Perhaps

by zenithoflife

One-shot : Only Temari, Shikamaru decides, can dump someone, kiss the person who she had just dumped, wake up with said dumped individual in her bed and retain some semblance of sanity the next day. Even his imagination found that too much of a stretch to contemplate.

"Temari." They are at his usual cloud-watching spot, and he is looking at her. She can feel the weight of his gaze on her.

"...hm?" She doesn't turn.

"..."

"What is it?" She swivels her head to the side now, and realizes that he has gone back to observing his beloved wisps of cloud coalescing in the sky.

"I like you."

"You what?"

"I—I like you. More than most people."

"Okay." She turns her face back to the sky. "For what it's worth, I like you too."

"No, you don't get it." Shikamaru suppresses a sigh. "I like you. More than a friend. The way Naruto runs after Sakura. The way Neji looks at Tenten. I like you."

She sits up now. He wishes she hadn't. It would be so much easier if she would lie back down, watch the clouds. But it is also infinitely better than if she had simply ignored it, pretended that he hadn't said anything—because he did.

And right now, the clouds are shrouded in the approaching evening fog.

He pushes himself up, resting on his elbows.

Temari hates how he can look so nonchalant even after a confession—did that even pass as a confession? His eyebrows are drawn together in a half-frown, and his fingers are entwined not quite in his thinking position, but close. But still, quite characteristically Shikamaru.

"I mean it." He says without thinking. He doesn't know who looks more startled: him or her. It startles him because he is Shikamaru and he always thinks about what he says before he has said it. He has envisioned 25 different responses from her, which includes her going back to Suna, her knocking him out with her fan, her going to the Hokage, her possibly kissing him—

But not this. Not this silence.

So he falls silent too, because this is Temari, who sat next to him while he cried, who fought with him side by side, who bitched all through the first time he brought her to eat dango and who fell silent and finished the two sticks he handed her (even though she told him later when he asked, that she hated every bite of it). Temari, whose eyelashes quivered while she slept, almost as if her pupils were dilated below her closed lids like she was poised and ready for battle at a minute's notice. This was Temari who said what she was thinking, always, even when it hurt.

Especially when it hurt.

"Stop," he presses the pads of his palms against his eyes, and tries very hard not to think. This is coming out wrong. All wrong.

Temari is disappointed. She is rarely disappointed, and on the last two times she was, her disappointment had rapidly evolved into hatred. The first had been for her father who apparently found the irony humorous, or at least amusing enough to transform his youngest son into a demon-possessed container. The second, was still her father but this time for dying on them, for leaving them a legacy of a village who supported them only out of terror at the bloodbath that might possibly be unleashed.

So when Shikamaru confessed that he might possibly out of a misguided conception of love, that he liked her, she wasn't disappointed. It came quite perilously close to disappointment but did not entirely succeed. She is all too familiar with using her sexuality as a weapon; all Suna kunoichi are practiced in the art of sexual manipulation, but this—to know that their games of shogi, of cloud-watching came down to this—just a writing off of a misguided I like you was close to disappointing.

She likes him as a friend, but to think that he would translate her friendship as something else; to warp it with an introduction of foreign, alien elements into the balance is just—just slightly disappointing. She just expected more from him than this.

"I don't like you." She says firmly.

He can sense her tangible frustration and it hurts. Not that he expected anything more, but still.

"Shikamaru, we are friends—I never expected anything more, I didn't ask for you to—to—like me, and I never wanted to be saddled with this—this guilt, this wondering about if I hurt your feelings, this spire of feeling goddamn guilty because I am not supposed to make you feel bad for making me feel bad—"

He knows that. That Temari is vicious and aggressively violent at times; enough to chew his ass off if he doesn't make sure the right form is signed and sealed by a given deadline. But she is essentially kind in all the ways that do matter. And it is this kindness that makes her feel guilty even though it isn't her fault that his "like" goes down a one-way street without a backward glance.

She has never asked for her friendship to be tainted with a what-could-have-been, and she doesn't want to deal with the discomfort it entails. She doesn't want him to ask for more than what she can give.

He can feel her looking at him now, explosive rage slowly ebbing away. In this moment, he wants everything and nothing at all; he prays for perfect infinite comprehension, to somehow despite the inadequacies of language and kanji, to translate his feelings into words, to make her understand—just understand. It doesn't matter if his feelings aren't reciprocated. It doesn't matter.

"Listen—"He ignores the faint throbbing behind his eyelids. "You're the person I want to see most, all the time. You're the one I want to know inside and out, even if I know a lifetime wouldn't be enough for me to find out everything about you. The way you hold the pen, the way you grip your fans, thumb tucked and bent below your index and your middle finger.

"I want to know how you eat your ramen, whether you prefer shoyu or miso based soup; to find out whether you drink tea or coffee, half-milk or just black, thick and undiluted. I want to be the first to know when you realize you hate dango, that you don't mind shogi; that losing four games in a row is the most you can stand without losing your temper." He looks utterly serious for once, and all of a sudden, Temari can't breathe.

"It's stupid stuff like that—I just want the time to find out, to know. I'm not asking you to feel the same way; it doesn't matter even if you don't. I want, as much as you do, for this—this friendship, mutual tolerance, whatever we have—to continue."

She sits up, back facing away from him. He can see her shoulders flex below her shift

"I thought of you that way before," Temari says reflectively. And then she notices his sudden look of askance, and of how it sounded. It sounds like a weird prelude to a dumping even to his inexperienced ears.

So Shikamaru doesn't stop his hope from rising—perhaps—just perhaps—

Before she rushes to correct her mistake.

"It's not you—I would have thought—it's a girl thing," she lifts up a hand and then lets it fall. "It's almost instinctive to wonder if a guy likes you when he's nice, when he waits for you at the village gates even when Tsunade forgets to tell him to wait."

She catches his half-scowl, sharp and curt at its edges, and then smiles briefly. "She told me."

"Or when he forces you to eat dango just because he loves it, or when he brings you cloud-watching—"

"I think that's probably just me—" He runs an embarrassed hand through his hair. Had he been that obvious, or had she just been more observant than most?

"I would have thought the same of any other guy," she explains apologetically, almost as if she had read his mind. He flinches, she could read his facial expressions too well, but then again she always could. It was Temari after all. "Just the occasional wandering thought. The what-if."

"And where did it get you?" He asks lightly, trying to sound as if he doesn't care much for the answer.

"Nowhere," she says. "I—I just thought I was overthinking it. I have a tendency to do that."

There is an abrupt silence. He doesn't know what to say in answer.

"I thought we were friends." She says softly. He hates this freakish mind-reading trick she has going on. Just fucking hates it.

"Still are, you know." He opens his palms and lets them dangle by his sides. Purposely doesn't clench them because he knows that while her eyes are on his face, she will notice. "We still are."

"Okay," she says, smiling. "I'm glad. Thank you."

And that, was that.

She leaves first, and he doesn't accompany her back to her hotel this time. She doesn't question why.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Dude," Kiba grins, wide and sudden like a flash—quick. "You got friendzoned!"

Shikamaru doesn't bother to confirm it because it's Kiba, he has his scents down to an art form. There is probably even a separate kind of smell for newly-dumped shinobi or something.

"Try to keep it to yourself, Inuzuka."

Kiba slings an arm around his shoulders. "Ya know what?"

He shakes him off, but Kiba just slings it nonchalantly around again. Shikamaru blames it on the laziness when he doesn't bother to shrug it off,

"What?"

Kiba's eyes are soft but not pitying, and then he grins, cutting and wolfish, canines showing. It's his way of showing he cares and Shikamaru is suddenly so glad that his friends are around to make things better.

"It's time to get drunk off your ass, genius boy."

"Right, and that would be good for me because?"

"Hm—" Kiba ticks off the list on his fingers thoughtfully. "You don't have a mission tomorrow. I'm your good friend. You just got dumped."

"...right."

"Especially the last one."

"I was trying to forget that part."

"So where's Chouji and the rest?"

"...just don't get Lee along and we'll be fine."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"YOSH, my beloved teammates! Have you come to share in the joys of our blossoming youth?"

:"YOU BROUGHT LEE?!"

"Neji'll keep him away from the liquor." Kiba looks supremely unconcerned for someone who is facing impending death. "We need someone to force feed liquor if it gets boring."

Shikamaru wonders where Kiba's brain disappeared too. Well, if anyone complained, he was the one who was the one who had supposedly gotten dumped without her even saying the words, and about to get raving drunk, so. He is the only with a valid reason for getting drunk in the first place. It helps to ease his guilty conscience.

"Wait—Nara?"

He briefly wonders if Kiba has been injecting him with some liquor on the sly. "Temari?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Kiba forced him here to get drunk off his ass with the rest of us," Naruto beams, bouncing into the pub with all the fervor of an eight-year old kid on a sugar high. Shikamaru doesn't know whether to thank him or punch him senseless for interrupting their conversation.

"Better him than me," Temari grins and Shikamaru can't help but let loose a reluctant smile. "Kankuro is around here—somewhere."

True to form, Kankuro appears lugging two girls wrapped so tightly around his biceps, he can't help but wince.

Two more giggling girls just migrated over to him—cue more arm-hugging—was the face paint some supernatural form of sex pheromone? He inwardly debates the merits of getting some just to test-try its effects on Temari. Then again, she seems oblivious to Kankuro's… Although that might have something to do with the fact that he was her brother.

"GUYS!" Naruto hollers over the din. "Over here—"

"Two seats aren't enough." Neji remarks as he frogmarches a salivating Lee over.

Temari doesn't bother looking shocked. "Is he drunk already?"

"Nah, Lee just hasn't seen a girl wearing anything shorter than pants before," Shikamaru deadpans. Although knowing Lee, that is highly plausible

"This from the guy with a public poll going on whether you're a secret Casanova on the side or just plain gay." Neji smirks.

"Who's a secret Casanova?" She drawls from behind.

Not me." He says defensively, trying not to flinch from the tentacles of an obviously drunk and completely random girl. "You—" He directs her line of vision back to the bar and gives her a smart shove. "Alcohol. Love at first sight. Go." The girl obediently slinks off drawn by the inexorable tug of her first and definitely only love. Ah, the charms of alcohol.

"And why did Casanova come here tonight rather than cloud watch?" She asks lightly.

"Firstly," he leans forward to catch the bartender's eye. "Said Casanova isn't actually one and you know it."

"I beg to differ." She eyes him at the sight of another girl propelling herself into his arms. He looks up to see Kiba waving a thumbs-up from across the bar. That idiot.

"Secondly, even if he was, he wasn't one by choice because a certain irritating dog-boy got Ino in on it as well and threatened to quote "sic Tsunade on your ass" if he didn't turn up." Not that he had been protesting very hard, but she didn't have to know that.

