Symphony of Opposites
Installment numero deus
AN: The 'opposites' in this one is rather more subtle than it was in the first one. Um. Oops. Up next, Ino and Chouji.
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He's lazy, and she loves him.
He's lazy and he loves her because it's easier –and less painful- than the alternative.
Their first meeting was preordained, their second sheer dumb luck, but everything that came after that was history.
When she was maybe eight years old, her father told her, with a voice that resonated like a knife blade striking a flint, that she would never be the kunoichi her mother had been. When she was nine she proved him wrong, standing over the corpse of an assassin with a kunai coated with blood that looked almost silver in the moonlight. When she was ten she knew what she wanted out of life. Not to fail or to fall but to live and to fight.
There are two people that she knows can beat her, without question. The first is her younger brother Gaara. The second is Shikamaru Nara. It isn't that Shikamaru is stronger or faster or a better fighter than she is. It's the fact that he's annoyingly intelligent that usually gets her. Temari is smart and she knows it, but she's passionate, too, and sometimes her heart rules her head, and sometimes she loses.
Either way, Shikamaru doesn't really care.
When he was maybe eight years old, his father told him that he was a genius, that he could do anything he wanted and go anywhere he wanted and he could probably even become Hokage, a title no one in their family had ever aspired to before. When he was nine, because it took that long to come to a decent conclusion on the matter, he decided he didn't care. When he was ten he knew all he wanted to do with his life was to sit around and watch the clouds as they rolled across the untouchable sky.
There's lots of people he knows can beat him, and he doesn't bother to list them all because really, he's not that energetic. There are also lots of people he'd surrender to, if it came to that. But there's just one person that he's already surrendered to, been taken prisoner and doesn't care. She doesn't really treat him with the respect due a captured enemy, but, eh, he doesn't really care about that, either.
The fact that he doesn't care is probably why Temari's sitting on his chest with a kunai to his throat.
"Say it!" she growls, low and dangerous, and she presses the kunai a little too close for comfort and reminds Shikamaru momentarily of the woman Anko and her random blood fetish. Instead he blinks, lazily because he does everything lazily, and pushes the kunai aside with one finger.
"Say what? 'Hey, that's sharp?'"
She gives him a flat-lipped glower.
His lips twitch into a smirk and he shrugs, a barely manageable feat, seeing as how she's got him pinned to the ground. "All right, all right. You win. I'm demonstrably the worst ninja ever. Are you gonna get off me now?" He puts one hand up to shield his eyes from the sun behind her, making her hair glow like burnished gold, gives her a halo that makes her look like some sort of heaven-sent creature when he knows she's only human.
She grins viciously. He can always tell when it's done viciously because her cheek dimples on one side. "That's not the whole thing, you little rat bastard."
"Right. You're better than me." And looking up at her, all he can think is Troublesome woman. It's not as if she hasn't won before. It's not as if he hasn't let her win before. Losing to a girl is one thing, but losing to a girlfriend is quite another, and Shikamaru's got nothing if not brains. Temari's kinda cute, in a way that's not really all that feminine –and thank god. I hate women.- and she's smart and all, but she's not about to offer him any competition with the go-ban.
So she stands up, and he catches rather more than a glimpse of her mesh holsters under her short skirt and along her smooth thighs, and he winces a little at that because women are never supposed to look that good. She pulls him to his feet, knowing that if she'd just leave him alone, he'd be perfectly happy to stay there for the rest of the day, or until he got hungry enough.
When he glances at her face, he pauses. Follows her line of sight. And sighs. She's looking at his crotch. He's always figured it's natural for men to ogle women and their various…physical attributes, but for her to do the same to the opposite sex and so unabashedly is a little …troublesome.
He snaps his fingers down by where her eyes have settled. "Yo. My face is up here."
She grins unrepentantly and deigns look up. "Yeah, but it's not nearly as easy on the eyes."
He raises both brows, shrugs and doesn't argue. "Fair enough. M'hungry. You comin'?"
"Is this a date?" she demands, hands on her hips.
"Nope," he says nonchalantly. "Just me bein' hungry and you bein' a convenient dinner partner. It's not like I'm gonna pay for you or anything."
