Chapter Text
It started, as most of Shikamaru’s annoyances did these days, with a meeting that should’ve been over fifteen minutes ago.
The council chamber was half-empty, and Kakashi sat at the head of the table looking about three blinks away from sleep. Naruto was supposed to be there to 'observe the process of village governance,' which mostly meant he slouched in his chair, whispered too loudly, and occasionally leaned over to draw smiley faces in the margins of Shikamaru’s agenda.
Sasuke was ostensibly present as a guest consultant on rogue shinobi reintegration. He hadn’t spoken once.
Not unusual.
Sasuke rarely said much in these meetings—he listened, he glared at inefficiency, and occasionally offered dry, lethal assessments that made half the room uncomfortable. Today, he hadn’t even bothered with that. He was silent, dark eyes pinned somewhere in the middle distance like he was three layers removed from the present.
Naruto had positioned himself next to Sasuke as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And it was. At this point, no one batted an eye when the two of them sat nearby, or stood side by side in formation, or understood each other’s half-spoken thoughts like they’d trained on the same wavelength.
Naruto and Sasuke spent time together—too much time, probably, but Shikamaru had long stopped pretending to understand whatever gravitational field existed between the two of them. The war had ended, Sasuke had been pardoned (barely), and Naruto… Naruto had latched on like forgiveness was a mission he couldn’t walk away from.
So no, it wasn’t the proximity that bothered Shikamaru. It wasn’t even the way Naruto lit up whenever Sasuke entered a room, like he was trying not to show it but failed every single time. That was old news. That was baked in.
It was the quiet.
It happened around the forty-minute mark. Someone from the agricultural district was rambling about soil saturation reports, and Naruto was half-asleep, head propped in his hand. Sasuke, whose tolerance for village bureaucracy was even lower, still had his eyes fixed on some indeterminate point across the room.
Then Naruto shifted—slow, unthinking—and nudged Sasuke’s boot under the table.
Not a kick. Not a nudge like hey, pay attention . No. It was soft. Absentminded. Familiar .
Sasuke didn’t flinch, didn’t glare, didn’t move away. He just… looked down for a beat, and then nudged him back.
That was it. That was all.
Shikamaru felt his stomach drop.
It was a quiet thing, like the beginning of a cold. A subtle ache behind the eyes. A sense of something off-kilter in a room he’d walked through a hundred times before.
Still—he gave himself an out.
Probably nothing. Just them being weird again. They had a thousand little habits that looked strange from the outside: bickering like old men, training until they both bled, communicating in grunts and half-scowls like feral cats that had learned the same language by accident. Codependency, he’d once muttered to Ino. She’d nodded without looking up from her nail polish and said, “They’ll either kill each other or get married. Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse.”
But this was different, and he knew it.
Still. Denial was a shinobi skill, and Shikamaru was a master tactician.
Maybe it was just a thing. A glitch. A moment. Naruto nudges everyone. Sasuke just… happened to respond. Weird, yeah, but not illegal. Not treasonous. Not romantic.
He clung to that thought like a man clings to a bad umbrella in a storm.
Until, five minutes later, Naruto laughed at something—some stupid comment about the rice tax—and Sasuke turned his head just slightly. Barely a smile. His eyes softened.
That was it. That was the killing blow. Shikamaru didn’t even know Sasuke’s eyes could soften. They had two settings: dead-eyed and murder. This was neither.
The comfort crushed. The casualness of it. Sasuke looking at Naruto like he'd memorized every part of him and was still finding new things to catalog. Like he wasn’t just tolerating Naruto’s presence. He was listening to it, tuned to it like a frequency no one else could hear.
Naruto didn’t look at Sasuke when he laughed, but it didn’t matter. He looked safe . At ease in a way Shikamaru had only seen when ramen was involved.
Ah, Shikamaru thought, blankly. So this is where I become the villain.
He stood up halfway through the next discussion on irrigation, muttered something about checking a map, and left before someone could stop him. Outside, he leaned against a wooden pillar and stared at the sky like it had personally betrayed him.
Of course Naruto had fallen for the one person in the entire village who emotionally operated like a stone wall. Of course Sasuke—fucking Sasuke —had the audacity to not only come back from treason but also apparently develop the capacity for fondness .
