I wrote these little drabbles while browsing through the 30threesomes section on LJ…which was about four months ago. Little snippets of the daily life of the NejiSakuShika trio. I apologize for not posting them earlier...
--
Fool"I said, I like you. A lot." Sakura folds her arms, and tries her hardest to look composed.
Neji and Shikamaru look at her, both slightly openmouthed. "Which…one?" croaks Shikamaru at last.
Sakura remains silent, feeling a blush creep up her neck and into her face.
After about a minute of this, Neji clears his throat slightly. "Surely you don't mean—"
"Yes. Yes, I do," snaps Sakura, now feeling thoroughly ruffled. "Exactly."
Neji and Shikamaru blink in unison.
"Well, I'll just go and drown myself now," Sakura says weakly. She takes one step back. "Don't bother trying to stop me."
Before she can make it to Shikamaru's door, both of them are at her side, Neji's hand on her shoulder and Shikamaru lightly gripping the other wrist. "Don't go," Shikamaru drawls lazily. "You've only graced us with your company for such a short time this evening."
Sakura only has time to blink before Neji squeezes her shoulder very lightly. "Honestly, Sakura," he deadpans. "How stupid do you think we are?"
"What do you—" Sakura squeaks, feeling more than a little confused.
Neji leans down and kisses her on the top of her head, and Shikamaru brushes his lips against her cheek.
A few moments later, Sakura cracks her eyes open, to find two pairs of eyes, one brown and one white, staring at her curiously.
"Oh," she says at last, before fainting.
--
EmperorSometimes, Neji lets himself imagine.
He imagines unwrapping the bandages around his forehead to reveal nothing but clear, unmarked skin.
He imagines walking through the hallways of the Main House without having to deal with resentful glares from some of his relatives.
Sometimes, he dares to imagine himself as clan head.
He imagines…well, he imagines Shikamaru and Sakura at his side.
And then he envisions the ancient Hyuuga clan crumbling after a week of having the three of them as heads of the clan.
A slight smirk touches his face.
Neji doesn't let himself imagine much, but he thoroughly enjoys himself when he does.
--
AnimalNeji's never been one for acting on impulse. He and Shikamaru tend to plan everything out, to think things through, to carefully premeditate every little action and predict the consequences of those actions. Acting on impulse is Sakura's area of expertise.
That is why Shikamaru and Sakura are so completely, utterly shocked when Neji brings home a small parakeet one evening after work.
Neji is carrying the cage gently, careful not to jostle the little bird inside it. It has one wing in a splint, and it cheeps curiously, looking at the white-eyed man carrying him with such tender care.
Shikamaru almost drops his tea when he sees Neji and the bird enter the apartment, and Sakura's jaw drops.
Really, they aren't in any position to be taking care of a pet. They're shinobi, and busy shinobi at that. Neji's captain of ANBU, Shikamaru's head tactician, and Sakura is Konoha's best medic. Some days, they hardly have time for each other, let alone the care and management of a pet.
All these rational thoughts are running through Shikamaru and Sakura's minds, but then Neji sets the cage down on the coffee table silently. The little bird cocks his head, and warbles a few slightly off-key notes.
Sakura breaks down first. "How cute…"
Shikamaru shakes his head, but then he sees the almost-pleading expression in Neji's eyes. And he realizes that, for Neji at least, this is personal.
And that is how the little orange parakeet becomes part of their small family.
--
DivineOnce, Neji used to believe in destiny. That an individual's fate was completely predestined, and there was nothing one could do to change it.
…Used to. Over the years, certain events made him change his outlook on life. First was his stunning loss to Naruto during the chuunin exams. That opened his eyes, to an extent. But from then on, the state of events in the world and in Konoha, beginning with Uchiha Sasuke's defection (which he believed was the catalyst of all this), and spiraling outward to Akatsuki, and now the war, raging through every country in the world, and battering Konoha in particular.
