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“Do you think he’s going to look more like you or me?”
“Hm?”
Temari turned her head, her cheek squishing against the pillows as she spoke, “Shikadai. Who do you think he’s going to take after?” She was laying on top of the blankets, still clothed in a billowy, purple, maternity dress. Shikamaru’s eyes followed the movement of her hand as it dragged over her protruding stomach affectionately.
He turned to his side, the mattress beneath him bouncing slightly as he did. “Well it’s hard to say. Maybe he’ll start out looking like one of us but then when he grows up his face will change and he’ll look like the other.”
Temari snorted, “He’s not going to shape shift. I mean the obvious stuff, like his hair and his eyes.”
Shikamaru smiled and propped himself up on his elbow so that he could get a better look at her. She was about six months along by now and with each passing day her excitement was mounting. Shikamaru found it quite endearing, frequently entertaining conversations like this one if only just to get a rise out of her. “Oh, well then that’s easy. He’ll look like me,” he answered with a smirk.
Temari’s eyes widened, “What?” She tried to roll to her side to face him, but needed to grab on to his arm to hoist herself over all the way. “How can you be so sure?” she huffed once she was settled.
“Well,” he breathed, bringing his thumb and forefinger up to twist a piece of her hair between them, “you have blonde hair and green eyes.” Shikamaru released the strands in favor of cupping her cheek, meeting her phthalo green gaze as he did.
“Ok… and ?”
Shikamaru snorted and dropped his hand, “Those are recessive genes versus my black hair and brown eyes, which are dominant genes.”
Temari looked as if she were contemplating it before allowing a cheeky grin to grace her lips, “I don’t know if I’d call anything about you dominant , but continue.” She barely suppressed a giggle when he sighed defeatedly. All things considered, it was a pretty decent jab.
“Recessive genes just mean they’re more rare,” Shikamaru continued, attempting to push past his building blush of embarrassment, “When paired with a dominant gene there’s roughly a 1 in 4 chance that the recessive gene will end up being the winner.”
“Oh so now there’s winner genes and loser genes? And mine are the losers, is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s science Tem.” He reached for her hand then, missing the contact. He flipped it over so that it was facing up towards the ceiling so he could trace the lines on her palm with his index finger.
“Well everyone in my family looks pretty different,” she said wistfully. Temari seemed to soften, whether from his touch or from her own thoughts, he wasn’t sure. “I’m blonde like my mother but it’s a much lighter shade, honestly more like my uncle’s than hers,” she mused with a shy smile, “Both my brothers have reddish-brown hair like my father and mine and Gaara’s eyes are completely different from either of our parents. Everyone looks a bit different, like a grab bag of traits.”
Shikamaru hummed in acknowledgement. From the pictures he’d seen of her extended family, her statements proved to be pretty accurate. Her mother Karura had violet eyes, while her fathers were dark and beady, much like Kankurou’s. Gaara’s eyes were powder blue and Temari’s were the most beautiful emerald green he’d ever encountered. Frankly the siblings hardly looked related at all. If it weren’t for their similar temperaments and affinity for the macabre, he never would have pegged them for a family. “Well everyone in my family looks exactly the same,” he mumbled, his mind wandering to the various members of his clan who all looked like they had been copy and pasted next to each other.
Temari jolted a bit, drawing his attention back to her. She smiled, grabbing the hand he was still using to listlessly flit over hers, and placing it on her stomach. There was a beat of silence as she navigated to just the right spot, and then there it was—a little kick. It wasn’t the first time, but the occurrence was still a relatively new one and it never failed to amaze them both. Temari had gotten into the habit of grabbing his hand out of the blue so he could feel the kicks along with her.
They stayed like that for a moment in complete silence, waiting for him to move again. When it seemed like he was all kicked out for the moment, Shikamaru leaned his forehead against hers and quickly kissed the tip of her nose. “Only two kicks and he’s down for the count? Looks like he’s already taking after me in the laziness department.”
Temari slid her hand up his arm, pinching at the skin just above his elbow, “He’s just comfortable in there, that’s all. Don’t you go jinxing it.” Shikamaru smiled and closed his eyes. The hour was getting late and they really should be getting to sleep soon. Though, that would involve getting up, changing clothes and washing up, which all sounded like the last things on Earth he would like to be doing right now.
