This is my maiden attempt at writing. Shikamaru is one of my biggest manga crushes and I have tried to imagine him a love story in the post shippuden Naruto world. In this story I have omitted Temari and her storyline(I apologise to everyone who ship them). This is just the first chapter but I have envisoned this story as a series with as much good smut as I can muster up. Please do read and give me your feedbacks. One more thing, English is not my first language, so please forgive the grammatical errors in the text.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. That belongs to Kishimoto san but this particular imagination is mine.
Chapter 1 The story of how they first met
It was 3 in the afternoon and Shikamaru's duties at the Hokage's office had just been finished. He took his leave and started walking towards the village hospital. It was a long day at the council. Meeting after meeting, trying to draw up the necessary conditions for the trade and military co-ordination pact between the countries and their ninja villages, Shikamaru was exhausted. But he was happy too, the diplomatic process is progressing in the right direction. He was satisfied. By now he was at the market place and it was abuzz with traders and their products. After almost 2 years, the village has bounced back and it actually looks like the war didn't really happen. But he knows better. They might have erased all the physical scars the war left, but the changes it caused in the collective psyche of the people was enormous. Believe it or not, the war and loss of life has actually brought people together, making them more tolerant and less prejudiced, if not enough. He smiled wistfully, 'This change was costly and thousands of lives had to be lost in order to make humans find their humanity back'. It gave him a new vigor to work twice as hard and not let this momentum go to waste. It will all be for nothing if the change is not reflected in the politics too and that will be his part to fulfill from now on. He was turning around the corner and the hospital came into view. His feet automatically picked up the pace with the excitement. After a long day he finally gets to see her. Nakshatra.
(Just in case it wasn't clear, this is flashback)
Nakshatra was the refugee girl, with a strange name that was both poetry and a mouthful, who turned up at the village's gates a couple of days after the war ended. She was badly wounded. She would barely talk. She belonged to a nomadic tribe that specialized in herbal medicine trade and needlework. She had just lost her grandmother, her only family, to the devastation caused by Madara. Hokage decided to take her in. It was Shikamaru who drew up her papers and admitted her in the hospital for treatment. He didn't pay much attention to her then except for his gaze lingering for just a moment too long on her eyes. Beautiful and melancholic. After that he didn't have much time to think about her or see her again. But he heard a lot of whispers that the strange looking nomad girl is suffering from chronic depression and that there might be nothing that could be done. But just like the village, she found the strength too, to bounce back. She slowly but surely started to get better. She started talking to the villagers, although in broken accents. Once her health recovered, she started helping out at the hospital's medical research lab and the elementary school. The doctors were jubilant that her herbal recipes were very successful in healing the wounded and the teachers were grateful that she helped put the orphaned children to sleep every night at the society care center. 'All is well that ends well', he thought and then forgot about her in his daily busy schedule.
And then one day, he saw her again. It had been six months since the war ended and life in the village was just returning to normal. It was a calm evening and he was at the town square park, beating an old timer at Shogi, showing him and some of the toddlers in the crowd that had gathered earlier to watch him play, some of the ancient strategic moves of the board game. A couple of the kids had climbed on his lap trying to touch his pony tail. He was laughing and trying to fend them off when his eyes landed on her in the crowd. She was standing there looking at him. This time he actually looked at her. She had soft brown skin and unruly black curly hair that was all over the place. However it was her eyes that transfixed him. They were dark brown and looked almost black, though not the same black as his own eyes. Hers were a luminous black. He felt hypnotized incapable of turning his gaze away from those black orbs. Suddenly he realized that she was actually coming towards him and he felt his palms turn moist. She was smiling down at him. He just stared at her, still hypnotized. She bent down and extricated the little girl, who was tugging at his pony tail, from his lap. She said, "I am sorry, Nara-san, I am supposed to be watching them but I was too engrossed in your play that I forgot about everything else", smiling, she added, " I have never seen a greater genius than you, Nara-san. You're truly amazing". Her eyes were full of wonder and something else that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He let his gaze move down and it fell on those goose pimples on the side of her neck. 'Cute', he thought. "Oh please don't worry about the kids, Nakshatra, it has always been my pleasure entertaining these little devils", he said, standing up, finally breaking from the hypnotic daze her eyes put him under. He saw that she was clutching a red scarf in one hand while trying to hold the little toddler still in the other hand. The little girl was fighting her. The crowd dispersed just then, the seniors moving on with their gossips and the toddlers running back to their swings and the see-saws. He continued, "Thank you for that praise, Nakshatra. You have made me blush and it's been forever since I last blushed". She blushed so prettily, giggling, "Now you're just teasing". She finally gave up on trying to control the toddler, bent down and let go of the little girl's hand. The child jumped out of Nakshatra's grip like a spring wound tight. The force made Nakshatra drop her scarf. She ignored the scarf for the moment and ran behind the child imploring her to be careful with her step. The little girl was running towards the slide in the park where her other friends were playing.
