Wind Goddess

“They have this look like they’re involved somehow. It’s not like they’re holding hands or anything. It’s maybe the looks on their faces and just the general mood? When I saw them the other day, it was totally like that." - Ino to Sakura about Shikamaru and Temari in the blank period.

Temari

She followed instructions down to the letter, gets it perfect every time.

To impatient to decorate properly, but still looks flawless (cause she’s flawless)

Always sneaks in fruit into it.

If someone says something bad about the cake, they end up wearing it on their face.

Gaara

He reads the recipe ten times, to make sure he doesn’t make a mistake.

He sits in front of the oven with a timer and watches the cake bake.

Let’s cool, still watching it, decorates using his sand and finally three days later you get to try it.

No matter what he always gets compliments on it.

Kankuro

To impatient, measures by eye sometimes.

If 350 for 50 minutes is required he believes that 700 can cook it for half the time (hint: it does not)

Forgets to set timer. Knows it ready by the ‘smell’.

Only one who can have a burnt cake with a uncooked center.

Decorates it with purple, always, makes amazing design though.

Gaara will eat it to be polite, Temari won’t go near it.

-Bonus-

Shikamaru

CHAPTER 18: Do it again

She wishes she'd drank more. Wishes she'd done more than try Kiba's new drink out of his glass. It'd mean more, in the end, if she'd been drinking. But she's sober by the time she crawls into bed. And so when she wakes up, sweating and swearing, so wet she's almost delirious, dreaming of Shikamaru's hands, she doesn't have the alcohol to blame.

Just weird semi-feverish dreams that are so visceral, it takes long moments for her to remember what's real and what's not.

Shikamaru: me too.

Temari: everyone is looking at us. It’s so annoying. We should tell them to leave.

Shikamaru: Temari it’s our wedding day we can’t tell the guests to leave.

Temari starts pouting.

Shikamaru: but we can leave our clones here and ditch this for some dango.

the first thing he noticed was her laugh.

not her face.

not her hair.

not even the impossible fact of her being there.

her laugh.

it cut through the noise of the izakaya like a blade through silk, clean and precise and devastating in its accuracy.

shikamaru froze with his beer halfway to his mouth. for a moment he genuinely thought he had imagined it.

the laugh came again.

warm.

low.

familiar enough to make something in his chest seize.

across the room, gathered around a table crowded with empty bottles and flushed faces, sat the women of konoha. and among them sat temari.

for two years he had not seen her. two years since the breakup.

two years since the last argument that had ended not in shouting but in silence.

which somehow had been worse.

he had expected anger.

resentment.

some clean wound he could point to and understand.

instead he had carried her absence like a missing rib.

something his body noticed every day without ever learning how to compensate for.

she was looking down at something ino had said.

smiling.

her hair was longer. she wore it differently.

softer. and somehow that made it worse because she was still unmistakably temari.

just older.

more beautiful.

more distant.

his stomach turned.

"you look sick."

choji's voice came from somewhere beside him.

shikamaru ignored him.

temari laughed again.

his chest physically hurt.

it made no sense.

he knew it made no sense.

he was twenty something years old, a jonin, a strategist, a man who had negotiated treaties and managed crises and survived wars.

yet hearing her laugh from across a room made him feel seventeen and doomed.

"don't."

kiba followed his gaze. then groaned.

"oh no."

"what?"

"don't do whatever you're thinking."

"i'm not thinking anything."

"that's even worse."

shikamaru finished the rest of his beer.

he had not known she was in town.

after they broke up, she had stopped acting as suna's representative.

someone else took over. he never asked why. because he already knew and because knowing hurt enough.

he looked at her.

really looked.

and for one terrible moment she glanced up.

their eyes met.

the room. the noise. the years. all of it collapsed inward.

her smile vanished.

not dramatically.

not cruelly.

just gone. replaced by something quieter.

something that looked painfully similar to the thing currently tearing him apart.

she looked away first.

that should have made it easier.

instead it made him stand.

"shikamaru." choji's voice sounded alarmed now. he ignored that too.

he crossed the room.

he did not think.

thinking had ruined enough things already.

conversations faltered as he approached.

sakura blinked.

ino's eyes widened then she smiled cruelly.

tenten immediately looked delighted.

temari watched him come closer with the expression of someone seeing a storm roll over the horizon.

he stopped beside her chair.

for a second neither of them spoke.

he could smell her perfume.

sand and citrus.

the same one.

of course it was the same one.

because the universe clearly hated him.

