Troublesome Fate

By: Lone Ronin

Author's Notes: Art time! I got the links to a bunch of sketches relating to my story as well as NejiShika in general on my Author Page, so go check it out. Cute little Kouichi and Shikamaru's bat powers make a comeback in this chapter, but its mostly fluff here.

Part 8: Work and Play

The kiss was long.

And serious.

Shikamaru wasn't sure what to do, so he pulled Neji closer and decided to let him take the lead. Neji moved himself so that on top of Shikamaru and deepened the kiss.

It was the most intense experience of Shikamaru's life. His heart was racing, his breathing was heavy, his newfound ability to hear thoughts only added fuel to the fire. Neji's own desires and passions ran through his mind before…

'Yikes, how come everyone seems to be getting action but me these days?'

Roka.

'Wow, look at 'em go!'

Yumi.

Roka had taken some papers to the hospital in the evening just as Yumi's shift was ending and she was going back to Shikamaru's house to make sure he and Neji were okay. After entering the unlocked door and just before setting foot in the kitchen, Roka blushed brightly at catching his friend in such a private moment. He quietly turned and went right back out the door. Yumi continued to watch for a few moments, before Roka grabbed her and led her out too.

"What should we do now?" Roka said.

"I dunno, I still don't completely trust that Neji guy, but I do think they look really good together." Yumi's comment made Roka roll his eyes.

"You and your one track mind."

"Okay, let's stay calm. Shikamaru can hear thoughts now, right? I'm sure he wouldn't let Neji make out with him if he could hear him planning to do something he shouldn't be doing, right?" Yumi pointed out.

"You do have a point. At any rate, there's something I didn't see coming, Shikamaru isn't exactly the one getting chased by the girls as he goes down the street. At least that Neji guy is pretty good looking." Roka mused.

"Oh, I don't know about that, there was that time we saw Kakashi-sempai's real face when he was kissing Iruka-sensei." Yumi answered as she turned pink at the memory.

"How could I forget?" Roka recalled with a blush as they quietly slipped out of the house and down the street.

Although they had seen Shikamaru's chuunin teammates come in and catch them in the act, it was only after they left that they both decided it was time to come up for some air and get back to reality. Back to the reality of the kitchen in Shikamaru's house, the reality of the cold tea on the table, the reality of being seen kissing intimately and the reality that it was extremely late.

"I want to see you again." Neji panted, his lips and face still full and flushed.

"I have teach at the academy tomorrow." Shikamaru answered.

"When can I see you?"

Shikamaru thought for a moment.

"Tuesday, after lunch. There's a large meadow on top of Hokage Mountain. Take the stairs near the sculpture of Yondaime."

Shikamaru led Neji to the door. Most others at this point would have had something romantic to say, but they were not like most others. Their heightened senses were almost like telepathy, they were able to completely and honestly communicate with each other without saying a word. In any case, neither of them would have known what to say, knowing words about friends, family, fighting, traveling, running, hiding, deceit, weapons, jutsus and chakra, but nothing about love.

They shared one more kiss before Neji disappeared into the night.

Neji went home in a dream-like state and for once going back was almost a pleasurable experience. It was as if all the bickering, the cramped and crowded rooms, the whining about the flooding and resentment within the family that permeated the elegant courthouse style Hyuuga estate didn't exist. The only thing on his mind was that he had taken the risk of showing affection towards someone and having the feeling returned. It just seemed to cure him of his troubles.

'The flood waters will eventually go down and Hiashi treats me well enough. Hinata and I are the only ones earning any money at this point, so the family can't do anything to me.' He told himself, it was as if the only concern on his mind was when he could see Shikamaru again.

Hinata later commented to Neji that he seemed to be in the best mood that he had been for a long time.

Kouichi the bat fluttered through the pre-dawn sky, before hanging, out of breath, from a tree branch at the very edge of a water-logged Konoha. Normally the bats didn't go to the Northeast of Fire Country, since there really were no caves for them to stay in and humans generally didn't accept bats the way they did with birds, but he had his orders and he was sure the Naras could accommodate one bat.

