Shikamaru isn't quite sure what to make of the day when Ino leaves a potted plant in his room. These things aren't what he usually spends his late mornings contemplating, so whatever the tall, leafy plant in the corner of his room means about his relationship with Ino, or even the amount of time she spent in his room, he isn't going to ponder it for too long. Or at all, as it turns out to be.
She did that often—left things at his house. A purple knit sweater on the back of his chair, hair bows strew across the floor, twisted flower crowns on his bedspread. Chouji did too; empty barbeque chip bags behind the bed, his favorite comic book on the side table.
It's a Team 10 Thing, because bedrooms are playrooms they never grew out of, and Ino's house and Chouji's house are really just my house in other places with different parents and it's nothing unusual. He's probably forgotten his fair share of personal effects at their homes as well.
But a potted plant is so Ino, so deliberately placed in the empty corner of his room that he doesn't know what to make of it. Neither do the other guys.
Kiba gives a snicker, Lee sings about blossoming youth, and Naruto is halfway to eating it before Shikamaru shoves them out of his room. What they're doing in there, he hasn't a clue, but he's thankful when Neji speaks up and says it was nothing unusual. He has several in his room that are, naturally, tended by the housekeeper that he hardly even realizes they're there.
It's a constant, nagging thought in the back of his mind for the next several days. The plant stands innocently enough in his room, intentionally placed to bask in the sunlight for most of the morning, and it distracts him with its solidity and purposelessness.
Distracts him enough to such a degree that when he has Ino against his bedroom door, noses bumping in an unpremeditated makeout, hands on forbidden areas of her body, the flower in the corner of his room is taking up half his thoughts.
It's unnerving him, like a voyeur to their actions, and he turns in frustration when Ino breaks off for a breath.
"What?" she asks, irritated, in a winded voice between pants.
"Nothing. Just, your stupid plant."
"Calla Lily," she corrects him, as if he were a student at the academy and she his long-legged teacher that half the class has a crush on. Maybe she is, for all the reprimanding look she throws him.
"It's staring."
"It's a plant." And she pushes off the wall and drags him down onto the bed and shuts him up with a strategically placed leg and the damn plant can stare for all he cares at this point.
Later, with her cheek pressed against his chest and his finger running across her toned stomach, he asks why she placed it in his room.
"Marking my territory," she answers, listening to the pounding of his heart.