"shikamaru." she said

his name sounded strange in her mouth.

like a prayer remembered after years.

he stared at her.

then reached down.

grabbed her hand.

and said, "come with me."

the entire table went silent.

ino nearly choked on her drink.

"well," tenten whispered. "finally."

temari's eyebrows rose."excuse me?"

"come with me."

"you seem drunk."

"i am."

"then this conversation can wait."

"it can't."

their eyes locked. for one suspended moment neither moved. then she stood and let him lead her away.

the night air hit them like cold water, the sounds of the village softened behind them.

he didn't stop walking until they reached the river only then did he release her hand.the absence of it felt immediate.

painful.

stupid.

he hated it.

temari folded her arms.

waiting.

she had always been good at waiting.

"well?" she asked.

he looked at her. really looked.

moonlight silvered the edges of her hair, caught in her eyes.

made her seem almost unreal.

his chest hurt worse than before. "you didn't tell me you were coming."

the words sounded pathetic the moment they left him.

her expression shifted.

something wounded flickered there.

"i didn't know i needed permission."

"that's not what i meant."

"then what did you mean?"

he laughed once.harshly.

because the answer was humiliating.

because the answer was obvious.

because the answer had been haunting him for two years.

"i mean i walked into a bar tonight and saw you for the first time in two years and suddenly i can't breathe."

silence.

the river moved steadily behind them.

temari stared.

he could see her pulse in her throat.

small. rapid. betraying her.

good. at least he wasn't suffering alone.

"shikamaru..." "don't." his voice broke "don't be nice to me."

her face changed. completely. all at once.

every careful wall she had built collapsed.

"you think i'm being nice?"

he swallowed. she took a step forward.

"you broke my heart."

"i know." "do you?"

another step.

"because i spent months waiting for you to change your mind." another step

"months wondering what was wrong with me."

"wondering why loving you wasn't enough for you to stay”

his eyes closed. for a second he could barely stand.

because he remembered. god, he remembered.

every unanswered letter. every sleepless night. every word she wrote to him asking for a reply. it was the greatest mistake of his life disguised as restraint.

when he opened his eyes she was standing directly in front of him. close enough to touch. close enough to ruin him.

"there wasn't anything wrong with you." his voice was rough.

"then why?" her voice low

he laughed softly. without humor.

"because i was scared." she had not expected that.

of all the things she might have anticipated, perhaps not that. not honesty.

“of what?"

he looked at her. at the woman he had loved for years.the woman he had continued loving every day after she left.

the woman standing so close he could see the shine in her eyes.

"of needing you."

the confession left him hollow.

exposed.

helpless.

temari stared at him.

neither spoke.

the silence stretched.

fragile.

aching.

alive.

then suddenly she laughed. a small, broken sound. and pressed a hand against her eyes.

"you're an idiot."

"i know."

"an unbelievable idiot."

"i know."

when she looked up again she was crying. which immediately made him feel like the worst man alive.

until he realized he was crying too. and somehow that was even worse. or better.

"i still love you."

his heart stopped.

she said it so quietly as though the words had been waiting all this time.

he touched her face. carefully. as though she might disappear. temari leaned into his hand immediately. instinctively.

the movement nearly destroyed him.

"i love you so much more." her eyes closed. a breath left her.

the kind of breath someone releases after carrying something impossibly heavy for far too long.

when she opened them again, she was smiling.

“so beautiful” shikamaru whispered

and for the first time in two years, shikamaru felt the world settle back into place.

as though it had been tilted slightly off its axis ever since she left.

'Impulsively, Shikamaru reached for a dusty keyboard, unsuspectingly lying within his reach on the table.

For once, Shikamaru let go, giving in to his urges that wanted to take over. He lifted the device up and let it come down on the hard surface of the table like an axe.

In the silence of the room, the explosive bang of the impact was like a shock. Keys flew through the air and clattered on the floor.

It felt liberating. The chains of convention broken.'

CHAPTER 17: Hunger hurts, but I want him so bad

If she were someone else, she would push him. Hit him. Uppercut against his jaw; send his teeth flying. If she had any sense of self-preservation or, seemingly right now, self-worth, she would. She would feel the bone of his jaw under the front of her knuckles and lick the blood of his split cheek clean off her own skin, metallic and warm on her tongue.