A/N: Hey! This is a happy birthday story to Shikamaru, because he's one of my favorite characters. It's the same format as the one I made for Sakura, Candles. Several birthdays through the years showing him growing up. ShikaTema-ness 'cause I'm a sucker for them. And when I say Rokudaime, it's Naruto. I was so mad at myself I missed Temari's and Kakashi's birthdays! I'll have to wait until next year!

Disclaimer: Naruto isn't mine. It's Kishimoto's, and whoever the hell owns it too.

Candles And Trouble

He was still little, but even at six years old he already showed the sings of the lazy, unmotivated man he was sure to become. He wasn't interested, in anything, really. So it wasn't really a surprise that when his mother greeted him with a cake and lit candles in the kitchen, he was unimpressed. She waved him over and wrapped her arms around him in a hug he tried to squirm away from. His eyes scanned the room for a sign of his father and when there was none, he turned to his mother with an inquiring look. She smiled and answered his wordless question; he was on a mission. It saddened him a little, but he wasn't too bothered. He hardly ever was.

He blew the candles so his mom would stop bothering him and walked to the porch to watch his precious clouds roll by until he fell asleep, and this time his mom would let him, because it was his birthday.

His best friend would pass by later to laze about with him, munching on his chips until they ended, and then eat the cake he didn't want. And that annoying daughter of his father's friend who was always squealing at everything Sasuke did wasn't there this year to try and boss him around, or, God forbid, braid his hair.

And even later, when the sun was already setting, while he played with a puzzle on the living room floor, his father would sit down in front of him and quietly help him. When they finished it, he would place a square board in front of them, and, together, they would arrange the pieces in lines.

It was calm, and not troublesome, and nice.

He was thirteen and feeling cranky. What a troublesome day. Too troublesome. He had been hoping to spend his birthday quietly, watching his clouds and sleeping until noon, but no. It was too much to ask. His mother had kicked him out of bed early and forced him to dress nicely for no apparent reason. The reason appeared soon after, when his teammates showed up, dressed up too, tried desperately to get him out of the house and then tried to keep him busy all day, making their intentions obvious even to someone who wasn't a genius. When he stepped into the house in the evening and his relatives and friends jumped up yelling 'surprise', it was no surprise at all.

It was one, though, when his blonde best friend jumped up too, as if she had no idea they were throwing a party. He rolled his eyes. Of course, she had thrown herself a party, using him and their close birthdays as an excuse. There were a bunch of her squealing friends too, all huddled up together drooling over, he suspected, the next boy wonder.

He sighed aggravatedly, damning the day their parents had become friends. Damning the day they had become friends too.

He spent the rest of the night dodging congratulating people, party games, ex-classmates, aunts wanting to squeeze his cheek and cousins wanting to beat him up, hiding from that stupid blonde with his best friend, like they used to do when they were kids and she spent the entire dinner parties their parents had trying to force them to play dolls with her. He decided that day he not only hated girls, he hated people, in general. They were just way too much trouble.

He just wished his life could be boring and completely not troublesome. It wasn't that much to ask.

He turned seventeen in the middle of a mission. War had hit hard and cleaning up the mess had been even harder. It hadn't only been mourning their dead, or the destroyed village. Their economy was a disaster on its own. They were finally starting to get back on their feet, but it was taking its toll on the shinobi forces. This would be the third mission he took in the week, and it was Wednesday. The most depressing part was that the moment he stepped back in the village he would have about six hours to eat, sleep and shower before he had to head out again with a new mission. He only saw his friends nowadays when they happened to fall into the same team for the current assignment. He sighed, finishing tying the last exploding tag in the trap he had put up. He looked it over one last time and then turned back to camp.

His captain nodded towards him in acknowledgement and he nodded back, sitting down by the fire and pulling his sleeve up to check the cut he had gotten earlier. It wasn't very deep, but it was long and it was throbbing slightly in an uncomfortable rather than painful way. He grumbled under his breath for the millionth time that day and tried to wrap the bandage around his forearm. He was making a sloppy job of it, but he didn't really know any of the people they had put him with to ask them for help, and with the amount of work they had been taking to recover from the war, there weren't enough medics for every team, they had been one that had gotten the short end of the stick.

