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Wrapping his arm around her, Shikamaru chuckled. "No it is not… How about you wait another hour to go get your pets? We can get our coffee and go lay in bed until we feel better."

"That sounds nice," Sakura agreed, however, she didn't move her head from his shoulder. "We might need more than an hour though."

Shikamaru nudged her to get her started on standing up, and kissed her. "I think we can manage that."

A week later, November 8th

Glaring as Naruto and Sai were cheerfully readying to start sparring each other, Sakura crossed her arms over her chest and huffed irritably. She could see her breath with how cool the air was that morning.

"Sakura, you don't look too happy to be here." Yamato concluded, from where he and Kakashi were about to watch the other two members of the team spar.

"What's there to be happy about?" Sakura countered, pushing her hands further under her arms to try to warm them up. "It's freezing out here, and it's been misting the entire time we've been here. I'm soaking wet and about to freeze to death. This isn't anything to be happy about."

Kakashi and Yamato shared a look, before the one-eyed sensei met Sakura's eyes. "You guys were the ones who wanted to train-"

"I didn't want to do this," Sakura interrupted, before she pointed to Naruto and Sai. "They wanted to. Why am I being punished because my teammates are morons who don't understand that this is not training weather?"

Naruto and Sai shouting at each other while they sparred was heard, and Kakashi had to focus back on them.

Yamato offered Sakura a smile. "We'll just be out here another hour or so."

Grumbling under her breath, Sakura went back to trying to warm up her hands. I'm going to die out here.

An hour and a half later

"Are you all just a bunch of morons?" Sakura asked to the very nervous and scared looking interns. Her eyes widening as she continued flipping through the charts and paperwork in front of her. "You have been in the intern program for a month, and you shouldn't have managed to screw up this much."

"We didn't mean to-"

"Well, I would hope you didn't mean to," Sakura interrupted one of the interns who had spoke up. "An entire floor of patient files completely mixed up and incorrect. Do you not understand how dangerous it is to have incorrect information on patients?"

"Alright," a nurse broke in, motioning for the interns to walk away. "Go back to work, and don't make anymore mistakes."

Sakura glared at the interns as they scurried away, before she brought her forehead to her hand.

The nurse offered her a smile. "You seem stressed."

"You have no idea, Kazuna," Sakura said, groaning as she leaned against nurses station. "Training this morning was miserable. It was freezing already, but then it started misting. So I was wet and cold, and about to die."

"Is that why you came in and stayed in the shower for nearly half an hour?" Kazuna countered, settling behind the desk that Sakura was leaning on.

"Yeah, I was trying to get back to a warm state, because it was like I was frozen to the bone," Sakura said, a scowl returning back to her face. "Then I have to come to the hospital and find out that the new interns are morons."

Kazuna chuckled, and propped her chin on her hand. "You could be a little easy on them. They are still in their first month being here."

Sakura's jaw dropped. "I would if it was something that wasn't so life and death. Being a doctor or a nurse is a serious job. If the paperwork or charts are off by just one number, it can get someone killed. If we hadn't caught the mistakes, someone could have died."

"Fair enough," Kazuna agreed and she shrugged. "However, I'm just reminding you that they are very new interns, and are bound to screw up once in a while. At least no one died this time."

Unable to help her laughter, Sakura brought a hand to cover her face. "That's not funny, but it is," she said, trying to control her laughter. Once she managed that, she sighed at all the paperwork in front of her. "I guess I need to go take care of this. Wish me luck to not have the second half of my day be ruined by all of this."

"Good luck." Kazuna replied cheerfully, chuckling at Sakura's groan.

A few hours later

"Shikamaru, where is Sakura?" Shikamaru's aunt, Sumiko, asked. They were in the living room at Shikamaru's family's house.

"She was on a mission for almost a week, then she had training this morning." Shikamaru replied from where he was settling down on the other couch across from the "L" shaped couch. His uncle Abari was playing Shogi with his dad right now.

Sumiko raised an eyebrow. "She was training? I thought it was on and off raining all morning."

"And it's pretty cold out." Yoshino added.

Shikamaru shrugged. "That was her plan. At least when I talked to her for a few minutes after she came back from that mission this morning. I think she was going to go to work at the hospital after. She had a long list of things she wanted to do there, so I might never actually see her again."

Right after he said that, there was a knock on the door, and Shikaku got up to open it. "Speaking of Sakura."

"Oh hey." Sakura greeted everyone, offering them a smile. After the greetings were over, she walked over to Shikamaru, and leaned over so she was on eye level with him since he was sitting down.

