Chess [28] - {ShikaTema AU}
Hey, hi, hello. I’m here, I’m alive, and I’m stuck inside my house like every other poor soul on the planet. So what excuses did I have to not finish off Chapter 28? Absolutely none.
This is possibly the dumbest chapter of this fic yet, but I figured everybody was probably in need of something a bit more lighthearted right now so...
I hope that everyone is doing ok, and give my absolute best to you all! You can do it - keep safe please :))
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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Shikamaru pulled one of Kankuro’s hoodies over his messy hair with a grimace, and wiped the remaining sweat off his brow. “Are you sure I should be wearing this?” He felt dirty, and not just because of what the two of them had just done—again—that had actually been far less reckless than the first occasion, thank you very much.
But it didn’t feel right at all to be wearing this while his own jumper dried. “Not sure I’m totally comfortable with this, Tem. Don’t you have anything that doesn’t belong to your brothers?”
Pushing her own hair from her eyes, Temari raised her eyebrows. “You might’ve noticed that I’m a woman, and so I don’t exactly go out of my way to own many men’s clothes.”
He shoved his hands into the big pocket in the centre of the black hoodie and rolled his eyes to the back of his head. The Temari he knew best was back in the room, and even through her undeniably rose-tinted glasses she had to admit it was absolutely huge on him. It did look ridiculous. Maybe, now she thought about it, it was a little weird for him to wear that.
She jumped off the bed and toward her wardrobe. “You know what? You’re skinny…” Frantically she sifted through the bottom of the unit and pulled out a lavender sweatshirt. “So you’ll probably fit in this one. Take that off.”
“Christ,” he mumbled, pulling it over his head and dropping it on the bed. “Quickly though, woman, I’m freezing.”
Temari shook her head as she threw the jumper at him. She watched intently as he put it on, and his torso disappeared from view once more. Blinking herself out of her stare, she saw how his eyebrows had raised.
“You aren’t subtle, are you?”
“Excuse me,” she spat. “You didn’t have to come up here!”
A smile spread across his expression. “I basically did,” he scoffed, sitting back down on her bed. “You begged me to stay.”
“And you listened. Could’ve ignored me.” Temari squinted at him, sarky as anything, and her hips swayed as she walked out of the door. She thought about putting some trousers on before she braved the hallway, but something in her wanted the satisfaction of his jaw dropping as she sauntered out, and while she couldn’t see it, the clearing of his throat told her enough. “Back in a minute.”
“W-where are you going?” he stuttered.
“Just put some trousers on.”
“Wow—hypocritical woman.”
“This is my house!”
She slammed the bathroom door with a giggle and scurried over to the sink. Immediately her reflection caught her, and her gut felt empty. What was she doing? Why had she done that—again? Last time it was him, and she’d kept some of her dignity knowing that, but this time it was entirely on her. The smudged eyeliner, the patches of missing foundation, and the mess that sat atop her head: all of it screamed mistake.
But she could not, for the life of her, stop smiling.
With a simple flick of the wrist the tap was on, and she wiped away the mess on her face, slapping her cheeks a couple of times to remind herself how real this was. She tore a brush through the messy hair and let it all fall how it wanted, perfectly aware that she didn’t have the necessary equipment at hand to tame it. Not once did she think about the fact that, as of yet, the man currently perched in her bedroom would’ve seen her in every state after she stepped out of that door, but the nervous smile on her face remained. Temari cared so much what he thought of her, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that when she walked out of the bathroom she would be met with the same grateful and somehow unenthusiastic eyes. And she knew that behind that look was a great deal more care than he could visually express. But he didn’t need to. She knew.
Temari slapped her cheeks once again and rubbed her eyes, when she suddenly heard muffled shout followed by a loud click.
Her heart sunk, and her stomach flipped.
The door.
That meant one of two things: either he’d gone, which given his general manner was a possibility but a slim one, or someone was home. The latter meant hoping and praying with her whole being that she had shut her bedroom door behind her, Shikamaru had heard and thus hidden himself away, and—most importantly of all—it wasn’t Kankuro.
Without a moment to spare, Temari flushed the toilet and threw open the bathroom door, looking around, only to find Gaara stood in the doorway of her bedroom up the hall, a somewhat disgruntled look on his face. He turned to her, astonished, and shook his head.
Oh, thank God. Gaara.
“Gaara…” she repeated out loud, barefoot and easing towards him.
