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Bonds of time	By : drakoniss Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Shikamaru/Naruto Views: 2640 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and make no money on the fiction I write.

Chapter List
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"I am not going with him."

Stubbornly, Naruto crosses his arms across his chest. Tsunade's hand shakes a little when she signs the letters, and her hair in neat, short, and white. She is moving on to sort through the mail now.

"Oh really, Naruto?"

She still does not seem to pay him any mind, spitting on her fingers to faster skip through the pile of correspondence, humming a tune that must be at least fifty years old.

"Yeah."

"I thought you two were friends."

"When you see and smell your friend's intestines displayed like New Years feast, it's kind of hard to carry on after that."

"It might be." She does not appear disagreeing; merely engrossed in her task, and profoundly ancient. "Not impossible though, if you ask me. And it's not like I am giving you a choice, brat. This is your job – and you have to do it."

"But..."

"No buts.'

Tsunade grins, displaying a row of tobacco stained teeth, chipped in more places than Naruto can count, sending a ripple of wrinkles around her eyes and across the forehead. Her skin is blotting paper thin and stretched tight over her sunken face proving just how brittle she'd really become. She seems very, very old, and very, very tired, but she will keep doing this job for as long as Naruto needs her.

Naruto glares at her, the feeling of guilt slowly working its way into his system. Guilt for letting her down; for letting Shikamaru down when he needed Naruto the most . For continuing to let him down, even now. It seems fitting to fill the silence with a sigh, and for a while it's just that, and the sound of rain falling over Konoha correlating with each other, and overall mood. Heavy raindrops beat against the glass of the only window in Godaime's office, and Naruto thinks it's about time it got washed. There is nothing left for him to do but to pick up the mission assignment from the table and stuff the pocket of his civilian pants with it.

"Dismissed."

"

"Well, well, well." Shikamaru opens the door, left arm in a sling, unlit cigarette dangling between the fingers of his other, good hand. "Enter Uzumaki Naruto. The friend I used to have."

"Oh, how I fucking missed you."

Naruto thinks drinking in Shikamaru's face. He does not look to be fit for any missions. He looks tired. There are purple smudges under his eyes, like he had not slept in days, and his collarbone sharp enough to cut glass with. Naruto's heart contracts, swelling up with emotions like Konoha River after the long bout of rain, ready to spill over.

"Shut up, Shika." He tries to squeeze in to the narrow crack in the door past Shikamaru and inside the house. "I am here for debriefing. Granny did not have time for both of us."

"This is not a good time."

Shikamaru blocks the entranceway with his skinny, long body; as if he could actually do anything to stop Naruto's passage.

"Why, you got a guy there or something? " Naruto gestures towards the door to Shikamaru's bedroom, starting to boil from inside. " Well, tell him to go. This is work.'

Shikamaru sighs, but decides to let him in after all. One good thing about the guy – he always knew how to pick his battles, because there is no way Naruto is leaving now, after he finally gathered enough courage to face him. Shikamaru signals for Naruto to follow him inside the the house, discarding a cigarette in the ashtray in the hall. Even on the wrong side of skinny, arm in a sling, Shikamaru still moves like a dream, every step is fluid and full of grace.

Naruto scanns the living room with suspicious eyes. He might be the biggest coward on earth for not speaking to Shikamaru for over a year, but it does not mean he stopped caring about him even for a second during that time. Stopped seeing red when he notices him with someone else, or wanting him any less than he did before Hidan had wrecked his should and destroyed his body. He is still completely and irrevocably in love; hope that Shikamaru feels the same is tenuous at best.

There is an eerie stillness that envelopes the house, and the floor is littered – Naruto does not have any other word for it, really, - with books.. The layer of dust in his empty cupboards is as thick as Naruto's finger, and there is not a crumb of food to be found anywhere in the kitchen.

"What's wrong?"

Naruto swallows and turns around, making an effort for his unresponsive tongue to spit out the words. He'd been sure that everything was going all right with Shikamaru. He'd heard he was healthy, and working, and changing boys like they were going out of style. He's been sure Shikamaru did not need him.

"Naruto." Shikamaru asks dejectedly, and Naruto can't really blame him for being cold. " What do you want?'

"I want to know that you are all right."