Shikamaru's eyes met Sakura's emerald ones, and he smirked. "Well, I can already tell that you need something."

Sakura moved close enough to where her nose was just barely touching his. "At exactly what time are you going to be able to pay attention to me?"

That had Shikamaru's family laughing, and Shikamaru had to try hard to stop laughing. "I don't know, because at this point, I'm finding it's a full-time job to pay attention to you. Maybe I should quit my other job at this point."

Sakura shrugged, as she straightened back up. "I don't know. You should probably keep it just in case you get on my nerves, and I break up with you. So that way you will have something to do, besides think about how much you miss me."

While that made his family laugh, Shikamaru settled for smirking. "I'm glad you're already prepared for that. Thanks for giving me a heads up."

"Don't worry," Sakura replied, leaning back over so she could kiss Shikamaru's cheek. "I like you too much, so you're unfortunately stuck with me… But I am requesting your attention sometime soon."

Chuckling at her response, Shikamaru looked down at his watch. "Alright, well we can go grab something to eat, and you can tell me all your life problems over dinner."

"That's all I ask," Sakura said, then she hummed. "Although I need an hour. I need to go stop by Hinata's team's training ground."

"Okay- where are you going?" Shikamaru asked, watching her walking down the hall his room was off of.

He received no response for a minute, then Sakura returned. Having slipped on one of his dark green jackets. "I'm taking this; it's cold outside."

Shikamaru smirked, as he propped his head up with his hand. "You know that's the jacket I wear all the time, right?"

"And?" Sakura countered, zipping it up. "I need it."

"Yes, because all the thirty jackets in your closet suddenly don't work for you anymore?" Shikamaru countered. Rolling his eyes at her putting her hands in the pockets of it. "You're not giving that back are you?"

Sakura moved back over to him, leaned over on eye level with him. "You should wear that navy blue one in the back of your closet. You hardly wear it and it'd look nice on you."

"Why? So you can take that one too?"

"Well then I'll give you this one back."

"No you won't," Shikamaru replied, before finally smirking. "Stay warm. I'll come by your place in an hour, then we'll go get dinner."

"Sounds good." Sakura smiled and kissed him. She said her goodbyes to his family, and left.

Shikamaru watched her walking off the porch, and he smiled at how she turned around just to look back at him.

An hour later

Leaving her apartment building, Sakura smirked at how Shadow and Tank ran past them to get down the stairs first. She looped her arm through Shikamaru's once they were walking down the street. "This has been the longest day."

"What actually happened after we spoke this morning? Did you end up going to train?" Shikamaru asked.

"Yeah, I didn't want to," Sakura said, sighing irritably at the thought. "I assumed that we'd get a few days off from training, but apparently Naruto and Sai pestered Kakashi and Yamato enough that they decided to start training this morning."

"You were on that mission for nearly a week. Wouldn't even Naruto want to take a break?"

Sakura laughed at Shikamaru's question. "Apparently not. The word break doesn't even exist in his vocabulary. Anyway, since it's starting to get colder out, we'll have less and less training sessions. I guess that is what they used to convince Kakashi and Yamato to do the training session this morning."

Shikamaru chuckled. "That is the exact opposite of my team. I'm pretty sure we were all ready to go into the Winter schedule last month."

"It's not even technically going to be Winter until December," Sakura said, smirking at Shikamaru. "How do you guys ever get anything done?"

"I think the real question is: how is my team so amazing even when we don't train that much?"

That had them both laughing, and Sakura settled with a smirk on her face. "Fair enough."

Walking into a diner, the ordered their food, and went outside to sit at a table to wait for their food. Shadow and Tank settled to sitting underneath their table. They'd be there at least for half an hour until their food would be ready to go. Shikamaru's focus returned to Sakura after they settled down. "So back to your day."

"After training—which was miserable—it was not only cold out, but it was misting the entire time. I ended up freezing, because it was so wet outside and the wind was blowing," Sakura said, pulling Shikamaru's borrowed jacket closer around her. "So, if I end up waking up tomorrow morning deathly ill, it will be my teammates fault, and I want that written on my tombstone."

Shikamaru laughed. "I'll be sure to make sure that happens."

"Anyway, I went to the hospital to get some work done. Well, I took about a half hour long shower to warm up after training first. Then I got to work, and I feel like today, for some reason, everyone forgot how to do their job. I had to supplement in order to keep people from dying, because practically my latest group of interns screwed up big time. It's frustrating, because yes I like to help people, but I can't do everyone's work for them. My staff at the hospital are some of the most highly trained doctors and nurses across the nation, and this new round of interns are idiots and I hate all of them."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at how just talking about that seemed to bring fire to her eyes. "Aren't they supposed to not really know everything? They are interns after all."

