I didn't think this would be this long. But eh.

Naruto fic.


Alternatives

“Hey,” Naruto says, and Shikamaru opens the door wider.

“For how long?” Shikamaru asks. Naruto shrugs.

“About four days,” he answers. “But knowing him, it’d take six.”

“Right,” Shikamaru says, and walks back inside. He leaves the door open, and Naruto tugs once at his backpack before following.

+

The first time Naruto knocked on his door with a backpack, Shikamaru didn’t open the door wider.

Instead he asked why he was here, and Naruto looked away. “Sasuke’s on a mission. For a week.”

Shikamaru frowned, and wondered if that was a valid answer to his question at all. He thought of asking again, more clearly this time, but Naruto was glaring at his own feet and biting his lip. He thought against it.

“Don’t eat up all my ramen,” was all he muttered before turning and going back to his couch. The door was left ajar, and Naruto pushed it open wider and went inside.

He stayed for eight days.

+

There is a comfortable silence between them during meals, but Shikamaru knows Naruto still can’t stand it sometimes. So Naruto blurts out stupid things in the middle of slurping noodles, things like “I wish he didn’t go away at all,” and Shikamaru always prefers the silence.

+

When Naruto comes over and stays there, Shikamaru makes it a point to buy food for three.

+

Naruto sleeps on a futon in Shikamaru’s living room. The first morning after he stayed, he complained loudly that the futon made his back hurt, and when Shikamaru couldn’t quite stand it anymore he told him he could leave if he thought the futon wasn’t good enough for his delicate body.

Naruto stuck out his tongue but kept quiet about it ever since.

+


It’s not like they don’t talk. They do, a lot. Or, Naruto talks a lot and Shikamaru absentmindedly plays with his rubrics cube and counts how many seconds it takes him to get all the colors on the right sides. Sometimes, though, Naruto says something that catches his attention, and Shikamaru occasionally nods.

Now, Naruto is babbling on about how Lee’s outfit is may be a little too green, and Shikamaru actually deigns this with a ‘yes.’

Naruto looks at him, and grins. Then he snatches the rubrics cube from Shikamaru’s hands and jumps up, props himself on Shikamaru’s windowsill. “Come get it if you can,” Naruto says, smiling with his teeth bared.

Shikamaru yawns and says, “We’re too old for this.”

There’s a pause, but Shikamaru doesn’t bother noticing these small things.

“That’s what he always says.” Naruto’s voice is strangely soft, but Shikamaru definitely hears it, notices—like it’s being said loud and clear and to him.

Naruto looks back at the setting sun behind him and frowns.

“Heh,” he says, when he turns back to Shikamaru. “I’m tired anyway,” and it’s a blatant lie because they didn’t even go out today. But Naruto throws the rubrics cube back at Shikamaru, and Shikamaru catches it deftly. He decides not to point obvious things out.

Naruto jumps off the windowsill and mutters something about food, and heads to the kitchen.

They don’t talk for the rest of the night, and Shikamaru wishes he preferred the silence like before.

+

The first time Naruto left after days of living with Shikamaru, he didn’t ‘thank you,’ or all those other things people should say after using somebody else’s apartment as some sort of refugee center. He just stood in the middle of the living room and kicked at his backpack (full again) on the floor, then suddenly walked over to Shikamaru, who was in the kitchen, cooking. Shikamaru had the air of a person who didn’t care one bit, and he didn’t.

Naruto just rested a hand on his shoulder, and said, “You cook really well.”

Shikamaru said “Hn,” and an added “I’ll be seeing you, then,” but didn’t turn. Not even when Naruto’s hand left his shoulder.

He did stop stirring the soup long enough to watch Naruto shut the door behind him at the corner of his eye, though.

Once he heard the familiar click, he lowered the heat of the stove.

He hears that Sasuke is back the next day.

+

“Why aren’t you ever out on missions?” Naruto asks from the couch, his feet dangling off the back and head almost touching the ground. Basically he is sitting upside down, and Shikamaru is lying on the floor. Their heads are barely inches apart and he can feel Naruto’s hair brushing his forehead.

“I like resting,” he answers, with a yawn.

“And why do you always yawn?” Naruto presses on, “You sleep all the time.”

“Tch, I’m still sleepy all the time,” Shikamaru replies.

Apparently “Mm,” is all Naruto can say to that.

There’s a small silence that no one bothers to fill, then Shikamaru asks, “If you came over and found that I was on a mission, where would you go?”

Naruto doesn’t answer, but Shikamaru doesn’t like repeating himself so he doesn’t.

Later, when they’re washing the dishes, Naruto suddenly says, “I don’t know” and Shikamaru’s not the type to remember such trivial things as unanswered questions, but somehow right now he knows exactly what Naruto’s talking about.

He says, “Okay,” and tries not to think about the piles of missions he’s refused for no reason before this.

+

Naruto leaves exactly a week after he arrives. He doesn’t say ‘thank you,’ and as soon as he’s out the door Shikamaru folds up the futon in the living room and stuffs it in a closet.

+

The futon catches dust. For three months, Naruto doesn’t come over.

Shikamaru tries not to wonder if Sasuke’s stopped taking on missions, or if Naruto’s on any. He thinks he could ask around, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t care.

+

One night, four months after his last visit, Naruto knocks on Shikamaru’s door.

