In which Shikamaru and Temari are already dating, but are trying their hand at the long distance thing.
also, this was written in present tense.
.::[::]::.
[Temari is sick and she gives Shikamaru a list of items to buy and he is totally clueless because it's a very complicated list. :3]
"Are you even listening?" she barely rasps, her voice ragged from sickness but otherwise her tone is still as sharp as a whip. Shikamaru grimaces because he really didn't, but he nods along anyways and tries to ignore the fact that her eyes narrow in suspicion.
Jeez, why was he even here?
It was a mission perhaps but he had received no prior knowledge as to why he had been summoned to Sunagakure. When the Hokage merely chortled at whatever paper he was holding, did Shikamaru decide it wasn't even worth questioning should he, the advisor, take a week's absence from his post. When he had arrived at Suna, the last thing he expected was to be summoned to Temari's side.
He didn't expect her to call him over when she had only done something as trivial as fallen ill. Apparently it was important though, because here she stood, mouthing him off, and though they had been together for a year now, he couldn't truthfully admit that he enjoyed being placed in this position much. (Honestly, no one ever did).
So as she sighs and hands him over a sheet of neatly folded paper, he nearly bristles when he realizes that he could've avoided the entire lecture should she have given him the list in the first place. But when she coughs weakly into her hand, her normally strong frame shaking from the effort, does his gaze soften and he gives her hand a quick squeeze. "I'll be back soon," he promises, to which she grumbles (kind of cutely) and hides her face back under the covers.
Leaving her house behind him, Shikamaru pulls the sheet of paper he had hastily stowed in his pocket out, smoothening the creases to read her script.
And then he realizes that he can't even interpret it.
His head whips around to the door he had just recently closed, a string of tactics and words he could say to his blonde girlfriend already at his tongue, but he swallows them back because he realizes that he doesn't want to deal with sick and angry Temari. That in itself would be too troublesome. So was it even worth his time to get the decoding corps to do it?
Ugh. From the limited interaction he had with the decode corps back in Konoha, he had deduced that the language was more or less a cipher. At worse, he could ask.
As he walks through the Suna Marketplace (always as crowded as he could remember), he is finally somewhat able to begin building the stack of items he needs for her. His frustration grows as he decides that this list seems more like a grocery list than a \I called you here because I'm dying please buy these items' kind of list, and as he's picking out two apples, specifically two, he didn't know why, he wonders for the umpteenth time why he's bothering with the crazy woman in the first place.
Halfway down the stupid sheet of paper and his hands are holding two filled bags each, does he finally get to the medicine portion of the list. Even with the friendly help of the locals, the scrawled names of what he assumes are herbs and medicinal remedies are lost to him. He vaguely wishes that a certain pink-haired medical nin was available to help translate, but he pushes his hopes aside and instead ducks into a pharmacy to get substitutions.
She'd better not complain, he thinks with a hint of aggression, because this was definitely not what he signed up for and not what he spent three days travelling for. I'm doing my best for her, after all.
"What the hell are these," she mutters as she sifts through the bags of groceries. He can't help but to roll his eyes and sigh, though her souring expression is enough to cut his moment of indulgence and instead be at her side. "Vitamins?" she questions incredulously, shaking the innocent white bottle between two slim fingers.
He sits down on the edge of the bed as the blonde tosses the bottle back into the bag before rifling through it some more. "Jeez, Shikamaru," she breathes, her tone equally teasing yet also somewhat furious and the shadow nin pins the blame on her illness.
"It helps if you wrote it in a language I could understand," he quips as she picks up another bottle, her lip sliding into a pensive pout. He rolls her eyes as she swats weakly at his arm, stating furiously that she was too damn sick to bother trying to translate languages. He ignores the obvious argument that would have defended him, instead giving the sand nin the benefit of the doubt as she coughs again into a hand. He feels a bit of pity for her now, but as if she senses it she looks up sharply, and though her eyes are clouded with sickness she still fights past them to focus her sight on the shadow nin.
"Sorry," Temari says softly, sincerely, and Shikamaru swears he can hear his heart thump in his ears as the tanner shinobi blushes before reclining back into her bed. Her eyes close and he pushes stray locks of hair off her face, her skin is tinged with sweat but he doesn't mind, and he pulls the blankets to properly cover her shoulders.
"I'll make you something to eat," he says softly. She makes a small noise of assertion. "And I'm getting you water." She nods. "Keep the covers on." She sounds a little grumpier now, only humming in response. "I can also get you a wet towel," he says with a grin. She makes the same sound again, now disgruntled. "And take one of the vitamins anyway, it won't hur-"
"Just go already," Temari growls with sudden conviction, the konoha native chuckling as he ducks to avoid the flying groceries that otherwise would have hit him dead in the face.