Summary: Shikamaru returned home from his mission wanting nothing more than to be greeted by a sweet, loving girlfriend and to take a (richly deserved) nap. But, as it turns out, Ino is over at Sakura's house, crying her eyes out. Hey, guess what? ShikaIno.
Pairings: ShikaIno (predominantly), and SakuLee (a pet pairing).
If you don't like these pairings then you'd be something of an idiot if you read this anyway. If you want to flame then I'll go ahead and copy/paste this warning in reply. Please don't be silly.
Unbeta'd.
Dedication: Me. It's my birthday, and I'm gonna post what I want.
Disclaimer: Oh good heavens, if only I owned it. Then I could fix certain things...
Surprise!
Chapter One:
Two Little Words and One Long One.
Even with all of his intelligence, Shikamaru hadn't been able to figure it out.
He'd gotten back and Ino hadn't been there. He'd thought it normal enough, even if he did feel somewhat disgruntled. He'd been away on a three-day mission and when he returned she wasn't even going to be around to say hello? What was the entire point of everything?
As it turned out Ino was over at Sakura's house.
And during that time Ino was lamenting grievously for reasons she 'could not explain.' But when she kept wailing at about how it must have been so nice to have such a wonderfully carefree and innocent relationship with Lee, Sakura got a bit confused and started to believe that Ino was completely misunderstanding things. She informed Ino (in an astonishingly blunt fashion) that she and Lee were having sex. And there was nothing wrong with a committed, sexual relationship.
Ino stared at her with red-rimmed eyes. "What?" she exclaimed, "Not my poor little Sakura…"
Sakura's eyes widened for a moment. "Ino, don't you dare tell me that you've got a crush on me. I won't believe you at all."
"No! I don't love you!" Ino said, and rubbed her itchy eyes with her fists.
"What's going on then?" Sakura asked. There was no answer. Sakura tried again. "Who do you love? And I'll tell you now, there's only one answer that I won't not beat you up for."
Ino started crying with renewed vigor. "Ino!" Sakura said harshly, "You tell me right now that you love Shikamaru or else I will beat the hell out of you! Don't think that I won't!"
Ino was crying too hard to answer. Sakura glared at her. "You commitment-phobe! Don't you dare do anything stupid! You two are perfect together and you're not allowed to break-up!"
"That's not the problem," Ino managed between her heavy cries.
Sakura felt no relief. "What is the problem?" she demanded.
"I'm ruining his life!" Ino finally managed, sobbing hardcore in Sakura's shoulder.
Sakura paused. "What?"
Ino shook her head, refusing to go any further. Sakura felt truly confused. Was her friend finally showing some signs of poor confidence? … Why?
She decided to proceed with caution. "He considers himself lucky to have you," she said.
Ino broke into even worse crying, which Sakura hadn't thought possible and Sakura knew a lot about crying. "You're making me feel like the worst person in the world!" Ino wailed.
There was a knock at the door and then the soft voice of Sakura's mother came through. "Sakura? Ino? Is everything alright in there?"
Sakura shot Ino a meaningful look while answering, "Yeah, we're fine. Sorry for bugging you!"
Ino gulped inwards a few times. "Yeah," she began, but then broke into tears again.
Sakura's mother opened the door and gazed down at the girls in concern. "What's going on?" she asked.
"Nothing-" Sakura began.
"I'm sorry Mrs. Haruno," Ino sobbed, "I'll leave now."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Sakura's mother said, catching Ino by the shoulders as she started to walk by. "What is going on here?"
"My life is a mess!" Ino wailed.
Sakura's mother looked at her for a moment, nodded in sudden understanding, and gave the girl a hug. "It'll work out in the end. Just go on home and face it," she said.
Ino nodded miserably and trailed away.
"Wait!" Sakura said, getting to her feet but finding herself ultimately blocked by her own mother. "Mom!" she exclaimed after the front door shut, "Why are you sending her home?"
Her mother didn't seem to be paying too much attention to her. "Her parents are going to kill her," she murmured to herself.
"What?" Sakura said. "What the heck is going on?"
Her mother shook her head. "You'll find out soon enough."
"Tell me now," Sakura said, "Since you stopped Ino from telling me."
She shook her head again. "You, my darling daughter, love to chat too much. You'll find out soon enough."
Shikamaru woke up from after-mission-nap at about eleven that night in order to forage for some food before being able to return to sleep. It surprised him to see Ino already in the kitchen, one arm cradling her head as she lay with her cheek flat against the table.
"You're back," he said.
"Hi," she said in return, nodding. Though the nod was actually just her head shifting against the tabletop.
He waited a moment before allowing a bit of irritation to build. "Glad to see you missed me while I was gone."
Ino nodded again, slightly. Just the tiniest tilt. "Glad you're back," she mumbled.
Shikamaru let the silence wait for a moment. "I'm safe too," he finally said.
"Good," Ino said.
Shikamaru shifted slightly. "Fine. Goodnight."
He was about to walk away again when Ino made that noise that always preceded tears (with her, anyway), and he turned around in confusion. Ino was covering her face with her hands and she was actually crying.
