a/n: inspired by the Reba McEntire song, The Greatest Man I Never Knew. Honestly not as sad as it sounds. Short and whatnot.
Many thanks to apps and abbyhatake for the help!
on Neighbors
She is under the awning of the building next door the first time they meet.
"Excuse me, miss," he says, vaguely out of breath. The cuff of his slacks are wet and his leather shoes look half-ruined.
Temari doesn't look much better. She is more wet than he. She'd taken cover soon enough to not be soaking. Her white dress isn't yet see-through, though, which is at least some consolation.
"Are you waiting out the rain?" He asks, closing his umbrella. It is hot and humid and absolutely miserable outside and Temari feels sticky everywhere. The stranger must too, although he looks so suspiciously attractive, it is hard to tell.
"Currently," she shrugs, "depending on how long it takes."
The man extends his pocket umbrella, "won't you take it?" He tries. "I live right next door and this is a throwaway."
Temari looks in the direction he is pointing.
"Actually," she says, "I live there too."
The man tilts his head. "In that building?" He smiles. "What apartment?"
"14B."
"14B," he repeats, "isn't that Ryo's place?"
Temari nods, "I'm moving in. Tomorrow, actually. I was supposed to meet him here to get a copy of the key but work must have held him. And then the rain started." She shrugs and looks above at the awning. His — and now their —building doesn't have any awning to protect against the rain, so she had run next door.
"Wow," the man laughs, "a coincidence, surely." He pulls his umbrella under his arm and extends his hand. "I'm Shikamaru." He says. "We're going to be neighbors. I live right next door."
Temari takes his hand. His grip is strong and warm.
"Temari."
He smiles through closed lips.
"Temari," he says, "come upstairs, will you? I'll make a top-off until Ryo comes back."
"It's hardly time for a top-off," she counters, but she slides under his now open umbrella any way and together they run towards their building.
Shikamaru is right next door — directly, it turns out. They have never met, though Temari knows a handful of her soon-to-be neighbors already.
Shikamaru gestures towards the kitchen as soon as they enter. "Would you like some coffee?"
"Tea, if you have it."
"Okay."
On his way to the cabinet, he pulls back a chair from his two person coffee table in the kitchen. "Please, sit." He has the same layout of his place as Taro's, and because of that, something feels vaguely familiar although their decor is completely different.
"You're not home very much, are you?" Temari asks, taking a seat. Shikamaru doesn't glance at her as he puts the kettle on a few feet away.
"I usually work long hours," he replies, sorting through a small box of tea bags. "Still, I'm surprised we haven't met." He turns his head and smiles. "How long have you two been together?"
"A little over a year."
Shikamaru nods customarily, but she has a feeling he thinks she is moving too quickly in her relationship.
"I am finishing my Master's in a few months," she continues, feeling the need to explain, "and am having to find somewhere to live anyway. I don't mean to say I am moving in for convenience's sake ... but the rent is half what I'd pay anywhere else."
"I don't mean to intrude."
"Not at all."
The kettle starts to hum and they wait in silence for a minute before he turns off the heat.
"So," he ventures after the water has boiled and he'd positioned the steaming mug in front of her and taken his seat opposite. "What are you studying?"
"Physics."
He frowns and leans back, seemingly disappointed with the answer. "You're a physics major? At which university?"
She returns his expression. "Y?"
"Then I think I know who you are." Shikamaru manages to make an inhale sound like a sigh. "Is your younger brother engaged to Ino Yamanaka?"
"Wait — you know my brother?"
"Very well, actually." Shikamaru smirks . "Ino is my best friend."
"Oh. Oh." Temari laughs. "The boy that stood me up?"
It was two years ago. She had just moved back to town and been put on a blind date with a partner that had never made an appearance.
"Something came up," he justifies.
Temari waves her hand. "No matter, now."
He gives a small smile. His eyes are so dark, she has trouble distinguishing the color from the pupil. "No," he says, "I guess not."
"I'm not so sure about him," Taro says the following night.
Temari rolls her eyes. "What does that even mean?"
"He's suspicious."
"Of doing what? You think you're living next to some hardened criminal?"
Taro sighs and rolls over. "No, not like that."
"Please, then, enlighten me."
Taro thinks on this for a while. Had he not been taking such ill-paced breaths, she would've thought him asleep.
