Massage
"Shikamaru, you look like an idiot, walking around like that."
The Chuunin looked up at his fiancé with his patented scowl/pout and tossed himself down onto the couch of their apartment face-first. He and Ino had, some time ago, decided to move in together. It was mainly so that neither went insane at the hands of their parents, partially because both wanted some more elbow room, and entirely because they were going to be married anyway by the end of the year. (Shikamaru had seen no point in putting off the inevitable, especially if it meant some added quiet from the lack of his mother.) Chouji was considering taking up residence in their spare room (it was a two-bedroom apartment and yet they only wound up using one room), but for the moment, it was only the two of them.
Shikamaru had just returned from a two-week-long mission to Iwagakure, five days of which were spent fighting or moving with utmost care, and by the time he crossed the threshold to the apartment, his shoulders were stiff from stress. He could actually feel the muscle knots, most located right between his shoulderblades, twisting painfully with his every movement. His lower back ached from walking nearly nonstop for the last stretch of the journey home, since they couldn't stop or else risk being overcome by their pursuers. Ino now had her hands on her hips, watching him with a mixture of annoyance and pity in her sky blue eyes.
He waved a hand at her dismissively, ignoring the pain that shot up his spine from the movement. "Just need to sit down for a minute. S'been a long two weeks."
"I can tell," she said, easing herself onto the edge of the couch so that she could sit beside him. She jabbed two fingertips right into one of the muscle knots, making him jump and yelp in surprised agony. "Yeah, I can see those knots. What were you guys doing?"
"The mission," he said stubbornly, not wanting to talk about it. She understood, though she didn't let him slip past a gently chiding "lazy ass."
He smirked into the couch cushion, relaxing but still fairly miserable, until he felt her hands on his shoulders again. He tensed further, hissing gently in pain, but relaxed again as he felt gentle warmth pulsing from her fingertips and into his pained shoulders. He let out a contented sigh as she started to massage the knots out, a slow smile spreading across his face.
"Since when do you know how to massage like this?" he asked, turning his head to the side so that he could talk to her. She smirked at him, digging her thumbs into tensed muscle and easing the pain of it with a gentle flow of chakra.
"Since Hinata told me how," she replied, and Shikamaru gave a dazed nod, understanding now that the heat from her hands was, in fact, chakra. She was slowly working every knot out of his back, gently kneading his shoulders until the tension eased. His efforts at suppressing a relieved moan failed when she leaned forward, chest to the back of his shoulders, and pressed a kiss against the base of his neck.
"Better?" she asked, breath tickling him, her voice in her infamous seductive tone. She knew very well the power she held over him, especially when that tone was employed, and wasn't afraid to use it.
He, on the other hand, wasn't afraid to stay put for a while longer. "No. Keep going."
Ino frowned. "You ass. There aren't any knots left."
"Didn't say there were. Keep going."
Author's Notes: Spark word was 'massage.' We at IMN had been talking about chakra massages (our Asuma had a dream involving one and I was far too amused with the idea), and so this was spawned. Not sure if I like the ending or not, so I might come back and work on it again sometime.