The Eternal Soundtrack Chapter 5: Track 5: Must Have Done Something Right, a naruto fanfic

The Eternal Soundtrack

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. That copyright belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

"Must Have Done Something Right" belongs to Relient K, from their album Five Score and Seven Years Ago.

Track 5: Must Have Done Something Right

/We should get jerseys

'Cause we make a good team
But yours would look better than mine

'Cause you're out of my league
And I know that it's so cliché

To tell you that everyday
I spend with you is the new

Best day of my life
And everyone watching us

Just turns away with disgust
It's jealously they can see

That we've got it going on/

"I swear, if you say "troublesome" one more time, I'm going to hurt you!" she growled, clutching a pigtail in an effort to repress her ire, while glaring at the various swatches and pamphlets strewn across the table.

"But it's part of who I am. You can't just expect me to drop such a large component of my personality." He stifled a yawn, watching the small square of visible sky just beyond the window. "You're supposed to try to look past such things and accept me as I am. My feelings could get hurt by your rejection of my ways, you know."

"Whatever, Cry-baby," she sneered, chucking down the indistinguishable colour swatches she was eyeing, defeated by their sameness, despite their differing names. "We'll see how much your feelings are hurting compared to your body when I smack you for annoying me."

"Well, I heard that women like sensitive men. It's part of their troublesome quirks," he sniffed, purposely nonchalant.

"Well, perhaps you should check your facts better." She turned on him with dangerous eyes. "The only thing I like a sensitive guy for is that when I beat him I'll have the satisfaction of watching him sob about it like the wuss that all men are."

"Tch," he snorted. "Like any guy would go through something as troublesome as picking a fight with you."

"Oh? Are you actually admitting that fighting me would be futile, since I would definitely win? I'm glad that you've finally learned your place."

He continued to watch the small patch of sky as a tiny cloud showed in it. "More like, I don't see the point in putting out so much effort when it's obvious that you would lose."

"Excuse me?!" Control was out the window, now! There was no way she was letting that one slide. "I don't think you remember who you're talking to! Need I remind you, how I owned your sorry butt during our first Chuunin Exam, and how I've saved you countless times since?!"

"And need I remind you that I technically won our match? I just found it too troublesome to finish the job. And I would have thought of something to get me out of those tight spots, even if you hadn't come around," he murmured with a shrug, studiously ignoring the rising rage emanating from his female companion.

"Oh? Then why didn't you?" Where was her fan? She was so going to dice this jerk! Just where did he get off?

"Mah. It was too troublesome." He waved a hand, then stifled a yawn with the same limb.

"Keeping yourself alive is too troublesome?" she said, incredulous, with hands on her hips. "You are a piece of work! I mean, how can anyone be so lazy?! You're pathetic!"

"I prefer to call it ingenious," he responded smoothly. "Everyone is always looking for a more easy and efficient way to get through life. I've perfected that endeavour. Just because you don't have the vision to understand my tactics, doesn't mean my ways are pathetic." He turned his eyes back on the woman before him, the focus of his attention having disappeared behind the roof of a building.

"You would rather catch pneumonia from lazing about outside watching clouds too long, than get up and go inside when it gets too cold!" she spat, shaking her head. "That's not efficiency, that's idiocy! You just cause yourself more trouble by doing stuff like that!"

"Now, see that? That's what I'm talking about." He leaned back further in his seat, tilting the chair onto its back legs, propped against the wall, and crossed his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. "You don't have the vision to see the beauty of my ways. I won't necessarily get sick, just because I stay outside, lying on the ground for too long. But even if I do, I'll just have to lay in my bed all day until I get better, thus relieving the strain and responsibilities that would have otherwise been thrust upon me, were I well. Either way, it's a win-win. Like I said, efficiency at it's prime."

She watched him with a slightly open mouth and a shaking head, face set into a look of utter incredulity. "You're an idiot," she said in that blunt way he had come to expect of her. "I don't care what they say about your IQ; you're still an idiot to me."

Resisting a smirk, he answered, "And I don't care what you say about yourself; to me, you're still way too troublesome."

Though he may have managed to dodge the kunai hurtling toward his head, his precious ponytail wasn't so lucky.

/And I'm racking my brain

For a new, improved way
To let you know you're more to me

Than what I know how to say
You're okay

With the way

That this is going to be
'Cause this is going to be

The best thing we've ever seen/

It was a wonder she didn't kill him.

Truly, there was no reasoning that could explain her tolerance of him. Even with his mad logistic skills, he could not for the life of him figure her out.

She screamed at him more than she smiled. She insulted and expressed her exasperation with him more often than she ever denoted happiness. She was always saying how she liked a man who was enterprising and motivated. And here she was, with the laziest man to ever come from Fire Country.

Really, it just reaffirmed Shikamaru's belief that all women were nuts; saying everything that was in contradiction to their actions. Honestly, to be in possession of double x-chromosomes was to be inherently hypocritical, of this he was sure.

"It wouldn't kill you to get off your lazy butt once and actually help me out."

He continued to lie in place, eyes closed with arms folded behind his head as he answered, "I didn't want to suppose that someone like you would need help from someone like me. According to you, I'm an idiot, after all. Why would you want help from an idiot?"

"Don't turn my words around on me!" she growled, slamming her tea cup down harder than usual. "If I say I want your help, you help me! That's not a request! I shouldn't have to do this all by myself! You're the one who asked for this!"

"And I've been kicking myself ever since. Why would I do something so troublesome? I haven't been able to figure it out yet…"

"Shikamaru…"

"Hm?"

A very hard, very large, very sharp-cornered book came flying at him, making contact with his exposed stomach and forcing the air out of his lungs.

