Winning is such a great feeling! And Shikamaru is winning so hard right now. More importantly, Temari is losing so hard right now.

The thing he's winning at and the thing she's losing at is a game that Kankuro has invented. Basically, there's a shot. Of alcohol. It's green. And there are turns, obviously, you have to take turns in a game unless it's like, tag or something, and even then you take turns being "It," but then you don't take turns if it's a race but is that really a game? What's a race, really?

"Is a race a game? Or is it like . . . a whatsit? An event?"

They're all outside, doing the shot game on the front deck of the bar, the shots lined up on the railing. There are four. One for each person. Shikamaru. Temari. Tenten. Kankuro. Kiba's there but he won't play because Kiba doesn't drink hard alcohol. It's not that he can't handle it, he just loves beer so much. Kiba should marry beer. Or, like, brew beer. Dog beer. Akamaru loves beer too but he's only allowed to drink it on special occasions. If there was a special dog beer maybe Akamaru could have it? Kiba says Akamaru can drink whatever he wants once he turns 20, so in a couple of years it won't matter, but it'd be cool if there was dog beer. Shikamaru wonders if dog beer would taste like regular beer or chicken livers or grass or hooves. What do dogs eat? Not olives, that's for sure, Kankuro has been trying to feed Akamaru olives all night but Kiba keeps snagging them.

Naruto is watching and laughing about something and Shino's outside too (his insects got kicked out so he left because of bug solidarity and whatever. Shino, come on. Don't let your bugs drink. They always get rowdy and cause a scene.) Hinata is there which is nice because she claps and cheers for everyone no matter whose turn it is. Choji went home. Ino went home. Reminder! Meet Ino and Choji tomorrow for possible swimming and possible feelings-chat! Noon! Don't forget!

But back to the pressing issue: is a race a game?

"A race isn't like tag, yeah? No turns."

"It's both, stupid. When it's a game you take turns being the timekeeper and if it's a competition you don't take turns but it's not a game. Take your fucking shot."

Temari raises an excellent point. His fucking shot demands taking. If only he could just pick it up and drink it.

Oh, that's the most important part of the game! You're not allowed to pick up the glass with your hands. You can do anything else but you can't pick up the glass using your hands. A lot of people would just use their mouths and kind of slurp it up but you have to drink the whole shot at once and slurping isn't effective. You can just kind of put your whole mouth around the edge of the glass and toss your head back but if you're not careful, it makes a huge mess and you lose the round if you don't drink the whole thing.

It's fun because you've got to do special things to make it work. Everyone was given time to prep so Shikamaru has a bunch of threaded senbons attached to mild explosive tags. He can kind of aim the tags under the glass and send the glass into a controlled launch that he tries to aim at his mouth. It's been successful, sort of. Not great. Better than Temari, though. She's doing the same thing but she's not flinging her head back fast enough or timing it right and she winds up spilling fancy green Suna liquor all down her neck, which is hilarious. She gets so mad and glares at everyone, but mainly she glares at him and he smirks at her because smirking makes her even madder and making Temari mad is the absolute best. Not like, actual mad, but shot-drinking game mad. The charming kind of mad. Fake-mad, which is cute. Cute like a mad toddler, ok? But not cute in a kissing way. That's- that'd be, man, kissing, haha, that'd be so weird and terrible.

"Temari's basically sorta my boss?" he thinks.

"Yeah, and your sorta boss is gonna kick your ass if you don't hurry up."

Guess he said that last bit out loud. Anyway, let's do the damn thing.

The world spirals when he moves his head and his eyes are not really willing to focus so previous methods aren't going to cut it. Time to think outside the box.

He falls into his usual "planning strategy" stance.

"You have three seconds or you forfeit."

Ok, it's time for full disclosure. He's not winning. But who cares, so long as he's not losing to Temari? Tenten and Kankuro are scary-good. Chakra strings, corpse puppets, weird fancy weapons- this whole thing is basically a pre-Hidden Village-style showdown ripped straight from an old-style movie. Also, during Kankuro's turns there's a lot of bodice ripping. Kiba is thrilled. Tenten is dismayed. Kankuro exudes the confidence of a man with plenty of backup jumpsuits.

