My random little one shot for my favorite Naruto couple. I LOVE Shikamaru. I adore Temari. I WANT MORE OF THEM, KISHIMOTO!
Let me know how it is! I wanted to finish it before I really get to work on my multi-part Naruto series, which I'll HOPEFULLY have finished (at least the first part) and start posting by the end of the month.
She's Not My Friend
By Saori Runa Dempsey
Just when she thinks she has a handle on the unfathomable boy (and he really is a boy; not quite a man yet), Nara Shikamaru throws her another curve ball so far from left field that Temari feels like she's just been smacked by it right between her eyes. He'd done it during their one and only fight during the Chuunin Exams and on numerous other occasions during the course of their correspondence as liaison and liaison's gopher (a title she uses because it's true, but mostly because it annoys him to hell), but this particular curve ball came during the rare leisure trip she'd taken to Konoha's more temperate climate to take in the local fauna. Bonsai, and to a certain extent it's parent study of botany, were notable hobbies of hers and had made Temari curious enough to come during her free time to check out Konoha's native plant life.
Nara and his gaggle of friends had invited her to a restaurant for lunch – a rowdy group of thirteen and the occasional Konoha chuunin or jounin she was well acquainted with like the copy ninja. She'd always found it vaguely interesting that such a highly praised ninja went around reading porn on a daily basis, but to each his own. She'd certainly seen stranger.
They were all enjoying themselves when the Uchiha-version-two flipped through the book he'd been holding in his hand and asked them both with his eerily blank face, "So, you two are friends?"
"I guess," she'd told him with a lofty shrug at the same moment Nara had said, quite definitively, "No."
The silence that descended upon the formerly rowdy table had been thick enough to cut with a knife.
The excuses to leave were quickly said but little remembered which is why Temari was now sitting across from the otherwise unbothered Nara bastard, glaring daggers into his head that was bowed so he could stare lackadaisically at the lighter in his hands that he continued to toy with like some sort of safety blanket for grownups.
The three years since their first meeting, she was proud to say, had allowed her to see the wisdom in waiting to beat people senseless with her fan, and Temari liked to even think she'd acquired a lot more patience as well. But gods be damn it, she was going to knock him into next week if he didn't say something! Her fingers wrapped around the cool metal of her fan that leaned idly against the wall next to her, taking both comfort in the familiar touch of the steel under her fingertips and the sense of pleasure she would get if she smashed it right on that pineapple-headed bastard's oversized brain.
"I don't…" Nara pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing as he no doubt lamented how unfair the world was being to him. Again. "I keep my social life and personal life separate."
"OK…" she drawled out, letting her irritation drip off of every syllable. "So what the hell does that have to do with me? I'm not your friend? And here I thought we were actually getting along and what not you chauvinistic pri-"
"Would you let me finish?" Nara grumbled, throwing an utterly frustrated look at her that Temari cheerfully returned ten-fold. "My friends are a part of my social life, which is why I would never date a friend. It's like mixing business with pleasure. Too troublesome." He toyed with a cigarette between his fingers, only to tuck it away into his vest pocket again once the restaurant owner shot him a pointed and slightly evil look. "So no, you're not my friend."
Being the moderately intelligent and experienced woman she was, Temari was sort of following Nara's ridiculously circular logic, but one never knew for certain when it was this particularly slippery bastard and she was the type of woman who liked things spelled out for her from A-Z simply because it made any miscommunications unlikely and her life infinitely easier. "So…what? I'm your political obligation? What? Spit it out plainly. You know I hate the dancing around crap you do."
Nara muttered something along the lines of, "Stupid Sai," before he sighed, "Do I have to?"
Temari scowled at him, though it was difficult with the smirk that wanted to twitch up on her lips. "Yes, you have to. I want to hear it plainly from your lips, Nara. Be a god damn man and say it clearly."
The jibe hit its mark and he glared at her, his fingertips twitching on the table where they rested idly near her own. "I…wouldn't mind being bothered to take you out one night."
Temari stared at him for one long heartbeat before slamming her head face-first into the table. "Nara, I swear, that is the worst way to ask a woman out I have ever heard. Did your dad teach you nothing?"
"My mother was the one who asked him," he deadpanned, and Temari let out a laugh into the table despite herself. Figures.
"I suppose I could go for some of Konoha's infamous flame-cooked yakitori tomorrow night," she mused, both amused by his overall incompetence and perhaps a tiny bit charmed by it. "Quite infamous in Suna now thanks to the stand that opened in my village, though it's not quite the same."
"Everything is better in its native land," Shikamaru told her simply, and Temari gave him the stink eye.
"I'm sure I just imagined the patronizing tone, right?"
He never even paused. "Of course. I would never dream of patronizing you."
He certainly was unique – she'd give him that. No man or boy had ever asked her out and made her feel like it would be a chore for them to do so. The purely female side of her wanted to slap him, but the irrational side of her that delighted in that twisted mind of his was flattered. Inexplicably so.
God, she was really in trouble.
She was still saying that when he picked her up, dressed semi-formally and, most shocking of all, slicked back hair with no ponytail in sight. His hair was to his shoulders and shiny enough to make the female inside her envious. She could never make her hair that shiny unless she didn't bathe for a month, and even then it never looked good. Bastard.
They did not talk beyond the pleasantries. He didn't hold out her chair – she didn't expect him to. Temari was surprised he never once said the word 'troublesome', but he did look outside and towards the clouds that were visible against the night sky. A lot. She could even see why, sort of. It was peaceful…in a very monotonous kind of way.
Konoha had that luxury.
Suna did not.
"So you're not my friend, huh?" They were lying outside under the light of a half moon on the slopes of ones of Konoha's many grassy hills when she asked him.
"I am not," he confirmed, and the look in his eyes made her chest flutter. Flutter.
Damn him. I hate him.
"You going to not be my friend tomorrow too?"
She didn't need to look to know he nodded, but she did anyway. His eyes were closed now, and he seemed to just be enjoying the breeze as it strolled on through. "And the day after, too. You'll just tell me when you want to be my friend, anyway."
Twisted, ridiculous little BOY…"Asshole," she grumbled, but without rancor. If anything, there was a bit of affection as she cursed him. "You're such an asshole sometimes, Nara."
"You can be such a bitch, too," he shot right back without heat.
Temari merely shrugged. It was true. "Yeah, well, this bitch wants Italian tomorrow."
He groaned and turned on his side, back facing her, but there was affection in his tone as he said, "Troublesome woman."
Maybe she was. But she was his woman.