It was a worst-case scenario, and Shikamaru had run plenty of those in his life. This one came with paperwork, emotional fallout, and at least three diplomatic headaches he could already feel coming like weather pressure behind his eyes.
He dragged a hand down his face, palm rasping against stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave in two days. The sun was too bright. The wind too loud. The entire world too full of unspoken romantic tension and agricultural policy.
He was in hell.
“Shikamaru-san?”
He blinked. A young chunin stood a few feet away, squinting at him with cautious concern. She had a stack of scrolls in her arms and the expression of someone deeply unsure if this was above her pay grade.
“You okay?”
Shikamaru stared at her for a long beat, then sighed. “I need a cigarette,” he said, “and maybe to fall down a well.”
The chunin made a small, uncertain noise of understanding.
“Deep well,” Shikamaru added, as if that clarified something. “One of those ancient ones. Bottomless, preferably.”
She nodded solemnly. “Should I… get someone?”
Shikamaru squinted up at her, briefly considering the logistics of asking her to bring him a shovel, a resignation form, or a time-traveling scroll of some kind. Instead, he just waved a hand in slow, dismissive circles.
“Nah. Go save the village or alphabetize something.”
The chunin hesitated, opened her mouth, closed it again, then pivoted on her heel with the urgent energy of someone who desperately did not want to get involved in whatever emotional collapse was unfolding behind her.
Smart kid.
Alone again, Shikamaru let his head thunk gently back against the wooden post. He closed his eyes and tried to remember a time before Naruto had fallen in love with an ex-terrorist who still gave council members existential dread by simply existing in the room.
He could see the future too clearly now. A scroll delivered at midnight. Sasuke going on some emotionally self-flagellating solo mission without telling anyone. Naruto following him into a snowstorm. Shikamaru being the one left behind to write the mission reports and manage the fallout when they inevitably came back together more in love and less emotionally regulated than before.
He groaned softly. A long, low, soul-weary sound.
He needed a drink. Or ten.
Instead, he straightened, dusted off his vest, and muttered to himself, “Right. Time to go tell the future Hokage he has shit romantic instincts.”
And with all the enthusiasm of a man marching toward his own execution, Shikamaru turned and went back inside.
---
Naruto was still in the Hokage office when Shikamaru found him again.
He was slouched in one of the guest chairs, half-asleep with his head tilted back, mouth slightly open, legs spread wide like he’d claimed the space by force. Sasuke was gone—vanished like he always did when no one was looking—and the rest of the room had cleared out after the meeting finally, mercifully, ended.
Shikamaru didn’t knock.
He stepped in, shut the door behind him with a soft click, and leaned back against it like he needed physical support for what was about to happen.
Naruto cracked an eye open. “Meeting’s over,” he said. “Unless you’re here to deliver more rice tax drama.”
“You need to break up with him.”
Naruto blinked.
“What.”
“Break up with Sasuke,” Shikamaru said again, slowly, like he was talking to a toddler. “Now. Today. Immediately.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Naruto sat up, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I saw the look,” Shikamaru said flatly, arms crossed. “ The look. The one you didn’t see because you were too busy existing like an open flame near gasoline.”
Naruto narrowed his eyes. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m being realistic ,” Shikamaru snapped. “Naruto, he’s—he’s Sasuke. He literally tried to kill you. Repeatedly. He emotionally combusts if someone shows him basic human warmth. And you—you’re you.”
“I’m sorry,” Naruto said, holding up both hands, “ are you mad that someone might actually like me?”
Shikamaru looked like he wanted to walk into a wall. “No. I’m mad that it’s him. You’ve built your entire life around dragging that man out of the metaphorical mud, and now you’ve decided to make it official? What’s next? Matching rings? Honeymoon in the Valley of the End?”
Naruto flushed. “It’s not like that.”
“Really?” Shikamaru leaned in. “Because it looked exactly like that.”
Naruto bristled. “We’re not—he’s not—it’s not like we—”
“Naruto.”
Shikamaru’s voice wasn’t sharp, but it was weighted. Heavy with something deeper than irritation. Something close to fear. Or maybe just frustration.