But anyway, Shikamaru's still beating Temari! That counts for something, right? Speaking of counting:

"Three. Two. O-"

No time for strategy. Hand seals! Shadow Sewing Jutsu! Pick up the shot and drink it! Holy shit it tastes terrible!

"NO HANDS!"

"I DIDN'T USE HANDS!" Lies and slander!

"No hand seals! That's cheating!" Temari's furious. She's also pretty. Pretty drunk, is what's pretty. Shut up. She's mad. Pretty mad. Pretty. Mad. Shut up.

Pretty unfair is what she is, because honestly! "Kankuro and Tenten get to use hand seals!"

"But you don't, because I can't, because none of my jutsus are close-range, so you can't use them!"

It's true. She's maybe a super high-ranked jounin, maybe the voice of an allied nation, and ok, she so cool and the best and whatever, but she's not very good at close-ranged combat. He leans in closer.

Nara Shikamaru is very skilled at shoji. He is a brilliant strategist. When he wants, he can see an enemy's moves laid out like a second-year academy student's homework scroll. This does not mean that he is smart. Not at all. At this moment he has decided to prove that he is very very not smart.

"Maybe if you weren't being such a baby you wouldn't be losing so badly."

Her eyes are so blue! So green! So green and blue! And so angrily narrowed! She's so pissed! Oh shit, his stupid mouth is just being stupid and loud and her eyes and the rest of her are just so mad! Crap!

She leans in. He's going to die. She lifts her hand. He's going to die. She flicks his forehead. It stings like a bastard.

There is a tense silence, or there would be if Tenten and Kankuro weren't shrieking about chakra string technique. Shikamaru opens his mouth to apologize and is cut off.

"You know you cheated, you little shit! You . . . cheater! You get a punishment." Some of her hair has slipped across her cheek and into her mouth. "You have to help me on my next turn."

"O-ok." He has to help her, or she might summon Katamari, and Shikamaru is scared of weasels. One time when he was little, he got bitten by a weasel and he had to get treated for rabies. They look like snakes plus fur plus legs. The stuff of nightmares. Weasels are as terrible as Temari is great.

Wait. Temari, temerity. "I guess I don't have the Temari-ty to argue," he says, and everyone avoids eye-contact. Pearls before swine! That joke was solid gold.

Speaking of gold, Temari is tugging the ties from her hair. It's tumbling down around her face and shoulders, shaggy pieces of straw-yellow. Brighter and stronger than Ino's pale platinum. Not prettier, Shikamaru thinks, because Ino has probably the prettiest hair ever, but Temari's is nice and warm-colored.

"Well, if you're helping me, help me." Oh yeah, it's Temari's turn. Tenten and Kankuro are being impatient because they're soooocool and soooo much better at this game even though Tenten probably kisses her knives at night and Kankuro wants to smooch Kiba, who is disgusting.

"What do you want me to do?"

She huffs in annoyance. "The same thing you did, obviously. If you cheat, I get to cheat the same way."

Her shot sits in front of her, perilously full. He knows he's going to Get It if he spills any so this will be a delicate operation. Shadow Sewing Jutsu. Pick up the glass. No trembling. No mistakes. Full concentration.

"Ok. Open your mouth." She does. "Tilt your head back and close your eyes, I don't want to get it in your eyeball." She does. This is very weird.

He sends shadow tendrils toward her face, getting a sense of where her mouth is in relation to the other shadows holding the shot glass.

At this point Ino or Choji would be crinkling their noses and complaining about how the shadows tickle, but Temari is utterly still, mouth open, eyes closed. He's unfocused, so the shadows start to branch, drifting over her eyelids, her nose, her ears, her neck. He doesn't want to be touching Temari this way, even if he can't really feel it. It's uncomfortable enough when it's Ino or Choji. Temari is -

Temari is different.

For whatever reason, Temari is different.

Her mouth is open, he has a decent sense of where it is, he has the shot glass in his shadow-tendrils and he tips it carefully -

Temari sneezes and green liquor gets everywhere. Tenten shrieks, Kankuro laughs, Shikamaru sighs the sigh of the long-suffering. They have lost. They have lost everything. Everything!

"Penalty," crows Kankuro, makeup smeared. He looks like an idiot because he is an idiot. "Pen-al-teeeeeeee! Tenten, what's the penalty?"

"You have to go stand in the corner and think about what you've done."

