I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has been reading so far.

CHAPTER 22 - A Tough Compromise

Deidara choked on his water, almost getting the small droplets all over the tri-fold board.

"Hey, dude! Watch it!" Kankuro exclaimed, glaring at his project partner.

Deidara swallowed the remaining liquid in his mouth, coughing vigorously into his elbow before turning to Sasori and Temari. "So you're telling me, that the plan of you two going out didn't even work?"

Temari shrugged, frowning. "Who knows? We held hands entering the school for like.. what? A couple minutes before the whole situation happened that got all fucked up and.. I'm just going to shut up before I go scream out my feelings off the balcony again."

"I'm sorry if I was the cause of it." Sasori apologized. "And Shikamaru really was a jerk for giving you that letter. Do you still have it?" He curiously asked.

The eyes of Nagato and Deidara twinkled, looking at Temari, totally intrigued.

"Oh shut up, you guys." Temari rolled her eyes. "Yes, I have that dumb letter. I'm not even going to get up and get it considering all it pretty much said was what I told you before you wanted to spit your germs into my living room."

Kankuro looked up from the tri-fold board. "You know sis, you're taking this a lot better than I thought you would be."

Temari sighed. "No, not really. I just don't..." She looked around, whispering behind her raised up palm. "I don't want Gaara to get angry."

Kankuro nodded, meanwhile the three other guys blinked. After a few seconds, the door knocked, in which Kankuro shouted it was open. Kiba would then walk in as if he owned the place. Temari stared at Kiba intensely, to the point where even Kankuro had noticed.

"Hey! Sis!" Kankuro called out to her. "Just because you and Shikamaru got into some feud doesn't mean you can go eyeballing my boyfriend and plan to get him into your hands."

Temari roughly shook her head. "No! I just found something out." She stood up in front of Kiba, who was sitting on the opposite couch, Kankuro leaning back onto his shins as he sat on the floor. "You're awfully involved with Shikamaru and all them, so you must have known about the letter."

Kiba looked up to the blonde who had a mean tone with her hands on her hips. He shook his head. "No. But one thing I can tell you is that the girls spammed my phone talking about a letter getting in the wrong hands."

Temari and Kankuro looked at each other in surprise, before looking to Kiba. Nagato, Deidara, and Sasori were also on the same boat, almost assuming how the drama initially began to spiral.

Kiba looked at all of them. "What?"

"Where the hell was I when this all happened?" Sasuke slightly glowered to his girlfriend, who had dried up tears on her cheeks. They were both sitting on a platform of Sasuke's backyard, considering it was the weekend and he often enjoyed staying home during these times.

Sakura sniffled. "Sasuke, it was a last-minute plan between me, the girls, and Shikamaru." Her mouth began to comfortably flow words better. "None of you were intended to know, considering we would of just thought you guys would just tell Shikamaru off and-"

"Well, don't you think we would of been right?" Sasuke told her, taking a sip from his glass of water. "Look what's going on now," he looked away, before seriously facing Sakura. "I don't know about you, but if you haven't noticed, Shikamaru isn't exactly the smartest when it comes to situations like these."

"But that's the thing, Sasuke!" Sakura exclaimed, trying to shift the blame off of Shikamaru and onto her. "That's why I butted in and suggested we did it my way. And look what happened, one false move and I fucked everything up."

Sasuke sided his eyes to a different direction, speaking in a lower voice. "I mean you're not wrong." He then looked to Sakura again, seeing her getting teary eyed again. "Well? What else could you do? I say the best thing to do at this time is for you to use that brain of yourself and start thinking of how to get them back on good terms. Even better, together."

Sakura smiled to her boyfriend through her wet face. "Thanks you big ass." She would say before planting him a kiss on the cheek. "As if I didn't think of that before, but I got to admit, you put it in me."

"Hm."

"This shit don't add up!" Temari announced. "So if they all went texting Kiba about the letter, just to find out he barely knows about it, then why? Why did they do that?"

Sasori would glue down the last piece of paper onto the board. "Perhaps Kiba is lying," he said, causing Kiba to stare him down. "Or, considering Kiba is pretty close with Shikamaru, they probably found out that the letter was misplaced and so they tried to text anybody that could have been with Shikamaru at that exact moment."