“Temari,” he replied. He beckoned her closer, and she obeyed regretfully, her head hanging slightly, and every ounce of pride she’d felt as she looked in the mirror a moment ago had gone. When she was finally close enough, he pulled her into a massive hug and buried his face in her neck.
She frowned, and peered over his shoulder into her room. A lump of black hair peered over the edge of the bed and immediately ducked down.
Thank god, she thought, sighing with relief as she caressed her brothers back slightly.
“Whats the matter?” she whispered. “Was it your date?”
Gaara didn’t seem as though he was going to cry or anything, he just felt floppy in her arms. “Yes,” he mumbled. “He was utterly bonkers.”
Shikamaru was spying again and frowned. He started miming spirals around his head, and Temari mouthed a stern ‘shut up’ before forcing her attention back to Gaara. “Was it that bad?”
“Not at all, and I suppose that’s the problem,” sighed Gaara. “I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but part way through eating I started worrying, because this man was properly strange and yet there I was; totally up for it.”
“Been there,” she chuckled. This, unsurprisingly, earned an eye-roll from her hidden companion.
“But really,” said Gaara, “it felt so wrong for me to feel suited to someone like that; somebody so loud and so extroverted. He was so lively, so cheery, and he was constantly talking—I barely even got a word in.”
Temari pulled away from their hug, giving Shikamaru a subtle glare as she did. “Sounds a bit self absorbed if you ask me.”
“No, not at all!” he insisted, slightly bashful. “Whenever I did speak he looked at me like what I was saying could not have been anymore important. It felt…” Gaara paused and looked into her room. “It felt easy, you know?”
“Good!” She smiled, genuinely happy that her brother had found somebody who showed promise in caring about him in the right way. “Well, I’m glad you had a great date.”
He nodded. “You, too.”
Temari scrunched up her face. “What do you mean?”
“With Shikamaru,” Gaara clarified. He crossed his arms and sighed. “That is where you went today, isn’t it?”
She had nothing to say for herself except trying, “Um…no?”
“You can come out, Shikamaru, if that is you,” Gaara sighed, and gave his sister a sombre smile. “You gave it a good go, but I knew as soon as I saw the jumper on the bed.”
With an awkward shuffle, Shikamaru got to his knees, but he daren’t stand up. Temari was glad for this unexpected awkwardness, but only in that moment did she realise that lack of trousers on her legs, and thus how what Shikamaru was doing it made the situation somehow more awkward.
The silence was unbearable, and as Gaara looked from her to Shikamaru, awkwardly rubbing his neck as he always seemed to be, Temari couldn’t bear it. She started to awkwardly chuckle and leant against the doorway. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
“Temari,” warned Gaara, “I’d argue it’s exactly what it looks like.”
“Hey, man.”
Temari’s eyes shot to Shikamaru, giving him a ‘shut-your-damn-mouth’ look, but he didn’t seem capable of paying any attention to it. The awkwardness had failed, and the oddly carefree bluntness was shining through.
“Shikamaru,” he smiled, holding out his hand across the bed. “It’s nice to finally meet you, you know, not over a phone.”
Gaara walked deeper into the room, leant over and shook his hand giving a sort of polite grunt in response. Meanwhile Temari stood on the sidelines, feeling undoubtedly like an idiot and by no means ready to be made an example of by her younger sibling.
“I’m assuming,” Gaara said, “that, like my sister, you are in fact not wearing trousers.”
Shikamaru’s mouth fell agape, and he spent the next ten seconds wrestling with his hair to get it up into a ponytail. “Well, erm…”
“Yes, okay, I thought as much.”
Temari hated the fact she couldn’t see Gaara’s face, but she knew if it was bad when he turned around she would probably cry. That wasn’t exactly something she wanted to do right now. Sure, in front of Shikamaru there had been the odd tear this evening alone, but no full on guilty sobbing, and that’s what she could feel brewing.
But then she saw Shikamaru looking at her and start biting his lip. He could see she was embarrassed, couldn’t he? He could tell she was uncomfortable, for sure, almost as uncomfortable as he appeared to be. Something was happening to his eyes that terrified her, and she new before he even moved that she was going to be powerless to this man’s stupidity all over again.
As he started to stand up she felt her eyes widening, and she almost ran towards him to get him to stop, but she was frozen solid.
