- Idiot -
It was official. The universe was conspiring to make sure Sakura never got to sleep again.
When Ino told Sakura how Shikamaru had ditched her to drink with Choji, she'd stormed back into the bar prepared to give her friend the beat down of a lifetime.
But instead of an uncharacteristically rude Shikamaru, she finds her friend nearly comatose, slumped over onto the hardwood bar. His face is buried in the folds of his arms like he wants to curl up and die there.
"Wow, you weren't kidding." She says to Ino.
"Told you." Ino shrugs in return.
No amount of prodding from either girl succeeded in rousing Shika to talk. He seemed immune to threats of physical violence, even more reluctant to move now that Sakura was there.
"I'm such an idiot." He keeps saying into his arms.
Even Choji could not be coerced into giving up valuable information, not for food nor drink nor threats of bodily harm. The third member of Team Asuma seems content to enjoy his plate of appetizers, entirely apathetic to their cause. There was just no getting an answer out of either of them.
"Did he even say what upset him so much?" Ino asks her stubborn teammate.
Choji just smiles down into his food. "What's said at the bar, stays at the bar." And that appears to be the end of it.
Their party of friends is quickly dwindling. The late hour is noted and excuses are made for early work meetings the following day. Soon, Sakura is the only one left aside from Choji, Ino and Kiba.
"Come on, you're really going to leave us alone to deal with this?" Ino chides. She gestures to a slumped over Shikamaru like he's a pile of laundry left out in the yard.
"I can cover your tab, or I can carry him home. Pick one." Choji states blankly. Ino's eye twitches in irritation. Choji knew he had the upper hand here and so did she.
"Fine, fine. Sakura and I will carry him home."
Behind her back, Sakura throws her hands up to the air. She was never going to get to sleep. "Me? Why do I have to help?"
"Because you were late!" Ino scolds.
"Don't…bring facts into this argument."
Kiba helps unload Shikamaru from the bar and gives Ino a brief peck on the cheek. "I had a blast, birthday girl!" He says, leaving a red faced Ino in his wake. Sakura is about to ask what that was about, but a glare from Ino tells her to mind her business. Thirty minutes later, their stumbling trio is finally nearing the Nara compound. A very drunk Shikamaru dangles between the two girls, swaying like a cheap suspension bridge.
"I'm going to hold this over him for days." Ino cackles. Not for the first time, Sakura marvels at her friends ability to spin inconvenience into opportunity.
"I still have no idea what happened." She thinks out loud. "One minute we were playing chess and the next, he's running away from me like…"
"Like what?"
Sakura replays the moment in her mind. "…I don't know, you just had to be there. But, you know when you see something you can't unsee? It was something like that."
Ino looks at the napping Shikamaru thoughtfully. "You guys have been spending a lot of time together lately."
Sakura ducks her shoulder, trying to reposition Shikamaru's dead weight more securely into her grip. She doesn't like where this conversation is going.
"I don't know if I would call it a lot."
"Oh really? So what do you call multiple lunch dates a week, spanning over the last two years?"
Sakura bristles defensively. "He's been dating Temari. You know our relationship isn't like that." Because Temari was an amazon goddess with curves and confidence Sakura could only dream of.
"Please, he and Temari have been over for months. And besides that, you two have way more in common."
"That doesn't mean we see each other that way."
Because she didn't see Shikamaru that way. She couldn't.
"I'm just saying, things between you were bound to change eventually."
Sakura shakes her head, looking away. She really doesn't want to hear this, much in the same way she doesn't like remembering Naruto's old feelings for her. She didn't like thinking about any of her friends that way, actually. Romance between friends came with too much risk...Sasuke had taught her that.
At best, what you got was a double or nothing bet. When it succeeded, it felt like winning the lottery, but when it failed, you ended up with nothing at all. That was a gamble Sakura wasn't willing to take. Not with any of her friends, and especially not with Shikamaru.
Still, Ino's words seemed to impress a power over her. She can't stop staring at the curve of Shikamaru's cheek whenever it lolls against her shoulder. She can feel his firm torso leaning into her side, less muscular than Kakashi but still well built…
Shit. Bad thoughts bad. 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 taunts Ino in her best mocking voice.