He wrestles himself free and propels the offending girl back towards Kiba. He sees the other mouth a pained and vaguely discernible "why?" from across the table before turning back to romancing a mildly disgusted Ino. Shikamaru briefly contemplates the number of ways he's going to slowly and exquisitely castrate Kiba, when he realizes she's looking at him.

Oh. He notices the bartender in front of him now.

"Tequila. But I can't say the same for pineapple over here." She looks over at him.

"Vodka," he says firmly, trying not to look at Kiba who has now moved on to enthusiastic fist-pumping with heightened vigor.

Apparently someone failed to mention that it was an unwritten law or blatantly certain for the most heartbroken wretch—or more specifically, Shikamaru, first time amateur at being dumped, that A) he ought to bawling his eyes out into his alcohol rather than drinking said alcohol at twice the normal speed; B) that it was a very bad idea to drown your sorrows because of a girl in a too crowded and overwhelming bar with the overwhelming odor of smoke and drunk shinobi.

Not to mention that no one told him that it was a very very bad idea to do it with said dumpee sitting beside him drinking at three times his speed because it was just his peculiar brand of bad luck that results in him falling in "like" with a girl with an exceptionally competitive streak.

He doesn't know when his lips have fastened to her, trailing kisses down her blond hair, finally meeting hers in a clash of wills and drunken tongues refusing to yield. They have made it out of the pub, and it is fumbling in the darkness of the night, of her back pressed hard in an empty alley, and of the heat of him pressing her against its walled structure, immovable and cold in the wind.

She nibbles on his lower lip, and he feels a slow burn in his gut, swelling yet tightening, transcending the abrupt dichotomy between expansion and contraction. He pushes her harder against the cold wall, it is almost unbearable now how he craves for every inch of his skin to feel the exposed surface of hers, it will never seem enough to fulfill this desire. His stomach muscles clench in uncomfortable control, willpower conquering the desire to relinquish everything in yearning.

His hand is on her upper thigh now, hers clenched in the back of his vest when she finally speaks.

"Is this part of your chase?" She slurs dazedly. "Is it?"

There is a fragmented heartbeat of silence after her question, before he replies without thinking. "It's no more than an elaborate suicide."

Shikamaru doesn't know if he's glad when her head slumps down to his shoulder, no longer awake to hear his answer..

He carries her home anyway.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Temari wakes up to find herself in a bed she doesn't know but can well guess whom it belongs to crumpled mussed bedsheets and a splitting hangover.

The owner of said bed appears nowhere to be found, however..

Lights, flickering lights, his hand skimming across her upper thigh. She remembers an aching need to be fulfilled as he presses her against the wall and stoops. Temari lets lose an feral growl under her breath. If that idiot took advantage of her piss-drunk state to do unspeakable things to her body...

Wait. Her mind chooses this moment to regurgitate a memory of his stupefied face when she threaded her fingers through his absurdly long hair. His faint curses under his breath as he watches his hair fastener being propelled in a crowd of gyrating bodies, and her faint chuckle that he was really an old man trapped in a young boy's body. That is until she muffles his curses by hauling him in for a slightly askew kiss, missing his full lips and landing on the upturned corner of his mouth—wait, had he been smiling?

He had, she realizes, he had definitely been smiling which makes her realize that so is she right now. Temari hastily wipes all vestige of its existence off her face—ignoring the fact that the idiot could make her smile even from a memory. Although she is sure he had been last night.

It seems a blur now—but there had been a wall in there somewhere, of her using its solidity for leverage as she forced him backwards in a violent war waged between their tongues. How did they get out of the pub in that inebriated state?

And then—and then—

What happened? She searches for elusive memories that seem out of her reach.

"You fell asleep." Temari looks up at him lounging against the door jamb, utterly nonchalant. She feels a pang of slight hurt—did it not mean anything to him at all?

"Was that before or after the sex?"

He cocks a confused eyebrow as she peers desperately below the bedsheets—oh thank god, her clothes were still intact. "Wait, we—"

"Of course we didn't. You fell asleep on me, and I had to carry you home." He evades all mention of their kiss outside the pub and she isn't sure if she should feel relief or slight disappointment. To preserve any shred of dignity that could possibly remain of passing out after a kiss—had he been that good of a kisser or had she just been really drunk?—and found in his bed the next morning, she returns back to familiar ground.

Snarkiness she can deal with, it is her last resort, the last uncrossable demarcation before she wanders into foreign territory.

"Only you, Nara, can be such a bad kisser to cause me to pass out from the disgust."

"Oh." Shikamaru arches an eyebrow. "So you do remember that far enough."

She flushes red, and he doesn't push the subject. For his or her sake, he doesn't know.

Only Temari, he decides, can dump someone, kiss the person who she had just dumped, wake up with said dumped individual in her bed and retain some semblance of sanity the next day. Even his imagination found that too much of a stretch to contemplate.

He moves forward slowly, tentatively. Years of approaching wounded deer have left their invisible imprint, not to mention vestiges of old scars not from a life marred with battle wounds, but from the less-successful evasion of deer antlers. He is never proud of his scars, but in this moment, he doesn't need every instinct he has derived from his rather unorthodox animal training to know that her senses are on high alert.

Her hair is tousled from sleep, eyes blinking owlishly up at him, furrowed. And he doesn't know what possesses him to clarify, to establish a new equilibrium because he is Shikamaru and he always wants to understand.

The first thing Shikaku taught him about the deer was speech because only through speaking to them, overt expression, could they begin to fathom the unspoken language of intonation and danger signals. And because this is Temari, and knowing her, the only thing she hates more than defeat is confusion.

"I like you." It is a statement, rather than any that requires an answer. Not to mention he has already received her answer yesterday, late night kissing in a darkened alley notwithstanding.

She blinks, not quite understanding where this could possibly lead to-didn't they finish rehashing it yesterday? He takes this as assent, plunging on forcefully before she can protest. Shinobi are geared to have no regrets, but he is also Nara Shikamaru, master strategist and for once he is throwing caution to the wind. Quite honestly, she's making him lose his mind. "I'm going to continue liking you, even if you don't return my feelings."

Noting the quirk of her eyebrow, it makes him fumble when he trips to explain himself. "I'm sorry—no, not because of my feelings, I'm not ashamed of them—but if it puts you in an awkward spot, I'm not the kind who'll spread rumors in the village, or pester you with unwanted serenades or red roses." He's babbling and he knows it. "I wasn't going to stop liking you regardless of your answer."

She looks furious, no, that's not it; its more than that, a weary disappointment smearing and distorting her features. But it's too late for regrets; it had been far too late since the moment he set eyes on her.

Temari is disappointed—the pineapple is apparently on first name basis with the multiple ways he can go about disappointing her—another trait of his that she never knew. All she wants is for the both of them to forget this. She had thought that they were over it.

The raw primal sexuality that they both displayed last night was just that—pure carnality. She has given him her answer, and he knows her well enough to understand that.

"There's no on-off switch for feelings, Temari." He says, trying for a semblance of calm, but quite honestly, just wanting desperately for her to understand. "It's too late, believe me, I've tried. There are so many things you do that should irritate me, from annoying the hell out of my with your snarkiness, and your constant attempts of one-upsmanship—yes, I have noticed—to your troublesome brothers whom a sand coffin burial will be the first thing on their list when they realize I like you."

He runs exasperated fingers through his hair. "I don't know why. I don't know anything when it comes to you.

So I'm daring you to make me fall out of love with you."

His lips are curved upwards now, and she knows her mouth is smiling instinctively in response. In retrospect, it is the perfect way to rescue the embers of their friendship after the abrupt dousing of awkwardness following his confession.

Both of them know that she'll take on the challenge, she is Sabaku no Temari after all, she never backs down especially from a challenge. Even if it was one outside of her comfort zone, planets away from her characteristic emotional reserve. But it's also his way of daring her to act the way she normally is, a challenge to be her normal self, barriers down, to demonstrate the worst of herself to him and to see what lies ahead.

If he does fall out of love with her, it will be a return to the status quo, a flare of momentary passion dissipating and steeping back into obscurity as its replacement: friendship reemerges to the forefront. If he does accept her, and she knows her flaws are numerous and varied and perhaps uncountable, maybe there is a reason for considering his confession again. Whichever the outcome, she knows that either doesn't entail a predetermined acceptance on her part.

Perhaps that was why he was offering it in the first place. No promises, no commitments, just a trial-run of sorts to see where the chips might fall.

Hm. He wasn't touted to be the lead Konoha strategist for nothing.

"Okay." She smirks and he looks visibly relieved. So he was expecting her to decline. It just makes the surprise apparent in his eyes all the more satisfying. Like all of a sudden, his precise world has been kicked off its orderly axis, parallel lines disjointed and crossing, to hell with the laws of mathematics.

She can see it in his eyes, him thrown just slightly off-kilter before his particular brand of gravitational force jettisons in, establishing its own equilibrium again. "Just don't hate me too much when I'm done."

They shake hands on it, and he gives her a quick-silver smile that reaches his eyes this time. She grins; she has noticed the difference.

"So why were you at the bar last night?"

His eyes narrow fractionally. "If you don't remember, you asked me that question last night too. Twice actually, which makes this the third time."

"Third time's the charm?" She crosses her arms. "Because god knows, Kiba is always asking you to go to the bar with him."

Shikamaru is silent for awhile.

"I like you enough to ask you out. Enough for my ego to get kicked in the teeth at your answer." He says prosaically. "Enough to go to the bar because you said no when I wanted to try and see what happens at the end of the line with you."

"I was looking for a place to lick my wounds, if you want to call it that. I figured I deserved a night just to drown a little in self-pity and then get up the next day and get back on track." He smiles briefly. "But I'm not as far gone on you as to blow my paycheck on cheap beer just to torture myself about what went wrong."

He is as honest as he can now and she can respect that. "There was no chance to try, so there's nothing to regret. I'm not the type to blame myself for an aborted mission that never happened. But if it started and ended badly, I'll use cheap beer to buy forgetfulness then."

"I'll be back next month." She says finally.

He grins in response to her snarl.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Shikamaru!"

Temari doesn't bother to stifle her sigh when the familiar cry echoes from behind. For being renowned for his laziness, he is surprisingly—popular wouldn't be the right word—more of a scapegoat, she muses, and with none of the credit.

After their abrupt change, she decides to call it, she has started spending more time with him.

He likes it their new equilibrium, he tells her. She smiles. Now he knows that she prefers the wild iris and hates roses (because they are so deceptively prickly) and that she can't cook amongst about a hundred new things and more every day spent with her. That she cares how everything is in its proper position but the kitchen is his domain.