And so there he was, just standing there at the far end of her bedroom in her purple jumper—which somehow still looked too big for him—and his boxers, arms crossed over his chest at the loss of pockets. How in any part of his mind was this a solution? How could he possibly think this could make anything better? What was worse was that Temari could see the ticking behind his tired eyes as he clearly scanned his own brain for a reason why he’d done this. He even opened his mouth to speak at one point, but a mere squeak came out, and Temari almost choked.
Suddenly Gaara’s shoulders started to quiver, and Temari felt herself creeping forward. “What?” she queried, grabbing a pair of joggers off her floor. “Gaara, what?”
He almost squeaked as he started speaking, and only then did she register it was a laugh. “I come home to find my sister and her boyfriend mid way through fornicating—”
She winced. “Oh, Gaara, any word but that one please.”
“Boyfriend or fornicating?”
“Both!”
Gaara cleared his throat and tried to calm down a little, but Temari could now see him chewing the inside of his cheek. “But then he shakes my hand and stands up whilst he has no trousers on, as if he has absolutely no shame.”
“Oh, man,” Shikamaru grimaced. “I can promise you I am utterly full of shame.”
“For what? Being with my sister?”
At this point Temari could see what was happening, and thought it best it ended right now. “Shikamaru…”
“No, no, not at all, mate,” he pandered. “I, um, we’re not actually…together. That wouldn’t be right, I just…we didn’t even, um—I just…” His eyes fluttered to the radiator on which his jeans were. “My clothes got wet, while we were out, so Tem—I mean Temari said I could borrow something?”
Temari sat down on her bed and rubbed her eyes. “Shikamaru, don’t bother. He’s a lawyer.”
“Fuck.”
At this point, Gaara somehow still seemed amused—happy even. Clearly he wasn’t quite impressed with the situation, but he didn’t look angry. This—the game of guilt he was playing with Shikamaru—was just one of his twisted interviews he liked to give people, thinking they were funny.
“Look, man, I’m sorry,” pleased Shikamaru. “I didn’t mean to offend anybody, ok? God this is just such a pain, I’m sorry, man.”
Gaara frowned. “Why?”
“Shikamaru, stop grovelling,” Temari sighed. “He’s not mad at you, he’s just being an asshole.”
“Excuse me, dear sister?”
“Come on, you know you are,” she groaned, punching him gently in the gut before looking back at Shikamaru’s worried expression. “Relax. He does this.”
Shikamaru hardly looked at ease, but he nodded and frowned slightly. “Can you pass me my jeans so I can pretend I didn’t just meet your brother in my underwear?”
“Don’t bother,” Gaara chuckled. “Would you mind if I had a word with my sister, however?”
His eyes shifted to Temari who nodded precariously. “Sure.” He sad back down behind the bed, sinking down into what she would only assume was a puddle of inconsolable embarrassment—that’s how she’d feel in his shoes—as Gaara dragged her into the hallway.
“What were you thinking?” he whispered at her, shutting the door.
Temari groaned and rubbed her eyes. “I know, I know—I’m shameful, you don’t need to tell me.”
“No, I didn’t mean doing him again.” Gaara blushed, as if he actually felt awkward. “I meant bringing him back here.”
“What?”
“What if Kankuro was here?”
“But he’s not,” she retorted. “I knew you were both out, I’m not stupid.”
“To be honest with you, Temari,” Gaara sighed, “I feel really bad for that man.”
“You’re not mad at him?”
“Mad at him? For what?”
“I don’t know, for sleeping with your sister?”
Gaara shook his head, chuckling. “No, what you guys do isn’t my business,” he said, calmly and matter-of-factly. “However, he didn’t deserve to have to meet me in his pants.”
“You say that to me like I had any idea this would happen.”
“Would you have liked to meet his sister in your bra?”
“He doesn’t have a sister.”
“Mother, then.”
Temari rolled her eyes. “That’s completely different, Gaara.”
“How is it different?” he shot back. “I apologise if I seemed harsh on him, I was merely trying to lighten the mood, but it seemed clear to me that he wanted to make a good impression.”
“You think?” she laughed. “Why would he want to do that?”
Her brother frowned and stepped back from her. “I would think because he cares about you, and he wants to stick around?”
She deflated her stiff shoulders and leant against the wall. “As if.”
“He could have left by now, Temari, but he’s waiting patiently in that room.”
“He’s just too awkward to leave, Gaara. Who wouldn’t want to after that?”
