Disclaimer: Love, I don't need to own Naruto to write fanfiction.

Penname: LiveLoveLaugh

Summary: He likes to play games, maybe even a few hearts, and when the going gets tough, he isn't going to break a sweat. But what good excuse can he make to get out of this? (ShikaXSaku) One-shot

I started this out without a plan. And I feel I'm going to be putting more effort into this than I have to.

Unearned Pleasures

Let's not pretend that Shikamaru likes commitments.

Rather, he prances around his responsibilities like a deer on its hinds, perhaps even sticking a toe pass the metaphorical tunnel time to time—never really committing himself to much. He had done things without motivation, or perhaps from boredom, or perhaps doing things only when he was threatened (for example, an ass-whooping by the Fifth—we don't need to explain).

Close friends had found it hard to believe his relationships with women can last more than two weeks. Then again, his best record was eighteen days when he had dated Ino a few years ago, on the account that she was playing rebound after being separated by her last boyfriend. It didn't end well, since the blonde kept replacing his face with another's. Her sudden pauses in her sentences, trailing off when she had begun talking proved just that.

It was hard to believe that he was not known for his scores of one-night-stands and flings; using his resources in a bar or any hook up joint he had attached his focus to with as much intensity as chess pieces on a chessboard. He had even dated married women, young attractive women already in relationships of their own, girls with husbands and fiancés who liked the sultry look of the lazy genius whenever his sharp eyes swept over their bodies.

And the fact that any woman would want to be around him was unbelievable, even for the kind of woman who thought that she was the wiser one who can trap Nara Shikamaru in his own game. They dreamt of seducing smug men and using them for their own perverse purposes. But strangely, it never happens. Their intentions were quickly averted when they met up with the real thing. Something about him had made their thighs tingle with an electric jolt that crawled up their spine in an aching corporeal manner.

Maybe it was the method he understood so well; that by one single glance he immediately knew the way she liked to be touched with his hand that glided softly down the side of her face, the way she liked to be looked at as though he saw nothing but the crevices of her body, the way she liked to be talked to as he gently stripped her of all her defenses that made the woman sensitive to all his words he whispered into her ear, the way he would perhaps make her believe he really cared about her. And when they wake up that morning, flushed by his scent and his touches, they wake up with a dreadful realization when they turn around in their mattress and would find nothing but an empty bed and a missing lover.

Yes, it was horrible the way he treated the women with such kindness and no guarantee. Yes, it was awful the way he can forget a woman's name and not fuss about it. Yes, it was rather pathetic that he played his games so well, to get out of any situation by running away before things got serious, when his friends were either getting married or being genuinely loved by another while he played more of his games, his flings, and his long line of women.

Of course, not everyone knew he was like that. People who were close to him trusted him to make the right decisions, and not expect a single wisp of his foul games, but think of Shikamaru of a lazy guy who just liked being single.

He hadn't realized how much he had hurt the girls he had been with until in some sick joke, he was tricked to believe he was loved.

But after their first night together, Shikamaru saw a part of himself he had never witnessed ignite and became more lively of a flame. He became a totally different person, completely changed and he couldn't be reversed. But suddenly, he stopped his games, he stopped the constant hopping from club to club, from woman to woman, and as though he was now being determined by the ultimate test, he came to this gigantic obstacle he couldn't tackle. As though, now in this every-man's-dream-life he had led without anything to bring him down had become something less significant, less important, when he came across Haruno Sakura, he wanted to be able to have his love returned.

He too believed it was nothing more than a fling. She was not stupid; she knew about his little rendezvous life and made nothing of it— it had not mattered so much back then. He sometimes wished it were that way, so he would not feel this way that made him less of a man when all he can think of was why she took their secret affairs so easily.

It was so much harder to hide their clandestine relationship from the rest of the village when it seemed she didn't really care about it in the first place. Does she forget about their shared kisses in the alley ways, the heated embrace they share in each other's apartments, their caresses and warmth when they had once made love in her office at the hospital? For days after that, he kept remembering how they kept each other's voices hushed by kissing and whispering sweet-nothings into each other's ears.

By the end of day, does she really not care about being with him?

Knowing she could have done this with any other man hurt him more than anything in the world.