She expects Ino to roll her eyes, to denounce Sakura's accusations as the assumptions of a lunatic. What she doesn't expect is for Ino to overreact, devolving into an anxious mess. "How did you know that?!" She asks in a panic, her blush practically giving off UV light.
Sakura stops dead in her tracks, trying to process what she's seeing. She nearly drops Shikamaru and the pharmacy bag she's got clutched in her left palm. "No...No way-"
"Don't look at me like that!" Ino yells in embarrassment, regretting instigating this fight.
"Really?! Kiba?!" Sakura presses on.
"I'm not saying anything, and don't you dare mention this to anybody!" Ino tightens her grip on Shikamaru, trying in vain to speed away.
"But! But I stood between you guys for hours and neither of you said anything! Are you guys keeping your relationship a secret? I never would have guessed you two were a couple."
Ino lets out a long-held breath. "That's because there's nothing to guess about. As far as I can tell, my feelings are entirely one sided. He flirts, but you know that's just the way he is. Nothing has actually happened between us yet."
Sakura watches the light in her friends face begin to dim.
"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 all blows up in my face?" Ino looks across Shikamaru's shoulders to lock eyes with Sakura. "Would you?"
Now this conversation was definitely hitting too close to home.
"Would I what?" She asks, feigning ignorance.
Ino just gives her the look. "Don't pretend with me, Billboard Brow. Tell me strait. Would you risk a friendship on the off chance that it could become 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. Sasuke, Kakashi…Shikamaru.
"I don't think I'm the right person to ask, Ino." She says quietly, looking ahead. "I did that once before, and you know how it turned out."
Understanding dawns on Ino's face, and together their thoughts go out to a boy they had both once loved and lost.
"I'm sorry, I didn't think-"
"No, it's okay." Sakura reassures her friend. "I stopped loving Sasuke a long time ago. Loving him like that, at least. The point is, I told him how I felt once, and….yeah. Maybe getting left on a park bench has made me a little gun shy. Such is life. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't make that leap for yourself."
Between them, Shikamaru murmurs something incoherent that sounds a bit like 'Idiot.' His head lolls again to rest against Ino's shoulder.
Ino suppresses a small laugh, and the tension between them dissipating. "So, you really think I should say something then?"
Sakura swallows down what she wanted to say, and instead speaks the words she knows Ino needs to hear. "Absolutely. The rewards are worth the risk."
Ino beams at her, continuing to chatter on into the night. All the while, the same word repeats over and again in Sakura's mind.
Liar. Liar. Liar…
- Hangover -
Shikamaru feels, for the first time in his life, like he truly understands death.
The sun is too bright. His mouth is a desert. His mother keeps banging on his door demanding he help his father feed the deer. She threatens that if she has to come back a fourth time, it would be with a bucket of ice.
Shikamaru rolls over and tries not to vomit. Someone please just kill him now-
'Never. Never again.' He swears, peeling one eye open just enough to search for his alarm clock. The damn thing hadn't gone off that morning. Why was it unplugged?
But there, beside his bed, Shikamaru finds a miracle. A brown paper pharmacy bag with a post it note stuck to the side. Inside this bag of life he finds water, Aspirin, and a small green vial with a sealed cork stopper. It takes a few tries before he can unify his split vision, the note finally becoming 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, DON'T FORGET -
But the note ends there, no further instructions. He rereads it twice over, turning it back to front. All to no avail. There is nothing else in the pharmacy bag either, the note just cuts off.
His mother storms into his room again, preparing to raise her voice. But then Yoshino catches herself, seeing Shikamaru sitting mostly upright. Instantly, she schools her face into a neutral expression. She looks like she's trying not to laugh at him. Shikamaru has neither the will nor the ability to analyze his crazy mother in his current condition.
"Who brought me home?" He asks groggily. He uncaps the water bottle and drains it dry, praying for the room to stop spinning.