'I heard Konoha was large, but I didn't think it would be this large. At least the insects are big and juicy too.' He thought as he captured a fat grasshopper.

'If I could at least get near to him, I could sense his thoughts…' an idea came to Kouichi as he spotted a crow.

"Excuse me, I don't know this area very well, I was wondering if you could help me out, I'm sure I could compensate you for your time." Kouchi called out, knowing that crows never passed up an easy meal.

"I was looking for someone in this area, his family raises deer." He continued as the crow perched near him.

"Ah, that would be a member of the Nara clan, they're known for their laziness in these parts. They're even worse then me, though their deer meat is quite sweet." The crow replied with a crude laugh as he pointed out the direction with his beak.

Kouichi thanked the crow by giving him the grasshopper, before fluttering towards the distinct house with its nearby deer corrals and salt licks. As he flew closer, he could tell that Shikamaru was awake but still in bed, and having some, interesting thoughts. Seeing an open kitchen window, he flew in, expecting a friendly greeting.

'I'm sure his parents must be very proud to know that he has the bats on his side.' Kouichi assumed that Shikamaru must have told them about his new ability by now…

Shikamaru's body woke him up early that morning, even though he had wanted to sleep in, so he simply lay in bed and to someone watching, it would have looked like he was still asleep. In reality, he found himself conjuring up a fantasy from one of Yumi's yaoi manga he had read while on the mission. He was lying in his favorite spot, watching the clouds on a beautiful day, when Neji suddenly came and lay in the grass near to him. Neji started feeding him grapes as he leaned over him and gave him a kiss, he could almost feel his boyfriend slipping a pale, soft hand under his shirt…

Shikamaru woke up from his half-awake state to his mom's screaming, followed by a thumping sound. He suddenly felt like he had been smacked in the face even though he didn't see the outside force that had caused it.

"You filthy winged rat! Nasty little animal! Get out of my nice clean house!" Minako's screeching went on from the kitchen.

'Shikamaru-sama! Help me!' a slightly familiar voice squealed in his head as clearly as if it were being shouted in his ear.

Shikamaru was still trying to comprehend what was going on when he felt as if he were being smacked again with his mom's broom, even though she was downstairs screaming.

'I'm downstairs, I didn't see her! Help!' the squeaky voice entered his mind again.

He ran down the stairs to find his mom swinging her broom as she chased a large and familiar looking bat around the kitchen.

"Mom, stop it!" Shikamaru took the broom just as his mom had cornered it for the final blow.

"It's just Kouichi, he won't hurt you." Minako was shocked as her son calmly reached his arm out and let the poor beaten bat hang from it.

"You mean it has a name?"

"I'm terribly sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, but I needed to speak with your son." Kouichi's ability to talk didn't do much to ease Minako's fear.

"It can talk. How can you touch it? I'm not going near it." She whispered as she quietly crouched behind the other side of the counter from Shikamaru and his familiar.

"I learned how to summon them on my mission, think of him as a guest."

"Just please don't bring in any more." Minako finally calmed down as Shikamaru took Kouichi upstairs.

"Are you all right?" he asked the bat as he walked back upstairs to his room.

"Nothing serious, I just got the wind knocked out of me. Your mother has good aim, she would have made a great shinobi."

"She made it up to chuunin level before she met my dad and decided she preferred being a housewife. Why did you want to talk to me?"

"Noren-sama sent me to Konoha to teach you the full limit of the abilities he has granted you in the contract. You just experienced some of them earlier, but I will have to stay with you for a time before you have learned and mastered all of them."

"So you can project your thoughts and experiences to me." Shikamaru realized now why it had felt like his mom was smacking him with the broom as she swatted poor Kouichi.

"Yes and it goes both ways, so when you summon us, you can command how we will move as if you were moving your own hand. With enough power and practice you could summon Noren himself. Will I be able to show you tonight after I've had some sleep? I've been flying all night to get to Konoha and find your house." Kouichi fluttered his wings and gave a yawn as they entered Shikamaru's room.

