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Shikamaru looked at the wall in front of him and sighed.
Temari had been pregnant for, like, a whole two months and Ino had already managed to drag them into a home improvement store to choose a color palette for the nursery. The nursery was actually a closet in their one bedroom apartment, with a magnificent area of 3.5 square meters, that happened to have a window. Up until the day before, the room had been somewhat of a library – book storage, at least – with two and a half IKEA BILLY shelves crammed against the two meter wall, with just enough space left to open the shelves' glass doors between them and the two seater sofa, that had its side smashed up underneath the window and was placed a little crooked because the other end was holding the permanently open door against the wall. C'mon, the wall is two meters long and the couch is, like, one-eighty, something had to give. They had managed to scatter the shelves around the apartment (one behind the living room couch, another half covering their bedroom window, and the thinner one actually ended up in the hallway smack dab in front of the bathroom door) and switch the sofa to the opposite wall, effectively emptying the room in order to do some deep cleaning. According to Temari’s spreadsheet, the next step would be to paint the walls and only then would they buy furniture for the baby; a crib, one of those changing tables with drawers for baby clothes, and some toys.
Anyway, that was he was staring at a wall of wallpaper samples inside a store he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember the name of (could be Something Something Hardware, House Depository, Lewis’s, Leonard Gandalf, Brico Market, Shikamaru does– not– know), and Sai was walking Temari through the fucking color wheel, talking about complementary tones, and color psychology. Karui and Choji were somewhere in the baby proofing aisle, Karui constantly complaining about moving while a literal miniature human being kicked at her bladder, and Ino was looking at gardening tools.
“What if we painted a mural?” his girlfriend’s voice sounded way too close to his ear.
“Hm?”
“A mural, Shikamaru. Something with a forest, for your family,” Sai walked closer to them, looking through the children’s wallpapers. “Or we could draw an Oasis, you know, for my family.”
“Woman, the baby will not care.”
“But I will! I’m going to spend, like, half of my waking hours in that room. Breastfeeding, pumping, burping, soothing, playing, reading, honestly just staring at him.”
“Wait– him?” Temari looked at him, seeming as surprised as he felt. They’d been calling the baby Baby , or Thing , sometimes even Tumor .
“I– I have a feeling it’s a boy,” she said with a smile on her face, “I’ll tell you more at home.”
“O-okay. Have you and Sai chosen the colors?” He looked back at Sai, who was tracing the lines of a cartoon-ish deer on one of the wallpapers.
“I have ideas,” he said, “What if I painted a deer on the wall? I know, with all certainty, that you’re going to start the child’s name with Shika,” he smiled, teasingly.
“Unfortunately, I’m sure you’re right,” Temari rolled her eyes and looked at the deer Sai had been studying. “Not this style, though, can you make it more realistic?”
“Are you going to start your child’s name with Ino, Sai?”
“Sure, I’ll make some sketches this week,” he smiled at Temari, “And of course, Shikamaru. I have no plans to derail your families’ wonderful tradition. I even took the Yamanaka name,” Sai smiled at him, and Shikamaru could see how genuinely he meant it.
Karui and Choji had already chosen their daughter’s name, Chocho, to keep up with the Ino-Shika-Cho tradition. Their children would be the seventeenth generation of this trio, if they kept it up. If he were to be honest, Shikamaru liked it, he liked how something as simple as a couple of syllables could create a family bond between a few people. He didn’t love all other Nara traditions, but the Ino-Shika-Cho naming one was one he could keep up.
Choji had always wanted to be a father, and when he took over the Akimichi business and proposed to Karui, they decided to try to conceive. Their – his and Temari’s – baby had been an accidental pregnancy, but not really unwanted. They had intended to wait a few more years, maybe until Shikamaru’s PhD was halfway done and not just starting, but it had happened and they were happy about it. Ino and Sai had been married for almost a year, and were now trying to conceive, too (“Might as well try too, baby,” Ino had said when they told them the news, “Our babies can be friends like us, that way,” and Sai had readily agreed). Technically, the three of them were only children, but Choji, Shikamaru, and Ino treated each other like siblings, he could almost compare the three of them to Temari and her brothers. Almost, because the history behind those siblings was something that can’t be fabricated, a history that resulted in daily hour-long calls at half past nine every night. So, even if they decided to not have any more children, they’d all have three, in a way.
The door opened and Temari walked Shikamaru inside the apartment, the apartment that had been his grandparents’, then his father’s, and now had been passed down to him in order to start his adult life more easily.
“We’re home?” He asked, feeling a hand on the zipper of his coat.
“Yeah, you spaced out a little bit,” Temari answered teasingly with a small smile as she took off his jacket.
“We didn’t buy paint,” he noticed, they hadn’t brought anything back from the store.
“Sai is going to sketch the mural first,” she hung their heavy winter coats on one of the little wall hooks, “Are you okay, honey? You’re spacing out more than usual.”
“I’m fine,” he stood and watched her go through the getting-home routine – putting their jackets away, their shoes on the shoe rack, her purse on the table, their keys on the bowl. “Just been thinking a lot,” he looked at her, “about this whole baby thing.”
Temari put her hands on both his cheeks, “Have you changed your mind?”
“No,” he shook his head, “The more I think about it, the more I want it,” he smiled, “Him, if we’re to trust your instincts.”
Taking him by the hand, Temari led them to their newly emptied closet and sat them on the couch, head on his shoulder, looking directly at the blank wall.
“I dreamt about it,” she smiled, her gaze moving down to the floor, “I dreamt of my mother caressing my belly and saying ‘My first grandson,’ like it was the most precious thing in the world.”
Shikamaru moved his arm around Temari, “I believe it, then,” he kissed the top of her head, taking in the smell of her honey shampoo, “I was going to suggest Shikari for a girl and Shikajin for a boy, but I guess we can discard the first one.”