But she has discovered others about him as well. It has becomes almost expected, the call comes in while they are walking down the street, or within the Hokage's office, or just on one of their detours to his multiple cloud-watching spots.

If it's not Sakura, acting on Tsunade's orders to summon him to the Hokage's office for yet another reconnaissance mission, a visit to Kurenai is due, to whom Shikamaru drops in with astonishing consistency. Not that she has anything against Kurenai, she is his deceased sensei's wife after all, but just that if it isn't Kurenai, a rechristening of the Ino-Shika-Chou reunion is desperately needed, just to reaffirm for the countless time, their bonds of solidarity over some over-barbecued beef.

And if it isn't the trio, its that damn Shiho. Or Kiba with Akamaru dogging his footsteps hounding him for another drink. Or...the list could go on, until she either gave up or lost her temper, whichever came first.

"What is it?" His eyes are on her, and she doesn't want to be one of those clingy girls putting on a sidewalk pantomime of absurd possessiveness. Never has and hopefully never will.

"It's just—" She pauses to search for the right words to explain. "I'm never one for being possessive…"

Shikamaru raises an eyebrow. "So that one time where you called Shiho a goddamn irritance doesn't count?"

"It was under my breath." Shikamaru begs to differ. He is quite sure even the Uchiha heir with his penchant for snake-head bastards to get over the remnants of his brother complex, would have heard Temari's rather colourful curses. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had triggered at least a shudder of instinctive fear from whatever obscure grassland Sasuke deems fit to poke his head out from.

Hearing it at close quarters almost made him have a peristaltic contraction in his pants, in an uncomfortable spot which would better be left undiscussed. And no, it had nothing to do with his unmentionables, just an unnatural bowel regurgitation borne out of fear.

Contrary to public opinion and Ino's salacious rumours, he really doesn't have an inclination for sadomasochism. All he has to do is convince himself of that fact.

"It only counts when she actually listens and stops going after you." She brushes it aside. "But you're part of the Ino-Shika-Chou, you're Konoha's lazy genius, or—" She flounders into silence, still searching for the right words.

"Although I'm kind of in the same boat." He points out, smiling slightly now. "You're Temari, the Kazekage's sister. Who speaking of which still suspects, although not unfairly, that I like you. And you are Suna's Temari."

"It's selfish because I just wish you could be just Temari's Shikamaru, you know?" She says quietly.

"You forget that I'm Temari's Shikamaru as well." He smiles.

She grins.

When the familiar cry echoes again from the distance, she knows better than to sigh. So she lets him go.

He kisses her. She lets herself lean towards him, craving the familiar warmth before remembering that it's wrong to lead him on.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The next time she visits, Ino has coerced her into setting up a kissing booth. Temari herself isn't particularly enthusiastic, that is, until Ino lets drop a certain piece of information.

Which resulted in Shikamaru's current predicament.

"I'll let you open a booth across from the girls on one condition."

Neji looks ridiculously terrified for a man who just knocked out two ninjas with his dilated pupils alone. Shikamaru simply yawns. He is expecting this.

Tsunade beams evilly. "75% of the profits go to me."

"I'm not feeding your binge drinking addiction," Neji glares. Shikamaru elbows him not so subtly in the ribs as Tsunade eyes the both of them beadily. He can practically see the dollar signs flashing above her head.

"25."

"50. And I'm not bargaining on this."

"40 and I'll let you have photographs to auction to the highest bidder."

"Done!" Tsunade looks positively gleeful.

Neji plasters himself to the wall and tried to use his eyes to blend in with the white wallpaper. Shikamaru tries not to imagine his life dangling on the line when Neji finally realized what he had gotten himself in for.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"The boys are opening a kissing booth across the street!"

Tenten doesn't bother looking up as she polished her sword blade. Temari wonders to herself if Tenten would throw a hissy fit if she tried to borrow her sword. If any one of those old men got his hand on her ass one more time, she is going to castrate him. Slowly, and painfully.

Then again, that is probably why Tenten got that knife out in the first place.

"And don't look so unconcerned, Tenten," Sakura chimes in."Neji volunteered too,"

"NEJI?! Are you sure you didn't mix him up Shino or someone else?"

Temari tries to stifle another yawn. This kissing business is harder than she had expected. So far, she has had half a dozen slippery kisses, two gropes, and one perverted man who had to be beaten off by Ino, until he was clutching his genitals for dear life.

"And Temari, so is Shikamaru."

"What?!" Her hearing is going. She turns around, and Ino grunts indignantly. "So is Chouji."

She looks far too pissed over her cloud-watching friend's sudden morphing into a kissing maniac. Temari's eyes narrows. Is there something going on between them?

"Are you sure?" She debates the odds, and can't calculate the infinitely minuscule possibility that Shikamaru of all people would do something like that. She bets even Shikamaru himself, genius that he is, wouldn't be able to calculate it himself.

"Yes!" Ino fans herself. "And so is Naruto and Shino!"

"Naruto?" Sakura's guttural growl threatens imminent destruction.

Temari thinks it may not be the world's best timing to point out that Sakura's headband is askew. No point in antagonizing a crazed kunoichi. She has better things to worry about.

Like the fact that Shikamaru, the lazy-assed genius is opening a freaking kissing booth.

"I heard it was restricted though," pipes in Hinata.

"To—?" Sakura's voice trailes off menacingly.

"Um—" Hinata gulpes under the gaze of three pairs of murderous eyes. "Non-kunoichis. They got Tsunade's permission to make it restricted to civilians only."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

They are spying on them.

Temari tries not to cringe at the gaudy sign. That certainly wasn't Chouji's best work. There was a faint trail of barbecued sauce, and slightly smeared writing. Everything else though, bore traces of Shikamaru and Neji's precise handiwork. Even she had to declare that it looked inviting.

Just wait till she got past the tent doors and gave him a piece of her mind.

"They put Kiba on watch duty?!" Tenten screeches. Temari tries to cover her ears. Evidently someone got jealous easily...

"Smart idea," She concedes. "Seeing as Akamaru is familiar with our scents and Kiba probably told him to be on guard to prevent us coming through. I never would have thought of that."

Ino looks as her as if she was the one who had just declared that she wanted to open a kissing booth. Which would have been quite possible if she overlooks the fact that she has already been there and done that. "Um...Temari. This is Shikamaru you're talking about."

"My case in point!" She slams her hand on the table. There was a faint shatter of-was that glassware?—and she backed away quickly from the slightly pissed off vendor. Hinata smiles in apology and his furious look is replaced by a slight awkward shrug. If that girl could patent that sad slightly apologetic look, Suna and all the other hidden villages were in deep shit.

But back to reality. "He's the cloud-watching, lazy-assed ninja—everything is troublesome to him. Not this!"

"Exactly, this is Shikamaru, he plans everything. Especially troublesome things."

She looks back at the cuteness overload behind her. The immaculate display of bouquets, the painstaking calligraphic strokes, slow and unhurried. She could have sworn he had been thinking "Troublesome" when he was writing that.

Wait—bouquets?

"What did he bribe you with to provide the flowers? It must be more than a month's wages!" She questioned suspiciously. Ino just laughs.

"He got it for free. He promised me something interesting."

Temari's eyes widens. If that idiot bribed her with—"Sex?"

She is expecting a shocked look from Ino, or perhaps for her to start declaiming that Temari is hideously jealous (which she was) or is in like with him (ditto). Either would have been better. Instead, Ino simply looks smug, noting her nauseated look. "Something better."

She growls. That idiot better not have, she is going to kill him, no, a slow mutilation with her fans would be better—Almost on cue as if she can tell the direction of Temari's thoughts, Ino's grin stretches scarily, like the cat who got the cream.

Temari takes off running.

"You totally planned that." Sakura hops up to where Ino sat crouching.

"Of course," Ino's grin widens evilly. "You don't grow up around Shikamaru without learning something. Plus I wanted to know what was going inside that tent!"

"You realize that when Temari finds out, she'll kick your ass from here to Suna?"

"Pfffft." Ino waves her hand nonchalantly. "She'll be too busy burying Shikamaru. And when you think about it, it's for the good of all womenkind."

"Speaking of which, what did Shikamaru promise you?" Sakura questions.

"Wouldn't you like to know..."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Shikamaru peers up at the shadow blocking the sun. With four blond pigtails stuck up in tufts and a slightly maniacal look on her face.

He briefly contemplates escaping.

Except that she is faster, and stronger and most likely to knock him out before he got a step away. A bloodthirsty Temari is always lethal. He doesn't think the women in line waiting behind with their kids in tow are quite prepared to see a bloodbath from a Suna kunoichi hellbent on his life. Even if the reason why they are in line to see him of all people was because of a misguided presumption that they are madly in love with him.

Not to mention the fact that he has paint streaks all over his hands from fingerpainting with at least five kids.

Troublesome.

She looks murderous.

"Fingerpainting?!"

"Yeah, I restricted it to civilian mothers and their children."

"Then why does your fan base come out gushing over you?!"

"Potential father-material." He grins. She growls. That idiot, he planned it all. "And how often do you see bloodthirsty shinobi putting aside their beloved kunais and playing with children? They love it."

"I'll show you how much I love it—" She threatens, rolling up her sleeves. "You troublesome—"

And he is kissing her. Fast, hard and it made her mind whirl with 1+2=3itstoohothereXYZwhat'sgoingon? It makes her remember florescent neon lights in a shadowed alley, of the grit of a brick wall digging into her back and his lips soft on hers. She stumbles forward, pressing her hand against him. She can feel the rasp of his Chunnin vest below her hand, when he pulls back.

When he looks down at her, his eyes are uncharacteristically soft. "Are you ever going to confess that you like me too?"

"I'll let your fan-base do that."

"No fair—" He grouses, twirling a strand of blond hair with his finger. "But I want to hear it from you."

"Humph." She doesn't give him the satisfaction of knowing that his single sentence has thrown her off-guard. "You better learn to kiss better, Nara. Sudden kisses are meant to be longer."

"Okay," He doesn't miss a beat. "But I don't think you'll like me experimenting on all my fans so I decided to make you my first test subject. Forgive my lack of experience."

"Listen." She looks away. "I am not your property."

Shikamaru frowns. "I never said you were."

She glares. "Ino said you did."

"Temari." He is going to kill Ino for spreading stupid rumors later. "I never said anything like that. No one even knows that we are together. Except for the display just now which pretty much blew our cover."

Temari scrutinizes the look of latent annoyance on his face doubtfully.

"Look," he exhales. "When I first told you I liked you, was that the only thing that got through? Public declarations of love are for Naruto and Lee. I wanted you to know it, that's why I told you. I'm not going anywhere with it. I'm not running around with it, especially because you don't like me that way. And I am especially not going to tell anyone else, because it is none of their business."