"I've got to teach at the academy and take care of the deer today, but I guess we can figure out something later on. Where do you want to sleep? I don't know a lot about bats, I'm not really sure where you can stay or what you'd like to eat."

"Don't worry too much about food, I can mostly forage for myself, though I'd appreciate it if you set out a little water and maybe some pomegranates, if you have any, they're my favorite. Do you have a closed dark place and an old piece of clothing?"

Shikamaru opened his closet and hung an old t-shirt with a rip in the sleeve on the hook inside the closet door, arranging it in such a way so that there was a little pocket for Kouichi to nestle into.

"Ah, thank you, this is quite nice, I'll see you tonight then after you've done whatever business you need to take care of."

"By the way, you didn't feel any of my thoughts before you came into the kitchen, did you?" Shikamaru asked as his unusual guest settled in for a sleep.

"The dreams of young manhood are natural and nothing to be embarrassed about, in any case, we bats keep our secrets quite well. Good day, Shikamaru-sama." Kouichi answered from inside the t-shirt, pausing before he poked his head out and added one last remark.

"And a good choice, by the way, that Neji fellow is very handsome for a human."

Shikamaru blushed as he closed the closet door. Then went downstairs and sat on the porch of his home to enjoy his breakfast outside; it had finally stopped raining every day and now everyone was hoping the flood waters would start to recede. Until then, Shikamaru had some interesting scenery to take in, as the waters were only about two hundred feet or so from his doorstep.

"Hey, buttered toast." Roka said as Taki swooped by and snagged some of Shikamaru's breakfast before sharing it with his human.

"I was eating that."

"Well, it smelled good and I was hungry. Kotetsu's been pushing paper all morning for Hokage-sama and he made me help him, didn't even offer me anything to eat or drink. You're up early, class doesn't start for a couple of hours." Roka suddenly realized as they started walking down the road together.

"I had a troublesome incident this morning."

Shikamaru told Roka about Kouichi's surprise visit, leaving out as much as he could about the new abilities he had been promised. It wouldn't do to have a lot of people know that he could do anything beyond shadow jutsu, as much for avoiding challenges and counterattacks as to avoid being given more work to do.

"You could mooch some books on bats off Yumi at the store, you might find that helpful."

"Thanks." Shikamaru noticed what seemed to be amusement in Roka's eye.

"What are you so happy about? Yumi's the one who's into that manga stuff." he asked.

"Oh, it's nothing, it's just that you seem to complain so much about everything being troublesome, I didn't think you could actually be bothered to make your life more complicated with things, like, I don't know relationships." Roka gave a wink.

"I know you guys saw us the other night. I'd appreciate it if you didn't share that information with a lot of people, it could get troublesome." Shikamaru answered.

"I'm not going to tell anyone, it's just that as your teammate and your friend I'm concerned for you and I don't want you to get hurt."

"Is there some reason why you don't trust Neji?"

"Well, Neji seems okay, I'd be more worried about his family."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There's been some gossip going around lately that they've been having financial problems and there's been a lot of infighting, but I don't know if it's true, just watch yourself, okay?" Roka said as he made a deliberate attempt to shut Shikamaru out from his thoughts.

"Fine." Shikamaru sighed.

Roka and Shikamaru went to the bookstore, where they found Yumi pulling out stacks of books and papers for Kotetsu and Izumo.

"Are you sure that's everything?" Kotetsu looked sick at the huge pile of paperwork.

"That's Tsunade's work from the archives, as well as the 'other' ones you were interested in. He's been involved in a lot of research over the years."

"Hokage-sama's going to hate us for this." Izumo mused as they started picking everything up.

"We're not medics, I don't even understand half of this, you're going to have to explain some of this stuff to us." Kotetsu said as he flipped through a document full of charts and graphs.

"I'm on hospital duty after my shift here."

"Actually, they changed you to evening shift, Godaime's new protégé is doing your early afternoon shift so she can train later on." Izumo said as they left the bookstore.