Sometimes it's enough to make his head spin, and sometimes, he misses the days when he was naïve enough to believe that everything and everybody was destined to follow a set path in life.
Those days are a rarity, though. If somebody had told him at the age of seventeen or so, that within eight years he would be in a committed relationship with Nara Shikamaru and Haruno Sakura, he would have told them to get some air holes into their skull, before optionally beating them to a pulp for even daring to suggest such an outrageous idea.
Every day, Neji, Shikamaru, and Sakura return to their apartment after long, stressful days spent assassinating enemies, planning brilliant battle strategies, and saving lives of the precious few functional ninja remaining in Konoha, respectively. Neji returns the earliest out of all of them, usually. He slips off his hawk mask and hangs it near the door, before sliding his katana off his back and settling it in the closet – out of sight, but never out of mind. Without even the energy to take the rest of his gear off, he pads over to the carpet in front of the armchair and sinks down on the floor with a sigh.
Sakura usually comes home about an hour later, her medic's uniform stained with the blood of the patients whose lives she saved, and those of the ones beyond saving. She sits beside Neji and rests her head against his shoulder, and tries not to shiver with despair. He squeezes her hand with his, and says nothing.
Shikamaru never returns before midnight, now. His clothes aren't bloody and torn, but he looks, if that is possible, more beat down than the other two. His eyes are bloodshot, and when he looks almost helplessly out at Neji and Sakura when they hold their arms out to him, Sakura feels that he can barely even muster up a single shred of hope to hold on to.
They sit and hold each other all though the night, both of Neji's arms wrapped around each one, trying to shelter them even when he barely has enough strength to spare for himself.
"It's always the darkest before dawn," Shikamaru murmurs at last.
Sakura nods wearily. "Let's hope so."
Neji remains silent, but he kisses the tops of both their heads. Within moments, they are asleep in his arms, and he closes his eyes, and wonders if it was all meant to be this way.
The truly remarkable thing about that, he realizes, that if he were given the choice to live a perfectly normal, peaceful life without them, or continue living like this, he would choose this life in a heartbeat.
This knowledge no longer startles him as it used to, but as he slips off to sleep at last, Neji wonders if it was all destined to be this way.
--
StrengthIt takes two years for things to really return to normal in the aftermath of the war, but when it's all over, Shikamaru still has his divinely afforded ability to yawn and declare that he was right and everybody else was wrong – that it really had been darkest before the dawn.
Of course, Neji and Sakura know that he is right (like he usually is), but they are rather proud individuals, and choose not to admit that to him.
One night, they go up to the roof of their apartment and lie down, all their heads pointing to the center of their oddly shaped triangle. It's calm and peaceful again, and from the light of the crescent moon and the silver stars, Sakura can just see the village below them. The repair efforts have been extremely successful, and Konoha looks just like it did all those years ago, when she was just a genin. Hokage Mountain is dimly illuminated, and she notices that the builders have begun carving Naruto's face into the rocks.
She sighs unconsciously, remembering, and Shikamaru coughs faintly, beside her. "Isn't it nice that we all lived through this?"
A familiar laugh echoes in her ears, and Sakura closes her eyes, fighting back sudden tears.
"Not all of us," Neji murmurs from the other side of her, and she knows that he remembers their Fifth as well.
Shikamaru nods acknowledgment, but he doesn't say that he wonders if he would have made it through the war without them by his side.
(He doesn't need to. Neji has the same secret doubts, and Sakura feels the same way.)
Impulsively, he squeezes both their hands, relying on the simple gesture to get across the meaning of what he can't quite say yet. Sakura smiles faintly, even though the tears are still rolling down her cheeks. Neji turns his head toward Shikamaru, and a look of understanding passes between them.
None of them could have gotten through this without the other there by their side, because no matter what their individual skills are, above all, they are each other's strength.
--
-sigh- I love them.
Reviews appreciated!