The first of hopefully a series of stories. I know it's cliché to write a 20 Facts series, but hey, I got the idea. Hopefully, you'll like my version of it.
Oh, and thanks to grynis209 for helping me out with nr. 11!
1. Choji is, without a doubt, hands down, no questions asked, Shikamaru's best friend.
2. Shikamaru appreciates that his friendship with Choji is as normal as it is, because when he looks at his other friends, he sees a lot of really strange friendships. Kiba's best friend is a dog, and his closest human friend is Shino, and that just speaks for itself. Ino and Sakura are still rivals, even if they don't hate each other anymore, Neji and Lee are… well, they're Neji and Lee. And Naruto and Sasuke's friendship is not a road Shikamaru even wants to go down.
3. Despite it being a drag, Shikamaru worries about his friends, and in more ways than one. At times, he worries a lot.
4. Although he will never tell them, he worries more about Naruto than he worries about Ino. He knows that Naruto is more capable of taking care of himself in battle than Ino is, but he takes a whole lot of psychological blows from people, and he also manages to get himself involved in the extremely tough fights, the ones everyone else would run away from or not survive.
5. Shikamaru preferred to play Shogi with Asuma instead of his father simply because Asuma was so much easier to beat, and he has to put in more effort in a game against Shikaku
6. Shikamaru will never try to understand people like Naruto, Gaara, and Sasuke because he knows he can't. What they've all experienced is worse, far worse, than what he can imagine, so he won't try to understand. He'll just lend an ear and help if they want it, and if he thinks that they really need it.
7. He loves his parents to bits, even if he doesn't show it. He just doesn't worry about them much, because his mother is mostly at home or just in the village, and he knows very well that his father is more than capable of taking care of himself.
8. Shikamaru was sort of shocked when he realized that in some aspects, he'd like to be like Shikaku when he becomes an actual adult, and grows out of his teenage years.
9. Shikamaru admires Kakashi for being able to handle Naruto and Sasuke's fighting and arguing.
10. When he was ten, Shikamaru was told by Shikaku that he was born eighteen days prematurely. They're both happy for that, because is he had been born those eighteen days later, he would have been born during the Nine-Tailed Fox' attack. And that would've been chaos for the family.
11. Shikamaru is well aware of the fact that his father has a deal with Ino's and Choji's fathers. If one of them dies, their respective families will be left in the care of the other two during the inevitable grieving period. Ino and Choji don't know about this, and Shikaku has asked him not to tell them, so he won't.
12. Shikamaru really hopes that Ino's parents don't die, because he really doesn't want Ino to be left in his family's care.
13. He loves Ino like a sister, so when his mother talks about the potential there might be in Ino, he immediately rejects it. He's not ever going to fall in love with Ino. As annoying as it is, he thinks there's a larger possibility of him falling in love with Temari.
14. Shikamaru never lies. He just doesn't. He can beat around the bush, try to avoid subjects, but he never lies.
15. After the whole Sasuke retrieval-mission thing, he hopes that Choji will never, ever get skinny. It doesn't suit him. It just worries the ones around him. He has considered telling Ino this every time since then that she calls Choji fat.
16. Shikamaru has never been low on confidence, even if he's not extremely self-confident. But after his first failed mission as a captain, he was worried. And the next time he was put in charge, he had been downright scared that he'd do something wrong and someone would die.
17. While it's true that Shikamaru was extremely lazy during his time in the academy, and spent a lot of time sleeping, his laziness wasn't the only reason. He was generally extremely bored as well. He knew most of the things the instructors taught, so he wasn't bothered to pay much attention. He got more out of a nap than he got out of paying attention, even if he never actually proved this during tests.
18. When it comes to his friends, Shikamaru, surprisingly, finds that most things aren't a drag. He enjoys spending time with all of them, including Shino and Sasuke.
19. Shikamaru is positive that nothing will really frighten him ever again. He's experienced so many horrifying things by now that it'll practically be impossible to scare him.
20. He doesn't want to be Hokage. Not because he's too lazy, or because he lacks the confidence. Sitting behind a desk doing paperwork is more relaxing than jumping between trees and fighting battles, and he has confidence in his abilities when it comes to his brain. And it's not because he feels like there's someone else, like Kakashi, that would be so much better. No, it's simply because he knows that Naruto wants to be Hokage, and he doesn't want to take that away from him.