Sorry this chapter is a bit shorter, but I wanted to get it out asap. Yume-Kakashi will make his appearance in the next chapter, I promise. This one is for MarchIII, who leaves the best reviews, and for Tarani, who wanted to know what Shikamaru was thinking! xoxo

Ch. 5

It was official. The universe was conspiring to make sure Sakura never got to sleep again.

When Ino had told Sakura how Shikamaru had ditched her to drink with Choji, she's stormed back into the bar prepared to give her friend the beat down of a lifetime. Instead, she'd found a nearly comatose Shikamaru slumped over onto the bar, face buried in the folds of his arms like he wanted to curl up and die there. No amount of prodding from either girl could get him to talk - he seemed immune to both Ino and Sakura's threats of physical violence. Even Choji could not be coerced into giving up information, too content with his plate of appetizers to be rallied to their cause. There was just no getting an answer out of either of them.

"Did he say what upset him so much?" Ino asked her teammate.

Choji just smiled down into his food. "What's said at the bar, stays at the bar." and that appeared to be the end of it.

Their party of friends was quickly dwindling. The late hour was noted, excuses were given for early work meetings the following day, and soon Sakura was the only attendee left aside from team Asuma. That's when Choji too announced his farewell.

"Come on, you're really going to leave us alone to deal with this?" Ino chided, gesturing to the slumped over Shikamaru like he was a pile of laundry left out in the yard.

"I can cover your tab, or I can carry him home. Pick one." Choji stated blankly. Ino's eye twitched in irritation. Choji knew he had the upper hand here, and so did she.

"Fine, fine. Sakura and I will carry him home." Ino conceded.

Behind her back, Sakura threw her hands up to the air. She was never going to get to sleep at this rate. "Me!? Why do I have to help?"

"Because you were late!"

"Don't…bring facts into this argument."

Thirty minutes later, the stumbling trio were finally nearing the Nara compound, a very drunk Shikamaru suspended between the two girls like a cheap hammock.

"I'm going to hold this over him for days." Ino cackled, and not for the first time Sakura marveled at her friends ability to spin inconvenience into opportunity.

"I still have no idea what happened." Sakura thought out loud. "One minute we're talking, the next he's running away from me like…"

"Like what?"

Sakura replayed their chess game again in her mind. "…I don't know, you had to be there. But, you know when you see something you can't unsee, and it catches you total off guard? It was something like that."

Ino looked at the napping Shikamaru thoughtfully. "You guys have been spending a lot of time together lately."

Sakura ducked her shoulder, trying to reposition Shikamaru's dead weight more securely into her grip. She didn't like where this conversation was going… "I dont know if I would call it a lot."

"Oh really? So what would you call lunch multiple times a week for the last two years?"

" Ok fine," Sakura bristled defensively, "I get what you're saying, but not what you're getting at."

"Im saying," and here Ino smiled, her voice curving up into a melodic lilt. "That you two have a lot in common. Things between you were bound to change, eventually."

Sakura shook her head and looked away. She really didn't want to hear this, much in the same way she didn't like remembering Naruto's old feelings for her, or thinking about any of her friends in that way. Romance between friends always came with too much risk- it was a double or nothing bet. Yes, when it succeeded, you became a better version of what you already were together… but when it failed, you became nothing at all. That was a gamble Sakura wasn't willing to take, not with any of her friends.

Still…Inos words seemed to impress a power over her. She couldn't help watching the curve of Shikamaru's cheek against her shoulder, or feel his firm torso leaning into her side.

Shit. This would not do. She needed to redirect the conversation.

"If we're talking about changing relationships, then let's talk about you making goo-goo eyes at Kiba." She said in her best mocking voice.

It was entirely a shot in the dark. She'd expected Ino to roll her eyes, to fall prey to her own flawed argument. What she hadn't expected was for Ino to massively overreact.

"How did you know that?!" Ino asked in panic. She looked like she suddenly wanted to implode, her face turning so violently red it was practically giving off UV light.

Sakura stood there in a dead shock, trying to process what she was hearing. She nearly dropped Shikamaru and the pharmacy bag she had clutched in her palm. "No…. NO!"

"Don't look at me like that!" Ino yelled back, likely regretting now that she'd instigated this fight.

"Really?! Kiba?!" Sakura pressed on.

"I'm not saying anything more, and don't you dare mention this to anybody!" Ino vowed, tightening her grip on Shikamaru and trying to speed away.

"But- but I stood between you guys for an HOUR and neither of you said anything! Are you guys keeping your relationship a secret? I never would have guessed…"

Here, Ino let out a long breath. "That's because there's nothing to guess. As far as I can tell, my feelings are entirely one sided. Nothing has actually happened between us yet. But… I don't know. Lately, I've really started to like him. I want to tell him how I feel but…what if it blows up in my face?"

Ino looked across Shikamaru's spiky, disheveled head to lock eyes with Sakura. "Would you?"

Now this conversation was hitting too close to home.

"Would I what?" Sakura asked. She knew what Ino was asking, but desperately feigned ignorance in hopes that Ino would drop the subject.

Ino instead gave her the look. "Don't pretend with me, Sakura. Would you…risk a friendship on the off chance that it could be something more?"

Sakura didn't want to answer truthfully: That she was currently wrestling with this exact same dilemma. That she was always wrestling with this same dilemma. Shikamaru, Kakashi… Sasuke.

