Chapter Text
It’s been at the back of Shikamaru’s mind, a fleeting sort of thought that comes and goes, wisps that drift past him when he sees older couples holding hands or when Ino’s got a large order in at the shop for a wedding. He’s never overly concerned with it, and something inevitably catches his attention before he can linger on it - chasing Naruto down to sign paperwork, or trying to cajole Shikadai into cleaning his room, or any number of Nara clan duties that keep falling into his lap.
Sometimes, though, when he’s on the edge of sleep and Ino’s curled up between his arms and he can feel the rise and fall of her chest in time with his, he thinks it might be nice, to go through it all again.
He just doesn’t expect Naruto to be the one to bring it up.
“When are you and Ino getting married?” Naruto asks, casually, as he digs around through Sasuke’s plate; Sasuke glares at him but makes no move to stop him, and Naruto snatches up a few chunks of pork.
Shikamaru coughs into his beer. “Um,” he starts, because he doesn’t know how to start broaching a subject that he and Ino have only ever talked about it in the vaguest, most nebulous of terms. “We’re not?”
Ino, on his left, nods once, leaning forward to grab more of the rice. They’re at dinner at Sakura and Lee’s, all six of them; the kids are out in the backyard, camped around a bonfire that Naruto and Shikamaru had helped them set up, and Lee’s put out a spread of food that would rival some of the Akimichi cooking. Shikamaru had been feeling content, head fuzzy from a few beers, until Naruto had felt the need to effectively drop a rasengan in the middle of the table.
“What?” Naruto says, voice entirely too loud for Sakura and Lee’s kitchen. “Like, ever?”
“Probably,” Ino says, with a shrug. Shikamaru mirrors her as Naruto’s mouth tugs down into a frown.
“But you guys are in love,” he says, like it’s an obvious point A to point B, like it’s simple fact that two people in love would be in want of a wedding.
“You’re so dense,” Sasuke sighs, at the same time Sakura, on Naruto’s other side, jabs her elbow into his ribs with a hissed, “they can do whatever they want, you dumbass.”
Ino sniffs, primly, lifting her chin, and Shikamaru knows he’s the only one who catches the way her hands tighten on her chopsticks. “It’s not that simple,” she says.
It really isn’t, either, is the thing. Never mind the fact they both have ex-spouses and fifteen year olds kids - they’re both clan heads, and neither Shikadai nor Inojin are ready to take over the clans in their stead. And even if they were, Shikamaru knows he wouldn’t give up being a Nara for anything, nor Ino a Yamanaka.
And all of that is assuming their clans would even approve of the marriage in the first place. They’ve intermarried before, sure, as have the Akimichis, but it’s always been the branch families, never the main family.
Naruto’s frown only deepens as they explain all this to him, his brow creasing. “So?” he says, finally, and Shikamaru reaches under the table to catch Ino’s hand before she can ball it into a fist.
“So,” Shikamaru says, “it’s not as simple as us wanting to or not.”
“But you’re the clan head, just. You know. Do it anyway.”
“Oh my god,” Sasuke mumbles, covering his face with his hand.
“Oh my god,” Sakura repeats, her fingers already rubbing at her temples.
“Oh, shut up,” Ino says, as Shikamaru feels the tips of his ears start to burn a little bit. She’s irritable; he can read it in the line of her shoulders, the way her nose is wrinkled at the bridge, the way her mouth is turned down.
He’s annoyed, too, but less at the whole production this is turning into - he’d long ago made peace with the fact that being friends with Naruto was never going to be a gentle experience - and moreso with the fact he’s now thinking about it.
Ino, in a white kimono, hair pinned up and back. Introducing her as his wife. Getting to hear her lyrical voice across a room, pointing in his direction, that’s my husband, right over there.
And now, suddenly, what had been a barely-there thought at the back of his mind is all he can think about, and he can feel his ears getting redder. Ino. His wife.
“This is shit you would’ve had to consider, too, Hokage-sama, if the Uchihas were still around,” Ino says, hotly, and Shikamaru spares a prayer of thanks that Ino didn’t go as brutal as she could’ve when it came to Sasuke’s family.
