Baby Blues
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/32943271.
Rating:
Mature
Archive Warning:
No Archive Warnings Apply
Category:
F/M
Fandoms:
Naruto, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Relationship:
Hyuuga Hinata/Nara Shikamaru
Characters:
Nara Shikamaru, Hyuuga Hinata
Additional Tags:
Smoking, Cheating, Mentions of a one night stand, mild major character
injury, Naruto RarePair Week 2021
Language:
English
Collections:
Spell's Completed Tumblr Requests!
Stats:
Published: 2021-07-31 Words: 2,139 Chapters: 1/1
Baby Blues
by SpellCasterLight
Summary
He growled his following sentence, every word punctuated by a point towards the ceiling, but
also in the direction of the stairs, in the direction of the baby's room, in the direction of-
"Is. She. Mine?" [Shikamaru x Hinata] Naruto Rare Pair Week - Day 7 Prompt: Free Day
Notes
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto in any way shape or form. This story is purely for
entertainment not profit.
Author's Notes: A Tumblr request for an angsty story made from the line "About the baby it's
yours?" and boy did I provide! I made myself both sad and angry writing this! My next
[Shikamaru x Hinata] needs to be super sweet to make up for it!
Please read the warnings for this one!
Pairing Warning: It also goes without saying but if [Shikamaru x Hinata] isn't your thing turn
back now.
Warnings: Smoking. Cheating. Mentions of a One Night Stand. Mild Major Character Injury.
Event & Prompt: Naruto Rare Pair Week - Day 7 Prompt: Free Day
Translations: If you want permission to translate one of my stories leave me a comment or a
Tumblr ask before translating!
Audio fics: If you want permission to record one of my stories leave me a comment or a
Tumblr ask before recording!
Shikamaru hadn't smoked in years, hadn't ever wanted to touch the things again, but the
moment he left the party to welcome in the new baby of their friend group, he went straight
to a shop, bought a packet and a lighter and found a place to hide.
Half the packet was gone, and his hands were still shaking.
He knew; the Nara didn't know how he knew, but he just knew. The baby's hair was Hinata's,
her eyes were Hinata's, but something, something about the baby was his.
The fingers holding his latest cigarette shook so badly he had to stabilise them with his other
hand.
His thoughts were so clear and yet so hazy like they came in and out of focus like Shikamaru
saw them through a microscope someone kept messing with.
He had to know.
Forehead falling into his palm, eyes scrunched up so hard it was nearly as painful as it was
trying to breathe at that moment.
He had to know. The not knowing would kill him.
He knew Naruto's schedule like the back of his hand, the Uzumaki, he couldn't think of him
right now, or the small number of nerves he still had left would leave him, disappear like
smoke never to return.
Naruto was at the Hokage Tower with the Kazekage, meaning Temari would be there too, he
couldn't think about her either, and Boruto, Himawari and Shikadai were with Inoiji over at
Ino's, he had all night, the pieces were perfect, it was realistically now or never.
As soon as Hinata opened the door, her smile fell, and her eyes went wide.
She knew, she knew and she didn't tell him.
"Hinata."
"Shi-Shika."
He pushed his way into the house, and Hinata quickly closed the front door like she was
hiding something, and she was, wasn't she? Just not him being in her home.
She followed him blindly to where the Nara was pacing the living room carpet.
"Tell me right now."
Her internal struggle manifested into wild ungraceful jolts of her arms. "Shika I-"
When she stopped with a jaw close so firm he heard her teeth bash off each other, he spun on
the spot to have his back to her Shikamaru couldn't even bear to look at her.
But he still had to know.
"Is she mine?"
"I don't-" his back straightened, and his vision took in the cracks in the white-painted ceiling
for something anything to do when he heard her let out a strange, desperate mix of a sob and
a sigh. The fact that Hinata didn't even ask what he was talking about was already highly
telling. "-I don't kn-know."
