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Konoha evenings were usually peaceful—until the ground began to shake without warning.
Shikamaru had been on his way to see Temari for some work, when the sudden tremor beneath his feet, followed by shouts in the distance, snapped him out of his thoughts.
“An earthquake?!”
Frowning, he broke into a sprint toward the inn.
Reason told him Temari was more than capable of handling a quake of this scale. She would not be in danger. But instinct drove him faster anyway, a sharp, restless anxiety pushing at his heels. By the time he reached the building, panicked guests were already pouring out into the street in a chaotic rush.
The wooden structure groaned under the strain of the shaking earth. Lanterns swung wildly overhead. Dust drifted down in soft, constant showers. Screams and pounding footsteps overlapped into one messy, frantic roar as Shikamaru forced his way against the crowd toward the section where she was staying.
There was only one thought in his head:
Make sure she’s okay.
And then, through the crush of people, he spotted her.
At the far end of the corridor stood a striking figure, calm and composed even in the chaos, directing the terrified guests toward the exit in a clear, steady voice.
“Don’t push! Watch your footing on the stairs! Let the elderly and the children go first!”
The instant he heard Temari’s voice, relief hit him—
—and then immediately lodged in his throat, because she was standing there wrapped in nothing but a white bath towel!
Her damp blond hair clung to her cheeks and neck. Water beaded on her skin and rolled down in glittering trails, leaving dark spots on the trembling floorboards. The towel barely covered what it needed to cover, soaked through and clinging hard enough to trace the long, sleek lines of her body and every dangerous curve—less like a towel, really, and more like a scandalously short off-the-shoulder dress.
No way. No way.
Is this troublesome woman's tolerance for exposed skin seriously this high?!
Whether it was anger or embarrassment, Shikamaru felt heat rush straight to his face. He strode over in a few long steps, his voice cracking halfway through:
“Tem—! Why the hell did you come out like that?!”
Temari turned at the sound of his voice. When she saw it was him, she looked utterly unimpressed and simply turned back again, flicking wet hair across his face in the process.
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked, perfectly matter-of-fact. “Everything that shouldn’t be showing is covered. Better than running out naked and traumatizing the whole village, right?”
She brushed a damp strand away from her mouth, and the edge of the towel shifted just enough to make Shikamaru’s eye twitch.
“Besides,” she added, as if preemptively answering criticism that hadn’t even been voiced yet, “I’m not ashamed of my body.”
“Is that the issue here?!” Shikamaru shouted. That was so far from the point it was actually making him dizzy.
Without another word, he yanked off his jacket and threw it over her shoulders, then zipped it all the way up to her neck. Her legs were still bare, but the jacket was longer and covered a hell of a lot more than the towel did.
“Hey! Nara Shikamaru!” Temari protested, struggling a little. “What’s with the overreaction?”
“Don’t take it off. I mean, please.” Rare for him, there was real force behind his voice.
He kept a hand on the jacket, half-expecting her to tear it off at any moment. That soaked towel had been clinging to her so tightly it might as well have been nothing at all. Did she seriously have no idea what she looked like right now?
Temari clicked her tongue, but didn’t resist any further. “Fine. At least your jacket’s dry. That stupid towel was soaked through anyway. It was sticking to me. Miserable.”
And before Shikamaru could even process the horrifying implications of that sentence, she reached inside the jacket—casual as anything—and undid the knot of the towel underneath.
Plop.
The damp towel dropped straight to the floor, pooling in a heap around her bare ankles.
Shikamaru stared at the white fabric by her feet and felt his sanity follow it down.
Because that towel on the floor could only mean one thing.
Beneath his jacket, Temari was now bare.
Wrapped in his clothes. Wearing his heat.
For one impossible second, all the blood in his body seemed to abandon his brain at once. His mind blanked. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
Dear god, why is this happening to me?
What kind of nightmare puberty trial is this?!
“Are you out of your mind?!” he blurted.
Blood rushed everywhere at once—his face, and somewhere much worse.