"He is pretty quiet," Taro begins eventually. "Keeps mainly to himself. He is good-looking, though. And successful. Kind, I guess — on the outset. But there is something obnoxious about him. Arrogant. Don't you think? I heard he is some kind of child prodigy, which is probably what it comes from. Works the government now." Taro yawns. "Still not an excuse to be full of it."
Temari shrugs. Sure, he has all the elements of being cocky, though he probably was equipped with all the truths to back it up. She doesn't like arrogance as a general matter of principle. That doesn't mean she doesn't find it sexually attractive. She isn't going to say that thought. After all, it is only her first night since "moving in" and they are already bickering over an insignificant neighbor.
"Well," she responds, turning to the real problem, "if you'd shown up on time, I wouldn't have been indebted to him at all."
"Indebted? What does that mean?"
"It means I'll invite him over for dinner. Or buy him tea."
There is silence for a moment, then Taro laughs quietly and rolls over to be half on-top of her. "Look at you," he whispers into her neck. "Here for two hours and you're already seducing the neighbors."
She can't help the smile. "No, just the ones that feed me."
Temari doesn't mention that they almost went out once. There is no point in minor, unimportant details, and her boyfriend is irrationally jealous. And there was no reason for him to be, so.
Temari fully moves in the following week. The lease is co-signed. The key to her old place returned to the dorm manager. Her boxes almost emptied and piled on the living room floor.
Taro had been working more than usual and most of Temari's time is taken up between finishing papers and submitting various PhD and job applications. Still, she is keeping house well. Cooking rather than going out. Doing her laundry more than once a week. She is twenty-seven and has never lived with someone other than her brothers and on her own.
She sees Shikamaru more often now too. He leaves around the same time she does in the morning. Him, to work, her, to jog around the park.
"You keep better shape than me," he had said the first day they'd met in the elevator.
She resisted looking him over, remembering that his form had seemed lean and his forearms had bared (what she now figured to be inherent) muscle. Always unfair.
"Come run with me, then," she had countered, but he only smiled and grabbed the paper on his way out the door, lifting it in a wave goodbye.
She doubts he'll join her. People who don't exercise — especially people un-wavered by aesthetic need — rarely take up running. But she asks anyway.
She falls into casual friendships and proposals with some of the other neighbors too. The mother in 1F does her laundry the same time Temari does. And the elderly man across the hall had studied in her same program some fifty years before and is happy to tell her tales of his time while his wife makes her and Taro dinner. And the building manager accepts the coffee she brings him one morning in exchange for moving some furniture.
In all, life has settled in.
"Temari!" Ino begins, "I had no idea you were moving in here!"
Temari steps aside to invite her in. "Yeah, I moved in last month."
"I heard. Shikamaru only just mentioned it though — otherwise I would've come over sooner! I didn't even know you were moving in with your boyfriend. Kankuro never said anything."
"It was kind of a last minute decision."
Ino stops walking when she is in the middle of the living room.
"I like what you've done with it." She pauses and turns her head, grinning, "I never even knew that Taro lived here. What a coincidence."
Temari shrugs. "We never had an opportunity to meet."
"Good thing you two never dated, huh?" She moves to the windowsill, leaning against it to face Temari.
Temari laughs. "It wouldn't've worked out anyway."
Ino raises her brow.
"He is too much of a hot shot for me. I like simple, boring people."
"He's not flashy," Ino interjects, "if that's what you mean."
"Well he certainly isn't humble."
Ino doesn't argue that.
"Well, from what I've heard from him, you two aren't as boring and domestic as you'd like to think," Ino declares, nodding her head in mock-sincerity, "apparently the walls are thinner than you might imagine."
"All the fighting?" Temari feigns.
Ino waves her hand in dismissal. "Oh no, certainly all the sex."
She is living in 14B for three months before Shikamaru rings the bell.
"Are you coming?"
She looks him up and down from across the doorframe. He is wearing black sweat pants and a black tee shirt. His muscle is long and corded up his arms, but he looks awkward in the sweats regardless.
"Running?"
"Is my invitation rescinded?"
Temari blinks.
"No. Not at all." She is still in pajamas though. It is a Saturday after all, and he must know she doesn't run on the weekends.