"I am all right. "

Shikamaru lies. He is standing in the patch of autumn sunlight, bathed in the cool, golden glow, the sleeves of white shirt rolled up to his elbows. Naruto is getting inanely upset at the thinness of slender wrists, at how Shikamaru's shirt is just hanging on him about a size too big. He remembers how it used to fit; He wants to come closer and massage the troubled shoulder, soothe away the pain that he knows is giving him that pinched, tired look. To lift up the shirt and trace the darkish-pink line that starts in the center of his sternum and ends just above the pelvic brim with his lips and tongue; kiss every finger that had been stepped on, broken, and then grafted back together, and then ask if he would be able to forgive Naruto this time around.

"I am sorry."

He offers instead.

"For what?"

"For not being able to save you."

Shikamaru's face falls at that, clearly aware of Naruto's torment. He always loved this about Shikamaru the most –the unwavering desire to make Naruto happy, no matter the cost. The innate and utter selflessness that he had never really seen in anyone else. He would assume that Hinata would want the same, but she never seemed to care about anything else but keeping Naruto all to herself. There is also incredibility on his face that is hard to fake. He probably never assumed that Naruto's reasons for not seeing him could be so… trivial.

"Did you avoid me for the past years because … of that?"

Naruto shrugs, somewhat imperceptibly, but Shikamaru understands anyways.

"I never thought of you as overly bight." He admits with a half smile. " But I had no idea you were such a fucking dimwit either."

"That's me, all right."

"I am alive because of you." Shikamaru continues. "And not because you got there seconds before it would be too later, but also because I made myself to wait for you. I wanted to live because of you… and for you. You don't have anything to feel guilty about."

"Do you still want to live for me?'

"I am still here, am I not?"

Shikamaru's way of answering when he walks up to Naruto and wraps fingers of his good, right hand around the back of his neck, aligning their bodies together. The bracing scent of him reminds Naruto of a summer and the time slows down to the languid flow of sunshine and endless gratitude when they kiss. It's invigorating, and raw, and it's nothing like Naruto had ever experienced before. Nothing like the kisses he'd shared with Hinata, or the dark haired look a likes he used to meet for a few hours of late night fun. The real thing is real. There are no absolutes in this world, but Naruto is pretty sure that he will remember this moment for as long as he lives. He is mindful of the sling, stroking his hand all the way down Shikamaru's side, slipping it behind the waistband of the drawstring pants. His hipbones are jutting out, and when Naruto's hands slides lower inside there is an uncanny contrast between the bony upper body, and full, perfectly rounded ass.

"That's because I had too much of it."

Shikamaru explains with a smile and then sways on his feet, promptly going slack in Naruto's arms. He is out cold and Naruto hopes it's not the kissing that did it; does not seem like a good start for any relation ship.

"

"There is nothing wrong with his shoulder."

Sakura shrugs off his questions, annoyed. "He's overworked, underfed… and … underfed. "

'He looked like he was in pain."

" It always hurts;" She explains, her patience short, and time to chat practically nonexistent.. "Sometimes it gets better, sometimes it get worse. But it's always going to hurt, Naruto. This is the price for keeping that arm. It's still a perfectly good arm, mind you, but occasional bouts of pain something he will have to deal with for the rest of his life. Why weren't you feeding him? He is practically see through!"

Naruto does not have anything to say to that. Another things to feel guilty about.

"So, once I feed him." He asks looking at Sakura sideways. "He will be better?"

She walks past him to her next patient, a pruned old man who is sitting on the low bench in the waiting room, unabashedly eavesdropping. She sticks a thermometer under his tongue, and waves Naruto off without turning around:

"Yes, Naruto. Get some dinner in him, and you can fuck him till sunrise for all I care."

As appealing as that offer sounds, Naruto knows that it probably not going to happen tonight.

He nodes at the old man, says good bye and thanks to Sakura, and begins walking through the long hall of Konoha hospital to where Shikamaru's room is. His fingers close around the scroll in his pocket, a mission assignment from earlier today. Godaime's face stands in front of his eyes, old, and gaunt, and full of patience.

"Thanks, granny." Naruto thinks with a smile, tossing the scroll in the nearby bin. " Mission had been a success."

"

Naruto woke up with a migraine, and his hand would hurt less if he stuck it into the industrial blender at the rice processing plant. The migraine, he could deal with. He'd had them since he was sixteen, and if meditation did not ease it he could always use medicinal herbs. The hand… Naruto tried to open sausage like fingers, and winced, recoiling a little at the sight of torn tissue, swollen and crusted with blood around the edges of the cuts. He could see the first signs of infection already beginning to set inside the moist fissures; overall, it looked and felt beyond his expertise. The worst thing was that he'd been too upset to even care.