The blonde stared at Sasori intensely, causing him to become alarmed. He raises his hands up in defense. "J-Just a thought."

Nagato typed again into his laptop, stretching his neck over to see the board on the floor as he was sitting on the couch. "Quite honestly babe, sounds like the letter was meant for someone else."

Temari sat beside Nagato on the couch, rubbing her chin as she tried to add everything up to create a possible scenario. She groaned, extending her neck back and furiously got a pillow to scream in it. He would rub a comforting hand on her back, being aware of not going too low.

Secretly, Gaara had been listening to the friends and his siblings in the living room. The walls were honestly not that thick.

Within the darkness of his room, Gaara scanned among the screen of his laptop, scrolling through countless social media posts of Shikamaru. On his feed, was a bunch of pictures of him participating in his sports and very high quality ones of them too. Another picture would show him of being a bit nerdy, with a trophy in his hands for winning.. a book award?

Watching this was painful for Gaara, he then thought to himself. 'My sister fell for a guy like this? Could of done better, but whatever.'

He then scrolled through photos Shikamaru was tagged in. There were countless amounts of them! Most were of him at typical high school parties, some swim team photos, soccer team photos, and one stood out very brightly.

It was a picture of him and Tayuya locked in a hug. Gaara raised an eyebrow, not wanting to think what this could of been. He clicked on the picture, seeing that it had a few hundred like with a bunch of comments that complimented how good they looked together. He then recognized that the picture was about two years old. He touched his chin in wonder. Why was this picture still up? Considering if someone had broken up with someone, they would usually delete all the memories they had with that person.

'A letter... in the wrong hands.. unless..?'

"Unless that letter was meant for Tayuya." He thought to himself.

Shikamaru laid in bed, playing with a rubik's cube while listening to music the whole time. He didn't feel like doing anything that day, still a little depressed from what had happened with Temari. He just couldn't believe it failed so bad. Although he knew that Sakura wasn't feeling so good either, he knew it was an accident. He sighed, continuing to fiddle the cube in his hands.

Naruto then walked into the room, in which he quickly saw Shikamaru still in his 'phase.' He would immediately turn around, intending to walk out of the room, not wanting to deal with any emotional talk. That was, until Sasuke barged in and forced Naruto to get back into the room, turning him around and urging him to walk forward to Shikamaru's bed.

"Shikamaru, come on, you've got to get up," Sasuke demanded. "It's practically evening already."

Shikamaru turned to his side, facing the wall. "I'm alright. Just wanted a little rest." He would pull the covers farther up on his body.

"Alright, that's it!" Naruto then shoved Sasuke slightly aside, pulling the covers off of Shikamaru. "You're acting as if you and Tayuya broke up again, come on Shikamaru. You know you're better than this. Besides, you definitely still have a chance if you just tell Temari that it was a whole misunderstanding!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Nice talk, idiot. But Sakura and I already planned it a few hours ago."

"Heh?" Naruto looked at his best bud idiotically.

Shikamaru blinked in slight surprise. "W-What plan?"

"Uhm, you sure you don't want to slow down on that?" Deidara asked as Temari ate her cup of ramen like an animal.

Temari took the last remaining sips of the soup, slamming the styrofoam cup onto the coffee table. "I'm fine."

"Well," Nagato put his laptop into his bag. "It's almost eight, we're going to start heading home. Kankuro, you'll bring this in tomorrow, right?"

Kankuro nodded, holding the tri-fold by both ends and into his room. "Got it."

A knock then appeared on the door. Temari would look at the clock, and Kankuro would shout from his room. "Who could it be at this time?!"

Temari then approached the door, twisting the knob to see a head-hanging Sakura. Sakura looked up at Temari, visibly nervous and upset. Temari blinked, a little upset herself but mainly confused. "Sakura?"

"Temari, can we talk? I promise it'll only be brief."

Temari began to try to comprehend with her feelings, biting the inner skin below her bottom lip. She wasn't able to recognize if this situation was going to turn out good or bad, however, she contained her serious expression. After all, Sakura had to be involved with everything that went on, right?

"Come in."