Shikamaru doesn’t open the door wider, frowns at him, eyelids heavy. “What.”

Naruto doesn’t answer for a long time and only stares at the ground. He waits for a few more seconds, but really, Shikamaru is too tired for this—he just came home from a mission and he needs to sleep, close the door and sleep. He gives up and begins to shut the door, but Naruto pushes it open again.

“Sasuke’s home, but—” Naruto says. “He—he hasn’t— Can I come in?”

Shikamaru squints at him, sighs. “Fine,” he says, and walks back to his bedroom, leaving the door open.

He falls asleep almost as soon as he hits his bed, but wakes up just enough to feel another weight on the opposite side of his mattress. He frowns tiredly as Naruto lies down beside him, keeping a decent distance between them.

“Futon,” Shikamaru says, partly because that’s all he can manage at the moment, and partly because the one word explains everything anyway.

Naruto ignores him and says, “I thought you didn’t go out on missions anymore.”

“Idiot,” Shikamaru says, turning his back on Naruto. “Can’t not go. I’d be useless.” And he thinks he’s never really cared about that before, and he still doesn’t. But he doesn’t want to think of any other reasons.

Naruto stays silent, and in a few minutes Shikamaru is snoring.

+

Shikamaru wakes up to the smell of ramen.

He trudges out of his bedroom and remembers Naruto, and sleeping on the same bed, and Sasuke’s home.

Naruto is eating exactly what Shikamaru expected him to be eating on the couch, in the same white shirt and brown pants as last night.

“Why are you here?” Shikamaru asks, and Naruto looks up.

“Hey.”

“Why are you here?” Shikamaru asks again, though he hates it. He needs to know, and he’s supposed to already know these things in the first place with his abnormally high IQ but he doesn’t and it pisses him off.

And there it is, that fucking silence again, and before he didn’t notice them but they stretch on too long now, and they’re there when he doesn’t want them, and they’re annoying him so much. “Why—“

“I wasn’t home when Sasuke came back the last time,” Naruto cuts in, voice unnaturally calm. “He asked where I’ve been, and why I had a backpack. I told him.”

Then Naruto laughs, all the while staring into his ramen. Shikamaru doesn’t say anything, waits.

“The bastard thought I was cheating on him.” Naruto looks up. “With you.”

Shikamaru’s eyes widen, and he says, “You denied it, right?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?” Shikamaru repeats, losing that cool he never really bothered about. Now that it’s gone, he notices it, and he clutches on to it, fails. “What do you mean sort of?!”

“He asked me if I felt anything for you,” Naruto says, and Shikamaru’s heart skips a beat. It’s an unfamiliar feeling.

“I didn’t… say no,” Naruto continues, and stands up. He closes the distance between them and Shikamaru doesn’t move when Naruto rests his forehead against his shoulder.

Shikamaru tries to keep his breathing steady for a long time, then Naruto says, “Say something.”

Shikamaru doesn't. Can’t. He was supposed to see this coming, should have seen it when Naruto stayed an extra day, when Sasuke kept glaring at him for no reason—he should have acknowledged these things and he should have seen right through them, and he shouldn’t be confused about actually wanting this.

But he is, and he needs to sit down and he needs to think.

He pushes at Naruto’s shoulders, and keeps him an arm’s length away.

“Go away for a while,” he says, voice calm, firm.

Naruto bites his lip and looks away. “Are you mad, or something?”

“I just need to think,” Shikamaru answers simply.

Naruto starts, but stops before anything comes out of his mouth. When he pulls back and nods, Shikamaru thinks that after all these years, maybe he has grown mature. Somehow.

When Naruto walks out the door, Shikamaru immediately does what he planned to do, and spends weeks doing it.

+

After twenty-six days, Shikamaru comes to a conclusion. It isn’t grand or anything, nothing that would be printed on sacred scrolls or anything like that, but it’s vital enough, and it changes things.

He knocks on Naruto’s door when he comes to this conclusion, and when Naruto smiles at him from the doorway he thinks about maybe sharing this revelation.

“I like you, and I don’t care about whatever it is you had with Sasuke,” Shikamaru declares. “You chose me.”

“I did,” Naruto agrees with a grin, and he steps forward and kisses Shikamaru lightly on the lips. When they part— too soon for Shikamaru, really— Naruto chuckles and knocks his knuckles on Shikamaru’s head. “For a super genius, that took way too long for you to figure out something so simple.”

Shikamaru snorts and says, “Simple minds immediately seize simple things without much intent. Like a frog’s tongue, you know? Just lashes out and grabs things.”

“You comparing my brain to a frog’s tongue?” Naruto demands, while pulling Shikamaru inside and shutting the door.

“I might be,” Shikamaru’s replies placidly, and kisses Naruto before he can quite come up with some really weak retort.

+

The next time Naruto is on Shikamaru’s doorstep, the door is wide open.

Now he has big boxes instead of a backpack, and Naruto immediately throws the old too-hard futon away to make way for all his things.

While he’s unpacking, much more enthusiastically than was really necessary, Shikamaru only mutters, “You’re buying your own food from now on,” but smiles to himself anyway.


End


Mmmm, it's 3 AM. Going to go swimming and karaoke-ing in about twelve hours, and this probably wasn't the best idea. -_-