Author's note: This was supposed to be a crack-fic but it gets kind of dark and serious near the end. This is my first posted Naruto fan-fic. I wrote it on the fly during a particularly boring day at work. Please no flames (especially Shika-Ino fans)! I know people get very heated about what pairings they support. Actually, Shika-Ino shippers should probably just click "back" now while they still can.
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My Girlfriend's Back (and There's Gonna Be Trouble)
A Naruto "crack-fic"
Ino was just a release valve. I don't even like her. I mean yeah, she's my teammate but she's useless, even as a medical ninja. You know Sakura really tried to teach her, but Ino has no attention span unless she's concentrating on doing her Shintenshin no Jutsu. And even when she's doing that, her body's all empty and helpless. Well, more than usual, anyway.
Everything about women that makes me cringe, the cattiness, the pettiness, the boy-craziness, fashion-conscious, mind-gaming, that's Ino. Sakura's passed her up 'cause she actually, you know, matured. Of course she's been through a ton, with Sasuke and Naruto and fighting Akatsuki. What's happened to Ino? Asuma dying, that's about it. And to be honest, it didn't seem to do much to her except give her an illusion of increased closeness with me and Chouji.
But resisting a woman who's saying, "Please, Shika, I'm so horny!" (though I hate her calling me Shika; it's too cutesy and it sounds like a girl's name) is pretty tough when you only see your girlfriend every six months for maybe a week at a time, and even then you don't get any play. Temari's a fucking cocktease and yeah, I get it, the playing-hard-to-get-forbidden-fruit thing, but when I got the chance to stick it in something other than my own callused hand, I took it. Besides, Ino was so damned persistent that it was less troublesome to just give in.
Fuckin' Ino, though, she's a little freak. She lets me do the Kage Mane no Jutsu on her and it's like I'm sucking myself off. Temari would never do that, even with a ring on her finger I'd probably never even get to be on top, knowing her, much less get to take control so completely.
Not that I care, let's get that straight. I love Temari, I do, and I'll be her mindless slave when the time comes, but Suna's so far away and I can't get by for six months on a sultry look and a kiss blown from the other side of the village gate.
I didn't have much trouble keeping Ino from thinking I'm her boyfriend all of a sudden. When we weren't screwing, it was just like normal. People wouldn't even have known if we hadn't gotten caught a couple of times. I got bitched out by Sakura once, not just for fooling around on Temari but for taking advantage of "Ino's lonliness."
I couldn't help but laugh about the latter, especially when Ino kept calling me "Sasuke" with her eyes shut tight. Though it's tough to believe that even with her eyes closed she'd mistake me for that limp-dick Uchiha. Heh. Though I did enough brooding and avoiding her afterward to qualify me as an honorary clan member. Too bad the fan symbol reminded me of… other things.
The trouble started at the next chuunin exam. I told Ino I was stopping the shenanigans, since I had enough to worry about if someone let spill to Temari what was up. I hoped no one wanted me dead that badly, though it turned out telling Ino the party was over made me a mortal enemy.
You see, Ino cannot fucking stand competition, even if she doesn't give a fuck about what she's competing for. Sasuke, for example: I think the competition with Sakura is the only reason she still thought she loved him all those years.
But to get back to my tale of woe: Temari shows up and we get into the usual mating dance, me all groaning about her cramping my style, she all unimpressed and calling me a lazy asshole, pretty much the usual banter and flirting. No one's told her a thing, though Sakura still shoots me dirty and sad looks, alternately. Chouji's got my back, he says, even though he's jealous as hell wishing Ino would polish his kunai, so to speak, and I think Konohamaru's still too traumatized to tell anyone about the time he caught us out near the old practice field.
Then Ino comes and fucks it all up but good. Temari and I are sitting there at Ichiraku having a quiet lunch when Ino bops up and drapes herself on my back, arms around my neck like she's impersonating a shawl. Before I can ask her what the fuck she thinks she's doing, she simpers, "Shika-kun! You're gonna help me in the flower shop tomorrow, right?"
"I'm proctoring the chuunin exam, you idiot girl! And get off of me!"
She lets go, pouting. "But you promised!" she wails.
"What? When the hell--?" I sputter.
Ino looks sassy and says, "You don't have to be shy just 'cause she's here," tilting her head towards Temari, who raises an eyebrow.
"Stop fooling around and leave us alone, you crazy bitch!" I yell at Ino, sweating bullets under Temari's x-ray vision. Ino flounces off in a huff, managing to look satisfied with herself at the same time.
"'Shika-kun'?" Temari asks frostily, her eyes flashing. Even Temari's never called me that. The closest she's ever come to giving me a nickname was referring to me as a "young buck," and in private moments I've called her my "desert flower" but that's about the extent of it. We don't get too cutesy.
I shrug and mutter something unintelligible about Ino being delusional, and she drops it, but she's stabbing at the bits in her ramen like she's practicing for some particularly painful torture, and we don't talk for the rest of the meal.
