Shikamaru was, uncharacteristically for him, smiling.
It wasn't that he never smiled; no, the boy would smile often enough, but it usually took a lot of effort for something to make him smile like this. Shikamaru would never admit it, but he liked having his teacher's hand on his shoulder. Especially when Asuma would squeeze it and smile brightly at him, cigarette in between his teeth, saying something about how proud he was of Shikamaru. It made the young ninja smile, though it disappeared quickly enough. Keeping a smile like that on his lips was too much of a bother.
It was late afternoon. The sun hit Team Ten sideways, the rays beginning to hide behind the trees. Ino was being slightly annoying, but a lot more tolerable than yesterday's training in which she couldn't focus. And Choji actually wasn't eating during this part of training. Shikamaru himself wasn't thinking about other things during training, either. They all seemed to be focused today, and it made Asuma quite proud.
"Good job, team. It seems we've earned a trip for Barbecue."
Choji reacted quite happily, complaining about how starved he was, Ino smiled brilliantly, and Shikamaru… well, he complained about what a drag it would be, but he was pretty happy they were being treated for dinner. They walked together back to town, heading to the restaurant while chatting about some nonsense Shikamaru wasn't paying attention to. He was still going over the day's training, thinking about how they could better their defens—
"Oi, Shikamaru! C'mon, we're going to eat!"
The boy sighed once, before heading in behind Choji. For a moment he wished his teammates would be less focused on food and more focused on strategy, but eh. It wasn't their forte. As long as they had Asuma and Shikamaru, they'd be fine. To each their own, right?
While they waited for the food, the boy observed the rest of his team interact with slight amusement. He remained pretty quiet, though he would comment on how stupid something seemed to be or what a drag an event would result in. Slowly, though, Shikamaru was drawn into the conversation. Slowly, Shikamaru saw through the boy-crazed blonde façade, the seemingly only hungry and never smart act, the cool teacher who smiled and didn't really connect… And they saw through the bored boy to take a look into the genius.
Slowly, Team Ten bonded. After several training sessions and stupid D-rank missions, Choji, Ino, Shikamaru, and Asuma finally started to become… happy with one another. Suddenly… between hearing Ino's adorable laughter, watching how happy Choji was with food and friends, hearing how Asuma really did pay attention and care… Suddenly, the four ninjas truly, and finally, became Team Ten.
Shikamaru felt warm, as if everything in the world was happy for a moment. He knew the feeling would go away, and that it was completely stupid to feel it, but it made him smile. Genuinely smile. And after Ino pointed it out and called it cute, everyone laughed together, which seemed to make everything even more perfect.
"Shikamaru, you should—"
Shikamaru awoke with a start. His heart was pounding as if he had been frightened suddenly, but that couldn't be right. He wiped the rain from his eyes and groaned as he felt his side ache.
"You really need to stop doing that," said a familiar female voice. Shikamaru frowned and looked up at Kurenai, then looked down as he got up.
"I know," he responded.
As the memory in his dream faded away, Shikamaru's eyes remained on his teacher's grave, a hand squeezing at his shoulder. How he wished that hand was Asuma's. How he wished he could hear his voice, see how proud he was of him in his warm, friendly eyes, how much he wished he could smell the cigarette smoke in his breath.
Oh how he wished his teacher, his mentor, his idol, were still here.