#whoops...............

agree to marry him. but, right now, he can't do this. his attempt at being a cute boyfriend has backfired, and the moment has turned serious, /bitter/. (and the pain on her face doesn't help one bit.) he pushes himself off of the sofa, allowing his hand to linger in hers as his body adjusts, and, as though her words had never been spoken, he says, "barbecue—yeah, i'll get us some barbecue for dinner. that sounds good, yeah? yeah..." finally, his hand leaves hers. "i'll be right back, okay?" 2/2

--

whatever he’s trying to communicate is helping. she appreciates that he doesn’t move away from her; she appreciates when he hangs onto her hand as he stands; and she even appreciates the effort he’s making to keep them from fighting, to keep this from getting worse. she’s the confrontational one in this relationship, but this time shikamaru isn’t being responsive to it. maybe the fact that they rarely have problems--that they rarely don’t agree on everything immediately--is coming back to bite them in the ass. they don’t know how to solve this problem, and she wants to talk about it while shikamaru wants to avoid it. but that isn’t something unique to him; it’s just because he’s a man.

but she explained it, to the best of her abilities and with all the honesty she could muster, she explained it--so what else can she do?

“okay,” she nods, prying up both corners of her lips in a half-hearted smile. he knows what she likes, so she leaves him alone to order. despite acting like any other man, shikamaru is shikamaru, and when things like this happen he needs time to process it. and every time, without fail, he needs to be able to process away from the subject--in this case, that means away from her. her first instinct is to offer to go to suna right now, over a week early, so he can have the time away from her, but there’s no doubt it would come out of her mouth wrong, or if it didn’t he would take it wrong. plus, she doesn’t want to leave early.

in the time it takes before he returns, temari tortures herself with several scenarios in which she tries to give him the time and the only conclusion she can come to, in every single one, is that shikamaru spends the next nine weeks convincing himself she’s about to break up with him. by the time he gets back, she looks worse.

the instant he sits down next to her again, temari’s tugging his arm around her and folding herself into his chest with an arm around him, as well.