Shikamaru laid on that bed, as so many times before. Clean sheets, every time he came here it would have new sheets, crisp, pleasantly fresh. The apartment was small, and lacking almost any personal touches. It was annoyingly neat to Shikamaru, because when the owner was gone, there was nothing there to remind him of him; not even his smell in the sheets.
Shikamaru was waiting, with one hand behind his head and the other caressing the soft cloth under him absently, watching the rain fall heavily outside the nearby window, and the gray clouds drifting by, slowly, slowly. He was waiting to hear steps in the corridor outside.
They would be faint, he would almost doubt that he heard anything at all. Then the door would open, carefully, without a single unnecessary twitch by his hands, and as soon as he was in the room, that annoying absence of his smell because of the ever-clean state of the apartment would drift away, little by little.
He had been gone for days on a mission, and Shikamaru had yet again been struck by how much he missed him when he was gone. It came as such a blow every time. It made Shikamaru wonder if he would ever accept it, if he would ever learn. One thing was certain however, Shikamaru knew the scent of him by now, the scent of him coming back from a foreign country, tired, with yet another won battle or three behind him. He would smell like his shampoo, like himself, and a hint of bloody experience. Today he would smell like autumn rain, too. He wasn't one for bothering with umbrellas if he walked alone.
Shikamaru's mind drifted from the clouds in front of his eyes to the thought of wet, tangled hair and that gaze of his. However passive he had tried to be around Shikamaru lately, Shikamaru would always see through his eyes right into his mind, like they were made of glass.
But it didn't matter that Shikamaru saw through him, whatever he did, the guy's stoic ways didn't seem to want to budge for him. Shikamaru's jaw had unintentionally tensed at the thought of his uncomfortably shut out situation, even though tensing muscles like that was troublesome.
When it came down to it, he would almost be lying if he said he didn't enjoy this. Waiting for him, every time to say welcome back, make sure he was okay. Sex or no sex, it was worth it, just to at least exchange a few friendly sentences, and maybe for him to steal a kiss before leaving.
Leaving through the door, obviously, since playing cool by jumping out windows was troublesome.
No, in the end it wasn't even about the lack of sex the last two months (or so), it was that Shikamaru felt like this guy - his guy - wasn't telling him anything. One thing that is sure about Shikamaru; he isn't stupid. Something was up, but he hadn't been trusted with what exactly was wrong. This, Shikamaru thought, reduced him to something less than a boyfriend, something more of a sex partner; and a sex starved sex partner, what's that?
A rejected sex partner, that's what.
Sometimes he thought, fine, he doesn't trust me enough, this can't go any further. But then he would meet him in the street, on the training grounds, or even be assigned to missions with him, and he'd look through those eyes of glass, and they'd say something to each other, something simple like "How've you been?" or "How's that special training going along?" and Shikamaru would know, from an unmistakable boiling hot sensation in the pit of his stomach that they had something, and that he undoubtedly wasn't the only one who felt it.
All Shikamaru hoped for was that he would come to his senses and admit his sex drive to him. Because Shikamaru knew that the moment he would give in, he would come to him to get it, like he used to. Tapping on his bedroom window, knocking on his door, pulling him into an alley or call him from a hotel room somewhere far away. He was sure that sex was all that was needed for things to start falling into place again. The talking, the trusting.
The fact that the lack of sex recently wasn't the real problem in Shikamaru's mind didn't stop him from getting a boner out of imagining how this guy must be dealing with this. He sighed. A boner when waiting for a sex refusing boyfriend was troublesome.
Beyond troublesome. When he would walk through that door, he would fill the room with the faint, wonderful smell of his shampoo, forest leaves, rain. His musky sweat, clinging to his skin under all the other smells, that wouldn't - couldn't - remind Shikamaru of anything else than sex.
He would look over to the bed, knowing before looking that Shikamaru was there, waiting for him, faithfully, even though he knew he would get no reward other than a "Hello". Shikamaru would look into those transparent eyes that would tell him he wasn't unwanted, that he mattered, and he would feel his stomach fill up with that godforsaken hope of being more special to this man, being, perhaps, his everything.
And as he would feel that ridiculous, troublesome smile reach his lips that he couldn't stop even if he tried, this guy would drop whatever jacket he was wearing, walk in the bathroom and start undressing. Undressing with those small, content sighs of a man who really want to get out of his clothes.