An impatient sigh from somewhere beside him cut through his concentration. Before he could look up, hands had ripped the bandage away from his and unwrapped it quickly from his arm, rolling it up again. The person kneeled in front of him. His breath caught in his throat. There was another particularity in the post-war crisis. The Suna-Konoha alliance was stronger than ever, and both villages had leaned on each other to stand on their shaky legs, sharing the burden of their frayed economy and the workload. And because of that, she was in front of him, disheveled hair, slightly singed clothes, a little more scarred, a little worse for wear, but still kind of beautiful in her exotic, scary way. She finished rolling up the bandage and started wrapping it tightly around his arm. There was nothing gentle about the way she was doing it, it was quick and efficient, if a little rough, hardly a caring gesture. Her lips were pursed and her brows scrunched together in annoyance, as if she had just helped him because his incompetence aggravated her. But when she finished, tucking the edge of the fabric into one of the loops, she looked up at him with those swirling blue-green eyes, the corners of her lips lifting in a crooked smile.

"Happy birthday, crybaby." She said lowly, in her husky, slightly gruff voice, gave his injured arm a little pat – half-awkward, half-affectionate – and stood up, going back to her own traps. His eyebrows shot up, he didn't quite know if for her gesture or for the fact that it was his birthday. In the middle of the mess he had forgotten it completely. He looked up to where she was perched against a tree, making a web with bombs, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched in concentration as she searched for the best angles to disguise the thread. Smart, and pretty, and deadly, and all things troublesome.

And hell if he didn't want her.

He had just turned twenty-one and he was grumbling. His stupid friends always found a way to make a perfectly normal day troublesome. His best friends had bullied him to go to some damned club to celebrate. He scowled deeper. He had spent the last two days running after his five-year-old goddaughter, making sure she wouldn't blow the village, or worse, herself up, and as much as he loved the brat, she made him want to shoot himself sometimes. All that after coming back from a long, tiring, A-Rank mission. He was dead tired and in zero mood to party, much less in a club. He wasn't particularly fond of crowded places, loud music and drunk people dry humping each other. He'd much rather stay home sleeping. He fumbled with his shirt buttons, getting them wrong because he was frustrated, and getting frustrated because he was getting them wrong. He dropped his hands with a huff. This was useless.

He fell back on the bed, staring at the celing for a few minutes before closing his eyes. He could take a nap. It wasn't like his friends would let him skip the party, they'd show up to drag his ass there if they noticed he was taking too long to arrive. Images started swirling behind his eyelids. Golden curls, burning green eyes, red smirking lips. And those legs. He sighed. The most troublesome thing in his life was away and he missed it.

The doorbell rang, startling him from his daydreams. His scowl returned. Damn, his friends were fast. He got up from the bed and walked down the hallway, into the living room of his tiny apartment, buttoning up the shirt as he went. He yanked the door open, ready to let them know how unwilling he was to go out. He stopped midway, shirt half closed, scowl dropping to an expression of shock. Amused teal eyes looked up at him with glowing mischief. It was her, she was at his door, with her smooth golden skin, her intoxicating perfume, a grin full of second intentions. And those legs. He was crazy about those legs.

"It's your birthday." She said, smirk never wavering. "I was in town and decided to get you a gift, but couldn't find anything worth it. So…" she pulled her arm from behind her, lifting her hand in front of his eyes. There was a bow wrapped around her wrist. He stared at her. She grinned wider. "Happy birthday."

It took him exactly one second and a half to react. He shot forward and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off her feet and pulling her to him. She looped her legs around his waist, arms closing around his neck, laughter muffled by his lips on hers. He slammed the door shut.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

He's thirthy now, and trying to ignore the pain of his daughters jumping on his chest to wake him up. Well, one daughter. The other just curled up to his side and fell asleep again. His lazy sleepy little carbon copy. The blonde untailed beast jumping on his ribs, though, was wide and attacking. He winced when her knee dug into his stomach and finally gave up.

"Alright, you little demon, I'm up! I swear, you're as devilish as your mother…" he grumbled, catching her by the arms and putting her over his shoulder. She squealed happily at how tall she was when he stood up. The little brunette tugged at his shirt, and he reached out to pick her up too. She nestled in his chest and dozed off again. He didn't know how she could do it with her sister screaming her butt off.