"Are you… are you crying?" he said warily.
"Uh-huh," she said into her hands.
He waited a moment. "Why?"
"I'm a terrible, horrible person."
There was very sudden streak of terrifying cold ice that suddenly coated Shikamaru's spine and shoulders before he forced it away. After a very dark silence he said, "What does that mean?"
Ino choked and shook her head.
Shikamaru sighed silently. To himself. He truly hadn't thought that she'd ever cheat on him. She used to have a lot of… wild behaviors, but he thought that she'd really been… He let his hands fall and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He had thought that she loved him.
"What did you do?" he asked quietly.
Ino shook her head again, still choking on her tears.
He waited silently. She wasn't a coward. She'd tell him. At least she felt bad about it, though. Was it with someone he knew? God, he hoped not. He hoped that it was with some nothing little civilian that he could kick the crap out of. Maybe kill and make it look like an accident of sorts-
"It's your fault too-" Ino finally managed.
Shikamaru's eyes widened. "My fault?" he said coldly.
His mind was instantly racing with that one. How could that be his fault? He'd been a damn good boyfriend lately. And attentive and… helpful. He wasn't doing anything wrong. There was no way that this was following one of those classic romance tales of an ignored lover driven into the arms of another. Bullshit.
"Uh-huh."
Ino didn't even do him the courtesy of looking up at him so that she could see his disgust.
"What exactly did I do?" he asked in an equally cold tone.
There was a bunch of sobbing that he couldn't understand, except for the very last sentence that finished with, "Daddy's going to kill me."
…
"What?" Shikamaru asked. "What does your father have to do with any of this?"
Ino cleared her throat loudly and she looked up at him, her large eyes red with a day's worth of crying. "I said, that he'll kill me for being pregnant."
Shikamaru blinked. Paused. And blinked again. "For… what?"
Ino buried her head in her arms again. "I'm pregnant," she said into the table, "Congratulations."
"You-" Shikamaru said, his normally sharp mind failing him. "You… oh shit."
Ino's crying strengthened.
It took another moment to regain a synchronization between his mouth and brain. "You're pregnant?"
She nodded. "Two months along."
"You're sure?"
"Four tests. All positive."
"Oh. You're pregnant?"
Wow. Life was going to be changing soon. Drastically. And Ino was right. Her father was going to kill the both of them.
She hadn't cheated on him though.
"Who else knows?"
"S-Sakura's m-m-m-mom," Ino managed through quavering lips.
"But not Sakura?" Shikamaru asked in confusion.
"No."
"Your mom?"
"Just S-Sakura's."
Speaking of mothers, his own mother was going to… Shikamaru shuddered and abandoned that particular train of thought. And then he really didn't know what to say.
"You could go get checked out," he said, "Sometimes those tests aren't accurate…"
Ino rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Inaccurate four times. Along with the fact that I just so happen to have missed two periods. Pure coincidence." The sharpness of her tone was hampered by cracking into yet more tears.
There was a moment of silence before Shikamaru spoke again, almost unable to keep from saying it. "Your dad is going to kill me. Using torture."
Good god, the things that man had said to him. Even though Inoichi knew that Shikamaru and Ino were sleeping together, he'd still managed many different terrible and dark threats about mistreatment or 'misuse.'
"Don't talk about my dad," Ino demanded with less force than she had ever demanded of anything. "He's going to…"
Shikamaru really, honestly, did not know what to say. This was the last thing that he'd been expecting. He expected people to die more than he expected this to happen. He glanced over at Ino again and wondered exactly how long she had been crying like this. It looked painful.
He got a glass of water, sat down across from and shoved the glass at her. "You're going to make yourself sick," he said.
Ino looked at the glass, rubbed one of her eyes and then burst into tears again. Shikamaru sighed, but it wasn't the 'how troublesome' or even the 'how tiresome' sigh that he usually gave. This was an entirely unusual circumstance. After several more moments he said, "Why are you crying?"
Ino dropped her hands and looked up at him abruptly. Her red eyes were going from miserable to incredulous and then, slowly but steadily, to angry. "Why am I crying?" she repeated hoarsely. "I'm crying because you're the biggest jerk in the world!"
Shikamaru blinked.
Ino glared and rubbed at her eyes again. "I hate you! My father is going to kill us both, your mother is going to be mad at me, and my Mom is g-g-going to be so," Ino's face screwed up a bit, "disappointed. And you come home and act all mean and then ask me I'm crying?"
"I didn't act mean," Shikamaru said automatically.
"You did too! You acted like I'd done something really wrong and-" Ino's expression suddenly darkened even as her face paled.
Shikamaru felt a slight flutter of panic. She'd figured out what he'd thought she had done. "You told me that you did something terrible, of course I wasn't happy-" he began, mounting a quick defense.
"You thought that I cheated on you?" Ino shrieked angrily, "So you think that this isn't even yours, huh?"
"Ino-"
"I bet when Sakura says she's done something bad, Lee doesn't think she's out screwing half of Konoha!" Ino shouted, getting out of her chair and stalking furiously down the hallway, into their bedroom and slamming the door shut behind her.
