Author's Note: Poor Temari. I really have no right to take out my emotions on her... Alas, such is life! If you have the inspiration, use it. Also, yes, I will work on "VAMP"... eventually. In the meantime, please enjoy.

Disclaimer: The owning of the Naruto, it no belong to me, 'kay? Thanks.

"I hate him!" Temari screamed, punching a pillow as she tossed over on her bed, pausing only to glare momentarily at the phone. "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!"

"Then why do you call him?" Even as the question left Kankuro's lips Temari knew she wouldn't be able to answer correctly. After all, hadn't she been asking herself the same thing for a while now? Kankuro's smirk widened as he leaned against the door frame, the silence becoming thicker every second.

"Cat got your tongue?"

"Shut up, Kankuro," the older girl decided to growl instead, chucking one of the pillows at the doorway where he had just been. Seeing that it would do no good to redirect her anger at her brother, Temari fell back on the rumpled bedspread, bouncing slightly. She glanced at the clock on her bedside and sighed. What she wouldn't give to have the hour she had just spent on the phone with Nara Shikamaru back. What she wouldn't give to have talked all night with him.

"I hate him..." she muttered to herself once more, running a hand through her soft bangs. She didn't know why she kept saying that, and so loudly, too. It was becoming painfully obvious to those around her and yes, even to herself now that the statement wasn't at all true. Maybe somewhere in the back of her mind she hoped, just by saying those words out loud, that she was forestalling the inevitable, those three other words coming out of her mouth and... And what? She wondered to herself. And totally getting shot down by a complete loser like him? She winced visibly.

So maybe he wouldn't completely shoot her down, she reasoned. Maybe he would just say "no," politely. Maybe he wouldn't answer at all. That seemed far more likely, considering what a lazy ass he was. Temari decided she liked that option the best, then. It was a lot easier to deal with someone who just didn't know what to say as much as you did, or at least seemed like it, than someone who knew all the right answers. Someone who could outsmart her even though she had always prided herself privately on being quite the genius. Someone she had to fight to keep up with even though his world seemed to operate in slow motion. Someone she... Temari bit her thumbnail pensively. Maybe she wanted him to say "yes" after all.

XXX

"Why are we out here?" Rain. Even now she was still uncomfortable with the temperate weather of Konoha, but back then the steady drops that fell from the sky had very near frightened Temari. It had been during their second Chuunin exam that the rain had started to pour like that, her brothers and Shikamaru's team huddled under a cluster of trees to keep dry. Except that Shikamaru himself was currently standing on the crest of a small hill, not moving, and getting drenched to the bone.

"Why are we out her?" Temari repeated grumpily, tightening her crossed arms.

"Well, they said it was supposed to be sunny," Yamanaka Ino, Shikamaru's teammate, observed with a huff. "I guess not." That wasn't the right answer, of course. The real reason she was out there was because, despite the fact that the idea of having a picnic with Shikamaru's team was absolutely repulsive and not just because they were currently "enemies" in the exam, she had wanted to spend time with someone other than her obnoxious brothers. Apparently, however, Fate was not going to allow her to do so in peace.

"That idiot. What does he think he's doing?" Temari tried again, glaring at Shikamaru's form through the falling water. Her brothers and Shikamaru's other teammate, Akimichi Chouji, seemed otherwise involved in a conversation about Suna cuisine, so Ino once more answered the girl.

"I dunno. He's stupid like that sometimes." She glanced briefly at the dark sky, then pulled her ponytail over her shoulder and began to comb her fingers through it. "Damn, all this humidity. I'd go and yell at him, but my hair's already a wreck as it is." Temari self-consciously brought a hand to her own dirty blonde locks, but the spiky pigtails seemed fine to her. Besides, what the hell was a little water? She had been forced to swim through mud at one point just to complete a mission and had had to wait a good day before showering. Like a little sprinkle could hurt a real kunoichi.

"That moron..." She growled at last, clenching her fists and walking out from under the trees in determination. She was immediately met with an ice-cold downpour, but what did she care? In the next moment, however, Temari could see that the slope had become dangerously slick in the last few minutes. Once she reached the base of the hill, she dared go no further for pride's sake.