Listening to the sounds of river gurgling outside his window, trying to lull him back into uncomfortable sleep, he fell back onto the pillows and closed his eyes. It had been very early still; his internal clock told him no more then six am, and the grey light that seeped through the window from outside confirmed that. Naruto could tell the time to a minute by a particular hue of sunrise from his days as a shinobi; a completely useless skill in his current line of work. The work he still had not the first idea about, left with a village on a fast economical decline despite it's potential, and a bunch of debts. Gaara said he would help; he said he would take a week off and come help him to learn the ropes; Which reminded Naruto that Gaara was coming today, and if he wanted to get everything else done before that he needed to have his hand taken care off.

The pounding inside his scull had still been as regular as clockwork, and when Naruto thought about last night, he felt his stomach twist. He had been well certain by now this would not end well for either Hinata or him, and it would be so much easier to just blame her for everything and walk away. But misery, just like love, was a two-way road, and deep inside his heart he knew that part of the blame had been rightfully his. He kept her by his side while it was convenient for him – not having the guts to break up and loose the dream of his youth. He 'd used her as crutch on his path to realization that he did not need her, or any other woman to be happy. They used each other, really, with the only difference that Naruto had always been honest about it, and Hinata would not admit to the fact for as long as she lived. It did not help any her mental health had been steadily deteriorating, and Naruto just was not the kind of guy to abandon anyone who needed his help. It would probably destroy him in the process, heart, body and soul, but there was not a thing that he could do about it.

It rained last night; the track that led to the village from his house had been slippery dirt all the way, and his boots had been caked in mud by the time he reached the hospital. He'd met some early risers on the way who's faces been vaguely familiar and nodded back his greetings, imagining what he must have looked like; blurry eyed and disconsolate, all the happiness sucked out of his expression by the last night's fight. There would be more gossip by early afternoon than he had energy to deal with, and he would probably get a visit from Hiashi later on today.

"Crap, Naruto." With utter disgust Sakura tossed the surgical tweezers into the bucket filled with bloody gauze. "Another fucking splinter. You should have at least put some antiseptic on it. It's already getting infected."

He moaned, feeling like the biggest of wimps, but she had not pity for him, plucking out the splinters methodically, dipping the instrument in and out of his oozing hand.

"Should have thought of it last night, when you had a party with your living room wall."

"So, just patch it up."

" I am not … a seamstress."

She hissed. It's been a while since Naruto saw her this angry.

'Sakura, have you seen…"

And he would recognize that voice from anywhere. Naruto swallowed, heart rate speeding up from the sluggish crawl to fully alerted drumming.

"Any serious damage?"

Shikamaru asked taking a peak over Sakura's shoulder. Naruto fought the desire to look away and met the concerned, brown gaze with weak defiance.

"A bunch of splinters and a sprained wrist."

"It's not broken?"

Naruto perked up, but promptly fell silent when they both looked at him with quiet scorn.

"No, Naruto." Sakura growled. "It's not broken. I would have set it for you already. And Shikamaru; Just the guy I am looking for."

"I am here for my shoulder."

Shikamaru gave pleading a try, but this kind of thing would never work with Sakura. Naruto fixed his eyes on the arrangement of red leaves on the window ledge, probably gathered no earlier than this morning; Sakura loved koyo season like Naruto loved spring. Only barely audible exhalation of breath escaped him while he waited for them to finish their squabble, which had not really been a squabble at all, Sakura from the beginning knowing how it would end.

"It's gonna have to wait. Stop by after you done with him. " He smile had been broad and full of teeth when she handed Shikamaru her instrument. 'Get to work, Shika. I did not waist those hours on your mandatory medical training for nothing. Slap bandage on it when you done; I heard Lord Kazekage faints at the sight of little blood."

When she passed Naruto on her way out of the room, he could se her form a good luck sign with her fingers behind her back.

'Oh Naruto." Voice barely higher then a whisper, Shikamaru shook his head. "If you wanted children – why could you just adopt someone, you idiot? There is a village full of orphans."

