Cloud Shapes
Shikamaru had suggested that they go cloud watching during the evening. It was particularly good then, he'd said to Neji with a yawn. The sun made colors out of the clouds, it was pleasant but not boiling, and if you found one of the good spots in the parks you could be virtually alone. Neji had immediately thought of a better place, but hadn't mentioned it. That spot was very firmly in his mind as belonging to Itachi and himself, and only Itachi and himself.
They lay on their backs in the thick grass, staring up at a sky full of puffy clouds. Their attempts at making what they thought of as 'normal' conversation about clouds had not gone so well.
"That one looks like…hm, I'd say a dog's head."
"…no, it doesn't. It looks like three lumps of cloud together."
"Itachi, you're supposed to use your imagination."
"I'm trying. It's three lumps of cloud together."
After a few more attempts like that, they'd fallen silent. In a way, both of them liked it better this way. It was a chance to just enjoy each other's company away from the village and its constant demands on them both. Summer was the highest time for missions, as every daimyo and their cat wanted to make a journey to some lake somewhere, and they were such a prime target that they had to have a shinobi escort. Some of the more advanced genin teams and the chuunin teams took up a lot of the slack, but there were often genuinely dangerous escorts—ones that led through or near Sound territory, for example—that required a jounin, and Neji had been dispatched on those, gone for days or weeks at a time.
Each return had brought Itachi leaning against a tree near the gates of the village. Sometimes he was in his street clothes; sometimes he was in the ANBU uniform and smelled of sweat and blood. Neji began to look forward to seeing him at the end of a mission. Their relaxation times after missions were like right now; calm, unhurried, unwinding away from any demands anyone could make of them.
"Neji."
"Yes, Itachi?"
He saw the prodigy's hand go up, finger pointing to a shapeless mass of white condensed water. "That one looks like the Uchiha symbol."