“So what happens if he ends up being blonde? Are you gonna kick him out of the clan?” Temari asked, circling back to their previous conversation.
Shikamaru laughed lightly, moving his hand a bit to rub at her rounded belly, “No…but he might get some weird looks.” He tried to imagine what it would look like—the classic Nara clan hairstyle but a blonde ponytail instead of a black one—and came up blank. He’d been the first of his clan, that he knew of anyway, to marry someone from another Hidden Village. Sure there had been some transplants from other villages across the land of fire, but none from somewhere like Suna. Temari was frankly exotic as far as his lineage was concerned. He grinned at the thought, “It doesn’t matter though, because he’s not going to be blonde.”
She reeled back slightly, trying to eye him through the growing darkness of their bedroom, “You said there was a 1 in 4 chance. So that means he could be—he could have green eyes too.”
“Roughly 1 in 4,” he corrected, “Still not good odds though, so I wouldn’t count on it.” Temari was shifting as if she were about to get up. He moved the hand he had on her stomach to loop around her waist and pull her closer.
She pushed against his shoulders, attempting to free herself from his selfish grasp, “My genes are going to beat your genes into a bloody pulp Nara, just you watch!”
“Mmhmm…”
She wriggled in his hold, “Everyone loves an underdog anyway. My genes are gonna kick your genes’ asses!” then adding as an afterthought, “Let me go, I need to get ready for bed.”
Shikamaru ignored the last bit, moving his head to rest in the crook of her neck, kissing the warm skin there and mumbling, “So does this count as that rematch you’re always bothering me about?”
Temari stilled and thought it over for a moment, reminiscing about the infamous match they’d had at their chunin exams where they’d first met. She’d been pretty adamant about rematches over the years, always trying and failing to convince him to break their long standing tie. “I think it qualifies,” she agreed with a sly smile.
“Alright then. You’re on.”
***
The nurse placed him in Temari’s waiting arms just as soon as they’d finished wrapping him up in blankets. Somehow, the pain seemed miles away when she looked at him—tiny, pink, and miraculously, already asleep. Shikamaru was at her side, frantically counting fingers and toes. “He’s perfect,” he said with disbelief.
Temari carefully leaned back into the pillows that were propped up on the hospital bed behind her. “Of course he is, he’s mine.” Shikamaru smiled, his eyes glassy with tears as he leaned over to press a kiss to her temple.
“Dad, can you fill out the birth certificate? Looks like mom’s got her hands full!” another plucky nurse chirped as she handed him a slip of paper and a pen. Shikamaru accepted it with a quiet ‘sure thing’ before waving her off. He was still in shock and probably would be for a long while yet. He couldn’t stop staring at him—he had to be the tiniest baby in the world.
“Make sure you spell it right,” Temari warned, though there was no ice in her tone. It was probably pretty impossible to be stern with someone when you were rocking your newborn for the first time.
Shikamaru pried his eyes away just long enough to fill out the form with shaking hands. At the bottom there was a line for hair and eye color. He looked back at his son, reaching a careful hand to push the blanket back from the top of his head. “Black hair,” he whispered. The tuft of fuzz on Shikadai’s head could hardly qualify as hair, but it was certainly dark enough to count as black.
Temari hummed, “And already fast asleep? He’s definitely taking after you it seems.” She sighed wistfully then moved a finger to tickle at Shikadai’s tiny hand, which opened and clamped around it happily. “Looks like I may be losing our rematch after all.”
Shikamaru brushed a hand over her hair, gently tucking some damp strands behind her ear. “Don’t worry about that now. Are you feeling ok? Does anything hurt?”
Temari huffed a laugh, “Yeah pretty much everything south of my belly button.”
“I can call the nurses back in,” he offered.
She sighed, adjusting the little bundle in her arms so she could get a better look at him. “In a minute, I just want a little more time to-” Temari cut herself off with a small gasp.
“What? What's wrong?” Shikamaru panicked, his eyes flitting from her to the baby in her arms. That’s when he saw it. Shikadai’s eyes were wide open and he was staring at them curiously. “Holy shit,” Shikamaru breathed as he gazed down at his son's brilliant green eyes, “It’s another damn tie.”