"And you have to stand on one foot."

"And you have to sing the apology song."

Temari rolls her eyes. "I am not singing the apology song, Kankuro."

He makes a mournful, wordless sound, and looks at her with wild eyes. Is he going to kill her? Is this what the Suna siblings call 'bonding'? Murder-eyes?

"Ugh!" She rolls her eyes harder. It looks like it hurts, but Temari is pretty drunk, so maybe she doesn't feel it. She should be careful, though, Shikamaru's mom always says that if he keeps rolling his eyes they'll stick that way. It hasn't happened so far but you never know. "Fine." She hops off her stool and saunters over to the corner of the deck where the railing meets the wall. She almost doesn't stagger at all. Lifting her right leg and grabbing her ankle with both hands, she sways and begins chanting in a monotone.

"Here's the very sorry song, won't you help and sing along."

"Bum-bum-bum." Kankuro actually sings. He's got a not-bad voice.

"I'm sorry!"

"She's sorry"

"I'm sorry!"

"So sorry!"

"I'm very very sorry that I got caught being bad!"

"Just don't do it anymore you scurvy scalawag!"

The whole thing is weirdly cute. It's easy to imagine Temari and Kankuro as children, playing a made-up game, coming up with the apology song and singing it to each other. Shikamaru wonders if Gaara knows the apology song, and if he ever sang it. It's a sad thought, so he pushes it away.

Apology song completed, Kankuro turns his attention back to the shot game. Temari is out, and Shikamaru is so far behind he decides to cut his losses and leave before he gets a penalty. Kankuro's only opponent left is Tenten. It's a boring game to watch - Hinata is a champ for sticking around, but even she's gone now, with Naruto trailing behind her. (It's hard to tel if they're an item - he's so affectionate with everyone, but Hinata's liked him for so long that maybe it's actually a thing?) and Kiba and Shino are only sticking around because they want to watch the Object Of Their Affections. Shikamaru wants to get away from the weird sexual tension so he tries to casually stroll over towards Temari. He's pretty successful (except for an almost-disasterous stumble when he takes his eyes off the floor) and after about a million years he manages to traverse the two meters to her corner.

"Hey." Nara Shikamaru, everybody! Master of eloquence!

"Hey."

"So, uh, sorry about making you lose."

"Eh, whatever. I was the one who sneezed. No big deal." She's wobbling a little, but still valiantly standing on one foot. Impressive. No way Shikamaru could stand on one food right now. He feels a little queasy just thinking about it.

"The sorry song was cute. You suck at singing, though."

"Yeah, I know."

Temari is swaying back and forth now. Almost off-balance. Not quite.

"It was kind of adorable, though." His stomach feels weird. He's saying things that he's thinking but maybe wouldn't want to say if he were sober. She's looking at him. looking at his eyes, in his eyes, and she probably has the best eyes. His are dirt-brown, hers are green-blue, turquoise, teal, aquamarine, other words, other ways to say "nice" and "pretty" and "special" and "scary," and his stomach is flip-flopping, and suddenly she's tilting, tipping over, and she's falling at a weird angle so she reaches out and grabs his shirt and now -

Oh.

He's leaning with his arm braced against the wall and she's got a fistful of his shirt and he's. Leaning over her. His arm out, his face close to hers, she's just short enough (short enough for what?) and he's looking into her bluegreenteal eyes, her mouth is open in an "o" of surprise, his is the same, their faces are close, his stomach is turning and knotting itself and

something

something

something important is about to happen,

and his poor stomach is falling through the floor and he needs to do something, anything at all, she's here and real and close and looking at him with surprise but also more than surprise? Excitement? Anticipation? Fear? Dread?

He's dizzy. The world is spinning. Thank god he's got his hand against the wall, otherwise he'd fall down. His stomach is -

His stomach feels weird.

Shit, his stomach feels really weird.

Shit.

He barely manages to push himself away from the wall before he pukes spectacularly onto her shoes. His velocity makes him tip over and he lands on his back. There is nothing to see but the ancient, dead light of the stars - no comforting clouds to catch his eye.

He has vomited (it's green, bright green, like the liquor they've been drinking) on the sandals of Temari of the Sand. His sort-of boss. The Ambassador of Suna.

Winning is such a great feeling, but Shikamaru is most certainly not winning right now.