Then again, just because she has inadvertently memorized his schedule doesn't mean the occurrence is reciprocal. That thought is kind of upsetting. After all, it's not like she cares. She, apparently, is just more observant.
"Let me go get dressed," she says, pulling the door wider to let him in. "I'll only be a minute."
He walks past her and she shuts the door behind him, putting a finger to her lips.
"He's still sleeping," she says quietly, leaving Shikamaru in her living room as she sneaks back in the bedroom to get some clothes.
They stop by the reservoir, Shikamaru lacing his fingers behind his head as she takes a seat on a bench.
"So?" She asks, "you doing okay?"
Seemingly unable to form words, he shakes his head with vigor.
"You should be healthier." She says, closing her eyes in the sun. It is early enough on the weekend that only joggers and bikers are out. "You're young! You should have better stamina."
When he doesn't respond, Temari opens her eyes. He is looking at her strangely and she momentarily realizes if what she said could be construed as being sexual.
"Perhaps," he says, and leaves it at that, though he keeps staring at her.
Aesthetically he had nothing to worry about — he could fill out a suit, certainly. But for things like... yes, sex, well, wouldn't it be better to be in shape?
Still, Temari watches him as he turns from her and goes to sit beside her, long limbs tucking under. The day is hot to begin with and she is already sweating significantly, yet she can still feel the heat rise off him in waves.
Temari can't help the pounding of her heart. She is an adult — has been for a while now. Inadvertently thinking about sex with someone shouldn't feel as intrusive as it does for her in that moment.
Shikamaru turns his head to smirk at her. "We should stop now."
"We're barely halfway," she protests, ignoring the sure blush on her neck.
"I'm lazier than you think." He replies, standing and walking back in the direction they'd come from. "And more pessimistic."
"This is the first time I've seen this side of you," she follows.
He tilts his head, thinking. "You're right," he mutters, "I guess it is." Then he breaks into a smile and they talk easily the rest of the way home.
She is happy with Taro. She has finished her school and has yet another framed degree gathering dust in her desk.
She likes the security of a spouse that will provide for her while she finds a practical application for her education. She loves her home and the ease of domesticity.
Her interest in him (if it even could be called that) is only natural. He is entertaining and she has time on her hands. It doesn't mean she will act on anything. Or pursue anything. Everyone flirts. Everyone fantasizes. No one falls in love with strangers or anything of the sort.
They go running every Saturday now. And some Fridays. It is a little thing — only once or twice a week. And they never speak much. They don't interact much at all, really. Just running partners.
She tells Taro about this relationship.
What she doesn't mention is that their paths cross more now. She sees him every morning as usual, but now at nights as well. Sometimes at the grocery store and twice at the bank.
It is nothing worth defining. They are neighbors. And stuff like this happens. During lunch he often passes by the window of the coffee shop she frequents. They both live and work in similar vicinities. Nothing at all is even present to define.
That's why, the first time he says anything she is taken wholly by surprise.
She'll admit to a casual flirtation, but there is little innuendo — less than she has with some people — and never anything inappropriate. At least, nothing inappropriate said aloud. She thinks about him. More than necessary and almost certainly more than healthily. She just hadn't known the feeling to be reciprocal.
It happens on a Wednesday afternoon, almost half a year after they'd met beneath the awning in the rain.
She is having breakfast in a diner a few blocks from her place when Shikamaru walks in with another man dressed similarly. They are engaged in conversation and take a seat by the window without waiting to be seated. She rarely comes here, and never at this time, so it is reasonable to assume that he is a regular.
The man he is with compliments him well and they look close. A coworker, probably. They are both dressed for business, at least. They have good heights and would probably make an attractive couple.
As soon as they sit, Temari turns back to her tea and book. She doesn't manage to finish a sentence though before the chair opposite her creaks with a new weight.
"Stop staring at me like that."
Temari raises her brows. He is staring at her, eyes dark and piercing and so deeply penetrating she has trouble breathing.
"Please stop." He asks sincerely.
She moves back, leaning further away. The heat coming off him — always so palpable — is worse now, expanding in her lungs and making her palms sweat.
"I feel it, you know." His eyes skim all over her face, searching for some kind of response. "Your eyes on me. Everyday."
Temari moves to say something, utterly taken aback, but thinks twice and sips her tea before deciding on how to respond.
Her heart is a pounding and she has no control on her actions.