Sakura motioned to herself. "I was not like that as an intern."

"I'm talking about normal people."

"Thanks," Sakura said, then they both laughed. She sighed after her laughter stopped. "I was really happy to get out of there, then be able to spend this evening with you. This is definitely making me feel better."

"Same here," Shikamaru said, watching as she had snuggled into his jacket that she took earlier. "Comfortable."

"Yes, thank you." Sakura said, smiling as that made him chuckle.

The next afternoon

"So I'm not going to be available tonight, and most likely tomorrow morning." Sakura said, laying back on Shikamaru's bed, as he was busy putting away laundry.

"What are you going to be doing that is more important than spending time with me?" Shikamaru asked jokingly, smirking as that made her laugh.

"Well, I wouldn't say it is more important exactly," Sakura said, rolling over on her stomach so she could look at Shikamaru better. "I'm just going out with some of the girls tonight. We're going to a party in a small village up North. You know the one-"

"The one by the valley?" Shikamaru interrupted, an eyebrow raised in her direction.

"Yeah… Why are you looking at me like that?"

Shikamaru hummed lowly at first, then he met her eyes again. "I don't think you should go."

"Why not?" Sakura asked immediately.

"It's not really a great area Sakura," Shikamaru said, finishing with his clothes. "I just want you to be safe, and that place doesn't scream safe at all."

"I will be fine. It's not like it's my first party-"

"No offense," Shikamaru interrupted her. "But I have seen how out of control you get, and I don't want you to get in trouble."

Sitting up, Sakura's eyes narrowed in Shikamaru's direction.

Out in the living room

"Isn't it weird that Shikamaru's dating someone?" Ino asked, having stopped by to run an errand for her dad, but she stopped to chat with Yoshino for a little while.

"At first it was strange," Yoshino said, pouring three cups of tea. She picked the third one up and delivered it over to her husband who was over by the couches. She returned back to the bar to sit beside Ino. "However, it was pretty easy to get used to. We've got to know Sakura a lot before they even started dating, and it was pretty normal to have her around the house."

The sound of a door being opened down the hall got their attention, and a moment later Sakura walked out and put on her shoes by the door.

Yoshino raised an eyebrow at her hurrying. "Are you leaving already? You haven't been here that long-"

"Sakura!" Shikamaru's loud exclamation interrupted his mom. He appeared out of the hallway. "You can't just-"

Sakura opening the front door, and shutting it with a slam behind her interrupted Shikamaru. Not saying a single word to him.

Shikamaru stopped at the door and watched as Sakura walked away from the house. He sighed heavily once she was out of sight, and irritated expression on his face.

Shikaku whistled lowly. "Trouble in paradise?"

Yoshino lightly smacked her husband on the arm, as she looked to her son with an eyebrow raise. "What happened?"

Shikamaru sighed heavily, as he sat down on one of the couches. "Sakura wanted to meet her friends at some party tonight, and I didn't think she should go because it's not a good area."

"And you told her this, then-"

"She kept arguing with me that it was fine, and it wasn't her first party, but that wasn't the point I was making," Shikamaru interrupted his mom, with a shrug. "I didn't think she'd be safe there, the party is in a not nice area."

Ino's laughter picked up after Shikamaru stopped talking, resulting in a glare from him. She settled into a smirk once she managed to stop laughing. "I know where you went wrong. Unless you want to figure it out on your own, but Sakura will be long gone to that party."

"Just tell me." Shikamaru said, a deep frown settled on his face.

"Sakura is super independent. She can stand on her own and she knows it and likes it. So naturally, when you tell her she didn't need to go to the party, she probably felt like you were trying to tell her what to do," Ino said, with a shrug. "If you haven't already realized it from Hinata or Tsunade, she gets increasingly irritated when someone tries to tell her what to do. However, the thing you really did wrong was implying that she wouldn't be able to take care of herself at this party."

"So this is an issue of pride?" Shikamaru questioned, an eyebrow raised.

"Sakura doesn't like to talk about this but that's one thing that really bothers her. When someone doubts her abilities. Which you weren't intentionally trying to do that, but it probably made her feel that way when you said what you did," Ino said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "Obviously you know about all the issues with the people coming after her, and how practically turns around and treats her like a child if it happens…. But I mean growing up, a lot of people doubted her. People doubting her ability to be a ninja. Then later people doubting her ability to become a doctor. Then when her parents moved it was her ability to live on her own and take care of herself. It's just something she's really insecure about."