Yoshino swallows another laugh before answering. "Sakura and Ino, of course." She says, stepping forward to take the empty bottle from him. "They brought you home a bit after midnight, even tucked you into bed. It was very cute, if I may say so."
The idea of his friends roaming around unsupervised in his bedroom sets off warning bells that only drive his headache deeper into his brain. With shaky hands, he uncorks the green vial and chokes it down. The bitter taste makes him curl over, hanging his head between his legs.
"I feel like I'm dying…" He groans into his knees. He was definitely going to throw up.
Yoshino apparently has some pity for her miserable son, because she leaves him to suffer in solitude after that. But as she turns, Shikamaru catches the tail end of something. "That girl is too good for you, you know. You're so troublesome."
He has no idea what that means, and his screaming headache says he doesn't want to know. He valliantly makes his way to the bathroom, proud when he doesn't vomit in the hallway. At the sink, he splashes his face with cold water, taking big gulps from the tap like an animal.
"Don't forget. Don't 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. No, that wasn't entirely it… He and Sakura had been playing chess… and then she had done something to…surprise him?
Except that wasn't entirely it either. His memories shorten and stretch in the dreamy way they do after a long night of drinking. His thoughts seem tethered around a single moment. When he tries to recall the rest of the evening, a gravity pulls him back to it like it's dark matter. He remembers fixating on Sakura's lips. Sakura's mouth. Sakura's…Everything.
'So, what should I make you do when I win?'
He remember exactly what he would have made her do. He'd never been so motivated to win in his life.
He remembers the overwhelming urge to lean over the chess board, to take her lower lip between his teeth. He'd wanted run his hands up her sides, to thread fingers into her hair and claim her mouth in victory. Belatedly, he remembers her trick with the knight, and being unsure whether he wanted to punish or reward her for it.
He'd wanted to revel in her entirely, to touch her in a way that best friends didn't.
His fingers twitch into a fist at his side, and the spell of the memory is broken. He's jarred back into his white tile bathroom, Sakura's note still crumpled in his hand. His heart races and his head swims, dizzy. He can't tell if he was still drunk, or just drunk again on the thought of her.
"Oh no…" He groans, covering his face with his palms. "Nooo, I'm an idiot-"
Because he could not be feeling this way about her, not even a little bit. Somewhere along the road of their unexpected friendship, Sakura had become one of his closest friends. One day, they'd just started showing up in each others lives and somehow forgot to quit.
She was someone outside his team he could talk to about anything, and she never made him feel stupid when he rambled. She was the sane to Ino's crazy, and the crazy to his personal sane. She ordered hot tea in the summertime (Which made zero sense every time she did it) And yet, she was the only person besides his father who could go toe to toe with him in chess.
She somehow managed to be infallibly brave with her fists, yet unendingly anxious when it came to her words. She gave her time freely to anyone who needed it, even though she had no free time at all. He didn't know how someone who could shatter literal boulders could be so scared to speak their mind sometimes, but somehow Sakura managed the contradiction.
She was annoyingly beautiful. She was compassionate…
No! She was a totally toxic workaholic that would ruin his lazy lifestyle if he ever started having real feelings for her. No Way. He could not let this happen.
"I must be losing my god-damn mind." He says, absently unfolding her care note again. He studies Sakura's perfect, tiny handwriting. 'Most importantly, don't forget…' What was that suppose to mean?
He crumbles the note and tosses it into the trash. It was okay, he would be fine. This was just a temporary case of hormonal insanity probably brought on by too many drinks. They were best friends, that was all. Next time he saw her, it would be like the party never even happened.
His cheeks flush again at the idea that Sakura has now been in his bedroom... He wonders absently if he said anything incriminating while he was drunk. 'Shit. Would be just my luck.' He thinks.
He goes to splash water on his face again, finally looking up into the mirror.
Outside in living room, his mother jumps. The yell that erupts from Shikamaru's bathroom could be heard clear outside the compound. Yoshino Nara finally let her strait face go, bursting into a fit of giggles.
Shikamaru storms out of the bathroom in a savage rage, pointing to the message written in sharpie across his face.
'You Owe Us.' It reads.