"You watching me like that," Shikamaru continues in the interim, eyes focusing in on hers, "will give me the wrong idea."
He isn't leaning over the table and there are more than two feet between them, but if he were to pull out a cigarette — something she'd seen him do recently — she would be breathing in his smoke.
She can't help herself. Her whole body is burning. "And what kind of idea is that?"
Shikamaru doesn't take the bait. Instead he just sits and stares. If his sternum wasn't moving so quickly with each coming breath, she would have thought him completely at ease. Though she has a feeling, if anyone were touch him, even with only the tip of a finger, he would snap like a taut rubber band.
She supposes she feels similarly.
It is natural to have a crush on someone. You can't help being attracted to another person, regardless of your current relationship status. The only thing she can control is how far she lets it go.
So when they ride down the elevator together every morning in complete silence, she clenches her fists so there is more of an excuse as to why her palms are so sweaty.
The first Saturday that Shikamaru doesn't show up at her door, she decides to show up at his. They hadn't been speaking more than the usual small talk for a few weeks, but they still run together.
Only this time, instead of him standing on the other side of her door, she is pressing her index into his doorbell.
And when the door pulls open it is not Shikamaru on the opposite side. Rather, a woman, probably closer in age to Temari than Shikamaru, answers. She is clearly wearing clothes that don't belong to her.
"Oh," Temari says, smiling politely at the girl, "Sorry I w—"
As though she felt new eyes on her, Temari glances up and over the girl's shoulder. Shikamaru is at the opposite end of his living room, bare arms crossed over a bare chest.
He is staring at her again. Eyes dark and calculating. He raises his brows. Challenges.
She has never seen him shirtless and she wonders if he know what it does to her. She sees men shirtless all the time, literally on at least one billboard or poster every street corner. Why is it so bothering when he is doing it?
"I didn't mean to interrupt." Temari tries again. "I'll see you later."
She turns around before the girl can speak and walks into her apartment, taking care not to slam the door behind her.
So what, he has sex? Everyone does. Everyone should. Curious choice of partner. She was interesting looking. Attractive, but not conventionally and Temari wants to laugh because of course his partners would be super cool and interesting looking. He was.
This girl is probably more attractive than Temari. Probably suits him even better.
Sipping a glass of water, she thinks that perhaps it was truly good that they hadn't met two years previous. She would have fallen hard and he wouldn't have meant to make some light flirting affect so significantly.
"Did you hear them?" Taro asks one evening as he gets back from work.
"Hear who?"
"Last night. Nara's woman?"
Temari frowns from her position at the table. "I didn't hear anything out of the usual. Why?"
Taro puts down his briefcase and loosens his tie. "There are thin walls," he says, sitting down opposite her, "so sometimes you can hear someone going at it."
"Did you hear something?"
He shakes his head, "but when I left for work this morning, I saw a woman leaving his place. And she definitely wasn't a sister."
Temari exhales in a half-laugh.
"When the bed was in the other room," Taro explains, gesturing to what was now the guest room. "I would sometimes hear sex noises. Faint, but loud enough to know what they were. He probably heard us too, so."
He did, it was why she had wanted to change the bedroom, she wants to say, but Temari stops herself and tilts her head in curiosity at his comment. She had never told Taro what Ino had mentioned. She had no reason not to tell him, especially when her crush on Shikamaru hadn't permeated her thoughts yet, but for some reason she'd never mentioned it.
Monday morning, in their usual elevator ride, Shikamaru asks whether she had slept well. They are both facing forward in silence until this point.
"We slept well," she says, eyes tracing the landing meter above her head. They are almost to the bottom. "We moved the master bedroom to the East side of the apartment because of the greater view."
Shikamaru inhales and holds his breath.
He doesn't say anything until he has the paper in hand and is holding the front door open for her.
"Good," he breathes. She makes a right and he makes a left out of the door, as they do every morning.
Temari isn't sure what Shikamaru's game plan is or what he is hoping to achieve.
He admitted that he may feel something for her. Or, at least, hinted that he may begin to.
But was he trying to sleep with her? Or turn her away from him? Did he want her?
As she found, it is harder to react when you don't know the other's intention.
That morning two weeks ago, with the partially dressed woman and the smell of sex, with his white skin and the slight spatter of hair on his chest and leading further into his pants, he had looked at her with a question. A so, what now? What are you going to do about it?