He was out of uniform this morning, wearing just a white shirt and thin cotton pants, still groggy from sleep, dewy eyed, and gorgeous. The birds had been trilling outside enjoying a bit of warmth after the rainy spell, and Naruto thought he would die if he did not get to touch him now. It must have been was the culmination of three years of abstinence that made Naruto take a step forward and lay his head on the cotton-clad chest. The familiar smell of flowery soap mixed with Shikamaru's scent flooded his senses, and he sobbed with relief. He'd been so tired of needing him, so tired of missing him, that soaring pleasure of gratification was almost too much to handle. Shikamaru sighed; patted his quivering back, light, long strokes, and rubbed his cheek against Naruto's buzzed head; a cat, pacifying him with every motion until Naruto quite and docile, like a baby lulled to sleep by a beat up lullaby. It had been warm in Sakura's office despite the chill outside, the low whistling of wind behind the window calming and familiar, and Naruto had not felt as at peace with the world in a three long years.

"Your hand, Naruto."

Shikamaru nudged him back toward the chair waiting until he was seated and comfortable. He went down on his knees between Naruto's spread legs, taking forceps to his tortured flesh. And it did not even hurt this time; Naruto felt the pull; the occasional poke; but it was nothing comparing to Sakura's ruthless handling. It almost felt relaxing, and at times strangely erotic – or maybe he completely lost his mind. Naruto watched Shikamaru work; brows knitted together, glorious mass of dark hair framing sleepy face. He could see every freckle etched over the bridge of straight nose, the memory of nuzzling his way from the juncture of his neck all the way up to the full mouth vivid in his mind. He also recalled why he tried his hardest to avoid situations like these; two of them alone without anybody to stop the flow of maddening, maddening thoughts and simple, primal desires: to claim; to own; to keep; to guard.

"I think the last one is out." Shikamaru announced and thrown the instrument inside the metal bucket. "I am gonna go find the bandage."

"Wait."

And it did not matter that they sworn not to ever come back to this, ever. Picking up where they left off had never been easier.

Naruto reached. He wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the front of Shikamaru's shirt, giving it experimental tug. He had been, in theory, risking his other hand to be ripped out for this, but Shikamaru only smirked, inched closer between Naruto's legs and pulling himself up on his elbows straddled his hips.

They weren't children anymore; not even inexperienced teenagers new to love and its consequences. They were grown men and they both considered the possibility of this when the door after Sakura closed, and they had been left alone; they had plenty of time to think it over, and whatever it is Shikamaru decided seemed to agree with Naruto's own line of thought. Naruto tugged again until Shikamaru's face was leveled with his, slipping his hand under a shirt that's been washed probably a thousand times, bringing his pelvis forward to meet the answering hardness against his own, held back only by a thinner than thin material of cotton pants.

"it does not take much these days."

Shikamaru exhaled, eyes dark and glazed over with want, lowering his front onto Naruto's, moving even further downward to kiss hiss collarbone, trail his tongue along the outline of his jawline, masterfully avoiding the parted lips, and it was more pain then pleasure when their lips and teeth, and tongues finally collided, nipping, sucking, and probing; drinking each other's taste; this was as close to heaven as Naruto ever felt.

Shikamaru was the first one to pull away, lips red and shiny from kissing, and it looked like it's been as hard for him to stop as it had for Naruto. Probably even harder, taking in consideration that condition of his.

"We can't."

And they could not. Not here; not now; and probably not ever.

"I know."

Naruto agreed, softly, while Shikamaru slid of his lap and went to rummage through cabinets, still indecently hard and disheveled. He did not try to do a thing to fix either, and Naruto thought that if he could not touch anymore, he could still look.

"You are married; and you can't stop being married." Shikamaru found a roll of elastic bandage and skillfully wrapped it in a circle several times around Naruto's hand. " "So… we can't"

"I hate my wife; my marriage is a fucking disaster."

"I know."

"You are the best thing that ever happened to me."

The sun reflected off Sakura's gleaming instruments blinding them temporarily, and when Naruto could see again, the bandage around his hand had been neat, and tight, and dazzling white.

"I know; I told you it's not easy to do the right thing; but you wanted – needed to do it anyways; the right thing is a heavy burden to carry, Naruto."

"Brains and beauty. Such an unlikely combination."

Naruto said dryly, when the sun the sun disappeared behind the large cloud, and the room became immersed in gloomy, gray color. He took Shikamaru's fingers in his own, undamaged ones, and allowed them few more moments together.
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Bonds of time