Disclaimer: I do not own Shikamaru or else the story of Naruto wouldn't be called Naruto. Everything is owned by Masashi Kishimoto. Except these words I've strung together in a tangle around Shikamaru's life.

Author's Note: This was part of a bigger story, but alas I deleted it so it could be a short one-shot. As such, since things have been cut and rearranged, there might be an error somewhere-or many places. Let me know. UnBeta'd. Obviously.

Asuma's Clouds

Night beat her wings downward, until she perched over the landscape. The house was removed some distance away from the town and the bustle of frantic activity. The sound of children laughing as they chased their balls over rolling hills or playfully assaulted their companions with rubber weapons, giving cries of dramatic exclamation, bubbled up laughter spilling from their overexerted bodies as they played.

None of that was heard on the porch of the traditional Japanese house where the tatami mats were beaten to death by Shikamaru's mom on Thursdays in the warm sunlight of the backyard.

Shikamaru was laying on ground, behind the closed door of the room where his dad and him often played Shogi. He didn't recall the outside world or the happy, oblivious children flitting about. His mind couldn't conjure up a single patch of light. It was all darkness.

Shikamaru was drenched in sadness, it had leaked all the color from him, striping him until he was merely shades of black and white. His eyes could only perceive in monochrome.

His body was heavy as he lay listlessly on the hard floor, eyes directed towards the ceiling with no awareness present.

It felt like a hole was blown into his chest, and after sobbing into the night. He was all worn out.

Let it all out, his dad had said.

And when Shikamaru did things, he went all the way.

He had squeezed himself of all the bottled emotions that battled in the center of his mind. He had squeezed so hard that he'd poured out nearly every drop of himself into the salt droppings that his eyes excreted.

Lines of tears were tracked across his face. His face had been run over—with sorrow and pain—helplessness—and a deep regret, feeling that he could of done more and that he'd failed.

He was a coward.

In between his heart wrenching sobs, he'd paused to take in the oxygen from the surrounding air and tried not to lose it through hyperventilation. It was at the moment when he'd he regained the feeling of equilibrium that was started to slip away from, that the memory of Asuma appeared in his head.

The silence rang with wails so sorrowful that the rice paper walls vibrated, as if their man-made paper shoulders trembled with grief.

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Asuma exhaled fumes of smoke from his mouth. Shikamaru watched him, turning away with a small smile.

Asuma was fidgeting now, they were playing Shogi, and Shikamaru was dominating the game, as always.

There was no rational reason they played every afternoon-and on some rare evenings-when Shikamaru always won.

It had been routine now.

Asuma was just so hopeless at it.

It was amusing to Shikamaru because Asuma was rarely hopeless at anything. It was interesting to see this big bulk of a man look as perplexed as a child whose lost their marble in field of wheat, and has no idea how to recover it.

Asuma was made up of big parts. His legs, his arms—his kindness.

He scratched his beard, it grew in a ring of tuffs around his face.

He's a handsome man. Kurenai had confessed to him quietly, for a moment not denying her relationship with his sensei.

She was gazing at Asuma with obvious love in her eyes, as she whispered this to Shikamaru a year and a half ago. It had caught him off guard, his teammates had been a short distance away, but it obvious she knew Shikamaru wasn't a gossip.

It made him feel proud.

He'd responded that day with a shrug. "Ah, he's just Asuma to us, nagging and all."

Then he'd walked over to his mates to chide Asuma for baiting Choji in that way, telling him that method of training wouldn't work for the Akimichi boy.

Now, this afternoon they faced the board with cups of tea seated next to them on the porch, having their regular match.

"I think you're starting to slip up, Shika-maru, or is it you're thinking something else with that move. Hm. Ahh right.." He placed his piece to the left on the board with an audible chink. "There. I might be digging my grave with that, but go ahead, your turn."

Asuma spoke with an slow drawl. Everyone like to think that Shikamaru was original, that he was lazy and liked to take things slow of his own volition, but as one knows it's the characters one surrounds themselves with that permeate into their own personality.

Shikamaru smirked. "Sensei, I sometimes wonder if you're really this bad at Shogi, or just playing me." He made his move, his hands on his chin sighing. "So what was that story you were telling me yesterday..?"

"Ah!?" Asuma gave a contemplative smile and launched into his story. His tales often had Shikamaru enthralled, albeit always wondering of the validity of them.

Asuma had been part of the 12 Guardians, he always had some weird story, but it wasn't the story, per se, that Shikamaru paid particular attention to. It was whatever riddle or lesson was hidden beneath that Asuma was trying to convey, which filled Shikamaru's head as he looked off up at the clouds as his sensei spoke. His feet hung off the porch, a hand resting behind him in a relaxed pose.

Shikamaru didn't have to imagine where he might have inherited his sense of easing into languidness. He knew.

There were a lot ninja who too high strung, in a frenzy or just hyper about things. Shikamaru had learned from being around Asuma to take life in stride.

