"Sakura, how are your treatments on the Uchiha going?"
She shrugged. "Better than expected, actually. He's responding very well to the chakra reconstruction of the pathways behind the optic nerve. Sasuke should be fully healed within a month or so, barring unforeseen circumstances."
Tsunade shuffled paperwork on her desk. "I might have one of those circumstances here. A small village outside of Tazaku Gai is currently under quarantine. They've managed to send a messenger to us for aid."
Sakura was in her serious medic mode immediately. "What's the illness?"
"A mutated version of influenza. It's only resulted in two deaths so far, but they only have one healer and his apprentice. They are completely overwhelmed and cannot handle the number of patients they're gaining every day." Tsunade looked at her sharply. "I have every confidence that you can handle this. I'm sending Hinata and a team of chunin medics with you as field leader. Cure the town, lift the quarantine."
Sakura nodded. "When should we leave?"
"I'll assemble your team now. Meet them back in my office in one hour, prepare for overnight travel. Dismissed."
Sakura left the office, mind already on overdrive. She thought of all the things she needed to bring, assuming that the town would be severely understocked in medical supplies. I'll use the chunin like packhorses if I have to. Ah, the joys of being team leader!
She was so preoccupied with her mental packing that she nearly ran into Shikamaru where he was slouched outside her apartment.
"Oh! I'm sorry." He grabbed her arms to steady her and she leaned up to kiss his nose. "Hi, you. Were you waiting for me?"
"I just got here. I was hoping to take you to out." He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair. "I missed you today."
Sakura giggled. "No one will ever believe that Nara Shikamaru is a big gooey sap."
He muttered into her hair. "That's because you won't actually tell anyone."
She sighed against his chest. "Caught me. I like to keep this part of you to myself." She pulled back regretfully. "I would love to go and parade ourselves around Konoha, but Tsunade-shishou just handed me a mission."
Shikamaru frowned. "What kind of mission?"
"Medical. I'll be out of the village for at least two weeks, probably closer to three."
"Hmm." He pulled her close again. "No, I don't accept."
"Like you have much of a choice," Sakura said dryly. He didn't reply and just continued nuzzling her neck. "Shikamaru! I have to get back and meet my team in less than an hour."
He gently pushed her toward through her now open doorway, shutting it with his foot as he kissed her laughing face. "Then we'll have to make the most of our time."
After sending a breathless (and late) Sakura off to the Hokage Tower, Shikamaru wandered through Konoha aimlessly. He had been looking forward to spending the night out with Sakura, an unusual circumstance for him to find himself in. Shikamaru had recently felt an embarrassing need to stake his claim publicly on her, even though everyone important already knew. If he didn't watch himself, he was going to pee on her leg like some sort of rabid Inuzuka.
In his wanderings, he spotted Choji eating with Asuma-sensei through the windows of Yakiniku Q and decided to join them. He wasn't interested in being alone just yet.
He waved at them lazily as he approached and Choji waved a piece of pork belly at him in greeting. "Shikamaru! I didn't expect to see you here."
He sat down next to Asuma and nodded at him. "I didn't expect to be here. Sakura just left on a mission."
"Ah." Choji nodded knowingly. "And we're your second choice. I get it."
Asuma laughed. "I'm hurt, Shikamaru. Aren't we your favorite team?"
Shikamaru poured himself tea after offering to the others, who declined. "I hate to say it, but I would rather look at Sakura than your faces." He took a sip of his tea. "Never mind, I didn't hate to say that."
Choji mocked him in between bites. "I never thought you'd be this disgusting when you fell in love, Shikamaru. It's surreal."
He felt his cheeks warm and he kicked at Choji under the table before laying his head down. "Shut up."
Asuma joined gleefully. "I remember how annoying you all were when I first hooked up with Kurenai. Now you know what it's like."
Shikamaru turned his head to glare at his former sensei. "I was twelve! Everyone is annoying when they're twelve."
The man shrugged, unrepentant. "Doesn't matter. You're getting your just desserts now, my friend."
Choji started on another plate of beef. "You know, I always thought you might get together with Temari. You seemed to be your version of interested for a while."
Shikamaru felt horrified at the idea and he was sure his face conveyed the emotion well enough. "She may be attractive, but Temari would probably murder her man before anything got interesting. I have no interest in becoming one of her victims."
Asuma choked on his own tea, but Choji just looked at him strangely. "How is Sakura any different? I've seen her shatter rocks with a finger."
He shrugged. "She doesn't create mayhem wherever she goes." He kept the fact that she just plotted mayhem and used other people to carry it out entirely to himself. He actually sort of loved that about her, a tiny bit.
"Well," Choji grinned an awful grin, something that indicated bad things were going to happen, "My mother already loves her. I can only imagine what Yoshino-san has been saying to you lately."
He groaned. "She's been asking me increasingly obvious questions lately, like 'what do you think of this formal kimono?' and 'how do you feel about a spring wedding?' It's terrifying."
Asuma clapped him on the back heartily. "I always thought it would be Ino who would get married first out of all of you! She's had her wedding planned out for years."
"I think Ino's having too much fun seeing how many people she can date at once to get married any time soon, Asuma-sensei," Choji said sagely. "Her last record was six, I think. Before that chunin with the hair got upset about it."
Shikamaru put up a hand to stop him. "I've already heard entirely too much about that chunin with the hair, thanks." He then grumbled to himself. "I'm not getting married just yet, you know. I have a choice in these things too."
Choji snorted. "You'd probably have a better time convincing your mother of that if you didn't take Sakura to one of our clan dinners on what was basically your second date."