There were several ways to respond to that one, most of which would warrant an almost-immediate death sentence from Ino.
"Lee and I do not think the same way," Shikamaru said through the door, raising his voice to be heard above Ino's renewed crying.
"Because Lee actually loves Sakura," Ino immediately returned, "Which is something you have no experience with!"
Shikamaru sighed. "You are being unreasonable."
"Then I guess you were being reasonable? I'm just that unfaithful? I've never cheated on you, and I could have, Shikamaru!" Ino shouted.
He felt that it was very unfortunate that they lived in apartment complex. There was no way that the neighbors weren't able to hear what was going on. And it was nearly midnight.
But honestly, what the hell was he supposed to say to that? And it didn't help that there was the slightest of sharp jabs of jealousy from that.
"Is that supposed to inspire confidence?" he said, "I bet Sakura doesn't see guys and tally them down as guys that she could sleep with if she weren't with Lee."
Of all of the things to say, that certainly wasn't it.
Ino threw the door open so suddenly that even with his fast reflexes it almost hit him and then she was right up in his face. "That's what you think I do? That I sit around thinking about how I wished we weren't going out so that I could sleep with whoever?"
"No-"
"Like I'm forced to stay here! I could leave any time I want, I've got plenty of places I can go!" Ino shrieked.
Shikamaru was feeling the edges of his temper rising. He suppressed it. "Ino what the hell would you think if I told you that I'd done something terrible?"
Ino's eyes widened then narrowed. "I'd think a million different things! I'd think that maybe someone got killed on the last mission, or you insulted my Dad to his face, or you burned down the apartment! You could screw up in a lot of different ways!"
"How the hell could I burn down the apartment?" Shikamaru asked.
"And now you think I'm stupid as well!" Ino returned, and she moved back and slammed the door shut. "Sleep on the couch or leave or do whatever the hell you want! I don't care!"
Neither of them said anything. Shikamaru waited until he heard Ino walk away from the door and move onto the bed before he sighed and headed out to the couch. Seventy-two hours away and this was not what he had been looking forward to. And it didn't help that Ino was still crying so loudly that he could hear her all the way to the living room.
Pregnant? Wow.
He was only very barely asleep when he felt Ino sit on the edge of the couch next to him and then a half-second pause before she laid her head down on his chest and both hands gripped his shoulders. It was entirely dark, almost three in the morning, and even his eyes couldn't fully adjust to the darkness.
"I wouldn't cheat on you," Ino murmured in an almost pouty tone into his skin
"Yeah," he said back.
"Why would you think I would?" Ino continued in that same hurt voice.
"Because that's the intro for that particular conversation."
"That doesn't mean I cheated on you."
He sighed, knowing that he couldn't edge around the issue, no matter how much worse it could possibly make her ego, "It's one of the hazards of dating an extremely attractive girl."
"You get jealous?" Ino said and, to Shikamaru's exasperation, there was a hint of a pleased note in her voice.
He knew that this was acceptable in lieu of a verbal apology. Then he could feel Ino suddenly sink onto him further and the mood was abruptly morose. "I won't be pretty much longer," she said and her voice was tilting towards tears again. "I'm going to get big and fat and ugly."
Shikamaru moved slightly to the side and yanked her closer against his side and tucked his arm around her. "No you're not."
"Yes I am," Ino said with a sniff and pressed harder against him. "I'm going to g-get huge."
"No. You are eventually… going to… get to buy new clothes," he said.
"No pretty clothes."
He reached around her and took her hand, gently intertwining their fingers. "You'll make them pretty."
Ino sniffed, but moved their hands up and she lightly kissed his wrist. "I wish I weren't pregnant."
He pressed his lips to the back of her shoulder. "Hey, at least it's mine," he said.
Ino stiffened in his arms and then she loosened and there was the shortest choke of a laugh. He waited to hear the final verdict. Ino turned and gently kissed his lips and then she rested her forehead against his. "I guess that's sort of a plus," she whispered.
He smiled in the dark and ran his hands along the contour of her back and shoulders. "I guess so. Out of the alternatives."
"I could list them for you if you'd like," Ino murmured, "You smug, little bastard."
His smile turned into a grin and they somehow moved so that she was beneath him and he was able to leisurely kiss her temple. "You can list who you want, but it really doesn't matter at this point," he said.
"Don't think for a second that I still couldn't leave you," Ino said and her whisper didn't sound as enthralled.
"Don't," he whispered softly in return.
Ino went still for half a moment and then she pulled him into a much longer kiss. "Fine," she whispered and it would have been harder for the two to be speaking more intimately if they tried.
A/N.
Hey, and here we have yet another multi-chapter fic that I'm going to have to work on updating. However, luckily, for this one, it is quite simple and I have most of it written.
Anyway, like I said, this is dedicated to me in honor of my birthday. I'm working on various other updates, so keep an eye out (if that's your kinda thing).
Fun Fact. I'm posting this at my place of employment. So technically, I am being paid for my fanfiction.
I will consider a review to be the equivalent of a birthday present. Late gifts are also perfectly acceptable. :D
-CR