“We can discard both, Sai wants Inojin as their boy name, so we better find a different ending.”
“Shikataro?”
“No,” she scrunched her nose in reply, “We have time, let’s not rush it.”
The following Saturday, Sai and Ino showed up at their doorstep at the unholy hour of nine in the morning. They had to make use of their spare key, because Shikamaru and Temari were both sound asleep, but none of them would complain about being woken up by the smell of freshly pressed orange juice and warm pancakes.
The two of them walked into their small kitchen while rubbing their eyes and yawning – Ino would even comment to herself how cute it was that they were so in sync. Sitting at the tiny high table, they started eating the food Ino had prepared without a word. God, they were lucky she knew they didn’t mean to be rude, who just scarfs down delicious homemade food without acknowledging the cook? That part only came after they cleared their plates, nice and fed.
“Good morning, Ino,” Temari said.
“Mornin’,” Shikamaru added, “Thanks for breakfast.” He kissed Ino’s forehead as he walked out of the kitchen and into the bathroom.
“You’re both so not morning people, it’s impressive.”
“That’s exactly why it works. Itachi was always in bed by ten and up by six, and he’d get upset that I was the exact opposite.” Temari downed the leftover orange juice from Shikamaru’s cup and started putting everything away in the dishwasher.
Ino snorted in response and grabbed Temari by the wrist, walking them to the previously-closet-now-nursery, where Sai stood looking at the wall with a sketchpad in hand.
“Which one of these do you prefer?” He showed them a few sketches of deer and forests and lakes, some more realistic, some more stylized. Shikamaru showed up behind Temari, a towel around his shoulders, his hair down and still wet.
“That one,” he stopped Sai’s leafing through the papers and pointed to a simple design, a few trees in the background surrounding a lake and a deer in the foreground, “It looks like the family home back in Nara, the one in the middle of our compounds.”
“It really does,” Ino smiled, “It reminds me of summers in middle school, when we used to go swimming every weekend.”
“It’s decided, then,” Temari claps her hands once, “I want the baby to know where it comes fro– where they come from? He, where he comes from. It’s a boy, I’m sure.”
“Ohohoh, then we’re the deciding factor on the majority. I think it’s time there’s two girls in Ino-Shika-Cho, we should work hard to have a baby girl, Sai.”
“We’ll have whatever our baby wants to be, Ino, as long as they’re at least half as cute as you,” Ino giggled, Shikamaru and Temari shared a look and faked a gag. Sai chuckled as Ino punched Shikamaru’s arm, “Give me a call when you paint the base color, I’ll come over to start drawing on the wall.” With a smile, he picked up his sketchpad and started walking towards the door.
Yet another week later, they were returning home from a trip to the paint store after a doctor’s appointment. This time, Shikamaru was carrying two 2.5 liter buckets of paint in a shade of green the store called “Glacial Green”. It was a pretty, soft, pastel-ish green similar to what Kankurou – the baby’s oldest uncle, and a graphic designer – had suggested. He had suggested something with a hex code, numbers, and letters, and they just gave it to the paint person at the store.
“Let’s go, I want to get this wall painted as soon as possible, I can’t wait until this baby is out of me.”
“Mari, it’s March, he’s due in September.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me that I have six more months of this and everyone says I’m at the easy part.”
They walked to their bedroom and got themselves changed into some shitty clothes; a pair of Shikamaru’s old gray sweatpants for Temari paired with a very old Master of Puppets t-shirt Kankurou had given her a few years back, Shikamaru wore some even older gray sweatpants and a t-shirt bought during his first Chess championship in highschool.
It’s apparently a rookie mistake, but they figured they could open the paint cans before covering the floor in plastic, you know, just to check if the color was right. Short story short, the paint was actually lilac and so is the closet floor, now. And their socks.
Temari stood looking at the small light purple puddle at her feet, tears building up in her eyes.
“This is the wrong color,” she sniffled, “And now the floor is all fucked. And my socks! I liked these socks!”
His girlfriend was straight up sobbing now, and Shikamaru had to bite his tongue to avoid laughing. “Today shall be known as the day of the Paint Fiasco,” he lost control and cackled, grabbing a small paintbrush and placing a dot of lilac on Temari’s nose.
“Shikamaru!” she giggled, grabbing a brush of her own and painting a big line along his jaw.
“Fiasco would be a funny name for a boy,” Shikamaru said, retaliating with a blob on her belly, right where the of had faded from the t-shirt. “Hey, this color is the same as the dress you were wearing the night we met.”
As Temari looked down to the lilac on her stomach, Shikamaru painted a line on her forehead. She yelped, gave him a shove, and he landed with his back on the paint puddle. The paint splashed everywhere – there were droplets on the door, a couple of splatters on the couch, some paint even made it down Shikamaru’s pants.
“Oops,” she scratched her cheek with the tip of her finger, “You’re right, it’s the same color. I’m surprised you remember,” she sat on his lap, one knee on each side of his body.
“I remember everything about you,” he had dropped the paintbrush and now took his hand to Temari’s nose, using his thumb to trail the half-dried paint on her cheek. “Like this moment, I’m going to remember it forever.”
She smiled, trailing her eyes to her boyfriend’s lips and lowering herself for a kiss. With their lips still pressed together, she whispered, “Maybe this day isn’t that big of a failure after all.”
“Oh!” He pushed Temari away, hands on her shoulders, “Shikadai! What do you think?”
“Hmm,” she pressed her chest against Shikamaru’s, “I like it.”
They had their foreheads pressed together, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes, Shikamaru thought. Until he felt a pair of hands slide under his shirt, and a bite to his bottom lip.
“Where were we?”