I'm re-editing all these chapters (hopefully everything on ff) during quarantine. Thank you for all the support since I first wrote this whole story! Some chapters are short like this, some are full one-shots. Enjoy!

on Sex

"The sex isn't, well…."

He heard it as he was watching the clouds. It was just an idle conversation, so Shikamaru couldn't quite explain why he became so invested. There was no reason to be. There was no reason to listen… and then… keep listening.

Sure, he'd always had a sort of far-off crush on Temari. He hated that phrasing though. Crushing wasn't exactly something that Shikamaru did. In all, he was a pretty apathetic guy when it came to love and romance, and more often than not, he was the one being pursued. But if he did like someone, he pursued them. Temari was different, vaguely, and so he didn't pursue her. So it wasn't a crush then, right? If it were, he'd do something.

It wasn't like he didn't know how to pursue. He'd done it before. He knew what to say when he liked someone.

With Temari it was just different. They'd been closer when they were younger but he had never even been old enough to try for her. And when he had, when he realized he might want to, she'd been with someone else. So he didn't. And it didn't matter. It wasn't a crush. It was more like a theoretical, possible, future-crush.

He wasn't in love with her or anything, and honestly, there were no late nights or horrific losses in her dating someone else. Shikamaru was fine.

So it was a kind of crush. Had they the opportunity, they'd probably by good for one another. But they didn't. And he didn't mind. He was fine. He wasn't, in the end, that interested.

Which didn't explain why he stood up and followed to better his eavesdrop.

He didn't care about Temari's sex life. He sure as hell didn't care to listen to Ino speak about hers. Ino told him enough when he was trying to ignore her. But here Ino and Temari were, walking down the street below the roof Shikamaru had recently been sleeping on, discussing sex.

He'd woken from his nap an hour or so before, and though he was hungry, he had yet to gather enough motivation to leave the roof. So he lay there, eyes idly on the sky, listening to the tidbits of conversation from the pedestrians below.

Shikamaru's ears had perked up when he recognized Ino's voice with, "…but how is the sex?"

He'd know Ino anywhere. Her smell, the fall of her shoulders when she sighed, and even the low whisper of her voice from thirty feet away. It made perfect sense that he would pick out her voice from the crowd.

He didn't realize he'd know Temari's though. If asked, before, he would have found it unlikely that he'd recognize her voice on hearing alone, but he does. The instant she speaks, the moment she responds to Ino's question, Shikamaru's torso goes straight up, spine rigid.

"What does that mean?" Ino asked. "Specifically."

They were moving out of earshot, and so Shikamaru stood, wondering why he was doing it and coming up completely blank, and began to move forward on the rooftops to follow.

"It isn't that he's bad," Temari clarified. When he looked down, he could see them walking right below him, strolling along with easy steps. "I mean, he tries hard, and I give him credit for that."

"Do you come?"

There was a long pause and Shikamaru finds himself leaning so far sideways in search of her answer, that he is risking falling off the roof. It's just in case Temari had whispered the answer or something. Which is also meaningless. He doesn't need to know. He doesn't care. He has no idea why he's even here.

"Once."

"Only once?"

Temari must have nodded or given some other form of non-verbal sign of affirmation because Ino continued.

"Does he not know?"

Shikamaru didn't really understand how this guy could not. Shikamaru was, after all, a man whom had engaged in sexual intercourse with more than one person. And sure, with a woman it was harder to tell when they came — as in there was no obvious sign — but not impossible, right?

Was there something wrong with this guy? How could he not realize that she never finished?

"I usually don't even fake it." Temari continued. "But he really tries. Every time it starts to get good, he stops and asks if I'm okay. I used to wonder if he was worried that he was, like, actually hurting me… but it turns out he was just asking whether I'd come or not."

Shikamaru grunted, calming his pace down. He wanted to interrupt them, suddenly, and he could feel the words beginning to form themselves on his tongue, the need to express to Temari your boyfriend is an idiot, but he stopped himself.

He also had, on more than one occasion, asked his partner if they were ready for him to finish. So he couldn't really judge, could he?

Then again though, Shikamaru was sure that if Temari were to choose another partner — say him, for instance — he would make it good. To be honest, he didn't really doubt it. He and Temari would have great sex. Of course it could only be speculation, but he really believed it. He would make good for her.

God. Fuck. Okay. He really shouldn't be thinking along those lines, because now his chest was burning.

Nevermind. It was hot out. Mid-July. That was all.

"Oh my god," Ino drawled. "I can't even imagine. Is sex really not that important to you? I would have dumped him right away if he couldn't pull off anything more than a few thrusts."

"He makes weird faces too."

There was a laugh from Ino and Shikamaru can picture Temari rolling her eyes. "Well that's not unusual. You should have seen Genma."

Shikamaru shuddered and, for the first time, seriously considered giving the two girls their privacy. He didn't think prying into Temari's personal life was worth the extra baggage of Ino's.

"No," Temari said after a moment. "Sex is important to me," she sighed. "And honestly, I don't even like him all that much. We started with just fooling around, and I used to think that even mediocre sex was better than no sex, but now I'm not so sure."

There was a pause and, in look down to confirm their presence, Shikamaru tripped over a roof tile.

"Temari," Ino began, voice even lower now, and when Shikamaru was able to right himself, he saw Ino's hand on Temari's shoulder. "Why haven't you said anything? It's your responsibility to tell him. Or at least, you can't be disappointed if you're not telling him."

Temari shrugged. "Honestly? I don't know why I haven't. I didn't, in the beginning, and then just never have rallied. I know it's stupid, but I just don't care enough to teach him."