"Stupid," she called, but soon realized that the rain was easily drowning out her voice. "Shikamaru, you idiot, what are you doing?" He turned his head to look in her direction, and it was then Temari saw that his eyes had been closed.

"The rain is nice. You should come stand here," he responded simply. The woman could hear her heart race at that moment, but had no idea why. She would have joined him then, she really would have... except Ino's loud giggle behind her stopped the sand kunoichi dead in her tracks.

"It's almost like one of those romantic scenes from a movie, y'know?" she could hear the younger girl say to her companions. "Temari-san, you should go run and hug him or something!" That did it. Temari did not want it to seem like she felt that way at all and she was certainly not part of some damn cliche.

"Get back here before you catch a damn cold, you idiot!" Was all the Suna resident could manage before storming back under the arboreal shelter.

"Mneh... Noisy woman," Shikamaru sighed behind her. "Mendokuse..."

XXX

Now, as Temari lay sprawled amongst the covers in her darkened room, she realized she wished desperately that she could have that day back, that she could run and catch him softly in the rain, both of them soaked. Just to have his warmth next to hers, even in a memory. She blinked, then scrunched up her nose. Well, maybe not desperately. It wasn't as if she was head over heels for him or something. She just... she just liked him, and when she wasn't looking directly at it, well, that "like" was magnified a little.

Okay, that sounded stupid even to her own mind. But it was true. She wasn't passionately in love with him; it was almost a separate feeling, an emotion not connected with her altogether. And even if he did say "yes" like she knew she wanted him to, or worse, he asked her, well... She didn't know if they could handle that. After all, their barely functioning friendship was fragile enough now without the pressure of romance clogging everything up. Not to mention they were living in two entirely different villages, so even if she could claim his heart for a day, a week, even a month it wouldn't be long before the memory of her sparse visits would be forgotten as some other girl took her place in his mind.

Temari sat up suddenly, clutching a pillow to her chest and frowning. And what about her? What if she found love, real love in some other man in her village? How embarrassing would that be, to have wasted so many "firsts" on stupid Shikamaru just because he would be the only guy she had ever been interested in to like her back? How stupid that would be! She barely even cared for that lazy ass idiot! And yet... and yet...

And yet there were things, little things he did that, despite the fact she would rant about them loudly for hours later, crawled under her skin and made her squeal inside with loving admiration.

Like that time she had sworn that she would never call him again, only to dial up his number out of sheer loneliness less than a week later. She could hear his smirk on the other line as he asked, "Who is this?"

"What do you mean, 'Who is this?' It's Temari, you moron!" She had hissed in indignation. The smirk only widened.

"That's funny. I could have sworn that the person who this voice belongs to told me she wouldn't call me again." Temari's anger grew as her embarrassment increased.

"W-well... For your information, this doesn't count because I accidentally called your number instead of someone else's!" Transparent? Yes. Did he play along? Of course not.

"Well, I guess I'll talk to you later." And then he had hung up. Temari, of course, immediately called him back, still fuming, only to hear, "It's so easy to make you squirm" from the other line.

Or what about that first time in sparring when he had hit her, actually managed to land a blow on her, Temari, the strongest female in all of her village? Not only that, he was the first man to actually ever hit her, to punch her dead in the gut so that she doubled over in pain. True, she had unfairly pinned him by his hair to a tree so that it was really his only way out, but to actually hit her? That took some incredible guts, and Temari felt a little more respect for him after that day. Not that she was all for men hitting women and all, but she knew how much effort Shikamaru put into being chivalrous, especially after he had apologized profusely in his own way after the fight.

The fact that he would listen to her gab away like some stupid, average teenage girl, really listening to her words. The fact that he called her, too, sometimes, remembering the exact time when she finished with training or other duties she had to attend to. The fact that, out of all the people he knew, including himself and his team, he had told her she ranked seventh. The fact that she dreamed regularly of him, just spending the day with him on a hill somewhere, and never got tired of having the same dream.

There went those damn cliches again...