He growled low and dangerous in his throat.
"You're lying."
"I'm not I-I-"
He spun on his heel to look her dead in the eyes again, fury pounding through his blood and
making his hearing fuzzy and his usually well placed verbal filter run for the hills.
"The power of the nine-tailed fox suppressed the bloodline limit of the byakugan for Boruto,
his blonde hair and blue eyes, all of which come from Naruto. Himawari has your eyes but
his whisker marks."
"But your newest daughter," Shikamaru felt his lips pull up in the usual smirk he had when he
figured out a puzzle, and when he caught himself about to do it, Shikamaru squashed it down,
this was no victory, so very far from it. "Little Himika, she doesn't have any of those, nothing
tracing her back to Naruto at all, and so I have to wonder-well no, not wonder, I'm fairly sure
I already know."
He growled his following sentence, every word punctuated by a point towards the ceiling, but
also in the direction of the stairs, in the direction of the baby's room, in the direction of-
"Is. She. Mine?"
Running both hands fingers through her short purple locks, her fingers shaking so bad strands
of her hair broke off to fall in front of her face at different times like Hinata was physically
trying to make a curtain between them.
"I don't know."
His patience and his self-control were on a thinning tangled thread, his hands slid over his
face, and the Nara forced himself to breathe, or the last parts of that thread would snap.
His arms fell to his sides after making his normal hand gesture for only a split second.
"How long have we known each other, Hinata?"
She blinked rapidly at the change in conversation direction, and it even made her seem to
calm down slightly.
"Umm m-most of our li-lives."
His dark eyes hardened again, making her shoulders tense back up.
"And somehow, you have managed to lie to me more this evening than you have in our entire
lives. So I will ask you politely one more time."
Taking the needed firm steps to be in front of her made her take quick tiny, frightened steps
back, their eyes never leaving each other. Only when her back met the bookshelf blocking
further escape did she stop moving.
The arms he threw out on either side of her shoulders with such force that a few books fell to
the floor made her whimper pathetically.
"Is Himika my daughter?"
"Yes," Shikamaru could see the last of her willpower to lie slide away from her lavender
tinted white eyes. "The baby's yo-yours, Shika."
He knew it. He Kami damn knew it but hearing it spoken so plainly cut him worse than any
kunai could.
"Why?" His forehead fell onto her shoulder, and it was a testament to how terrified she was
of his reaction because she flinched so hard his head hit off the wood on one of the shelves.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
When Hinata didn't reply right away, his genius-level intellect worked against him, creating
vast and intricate scenarios, each one more soul-crushing than the last.
"You were hoping I wouldn't figure it out."
"No, it's not-"
"Then what was it? You-you didn't want to accept that she was mine? You didn't want to
remember the night you came crying to me and poured your heart and I-"
"No! Shika," the desperation she suddenly said his name with made some of his agonised
thoughts clear. When she placed her gentle warm hands on his cheeks, the Nara slammed a
hand over one of hers and buried his distraught face in her palm. "No, I wa-wanted-"
"What?" He didn't know what she was going to say. He didn't even know what he wanted her
to say. "What did you want, Hinata?"
His hands were around her throat, holding her and pushing her further into the shelves like he
wasn't in control of himself. Her hands clawed at his wrists, her nails biting out chunks of his
skin, making him bleed, but he only squeezed her throat hard once, making her gag. He was
only making himself angrier. "Tell me right now Hinata or I swear I will-"
Tears dripped from her eyes onto his hands, and the watery smile that tried to make its way
onto her face to accompany it made no sense to him. "I wanted you."
As happy as his heartfelt at that, his common sense bat it aside easily. If she wanted him,
cared about him, she would have told him.
"You used me. I-"
He released her violently when Shikamaru felt his hands and the very shadows around him
want to squeeze again in his anger.
"-I told you how I felt about you before in that stupid Kami damn moment of weakness when
we were both so so stupid and you, you weren't even going to tell me about her."