She eyes him with due suspicion, because she hates anything that remotely resembles dating. Has told him once, unnecessarily, that she isn't even going to consider it until she's a Jounin, and she plans on being a Jounin before anyone else in her age group, and definitely anyone else below.
He half-turns away from her and starts walking towards the town, and a sushi shop. After a moment, she follows him. She has this little thing where she constantly has to be half a step ahead of him, which he finds cute and strangely endearing. It takes a lot of effort.
Sometimes she proves worth it.
Other times she just makes his head hurt.
They get to the shop, and she insists on paying for both of them. He doesn't argue, he isn't that noble. He just shrugs; "Whatever." The shop-owner, an elderly woman, gives him one of those disapproving looks that go right over his head. It isn't that he doesn't notice, it's that it takes too much bloody effort to care.
Temari shoots the woman one of her vicious looks –she has a whole array of those- and says, loud enough for everyone present to hear, "He had me carry his money, you miserable old hag. Does he look competent enough to be in charge of the funds in this relationship!"
He raises an eyebrow, collects their tray of sushi and goes to sit down. Temari gives him an expectant little 'Well?' that he kinda-ignores.
She comes over to their table and slams both her hands down in front of him, and he looks up at her with his chopsticks poised over a particularly decent-looking piece of koi, and he blinks. "Yeah?"
"I'm a Jounin now," she announces. "Passed the test with flying colors."
"Congratulations. No wonder you kicked my ass."
"Well?" she prompts again. He lifts the section of fish to his mouth and chews thoughtfully, avoiding a response that would probably scribble 'trouble' all over the place like a particularly complicated ninja seal.
He chews. Swallows. She looks like she wants to eat him instead of their meal. To placate the angry beast, he sacrifices some of the food by pushing it in her general direction.
"ARGH!" she shrieks. They're earning looks again. Pretty much everyone in the shop is watching them. Which is quite a bother — why can't people mind their own business, tch. "You're so dense! I said that I'm a Jounin now!"
"And I said congratulations," he observes idly, gesturing with a chopstick. "Am I supposed to say somethin' else…?"
She leans closer, grabs his shirtfront and jerks him into a standing position. Rather more hastily than he might have liked, he has to save the tray from an untimely clatter to the floor when it catches on his chuunin's jacket. They're nose to nose and –for once- eye to eye. She's glaring. He's…finding anything of that ilk to be too much of a hassle.
"Uh?"
"Shikamaru Nara! Ask me on a goddamned date!"
He blinks. "Okay." He misses a beat and she's still giving him that 'I'm a harpy and I'm going to eat you' look so maybe he should stop playing dumb and elaborate. Just a little. Effort, oy. "Hey Temari, let's go on a date." Just like that. She lets him go and he sits back down and continues chewing thoughtfully on his food.
"For being a genius," she says darkly, "you're really bloody stupid."
He grins at her. "Yeah," he says a little vaguely, "yeah, I sorta am." She smiles. Not quite viciously. Maybe there's a new species of expression evolving. Hm. "Is it still a date if you have to pay?"
The smile slides off her face like an uncooked egg against a wall, she kicks him under the table and he knows that's a promise of more violence later that just made her break her chopstick in two. Whoops.
Phrases like 'such a bloody weasel rat bastard son of a bitch' float towards him occasionally over their food. She's stuck trying to use half of her chopstick, and he sighs. Troublesome… and then he reaches over and picks up a piece of –her- food with –his- chopstick and he holds it up expectantly in front of her face.
She blinks at him.
"Never said I wasn't a nice guy," he says by way of an example, and as she opens her mouth to protest that, he pops the morsel inside. She now has the option of either choking to death or chewing, so her mouth snaps closed and she scowls. Takes a drink of her beverage to chase the remnants down and kicks him again.
"You're nice enough," she says wryly. "Doesn't mean I'm not gonna kick your ass later."
Something to look forward to, yay. And doesn't he just sound so enthusiastic?
He relents. A little. "All right, I guess I can pay once or twice." Providing he survives the first –gulp- date.
She…dimples at him, and he's pretty sure that was the right thing to say. He'd planned that all along, and all. Two hundred moves…
What a troublesome day this is shaping up to be.