Shikamaru still didn't know if the guy was aware that leaving the bathroom door open like that gave Shikamaru a pretty clear view of what was happening in the bathroom through the full sized mirror on the wall. It was an obscure angle and though he sometimes, hard as a rock and swearing in his mind with knitted brows, swore the guy was just trying to tease him silly, he thought it would be unlike him to do it entirely on purpose.
Yes, a boner at this time was in deed very troublesome.
Shikamaru closed his eyes and tried to think of cold showers. "Down, boy..." he whispered to his dick, though it didn't help much. He changed tactics to what he knew was a much more effective one; he thought of work.
They had passed a village, burned to the ground, on the way home from his last mission. Sometimes it happened, inevitably, the reality of what he did for a living caught up with him. Their mission had been simple enough; his group had hunted down, interrogated and destroyed, a group of men raising an uproar against Shikamaru's team's employer.
Shikamaru knew that he musn't think things like "should I really be standing on this side in this battle, is it really the right thing?" and "If I would have refused to do that, would things have turned for the better or for worse? How many people will cry over the ones I have killed? How many of them will get a burial at all?"
In his line of work, thinking like that only led to head diseases. Because right and wrong were always very objective and the sides to choose between were always in shades of grey. Reality wasn't made up by the good and the bad, and sometimes saving an innocent child could lead to an unnecessary war. There were no good ones and bad ones as much as there was no way of telling who you should choose to protect, or if choosing the opposite side would have made it easier to live with after it was all over. But this village, this crushed, burned out village they had passed, it was clear that the men they had killed were native to it.
It was also clear that the information Shikamaru had found and dug out and given to his employer had directly lead to this slaughter. Everyone in his group knew this. None of them were foolish, and none of them had enough naivety left, however young some of them were.
But nobody had commented on it. They had just quietly gone past, ignoring in hope of forgetting. And Shikamaru suspected that maybe the fact that they hadn't even stopped to look for survivors in the piles of dead on those once peaceful streets, made his conscience even heavier.
Those memories chased away whatever lust was in his body, though he knew the risk was great for him to try to seek comfort and ignorance in his boyfriend with those memories eating away on his mind.
That's when a key was carefully slid inside the door's lock with a faint rattling sound, and the doorknob was turned gently. Shikamaru was a little startled; he hadn't noticed the sound of a single footstep outside, and though his chest filled up with bubbly happiness at the thought of who would be walking in the door in just a second, his reflexes to hide and ambush twitched in his muscles.
He was 18 since four days ago, and he figured that he was either getting too old for this, or that he wasn't old enough for this yet to begin with.
Into the room slid the man of his dreams. Wet, tired and seemingly gloomy.
"Hey, you.. How did you know I would be home today?"
Shikamaru couldn't help that unstoppable smile spreading over his face. He shrugged a little. "Intuition." In truth he had just asked the Hokage.
A faint smile back. That was all Shikamaru really needed to walk home content, but this time he wouldn't settle for just that.
***
He walks into the bathroom for a shower, and Shikamaru quietly gets off the bed. He watches in the mirror as the man peels off his damp shirt and sighs a tiny puff of air in relief before Shikamaru ultimately makes the decision to walk inside. He reaches out, caresses a shoulder gently, and feel that same reflex to hide or attack as he had had a moment before jumping through the muscles under the moist skin, before he relaxes into Shikamaru's touch.
He lets Shikamaru pin him to the wall, and doesn't even say anything when his back is pressed against his mirror, surely leaving a big greasy stain, and a pair of neat hand prints from Shikamaru on both sides of him.
There was a pause, then a fluttery butterfly kiss. Shikamaru searches behind those eyes, tries to read his mind.
"Was it a rough one? Your mission?"
"Yes." He sighs, not knowing if he hated that Shikamaru could read him so well or loved it. After all, telling him without being so directly asked about it would have felt impossible. Words were heavy things.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No. I want to forget about it."
Shikamaru could see tears being blinked away, and that was something that just didn't happen. His boyfriend didn't cry, not without a damn good reason. So he decided to not argue it and do his best to make him forget, before those tears would slide down skin. Shikamaru could deal with a lot without loosing his composure, but seeing him cry was very likely not one of those things.
This kiss was deeper, Shikamaru tasted the insides of his mouth, and found it tasted of liquor. A faint hope that he was drunk enough to have shaken off some of his stubbornness made Shikamaru's cock twitch to life again. He wrapped his arms around the body pressed against his, lifted him up and carried him to the bed. There was a muffled protest that he should shower before laying on his clean sheets, but it was ignored. Shikamaru knew that he would change them in a few days anyway, so he had no qualms in dirtying them.