But is he asking her? He was the one that had asked her to stop. What did he want her to do now?
And worse: why was his challenge so goddamn inviting?
Friday night, Temari goes to pick up take out for herself. On her way back in, Shikamaru is holding hands with some other girl a few feet behind her on the street. She holds open the door.
It is a different one this time. Still dark haired and still tall. Still perfect (or as close as one can come, probably).
They all three ride the elevator in conversational silence, though there are occasional breaths and small laughs from the girl as she and Shikamaru stand behind Temari. Temari is out as soon as the opening door is wide enough for her to fit through, walking down the hallway and sticking her key in the lock.
She hears them close his door a few seconds later. It is ten minutes before she hears them in bed. And not faint, as Taro had said. She hears them from her living room. Loud and banging against the wall. She wonders how — up against? From behind? Hands in frustration?
It isn't as intimidating as she might have thought, though. She hears Shikamaru. Really hears. He is loud and vocal and she can here the there and I like it here's. She thinks, for having gotten so head-spun just thinking about having sex with him, the real thing — at least, the audio — really isn't all the impressive. It sounds like common porn, which is fine. And good. And really arousing in itself. It's just not what she wants.
Still, Temari is bothered and turns on a film louder than necessary in hopes to get some sort of point across.
"She was cute." Temari says the next morning on their run. He had come to the door today, apparently finishing his date earlier than the one two weeks ago.
Shikamaru doesn't say anything. He has gotten in better shape and now is able to get a few words out while moving, though only every fifteen minutes or so. Still, she supposes his silence isn't because of exercise.
"Did you kick her out too?" Temari continues with a smile.
Perhaps, she thinks, if she pushes the lightness, she won't feel so heavy around him.
"I don't kick women out all the time." He justifies shortly.
Temari laughs as they turn a bend. "So they run out every morning as fast as they can on their own initiation?"
Shikamaru shrugs.
"Maybe you're shit in bed?"
She can hear the grin in his voice. "You tell me."
She confirms what she'd figured already: that he was being so loud purposefully. Purposefully, for her.
"I wouldn't know."
"No," he says, slowing down as the reached the reservoir and not looking in her direction, "I suppose not."
Still, for some reason, as they pause, the mood is significantly easier and lighter than it has been for the past few months.
Shikamaru keeps it up though. The sex — that is, not the tension.
Every week, like clock work, she will hear him fucking someone. It is harder to make out when there is conversation or television in her own place, but even Taro will stop himself mid-sentence to listen.
The next morning, she and Shikamaru always go on a run together. They keep a few feet apart and don't speak anymore about sex. Temari spends most of her time complaining about finding a job and Shikamaru, when he does manage to string together a few sentences, complains about Ino and the upcoming wedding plans. They run over her job applications and he gives her contacts in academia.
She still watches him though. And when she doesn't, she feels him looking for her. She isn't sure what this is, but there is no denying it is something.
"He used to come quieter."
"Jesus," Temari says, "stop talking about it. We're workout buddies. I don't want to be thinking about his spunk."
"I wasn't talking about his semen," Taro retorts, shrugging. "And it's not like I enjoy thinking about another guy's come." He pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot and takes a seat at the table. "I wouldn't have even registered the difference if his sex-life wasn't so apparent."
Temari glances up from the Sunday Edition and gives him a look before going back to the paper.
"All I mean is, a few years ago, you would barely hear anything from his apartment. He had moved in right out of college, if I remember correctly. Took his girlfriend. I was moving in around the same time, so I remember. He had money from his father or something."
Temari folds the paper and settles back to show she is listening.
"He lived there with her for a while... I think she moved out three years ago? Two and a half? It was around Christmas. Just up and left, as far as I could tell. He was kind of out of it for a while. Mail piled up. Friends would come bang on the door and he wouldn't answer even though he seemed to be home. You know, dramatic stuff like that."
"What happened to the girl?"
Taro shrugs. "Not a clue. She was cute. Young. Was nice to me."
She nods. "Right, so," she raises her brows, "back to his orgasm..."
"He used to have quiet sex. Even when he would finish, you could always tell because there would be a lot of gradually heavier breaths and then suddenly silence."
Temari laughs lightly. "Wow, thank you for that information."