Naruto whips his head to Sasuke. “What does she mean?”
“Oh my god,” Sasuke says, again. Shikamaru, for the first time in the many, many years he’s known Sasuke, understands the feeling.
“She means that any shinobi clan is going to have expectations when it comes to marriage,” Lee says, brightly, from the other end of the table. “There would’ve been discussions on who was going to take who’s name, on what clan the kids would belong to - stuff like that.”
Shikamaru thinks, briefly, of Ino with a Nara clan sigil on her back, and it makes his stomach burble uneasily. Next to him, Ino leans back into her chair, against the arm Shikamaru’s slung over the back of it, and he reaches out few fingers to smooth along her shoulder.
Naruto frowns further, still staring at Sasuke. “But you said you wanted the Uzumaki name,” he says. “Did you want Boruto and Himawari to be Uchihas?”
Sasuke sighs, heavily. Shikamaru is suddenly distinctly uncomfortable; Sasuke’s always been a private person, and as much as Shikamaru isn’t overly fond of him, even now, he’s not relishing the idea of watching marital issues with him and Naruto get splayed across Lee and Sakura’s dinner table, either.
“If things had been different,” Sasuke says, carefully, “and if my family was still - here. Then yes. I would’ve wanted to remain in the Uchiha clan.”
Naruto looks like he doesn’t quite know how to process this, and he turns, clearing his throat, to Lee and Sakura. “But you took Sakura’s name.”
“Yeah,” Sakura says, shrugging, and it looks a little forced, a little too tight. “Neither Lee or I are from shinobi clans, though. We just sort of decided.”
“When did this turn into marriage counseling?” Ino complains, loudly, and she stands up, plate in hand. Shikamaru follows suit, pulling a cigarette out as he goes, palming his (Asuma’s) lighter in his hand. He ducks out onto the back deck as the rest of the table stirs, leaning against the railing as he lights up.
The bonfire’s still going strong, and he can hear the murmur of the kid’s voices from where he is, though he’s too far away to make out the words. Which is probably for the better, anyway, he thinks. He was fifteen once, too; there’s things he knows Shikadai and Inojin and the rest of them are talking about that he’s better off not knowing.
Shikadai. Inojin. He purses his lips. It’s only been two years, since he and Ino got together, and he’s sure the added emotional layer of being the next generation of InoShikaCho is heightening it - but he already thinks of Inojin as his son, too. He and Ino only ever say the kids or the boys. Inojin’s got a room in the Nara house and Shikadai has one in the Yamanaka’s. They’re a family unit, already, regardless of who has who’s name and what clan sigil’s on their back.
But still.
He watches Ino, through the glass of the backdoor, as he takes another drag. She’s pouring another glass of wine with Sakura, the two of them bundled up in oversized sweatshirts - Sakura in one of Lee’s, which he suspects might be a Gai hand-me-down, and Ino in an old, wash-worn one of Shikamaru’s - and he still can’t stop thinking about.
Wife.
He’d liked being a husband. He’s missed it, honestly, in the past however many years; it’d never been a distaste for marriage or even for Temari that had been at the root of his divorce, just an unfortunate circumstance and a decision neither of them had really wanted but had agreed was best.
And things with Ino are twice as complicated, even taking into account that Temari was effectively Suna royalty. Like everything with Ino, it’s somehow the most natural thing in the world - as natural as breathing, as natural as blinking - and still, even with all that, there’s more hoops to jump through than he has fingers to count on.
He sighs, stubbing out his filter and stashing it into his pocket. Ino’s still at the countertop, her and Sakura still engrossed in whatever they’re talking about, her long hair swinging gently every time she moves her head, and Shikamaru’s struck by an all-too-familiar and all-too-overwhelming sense of love.
No matter what, he reasons, as he steps back into the house and helps Lee start putting the food away, at the end of the day, he still has her.
________
“Don’t stay up too late,” Ino warns, later, as they file into the Nara house. Shikadai gives her a lazy hand wave as Inojin just shoots her a wordless thumbs up, the both of them darting down to the basement before Shikamaru even gets the lights on.