Sure, Asuma wasn't like him exactly, but he had that trait—even as a great Shinobi with brutal strength-that most occasions called for a collected demeanor. He was not so far nonchalant in the way of Kakashi, but pretty easy going about a lot of things.

He seemed to slip contently into the shoes of a sensei, despite his battle roughness, and he was a damn good one.

Shikamaru had the sense of a turtle borrowing the body of a big man and speaking out it with a booming voice.

Because Asuma did things with slow deliberation—talked with a strong drawl that didn't hurry through his words (It was no wonder why Kakashi could be seen to stand his company in the Jonin rooms along with Kurenai, in moments where they converged to discuss their genin, back in the day.)

Asuma's presence was soothing. It was like sitting under the shade of a large tree.

Shikamaru appreciate Asuma very much, but he would never voice these things out loud. For one thing, it would require too many words and he was far too lazy to attempt to form them.

Plus, Shikamaru liked to avoid doing things that didn't have a purpose. He laid out plans which would lead to plan B's and C's, all the way down the alphabet, and he had not seen any reason to mention anything as obvious.

He didn't need to convey that Asuma was a pillar of strength to him.

Because he said it repeatedly, into the air with his body and words, or whenever he shook his head disapprovingly at something Asuma had said or done, or sighed with exasperation or just sat with Asuma, silence stretching between them.

His unguarded demeanor toward his sensei was proof enough.

The unsaid was important to Shikamaru, there was so much to be found in what people didn't say, and so he conveyed messages into that line.

There was a certain blonde Shinobi he who didn't use it much, because his mouth was always gushing.

Shikamaru was sensible. There were not many who had the head on his shoulders that he possessed. He didn't pay particular attention to himself, never looking at himself too seriously even as he climbed the ranks of Chunin before all his peers.

Behind his lazy shrug, and his expression of what a 'drag' everything was, he had something underneath it all that made it obvious that he'd indeed bloom into something notable. It was faint, but there all along.

And it had been Asuma who had cultivated it.

Shikamaru might have done things simply, but he thought with great complexity. His thoughts had a web where all his actions were filtered through. So he always acted as sensibly as possible.

As the years passed he had turned 17. Shikamaru honed this gift. The gift of saying the thing that needed to be said and being silent afterwards.

He wasn't ostentatious. He dressed simply, acted simply and wore his black hair in a ponytail; like a pineapple on his head.

Simply.

He developed sound judgment and strong moral character.

He could be the hero of any story. The silent protagonist that bewitched the audience with his cleverness.

He had been a patch of green in the soil that was ignored because it was seen as unremarkable.

Eyes glanced over him, forms moved passed him.

But as in an orchestra building up to a crescendo, he was the dramatic pauses in between that were understated. It was this personality that elevated him higher and higher and higher still.

Shikamaru's success was really about two things, not giving a damn about what anyone thought of him, and not giving to thinking of himself too much.

With these two things he was able to unlock within himself a striking young man that people couldn't help but look up and notice.

Others lost themselves in what people thought of them, Sasuke couldn't escape the perceptions, even if he ignored the words from people, he acted in awareness of the way people reacted to him.

That evening with the hot summer sun beating down on their necks as they sat on the porch, his dad came around the back as Shikamaru and Asuma sat around playing Shogi. Shukaku patted Asuma on the back as he passed by, questioning him about something they had talked about that Shikamaru had no interest in.

Shukaku, had returned from a long day at work, and although he often sat with them for a while, today he moved towards the house, after finishing his conversation with Asuma. He had his shoes in his hands, crossing over the grass barefoot.

Before he left, he'd laid a hand on his son's shoulder, commended him after observing the tide of the game and his son's, then departed.

Shikamaru was in a daydreaming mood that afternoon.

The gears of time squeaked to a halt in his eyes as he felt like he was drifting away from his body, as thoughts sang slowly through his head.

He felt that day for a brief moment that this routine wouldn't last forever, but at the same time he could imagine himself with gray hair, sitting with a decrepit Asuma, playing and listening to stories for all of time.

Shikamaru felt content. He had the awareness to feel grateful that day. To be grateful toward Asuma, and to look at him as he'd never, feeling it was good to have him as company and—the fabric of his mind touched on this briefly before moving away as quickly as possible—wondering of a day Asuma might not be in his life-it was unfathomable.

These images like water colors mixed in his head, melting together into a kaleidoscope.

Asuma's cigarette hanging from his lips, that dirty habit, which disgusted Shikamaru on other people, but when Asuma did it, he was able to make it seem innocent and so Shikamaru could find no fault with him.

Asuma wasn't pulling toxic lung disease-causing agents from the stick of death he inhaled into his body, he was simply expressing a creative impulse to make baby clouds manifest into the atmosphere, sending them upwards to their parents.

Yes, he was making clouds. Shikamaru liked clouds.

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Review.

Seriously this was a whole story. Intense, long-winded and certainly not any fluff piece as the title suggested.

I found myself too tired to launch into another story. Maybe sometime I'll pick it up and tell the whole thing. I would like mention the interesting storyline I had planned...but

Man...what a drag that would be.

*wink*