"I didn't know that." Shikamaru said, a frown settling on his face. Sighing heavily, he rested his forehead on his hand. This turned out to be a very unexpected turn of events.

Sakura's apartment

"That's so annoying," Sakura said, having spent the last half hour venting to Hinata and Misaki about her conversation with Shikamaru. "Like, who is he to tell me what I can and cannot do."

"Maybe he just didn't realize how he was coming across-"

"Really Hinata?" Sakura interrupted, looking at Hinata through the mirror she was sitting in front of, as she was curling her hair.

Hinata sighed over-dramatically, and Misaki just smiled. "We're on your side Sakura, but sometimes you overreact."

At how displeased that clearly made Sakura, Hinata focused on brushing her own hair. "Okay, so maybe you're not overreacting."

"Thank you-" Sakura broke off when she heard a knock on her front door that caused both her dogs to start barking. "Will one of you get that? It might be Tenten."

"I'll get it," Misaki said, leaving the room for a moment with Shadow and Tank running after her to go see who was at the door as well. A moment later, Misaki returned to hearing Sakura and Hinata mid-laugh. "Uh, Sakura."

Glancing over her shoulder at the door, Sakura found Shikamaru there with Misaki. Her smile dropped right off her face, and she turned back to face the mirror.

At Sakura's lack of words, Hinata got off Sakura's bed. "I'm going to go grab a snack from the kitchen."

"Me too." Misaki said, as she and Hinata left the room.

When it was just him and Sakura, Shikamaru moved over to sit on Sakura's bed near where she was on the floor. He watched her in silence for a long moment, and he noticed how she refused to look at him. "I talked to Ino after you left."

Sakura scoffed. "Oh, that's great. Let me guess; I'm being a bitch."

"Sakura," Shikamaru said, shaking his head. "I didn't think that I came across the way that I meant to in our conversation. I wasn't trying to tell you what to do. I didn't mean to make you feel like I didn't believe that you could take care of yourself. I know very well that you can handle your own."

That seemed to noticeably soften Sakura's expression, and she finally looked at him through the mirror.

"You've told me about your anxiety, and I've been there for some of your anxiety attacks. That doesn't make me think any different about you," Shikamaru continued, sliding down so he could sit on the floor next to her. "Nor do I think any different if you felt insecure after what I told you today… I didn't realize it would make you feel that way, but I didn't know there was a problem with how I was phrasing my words. You never told me. Even so, I apologize for what I said, and it was not my intention for you to feel as if I didn't believe you could take care of yourself."

Finishing the last curl on her head, Sakura turned off the curling wand and set it to the side to cool down. She was quiet for a moment, before she finally turned to face him. Resting her arms on her knees, she sighed. "No I'm sorry, I guess I really was being a bitch today."

"Sakura-"

"No," Sakura interrupted him, then she sighed. "I never told you that about myself. Partially because it's just been something that made me insecure, and that's not usually something I like to share. You had no idea that I would react that way, and I had no reason to get so mad at you."

Shikamaru reached over to rest a hand on her arm. "I just worry about you sometimes. Even when I know that you would lay out anyone who could cross you, I still worry. And I've been to that area before and I didn't feel that comfortable there. I just want you to be safe tonight. I don't want anything to happen to you."

Sakura moved to rest a hand on his. "I don't mean to make you worry. I guess with how much of a danger magnet I am, it just comes with the territory… I'm just going out with the girls tonight. Misaki is coming with us and she won't be drinking that much, and she would lay out anyone who even tried to mess with us. Plus Ino is coming too, so it's clearly not going to be that crazy."

"Okay, that does make me feel a little better actually."

Sakura joined Shikamaru's laughter. "Thank you for caring so much."

"No problem." Shikamaru said, leaning over to kiss her once. When their kiss broke, he smiled. "Be careful tonight, and have fun. But mostly the first part."

Sakura grinned and nodded. "I'll try to come over tomorrow morning if I don't feel so hungover that I might die."

"And if you don't show up by noon, I will come over here with donuts and coffee, and I will try to save you from dying." Shikamaru said, smirking as that made Sakura laugh.

"I'll see you tomorrow." Sakura said, smiling after Shikamaru kissed her and got up to leave her room. Her eyes watched the door, as Baby climbed into her lap for attention. How did I get so lucky having a guy like him. Even with me being crazy sometimes, he is there for me… He's amazing.

A/N: My favorite scene by far was when Sakura showed up at Shikamaru's with some of his extended family there. What was your favorite moment?

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