He was wrong. Shikamaru didn't want to know. Now he would have this information in his
brain forever, tormenting him silently, pulling him apart every time he saw that precious
beautiful baby Himika in Hinata's arms he would-
He turned and started power walking to the front door.
"Shika. Shi-Shika wait-"
She grabbed one of his arms in both her hands and pulled, making him stall in his steps.
"Unless you want me to either kill you or vomit on your carpet, I need to-"
She kissed him, she had the nerve to spin him around and kiss him, and didn't he feel a fool
when it took every ounce of his willpower not to kiss back.
He shoved her harshly, and Hinata merely crumpled to the floor.
"Get off me."
Pushing herself up with her hands but remaining on the floor made a true sense of
hopelessness fall over the room.
"Are you going to tell ev-everyone?"
"About our secret love child?" Shikamaru forced himself to swallow before staring at the
ceiling again, hating the words about to come crawling out of his throat. "Or about a one-
night stand mistake come back to bite us? I don't know," he felt his own sob tear out of his
throat before folding over and rubbing the palms of his hands into his eyes sockets so hard he
started to see stars. "Which is it? Because Hinata, I honestly don't know."
"Lo-Love."
His head snapped up, and even though the tears and the red eyes and the out of place lavender
locks and her place half slumped on the floor, he could see she was truthful.
It only seemed to hurt more. If Shikamaru knew Hinata only considered their one night
together nothing more than a forgettable memory, he could hate her and try to move on.
"No," the Nara sighed deeply, and he could feel tears beginning to prick at his eyes. "I'm not
going to say anything. I don't have the right."
"The ri-right?"
"It's not the baby's fault, is it?" He couldn't use Himika's name, not again; if he was going to
be able to keep any decorum at all, he needed to start mentally separating himself. "I don't
have the right to break up two families."
"Then what will you d-do?"
"There's nothing to do."
He needed to leave. Shikamaru had his answer. He knew the facts. He needed to find
somewhere to break down by himself. To put all this new information in a metaphorical box
and push it far far away.
"I need to leave."
"Shika," the Nara hated that he paused, hated even more than he wanted to go back and throw
himself on the floor beside her, wrap her up in his arms, to apologise and tell her everything
would be alright. "I didn't lie, I promise, I love you. I just," he heard her sob. "Don't re-really
know h-how."
He hated that he understood that, but he did. A part of him had always cared about the Hyuga
heiress. It was if as soon as Mirai came into the world and they started looking after her
together, a whole new world of late nights, secret smiles, gentle accidental touches and jokes
only they understood appeared and surrounded them both.
They could have even become something, but it always felt like they were never on the same
page, never both ready and wanting to take that next step from friends into romance at the
same time, like a race they were constantly overtaking the other in then falling behind.
But this, whatever happened between them, it may have very well been love, but it wasn't
good. They had the making to destroy lives, so many lives, all because of one moment of
unhappiness for the two of them in what was usually extraordinary lives they had built with
their significant others.
Their love for each other that was so pure once was now dirty and ill-timed and tainted.
Gulping down the sick that wanted to escape him, he managed to suck in a chestful of stuffy
air.
"And I-"
If he could go back, back to that one night they had both ended up running into each other,
where Naruto had left all raising of their children to her for so long she had left to calm down
and Temari had kicked him out for something so stupid it didn't even matter anymore...he
hated it but he would still probably have pulled her into that first kiss and mentally rejoice
when she pulled him closer. What a monumental fool he was, what fools they both were.
He took a second to slam his forehead into the door frame, Kami dammit it all even after
everything that happened, even after everything he knew now-
"-I love you too," her outline was blurry through the tears falling down his face, and it only
seemed to make her cry harder. "But it's not enough, I'm not even sure it ever was."
The last thing Shikamaru heard before he closed the front door behind him was Hinata
curling up further on the carpet and sobbing.
Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!