I just want you to like me back. That's all I am asking. That's all I want. He wants to say, but the words don't leave his mouth.

"Are you going to trust me or Ino?" This really isn't the best time to begin worrying about their trust issues, especially when they have quite a few civilians eyeing them. "Ino, who is quite conveniently, in charge of drumming up kunoichi support for a kissing booth?" Even if she was in charge of promoting—no, coercing, shinobi involvement into setting up that kissing booth, that was going too far.

"Wait." His mind is sending arrows back and forth, connecting the dots. "That was why you joined her kissing booth? To demonstrate that you are not my property?"

She doesn't answer, slightly ashamed—it is a petty excuse, but he is right, she doesn't want anything finalized, she was angry that he could make assumptions like that without her consent.

"You—" He hesitates, and she can see the hurt flash behind his eyes. He doesn't want to say this, but the words tumble out before he can stop them. Force them in where they belong. Perhaps bury his head in the sand along with them. "You should have known me better." Even as friends.

It is far from an accusation, but she flinches from the strength of his words, because this is coming from Shikamaru.

"I'm sorry."

He turns away from her, almost dismissively, and suddenly the strength of how much she wants to run back to him and make it right, to wipe off that look of disappointment from his features, until he is smiling, eyes laughing with hers again.

"Shikamaru."

He turns, eyes trained on hers. "I'll speak to you later, okay?"

She can see him categorizing her through his eyes, reassessing her, consolidating this new information, her unreliability—She wanted him to know her, except that that includes her flaws too, her distrust for others, her fear.

The friction between showing him the best of herself and being honest. That was the bargain after all, except she didn't expect herself to want to him to know only the best of herself.

"Are you disappointed?" It is a stupid question to ask, he is obviously disappointed. But she wonders if he can hear the bubble-like hope rising unbidden to the surface please don't give up on me, please.

"Yes." He doesn't lie. "This is you though."

"I know."

It is almost as if he can sense her hesitance, because she sees his fingers stretch forward to bridge the gap, almost as if he wants to thread his fingers through hers. Before he holds back. "Did you know I made a list of all your flaws before?"

"What?" She looks up, jolted from her barely concealed frustration with herself or him. He isn't sure. He wishes he hasn't said it, it is one thing for him to be disappointed, but she is still the Temari he has come to know, just another side previously unseen. "You did?"

"Yeah, tried to use it to get over you before the first time I confessed." He grins. "You don't think I tried all methods to get over you? Confession was a last resort after I exhausted all other options."

And with that the awkward moment is over.

"Foul temper is the first, not being able to cook adequately without burning the house down is a second." He crinkles his brow, trying to remember what else he wrote. "Trying to carve everyone up within a fifty-metre radius when she is pissed is the third—"

"Idiot, I do not!" She is grinning now, before she recalls something. "Then what did you promise Ino?"

"Hmm—?" She is looking deadly serious now. Shikamaru dregs up the recollection of all his previous talks with Ino—and begins to laugh. "Oh you mean the flowers..."

"What did you promise her?"

Shikamaru tries not to laugh. It is hard, even on pain of death in the face of her death-threat glare. "That if I ever like a girl, she will be the first I tell. That's how she knew I liked you."

"YOU WHAT?!"

"Miss," a voice interrupted them. "You're stealing my boyfriend."

Temari cast him a withering look. "Nara, if I find that you have been sleeping with—"

He turns her around none too gently. Making girls jealous is never his forte, and when it comes to Temari who can level a forest with her bare hands, he is in favor of self-preservation. She blinks. "You have a eight-year old suitor?"

He runs a hand through his hair. "Troublesome." Really, jealousy is far too overrated.

"I love Shika," the girl half her height looks as threatening as she could from where she was standing.

Shikamaru isn't sure what he is expecting. After all, Temari can't possibly beat up a six-year old girl. But she can walk off, or make him the recipient of yet another punch in the face. Either would have avoided the hordes of bloodthirsty mothers on her trail.

"I know," she bends down and smiles softly. Shikamaru sits back down and tries not to feel jealous. He doesn't succeed. "He's pretty cute, isn't he? I'll leave him with you then."

"Thank you," the girl says gravely.

"Have fun," She tells him as she stood up.

"Wait for me," He tries not to look too desperate. "Please?"

She runs her fingers through his hair affectionately. "I'll see you later."

"Okay." He doesn't bother to stop smiling. "You better."

He turns to watch her go—really, its pathetic that he doesn't even resent the depths he has sunk to with Temari—before he is interrupted by a slight pulling on his hand.

"She's nice." The girl—Taku, was it?—smears paint over her artwork. He refrains to mention that more of it is going over his hand than the art piece in question.

"I know."

"Do you love her?"

"Not yet." He threads his fingers through his rumpled hair, and smiles when he remembers how she did the same. "But I think I might."

"She likes you."

"I hope so, but even if she does, she doesn't know it yet." Shikamaru grinned and ruffled her hair. "I hope she likes me more than everyone else though. Because I like her more than anyone else."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

He ponders over this question. "Because when she is around, troublesome things are still too troublesome, but not that much."

"But you told her that it was. I heard you say it just now."

"Yeah."

"So you were lying?"

He weighs the odds of corrupting a minor's view, and decides that she would figure out sooner or later anyway. "Pretty much. But that's our secret though."

"That's bad but—"

Shikamaru blinks. One moment it is perfectly fine. The next, the tent is trampled in the ruckus of a feral wildcry, Naruto gets his hand stepped on in the frenzy of shrieking civilians, and three armed girls, pulling an embarassed Hinata with them are flooding into the tent.

The mothers and their hapless offspring turn to look.

"Hey—" Sakura stifles a whimper at a particularly terrifying look from half-a-dozen hormonal women. "Temari told us you guys were running a harem in here when we asked why she had paint streaks on her face—"

Shikamaru tried not to groan too loudly. Troublesome indeed.

Tsunade declares the fair close three days early, and promptly bans all shinobi-kunoichi booths (kissing or no) citing liabilities to public safety.

Shikamaru himself doesn't care. At least he has Temari to go cloud-watching with, and as far as he is concerned, the rest doesn't matter. Although the fact that she isn't operating a kissing booth is definitely a plus in his book.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The next time they meet, they don't bother with formalities, because time is limited and they are both well acquainted with the news.

"Why aren't you joining ANBU?"

"I don't want to."

"Really?" He drawls, eyebrows disbelievingly raised. "Because I could have sworn this is from the exact same woman who declared to me that she would quote—kill every fucking person who dares to stand in my way—to get into the ANBU corps squad."

"I changed my mind." She eyes him, just daring him to question.

He does. He is Nara Shikamaru after all. "I don't believe you."

"It doesn't matter, Shikamaru. Last I heard, I was the one who got offered the placement, not some no-good, laidback idiot of a Leaf ninja."

He looks vaguely hurt, and she doesn't care. Better him getting his feelings hurt than the alternative—

"Look at me." She ignores him and lies back down. "I said, look at me, Temari."

And all of a sudden he knows why, perhaps from that irritated tilt of her jawline, and how she's angrily contemplating the night sky with its rimless clouds stretching as far as the eye can see, or it could be just that she is trying not to look at him.

"This is because of the state-sanctioned murders isn't it? You're afraid that you can't turn your back then, leave Suna, join somewhere else—" His voice brightens, like a newborn's tentative first smile. They both know that once an ANBU, forever a shinobi, there can be no turning her back on her country. Without being branded as a rogue ninja. "Perhaps, another Leaf village for example—"

"Don't be absurd, Nara." Her response is quick-fire and hurts just like a cutting whiplash scarring his skin. "We aren't even a couple."

When he speaks again, his voice is strangled, blended with the softness of uncertainty.

"Well, I am paid to sit and think too much after all." He says lightly, sitting up. She doesn't bother to correct him or point out the visible sign of weakness displayed in his body's almost instinctive drooping into a half-crouch, arms around his knees. His body posture screams disappointment despite his carefully crafted apathy.

Neither does she ask how he came to that conclusion. He isn't the genius ninja for nothing after all.

"Fine, it may not be me. But it involves your brothers," his voice is strong now in its utter certainty at least about this if not anything else. "Gaara—you wonder how he'll cope with the loss of another loved one."

"Shut up, Nara." She flicks a sliver of grass from her arm, picking another fragment off and crumbling it between her thumb and forefinger.

He doesn't "And Kankuro, how he might deal without you—you to chivvy around, you to rile up, you to elbow in the morning, or to grouse about your non-existent culinary skills—"

"I SAID SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUT—" She is crying now, curled up in a fragile breakable ball half-hidden in the long grass.

So he shuts up and hugs her so tight, almost as if he never will let go, never wants to let go anyway, until she cries her fill, and he finds that he is crying too, tears like a fountain welling up and hot, seeping from beneath his closed lids squeezed shut so hard because he doesn't want to confront the truth, and his tears are dripping down the side of his face and away, until they disappear the tangled mess that is her mussed blond hair.

So she sits there and lets herself hug him until her tears fade into just the occasional hiccup that is, until she looks up and finds that he's crying with her which is apparently the trigger for her to burst into full blow-out bawling mood. This in turn makes his own tears dry up, replaced by a vague part-guilty part-embarrassed frown because there's nothing worse than for the girl he loves to see him crying, especially when he was trying to make her stop because after all, he was the one who made her cry in the first place. But apparently that does nothing but makes her cry harder.

When they—she, he corrects defiantly, she was the only one—finally stops crying, they lie back on the soaked grass and try not to look too embarrassed with themselves.

"It's like the aftermath of a really bad kiss." She tells him thoughtfully. "Or the morning after a drunk night where you realize that you kissed your best friend."

"And we both know what that feels like."

"More me than you for the first."

"Hey!" He says, miffed enough to jump back into conversation when all he wanted to do was hide under a rock for the rest of his animate life anyway. "How would you know that it wasn't like that for me too?"

"Because I'm Temari." She contradicts. "And also Nara, it was kind of obvious that I was your first."

"This is embarrassing enough without all this added information, thank you very much."

"Why?"

"I just cried in front of you."

"I thought we got over that but apparently not. You've cried in front of me before, Shikamaru. Just that—if we're going to match scores on the embarrassing crying jag scale, I'll be the winner."

His expression begs to differ.

"Because I'm Temari." She says. "And in Suna, if a girl cries in front of a guy—"

"He has to marry her?" He interjects. Perhaps something good will come out of this after all.

"No, he gets castrated."

"You're kidding!" He says, appalled. There can't possibly be a rule about that—Suna would be out of males within the next decade.