"Well I never really thought about it," Taro continues, "except now that the sex is so loud, it reminded me of a long time ago. Makes me wonder."
"Maybe she was the one directing the sex?" Temari muses, "she might have liked it quiet? You should be happy for him, coming out of his shell."
Taro laughs. "No, even after her he was like that. For a while after she left he had sex with everyone. Men, women. Older, younger. Definitely took the rebound thing to heart. You would see them coming and going like he was running a restaurant. After a while it calmed down, but he never had sex with any of them loudly."
"So in your inventory of our neighbor's climactic sounds, you've calculated this as a recent development?"
He sighs. "Inadvertently," he says, "I guess I noticed, yeah."
Temari shakes her head and looks back down at her paper. But she can't make it through one sentence, reading without comprehension. Instead, she thinks about Shikamaru.
She thinks about sex and about relationships and how her toes curl when she thinks of him and yet she knows absolutely nothing about his life or his loves.
But she also thinks about what he is doing. And his intentions with her. She wonders about his ex and his string of lovers. He is doing something similar now — only with none of the versatility he'd apparently had before: Only women. Young ones. Beautiful ones. Ones that intimidate her. So, rationally, he either only recently discovered and solidified his taste in one type of woman, or, probably less likely, he is trying to make Temari jealous.
If true, she is well-versed these days in the warmth that runs through her body at the thought.
She doesn't like being wishy-washy. She doesn't like being stubborn, or demanding one solidified thing. She doesn't like being dishonest.
She loves Taro. Still. Her love isn't waning, really. Not even changing.
But she wants Shikamaru. Badly. Sure, it no longer feels like her world is falling apart, but she still finds her eyes following him. She is just more used to it now.
She likes him beside her. She likes the height difference. The heat coming off him. She likes standing with him.
It is a little thing, but something she never recognizes with her boyfriend. Never had.
Temari bumps into Shikamaru completely accidentally near the beginning of spring.
She normally knows exactly when and where they will see one another. But tonight, she is out to a play with Taro and Shikamaru is at what appears to be a work function across the street. They meet outside the bar as she is leaving and he is entering.
"I just stopped for a drink. Taro 's waiting for me at the door to the theater," she explains.
Shikamaru nods, smiles. He brushes the bangs out of his eyes. She has butterflies and feels jittery everywhere. Perhaps it is the unexpectedness of seeing him, the lack of preparedness she usually cultivates in his presence.
"Seeing anything interesting?"
"I doubt it," Temari responds, smiling.
He reflects her expression, lips turning up and she can't help the observation.
She can feel him watching her stare at his mouth.
"I—" he begins, then stops.
"Yes," she says, with absolutely no idea as to what was going to come out of his mouth.
Then, because her filter seemed to have completely slipped out from under her, she says: "Three years ago." He takes a breath. "I... you," she stares up at him, "you should have come. I was waiting."
She waited for an hour and he never showed. She had been annoyed but not angered. She didn't know him then. But now she hates him, loathes him, for it.
"I know." He says instantly, before she can even finish her sentence. As though he knows exactly what time she is referencing. She waits for him to say it again as the initial comment had ended in a way that bore more follow-through in the inclination he'd used. But he says nothing.
They are silent for a beat longer than socially common. Then she turns and walks to the theater and he continues inside the building.
"Was that Nara?" Taro says when she finds him across the street.
"Yeah," Temari says, reaching into her bag for her lipstick. "I just bumped into him outside. I guess he had a work thing around here."
Temari doesn't mention that they almost went out once. There is no point in minor, unimportant details, and her boyfriend is irrationally jealous. And, this time, there are lots of reasons for him to be.
The second time Temari enters Shikamaru's apartment, it has been almost exactly a year since the first time, and once more, she is dripping wet.
"I gave you an umbrella," is what he says upon opening the door.
"Firstly," she responds, "you offered to give me an umbrella. Then we came up here, so you never gave it to me."
He thinks about this for a minute, and then, in silence, pulls the door further open and steps aside to let her in.
"You don't have company?" She asks. "It's a Friday night after all."
"No," he says, walking to his bathroom to grab a towel, "not tonight."
He doesn't say you're here even though she can see the remark on the tip of his tongue.
