Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and do not make any money from these writings.
A Slight Miscalculation
Nara Shikamaru yawned and stretched and rolled over, casually flinging an arm to the currently empty opposite side of the bed. Lazily he cracked one eye open and in a rather fuzzy state of mind he recalled that Temari was out on a mission and wouldn't be back until later in the day.
The sun wasn't up yet and Shikamaru decided that he need not be either. Grateful for the peace and quiet that only a Saturday morning in an empty apartment can bring he promptly fell back asleep. With no missions in sight for himself for the rest of the weekend he figured he might just as well skip breakfast and meet up with Chouji and Ino in time for lunch later today.
A couple of hours later he yawned and stretched again and this time managed to roll out of bed. Deep inhale, exhale as he ran a hand over his stubbly chin he realized that he probably ought to go home to shave before meeting up with his teammates. He hadn't quite gotten the hang of this almost-living-together business with Temari. He had some stuff here at her place but not everything he needed yet.
Yet.
He sighed at the implication. It was probably inevitable. He had stuff. The stuff needed to be someplace. That place could be at Mom's or here at Termari's. A third option, getting his own place or one that he shared with Chouji seemed less than practical if only for its sheer short-term-ness.
It seemed fairly apparent that he and Temari were "dating" or a "couple" or "meant to be" or whatever the current term the genin and chuunin used to snicker behind their backs. At the very least he and Temari were having satisfying sex together on a fairly regular basis.
All in all it could be worse, he mused. She had a banging body and she knew how to use it. And she had a sharp enough mind too. Although she couldn't exactly hand him his ass in Shoji she could at least play at a level that kept the game interesting and kept him on his toes.
Again, all in all it could be worse.
Making his way to the bathroom as he pondered what things he ought to pickup when he was back home this weekend, he performed his usual morning routine, pee, wash his hands, brush his teeth, splash cold water on his face.
As he went to dry his hands, the towel slipped from his fingers to the floor. Bending to retrieve it he noticed the wastepaper basket was filled to overflowing with tissues and spent toothpaste tubes and empty shampoo bottles and other normal assorted stuff that made up the day to day lives of a couple of twenty-something ninja.
He considered it a moment, after all it was simply a wastepaper basket that needed emptying.
On the other hand, it seemed to be a mocking symbol of looming domesticity, almost as if it were daring him to empty it.
He shuddered involuntarily as he heard his mom's shrill voice inside his head nagging his dad to take out the trash.
He would never empty Chouji's bathroom trash. Or Ino's. That would be rude, weird at a friend's house. Hell, he wouldn't even do it at his own house unless his mom came and ragged on him to do it.
But this wasn't a friend's house and it wasn't mom's place. It was Temari's. And his. Sort of. Unspoken but there it was. Sort of.
At that point Shikamaru came to a life-altering decision. It was theirs. Their place. Their trash. He'd take it out. The vague and nebulous plan he'd had for his life was tentatively starting to coalesce.
Toting the small container downstairs he dumped into the larger container outside. As the contents poured out a cardboard carton caught his eye.
Had that box been labeled EPT? Early Pregnancy Test?
What the hell?
He rifled back through the can and retrieved the box. It did indeed say Early Pregnancy Test.
What in the world would Temari be doing with a pregnancy test?
Shaking his head, liking to think he was a little quicker on the uptake than that, he had to acknowledge that the only obvious conclusion was that she was checking to see if she was pregnant.
Holy shit.
His vague and nebulous plan suddenly took on a shattering clarity.
He rattled the box, empty. Dammit, the test itself must be further down in the waste can.
Rifling through, not even sure what he was searching for, Shikamaru stopped and took another good look at the box. Satisfied that he knew what he was looking for in the trash but not at all sure he really did want to find it, he dug a little deeper.
Retrieving it at last he held it up. For a brief instant it didn't even register he couldn't even tell what it was he was looking at because he had no frame of reference, no experience in this shit.
Plus . There was a plus sign on it. He had a sneaking suspicion that that was not what he wanted to see. How the hell did you read this thing?
He snatched the box up and turned it over reading the directions. Plus. Positive. Pregnant. Of course.
Holy shit.
Dumping the box and test strip back in the container he placed the lid back on it and went out back to sit on the porch. And smoke. And think.
Temari was pregnant. He was the father. Shit he was only twenty. His dad had been at least…twenty-four Shikamaru recalled when he was born. Somehow twenty-four in this situation did not sound as far off from twenty as it had seemed only a few moments ago.
