A/N: I don't know what I'm doing with this. Just read.
Onward!
The combined training session with Team Gai had been Ino's idea. She'd never admit using her jutsu to get into Asuma's head in a moment of sleep deprived weakness and sign off on the permit for it. She was safe in the knowledge that Asuma wouldn't ever talk about being duped by the least the least motivated of the group.
For her part, it was mostly a shot to quietly ogle Neji Hyuga up close and secondly to try to drop some knowledge on Lee about winning over Sakura. That boy needed all the help he could get after failing so miserably on previous attempts.
She mistakenly believes they have to beware of Neji, since he's the one with the reputation. She's in for a rude awakening when the first thing they witness is the training field vibrating under their feet followed by a massive cloud of dust that momentarily blankets the entire town.
They all learn to watch out for the little brunette who is a tad obsessed with weapons. The little cluster bomb she used to greet them turns out to be a first attempt at making one, what she calls a rough draft that's more boom than bang, whatever that means.
They're coughing up dirt when Tenten, covered in red and gray dust, steps out to yell a hello. After explaining her attempt, she pulls off her googles, tells them she expected to fell a tree or two, but must have miscalculated the amount of powder to use.
And just like that, Shikamaru is the first one to speak to her.
Ino can't really hide the ensuing goofy grin.
The thing with Shikamaru was that while Ino respected him, she was mostly disgusted by him a lot of the time. Ino thinks of herself as part of the team representing the civilized side of Konoha: good manners, social etiquette, the whole polite package. Naturally, she finds it problematic in being outnumbered as the only girl on a three person team.
While Chouji isn't so bad on the hygiene front, it's Shikamaru who troubles her.
His manners are nonexistent.
He spends his time either playing shogi or staring at clouds.
He burps.
He swears.
Hell, he's even farted in front of her. Repeatedly. And is completely unapologetic about it.
Outside of mission assignments and strategy games, he doesn't use that brain for much else. Even her efforts at instilling etiquette and grooming are wasted on him, as he ignores her or simply pins her shadow down to keep her in place as he walks away.
It's after several training sessions that Ino begins to notice changes.
For one thing, he's not as easily found on the familiar hillside where he cloud watches. As a known creature of habit, it's slightly distressing not to be able to find him in his usual spot, until Chouji mentions Shikamaru's sudden interest in target practice.
Other times, she catches sight of him with Tenten eating together. It's never the restaurants with white tablecloths and five course menus, but the food stands seem more their style as they slurp down noodles or duel with chopsticks for dumplings.
After a while, Ino can tell when he's in a good mood, as evidenced by his improved marksmanship. It's when Tenten's missing that he gets mopey since his aim is extra sucky.
Even Chouji seems surprised and calls him out on it.
"Dude," Chouji shakes his head and pops a handful of potato chips.
Ino finds the whole thing entirely adorable, often to the point of sheer envy.
She supposes Tenten is normal enough for Shikamaru. The girl is pretty and good at fighting and makes him laugh, even if she does tend to get a crazed look in her eye when she's demonstrating her weapons during target practice. Her only real complaint is the Tenten's fashion sense. But whipping him into shape and getting him to take her out on dates is impressive, even if his manners don't really improve all that much, Ino thinks as she gushes over the pair.
She keeps from outright saying the two are dating, although it's plenty obvious to her. Even if they don't hold hands or embrace or do any of the sappy things she reads about in novels, the two seem to genuinely enjoy each others' company.
If anything, she'll hound him about it with obnoxious kissy noises once it's officially declared.
If ever pressed for the exact moment he noticed Tenten, Shikamaru couldn't pinpoint a specific instance.
He remembers seeing her around the academy when they were kids, the Forest of Death, the first joint training between their teams and seeing her topless for the first time.
But he likes to think it was that last one.
While he's used to hanging out with her, he starts to see her as something more during when she joins his team for an assignment that turns out to be mostly a very long stakeout. The ensuing rain make a boring mission just about unbearable as their feet churn in mud and pond-sized puddles.
Two days stretches to five with all of them taking turns looking over the back road the targets were expected to arrive.
Ino's whining is the only constant that lands her on Chouji's corner since he was the only one who remembered to wear ear plugs and bring extra crunchy snacks to muffle the sound of her voice. Shikamaru finds himself observing Tenten make mud pies mixed with twigs and topped with leaves. She also traces stick figures with a snapped branch.
After four days, she gets the idea to ball up her creations and hurl them in Ino's direction. Ino's conniption complete with a horrified screech that takes its time to build up is both one of the funniest and weirdest things he's ever heard.
"Food fight!" Tenten yells before lobbing another one.
Despite chewing on cement-grade trail mix, Chouji hears that part.
"Whaaa?" he says, pulling out his earplugs.