“I mean it,” Ino calls after them, poking her head down the basement door. “Shikadai, if you want to pass those jonin exams next month you need to study,”
“Got it,” Shikadai calls back, in a voice Shikamaru knows very much means he wasn’t listening, if only because Shikamaru used to use the same voice constantly with his own parents.
Shikamaru leans around Ino, resting his chin against her shoulder. “In bed by midnight,” he adds, and Inojin and Shikadai’s sounds good is cut off by the start-up tones of one of the game systems.
Ino huffs, clicking the basement door shut as she flicks her hair over her shoulder. “I can’t stand teenagers,” she hisses, already strutting towards their bedroom.
“We might have been worse at that age,” Shikamaru says, trailing after her; she looks good in his sweatshirt, he decides, with the sleeves rolled up a few times and the hem of it resting just below her bottom. “We did try to sneak out of the village to avenge our fallen sensei.”
“And we were right for that,” Ino sniffs, tossing her hair again and glancing over her shoulder at him. “Now, are you going to keep staring at my ass, or are you going to do something about?”
Shikamaru grins, crowding her into the bedroom as she laughs, the noise almost musical. He knows her body well by now, well enough to have her bare and whimpering in a matter of minutes, Shikamaru buried between her thighs and Ino’s fingers pulling his hair loose.
It’s only after they’ve finished, after they’ve showered and brushed their teeth and Ino’s sitting on his bed with her nail file, that he thinks about it again. It wouldn’t be much different, really, then what they already do, after all, then what they already are, and she looks so soft, in his bed, in one of his sleep shirts.
He leans against the doorjamb of the bathroom, hands shoved deep into his sweatpants pockets. It doesn’t matter, really, if he wants it, after all. They can’t, not unless one of them gives up their clan name, their status as clan head, and he wouldn’t ask her to compromise on a point he himself won’t.
“Just say it, whatever it is,” Ino says, inspecting the nail of her ring finger. “Your face is all pinched.”
He wets his lips. “What if we did get married?”
Ino stills, her knuckles white around the file, and glares up at him. “Is this because of what Naruto said at dinner tonight?”
“Maybe. Sort of. It was kind of a half-thought before he brought it up.”
“Oh, yes, so romantic, Shika, I sort of kind of had a thought about marrying you,” she mocks, her tone acidic, and Shikamaru just snorts out a laugh as he climbs onto the bed next to her, presses kisses along the line of her neck and shoulder. “You really know how to make a girl feel special.”
“Stop deflecting,” he says, “You know I’m not proposing right now.”
Ino clicks her tongue, tapping the file absently against the palm of her hand. “It just… it just doesn’t really make a difference if I want to or not, does it? We can’t, not unless one of us steps down as clan head and takes the other’s name. And it’s not like I haven’t already had my dream wedding. I lived the fairytale, before, with Sai.”
She turns, climbing onto his lap, burying her face against his neck; Shikamaru smooths his hand down her back, over soft, pale blonde hair. “Forget all that for a second,” he murmurs, pressing his lips against the side of her head. “This is just me and you. No clans, no responsibility, no exes - just us. Would you marry me, if I asked?”
There’s a long, drawn out pause, and Shikamaru can feel Ino breathing, the puff of air against his skin and the rise and fall of her back - and then he feels her nod, a shallow movement that brushes her hair against his jaw.
“Yes,” she says. “Of course I would.”
He squeezes her tight, pulls her down into the sheets with him, holding her close against him. She passes him the nail file, which he tosses onto the end table as she presses herself impossibly closer.
“Is it bad that I’m jealous of Sasuke,” she says, the words muffled against Shikamaru’s skin. “Not jealous of, like, the whole deal. Just how easy it was for him to be with Naruto.”
“I don’t think anything has ever once been easy for Sasuke,” Shikamaru says, quietly, “including his and Naruto’s relationship. I bet you that wasn’t a fun home to walk into tonight.”
Ino chuckles, a little wetly, and Shikamaru knows before she even does it that she’s going to rub her wet face all over the front of his sleep shirt. He pulls her tighter, anyway.
They don’t speak much after that, but Ino doesn’t disentangle herself, either, and Shikamaru falls asleep like that, with Ino looped through his limbs and her pillowed against his chest.