Temari was pregnant.
That actually explained a lot. She'd been moody lately, much more so than usual, bordering on morose. That is, when he had seen her. For she'd also been away a lot.
He hadn't thought much about it at the time – sometimes missions came in clusters and you were away for a long while. But now it seemed…weird…that she was pregnant and away. Of course maybe all the weirdness was tied up simply in the pregnancy aspect of it. Nonetheless it seemed somehow…different to know that she was away…and pregnant.
His cigarette had burned down and he stamped out the butt and lit another. He tried to run through this systemically. It did rather fit in with his long-ago plan. The timing was a surprise but he'd never factored a time-line into the plan.
There would of course be diplomatic issues between Suna and Konoha but they weren't insurmountable. The two villages had been allied for some time now. It wasn't completely unheard of for there to be marriages between shinobi from the two.
And then there would be the "diplomatic" issues on the family sides. Any objections mom might raise to him marrying "that girl from Suna" would be easily trumped by the impending arrival of a grandchild.
That left Gaara and Kankuro.
After a couple of long drags on the cigarette, Shikamaru came to the conclusion that the only resolution there was to let Temari deal with her psychopathic brothers.
He must have sat and thought and smoked on the porch longer than he realized. He heard the front door open and close and realized that Temari was back. He rose and sauntered into the kitchen to greet her.
"Hey," he said, leaning forward to kiss her.
"Hey," she mumbled back, deftly turning so that his lips brushed her cheek as she leaned her fan against the wall.
Shikamaru straightened and studied her. Moody.
"So…how was your trip?"
"Oh, ummmm…fine," she mumbled back, quickly crossing to a cupboard to get a glass and a drink of water from the tap, not bothering to look at him.
Shikamaru's brow furrowed. Not that he himself was usually the most sparkling of conversationalists but he expected a bit more than this after she returned from a trip. Still he supposed it must be awkward for her.
"Temari…are you okay?" he asked.
Taking a deep breath with her back to him she sat the glass on the counter with a soft clink. She turned to face him. "We need to talk."
"Yeah, I think I know…"
"No. You don't" she cut him off. She took another deep breath. "Shikamaru…I'm going back to Suna."
"When? For how long?"
"You don't understand. I'm going back. I'm moving back. I'm not staying in Konoha anymore."
The silence between them was deafening.
"Temari?" he asked puzzled more than anything else. He reached to hold her arm but she shrugged him away.
"Temari?" repeating it didn't seem to get any response either. The definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting different results, nonetheless he tried a third time. "Temari?"
"Look," the blond kunoichi said, waving her hands dismissively. "It's…time I went back. I've been here a couple of years now. It makes sense to rotate a new diplomatic team in every once in a while. Besides, the jonin commander in Suna is stepping down. And even though I don't have enough seniority for that position, the new commander will certainly have staff openings. That and other circumstances have just led me to…consider that now might be a good time to go home."
Shikamaru could hear the clock tick on the wall and the refrigerator hum in the kitchen. 'Home' she had said. 'Home' to her was Suna. Always had been always would be.
"Temari, is there something…is there something I should know?"
Shrugging her shoulders she turned to her water glass, her back to him. "No. Just that. That's all you need to know. I'm going back to Suna."
"What about us?"
Another deep sigh. "Us? Honestly, Shikamaru. What 'us' is there? We just sort of flit in and out of each other's orbits. I mean it was fun and all but really it's time to move on, don't you think?"
There was a strange incongruity in his head at the moment as if he'd just awakened from one bad dream into another bad dream. Something so nauseatingly terrifying just a few moments ago, the idea of Temari pregnant, now seemed tinged with words like 'home' and an odd feeling of loss for something he couldn't quite explain.
The clock ticked on.
"When do you leave?"
"Tonight actually. There's a group heading back to Suna that's leaving this evening and I can join up with them. I came back here to pack."
The clock pounded away the passing seconds. Finally, when he felt able to actually articulate something, Shikamaru blurted out. "Temari, are you pregnant?"
She'd been raising her glass to take another sip and paused with it in midair. Temari turned aside so that she wasn't facing him, "What makes you ask that?"
"Taking out the trash I found the pregnancy test."
Shikamaru was certain the clock was going to pound itself to pieces before she answered.
"Well, Nara," she replied coolly. "If you saw the test you know I was." She finished her water and sat the glass down on the couter. "But now I'm not."