He hands her the towel and she takes it, gripping the white terrycloth between her fingers but not moving to dry off. She'd come in the rain purposefully, hoping to deter herself physically as she was having trouble emotionally.
"I don't have a spare key, if that's what you're after."
"No," she breathes, taking two steps inside before stopping. "I got the job. I just... I wanted to tell you. Because you helped, you know. Talking through applications with me."
Shikamaru grins for a moment and then lowers his mouth into a smirk, probably trying to look cool. "Congratulations," he offers sincerely. "Really, I'm happy for you. You don't have to worry anymore."
She shakes her head. "Nope. No more anxiety. It's what I want."
"I know," he says, smile lightening now. "Are you going to celebrate?"
She pauses for an instant, just momentarily, because: no. She wasn't going to celebrate. She hadn't told Taro yet. She was aware, when she'd come here, but she thought the job less important. She had something else she'd wanted to say, and the words about the job had slipped out, mostly as a means of distracting from her actual purpose.
Temari had been hoping for a way to casually let him know, but the more he looks at her, the more she realizes there is no way to let the comment into a conversation naturally.
"Maybe." She answers instead. "But that's not why I'm here."
He raises a brow in interest.
She makes effort to not avoid his eye contact although his gaze is much too piercing.
"I just wanted to let you know that I listen."
His eyes move across her face as though the answer might be in her features. "Excuse me?"
"I listen," she says again, "you don't have to be so loud all the time."
Shikamaru swallows and out of the corner of her eye, she sees him making a fist.
"You come silently," she says. "I know. It doesn't matter how loud you are, because I'm always listening."
With that, she sidesteps to the coffee table and drops the unused towel over the side of a chair. Shikamaru doesn't move to do anything as she turns and walks out the door.
She realizes the problem.
She is using him as a scapegoat for her own feelings.
Of course she wants him. So badly, he's nearly driven her mad.
She thinks about him all the time. She tracks his movements and plans her time around him and where he is going to so that she may intercept. She imagines their conversations, and when anything interesting happens at all, she imagines telling him about it.
But he isn't the reason she is betraying her relationship. An instigator, at most, but it really has little to do with him.
They only speak once after that. A handful of sleepless nights later, on the rooftop of the hotel after Kankuro and Ino's wedding.
It is a fight. And it isn't pretty.
He follows her up to the privacy of the roof without any provocation.
"Do you?" He asks, continuing where she had left him, a step behind her as she exits the doorway of the building.
Temari turns her head back in question.
"Do you really listen?"
Temari takes a deep breath. She should have never said anything.
"It's for you," he continues, "it all is. Everything I do."
She fully turns now. The wind is cutting and her cheeks feel raw. Shikamaru looks disheveled though the party has only recently begun.
"Stop."
"Me?" He licks his lips. They look dry. "I had nothing to do with you." Shikamaru turns away from her now, pacing between the vents, "I was living my life peacefully until you walked into it. Wet and charming and so very enticing." He waves his hand, "watching me, listening to me... what did you want, Temari? Some flirtation with your next door neighbor as you settled down into your perfectly nice Stepford life?"
She bites her tongue. "Of course not!"
He laughs, sharp and angry. "So, you fucking well got it."
"I never wanted this. I never wanted anything. You think I planned this? I feel like shit... All the time." Temari takes a breath, pausing for a minute. Except he is telling the truth. She is horrible and manipulative and so fucking selfish. "You're right," she says. "You're right. Everything I've done to you..." she swallows. "I've been so unfair."
He takes a step forward. "I love you." He says, loudly and desperately, but it is no matter.
"You never said anything."
"I thought you knew."
There is a longer silence this time. Another gust of wind hits, blowing her dress and cutting like razors against her calves, but she can't feel it. Her body is already numb with self-loathing. After all, she is up here, with him, and downstairs she has her whole family waiting.
"You're too late."
"To tell you? When was a good time?" Shikamaru balks. "Three years ago? Was that it? Had I shown up, had I made it to our blind-date, then it would be okay?" He sighs in exasperation and throws up his hands. "So, then, are you with him because he came first? This isn't some test of loyalty, Temari, this is your life."
"Of course not," she strikes back. "Of course I'm not with him because I met him first. How can you think that?"
"Well, from where I'm standing it's looking a lot like that is what happened. Either that or I am just some plaything you can string around when you're feeling bored."