Sakura was also in the same boat as him; single without bounds. They had met each other in the hallway of the Hokage Tower, when he was just returning from filing a successful mission report and she was lingering around the corridors during her coffee break. Their meeting place was unexpected when they walked into each other, spilling java and papers everywhere on the floor; when everything slowly began to fall into place.

Although they knew each other for so long, they had never truly interacted. He became attracted to her when he noticed her cutting remarks and unusual charm that surprised him many times after that; he was attracted to the way she lift up her chin to stretch out the length of her neck for him to stare at her pale flesh and her green eyes would watch him as he did so with a pause. Her body was slim and slender, fitted well in her training skirt and medic's white coat with that distinctive medicine smell. Her best feature was her short pink hair that stayed glossy and silky to the touch, the ends of her hair were curled and her bangs framed her face quite nicely.

Shikamaru remembered how stupid he felt for following her around for ages before they got together. He secretly watched her through her bedroom window, watching her when she was at her most basic like reading a book by the lamp, combing her hair, or falling asleep with the covers over her shoulder. It had only been a few encounters, only a few exchanges of polite words, and yet he was always out there, waiting to open up his heart for her. Shikamaru felt he should be the pages her fingers had touched and were flipped in her medical book, the bright glow of the lamp that showers over her head with a golden glare, the brush that draws the pink curls from her face, or the blankets that hugged her curves when she rested.

It wasn't just the sudden electricity that sparked their passion, but rather it was the simple things that started to pile up collectively. He felt a jolt of confusion when they had once sat together in the local library, reading up on the latest romances (or for him, books written exclusively about chess) he saw that one of her hands closest to him was inching to touch something. He took her hand into his for particularly no reason at all than to feel her fingers. It caught both of them in shock, but he was relieved when Sakura had grinned and gripped his hand as they read.

And there was a moment when they were both at Naruto's house party—he was celebrating about the fact that it was a Wednesday—where both their faces were flushed not because of the alcohol. Everyone there was crazy and wild, dancing until the night through. It came to a point of the party where Shikamaru crashed down on one of the abandoned couches that Sakura was asleep on. His eyes were unfocused and he watched the rhythm of her chest move whenever she breathed, her hair was limp and her mouth was parted. He noticed the slight wrinkle between her closed eyes when he bent down to kiss her forehead.

Of course, he never told her this. Maybe he didn't realize it until this moment.

By the next morning, she was left the instant he passed out.

What he hated was that he didn't understand how it all progressed so quickly, how she became a daily routine in his life—both of them making love every week—how she could easily take control of his life so effortlessly and how clueless she seemed to be to his unspoken love. This was all a game, just something dumb to put into the pages of a shinobi's life, already filled with so much killing and endless missions.

And all he could think about was Sakura.

And if he wasn't, it would always be in the back of his mind whenever he thought of something else until suddenly everything went back to the thought of her.

They had been together in this enigmatic affiliation for so long, they lost count of the seconds, the minutes, the days to months they had first stumbled upon each other at the Tower, as if for the first time, they met each other as though they were strangers and not acquaintances from the past as they were once classmates who sat in the same room in the same Academy, who had not gone through the Death Forest together, and on more than one occasion had rescued one another's lives.

He wished to tell her his true feelings, but he was afraid that she could not return back his love.

And then he thought about all the times he had hurt the women who had been tricked under his disguise, women who went to his bed willingly after being told a mess of lies that they believed he could love them like he does now about the pink-haired kunoichi. And he had acted upon those lies by caressing their bodies in a way where they did feel wanted. And he kissed them like he loved them, and they all fell for it. And he made love to them like he meant the things he said in their embrace of twisting limbs, muffled moans, and each other's sweat.

He wanted to say something to anyone, just so he can share his grief but something in him, something that reminded him that he couldn't let go of something that was his main drive in life. Maybe he was afraid that someone can relate to his problems. Maybe he was afraid that someone else would know and his life will be forever altered if someone were to find out about Sakura. But no one ever talked about her around him, he knew it was the fact they didn't know anything.

They didn't know that he could trace her entire body with one finger, brushing it lightly over her skin to memorize the pattern of her flesh and the body he was touching. They didn't know she had once snuck into his bedroom window to surprise him with a kiss because she had a bad dream. They didn't know that she always smelled like the shampoo she rinses into her hair. They didn't know that she looked pretty without make-up. They didn't know that she was wild in bed and liked to be kissed around her neck so the marks would visibly show. They didn't know that he felt more sensual when he took off his hair tie to let down his dark tresses just so she could fondle them and grip them in her fists when she writhes under his body.