Ino's aim is not as good as Tenten's. The angry fistful of slop lands on her back and partly on Chouji.
Tenten snatches Shikamaru's wrist, leading him behind a tree to take cover.
"That sounded like the stray cats doing it in my neighborhood," she wheezes.
Her stupid smile is infectious as he feels her shoulders shake and finds himself laughing along with her, even though she's smearing his shirt.
They come under siege pretty soon from Ino swearing revenge for her sweatshirt.
"Do you have any idea what the dry cleaning bill is like?" she yells.
Even though he knows better, but Shikamaru joins in, throwing anything he can find under his feet. Then all hell breaks loose when they're all taking aim at each other. Chouji only participates because his rations have almost run out for the day and he needs enough for the following days to withstand Ino's complaining when she's awake.
At one point, Shikamaru sneaks up on Tenten, tying his arms around her waist and spins her around, her legs waving in the air like an uneven merry-go-round. They all end up covered in a layer of sludge and moss that stays on for the rest of the mission. Ino finds herself wondering why it is that she ends up covered in a form of dirt when Tenten's around.
He stays up with Tenten during her assigned watch, trading stupid questions and strategy advice. She teaches him the correct grip, showing him how it mattered more than the angle from where it's thrown. While showing him, he finds himself looking at the location of her holsters: thighs, ribs, hips. Absently, he wonders where else she might be hiding weapons.
The grace of her movements reminds him of the fluidity of a seasoned circus performer since she's a lethal combination of acrobat and knife thrower.
He tells her the pros and cons of defending the higher ground and how to attack from below. Sneakily, he demonstrates his shadow technique by making her grip loosen and makes her miss a leaf target by hitting the ground instead. The next kunai she aims pins the granola bar he's unwrapping to a tree. He looks at his stabbed snack before looking back at her, sort of impressed and sort of alarmed. One look at the dark glint in her eyes and they both laugh.
Ino sees the exchange when she wakes up for a moment to adjust the backpack she uses as a pillow. She falls asleep before hearing them debate condiments on fast food.
Tenten lets him nod off when he says he needs to close his eyes for a moment. Despite being sleep deprived when dawn breaks, she shakes him when she hears horses approaching before nudging Ino and Chouji awake.
They take down their target without a problem. No one in the caravan sees them coming.
It's one of the things that makes her Tsunade notes from the field report they submit.
An hour and several miles later, Ino's whining about getting back home ASAP because mud is so not her look and she needs to rinse in a shower for the next month among other things. From behind a large tree a short distance away, Ino's grumblings are muffled as she chews on a snack Chouji handed her as a distraction.
In the grey morning drizzle, Tenten washes the dirt off her face with a bottle of water before undoing her vest. The heavy material calls off her shoulders. Sitting atop the exposed tree roots, both Shikamaru observes her while Chouji munches away.
"Ugh," Tenten scoffs.
Both guys grin when she mimes the blonde's words. When Ino starts going on about being hungry, Chouji takes it as his cue to hide the premium snacks in his food stash.
Tenten dries her face and throat. She grabs the hem of her dirt caked shirt, pulling it up and over her head along with her sports bra. He wants to think it's the exhaustion that she forgot to tell him to turn away, but his brain shuts down as he stares at her up and down. It's the perfect excuse for the next thing that happens.
"Nice rack," he blurts out.
She laughs as she slaps on a bandage to a thin line of blood trickling down her shoulder and pulls on a clean sleeveless shirt.
"In-appro-priate," she sing-songs.
To which he actually reddens. He clamps down on mentioning how her breasts look like perfect handfuls. Immediately, he mentally catalogs the new found intel of her bra size should a bet ever come up. He also suddenly despises sports bras with a unending hate since they make her chest seems smaller than what he's witnessing.
"Sorry," he apologizes, not meaning it at all since the view is nothing to complain about. He's also surprised when she doesn't take a swing at him.
Then he notes bandage that's peeled off when she put on her shirt.
"Your," he motions his shoulder. "Thing came off."
"Just a scratch," she says. "I'll be good as new soon."
"Didn't you learn healing jutsus?" he asks.
"Killed a fish trying once," she huffs.
He laughs.
"Not funny," she pouts.
It's horribly endearing.
"It's just a scratch," she tells him.
"Come here."
She looks up at him while rummaging around in her bag to pull out an oversized hoodie. When she realizes she just used up her last bandage, the bag drops from her hands. The ground squishes beneath her boots like batter as she steps over to him and takes a seat on a damp root.
With her so close, he can tell she's cold, even as he forces himself to concentrate on the red line tracing her skin as he places a fingertip on the cut. The temperature is causing her goosebumps, he reminds himself to push out funner, filthier thoughts.
"I'm better at applying ointment," she says.