"I don't think I'm the right person to ask, Ino." She said quietly. "I did that once before, and you know how it turned out."

Understanding dawned on Ino's face, and together their thoughts went out to the boy they had both loved and lost.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think-"

"No, it's okay." Sakura reassured her friend. "I stopped loving him a long time ago. Loving him like that, at least. The point is, I told him how I felt once, and….yeah. Maybe it's made me a little gun shy. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take the leap for yourself."

Between them, Shikamaru murmured something incoherent, his head lolling sideways to rest against Ino's head. Ino suppressed a small laugh, and the tension between them eased.

"So, you really think I should say something to him?"

Sakura swallowed down what she wanted to say, and instead spoke the words she knew Ino needed to hear. "Absolutely. The rewards are worth the risk."

Ino beamed at her, continuing to chatter on into the night. All the while, the same word repeated over and again in Sakura's mind.

Liar. Liar. Liar.

-Nara Household, The Following Morning-

Shikamaru felt, for the first time in his life, that he truly understood death. His mother came to wake him for the third time that morning, threatening that if she had to come back a fourth, it would be with a bucket of ice water.

Shikamaru reluctantly rolled over, and tried not to vomit.

'Never. Never again.' He swore, peeling one eye open just enough to search for his alarm clock. The damn thing hadn't gone off that morning.

But there, beside his table, Shikamaru found a miracle. A brown paper pharmacy bag with a post it note stuck to the side. Inside, there was water, Aspirin, and a small green vial with a sealed cork top. It took a few tries before he could unify his split vision and the note became legible.

Water first, then drink the vial. It will take care of your hang over in no time. Follow with the aspirin if your headache isn't gone in an hour. Most importantly, DONT forget -

But the note ended there. He reread it twice over, turning it back to front. All to no avail. There was nothing else in the pharmacy bag either, the note just cut off.

His mother stormed into his room again, preparing to raise her voice, but caught herself at seeing Shikamaru upright. Instantly, she schooled her face into a neutral expression. Shikamaru had neither the will nor the ability to analyze it in his curren condition.

Uncapping the water bottle, he croaked a shaky "Who brought me home?" not waiting for a reply before draining the bottle dry.

Yoshino Nara smothered another laugh before answering. "Sakura and Ino, of course." She said, stepping forward to take the empty bottle from him. "Brought you home close to midnight, and even tucked you into bed."

The idea of his friends roaming unsupervised in his bedroom set off warning bells, but that only drove his headache deeper into his brain. With shaky hands, he uncorked the green vial and choked it down as taste made him curl over and hang his head between his legs.

"Uhgh…I feel like I'm dying." He murmured to his knees. He was definitely going to throw up.

Yoshino apparently had some pity for his miserable state, because she left him to suffer in solitude after that. But as she left, her voice trailed behind her retreating form, and Shikamaru caught the tail end of something like "That girl is too good for you you know. You're so troublesome."

Shikamaru bravely made for the bathroom, proud when his didn't vomit in the hallway. At the sink, he began washing his face and taking big gulps of water from the tap like an animal.

"Don't forget…. Dont forget…. What?" He couldn't keep a single thought clear in his head. Why had he drunk so much in the first place? The last thing Shikamaru remembered was….

Something…something about chess. Chess. Chess. No, that wasn't entirely it… He and Sakura had been playing chess… and then she had done something to surprise him. Except he also remembered that what ever it had been, he hadn't been surprised at all.

His memory shortened and stretched in the dreamy way they do after a long night, tethered around a single moment. When he tried to recall the rest of the evening, a sort of gravity pulled him back to that same moment like it was dark matter, and nothing could escape it.

He remembered fixating on her lips. Sakura's lips. Sakura's mouth and Sakura's…. Everything. He remembered an overwhelming urge to lean over the chess board and take her pink lower lip between his teeth. To fist his fingers into her hair and claim her mouth like a game token won in battle. Belatedly, he remembers her trick with the knight, and being unsure whether he wanted to punish or reward her for it. To revel in her, entirely.

His fingers twitched into a fist at his side, and then the spell was broken. He was thrust back into the white tile bathroom, Sakura's note crumpled in his hand. His heart race and his head swam, dizzy. He couldn't tell if he was still drunk, or just drunk again on the thought of her. Never in his life had he ever experience a longing so primal. No wonder he had fled from their table…

But had he run from the intensity of his desires… or had he run from her?

He shook his head, knowing he couldn't be feeling this way. Sakura was… had become his best friends. Someone outside his team he could talk to without compromising their work-dynamics. Sometimes it was easier to talk to an acquaintance than to your closest friends.

But Sakura hadn't been an acquaintance, not for a long time now. One day, they just started showing up in each others lives and somehow forgot to quit.

"I must be losing my mind." He said absently, opening up her care note again. He studied her perfect, tiny handwriting.

'Most importantly, don't forget…'

His cheeks flushed. What was that suppose to mean?

Determined to ask her about it later (Or never again, depending on if he could bring himself to ever face her) Shikamaru went to brush his teeth.

The yell that erupted from the bathroom could be heard clear outside the compound and deep in the bordering streets. Yoshino Nara finally let her strait face go and burst into a fit of giggles. Shikamaru stormed out of the bathroom in a savage rage, pointing to writing in sharpie across his face.

'You Owe Us.'