They didn't know that the two lovers had once got into an argument with each other so badly, that their voices bounced off the walls and they had thrown objects at each other, flinging glassware and magazines across the living room. They resolved never to see each other again, yelling and screaming at each other until Shikamaru had walked out of her apartment, slamming the door so loud the neighbors jumped.

They didn't know that later that afternoon, he came back to her without saying a thing, and both of them whispered soft apologies into each other's ears again and again while he placed kisses all over her chest to state his request for forgiveness and she had touched a part of him that gave shudders across his body while they held each other in their love-making embrace. Sometimes he shivered at the thought of it.

And what he was feeling now—guilt, deep remorse, immense fear, complete sadness, uncontrollable rage, compassion, desire, jealousy, and a load of emotions stacked up on top of one another, trying to unbalance each other so they would all tumble down. These feelings within his gut twisted and churned, making him ill that the next time Shikamaru and Sakura had seen each other was not through the language of sex.

He became perceptible to sicknesses, he wheezed and coughed so much that the Fifth had sent him on his own way to bed rest for two weeks at the least. His nose was runny and stuffy at the same time, his throat was dry and itchy, his body was racked with a numbing weakness, and a sort of heaviness developed in his joints and the base of his back that made it hard for him to get out his room.

But Shikamaru was too weak, too sick even to play Shogi with his teacher Asuma who puffed at his cigarettes and was quiet when he watched his star pupil try his hardest to walk across the hall to the bathroom or whenever he sneezed into mounds of folded tissue as though the bearded man had known that disease was not the case of his bedridden state.

When he hadn't come out of his room for a while, people he was close to were worried about the lazy genius. His best friend Chouji frequently came into his apartment to pop pills for him and cleaned up his room. Ino sent giant pots of soup and meals wrapped in towels, and had set up vases of decorative flowers around his mattress to bring color in his life. His parents called to check up on him. Rock Lee, who heard been on missions with Shikamaru and had often praised him for his intelligence, had been the most concerned about his health—had once walked into his bedroom without knocking with a giant basket of medications like heat pads, cough medicine, and tea bags.

Lee was easily over dominated by Ino, who was furious about the annoyance and the commotion. And while they fought, Shikamaru had discovered that the remedies had come straight from the medical supply closet in Sakura's office. Such a realization had made his heart flutter in disgusting frilly way. And that night he dreamt of her without much as a wheeze. He dreamt of her hair spilling across her high forehead when the wind blew, the soft flush of her cheeks when she smiled.

She came to visit him one evening. By that period he was strong enough to get out of bed, make his own meals, and take his own pills—although there was an occasional sneeze—the doorbell rang, and when he opened his front door, he was completely thrown off by the unexpected visit that filled his mind. She looked more beautiful than before, maybe it was his mind playing games caused by the miserable gap of their time together.

When he reached for her, Sakura stopped him. She grabbed both his hands—god, her touch was so soft—and pulled him closer to look at him. Her green eyes darted across his thin face, searching for some error.

"Shikamaru…are you well?" she whispered, staring at him. The shadow ninja was so caught up in the moment, his face was practically glowing and he felt much better than he had been before. But he immediately hid his excitement with

"I'm good," he said, looking embarrassed when he noticed that the blue bath robe he was wearing was revealing his undershirt and boxers. He quickly closed the flaps together and tied the bounds; he started out stumbling, "I'm just eating now, you can come in if you want. But take off your shoes, Ino will kill me if I made a mess after she just cleaned it—what a drag," when he noticed he had said quite a mouthful, he looked at her, "I haven't seen you in so long…"

But she stopped him before he could continue. He noticed how pained she looked with the dark hoods under her eyelids and the paler skin made her look sicker than him. Her eyes looked sad, and she was more exhausted than before.

Soon, he found himself outside walking together with Sakura in the local park, passing by the children's playground. He looked over her head to watch the kids on the swings and sliding down the tube slide, their laughter was loud and annoying. They had never done this before, nearly looking like a real couple—in public no less—and he had a sudden panic that someone might find out about them and he tried to find a moment to tell her about this, but he stopped when he noticed how stiffly Sakura was walking.

