Life Plan

"Look, Daddy, a butterfly!"

He looks up along the length of his daughter's skinny arm with its knobby elbow and bony wrist and past her long, pointed index finger. Sure enough, a blue and violet butterfly is fluttering along high above the deer paddock, where they're lying in a patch of clover under the lone sakura tree. It's deep summer, the clover springy and comfortable and somewhat damp with the heat, the tree's deep green leaves drooping slightly towards them and rustling in the gentle breeze.

The butterfly alights on the tip of one stag's antler, the deer completely unconcerned as it continues grazing. His daughter giggles before giving a jaw-cracking yawn, stretching like a cat with her back against his stomach, and settles comfortably again with a dreamy smile on her face. Her muddy brown eyes, glazed over drowsily, turn to the fluffy white clouds overhead, scudding slowly through the baby blue sky.

It's times like these that he knows, really knows, that she's his daughter. He gently musses her sandy blonde hair and she swats halfheartedly at him, too comfortable to move and actually get a good smack in. He chuckles and stops, she makes a quiet whining noise in the back of her throat, and they're back to silence.

He loves the peace and quiet between missions for this reason. The twins are always glad to have him around as their personal living couch and, when she's around, his wife is always glad to have him around again to have someone to abuse lightly. He still calls her troublesome, to this day, but she counts it as a pet name and counters with "lazy ass."

He considers that a pet name as well, and always rolls his eyes to cover up the smile threatening to cover his face.

He can sense her, lurking somewhere (probably either behind the tree or amongst its crowded branches) with the second half of the twins, just waiting to pounce the two dozing Naras in the paddock, but he does nothing about it. They enjoy torturing them, nobody's ever been hurt, no harm done.

He is surprised, though, when Shikako's hands move slowly into the seal of the rat, resting quietly against her flat tummy, lips moving silently. He marks the movement of her shadow over the clover from the corner of his eye, suppressing an amused snort when she snags her twin's ankle with it and trips her, stopping the ambush.

"Shikako!" Temari scolds, dropping from her hiding place in the branches to land beside their dark-haired, tripped daughter. "What have I told you about using that against your sister!"

"Yeah, yeah, I won't do it again," Shikako drawls, remarkably detached for a six year old.

"One 'yeah' is enough!"

Shikamaru fails to suppress the laughter now, jarring Shikako in her resting spot across his stomach. She rolls off of him irritatedly, swatting at him again and grumping about him being a lousy pillow.

Samara is already up from her fall, knee scuffed to match the other one (and her elbows, though they're covered by band-aids), her feral grin in place despite her lack of two front teeth. Midnight blue eyes flashing in challenge (she thinks he's laughing at her), she pounces her father with a bellow of "GOT YOU!" and tickles under his arms fiercely because she knows that's his one ticklish spot.

Her mother taught her everything she knows (almost) about pouncing him, so it's only natural that she's damn good at it.

Shikako gives him the look he patented ages ago, half pout, half frown. "Daddy, you're really dumb sometimes."

Temari is now laughing just as hard as he was -- he now has Samara restrained with shadows to keep her from tickling him more -- and he sighs, muttering about how troublesome all three of them are.

He loves them anyway, even if they did completely throw off his life plan.

Author's Notes: Eh-heh-heh... y'see, TurboRikku and I came up with the twins for our RPG, Sunstrokeruspg at Livejournal. Temari's pregnant and we wanted to make Shikamaru suffer as much as possible, thus the twin girls. Shikako was the first name decided on, then Samara (yes, from the Ring) because we wanted her to be the Evil Twin that takes after her mother. X3;; I love them dearly already.

And shout-outs, because I love my reviewers.

Twin Sun Leader: Aww, thank you very much for the fave! Sorry about the shortness, but... well, most of these are exercises in trying to bust up writer's block, so I either hit a brick wall or end up hating what I wrote. Eh-heh... this one's the exception, though. Hope the length was good enough.

Blue-Fire310: Haha, thanks! I'll be continuing until I finish every challenge in my writer's block book, which could take a while. XD;; I'm sure y'all will be sick of the drabbles by the time I'm done.

Kaeru Soyokaze: Thank you! I'm probably gonna skirt around the angst from here on in, but you can count on the humor and fluff. (I'm so happy you reviewed. I love your stuff. X3)

bakusensei: More TemaShika right here:D It's hard for me to write, though; Temari escapes me. That's why I had TurboRikku play out "Another Boring Day" with me. Hopefully I can get better at Temari and balance out the InoShika and TemaShika ratio for the drabbles. (Ino's a lot easier to write, in my opinion, hence the slight favoring of InoShika. I like both pairings equally, really. XD;;)

link no miko::glomps back: The rabbit is happy to have made your night! And team dynamics... hah. I should do one based off of our BBQ thread and have a food fight or something. (But then Chouji would be upset and that would be bad.)