Shikamaru bent down and picked up the scarf and walked a few steps ahead, closing the distance between him and Nakshatra, all the while appreciating the intricate needlework and breathing in her scent that wafted from the scarf. He found it intriguing, to say the least. Nakshatra suddenly turned back to face him and they found themselves standing an inch apart, staring each other in the eyes. He could feel her heart beat fluttering away like a little bird caught in a cage. Her eyes roamed over his face, alternating between his eyes and his lips. However he kept his eyes steady on hers. He wanted to see the response he could invoke in her. So he stood his ground. Interestingly, she didn't move back either. Her gaze lingered on his lips for a few heartbeats and darted up to his eyes. She looked sheepish when she saw that he had his eyes fixed on hers and the goose pimples rose again on her neck. She lowered her eyes quickly and he saw that her gaze fell on his shoulders next. Compared to her smaller frame, his shoulders must look enormous to her, he mused. Her eyes widened and a very silent gasp escaped her lips. At that moment the veil seemed to have finally lifted off her and she moved back a couple of steps. She still had her gaze lowered and said, "I am sorry again, Nara-san, I almost collided into you just now, didn't I ?". 'Huh' he thought to himself. He couldn't help the smirk forming on his face. He said, "Oh you don't have anything to apologize for, that was my pleasure too, Nakshatra." He couldn't help himself. She suddenly looked up at him with widened eyes. A very dark blush creeped up her cheekbones. "Here", he said turning over the scarf to her. She slowly took the scarf back from him and thanked him. He shrugged. "Well then, I guess I will see you around Nara-san" she said trying to get back to her job. "Call me Shikamaru" he said. She smiled and lowered her head down as a respectful Ojigiand sprinted ahead towards the slides where the kids were. Shikamaru stood there staring at her shapely bottom sashaying away, trying to replay everything that just happened in the last couple of minutes. This girl was clearly attracted to him, he decided. And he was attracted to her too. She was not a classical beauty as they say, but there was something about her, in that unruly hair, those big brown eyes, that shapely waist and those large juicy lips that looked like an orange slice. He started jogging up towards her, calling out to her. She hadn't gone that far. She stopped and turned around. When he reached her, he didn't beat around the bush. "What are you doing this Friday evening ?", he asked. She looked surprised but told him that there was nothing in her schedule yet. "Would you like to go out on a date with me on that day ? Say, we meet up at 6.30 pm at the Ichiraku ramen shop ?" he asked. She still seemed surprised, her eyes were still the size of two small discs. After a moment she seemed to have collected herself together and told him that she would be there. He took his leave wishing her well and started walking away, smiling to himself thinking 'So I am not the only one hypnotized, huh'.
So that was how they first met.
In the next chapter I intend to write about Nakshatra's version of this chapter. And I expect it to be a lot more fun to write. I don't know if you found this racy and entertaining as a reader, but when I imagined this in my head it was extremely enticing. I have tried my best to transfer it to paper. Please do let me know how much success I have had in that endeavor in your reviews and comments. Thank you for reading.