There was a slight gentle knock from inside her room, and the door creaked open the slightest crack to reveal Shikamaru in all his lanky glory, hands safely in pockets of his jeans—thank god he’d clothed himself—biting on his lip. “I’m sorry I fucked up. This really isn’t how I wanted to meet you, man,” Shikamaru sighed. “And I’m sorry, Tem, that this is how I am. I don’t know what to do in the moment without a plan.”
Temari closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She slowly reached out and tugged on his pretty purple sleeve slightly. “It’s fine. You need a smoke?”
He nodded, leaning against the threshold. “If you want me to go home, I can. Either of you, that is.”
“Nonsense,” interjected Gaara, before Temari could even get a word in. “There’s a huge window in my room that opens out a great deal. Just sit by that—no need to go out into the cold then.”
Shikamaru nodded. “Thanks, man,” he said, fishing a cigarette from his pocket and placing it between his lips. “You really don’t have to.”
“I repeat: nonsense. Just shut it when you’re done.” Gaara smiled softly and point in the direction of his bedroom.
As Shikamaru raised a hand in recognition, Temari engulfed her little brother in a huge hug, squeezing so tight Gaara was unsure she’d ever let go. She kissed his forehead and ruffled his hair a little bit with a big grin. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much for not being mad at him.”
Gaara shrugged and elbowed her. “We all know I’m the cool brother,” he joked, and stepped back towards the stairs. “Besides, he is pretty attractive, I cannot blame you. Keep hold of him.”
“We aren’t together Gaara,” she groaned, rolling her eyes.
“Nobody is buying that.”
“Shut up.”
She looked over toward him, perched on the windowsill and exhaling a drastic amount of smoke out into the night air. Even now he had his jeans back on, she couldn’t expel the picture of him stood stiffly without them, staring awkwardly at her brother, and she started to chuckle as she heard Gaara patter down the stairs.
“Are you seriously laughing at me?” she heard him muttered. His dark eyes shot her way, half-open with the slightest mischievous glimmer, and she immediately giggled. “You are. What a bitch.”
Temari’s eyes widened. “Wow, brave move from the man who thought that was a good move!” She shuffled into Gaara’s bedroom, feeling the cold of his wooden floors hit her toes and work its way up her bare legs. As she moved closer she slipped on the joggers in her hands before reaching out to him. “Gimme.”
“Give you what? My hand?”
She blushed. “The cigarette, idiot.” He held it out and she snatched it, perching herself beside him. “That really was,” she said between tokes, “the most stupid I’ve ever seen you.”
Shikamaru rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d argue but let’s be real here, I haven’t got a leg to stand on, have I?” She shook her head and he immediately began to chuckle. “I think I know why I did it.”
“No…” Temari exhaled and handed it back to him, shaking her head. “There cannot be any real cognitive thought gone into that. I refuse to believe it.”
The laugh he had barely dwindled as he puffed on the cigarette and tapped the ash outside. “Sadly, yeah.” His eyes focused in on her and pulled the corners of his mouth up into a massive great big smile. “You looked so embarrassed, you know?”
She cocked her head at him. “Why does that mean you do that?” She was doing an awful job of containing her giggles. “Surely then you keep your legs very much hidden behind the bed?”
“Yeah, right,” he chuckled, blushing. “You’re completely right, but apparently my brain went awol and decided I needed to make myself as embarrassed as you looked.” He took a long drag and hung his head, shaking it as he laughed out the smoke. “As if that would have actually made you feel any better.”
“You wanted to be embarrassed?” she laughed. “Are you ill?”
“I don’t know—you tell me!” He dropped the dying cigarette out the window into the rain after one final puff. “Forget it.”
“I can’t do that.”
“No, ‘course you bloody can’t.”
Temari giggled, unable to focus on anything but his eyes and how genuinely happy they were. If he had really stood up to try and embarrass himself—so that the two of them were then ‘in it together’ if you will—then that was the most ridiculous and sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her. And, frankly, she wasn’t sure how to process that. She wouldn’t have done that—the thought wouldn’t even have crossed her mind! But her mind wasn’t like Shikamaru’s. It was far less complex, and obviously far less daft at times, and perhaps, she thought, even a little more selfish.
She stepped a closer to him, the tips of her toes touching his, and she looked up at him. Her eyes were narrow, her lips pouted slightly. “Shikamaru,” she said.
“Tem?”
