata to yank him closer and kiss him. 

Her lips were warm. So, so warm. The angle was strange, and unfamiliarity made Shikamaru stall for a moment, before he lurched into motion because this was Sakura, and she was all he had ever wanted. 

He tilted his head for a more pleasant angle, and everything was so unspeakably right, it was as if all the stars in the world had aligned, for this one private moment. Perhaps Sakura thought so as well; he felt her hand slide into his hair, before she moved, rolling over and climbing into his lap, knees bracketing his hips, a hand planted next to his head. The warm weight of her, the soft press of her lips against his, the brush of her fine hair against his cheek: it was unfamiliar and comfortable and wonderful, all at once. 

Haruno Sakura’s tongue is in my mouth, Shikamaru thought dumbly, as it swept over his bottom lip. His lips parted on an involuntary gasp. He could feel the shape of Sakura’s smile against his mouth, and couldn’t help but reciprocate it, until they were both eventually smiling too hard to continue to kiss. 

“I like you too,” Sakura confessed, pink hair mussed from where Shikamaru’s hands had been running through it, cheeks flushed, lips red. It was like a blow to the chest, how beautiful she was. 

“I’d hoped so,” Shikamaru said breathlessly. He’d known, intellectually, but it was somehow different, spoken aloud. Like it was real, undeniable and irrefutable. “Is that a yes?” 

“It’s a yes.” She nodded. From this proximity, the lack of proper lighting didn’t matter at all. Her green eyes practically glowed in the dark with how bright they were. “Not to the marriage thing. The dating one.” 

“I’ll take it,” Shikamaru conceded, and he pulled her down for another kiss.