He walked down the stairs to the living room of the house in the clan complex. He found his wife sitting on the couch, hair up in a messy bun, wearing one of his old T-shirts, so big on her it slid down her shoulder. He stopped for a second to appreciate the view. She looked up from the documents in her hands when she heard him walk in, and smiled. Softly, tenderly, the way she did only occasionally and only to him. She nodded towards the coffee table in front of the sofa. There was a small round cake with one candle stuck on it. He rolled his eyes good-naturedly and sat beside her. The little blonde quickly jumped off his shoulder, into her mother's lap, all excitement and chatter. His wife lit up the candle and his daughter pulled the song. Her sleepy sister numbly clapped her hands, seemingly confused with the whole matter, looking up at her father as if to ask what the heck was going on when the blonde blew the candles as if it were her own birthday. He felt stupid singing the happy birthday song, but he was a sucker for his girls, and there was no saying no when his little demon turned those big hazel eyes and grinned like she was about to do something she shouldn't.

"Do you want cake? I promise I didn't make it." His wife joked.

"Good, food poisoning isn't what I'd like to get on my birthday." He teased. She rolled her eyes.

"Shut up. Oh." She leaned in and kissed him. "Happy birthday."

"Thanks."

This was nice. Just him and his family, quietly sitting together, enjoying a calm birthday. No fussing, no dancing, no games, no yelling, no fighting or anything of the sort. This wasn't troublesome. It seemed like the kind of life he had wanted as a kid. His wife's next words cut through it, though.

"Ino's throwing you a surprise party in two hours and I'm going to drag your ass to it." She said non-chalantly. He groaned.

"How many parties more will she throw when I especifically told her not to?"

"How many years more do you plan to live?" His wife mocked.

"Lots of parties then." He said with a resigned sigh. Her eyes softened.

"Lots of parties." She agreed.

A loud noise of something crashing rang through the air. They jumped, looking around. One daughter. Check. The other? Nowhere to be seen. They stood up, already guessing what had happened, running to where the noise had come from to find out what their pest had blown up this time.

His wife would be true to her word and drag his ass to the party his best friends had planned, even as he grumbled under his breath the whole time. He would walk into his parents' living room, like he had done so many years ago, and watch with half-annoyance, half-amusement as all his relatives and friends jumped out of hiding places to cry out 'surprise', even if they had been throwing him surprise parties every year and everyone knew it was just not a surprise anymore. He would spend the rest of the night being hugged, congratulated, dragged in and out of games, greeting ex-classmates, letting the old aunts squeeze his cheek and pretending his cousins' mock punches hurt. He couldn't even be mad at the stupid blonde organizing the party, hard as he tried, so he just let her nearly strangle him and his best friend in what she called a hug and remind everyone of the same Team Ten stories that always mysteriously ended up with him embarrassed half to death. His parents sat together, bickering the whole night through, about anything they put their eyes on, but looking like they were doing it for fun. All the while his bratty daughter would run around driving people insane with the Rokudaime's son, while her quiet sister would sit and play with his best friend's boy, and, to their amusement, hide from their female teammate's eldest whenever she spotted them.

It was tiring, and troublesome and he was getting a headache, but it was also good. Being there surrounded by his friends and family, pains in the ass as they were, was good.

Not troublesome was nice, but it was just not his life. He, who had wanted to be a mediocre chuunin forever, had been stuck with Chief Advisor to the Rokudaime, which had got to be the most migraine-inducing job ever. He had parents that showed their love by trading witty remarks. He had found the most troublesome woman on the planet, and then fallen in love with her, the very one that drove him crazy and made him doubt if he wanted to strangle her or kiss her. He had had two daughters, twins on top of it, and while one of them was easy-going, the other gave the devil a run for his money. He had loud friends that fussed and yelled, and fought, and raised one hell of a racket, wrecked more havoc than their own kids. They were annoying, and maddening, and troublesome, and alive, and at his age, with his brain, knowing the odds, he was just too happy to see them breathing to care.

Life was troublesome, but it was nice, just the same.

A/N: Thanks for reading, tell me what you think, and forgive me for the amount of 'troublesome's used in this story.