Ino keeps it up. Every day she pops up and coos at me, always when Temari is around. By now I'm regretting I ever threw her a bone; I'd be better off if I'd gotten caught fucking the deer. Temari is barely speaking to me by the time the final straw comes and knocks the whole thing down.
We're walking with our pinkies linked, which we like 'cause it's subtler than holding hands, when I hear Ino saying, "Shika-kun!" behind us. Again. Temari's finger tightens around mine, not in a possessive way but in an "I'll fucking break this right off" sort of way. I stop and turn, Temari still not letting go, and by this point I'm thoroughly fed up with this catty girl bullshit, but what I see just drains the life out of me. Ino says, no simper in her voice at all, just cold and hard, "You left this in my room." And dangling from her finger like a flag of shame is a pair of my boxers, the ones my mom gave me for my birthday, emblazoned with the Nara clan symbol and painfully cute cartoon deer.
For once, my brilliant brain, with its 200 IQ capable of thinking up any number of strategies for any number of situations on the spot, seizes up, chokes, and dies. Temari lets out a growl like an enraged mother bear. Her hand is on her fan and I think this is it, this is the end of me, death by war-fan, and I just hope that she takes that freak whore Ino out too.
But she doesn't. Instead she gives her hand a mighty wrench and my pinkie dislocates with an audible pop. Then she disappears like the wind while I'm gasping in pain.
"Stay still!" Ino cries and rushes forward. "I'll heal you!" Now she's sympathetic? Right, she's probably looking to fuck me up even more with her "healing" techniques. Sometimes I think the girl trained under Kabuto, not Sakura and Tsunade.
"Get away from me!" I growl clutching my hand and trying to steel myself to yank my pinkie to snap it back in. I did this to myself once, to snap myself out of a genjutsu, but that was years ago and I forgot how much it hurt. Tears are streaming down my cheeks and all I can think of is Temari calling me a crybaby in that scornful tone of hers.
Ino's hand is on my wrist, and before I can think, she's in my Kage Kubi Shibari no Jutsu, gurgling as the shadow hands constrict around her neck. Her eyes are bugging out, pleading for mercy she doesn't deserve.
"Are you happy now?" I rage at her. Real fear fills her eyes now. I could do all manner of terrible things to her. I can even use the Kage Mane and make her slit her wrists, make it look like suicide.
Instead I let her go. It's not worth it. She tears away and runs.
I start having nightmares about Gaara raping my every orifice with sand when he finds out I've cuckolded his sister. Ino wisely decides to go into hiding. I'd do the same, but I have to proctor the chuunin exams. Still, I don't run into Temari, don't even see her until the main match-ups begin.
I'm sitting on one side of Tsunade. Gaara's to her right, Temari and Kankurou to his right. I don't think she's told them anything, or I'd already be in pieces. That worries me even though it's no surprise: Temari handles her own battles, likewise her own revenge. She'd never send her brothers after me and miss all the fun herself. I massage my relocated but still sore pinkie. Whatever she has planned can't be good.
It looks like she's told her gennin to aim to kill, the way our hometown shinobi are getting ruined out there. Three of the matches get stopped prematurely, and all the while Temari is watching the arena in demonic glee, never once looking at me to see my reaction. She looks so much like Gaara did back when we were all gennin and he was still crazy on Shukaku.
One of my distant Nara cousins is up, and that's when Temari whips out this… effigy on a stick. It's a plushie that looks like it has a huge arrow through it. What is it? My heart drops through the floor; it's a cute plushie deer I gave her last Christmas, with a little scarf around its neck and a cute little button nose. Only now it's covered in red paint and impaled on an arrow. That bitch…
Tsunade leans over, smooth as you please, and fiercely whispers, "What the fuck did you do?" I can smell sake on her breath. I can also kick around a pile of little nip bottles under our seats. The fifth Hokage doesn't so much have a glow on as a spotlight.
"Me?" I feign ignorance and innocence, but she knows I'm neither, so she glares until I spill all my guts.
Tsunade's eyes bulge and she grips my arm. "You have to make it better!" she insists, panicky. "One of the strongest ties between Suna and Konoha is your little romance."
If I knew international diplomacy rested on my love life, I'd have pulled a legendary Sannin act and split to live like a hermit.
"We've come a long way with the Sand, and I'd hate to see a war start because of a lovers' quarrel," she continues.
"What the hell am I supposed to do?" I ask angrily.
"Something! Anything! Before all our gennin get killed!" the Fifth almost shouts. Gaara's eyes flit over and then away.
I do the only thing I could think of: Kage Mane no Jutsu. Using the shadow under the seats to elongate my own, I snake it over until it touches Temari's and grab hold. She freezes, eyes wide, knowing what's up but not saying anything. I stand up quickly before she decides to react. She stands in unison. "Temari?" Kankurou questions. His eyes dart to me in suspicion but I'm already on the move.
