Shikamaru:

The quality of the silence, that's what it was. He let out a sigh as he shifted slightly to relieve the pressure of a rock in his back, too lazy to completely move from the annoying thing. His hands came up to curl under his head in the soft grasses.

His movements alerted the silent figure beside him, and he watched in the black and white peripheral vision of his eyes as Naruto gave him a lazy look before he resettled himself and looked back up to the sky.

Yup, silence with Naruto was actually much better than anything silent at all. With the crunching of Chouji at his side and the warming presence of Naruto at his opposite he just might be able to relax some.

"I never knew you liked cloud gazing Naruto." Chouji spoke up between mouthfuls of crunchy and salty fried potato delights.

"Sure I do. Clouds are great because they can be whatever you make of them." Shikamaru frowned and tilted his neck oddly, actually bothering to try to look at the blonde who was a little behind to the side of him. That was an odd answer that he had never heard before.

Now Naruto was never predictable, and Shikamaru had never liked the unpredictable. His uncanny ability to come up with several responses and read people was growing legendary amongst Konoha civilians or nin. Shikamaru had been surprised to find Naruto usually broke all his expectations despite being in his class for years and a comrade for even more.

He was not used to the difficulty he had in reading Naruto.

But everyday that he spent with the blonde led to more discoveries and more complexities. Shikamaru was almost ready to give up casually observing (not that he ever really stopped mind you, it was just that he seemed to wake from his laziness to particularly observe a certain blonde who was too mysterious to be healthy for him).

There was something so troublesome about trying to figure out the blonde, but then Shikamaru would be bitten by the almost irresistible urge of the challenge. And it helped that Naruto was anything but unwelcoming. He never turned anyone away and kept his word.

But for someone so open to everyone he sure as hell was an enigma.

Shikamaru sighed and looked back up at the clouds, once again settling into the silence and hoping his curiosity (yes his curiosity) would leave him alone and let him enjoy the rare moments that were becoming even rarer to the ninja of Konohagakure.

Naruto was always shifting and growing, Shikamaru had predicted he would lose in the Chuunin exam- he didn't. Shikamaru had thought the loud mouthed blonde was just that- he wasn't. Chouji knew Shikamaru enough to predict his moves in the examination, and it galled Shikamaru that his other close comrade was so overlooked by even him (the master of observing the small things) that even with his loud personality he was invisible.

But he wasn't really loud.

Naruto was just too bright.

Some people mistake them for each other, but when Shikamaru really thought about it Naruto was bright- he was so bright that people mistook him for loud and uncouth and rude and annoying and desperate.

Which he wasn't, Shikamaru thought with a wry twist of his lips as Naruto smiled at the clouds.

Bright; blazingly glowing with light, vivacious, animated, lively, cheerful…

Loud; strong or powerful in sound (Naruto didn't need to make noise to be who he was, it was just a result of his good cheer), confused mixture of sounds (Naruto was anything but confused, he knew his path and strived for it with everything eh was), rumor monger (Naruto hated gossip for unknown reasons, but Shikamaru had seen the old lady mongers giving him off looks enough to now that he really didn't want to know)…

Yes, Naruto was simply bright. You couldn't ignore the sun after all.

Figures, because Naruto was so bright Shikamaru had to pay some token attention to him, and then get caught up in all this thinking when he should be staring at his lovable clouds. He sighed and felt his muscles slump, letting him sink further into the ground.

That nuisance of a rock hadn't decided to make it more comfortable in all the time he spent contemplating.

He heard faint whispers over the background noise he had learned to ignore of crinkling bagged food and Chouji munching. He cocked his head in confusion, eyes meeting the profile of Naruto smiling and whispering to himself as he stared at the clouds.

Shikamaru rolled his eyes; you weren't supposed to decipher the clouds, you were just supposed to stare at them and watch the float by without a care in the world. Finding pictures in them was too troublesome.

Chouji's munching paused as he too caught their blonde's odd motions, and Naruto hummed a bright note in response to his notice of their odd looks. He grinned and his eyes squinted, too much like the sun against a sky with his loud…bright hair and tan skin and blue eyes. Shikamaru wondered if he had clouds on him somewhere too…

Chouji swallowed loudly, licking his fingers and tilting his head as he gave Naruto an amused look. "What are you doing?"