“You think you’re doing the right thing,” he said, more quietly now. “That if you love him enough, if you’re steady enough, you can pull him the rest of the way back. But this— this —isn’t a redemption arc, Naruto. This is real life. And in real life, love doesn’t always fix things. Sometimes it just hides shit until it explodes again.”
Naruto didn’t respond for a long moment. His hands curled loosely into fists on his knees.
“You don’t get it,” he muttered. “He’s not who he was.”
“I know,” Shikamaru said. “And I know you’re not who you were either. Which is why I’m telling you now—before it gets worse. Before you make this something the rest of us have to clean up when it shatters.”
Naruto’s jaw clenched. “It’s not going to shatter.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I have to.”
Shikamaru went still.
He looked at Naruto and saw all the things he hadn’t wanted to believe. The way Naruto’s shoulders tightened like he was bracing for a fight. The flicker of fear behind the stubbornness. And the truth, deep and painful and stupid: he was already in it .
Not just toe-in-the-water in it.
All the way in.
“…you’ve already slept with him, haven’t you.”
Naruto choked on absolutely nothing. His hands flew from their spot on his knees as if they’d betrayed him.
“What?! No! I mean—that’s not—how is that even the part you're focusing on right now?!”
Shikamaru just stared at him, deadpan. “So… yes.”
“No!” Naruto flailed. “We haven’t—! We didn’t—! I’m not even—! Shikamaru!”
He was blushing. Fully, unmistakably red from ear to collarbone, ears hot, posture tense like he wanted to crawl under the desk and never come out again. He looked equal parts defensive, guilty, and scandalized, and the sheer obviousness of it only confirmed Shikamaru’s theory.
“Well,” Shikamaru said, with the bleak calm of a man bearing witness to his worst-case scenario in real time, “that’s horrifying.”
Naruto threw his hands up. “We haven’t! Not yet! It’s not—why are you like this?!”
“Because someone has to be,” Shikamaru replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And apparently it’s me.”
He let out a long, slow breath, like he was releasing all his hopes for a quiet day, a stable future, and a Sasuke-free incident report in one go. Shikamaru moved toward the desk and leaned against it, arms crossed, gaze steady and uncomfortably perceptive. He looked tired. Not physically, but soul -tired. Like he’d lived this conversation in his head a hundred different ways and none of them ended in something neat.
“I won’t tell anyone.”
Naruto blinked. “What?”
Shikamaru straightened, expression resigned but serious. “Your relationship. I won’t say anything. Not to the others. Not unless you want me to.”
Naruto studied him for a moment, expression unreadable. His flush had faded to something quieter.
“Thanks,” he said at last, quiet but honest. “For not freaking out. Like… more than this.”
“Oh, I’m freaking out internally,” Shikamaru said, dry as sand. “Just compressing it into a tidy mental box. ”
Naruto snorted. “You’re the worst.”
“And you’re a dumbass.”
“Yeah. But you’re stuck with me at this point.”
“Unfortunately.”
They sat in silence for a beat, the kind that only exists between people who’ve been through too much together to pretend they’re not afraid for each other.
Then Shikamaru pushed off the desk, dragging a hand through his hair. “Fine. Be in love. Ruin my strategic projections. Just don’t—” He paused, glanced at the door, and then back. “Don’t disappear on us. Don’t let him pull you so far into his mess that you forget the rest of us are still here.”
“I won’t,” Naruto said, voice low but certain.
Shikamaru gave him one last look. It wasn’t approval. It wasn’t quite acceptance either. But it was something close to trust.
He exhaled through his nose and turned toward the door. Halfway there, he paused, one hand on the frame
“I swear to every god this village has,” he said, voice low and dry, “if I walk into another strategy meeting and find you two making eye contact like it’s foreplay, I’m jumping out a window.”
Naruto snorted. “You’re so dramatic.”
“I’ve earned the right,” Shikamaru muttered. “I aged five years from this conversation alone.”
He didn’t wait for a reply—just lifted a hand in a half-wave and stepped out, his silhouette vanishing down the hallway. Naruto sat there in the quiet. Still a little stunned. Still a little pink.
Then, slowly, his smile returned. Wide, sheepish, and entirely his.