"Morning, guys."

"Morning, Yumi. We figured Shikamaru could use some books on bats to help him with his summon." Roka answered.

"No problem." She said as the books on bats, snakes and some yaoi manga as an afterthought became a huge stack that went over their heads.

"Oh, and one more. This might help you understand Byakugan better, its really quite interesting." Yumi gave him one last book, but when Shikamaru flipped through it, the book seemed have a bunch of experiments with pea plants.

"I could spend all day trying to figure out what the Byakugan ability has to do with pea plants." Shikamaru told Yumi.

"Just think of the peas as a simplified model." She answered as she did her best to explain genetics, since Shikamaru had never learned it back at the academy.

"In the case of the Byakugan, it's a completely penetrant, dominant Mendelian trait, either you have it or you don't, and if you have children with someone who doesn't carry the gene, you're eventually going to have fewer and fewer kids with the Byakugan. The Hyuuga keep detailed pedigrees, they're also the only clan in Konoha that still practices inbreeding through arranged marriage, though I hear the Uchiha did it too to control their Sharingan before they were wiped out. In the case of the Uchiha, Sharingan was recessive, it was also rumoured to be linked to mental illness. But many cultures consider incest taboo, that's why many of the bloodlines are so reviled in many places. I thought you might want to read about it for personal interest."

"Fascinating." Said Shikamaru, though he didn't have a clue what Yumi was talking about.

"Oh, and before I forget, I need to talk to you about something else." The medic added.

"Okay." He said.

"As a medic, your health is my first concern, I don't know if you're sexually active yet…."

Shikamaru shook his head vigorously. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"…but it's extremely important that you use protection. Here, I always carry some with me, just in case. Any time you want, you can get these for free at the hospital or you can just ask me for more." The medic continued as she proceeded to pull several condoms and a tube of lubricant from her medic kit and put them in his hand.

Shikamaru was too shocked to say anything, but Yumi kept going on like she was discussing the weather.

"Don't be scared, you never know and a lot of venereal diseases can be transmitted by blood transfusions too, the hospital screens for them, but it can still happen. Plus, they're lubricated, so some of the work is already done for you, but use the extra lubricant too, you can never use too much and you still need to go slowly and stretch."

"Um, thanks." Shikamaru was suddenly very eager to get to the Academy.

"Hey, we're not done! It's important that you use them properly too. Let's see what can I use, ah, here we go." Yumi looked around and grabbed a banana that was sitting in a bowl of fruit on the counter.

"Is it supposed to get that big?" Shikamaru couldn't stop his eye from twitching.

"This is just a demonstration, I'm sure you can be mature about this." Yumi replied without a hint of irony.

"Wait a minute, I'm only 14! What makes you think I'm going to go and have sex any time soon?"

"Trust me, I'm a medic, I've seen some crazy things." She replied as she demonstrated proper use of said protection.

"I'm suddenly hungry for some fruit." Roka said with a smile before the bell over the front door rang.

"Morning, Ebisu-sempai. Just your usual order?" Yumi whipped the condom off the banana in a flash and stuck it back in the bowl, while Shikamaru quickly hid the personal items Yumi had given to him.

"Ah, Yumi-chan, back from your latest mission? So this is your new teammate." Ebisu acknowledged Shikamaru before Yumi took a brown paper parcel with a label on if from a pile full of familiar names such as Kakashi and Iruka and gave Ebisu his order.

"Yeah, we make a great team, we're learning new things every day." Roka said with a grin.

"I was in such a hurry to pick up my order, I forgot about breakfast." Ebisu suddenly noticed the fruit bowl and took out a certain banana and added it to his order.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Um, no, have a nice day." Yumi quietly totaled his bill.

They all watched, wide-eyed as Ebisu left the store.

"He just bought the banana that you put the condom on." Shikamaru looked sick.

"Oh well, he probably wouldn't care anyways, he's a closet pervert." Roka mused as he grabbed a condom and started inflating it for kicks.

