Uzushio is different, Shikamaru supposes. All places are, really, but the brightly coloured smooth buildings with its similarly coloured stone paths that stands where a view of the ocean is not the exception but the rule feels a little more out of the norm than your everyday village. Granted, ninja villages are weird in general, but he's never seen one quite so… flamboyant, ever before. He thinks Lee would like it here.
The people match their village, too, dressed as birds of paradise the lot of them. His eyes are hurting, almost. His ears, too. They are a rather loud group of people, these Uzumaki. And they are everywhere.
Unlike most other ninja villages, Uzushiogakure is not the result of several different clans banding together to build a home, rather, the Uzumaki, who supposedly has lived in the same place for centuries, decided they might as well become ninja and that had been that. Sure, other people joined at different points, but the vast majority of the villagers where Uzumaki, both ninja and civilians. You can tell by the colour of their hair.
His liaison, however, seems to be the exception of the rule. She laughs at him when she notices him looking.
"Yeah," she says. "Apparently my dad felt strongly about the colour. Hence the whole blonde thing." She waves around her head for emphasis.
Her hair is long, longer than even Ino's at its longest, and it's all tied up in complicated looking braids of different sizes that wrap around themselves down the length of her spine. The light from the sun reflects on each strand, the hair bending and shifting with each movement she makes, and Shikamaru feels a sudden need to reach out and touch. His fingers itch and he puts his hands in his pockets not to do something unfortunate like accosting a woman just because he likes her.
He kind of does, is the thing. She's loud and bright and decidedly annoying, all things that normally puts him off, but he's smiled a lot more in an hour than he has perhaps in weeks, just because she spent it with him. She makes it easy to be friendly, even for someone like him who doesn't really know how to be. She smiles at the littlest of things, her laugh is infectious and she speaks enough that Shikamaru is allowed to be quiet and take his time to properly think of what to say. He doesn't even feel awkward when he missteps.
If she's not working for Uzushio's interrogation unit he would be surprised.
"It's pretty," he admits despite himself, and gets the pleasure of seeing her cheeks darken before she catches herself and grins.
"Thanks, dude. Yours is isn't bad, either."
Shikamaru looks at her incredulously. "It's brown," he says after a beat. Brown is not a very exciting colour.
"Yeah, and around these parts everyone and their mother is a red head." She smiles slyly at him. "You're practically exotic, brown haired and all pale as you are. Don't you have sunlight in Konoha?"
"No," Shikamaru says in a voice as monotone as he can make it. "We're secretly vampires and the Shodaime grew the trees to black out the sun. It's all dusk and darkness back home."
"Makes sense," she agrees and nods. "I always suspected that Uchiha likes the taste of blood, of course they live in a village of vampires. They're all doom and gloom and hell bent on revenge for the smallest of things."
The slots fall into place and Shikamaru can't help the snort that escapes him. "You're the one who called Sasuke nipple man." Gods, it's almost like meeting a celebrity. He can't wait to tell Sakura, she'll have a blast.
"He kept flashing them! Like, I was trying to do serious battle and his shirt just kept falling open. It was indecent, I tell you, indecent. Managing to stay sane with those nipples constantly staring at me should have been reason enough alone to get me that vest, beating him was just icing on the cake."
Her cheeks blow up adorably as she gets incensed and the laugh falls freely from Shikamaru's lips. "He still talks about you. In fact, I'm pretty sure most of Konoha has heard about that 'impetuous little insolent blonde pervert' by now. He likes to rant when he drinks." And Sasuke drinks rather a lot. Granted, Shikamaru can't blame him. With that team, he'd drink, too.
Naru stops moving and gapes at him. "He calls me a pervert? He's the perverted one! I wasn't the one revealing myself to innocent bystanders who just wanted to become chunin!"
"To be honest, I think he might be a little bit in love with you," Shikamaru tells her. The fun part is that he's not really joking. After the chunin exam in Suna five years ago, Sasuke has spoken more about the blonde Uzumaki girl than he has about his brother, and considering the size of his brother complex, well. Most that know him are betting it's a crush. Sasuke never was all that great at dealing with his emotions like a reasonable person (not that any Uchiha is really reasonable, but even among them Sasuke is particularly un-gifted), it isn't out of the realm of possibilities that he'd handle getting a crush by constantly bad mouthing them.
"You can't be serious." Her disbelief practically wafts off her. "Nipple man considers me his arch nemesis, he told me so to my face last month. He can't be in love with me."
"Sure," Shikamaru agrees noncommittally, making it clear that he doesn't really agree in the most annoying way he knows how.
She side eyes him distrustfully, a deep furrow between her brows. Shikamaru grins and the smile comes so easy.
"Dude!" She punches him in the shoulder and Shikamaru snorts. "This is not funny! Nipple man can't be in love with me! That's, like, gross. So gross! The super grossest ever!"
"Whatever you say," Shikamaru agrees blithely, tongue in cheek.
Naru gapes at him again in affront before she harrumphs, turns her nose high in the air and swivels away. "We're not friends anymore, Nara-san."
She starts walking toward the tower and Shikamaru follows her leisurely, mulling things over for a quick second before he makes up his mind. He's usually not one for risks, but he thinks his chances are good with this one.
"So, since we're not friends, want to grab dinner later?"
Naru glances at him through the corner of her eye, her gaze calculating and unflinching. It's only a moment before she smiles, though, and Shikamaru feels like the cat that ate the cream.
"I guess I could do dinner," she says.
"Awesome," Shikamaru says and folds his fingers together behind his head. He turns his head to the sky, feels it warm up from the sun and the pleasant feeling in his gut, both, and doesn't want to be anywhere else. "Can't wait. "
It's a good day.