“I’m not gonna lie, I am not so good a person that I would meet your family in my underwear to make you feel less of an idiot.” She raised her eyebrows. “Partially because it doesn’t work, but also I’m just not up for it, alright?”
He smirked. “I totally understand.”
“I will wear clothes that belong to me and cover what needs to be covered.”
“And I’m sure they will be very grateful.”
She could feel his hand encroaching on the small of her back, and she wriggled a little closer into his grip, resting her head on his chest. Her arms weaved round his torso as her mouth settled into a smile. “Thank you, though,” she told him. “For not wanting me to feel alone.”
Shikamaru shook his head with a smile, and buried his face in her hair. “You always stop me feeling alone. It’s the least I could fail to do.”
The two of them laughed softly, Shikamaru pressing a kiss on the top of her head as his eyes opened to the room of a stranger. He held her closed to him and felt all the warmer despite his wet trousers with her sweetly giggling with him.
When a figure appeared in the doorway with a mug of tea in his hands and a wide, proud smile, Shikamaru noticed only one of those things. And, with it, he proudly pressed an even more sincere kiss onto the woman’s forehead as she pried herself away from him. He looked down into his favourite colour, that miraculous shade of so many different hues amalgamated into the perfect shade, and smiled.
“You work at a florist,” said Gaara from the doorway. “Can I be a pain and ask you to put aside four litres of soil for me on Monday?”
Temari’s head turned to shush her brother, but Shikamaru’s eyes didn’t move an inch, and over the woman’s squabbles he said a loud, “Yeah, man—no worries.”
“Shikamaru, don’t. He’s just trying to interfere.”
Shikamaru shrugged and rubbed the small of her back. Time slowed, almost to a halt, as she looked back at him and frowned. Every little wrinkle around her skeptical eyes, the frustrated smirk worming its way onto her lips, it all pointed him in the direction of some overwhelming—and really quite terrifying—feeling.
Oh, fuck, he realised as she starting laughing again, squeezing his hands once and turning away. Holy fuck.
“Are you coming downstairs with us then?” Temari teased, strolling out of the room, and looking back at him when he didn’t move. “You alright?”
He nodded feebly and tucked his hand back in his pocket to grab the familiar cardboard carton. “Fine. I’ll be down in a sec.”
Temari nodded and sauntered off with a smile, but Gaara hung back, and the eyes of both men locked for a second. “You sure everything is ok?” asked the redhead calmly. “You look a it shaken all of a sudden.”
The flame of Shikamaru’s cheap, plastic illuminated his face for a moment as they stared. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but Shikamaru didn’t know what to say. He felt far too flooded with emotions to reply, but it was weird not to. “Yeah, I’m sound,” he smiled, raising his hand in a little salute. “Don’t worry about me.”
“She can be a bit of a handful,” observed Gaara, “but it’s worth it.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” he chuckled.
Gaara nodded. “She’s the best sister in the world.”
Shikamaru smiled. “I’ll be down in a sec, mate.”
“She cares a lot about you, Shikamaru,” he told him, a hint of warning in his voice. “I’m sure you feel similarly.” Before he could reply, Gaara nodded. “I know, don’t worry. I’ve been where you are—it’s hard to know how to feel.”
The unlit cigarette between Shikamaru’s fingertips shuddered. “It was,” he mumbled, “but now I don’t know…”
Gaara smiled and took a sip of his tea. “I didn’t say this, and I’m not encouraging you, but you are allowed to feel it.”
Before then Shikamaru might’ve asked what ‘it’ was, or shrugged his shoulders at the man, but he didn’t need to do that any more. Instead he smiled and lit his cigarette, nodding at the kind-hearted soul in the doorway, because he did know, and he did feel it. There was no reason to fear or deny it anymore.
There was no chance in hell he was going to be able to tell her or anyone, and it terrified him to his very core. There wasn’t some sudden extra warmth in his heart, or an overwhelming sense that his life was never going to be the same. It was just suddenly there, at the forefront of his mind, impossible to ignore. He hated it, and he never wanted it to change.
He loved her—with every part of his being he loved her, more than he’d ever loved anything. And now he felt it, he physically couldn’t stop feeling it.
But, as his brain always did, it focused in on the most pressing detail of this new situation. He would have to stop, for one of the millions of reasons it wasn’t right. Worse than that, was the fact that he couldn’t even imagine how he’d do that.