"You can go out and tell him if you want. And quit wasting those, Roka."

"You know what, I think its time for me to get to class." Shikamaru said as he left.

"Stop trying to act all macho, what's the matter?" Ino asked Chouji as they took a short break from training.

"Shikamaru has to work at the Academy today, I'm just hoping he hasn't forgotten about us being a chuunin and everything now." Chouji answered.

"Oh Chouji, don't feel hurt, its just that he's totally head over heels in love right now."

"How do you know?" Chouji asked.

"I've seen lots of men browsing for flowers for someone special at my parent's flower shop, I know when a guy's in love for sure. I saw Shikamaru pass in front of the flower shop this morning while I was working and he just had that walk in his steps and look in his eyes, it was so adorable!" Ino put her hands to her cheeks and beamed at the thought of the normally lazy Shikamaru suddenly worried about his looks and blushing over a date, it was such an endearing scene.

Their discussion was interrupted by Asuma as he stubbed out his cigarette and cleared his throat to get their attention.

"You've both been training hard, so I've nominated you both to take the chuunin exam again." He said as he handed Ino and Chouji their documents.

"I also wanted you to train with your new team member for the exam, she's usually busy, but she finished work early today. Ah, here she comes now." He continued.

"Sakura?" Ino had suspected they were going to work with her, but since when did she have 'private classes'?

"Hey guys." Sakura greeted Ino and Chouji.

"So, we haven't really seen you around since Naruto left, I hope you've been training hard for the exam." Said Ino, suddenly wanting to act tough and show she had something to prove.

"Well, Tsunade-sama is a strict teacher." Sakura answered

"Godiame herself has been teaching you?" Ino was dumbfounded.

They had just started the day, but Chouji already uncomfortable seeing Ino's obvious jealousy over learning about Sakura's special training. What had once been childish rivalry between them now seemed to be shaping up into serious competition.

'Where's Shikamaru when you need him?' he was starting to miss the old days, when his best friend was around to help smooth over conflicts and tension.

Shikamaru found that Roka had been right, teaching at the academy was easy.

After pinning a troublemaking Konohamaru with Kage Mane no Jutsu and talking about some of the things he had seen while outside the village, the kids quickly respected him. They had a shiruken tossing quiz that day, tossing four shiruken at a stationary target. Everyone did pretty well, hitting reasonably close to the target as they tossed each shiruken. But Hyuuga Hanabi blew everyone away, hurling all four shiruken at once, two from each hand and all hitting the spot, Shikamaru could definitely say that she was his favorite student. After some lessons on different hand seals and chakra control, they spent the rest of the day drawing pictures and then talking about what they drew.

The day went by quickly and around mid afternoon it was time for the students to go home, but not the chuunin instructors. Classes had to be locked, papers marked and documents filed away. Roka locked the upper classrooms as Shikamaru neatly stacked Iruka's papers in his office for him to mark when he felt better. He was surprised to find that he really enjoyed teaching. Even though his Kage Mane no Jutsu made keeping order in the class a breeze, he didn't really need to use it since the kids adored him, they even called him Shikamaru-sensei, he liked the sound of that.

As he stooped down to pick up some papers, he could sense the thoughts of someone approaching from behind. He knew it wasn't Roka, his thoughts sounded different, but he could sort of hear this person's thoughts, so he at least knew them by sight but he wasn't sure exactly who it was. Their thoughts sounded like the rough equivalent of a sort of giggling, seemed like whoever it was thought they were going to surprise him, but didn't seem to want to hurt him. Shikamaru calmly stopped what he was doing, making it clear he knew they were behind him. He was shocked when whoever it was suddenly grabbed him and clamped a hand over his mouth.

"Don't say a word." He growled in Shikamaru's ear.

Author's Notes: Cliffhanger, until next chapter, heh. Oh yeah, I just couldn't resist traumatizing poor Shikamaru with the banana condom thing; they had a wooden model at my old school. My elementary school was pretty fucked up, but I remember how most of the really crazy shit always happened in sex ed.