"Don't be an idiot," she snaps. "What I meant was: if I'd met you first. If, when you were actually supposed to show up, you had, well, I would have fallen so madly in love with you, you would never have been able to get rid of me."
That shuts him up.
"It's true." she says, looking down at her shoes before facing him again. "But you never came. And so I moved on and loved someone else and lived a different life."
They are both silent for a while.
"Now though," he says eventually, "if I asked you to leave him... to leave him for me, would you?"
She leaves Taro on a Thursday night. Not for Shikamaru. For herself.
They sit on opposite sides of the living room. He is silent the whole time.
"I thought I wanted this," she says, head in her hands, "I did. I really thought so." He sighs, but doesn't say anything.
She had gone through school wanting to settle down. Wanting to secure a job and start a family. She likes the ease of love. She likes the domesticity of having a home and a commitment. She thought it was what she wanted.
But it wasn't. It isn't.
She doesn't know what she wants. But she wants something else
Temari pauses mid-step to lift the box higher in her arms. The wrapping paper is some sort of sickening pink with purple and yellow rubber ducks and Temari can't believe she is actually attending one of these voluntarily. More, she can't believe she is about to be an aunt. She is only thirty years old. Honestly.
(Okay, so some people had kids already. She didn't. All her friends didn't. This was the first one.)
The doorman holds open the door for her and then moves to press the button for the elevator. She smiles, steps inside, and tries to precariously balance the over-sized Jumperoo on her hip so she has a chance to move her hair behind her ear lest it become plastered to her forehead. It is June. And hot. And she is stupidly wearing long sleeves.
With her elbow, she presses the button for the fourth floor.
"Oh, M'am," the doorman says. She belatedly hears someone enter the building as the doors begin to shut and Temari practically drops the box trying to reach out and stop the elevator. An instant before her Temari's gets there though, the person running to catch her sneaks his arm through too.
"Thank you," he breathes, stopping in front of her. He only gets out half the breath though. She thinks, perhaps, he is in some sort of shock, as common courtesy would ask him to move to her side instead of standing in front of her, halted. She, on the other hand, miraculously, is completely in control of her faculties.
It is silent until he, very quietly, says: "I wondered if you were going to be here." Temari takes a step back.
Shikamaru is wearing a black sweater over a collared shirt and he fills it out better than before. His hair is shorter, his jaw less angled. He is darker now too, in his complexion. All things that make him look older, but still so poignantly recognizable.
She has wondered the same thing: if he was going to be here. Honestly, she had already planned out her speech.
There is a beat, and then Shikamaru steps beside to stand beside her, letting the elevator doors close in front of him.
Temari takes a deep breath. Her heart is pounding and all she can hear is the blood in her ears, but she has waited for this. Waited three years.
It was purposeful, the waiting. She had not run to his door the moment she'd broken up with her boyfriend. She had needed time. Time to figure out what she wanted. And she knew now. She wanted her own life. And she wanted a part of his.
Shikamaru is holding his breath. She can tell by his stiffness beside her.
She has no clue whether he still wants her. Whether he is married to someone else now. Or seeing someone. She has no idea what his life entails; which puzzle pieces fit together to form him these days. All she loves is a memory. But is a memory of him. And hopefully, she thinks, that is enough.
"I love you," she says without precursor, turning to stare at him openly. The words are gentle. Easy. As though it hadn't been years since she'd first thought them. "I've always loved you." She smiles for a brief moment. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you before."
Shikamaru exhales and snaps his head in her direction.
His eyes scan her face, just as dark and inquisitive as they used to be.
Eventually, the elevator reaches the landing and Shikamaru smiles, low with satisfaction and ease.
"I know," he says, taking a step out of the elevator.
Temari exhales quickly into a grin, eyes tracing their way over him as he offers his hand to her.
Suddenly, everything seems to ridiculous — the elevator, the apartment, him.
Once she starts laughing, she can't stop. And then he starts too. Loud laughs that Temari wants to feel inside of her. She wants to capture the warm sound of his mouth, taste it on her tongue. Without paying much attention to anything else — the not quite empty hallway, the baby-shower only a few doors down — Temari drops her gift in the middle of the floor and reaches for him, thinking only of those laughs on her lips, and presses them against his.
I'm finishing term so please please review and give me at least some good news!
