Yes! Update! ;)

Okay, a few things: 1.) To clarify, Neji does not actually have a foot fetish. Tenten just likes messing with him. 2.) Just in case you didn't remember the hooker heels, the feet in the pictures were Tenten's. 3.) You guys crack me up! All the jokes about Hinata and Naruto and their "endurance training. wink wink" had me literally lol-ing. (Also, a couple chapters back, someone made a comment about Naruto "sharpening his kunai" and thinking of Hinata. LMAO.) 4.)The Hyuugas are quickly becoming my favorite family. Sooo much fun to mess with. ;)

That's all for now, I guess! This is a little drabbley thing. More to come soon.

I don't own Naruto. If I did, we would have gotten to the *Spoiler* Sand Sibs vs. Sand Daddy (with possible ShikaTema action) fight already.

He was losing.

He could no longer ignore it.

When she nagged at him, as she was prone to do, it was fairly easy to group her with every other female he had ever met. She was nothing special.

When he had seen her heading to the onsen with Tenten, he could squash his overactive imagination. It took a little effort, but he could do it.

When she smiled, the sharp angles of her face softening, her exotic eyes glowing happily—then, he usually could attribute the funny feeling in his gut to gas.

But the other day, when she had beaten him in shogi—without cheating—

He had a hard time pretending.

And even now, when she was doing nothing more than filling out paperwork, nibbling on the end of her pen, he could no longer delude himself.

"Dammit!" he cursed, looking at the ceiling in vain, knowing the gods were laughing at him.

Temari didn't even look up from the chuunin exams she was grading. "Do I even want to know?"

Shikamaru stared at his own barely graded stack. "Most likely," he mused.

An eyebrow went up, but she still didn't divert her attention. "Are you still upset that I beat you? It's just a game, Nara. Don't be such a baby."

He smirked at her assumption. He had been feeling a lot of things, but upset had not been one of them. "It's not that."

"Then spit it out," she barked. "We don't have time for twenty questions. You've barely started grading your half."

He was silent for a little while, watching her pen dance across the paper. Then, convinced his thoughts were in enough order, he finally answered her. "Shogi isn't bothering me. Self-fulfilling prophesies bother me."

That got her attention. The pen stopped, and he finally got to see her cerulean orbs. But a second later, she nonchalantly looked back down, her grading resuming. "Is that so?"

A small part of him regretted ever going over to Kiba's that night. He had thought that he would be able to prevent things he didn't like, but honestly, after seeing what his life could be like, he had absolutely no urge to do so.

Sunlight filtered through the tree outside the window, causing shadows to dance across her skin. "That makes two of us then," she said, so softly he almost didn't hear it.

His eyes widened, his mind trying to process what she had just said.

She clicked her pen. "Done. Here, you need to sign off on these. I'm going to go turn these in."

He watched, still speechless, as she stood, handed him the papers, and then left the room.

Distractedly, he turned to the stack she had given him, picking up his pen and sloppily signing his name on paper after paper. He had probably been hearing things. She probably hadn't even heard what he had said; if she had, worse case scenario she would have yelled or hit him—or, most likely, both. Best case scenario—

The sixth page in, next to where he would need to sign his name, a tiny set of numbers was written. Shikamaru's eyebrows furrowed. It looked suspiciously like coordinates. Coordinates...to the closet down the hall.

He grinned.

So it begins.

A/N: Let me know. ;)