"But you're still dating him?"

He moved, again, to be out of their line of sight, so Temari must have answered non-verbally, because Ino moved on.

"There must be other prospects? It has never been hard for you to attract someone. And there must be some decent population of men that are good in bed."

"You've slept with the majority of reasonable eligible men in Konoha. You've never had a horrible partner?"

The two of them stopped walking. Shikamaru, too, halted, breath held.

After another twenty seconds of silence, he leaned over again to see what was occupying them. Both were hidden beneath an awning. It was another half minute before they continued into the open.

Why was he doing this?

He needed to stop. This was a serious invasion of privacy. He respected Temari as a kuniochi. He shouldn't be curious about her personal live. She kept it from him for a reason.

And yet. And yet. He was still there, still following them, silent on the roof as they walked further down the street below him.

Ino gave a non-committal grunt. "I've had not great partners, but they all have been… decent? And the ones I stay with, well, they're the people I have the best time with. Sex included. That's why we date."

Temari laughed.

"I think you should dump him," Ino announced. "Start sleeping with someone else."

"There is no one else right now." Shikamaru bit his tongue. "In Suna, sure. But I'm stationed here for eight more months and these days all the men around my age seem to be taken."

"Hm, well, I guess you're right. Even Choji has a girlfriend... there is Sai?"

Temari laughed loudly. "I'd rather do it myself than fuck Sai."

Oh — oh. He'd never thought about that before. Everyone masturbated. But… oh. The image made him blush. It wasn't something he'd really thought about before.

Suddenly the thought of Temari touching herself was rivaling the thought of him with her. Of course, he was available, and Shikamaru could snap Ino's neck right now, but that was beside the point. He was caught fifty-fifty between wanting Ino to acknowledge that Shikamaru was a perfectly eligible bachelor whom got on with Temari and had maintained a healthy (or at least, climactic) sex life, and wanting Temari to break up with this guy and then just find satisfaction with herself.

Both ideas turned him on immensely and he honestly couldn't tell which was better.

"I see merits to both!"

He swallowed, caught now between being glad Ino, as a teammate, was so likeminded, and horrified at the thought of participating in anything explicit.

Temari laughed.

"Does he go down on you?"

"He used to. He always wants to, but at this point, I'd rather just get the sex over with."

Fuck. Shikamaru's sigh of exasperation at the current situation was too loud, and both Temari and Ino stopped talking for a second, but quickly carried on.

He hated this. Why was he listening to this? It was just annoying him. He'd had a perfectly good day with a perfectly good nap, and now he was ruining all of it. It was making him think about Temari — something he largely tried to avoid… it had never felt good, to imagine her, somewhere, doing anything really, with someone else — and also making him thinking about Ino's love life, which he also avoided doing, for more justifiable reasons.

"Well you know, Kiba loves oral sex. He has this one technique where he kind of rolls—"

Okay. Problem solved. Those were the reasons he didn't allow Ino to talk about dating in front of him. That was enough. More than enough.

There was only so much he could take.

Without any more hesitation, still unsure why he hadn't done this in the first place, Shikamaru turned around and leapt from rooftop to rooftop until he was well out of range of their voices.

Regardless of their new distance though, Shikamaru could still hear the sentences — Ino's questions and Temari's unhesitant answers — repeated over and over through the next week. He imagined what more might have been said. He imagined what Temari was doing at night with her Konoha-boyfriend. He tried to remember how sure he was that he'd been a good sexual partner in the past.

He worried and fretted and yearned and spent most of his time unhappy.

He never should have listened in the first place! Since when did he not listen to logic?!

It was a surprise, of course, when Temari showed up to his door eight days later. He hadn't seen her since the eavesdropping. He'd avoided circumstances in which he might have seen her. His palms would get sweaty, these days, just thinking about her.

There was a reason he'd pushed it back before. A reason he liked to consider it far-off.

He probably always knew though. He surely knew, even if he didn't understand it, why he'd worked to not think about her.

It was why, now, he had avoided her until she'd shown up at his door.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, mouth dry.

She leaned into the doorframe, folding her arms in front of her chest. "Took you long enough."

"What are you talking about?"

Temari shrugged. "I was tired of waiting."

He frowned. His heart was pounding. She had to know. She must be able to hear it.

He had to calm down.

"Well," Temari continued, stepping closer and forcing him to sidestep so that she could enter. She walked into his apartment and glanced around before turning to face him. "Do you want to fuck me or what?"

Shikamaru gaped. He couldn't breathe.

"Wh— what?"

She raised her brows, waiting.

And then it hit him. He knew he was being stupid. God dammit.

"How long did you know?

A shrug. "Long enough."

Shikamaru wondered how apparent he'd been. Did they hear him the moment he'd sat up? Had everything, each question and answer, been calculated knowing of his attendance? Or was it later, when he tripped? Or one of the times he leaned out to see them?

He'd thought he'd covered his tracks well….

Slowly, enough so that he can feel it happen and know he can do nothing to stop it, his ears turned pink. It was a rare thing for him to feel embarrassed, and truthfully, he hadn't really felt as such since childhood. But Temari brought certain things out in him.

"Ino thinks it's hilarious. She's told practically everyone."

He looked at the floor. "Bitch."

"So," Temari asked after a second, leaning forward to draw his eyes back up to her. "I asked you a question, Shikamaru." He swallowed. Her eyes, bright and amused, bore into his. Temari licked her lips, a hum in her throat. "What are you going to do?"

He inhaled. He stopped thinking about it.

a/n: thank you for the support!