"I'm not." She says straight-faced for one wildly insane moment where he envisages the unpleasant scenario of Suna and Konoha coming to war over his precious family jewels, before she cracks up. He rolls his eyes and tries to keep the look of relief from being quite that visible.

"I just want you to live for you." Shikamaru places a crossed arm under his head and leans back on the dewy grass. "Don't make decisions because of me, or for Suna, or even for Gaara and Kankuro. You were never made to be a woman who lived for others."

"What do you want then?" She finds herself silently close to tears. Again, she chastises herself. The thought makes her want to hit someone, preferably him. "I am trying—" Her voice collapses inwards, he thinks he can feel her crumbling through her voice alone. But he has to do this, he now knows it with the certainty that only truth alone possesses.

"Temari." His voice is quiet. "Don't try so hard for us. And if it matters, don't try so hard for me."

She feels her legs buckling. He cannot be saying this. It is just not him. This isn't Shikamaru, the one who begged her to try, did everything he could to convince her to stay. She can see him choosing his next words with careful deliberation. Don't say it, her head says. If you do, it means that you never wanted me enough—that when it came down to it, I didn't mean enough to you. And because her heart knows what her head does not, please, it begs, please don't—

"This isn't the end you know. I'm still trying, I always sucked at knowing when to quit." He says lightly, and her heart gives a boundless leap. She can almost taste the relief; its choking her in its desperation as if she had been drowning all the while not knowing that she merely had to open her mouth to gulp great gasps of air.

"I'm still going to try to be with you, even if you go bat-shit crazy, wonder why you even bother to be with this laidback, good-for-nothing Leaf shinobi who's always going off on S-class missions that he knows he can't win and who asks for more than you can give.

But I still want to try, so don't make me give up just yet. That is, until you find someone else—a non-murderous civilian hopefully—who wears nice suits and takes you out for meals in fancy restaurants and can quote Shakespeare and Byron and serenades you outside your window and is the head of some inter-village corporation.

And Gaara and Kankuro, you think they'll want to be the ones holding you back?" He knows he might be sending her off to potential death, ruining any possible chance at all that she might stay with him in Konoha. But he can't stop himself from flinging the words at her like his precise kunai sharpened to a razor-thin blade.

She flinches almost instinctively; she is a finely honed weapon—a kunoichi to the very last.

"Temari, Gaara knows the danger and he knows that every single time he puts your name down for a jounin-mission that this is it, you might not come back. If he is strong, brave enough to deal with the dangers, the hurt and guilt that his sister might not come back from a mission that he sent her on, why aren't you brave enough to do the same?

And Kankuro, do you think its okay with him not always being in the same team as his elder sister? He deals with it, he deals with the possibility of your death all the time."

Temari looks discomfited. His disloyal heart yearns in vain—don't, just don't listen to me, you don't have to, I don't mean it, you know I don't—His mind trudges on regardless and his mouth follows in quick pursuit.

"And—" He takes a breath and plunges forward. This is the end; the end of everything. "If it matters to you, even if you don't make ANBU, I will."

He ignores her stupefied face. "I might take the jounin test in a few months, and then Tsunade has told me that ANBU will be a natural promotion for me after that."

Temari knows, she knows how much Tsunade relies on him—she had been counting on that he was of more use alive than dead to keep him from the front lines, the blood bath, but this—

Both of them will be stripped of their ambassadorship status when they become ANBU, the workload is immense, there is no time for distractions. Especially illicit liaisons with shinobi from other hidden villages.

"She wants me to join ANBU after the jounin test, the jounin test is almost a formality this time round. With Asuma out, there is a need to replace the ranks fast. Only an ANBU can lead certain S-ranked missions after all. She needs me there." That was an extension of what Tsunade had said. But it was true, she had asked him. He just hadn't given an answer just yet because of a certain blond Sand kunoichi and the Leaf ambassadorship.

"And just how does that affect me exactly?" She says sarcastically, but her wit lacks the usual vehemence and they both know it. "Nara—"

"I know, you want your space." he stands and brushes the grass streaks off his shinobi vest. "I'm just asking you to think about it seriously, for yourself. I'm off."

She doesn't wonder how he knows her so well, the air of slight discomfort that says she wants silence, she wants peace, she wants not to think about anything at all. Ignoring the slight painful twitch in his chest; that she wants him gone, he clears out.

"I just want—," she tells the stale trail of air after his abrupt departure. "I want—"

She doesn't know. What exactly does she want?

She doesn't go home that night, just sits there meditating until the cold Konoha winds at night blow her back to the ambassador flat. They aren't colder than Suna's chill, but she isn't crazy enough to sit outside when there's mediocre central heating waiting for her at home.

There's a brief pang of guilt when she realizes she didn't make it home for dinner, he has gotten into the habit of cooking for her everytime she visits (even when Gaara and Kankuro visit with her too) then promises herself that she will finish every bite of his dinner that she wasn't there to eat. Idiot Shikamaru for making her feel guilty, idiot her for feeling guilty—idiot idiot idiot—

"Temari." She looks up when she drags herself across his front step, half-expecting him to be there. It's too late to hide the flush from her cheeks before she realizes its Kankuro instead.

"And who were you thinking it might be?" Kankuro asks lecherously. "A certain genius ninja perhaps—OW! Fuck, Tem, that was your shoe!"

"You deserve it." She ignores his faint whine and pads on into said Konoha ninja's threadbare carpet to the kitchen.

"You're not going to find anything, ya know," Kankuro grins gleefully as she picks through his fridge. Carrots, apples, where the hell was her dinner?

"If you've finished my leftovers—" She eyes him beadily, briefly contemplating murder.

"Nah—" He dodges when she makes do with a well-placed whack on his arm. "Shikamaru said you wouldn't be back in time for dinner."

"How did he know I wasn't going to come back in time?" Idiot, she chastises herself, he is Shikamaru.

"So you're going on with the ANBU thing?" He questions.

She nods, not trusting herself to talk now.

"Tem, its fine." He lays a comforting arm on her shoulder, and if she was a better person, she might have cried again, laid her heart out for all to see, and perhaps Kankuro would know what to do—except that he was right, it was her decision to make and no one else. "We'll be okay, all you have to do is concentrate on surviving and we'll make it through. It's what wedo every day, this is no different."

Except that it is, and she knows it.

"I'll streamline your application tomorrow then," Gaara says evenly from the doorway. She thinks it is the trademark of a shinobi when neither of them flinches at his sudden appearance, silent muted footsteps without the susurrus of rustling through the carpet.

"Gaara." Her voice is perilously close to breaking. "Thank you." She knows how much easier it would be for him to hide the application offer, shred it up as Hokage, never allowing it to see the light of day.

"It was always your decision, Temari." He corrects, confused.

"And for giving me something to fight for." Something that kept her rooted, centred. The added incentive to protect, to put her life on the line every single day, because he was the Hokage, and her brother, she would—could never turn her back on them. Definitely not on him. Any single person that threatened his safety would be eliminated.

"Idiot Kankuro, you too." For not pleading for me not to go. Because then I would—I might just—

"Thanks—" She pulls them in one of her patented hugs, too tight and for once, neither of them complains.

They stay like that for a long time, until she pulls away. Surreptitiously drying her eyes on her grass-stained sleeves, Temari wanders out to look for a certain missing ninja. "Where's Shikamaru?"

"Out," Gaara answers from inside the kitchen. "He says to tell you when you came home, that he picked up chocolate cake on the way back because you'll probably need it."

"Hey!" Apparently that's reason enough for Kankuro to emerge from within the bathroom where he needs to readjust his makeup—and a Goddamnit, I was not crying okay, Temari?!— (the smeared eyeliner does nothing for his appearance and he knows it). "Why the hell didn't he tell me he got chocolate cake? Did he get my favourite biscotti too?"

"Because he knew that you would finish it before she came back." Cue Gaara's monotone. "It's called taking precautions, my brother. And no he didn't, be glad he didn't just get a slice for Temari. "

"Cheap bastard. Even if I did finish it, he can just pick another up on the way home!"

"He'll be back late and the bakery closes at 9. Kankuro, do you know where he put that cake?!" Temari can't do anything but laugh at Gaara's slightly rabid growl of frustration.

"You asking me?! He didn't even tell me he bought one!" hollers Kankuro from the bathroom. She decides to go back in before Gaara destroys Nara's carefully organized refrigerator system with a single well-placed attack. Even without Shukaku, his grip on his temper only stretches quite that far, especially with chocolate cake at stake.

But that's incentive enough for Kankuro to scatter and play hide-and-seek with Shikamaru's forks (he simply can't get the hang of where the Nara puts his kitchen utensils for some reason) while Gaara washes a few plates and Temari brings out the cake to its place of honour.

"But Tem," Kankuro shovels a overflowing heap of cake into his mouth. "If you already made your decision that you were gonna join before dinner, why didn't you come back to eat then?"

She rolled her eyes. Trust Kankuro to think about food when she was undergoing the biggest crisis in her 25 years. Except—

"I only just decided before I came home. On the way home, to be exact." Her brow furrowed. "How did you know? You asked me in confirmation; like it it was already a given answer—"

"We were taking bets and Shikamaru said you would. And he was the last person who saw you so I thought you had already made up your mind and told him." She sees Gaara nodding in assent.

"Oh."

She doesn't say that she was the one mired in confusion while he was poised in comprehension, somehow reaching there before her.

He, when he returns, doesn't mention the cake.

She doesn't thank him.

He understands.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Temari," Gaara's voice caught her before she left. "The Konoha ambassador's coming by today."

She flushes as Kankuro wolf-whistles softly below his breath. "So?"

Kankuro just grinns maddeningly. "So I guess you've got to show him around again."

"Temari…" Gaara looks slightly discomfited.

"What?" She growls. That was it, she is going to kill Kankuro later. But perhaps after she has brought Shikamaru to that new ramen place that opened across the street. She had a feeling he would like that, and it was relatively new enough that she can hold a proper conversation with him without people looking at the both of them: her and the definitely crazed man for being with the Kazekage's sister.

They both like to pretend that Suna is just like Konoha in all the ways that do matter.

"Um…"

She glared at Gaara. "If you're going to twit me about that lazy-assed ninja, you're going to be making dinner for the next month. By yourself."

"The Konoha ambassador has changed." He tries to force on an impassive mask, but she can't help noticing the slight softening of his voice.

"They changed his position?" She felt a sudden wave of nausea. This could not be happening.

"Tsunade…" He hesitated, as if debating whether to inform her or not.

"Tell me." It is a command. Notwithstanding the fact that he was the Hokage, and her brother, he knows firsthand how she can make his life a living hell when she's pissed.

"She informed me that it was a voluntary resignation." It was too cold here, why was it so cold? She locks her arms at her sides.