Facedown on the table, Shikamaru said, "You guys are the worst. Why am I here again?"
They chanted together. "Because you miss Sakura!"
He sat up in defeat. "Just because you're right doesn't mean I have to sit here and listen to it. Choji, tell me about your team. Distract me."
His best friend grinned at him, but didn't push the subject further. "Well, they were real disappointed that I didn't nominate them for the Chunin Exams, but they got over it pretty quickly when I showed them a new doton jutsu. Were we that easily distracted, Asuma-sensei?"
Asuma laughed. "I couldn't physically move Ino if Sasuke was ever in the area and Shikamaru once fell asleep in the middle of shuriken practice. You tell me."
"Oi," Shikamaru said, feeling the need to defend himself. "I only did that once."
"Because Ino threw a shuriken right through your hair!" Asuma rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I think that was the fastest I've ever seen you move."
Shikamaru regretted ever stepping foot inside the restaurant.
A week later, Shikamaru was busily helping his father in the Intelligence Division, picking up shifts just to fill his time. Shikaku looked at him and shook his head. "You got it bad, kid."
"Ugh, not you too." He tried to concentrate on decoding the mess of symbols on the scroll that a chunin team had accidentally intercepted the day before by killing the messenger. As a whole, Mist nin seemed to have the worst handwriting. He squinted at an unintelligible figure and turned the page upside down, hoping it would make more sense.
Shikaku plucked it out of his hands and waved him away. "Go do your moping somewhere else, Shikamaru. Or better yet, go visit your mother."
He grimaced and decided that he was definitely not going to do that, not if he wanted to leave his childhood home without promising his mother she'd have grandchildren within the next year.
Wandering out the doors, he stared up at the friendly blue sky and decided that some cloud watching was in order. There was a meadow with high hills right by the Nara Forest that would be perfect for today. Shikamaru walked there leisurely, not in a hurry to expend more effort than necessary.
"Yo." Kakashi appeared out of nowhere and fell into step beside him. "Have you seen Sakura-chan?" They passed out of the main part of town toward the training grounds.
He sighed heavily. "Sakura is on a mission for at least another week or maybe two, from what she said before she left." He couldn't see it, but he could feel Kakashi give him a pitying look. This was getting out of hand. "Yes, I miss her, please stop looking at me like that."
"Like what?" Kakashi's innocent voice wouldn't have fooled a small child. "I always look like this."
"Right," Shikamaru said wryly. "What did you want with Sakura, anyway?"
"Ah, well." The man scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "I was actually hoping she would take a look at my eye again. But I was going to argue with her about it for a while first."
"You know I'm just going to tell her you said that, right?"
Kakashi shrugged. "Sakura knows how it works." Shikamaru was confused. How what works? The strange balance that her relationships with her teams seemed to thrive on? He figured he could be with her for a hundred years and never fully understand the intricacy of Team 7's weird hang ups and quirks.
He was going to reply when they both heard a noise from the training ground he had just decided to cut through to get to his perfect meadow. Shikamaru was hesitant to investigate, because it definitely sounded like some sort of strangled moan and he wasn't sure he wanted to see if it was the sexy type or the dying type.
Kakashi didn't seem to be nearly as hesitant. His sensitive nose didn't pick up any blood and he grinned behind his mask and whispered loudly to Shikamaru. "Looks like somebody's having some afternoon delight, Shikamaru-kun. Shall we interrupt?"
He was not at all inclined to join in on Kakashi's fun, but considering the grip the man suddenly had on his arm, it was obvious the question was rhetorical. Clearly he was enjoying the prospect of embarrassing someone a little too much. With a mentor like this, Shikamaru no longer wondered how Sakura came into her eccentric personality.
Kakashi crept and Shikamaru was forcibly dragged across the ground quietly toward the source of the noise, a large tree facing the Nara Forest. As they got closer, Shikamaru could definitely hear murmurs and then that horribly intimate moan again. Definitely no dying happening behind the tree.
Kakashi paused and seemed to recognize the presences before they came into view, because his shoulders drooped and he sighed. "Sakura-chan is going to be ecstatic."
Before Shikamaru could question him, the man shunshined to the side of the tree for a dramatic entrance. "Good afternoon, boys!"
Boys? He thought to himself and then his eyes widened. "Ugh." Naruto and Sasuke were scrambling away from the tree and their scarily amused teacher. Shikamaru could see the Uchiha pulling up his pants hurriedly with Naruto wiping his mouth and shut his eyes tightly. "I could have lived my whole life without seeing this, Kakashi. Why did you have to interrupt them?"
"Well," Kakashi said and his tone boded ill will for everyone, "There was just so much noise, I had to make sure everything was okay. It is my duty as a Konoha shinobi to protect the village, after all."
Sasuke's face was bright red, something Shikamaru was sure he would never see again in his life. He didn't even know the Uchiha was even capable of human emotions like embarrassment and now he had just found that the other boy was apparently capable of many human things.
Naruto laughed, though it was a little high-pitched. "Ah, Kakashi-sensei, don't be like that. We were just …"
They both raised their eyebrows at him as he trailed off, struggling for an explanation other than the obvious.
He shrugged helplessly. "Well, you know what we were doing."
"Idiot." Sasuke hissed and smacked on the back of the head. Shikamaru thought charitably that it seemed a lot less violent than usual.
He sighed and turned to Kakashi. "You were right. Sakura is going to be ecstatic." He grimaced at the thought. "And she'll probably make me recount every horrifying detail."