Shikamaru let his ears listen instead of blocking the noise- in favor of finding out his own question instead of damning it as troublesome and watching the freedom of the clouds. He heard the blonde laugh; like the wind it was so quiet, like he was afraid to disturb the natural sound around them even though he was usually brightly laughing so that it echoed amongst the trees.

"I told you I like the clouds, they can be anything you make of them. I'm trying to figure out how many things that one," he made a very vaguer gesture with his arm in some direction at the sky, "over there can be. Haven't got much so far," his rueful expression was still brightly happy, cheerful, and lively…like this wasn't a disappointment but another way that he passed the time for the simple joy of looking at things differently.

"It kind of looks like a hotdog…" came Chouji's distracted voice, strangely muffled since his head was tilted back extravagantly and his face was to the sky and not them or his bag of chips.

Naruto laughed, tilting his head as he sat up so he could look at it exactly the way Chouji was. It was with another laugh that he agreed, patting Chouji on his broad back and smiling like the sun. "Yeah, and when you twist you head like this…" he demonstrated, "it makes it look like a pair of eyes." He shifted back to his sitting position. "I see a boat and a scroll and those eyes," he nodded vaguely in Chouji's direction, "And Chouji's hotdog. What do you see Shikamaru?"

Shikamaru twisted his head, looking at that cloud and really examining it instead of envying it and its freedom. But he got distracted, looking at the bright spikes of blonde casually resting against vibrant green grass and folded tan arms.

He saw a boy.

This was a strong boy, overlooked and ignored and sometimes hated…he was teased and ridiculed and never gave up despite how troublesome it was. He smiled in the faces of those who glared at him, and he laughed with those who laughed at him. He shone in the dark, no matter how oppressive, and always in some way came out on to even when he apparently lost.

He saw Naruto.

This was a ninja who overcame whatever was in his past that made him so shunned, he overcame what could have been his doubts and his trouble and became what they saw everyday. With no need for breaks from his troublesome role and no need for encouragement from anyone else he was their bright sun.

Shikamaru shifted his eyes to glance at the cloud, and felt his retina burn with the force of the sun in the sky a little ways from the direction he was looking in. he felt the shift in silence of his two comrades, basking in this warmth and quiet like it really was the sun coming down to wrap around tem.

It was just Naruto…

He saw the cloud in question shift into something like a scroll and then those eyes and that hotdog and some type of misshapen boat…

He looked over to his friends, found them staring at him with smiling eyes, and scoffed. "So troublesome…" but then he grinned and lay back down, "it looks like Change."

He didn't need to see it.

He felt the exuberant joy of Naruto's grin and heard his bubbling quiet type of laughter as Chouji started to once again snack on his chips.

Shikamaru snickered, face going blank as he sighed and finally reached under him to remove that rock of annoying troublesomeness.

Change was good…he supposed. But then he felt his friends shift to lay back and join him, and he decided change didn't matter.

This silence was even better…not so troublesome.

Shikamaru deadpanned, that anything was always troublesome but he guessed, in some ways, and on some levels, that things just might not be so troublesome if he learned to look at it differently.

But right now, he didn't really think he wanted to expend so much energy. He was comfortable, finally, and he had two very good comrades beside him enjoying his favorite pastime.

He didn't need thoughts to fill this silence.

.x.

.x.x.x.! X !.x.x.x.

I am sorry I can't give you timeline or dates or ages, but I am not exactly the best Naruto buff and don't want to offend those who are when this should be very close to canon. I figure that we don't get to watch very day of Naruto's life in the manga, so he has downtime away from our prying eyes every once in a while. Just insert this where you see fit. I'm sorry about Ibiki, I am considering rewriting it again, but this just came out instead.

I have writers block for my big baby, and so I have the time (since I SHOULD be studying for my finals…erp) that I usually take for that to update THIS! Lol. I hope you enjoy!

PS; I can't believe that troublesomeness is an actual word O.O.