author's note: It's summer, I have spare time and I thought this was a good way to fill that spare time with. enjoy x


summary: it's not much, but it's something, it's a start.


01. beginning


Her eyes narrow.

She doesn't really like this boy, he is, to put it quite nicely(in her eyes), weird. What makes him weird? Well that's quite easy, it's all the things he does, to be honest, she's not even sure he's actually a human. After all, he prefers to take naps instead of play castle with her, he would rather sit and play a boring, old game of shogi than be her knight in shinning armor.

To be perfectly honest, she's always believed that he was more of an old man than an actual boy.

An actual part of her believed that he was actually a spaceman trapped inside of a boy's body as a punishment for messing up something in time. However, when she voiced this to her mother she had hummed and then laughed lightly, promising her that he wasn't an old man.

She just couldn't come up with a better explanation for his behavior, or why he was so languid in his movements, like an old man(although she's more than positive her jichan moves a lot faster than he does). Plus, she reminds herself, he's incredibly smart since he's always beating people in those shogi games he plays. She's positive that there is absolutely no way that he can't be a spaceman trapped in another's body.

She kneels next to him, poking his cheek, "Shikamaru."

He stirs slightly before cracking an eye open, "Ino."

She grins, holding up a plastic sword, "be my knight today."

"No," he grumbles, "I'm taking a nap."

"You always take a nap," she tells him pouting, "just once."

"No."

"Fine, we can play something else," she smiles, "anything you want."

"I wanna play nap," he grins, "bye."

She frowns, watching as he shifts, laying on his side with a small smirk on his lips. She picks up the toy sword and pokes his face with it, watching as the smirk slips away and his face scrunched up in discomfort, but today she'll be the one who wins.

"I wanna play something," she tells him seriously, "please."

He sighs, cracking his eye open and slowly sitting up, "fine, but we'll do what I want to do."

She arches a brow before pouting, "Fine."

He stands up, brushing the bits of grass off his pants, before he extends out his hand for her to take. She does so hesitantly, and when she's hauled up she isn't given a chance to ask him what it is they're doing because he's moving rather quickly for someone who lacks energy.

It's a long way there but once they reach out she's amazed by how many flowers are around. She opens her mouth to comment on the beautiful flowers but before she can do so she notes that they're now heading up a hill.

"Here," he tells her, "sit."

She does so slowly, looking at him carefully, "What are we going to do."

"Cloud watch," he tells her, sitting down next to her.

She frowns watching as he lays down, "you're just going to nap again."

"No," he pouts, clearly annoyed, "we're gonna cloud watch."

She lays down next to him and looks up at the blue sky, the puffy white clouds moving across it slowly. Her eyes dart to Shikamaru who's looking at the clouds intently, she smiles her own moving back up to the sky, before she notices something.

"A rabbit," she laughs, "that's a rabbit."

"There's a fish," Shikamaru points.

She smiles, nodding her head, "I see a shark."

"It'll probably eat the fish," Shikamaru tells her, "there's a dog."

"That one looks like a flower," she giggles.

For the rest of the afternoon they spend it laying on the green grass, looking up at the big, blue sky. To be honest, Ino quite enjoys this much more than she would've enjoyed seeing Shikamaru pretend to be her knight in shinning armor, and now that she looks at it, it's probably not true that he's some spaceman trapped in another's body.

Plus, she reasons with a small smile, his hand is nice and warm, and it hasn't let go of her own since they arrived, and that, she smiles, that's a start.