He spun on his heel, dashed into the nearest empty room, and grabbed the thin blanket off the bed. In the span of seconds, he had Temari wrapped again—this time thoroughly, from shoulders to calves, swaddling her so tightly she resembled a human cocoon. If the blanket had been long enough, he probably would have covered her head too.
Temari couldn’t even get her arms free. She glared at him, already preparing to break out and hit him.
Shikamaru held the cocoon in place with both hands, thoroughly exasperated and too flustered to choose his words carefully.
“I know you’re not embarrassed about this stuff! Fine! Great! Good for you!” His face was red enough to rival a tomato by now. “But could you at least think about what this is doing to me for a second?! I’m a normal guy, you know?!”
The outburst rang out in the middle of the shaking inn—raw, humiliating, and honest.
It was the clearest expression yet of the problem that had been tormenting Shikamaru for far too long.
Temari froze.
Then, almost involuntarily, something in his panic made her glance downward, toward his pants.
Temari—who usually preferred to blow through every problem rather than pick apart nuances—finally, belatedly, understood what had been behind all his weird behavior: the painfully real reaction of a teenage boy looking at her as a girl, not just a comrade.
For once, she had no comeback.
She just stood there, rigid and speechless, while the thin blanket suddenly seemed a great deal heavier than before. This time, she no longer had the nerve to toss it aside as carelessly as she had the towel.
Then another violent tremor hit.
The building groaned.
“Move!” Shikamaru said immediately.
Not giving her time to recover, he grabbed Temari, who still wrapped up like a cocoon, still looking half-stunned, and hauled her quickly out of the inn.
So when the worst of the chaos finally subsided, what Konoha’s shaken residents and shinobi saw was this:
Temari of the Sand—fierce, formidable, and famously cool under pressure—was standing there flushed bright red, wrapped from neck to shin in a guest-room blanket. At the collar, a hint of a Konoha chunin jacket was just barely visible. Below the blanket, a pair of long, bare legs made it painfully obvious she wasn’t wearing anything underneath, her bare feet against the ground, toes curled.
And beside her stood Nara Shikamaru—usually lazy, detached, and allergic to trouble—equally red-faced and refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, yet staying close at her side the whole time, subtly angling his body to shield her from every staring gaze around them.
Uh.
There was really only one conclusion anyone could draw.
It looked exactly like a young couple had been having a very good time at an inn when the earthquake hit and had barely managed to flee in the middle of it.
By the next morning, the rumor that “Nara Shikamaru and Temari escaped the earthquake half-dressed from the same inn room” had spread through Konoha faster than the seismic waves themselves. And the reactions from Shikamaru's peers were spectacular. No one had expected Shikamaru—who usually seemed interested in absolutely nothing—to be the first of them to get that far.
“Whoa, Shikamaru! Nice!” Naruto said with a wicked grin, hooking an arm around his neck. “So that’s where things are at, huh? When are you treating us to celebrate?”
Ino and Sakura popped up too, smiling in a way that was far too knowing, their eyes sparkling with gossip-fueled delight.
“I seriously didn’t expect you two to be moving this fast~” Ino teased.
“Be good to Temari san, okay?” Sakura added, not helping at all.
Even Hinata, usually so gentle and reserved, had apparently heard of his “heroics,” and murmured softly to Shino, “Um… Shikamaru-kun is… very manly.”
Later, even Kiba showed up with Akamaru just to bark his approval and join in on the chaos.
They weren’t even dating, but somehow the rumor had already solidified into something far more ridiculous. At this point, there was no clearing his name no matter what he said. Faced with the relentless barrage of congratulations, teasing, and invasive questions from all sides, Shikamaru could only clutch his head and wish the earth would open up and swallow him.
Help. What a colossal pain in the ass.
And when Temari’s fellow Sand shinobi discreetly asked whether she wanted them to do anything about the gossip in Konoha, she only looked out the window and replied vaguely,
“…It’s all a misunderstanding. Leave it alone.”
Though maybe, she thought as she touched her still-warm cheek, it wasn’t entirely a misunderstanding.
Will the two of them be stuck in the aftershocks of this rumor forever? lol
Also btw, Shikamaru-san… are you ever wearing that jacket again? ^^