"I'm going to the ladies' room," Temari calls back as I continue to lead her. I don't know why she's going along with this. Maybe she realizes I'm trying to get her alone and figures she can use it to her advantage, to enact her own plan. The problem with two strategists dating is that you never know how many twists your plan needs to have. And I'm making this up as I go along.
There's nobody in the stairwell, not when there's an intense battle going on, and the matches have been pretty gripping. There's one advantage of a blood battle. Sound echoes in here, though; hopefully the cheering is enough to cover any shouting in here.
I stop and turn to face Temari for the first time since she injured my hand, and she's livid. "You'd better keep the shadow bind on," she growls in that husky voice of hers, "if you want to stay alive."
"Kill me then," I say, as contrite sounding as I feel. "Beat me, destroy me, just stop your kids from killing our kids. I won't stop you. I'll just stand here."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she rages back. "You'd feel like you were doing some penance, huh?" I release the Kage Mane and I see she's shaking, trying to hold herself back. "Why, Shikamaru? Why Ino?" she asks, revulsion dripping from her tongue as she says the name.
"Why do you think? I was horny and stupid. Ino was pestering me. And anyway it's not like you—"
The next I know she's cracked me across the face with her fan. The world goes white and flashing and I can feel, distantly, my body bouncing down the stairs to the other landing. Agony enfolds me but it's so far away that I don't really feel it; I just know it's there. Through the flashes and the fuzzy edges I can see Temari with her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide in horror, and I'm just hoping my brains are still in my head. My face feels huge and inflated, and wet, sticky where one cheek is against the floor.
I hear a clatter and my brain's going fuzzier and the first thing I think of is that she's thrown her fan down after me and that's what's making the noise. I hear this weird whimper as my vision starts to dim, and something wet falling in drops onto my face, and before my brain switches to static the last thing I think is: good, she'll be sorry now that she's killed me.
I wake up in bed, light beating at my eyelids and one side of my face hot. The smell of disinfectant and rubber tells me I must be in the hospital. I try to move but it feels like someone's drumming in my skull and my stomach lurches, so I lay back down in a hurry.
It's dark outside when I wake up again. Only one of my eyes will open, so I figure that's good enough. Temari's sitting in a chair next to my bed, looking small. She's petting something, just stroking it sadly and staring into nothing. It's the little plushie deer, still with a hole in its side but with the red paint scrubbed off as well as is possible.
"Hey," I say. Temari almost jumps clear out of her seat.
"You're awake," she says, her voice rough like she's been crying. "The exams have been over for a couple of days."
"Did any of the Konoha gennin survive?"
Temari gives a broken little laugh. "Yeah, a lot of them made chuunin too."
"How did I survive?"
Her expression darkens. "Ino healed you."
"Ino healed me? Am I missing any organs?"
That little laugh again. "No, she did a good job."
"Surprise."
Temari looks at me like she's never going to see me again.
"So," I say, "are you leaving?"
"Do you want me to go?" Her voice is thick. God, I've never seen her like this.
"No." Then. "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry I hit you. I should've just… taken it calmly and let you two be together."
"What?" I try to sit up, but my ribs kill. Probably from falling down the stairs.
"I guess the long-distance thing isn't working."
"Ino was just a release valve. I don't even like her," I insist. "And she doesn't give a damn about me either. She was just trying to get me in trouble with you."
Temari frowns. "I always figured sex had something to do with love."
"So that's why. You don't love me." It's the thing my evil inner self always told me during the darker moments. I don't believe it even now but it has the intended effect.
Temari gives me a wounded look. "I do love you, Shikamaru. I just wanted to take it slow. So you'd appreciate it. So if it didn't go anywhere, it'd be easier to… let go…"
"You love me?"
"Yeah, but…" she pauses for what seems like forever, "maybe I should let you go."
I can't stop her, she's getting up and leaving the little deer plushie on the table, strapping on her fan and moving for the door. I do the only thing I can still do while stuck in my bed: reach out with my shadow and stop her.
Even in the dim light of the one lamp I can do it. She gives a little lurch. "You shouldn't use your chakra! You have to heal!" Temari cries, halted in her tracks.
"You're not going anywhere, Desert Flower," I say firmly. The pounding in my head is ridiculous but I hold on.
She turns her head and gives me a tiny, hopeful smile. I release her and she walks back to my bedside, leans over, and kisses me gently on the uninjured side of my face.
It worked.
It was risky, letting her beat me up, but I knew she'd hold back. If not, then it wasn't worth surviving anyway. She hurt me enough to almost kill me, and in her fear of me dying forgave me everything.
I learned my lesson anyway. Temari stayed in Konoha until I healed up completely, saying she had a parting gift for me but it had to wait until I was better. Believe me, it was worth the wait, and it's worth waiting six more months for.