Good Morning, Shikamaru
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She was on the grass. The sky above her, the ground beneath her, and nothing but the clouds floating through her field of vision. The air was clean and beautiful-smelling, and the earth was clumpy and dark in its wetness. She scooped a bunch of it into her hands, marveling at how soft it was. How blue the sky was. How puffy the clouds were. Shikamaru would love it here.
Shikamaru. Her eyes softened.
She always thought he was gorgeous.
Not in the way Uchiha Sasuke had been gorgeous, with his flaming eyes and his icy smirk that hurt more than it should've. Not gorgeous like Hyuga Neji was either, with his darkened locks of silk and his eyes of silver.
He was more than that. Better than that.
Ino always thought Shikamaru was gorgeous in the way a woman was supposed to find a man attractive. He was gruff and irritating and scruffy and more than a little rough around the edges, but his heart always held a soft spot for her. His arms were firm and warm, like a man's should be, and his voice was more a low rumbling in his chest than a real sound at all. And his scent… it was heavy and comforting, heady, but it didn't really stand out. He didn't really stand out. Shikamaru didn't really smell exotic and spicy like Kankuro, or clean like Neji, or wild like Kiba, and neither did he cling to the smell of tempura and Korean barbecue like Choji did.
It was… nothing.
Well, not nothing. Just something unidentifiable.
He smelled like the air. He smelled like pine trees, the deer, the grass beneath her feet, the rain, and sometimes, like smoke. But mostly, he just smelled like Shikamaru.
Ino allowed the tufts of grass to fall between her fingers as she stood. The calmness of where she was seeped into her every pore and gently held her soul until nothing but serenity dwelled within her. She walked toward a tree—a sturdy peach tree with little pink buds of fruit just peeping out behind rows of flowers.
It was no secret she was waiting for someone. Ino was so tired of being alone… no matter how perfect the world was, she simply couldn't stand to be all by herself without him. She was a social creature at heart. And maybe today would be the day.
What luck. Today was the day.
Ino couldn't help but let herself smile beautifully when she neared the tree and noticed the lazy figure of a man lying beneath the shade of the peach blossoms. He was still as handsome as ever. His hair color was average, his looks fairly average, his eyes a little too small and a little too shrewd to be considered perfect. But she didn't really want perfection; all she wanted was him. And when she arrived to stand beside the sleeping man, she took a few moments to stop and simply stare.
It had been a long time.
At that moment, Ino laid herself beside him and entangled her slim fingers in his hair, watching as her man breathed up and down. He had just arrived, and she would make sure that she would be the first person to greet him. The first one to see his face. See all that intelligence and affection buried deeply within his brown-gray-green eyes.
At length, Shikamaru's breathing quickened, and Ino felt herself tense in anticipation. She drew her hand down toward his chest, where his sun-darkened fingers tangled with hers. He yawned and stretched, eyes prying open sleepily. At first, he looked confused. The sky, the sun, the grass, the clouds. Surely this was too perfect to be reality. Then his eyes lit up when they saw her, and Ino felt a thrill down to the very tips of her toes when he smirked at her in that way.
Heart beating quickly, breath hitching in her throat, she managed to murmur, "Good morning, Shikamaru."
His omniscient smirk melted into a true smile, and he gathered her carefully into his arms. She was a kunoichi, and she did not cry, but she certainly felt like she might at that moment.
She had finally opened her eyes to him once again.
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