XXX

"So what have you been up to?"

"Nothing much." A couple days later, and their conversation still sounded as if it would never change. Not that Temari wanted it to, it was just the slow beginnings that made her feel as if she was wasting her precious time. Precious indeed; it was one of those few occasions he actually got off his lazy ass to call her.

"You always say that!" What stupid thing would come out of her mouth this time? she wondered absently. What obvious clue is he going to miss next? It never failed. Last time she had wondered out loud, with feigned boredom, if their zodiac signs weren't compatible. The time before that she had asked blatantly whether he liked Ino's shade of blonde better than her own (which he did, although he admitted it was probably because he had had a thing for Ino at one point), claiming that even if there had been something else to the question she wouldn't have told him. How could someone who was supposed to be a genius be so damn thick?

"Well, nothing really happens," Shikamaru yawned from the other line, shuffling some papers in the background. "I already told you about going to the barbecue place with everybody. And you're not interested in clouds..."

"Nothing happens because you don't want it to happen!" Temari sighed, her frustration showing plainly. "I wish you would go do something. Then I wouldn't be the one talking all the time!"

"I don't want to go do something..."

"You incredibly lazy ass!" She really did need to come up with something better to call him. That name had worn so thin you could fit Gaara's gourd through the holes.

"That's not very nice." And there she was, fighting with him again. She didn't want to fight, but it was safer if she did that instead of--

"Remember that time in the rain?" ...instead of her blurting out stupid things that he wouldn't be able to catch anyways.

"Ne?" Apparently she had caught him completely off guard, which made two of them.

"That... that time when you stood out in the rain during my second Chuunin exam. When the picnic got ruined." He was silent for a few minutes, and after a while Temari began to fear that he had actually caught on somehow.

"Yeah, I remember that. If I recall I told you to join me, but you decided to yell at me instead." No such luck, of course. "What made you bring that up?"

"Uh, I was... I was just thinking about it, that's all," was all she could come up with.

"I see." Silence. Damn it, think of something! Temari yelled at herself mentally.

"You know..." She bit her lip, gulped a little, closed her eyes, and continued. "You know, if I had that day back now, I would. Join you, I mean. I would join you in the rain." Temari waited, holding her breath. That was the closest she'd ever come to saying it, so she knew, this time--

"You'd catch a cold," was all Shikamaru replied. That did it.

"You're so stupid!" Temari yelled suddenly, using the phrase Shikamaru had said was once one Ino liked to use often. She didn't care, it was hers now.

"What?"

"You are, you really are!" Temari begged her mouth to stop, for her vocal chords to break down, for her tongue to rot, for lockjaw, something, but to no avail. "I don't care how smart anyone says you're supposed to be, because you're not! You're stupid!"

"What the hell did I do now?" Shikamaru sighed in frustration. Temari had definitely lost it, but there were no signs of stopping.

"It's not what you did, it's what you didn't do! What you don't do! How stupid you are!" Somebody, please, she begged inwardly. At least stop her from overusing that word. "It's that no matter what I do, you'll never know! You're too thick to understand! Or maybe you just don't want to understand!"

"Understand what?" Shikamaru finally managed.

"That--!" Temari realized she was practically screaming now, and so she stopped mid-sentence to gain some control of herself. "That no matter how smart everyone thinks you are, you can't see anything past the end of your own damn nose-- even if it was the tip of mine." Bang! She was panting unsteadily, her hand still clutching the phone tightly where she had slammed it down.

"Temari, is that you slamming things around again?" Kankuro called from his room.

"Shut up, Kankuro!" she answered, and even she could hear the shaking in her own voice that betrayed her out of whack emotions. "I can slam all the damn things I want! I'm not a freaking child!" Yeah, that would definitely convince him. She rolled back onto her bed, untying her pigtails even though it was still light enough for her to go do something productive outside. She didn't feel like it. She would just go to bed early, hide all of her embarrassment under the covers, and in the morning all of the stupidity would just be a memory...

Temari jumped as the phone rang, stubbornly looking away from the instrument until she could hear Kankuro yell from down the hall, "Temari, it's for you!"