"Temari?" Kankuro looked concerned, but it was more than she could bear.

"I'm fine." Her voice is a trifle harsh when she waves him off. "That Konoha ninja—I was just betting with myself how long before he would find it troublesome enough to quit."

She stalks out of the room, ignoring the sympathetic looks they cast her.

"How long do you think she's going to take before she requests an ambassador mission to Konoha?" Kankuro twirls a kunai in his hand. "Hey Gaara, do you want to send me along so I can play backup for her Kill-Shikamaru mission?"

Gaara continues writing. "I need someone going in an ambassador capacity."

"You know Temari's capable of killing him by herself, and then digging him up just to have the fun of killing him again."Kankuro's grin widens. "That's why I want to go along."

"As I mentioned, a peace-keeping trip, Brother."

"And you know how I'm always ready to risk my life for my sister."

"Too true. And especially when it involves killing Temari's suitors," Gaara finally looks up. "Temari will stop before she kills him. You, on the other hand—"

"I'll promise to stop before I castrate him?" Kankuro wheedles. "Please—?"

Gaara is back at his paperwork. With a broken-hearted and eventually murderous Temari on the warpath, and an equally irritating Kankuro on his back, it appears painfully clear he needs every moment he can get to finish all his work before his head explodes.

Said female ninja on the loose is currently hard at work deforesting all surrounding foliage. When she is done, they are going to be able to repopulate a whole goddamn hidden village on the newly exposed ground.

What was she expecting? Hugs and kisses and fingers twined around each other in the dark? No, that's not it, her heart chants defiantly. You expected consistency if nothing else from him. God knows she wasn't the most likeable of all kunoichi, but he was the one who came up with the challenge. Wasn't it the bet in the first place: to see if he could withstand her, raw and exposed even in her most thoroughly hateful moments?

Perhaps that was the problem, she decides embedding another kunai into the bark grimly. This isn't what she is with the guys she has been around before.

With them, she is snarky but infinitely less so, she has never cried in front of them, broken down so badly that she can't remember being whole again until he put her back together even though she never expected he could nor asked him to. She has never wanted to lean on someone so badly, has never wanted to be allowed to without being labelled as a burden to be discarded.

She's been whole for so long that she has forgotten what it feels to be broken, a dusty fragmented thread left to hold up two points when the other had long let go. She has been whole for so long she has forgotten how he is a part of the glue keeping her together.

Why why why—it is no longer a question but a mantra ricocheting from point to point within her mind. She buries another kunai into the tree before looking down slightly surprised at the pain. Her fingernails have dug little white crescents in her palms without her noticing.

Idiot, she muses silently. Idiot her for agreeing, idiot him for initiating the bet, for putting her in a position where she would miss him, for her moving from mere like to craving his presence at any given time. For wishing, for hoping, for expecting—

She hammers the last kunai into the wood. She is over. Done. Absolutely finished with him. His antics, his hidden innuendos of subtle love declarations—or had she been overthinking it? Was it nothing but another extended game of shogi with him?

She leaves without allowing herself to look at the play of her shadow on the arid ground, if it retains the pressure of its shadow weaver's previous fingerprints.

Did he ever understand? Or was it her wishful thinking?

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

It takes her two days of slammed doors and kunai embedded in places where no kunai should venture, namely windows and doors and most conspicuously, the tell-tale ruin of cigarette boxes and tobacco holders (vestiges of Kankuro's late night speed dating). Until Gaara ignores the threat that is his life at stake, to drop suspicious hints of "Perhaps it would be a good time for a Konoha ambassador mission?" which are loudly and virulently refused.

That idiot knows where she is, and if he hasn't come, well—he hasn't. And that, as Baki likes to say, is that.

There is no reason for a conveniently scheduled mission that would be less of an attempt to reinforce the peace between hidden villages, and more of an excuse for her to moon love-struck over him. Especially when is perilously close to destroying said peace by cruelly and painstakingly mauling a certain pineapple head for toying with her heart.

She is many things, but foolhardy she is not (despite Kankuro's loud and repeated assertions to the contrary everytime he assumes she was out of earshot).

Neither is she blessed with a streak of masochism that desperately yearns for pitying gazes and the possibility of running into Nara Shikamaru, newly minted jounin and his girlfriend. A blond girlfriend whom fate would have it, does not happen to hail from Suna.

So when she locks the door of her flat the third morning after, it is with an air of triumph that she is over, definitely over, that irritating pineapple head.

She is also, perhaps, toying with the idea of submitting her resignation letter to Gaara as Suna's official ambassador. Really, it is time for Kankuro to be the one delving through the masses of red tape—she is a living testament to its successful retraining with regards to her anger management problems.

So her first reaction, when cool fingers wrap around her wrist as she is turning the lock, is to dropkick the intruder into oblivion.

She blames the paperwork for wondering if the sight of him buried in the wall, groaning slightly, is a hallucination.

It is a spur of the moment decision then that should he bend down on one knee and attempt to apologize for his past transgression, she is going to dropkick him into oblivion. Because she is more than happy to try shattering his skull again.

Or if he allows any inkling of a sheepish look to dawn on his face, it would be infinitely irresponsible of her to allow that to pass without a similar response.

And if he dares to serenade her with an apology ode or pull out a bunch of flowers, he wouldn't be Shikamaru (so the above response wouldn't be applicable, but which would mean that it was an enemy shinobi who knows her weakness. In which case the above response would be appropriate anyway.

Really, Temari muses to herself, if all problems were solved with a good dropkick, preferably as close to the genital area as can possibly be reached, the world would be an infinitely more satisfying place. Although that might be at the expense of the extinction of all homo sapiens.

Except that he is Shikamaru, and he never does act the way she expects him to.

"I'm tired," he says softly. She can barely make out his words, as he moves towards her, head dropping to her shoulder.

Her arms come up almost instinctively to hold on to him, and she can feel him, holding on to her as if she was his only grasp on life. There is no pity, gone is his gentleness or guise of male superiority, he is sagging against her, heavy and warm. Her arms are the only thing holding him upright.

Shikamaru is an immobile statue of smeared dirt and dishevelment; a solidified fracture of chakra-exhaustion bound by skin and ragged obstinacy, having run the last kilometer on pure adrenaline as the dust and sand blow him home.

There is nothing apathetic about his eyes now, and try as she might, she cannot find her bubbling rage under his listless gaze. He looks drained, eyes heavy with unfulfilled sloth as she staggers under their combined weight back inside and over to the couch.

"Idiot," she says quietly, distangling a crumpled snarl in his hair and letting the strands run through her fingers. There will be time to ask him about Ino later and Naruto and Tsunade. But now that she has seen him again, her insecurities appear vapid and hollow, dissipating into ash and cloud. "Idiot, you made me doubt."

The confusion is apparent in his eyes. But he knows enough about her that exhaustion be damned, he tugs her down with him until she is laughing above and on top of him in a crush of tangled limbs.

He allows himself to fall asleep to that laugh.

It is only until later that she finds out from him that it was a temporary revoking of his ambassadorial position, forced by a conniving Ino and Tsunade, both who realized that blackmail was the only way to force a certain lazy genius into taking the jounin tests.

She also knows, without asking, that Shikamaru plans on manipulating the Hokage's mission list to ensure Ino is out of town the next time she visits. Just to avoid the troublesome mess that a little unnecessary bloodshed might cause.

She momentarily thanks her lucky stars for her erratic schedule which would make any advance planning on his part exceptionally difficult. That would teach Ino to mess with her man (or perhaps a certain Suna kunoichi's feelings).

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

He is counting the days since they last met—three months and thirteen days, to be exact, and wondering when her next Konoha mission will be—when he is jolted awake by a muffled shuffle outside followed by abrupt silence.

Shikamaru tenses below his sheets, every instinct on high alert now. He can feel his muscles clenching in instinctive response, the shadows awakening and springing to his command.

His mute shadow inches its way across the floorboards, as he lies unmoving. Its prey makes an half-hearted attempt at evasion but the dark is his territory; it slinks from another corner, binding the intruder firm. Whoever it is, his or her flare of chakra is almost entirely extinguished; he is betting it is one of the newly crowned genin, perhaps Konohamaru's kage bunshin but it is always good to be on guard—when he flicks on the light.

She is the last person he expects.

The florescent light bulb casts a splayed line of fragmented illumination across her face. The crimson streaks have darkened into rivulets under her mask, the stench of blood so strong, she reeks of it. A thin patina of cerise, like the dregs of a wine glass three-quarters emptied, clings to her skin; almost as if she has deliberately submerged herself in its scarlet trail.

It is only from long-term experience that he doesn't bend over retching from the stench of blood in the air. Her set jaw bears the claret rouge of blood.

He blames it on his sleepiness that he doesn't smell it before.

For a moment, he can hardly breathe, lungs constricting before he snaps out his stupor.

"Are you hurt?" He asks roughly, shaking her with an almost unnatural desperation. This scene is all too familiar, playing out again in Asuma's death throes, Ino pumping chakra into a half-dead body wracked by convulsions, of a set of fists clenched in wretched impotence. "Temari, are you hurt? Where is it? TALK TO ME!"

His voice has risen to a half-shout, but he cannot stand to lose another, especially not her—anybody else but her. Until he sees her green eyes, lidded and almost dark in its anguish that he realizes its more than that. It doesn't take much to understand that its so so much more than that when she heaves herself off the ground, takes a few shuddering steps when the light snaps off.

She is poised by the window to flee as easily as she has entered, when he steps towards her.

His shadow possession jutsu is at attention, ready to be utilized at a moment's notice but she doesn't move. So he takes step by tentative step towards her, until she is finally clenched tight in his arms.

"I'm sorry," he says into her hair. Even with his eyes made to be attuned to the darkness, he can barely make out her blond hair from its red spray. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

Because she hasn't come to him because of her injuries, he should know better than that. She is shuddering in his arms, he can feel her pulse; she is alive, but hurt somewhere so deep even she herself cannot make it, the tenuous fibrous thread of who she is, from the blood and gore.

Her legs give out and he is the only thing holding her up, until they both sink to the ground.

He doesn't flinch from the flecks of blood coagulating under her nails when she traces the contours of his face, from his eyebrows to his jaw. They dislodge, slowly, blood-caked fragments peeling off in minute flakes, staining his face.

It is only later that he understands when he goes to the bathroom to get a wet rag why she was crying, the sticky crimson flakes a smeared tattoo, infused in his skin and trailing from his eyes. Almost as if he has been weeping tears of blood.

Which is why he leaves their blood smears on his face rather than wash them off (an emblem of what exactly, he does not know) when he returns clutching the cloth.