They sat themselves on one of the green park bench in a secluded area without anyone able to eavesdrop without them noticing their aura. The two shinobi sat there for a while; far apart that no part of their clothing was touching but close enough they felt that unbearable tension that soured his gloomy mood.

He had to tell her. It was too much, this horrible silence. He needed to break out, tear out, anything—but he couldn't find anything to dodge this situation. It was obvious that Sakura wanted him to say something. She's sitting so still anyone would have mistaken her for a beautiful statue, both of them frozen by the moment of maybes, of what-ifs, and of possibilities.

He had to tell her. It was eating him inside, not being able to say a thing because he was trapped by the mere thought of her rejecting him. He always found it funny that girls still wanted to be friends with boys who hearts they had ripped out. But he knew the awkwardness remains between folds of friendship and laughter, that whatever choice they had made could not be undone. Shikamaru was suffering within, aching to touch her or stroke her hair. To stare at her across the room in a crowd of people, watching her giggle and gossip with her teammates and friends, wondering whether or not she might be thinking about him.

And what lies at the end of each day is this yearning for more. After she kissed him, he needed more. After she slept with him, he wanted more. After she got up and left, he needed to see her again. After everything she had done with him, this gluttonous craving would always overtake him. Maybe it was a curse caused by the women whose hearts he broke, and now, he believed he learned his lesson, and he was so, so sorry for every goddamn stupid thing he ever did to them. Making them believe he loved them…he was a horrible person.

And here, now, stood his ultimate obstacle. It wrenches his soul that he didn't tell her how much he thought about her, how he kissed her on the forehead that party night to feel her skin against his lips. It killed him more how indifferent she seemed to be, how well she played her own games. She didn't seem to mind that he was ill because of her. She didn't mind that only when he was with her, he was in his best or his worst. Does she know he felt there was something more when they shared their unearned pleasures? Does she know he had long decided that she was the one reason why he's still around today?

He wished she could at least tell him right now that she was tired of him, that their little sport had got boring and she wanted to end it. He wished there was someone else she had feelings for, possibly someone she must have slept with. At least a valid reason she could gave, no matter how hard it was hear, just so it would save him the trouble. Although he would just be devastated, he knew it wouldn't hurt as much as this moment, not knowing where to land.

Suddenly he felt he was on the edge of this cliff, will he fall? Or will he throw himself back to save himself? Or perhaps will he try to fly, knowing that only Sakura could make him believe he wouldn't be falling?

And only Sakura can make him feel this way. Only Sakura can make him feel this miserable. Only she could do all these things to him, and only she can hurt him this way that was painful he thought he can just completely break down. He knew in everyone there was a special place where everyone would go and store their deepest memories and thoughts. It was the place where everyone would go to when they're happy, sad, or in love. A special place reserved for a special someone. And only Sakura could be that special. He needed to tell her. He needed to tell her.

She moved just a little, to ease a more comfortable position on the hard bench. She gripped the edges of her seat, closing her eyes just a little that he could still see the emerald hue he had vividly memorized. It was like a soft green shade like the bright color of a leaf after it rained. She did something with her hair; probably she had just washed it. She pursed her lips like she was ready to kiss someone, or waiting for someone to kiss her. Shikamaru committed to memory of her movements, recording and replaying the motions of her body over and over until he got tired of it—the thing is, he never got tired of Sakura. He needed to tell her.

"I love you," he whispered.

She didn't look at him, but rather she had lowered her head and stared at the ground. Sakura squeezed her eyes tiredly and opened them before she let out a breath so drawn-out and loud Shikamaru somehow knew she had kept it in for so long. When Sakura looked back at him, she looked about to cry.

"I wish you told me that a long time ago, you moron," she murmured, a slight sob grabbed at her. He stared at her when she rubbed her temples; the exhaustion buried deep within her finally gave out. She looked older than she really was, she was depressed and upset. Tears came down her eyes; her face became puffy and red. She sniffed to bring back in her choking sobs, whispering in a heart-breakingly soft voice, "God, you're so stupid…"

Shikamaru didn't know what to say, but he knew in his heart, his love was returned.

Fin

Oh yeah, I love this one.