"I don't want it!" She yelled back, ducking back under her covers for protection.

"But it's Shikamaru!" He called, using a sickeningly sweet voice and then cackling to himself.

"I don't want to talk to him!"

"But he says it's important!"

"Damn it, Kankuro, hang up the damn phone already!"

"Oh, I don't think Shikamaru wants me to do that."

"Well, Shikamaru's not your older sister who will damn near castrate you with her fan if you don't stop bothering her, is he?"

"Uhh... She says she doesn't want to talk."

Temari grasped one of her pillows tightly, biting it a little out of extra malice. When the phone rang again, no one answered. Neither did they answer it when he called back again. By the third time, her door creaked open slowly, and Temari was just about to spin around and tell Kankuro that she would cut off his ears for him if it would make it easier, when none other than Gaara stood before her. She blinked.

"Oh. You're home early," was all she could say. Gaara didn't look like he was in the mood to talk pleasantries, however. Not that he ever was, mind you, but especially not now.

"You should answer the phone," he replied simply, his hand still on the door. Temari's face immediately scrunched as if she had tasted something sour.

"And why should I do that? It's not going to make anything better!"

"You should do it because I'm trying to get some important paper work done, and I'm sick of hearing the phone ring."

"...oh." As if on cue, the phone rang once more. Gaara reached out before Temari could think to stop him, and held the phone out to her.

"Answer it," he said simply. Temari frowned, but nodded, taking the instrument from him and holding it to her ear. She waited for him to leave, but it seemed he wanted to make sure she was actually going to start resolving her issues before he left. The woman sighed.

"Hello?"

"Temari!" Shikamaru sounded a bit winded on the other line, but relieved nonetheless. "I've been trying to call you for--"

"I know," she said stonily, trying her best not to squirm, or worse, hang up again.

"Why didn't you pick up?"

"Why do you think I didn't pick up?" She glanced up at the door, but Gaara had already left. If she acted quickly, she could hang up and just leave the phone off the hook.

"Temari, this is childish."

"Don't tell me about being childish, Shikamaru! You're the last person I want to hear that from!" She heard a somewhat shaky sigh from the other end, then finally he replied.

"Just tell me what I did." She couldn't believe it; he still didn't understand.

"You didn't do anything! How can you still not see that? How do you still not get it that I--!" She stopped, unable to continue.

"That you...?"

"Look, if you don't understand now, you never will. And maybe that's what's supposed to happen. Maybe this is divine retribution for some poor heart that I broke when I was little, or in another lifetime, or... or something. Anyways, I think it's best that we not talk anymore. Ever." She waited for his response, but none came. When at last she deemed it appropriate to end their conversation, however, he spoke.

"When can I see you again?" It was soft, barely audible, in fact, but Temari heard it just the same.

"What? What do you mean?"

"If we can't talk ever again, then let me see you one more time. Is that okay?" Temari blinked slowly, and suddenly a tear slid down her nose. She jumped in surprise. When had she started crying?

"I... I mean, yeah, it's okay... If it's okay with you."

"Yeah." Awkward silence resumed its reign. What am I supposed to say here? Temari thought madly.

"Um... My next assignment is in mid-August," she said softly. "I could meet you... at the cloud watching hill?"

"Mid-August," he repeated. "Cloud watching hill. I'll be there." Temari breathed a sigh of relief she hadn't even realized she was holding back.

"And Temari?"

"Yes?"

"I want you to be there, too." She smiled slightly, not even sure why.

"I will."

"Okay. Good. Well..." he paused, obviously unsure of himself. "Good night, then."

"Good night." And this time, even though she could hear the click as his line went dead, she didn't hang up right away. She wanted this moment, this small sliver of hope that he wasn't as stupid as she thought, to last a little bit longer.

Wow. That was way longer than I intended it to be, but oh, well. Sorry it ended up being so crappily romantic, but eh, I haven't written anything in a while and this is what came out. By the way, half of this is fact, and half of this is fiction. You be the judge. Anyways, thank you for reading it, and please don't forget to review to let me know what you think!