He fumbles, his fingers inept as they flit across her face. It is so garishly stained that for he has to keep his eyes trained on her to remember that this is Temari, this is Temari just to keep his stomach from turning over, from saliva to coagulate into the bile-like acidity he that is on the verge of erupting. So much that he wonders how and why she is not crazed and out of her mind with the horrors that have made her this blood-drenched warrior.

His fingers reach the curve of her ANBU mask and her fingers scrabble for it in a panic. He doesn't move to take it off, just skims the edges of the mask to remove the solidified blood, hardened from the hours. It is fine if she doesn't want to, he knows that without it she is as naked as a newborn child. It is not only a mask, it marks the start of a life haunted by the horrors that she has witnessed. Her eyes are wide and staring and tortured, he can see the dawning realization, the sickening dread of a life hunted by memories of those she has eliminated with a wave of a fan.

She has killed before, but not to the extent that her arms are slick with the blood of the masses, fingers so slippery, she can feel the coppery tang on her tongue and on her palm. The only part of her face left untouched by the spray of blood is her face, but it is no longer her face. It is the face of a cruel grinning gargoyle, mouth twisted upwards in the sadistic leer of murder.

"Shikamaru." She says hoarsely. And with a start, he realizes that the cloth is smearing rather than removing, the blood so thick that it has soaked clear through. She is looking at it with such a vague indistinct sense of horror that he just hurls it out of the window.

He will pick it up tomorrow, and it will be caked with the blood of civilians or shinobi he has never even met but are now dead. But for now, he gathers her broken body in his arms and waits for the sun to rise.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

She wakes up with in his arms, her back against his, both of them leaning against the bottom of the window sill . The sunlight is casting crisscrossing diamondsof light and dark against her thighs. She can hear the shouts of vendors hawking their wares outside, but she doesn't want to move. He is somehow so warm, hair golden in the morning sun. It would be so easy for her to fall back into the pool of dark inviting sleep.

She extends her feet, attempting to shake off the stiffness from her limbs, before she notices his chin on her shoulder. Right now, his arms are around her, she feels the hitch in his breath as he she looks up to see him looking down, eyes half-lidded from sleep.

"Hey, troublesome woman."

His fingers touch her face, and for one mad moment she jolts upwards, wondering if she has lost her sense of touch. She cannot feel his fingers on her.

It would be insufficient compensation for the number of lives she has taken last night; her tessen still bears its ignominious stain of a night of wanton violence—but she never expected this—this.

Until she realizes she is still wearing her mask.

His eyes are open and non-judgmental on hers as she pries it off, wincing slightly at the smears. They are not yet at the stage when he can remove it for her—perhaps one day, but not now. But when his thumb skims her cheek, she makes no objection and leans into his touch.

She thinks she will always remember this moment, the touch of his fingers cool on her face, smudging away any vestige of last night's bloody remnants. When she closes her eyes, it is almost as if he is mapping the contours of her face by touch alone. Every gesture of his seems to be smoothing away the memories, dead sensory nerve endings stirring back to life, as if she is slowly regaining her senses, one touch at a time.

"I've got to go." She slides out of his grip. He wants to hate her for this, a month's worth of wondering and waiting condensed into a single bloodstained night. The months are blurred into a garish stream of missions and picking out clouds in the sky that reminds of her hair forced and tamed into four blond bundles. "My team is waiting for me."

Temari potters around in his small kitchen; her natural fluidity on the battlefield apparently does not translate into grace in the kitchen. She dwarfs it from the force of her mere presence alone; entirely too large for it, a fascinating turmoil of constant motion and virulent curses, when hip meets unexpected edge while navigating his cramped domain.

His lips quirk up, she is bending over, almost as if clearing up the remnants of last night's wild debauchery—until he realizes it is the blood he has left in the sink, smeared residue after washing the bloodsoaked cloth. She has smelt it quicker than he has. When she is around, her magnetism, the weight of her personality makes all essentials forgotten and unconsequential. It is only when Shikamaru, still sprawled against the wall, watches her flitter, all angles and elbows, that he realizes he can never cage her, this utterly undomesticated species of the wilderness.

He will spend his life wishing that she is always by his side, but she will never be and he secretly doesn't want to settle for anything less. And with the more time he spends with her, the more he becomes convinced he never will be able to settle for anyone else, even with the guarantee of another's continual presence.

She has spoilt him with her unexpected retorts, her silent cloud-watching, her fierce obstinacy in the face of danger. Temari is the worst first crush in the world because first crushes are meant to be forgotten, cherished as a beloved memory of first love and nothing else. They aren't meant to set the bar so goddamn high that no girl can possibly match up, rendering his bachelorhood almost a predestined unchangeable fact in the annals of history.

It's a toss-up between being wildly, almost desperately happy a small fraction of the time and, given her erratic schedule, dealing with the constant missing. Or of being mildly unhappy all of the time without her. Neither option seems particularly appealing.

All of these are stolen fragments from the rush and tumble of time. He will end up dying honourably, Tsunade or Naruto's last-ditch defence against a faceless enemy, thrust in a mission the odds so high he cannot possibly win. She will most likely perish defending Suna's honour, fuelling the bloodlust between two hidden villages.

He doesn't like thinking about the 82.6% statistical possibility of that happening. They are shinobi—that alone explains everything, so he says nothing at all.

"Hey." Her eyes are dark on his face as he snaps back to attention. "I'll be off now."

"Right." He tries to focus. "I'll see you soon."

He watches her meld into the crush of civilian bodies on the street from the window. The jostling crowd swirls, making way and parting as she enters before closing up like the eddying waters of the Red Sea in her wake. There is no visible change at all, just the flicker of time past.

The sheets on his bed are unrumpled from their camping out on the floor, the paint remains peeling and flaking onto his kitchen's unvarnished floorboards; she has left it surprisingly immaculate.

He is a master of how things can change in the blink of an eye. Although its facade seamlessly unchanged, no visible reaction can be perceived from the deceptively smooth surface. But in this case, he is groping blindly in the dark, unsure what lies in the darkness ahead, its jaws extended in a pseudo-smile.

He feels like he is immolating himself on this matchstick love, that will eventually flare itself out along with himself, the proverbial moth.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"You lied to me." Temari says the minute he sees her and two million, three hundred thousand minutes (not counting decimal points) since the last time he saw her.

Shikamaru decides not to remind her that it is their first meeting in 5.3 months, as her blow catches him full across the mouth but not off-guard. "Why did you make the choice for me?"

He had been wondering when the news would reach her that he has refused the ANBU offer. But she isn't lying when he says that he made the choice for her. Despite her declarations to the contrary, both of them know that it wasn't entirely her fear for Gaara and Kankuro. If his implied promise to join Konoha's special force corps had gone unspoken, she wouldn't have joined the carefully controlled killing machine that is Suna's ANBU.

And perhaps they wouldn't be standing in the shade of the trees having this fight when she is furious and drunk and the nearest thing to being sick at heart as she can possibly be.

"How did you find out?" He inquires, with an almost childlike curiously.

"Joint ANBU training between Suna and Leaf." She snaps back. She remembers her crushing confusion when she didn't see the familiar disinterested slump of his shoulders in the line-up, when she asks Hawk (really, they ought to choose more original pseudonyms) where he is. And the crushing sense of betrayal when the Hyuuga told her that he had declined the offer.

He has forgotten about the Joint ANBU training, Gaara and Tsunade's latest brain-child to solidify the alliance between hidden villages.

"Would you have enlisted then?" He exhales. "Temari, you aren't sure of anything—yourself, Gaara and Kankuro, definitely not of me, or of us."

Her eyes scream betrayal, and he has envisioned this scenario, the outcome he never has the courage to contemplate. Because Temari's trust doesn't come cheap and it's dangerously easy to lose, it is slippingslippingslipping

"There's a reason why I never enlisted, Temari. I'm sure of my feelings; that's the only reason why I'm keeping my options open; because I might one day, just one day, leave all this behind and go to you. Ino and Chouji and Naruto and Tsunade? They will do fine without me. But you—"

She is seeing him now, so clearly, as if a pane of translucent glass blurring the surface has lifted and now, there's nothing but full comprehension.

"You change your mind, you are never certain; you make me doubt myself, second-guess my actions, get drunk because I am wondering what I did wrong, where I made a wrong turn."

He is jittery and highly caffeinated, fingers a death grip on her arm.

"I never know what you are thinking, Temari, I don't even know what you feel about me. When I am around you, I wonder, I question everything, sometimes my feelings, especially my feelings."

She remains silent.

"I wanted—" He says haltingly. "A normal not-so-pretty girlfriend later-turned-wife, two children and a dog. I wanted to settle for things within my reach. Until I met you and then I wanted so much to be all that you needed; I thought that if I love you, it would be enough.

"I wished for you, a home in Konoha, to be a normal shinobi protecting my country. I thought that if I loved you enough it would come naturally like breathing, in subsequent order. Until they fell apart, you dismantled them piece by unknowing piece. Until to have you would be enough."

"What I can give is only this much—I can never be enough for you; there are certain parts of you I cannot encroach upon; your passion as a shinobi, your duty to serve. But there are certain parts of you that are mine that I wish to keep. I want to watch them burn bright."

"Temari!" She has never been this glad for an interruption. She can never quite thank God enough for Ino's piercingly loud shriek as she fast descends upon them.

His fingers are still locked around her arm as she attempts to pry them off.

"Nara—"

"Your answer." He is looking at her expectantly.

"This isn't the time—" She tries to drown the scream rising at the back of her throat, a tsunami sweeping across all rationality. She can feel bile rise in the back of her throat, Gaara was right and she was wrong and oh god, she cannotcannotcannot do this.

"Shikamaru!" Ino shrieks from the distance, rapidly closing the gap. "Tsunade's orders: Send Temari of the Sands, I know she's with you, back to the ANBU training camp. They're moving out for a S-ranked preliminary drill, standard stake-out mission."

"I'm waiting for your answer." His voice bears an unknown edge of finality.

"Let go of me."

Shikamaru complies, stepping away. For once, his face is impassive. There is no level playing field now, the gauntlet is thrown, challenge gone uncontested; there can be no turning back.

And because she is Temari, and she cannot bear the look on his face that is devoid of all emotion, she turns and runs. It technically doesn't count as fleeing since she's running towards rather than away.

But she has long learnt that it isn't a dichotomy, one can simultaneously run towards and away, there is little variation but in the destination.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

He doesn't visit Suna after that.

She doesn't cry because she couldn't do it to him, and he, that kind idiot would have done it anyway:

"Temari."

Gaara's face is impassive as he meets her in his office.

"Nara Shikamaru—ANBU tells me that he believes he's in love with you." She cannot help it, she hates how she flinches like a cornered animal at the sound of his name from Gaara—Gaara, of all people. "What do you think of him?"