That doesn't help the chorus line of porn he's mentally trying to keep at bay. The bit of chakra he employs to stitch her skin together makes her feel like pins and needles as he slowly runs his finger along her shoulder.
"Wrapping bandages," she goes on.
It sounds like the equivalent of baseball and boring things like shoe shopping when she says it. His eyes trace along the curve of her shoulder and lines of her arm and neck before going back to her cut. He's well aware she's pretty, but never dwelled on it until seeing her so up close.
"Stitches and shit," she babbles on.
He bites his lip. The moment seems to stretch longer than the minute it actually takes.
"Good skill to have," he tells her.
"When she looks at her shoulder, all she sees is the familiar birthmarks dotting her skin and nothing else.
"Thanks," she says before standing to pull on a billowing sweatshirt that regrettably swallows her figure.
Ino finds them and starts ranting about needing to go home immediately. Behind her, Chouji munches on chips, earplugs securely in place. Shikamaru and Tenten share a look that clearly says "lucky bastard."
The road back isn't so bad as Ino tones it down the closer they get to Konoha. She shuts up enough to notice how Shikamaru deliberately knocks into Tenten's side every now and then.
Before entering town, Ino takes Tenten by the arm to consult with her about a throwing technique. Suspicious, he only narrows his eyes for a moment as Tenten grabs her hand and positions her fingers around the blunt edge of a kunai. He tunes them out when Ino steers the conversation to clothes.
It's only when they enter Konoha that Tenten notices how a thread in her sweatshirt had come undone in the shape of a massive triangle on her side, ruining the entire thing. Before bidding them goodbye, he hears Ino offering to take her shopping. He's not sure about warning Tenten since he doesn't want to seem like he's overreacting.
Chouji, on the other hand, only punches his shoulder lightly and grins when he looks at Tenten retreating before looking back at Shikamaru.
While Shikamaru instantly noticed Tenten as a pretty girl, it took Ino's intervention for him to really pay attention.
After the sweatshirt incident, other voluminous jackets and shirts were mysteriously damaged or lost, which caused Tenten to unwittingly get a makeover. It starts off rather innocently when her hoodie is ruined. The replacement she gets is fitted.
"Turns out Ino wasn't full of crap about this thing being easy to move in," she tells him.
His suspicions are confirmed when all of her wardrobe changes. Everything she wears no longer blankets her but fits closer to her body. He's sort of relieved she doesn't go full-on girly with ruffle skirts and makeup. She's still the efficient, no-frills Tenten.
Shikamaru's wake-up call comes in the form of a sobbing Ino, who comes barreling at him with open arms like that time her satin dress ripped.
If he's learned anything over the years is that sugar usually calms her. Begrudgingly, he takes her to an ice cream parlor because he knows it's the only time she won't bitch about the empty calories and high fat content of sweets.
After gorging herself on a massive sundae, she blurts out how it's so sad he's losing his girlfriend.
He chokes on a sip of water when he hears that.
"My what?" he asks as the glass slams on the table.
Ino wipes her eyes, trying to clear her vision.
"Tenten,' she repeats. "You know, the girl you've been dating?"
She goes on to explain how Tenten is engaged to Neji.
His eyes widen as he frowns and it takes her a moment to realize he's alarmed. She watches him mouth the words "what the fuck" despite her seeing him slightly out of focus.
Ino likes she snapped him into action.
In the days that follow, she notices weird little things. Shikamaru skips out on daily training. She doesn't catch him cloud gazing. He's always at target practice, tossing anything he can find. His success rate varies, since he lacks consistency, hitting different sections of the targets and sometimes misses them altogether.
Ino comes across them on different occasions and instantly notices the change in Shikamaru's behavior when Tenten is around. The slouched posture suddenly straightens. (OK, that one's a lie.) He develops a twitchy hand that comes up behind his neck. (This one's true.) The longing look in his eyes. (She's never close enough to confirm the last one, but Ino likes to imagine him capable of it.)
Ino isn't there to see the conversation between them about her engagement.
It goes something like this:
"So I hear you're engaged?"
"How'd that get around?"
"Rumor mill."
"More like a sewing circle."
"Typical way to gather intel."
"From wild speculation and gossip? Lame."
"He's not ready to let it go.
"So, engagement?"
An eye roll.
"It's just a formality, really."
"How's that work?"
"Neji doesn't want his family to think he's a loser who can't get a girl."
"Is it like an agreement when you turn 30 to get married?"
"We agreed at 35."
"Would you go through with it?"
"Have you ever been around those freaks? I mean, aside from Hinata."
"Oh, really?"
"I had to go over once to check on him once and the little scamp who opened the door was the worst. Asked what I thought about training while pregnant."
"Another drink?"
"Duh."