"Shut up and help me with these plans!" she shouted, eyes narrowed on the gasping man who was curled up on the floor where he had fallen. "I'm not taking anymore of your nonsense! And if you think for one minute that I'm going to tolerate that sort of attitude after this is all over with, you can think again! I have no aversion to inflicting pain on you to get my point across!"

"Look at this," he huffed out, lugging himself into a chair so he could slouch over the table. "I'm already a victim of spousal abuse, and we aren't even married yet."

"And we never will be if you don't help me with these plans!" she snapped, shuffling various papers in annoyance.

He raised a dark brow. "I don't really see the motivation for me to help you then."

"Shikamaru!"

"…Troublesome," he muttered under his breath, as he snatched up a nearby booklet of place settings and began to scan the pages of pricey porcelains.

/If anyone could make me a better person you could
All I gotta say is I must've done something good
You came along one day and you rearranged my life
All I gotta say is I must've done something right
I must've done something right/

This was so not a part of his plans. Back in the day, he had had it all figured out: The average looking and tolerable wife, the average position in an average paying job. Not this. An elite position in ANBU did not qualify as average, in any way, shape, or form. And the pay he was raking in for it certainly wasn't average, either.

And his soon-to-be wife… So not what he was thinking of when he planned his future out. Average looking and tolerable. That was what he had been after. And what did he get? A brash, buxom, warrior woman, who was more overbearing than his own mother, that's what! Where did his perfect plan go? At this rate, Shikamaru was beginning to think that his dream of having one girl, followed by one boy, and retiring when his daughter was married and his son was settled into his own career, was never going to happen. With his luck, he would get five kids, all girls, each of them more bossy and troublesome than the next; perfect replicas of their bossy and troublesome mother. Oh, he could see it now…

But then again, he couldn't really see it any other way. His dreams of average everything had never held dimension. They had never been vibrant or tangible. There was nothing in them that he would fight to have, to keep. They were simply…easy; not troublesome.

And every bit as vapid as a cloudless sky.

/Maybe I'm just lucky

'Cause it's hard to believe
Believe that somebody like you'd end up with someone like me
And I know that it's so cliché

To talk about you this way
But I'll push all my inhibitions aside
It's so very obvious

To everyone watching us
That we have got something real good going on/

"Shikamaru?"

"Hm?"

"What's with that look?"

"What look?"

"That look! Do I have something on my face?" Her hand quickly shot up to her cheek and around her mouth. "Are you amused by something stuck to my face without my knowledge of it?!"

"Temari."

"What? Where is it?" She rubbed furiously at her skin. "Is it gone now? Did I get it? I swear, Shikamaru, tell me these things when you see them, don't just dub them too troublesome, for crying out loud."

"Temari."

"It's not that I'm vain, or anything. I just don't appreciate someone not telling me when something's off, when it would be so simple to just--"

"Temari."

"What?!"

"I like clouds."

She stared at him for a few moments, nothing but pure, unadulterated confusion upon her features. "I…know…that? What?"

"I like clouds, because they're interesting to look at," he elaborated, watching her with the same look that had set her off to begin with.

"Uh-huh." She stared back at him with wide eyes, obviously not following his train of thought.

"The sky is boring without clouds. A normal sky is boring. It's not worth looking at."

"O…kay…?" she answered, unsure. "Shikamaru, have you been falling asleep near the poppy fields again? Because I've heard that they're not really healthy to inhale."

He gave a lazy smirk. "No. I was just thinking."

"Just thinking?"

"Yeah."

"About the boringness of clear skies?"

"Yeah."

"Well…" she trailed off, not sure of how to take their odd conversation. But her dominant side quickly took over again, and she levelled him with a serious glare, though her eyes were smiling, he could tell. "If you have time to think about something as pointless as that, you could be helping me think of the floral arrangements for the wedding! We've only got two weeks! And we would never be so strapped for time if you would get off your lazy butt and actually take the initiative, once in a while!"

He just continued to smile sleepily, as though caught up in a pleasant dream.

/And I'm racking my brain

For a new, improved way
To let you know you're more to me

Than what I know how to say
You're okay

With the way

That this is going to be
'Cause this is going to be

The best thing we've ever seen/

"But I still don't get it," Shikamaru murmured, adjusting his ponytail for the twenty-third time in five minutes. He could hear the murmuring guests as they awaited the ceremony's commencement.

Shikaku turned to his son, scarred brow raised in question. "Don't get what?"

"When I was a kid, and I was saying how I hated women and couldn't figure out why anyone would want to be around them, you said that I'd understand when I was older."

"Yeah, so?"

"So," Shikamaru sighed, "I still don't get why you would marry such a troublesome woman as mom."

"Well, you're marrying a troublesome woman, aren't you?" the senior Nara asked, eyes twinkling as though he knew of some inside joke that his son did not. "You've said so yourself on a regular basis, if memory serves."

Shikamaru gave a lazy, albeit sheepish, smile. "Yeah, but… Dad, she's not really troublesome."

Shikaku smiled back, and clapped his son on the shoulder. "Then you get it."

End of Track 5

Guttersnipe's Word: (Sigh) Good ol' ShikaTema. You know they want each other! You just know it! This was such a pain to write, though. I've never written Temari into anything, and I've only ever had Shikamaru as a cameo in my stories, never mind actually writing for them together. The part with Shikamaru and his dad was actually what spurred this chapter. I wrote it long ago, when I was still planning tons of one-shots, and that was going to be the basis for one of them. I have so many stories/chapters waiting in limbo, like that.

As a side note, I am so annoyed by FF's formatting! Gah! The spacing on the lyrics! How appalling! But I can't get it to show up normal!

Coming Soon: Either Chapter 4 of A Family of Sorts or Chapter 4 of Of Fear and Women will be next. It all depends on which comes easier. With the way things have been going, odds are that A Family of Sorts will be updated first, as in, this week.