She thinks of whispered nothings, of his fingers slender but callused from kunai-practice winding around hers,. Of shared smiles across a table where Shikamaru is brawling with Kankuro, fleeting and easily missed. So she lets the words drop with finality."I think the belief might be reciprocated."

"Will you marry him?" His mouth curves up, this grimace is a form of Gaara's smile. Temari lets the tension slip from her shoulders.

"Maybe." She allows. "That is if he actually finds it not troublesome enough to propose."

"Then you should know." Gaara is choosing his words with great care now. "That the elders support your marriage. Not support as much as want this union."

The elders? Her brow quirks upwards in surprise.

"ANBU reconnaissance tells us that he will move to Suna. it corresponds to Tsunade's information that she will streamline his application provided I give my consent for his permanent move to Suna."

She feels a spreading warmth expanding, unfolding so forcefully from the inside outwards that her chest clenches in response. It is the comforting feeling that she loves and is loved in return, because she does love him, of course she does. And the knowledge that her love is reciprocated, that he will do anything but hurt her, of a life to look forward to with a man who knows her better than she knows herself. This is happiness.

"The elders believe he is a good match—he is indisputably the Leaf's leading strategist, they are already grooming him to be the next Hokage's advisor Without him, Leaf's internal strength will remain permanently crippled. He will be a hostage in the event of an outbreak of war. You should be prepared for this eventuality. He will always be used."

She is a pawn. And from now on, so will he be.

She is unsure of many things. Whether this love will last. How long before he recoils from his restraints. How long before his sudden flare of "love" banks into fading embers of chaotic regret. She cannot, does not want to watch it rise, shackled and muted, she has known the taste of regret from running too long, too far, too hard from her own devils, he is an innocent.

She wants it to remain that way, she wants to remember him that way.

That is what she tells Ino. "I want him to remain an innocent."

Ino wonders if she is slightly—no, scratch that—hideously demented. "Were you dropped on your head as a child?"

Temari glares. Shikamaru's best friend and beside the fact that she has gotten to know her and they are quite passable friends, no one calls her that and gets away with it.

"This is Shikamaru. He's the master of manipulation."

"I don't want him to have to fight in my land. I don't want him to fight because of me."

Ino tries to keep the frown from his face. "He has always been fighting for you. He will always be fighting for you regardless of whether you are together or not."

Temari quirks an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Do you know what he has been doing?" demands Ino. "Fending off prospective brides that Yoshino has picked out. He will always be fighting to keep his heart separate from the life he has to lead. What is the difference between doing that with you beside him or not?"

"You speak as if my sister will be doing a favor to him to like him." Gaara pops into the picture.

"Hell no," Ino scowls. "He'll be doing her a favor finally declaring to everyone he likes her. Do you know how many bloody times that idiot Shiho's name came up in Yoshino and my conversation the last time?"

Temari wonders if she will have to find a less subtle way of telling Shiho Nara Shikamaru was out of bounds. Perhaps punching her in the nose would be obvious enough.

Except…"What?"

It wasn't possible. "He's resigning from being Leaf ambassador and joining ANBU?"

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Three days is a long time across the desert and into Leaf territory fuelled by the possibility of being too late.

The clock reaches 9:10am and as she makes it past the Leaf check-in-point and to his house, she knows what she is going to find.

His empty house is a slap in the face as the what-ifs flay her raw. Her heart feels as if it is being wrenched open, she stumbles as if from an open-faced blow, her fingers scrabbling for a hold on anything to keep her standing—

There is no turning back this time. This is the end.

She doesn't know when she curled up in a ball on his well-worn bed. It bears his dissipating scent, but she buries herself deeper in the soft mound of pillows. She doesn't care that she is filthy, she'll leave before he comes home. This once, just this once, she wants to take something with her when she goes, she wants to engulf herself in everything of his, the last time she'll enter the jounin Shikamaru Nara's room.

Once she raises her head, everything will be different, everything will have changed in the shallow heartbeat of the overwhelming silence and just for now, she cannot handle it. She can't, she doesn't want to. She realizes she is crying, tears are falling and he isn't there—he will never be there for her again—

"Temari?" She peers through the bed sheets.

He is standing there, confusion etched in his expression. She doesn't know what she has been expecting—anger, regret, perhaps, but it has never suited his face. Irritation, yes; sadness, yes; fear, rarely but possible. But twisted rage, no. She realizes she has never seen rage warp the contours of his face when it comes to her. Then again, it is part of the reason why she loves him so much.

Then she realizes that she's in his bedroom, yes, that's the first revelation, the second that he was probably not expecting his former love to be tangled in his bed sheets two months after officially refusing to answer his declaration, and thirdly—

"Nara Shikamaru, ANBU?" She cannot help it, the words shoot out of her mouth before she can clamp it shut. She has no right to ask anything of him, nor curtail his flight—he can rise through the ranks knocking the rest down like dominos, she of all people know best his innate aptitude for it. Except—except—if it comes at the cost of being the Leaf ambassador, she doesn't want it, can't deal with it.

He is in front of her now, bent down to her face flushed with her recent loss of control. She is crying again in front of him, and as much as her brain screams to take it back, she cannot. There is nothing more left for her, she has to—she has to—

"Just Nara Shikamaru, jounin." He says quietly. She stares at him, mouth agape. Somehow, the pressure on her heart has eased; it has taken flight, soaring like a bird, she can feel the thud of her heart now, pounding. Somehow she knows that if she reaches forward, touches him through the layers of his vest, his would be too. "I couldn't do it." I couldn't not leave my options open.

"Don't say anything." He says, but it comes out as a whispered request. "If you say anything now, I don't think we can ever come back from this."

Shikamaru knows, if he listens to her refusal this time, he can never regain the courage to recover from this blow. "I'm not asking for an answer this time. Just that if we were ever friends, if I ever meant anything to you at all, just let me continue." Hoping.

"Idiot." She says softly, because she is treading into his heart now, and she knows one step can cause irreparable damage, but she can no longer remain silent. "I love you."

He looks simultaneously stunned and possibly close to tears. "You—"

"Damnit, I love you." She's crying now (and she thinks he is too). "Say something, you idiot. I am bloody telling you I love you and all you do is sit there and stare—" He hugs her this time, and it is so terrifyingly similar to the time before where they were both sitting in the grass and he broke her heart, although to be fair he broke his own as well. "I took so long to come back to this but I love you—"

"Troublesome woman." She is certain now from the rasp of his voice that he's crying too; she doesn't need to feel the slight dampness in the curtain of her hair to confirm it. "Then why—" Why did you almost make me believe otherwise?

"Because you can't move to Suna. You can't, you will be a scapegoat, held hostage. I never wanted that. And I'm in ANBU, so moving permanently to the Leaf will brand me as a traitor and I—"

"We'll work it out somehow." It is the flush of a boy who knows the end is in sight, when fear is out of the question and somehow through her tears she believes him. Because she is with him, she loves him she loves him sheloveshim—

She raises her head and half-smiles through her tears.

Perhaps they can work this out after all.

Perhaps being together is not so much about being together, but more being together yet apart. Perhaps one day she might understand how they came here, how he became her world, perhaps sharing a life together isn't an impossible dream.

The perhaps and the thought that they can have a "perhaps" together, is what makes her smile.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dear troublesome women,

Hm. For our fourth year anniversary you told me to give you something that is distinctly from me. So I'm writing you another letter (I'm not going to win any prizes on the originality scale) but you're away in Suna for another extended mission, and getting you a present on my first ANBU mission is a far stretch seeing as we're surrounded by woods. You're right, Tsunade did agreed to let me remain as the Leaf ambassador as a precondition to me joining ANBU—she is a sucker for romance stories after all.

I am trying to be open with my feelings and this whole relationship on paper; it is astonishing how troublesome it is to define its enormity with words, so bear with me.

Being with you is hard because you're prickly like the legs of a furry caterpillar, or the finely honed blade of your fans, a constant tug of war for dominance, and more and more, I find myself defining what I feel at a particular moment, trying to boil it down to its constituent elements, a search for comprehension because the water is over my head and I am struggling for sense while mired in its confusion.

But then being with you is also easy, I am comfortable in my skin, like for once, my skin is my own rather than inhabiting the farce that is another's label. It is as easy as watching clouds in the sky, because it is easy to just be. Until you leave, and I forget. It is waiting for you to come back and I relearn, slipping back into the way I map the contours of your skin below my palms, unused and forgotten in the moments between.

I am calibrating you in terms of your relation to me, how you make me feel, how you affect me. Me. Is it selfish? Perhaps; you are more than that. The parts that I know of you are me, but the parts that I don't know are still you. They are all the more you because they are not me, because of my own unawareness, and of others' unconsciousness as well. You will always be a mystery to me, even if I spend the rest of my life and all the moments in between learning about you. You are a book written in an unfathomable language that I do not know, and I am lucky enough to be privy to the fragments that drop unwittingly to the ground, stolen fragments that evaporate as soon as they go unnoticed.

You tell me to be honest, to tell you how I feel, to open up. I never knew I had this problem before, I'm so used just letting life flow past me, unconcerned. But there are so many things that are I brush off as unimportant, that I occasionally forget the few that are. So: since you want me to be honest, I will tell you that I used to be afraid; I was often afraid when it came to you, because if trying is the only thing that differentiates me from everyone else, then if another discovers and tries as well, they might get the same result. Which made this uneven me-and-you, just that. Three tenuous words in a sentence. Another label, simplicity itself in how easily it can be erased. I wanted them to be embedded in stone, I wanted them to be carved on the side of a sheer wall, I wanted them to be hammered into the pulse of the universe, so they will be there even if no one can or will ever see it. I wanted it to be proof that a "we" existed. And will continue to exist.

But I am no longer afraid now. We aren't together in the most conventional of ways, but everytime you are with me, it makes up for all the times we were apart; everytime you are beside me, I fall just that much more in love. With you.

I hope our paths intersect soon whether you are dropping by Leaf or me being sent to Suna, because a year is too long since the last time I saw you.

Until then, remember I love you.

-Shikamaru

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

I love this story, but really, I've realized that nice guys falling in love first, finishing first, are a generalization. I love writing nice guys (because well, they are so nice) but there has to be more than just about how nice the nice guys are, there just has to be. Will try to write a better story, better developed characters the next time. I'm sorry if Shikamaru seems one-sided, and thanks for reading through this story, it's my first attempt at a ShikaTema! But for all you guys trying to write, and realizing you actually do better at writing fanfics than actual stories, don't give up. I won't too. Branch out from here, I will keep trying as well, because writing is beautiful and writing something that is truly your own, something original, to breathe and live your own characters is the hardest thing in the world (or at least for me now) :DD