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Kicking the Habit	By : KohakuShadow Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1312 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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A/N: This chapter fell flat
on so many levels. I'm almost ashamed to post it because I didn't
pull off half of what I was planning when I sat down to start it. I
hope you enjoy it anyway. Expecting one or two more chapters.

Kicking the
Habit

Chapter Three: Cold Turkey

Shikamaru groaned and rolled over to kill the alarm clock. He knew he
had to get up, but it was just way too damn early! The birds weren't
even chirping, and the sky was just barely beginning to take on a
grayed rose color. He had to set to alarm for almost an hour before
he actually intended to get out of bed if he had any hope of making
it to the academy on time for first period.

“Itaii! Bastard!” Naruto complained, sitting up and
rubbing his head. Looks like that thing you just hit with every bit
of your drowsy strength wasn't an alarm clock after all, Shikamaru.

The Nara's eyes shot open to see the blond, dressed like he was ready
for a slumber party, sitting up in bed, rubbing his head. He sat
bolt upright, but fumbled and fell out of the bed entirely, taking a
heap of blankets with him. He blinked a few more times and rubbed his
eyes. “Naruto? What the hell are you doing?!”

“Obviously, I'm staying here with you so I can make sure you
don't cheat!”

The Nara blinked at him, perplexed in his half-conscious state as to
what in the hell the blond was referring to.

“The smoking, Shikamaru!” Naruto proclaimed. “You're
quitting starting today, remember?”

“I never agreed to that!” Shikamaru griped. He'd never
wanted a cigarette more than he did right now though—talk about
a rude awakening.

Naruto waved his hand a bit. “That's just a detail. You're not
allowed to back out now, or people will call you a coward!”

“I am a coward,”
the Nara sighed, exasperated, fumbling to his feet and pulling Naruto
from the bed, “and you're leaving.”

“Am not!” Naruto declared, digging his heels in so that
Shikamaru couldn't drag him to the door without putting a lot of
effort into it, hopefully more than he was willing to expend—Naruto
was banking on that lazy nature! He just had to prove to the Nara
that it was too much trouble to throw him out, and if anyone in
Konoha was good at causing trouble, it was Naruto Uzumaki.

“Are too!” Shikamaru replied instinctively with a firm
tug. He mentally cursed himself to sinking to that particular
intellectual level after the words slipped from his lips, but it
wasn't the only thing that slipped. He stepped on a stray sock and
tumbled backwards, Naruto flying forwards and crashing on top of him.
He wheezed as the blond's elbow accidentally came into contact with
his solar plexus. “Damn it Naruto!”

“It's not my fault, you pulled me!”

“You're the one who dug your heels in!” Shikamaru argued.

“Only because you were going to kick me out!”

“I'm still
going to kick you out, now get off,” the Nara griped.

Naruto blinked and looked down to
find that he was on top of the Nara, straddling one of his thighs,
chest pressed to chest. His cheeks flared and he scrambled off of the
brunette. Shikamaru got up, sighed and muttered, “Whatever.
Get dressed. You can stay for breakfast, but then you're going
home.”

“But...”

“I don't want to hear it. You can have the shower first while I
make coffee.” He left the room grumbling under his breath and
Naruto, looking rather dejected, headed for the bathroom.

Shikamaru sighed, putting the coffee
on, and lit a cigarette. He hadn't been kidding. Just because Naruto
wanted him to quit smoking, that didn't mean he had to go along with
it. Besides, the hyperactive nin had a way of making his already
frayed nerves even worse. He took a long drag and sighed. 'I
guess...I probably should
quit,' he thought. 'But
even if I should, wouldn't that mean letting go of my important
feelings for you, Asuma? I...don't want to ever cast these feelings
aside, even if I'm holding onto them with something like this.'
He watched the cigarette burn down a bit and flicked the ashes into a
dirty mug in the sink, thinking idly about how he really ought to get
an ash tray or two if he was going to maintain this kind of habit.

While he was lost in thought, a very bright, wet blob tackled him to
the ground. The cigarette rolled from his fingers, leaving another
scuff mark on the floor as he yelped in surprise. Naruto launched to
grab it and tossed it out the window, immediately molesting the poor
Nara until he found the rest of the pack. “Damn it! Give those
back you day-glo psychopath!” Shikamaru griped, but they were
already in the sink with the water running over them by the time he
managed to grab Naruto's hand.

“We agreed you were going to quit, so quit!” Naruto
declared, glaring irritably up at the Nara.

“You decided I would
quit! I didn't have anything to do with it, so I don't see why I have
to!”

“Because it's not healthy, that's why!” Naruto demanded,
stomping his foot. “It's bad for your body and it's bad for
your heart too! He wouldn't want you to waste your life like this
just because he's gone, damn it!” he blurted. He hadn't meant
to go there, but Naruto has always had a big mouth.

The words startled Shikamaru into silence for a long moment. “...I
know that,” he said eventually, “but, even so, I...”

Naruto sighed sympathetically and rested a hand on the Nara's
shoulder. “Shikamaru...”

“I've
lost my focus,” the Nara said at last. “Most of the
time, I'm fine with it. It's not as if I'm really still in mourning.
Sure, I miss him, but I'm not a kid anymore; I know that no matter
how hard you try, sometimes you just can't protect the people you
care about. It's just, I had this plan of how my life was going to
go. Asuma and I would spend another seven or eight months playing
shougi on Tuesdays before he would stupidly declare that if he won
this one game, I would have to move in with him even though he's
never beaten me in all the years we've been playing together. He'd
say something about how he was feeling particularly lucky that day.
I'd let the game drag out a while and then lose on purpose. We'd both
know, but neither of us would say anything.

Then we'd get the Akatsuki taken care of once and for all, and after
that maybe stay on for another three or four years before retiring
early and living a quiet, peaceful life where all I have to complain
about is that he smokes too much and squeezes the toothpaste from the
top of the tube.” He sighed a little, instinctively reaching
for a cigarette only to remember they'd just been drowned in the sink
and lifting a hand to rake his fingers through his bed-mussed hair.
“But that plan isn't going to work out and it's the first time
in my life I haven't had a back-up. I start thinking about that and
before I know it I'm down three cigarettes and still don't have any
answers.”

“Well, sure,” Naruto answered as if Shikamaru's entire
rant made perfect sense. “Love is having no back-up plan, but
that's still no excuse to throw your life away. For a genius, you can
be pretty stupid, you know.”

“I'm not throwing it away,” Shikamaru griped. “It
just seems to be slipping through my fingers.”

“Then close your damn fingers,” Naruto said, jabbing the
brunette in the chest. “You can't do that with a cigarette in
between them, you know.”

Shikamaru actually laughed. “You're something else, I swear.”

“No more cigarettes!” Naruto insisted, stomping his foot.

Shikamaru finally agreed. “No more cigarettes.”

Naruto crossed his arms over his chest and nodded sagely, though it
wasn't a very convincing display of intellect. “Now we're
getting somewhere.”

---

Shikamaru never realized how dependent he was on those little white
cancer-inducing sticks of tobacco. The first day hadn't been bad,
Naruto was an incredibly distracting presence and just having someone
else around all the time kept him from thinking too much, and it was
when he was lost in thought that he most tended to start smoking.

That evening they got together with a large group of their mutual
friends. Chouji grinned stupidly every time Shikamaru instinctively
reached for a cigarette that wasn't there and sighed, resorting to
drumming his fingers on the table. Neji glared at said fingers when
the drumming started, until someone gave him and Lee sake, at which
point they somehow ended up going to karaoke and making fools of
themselves until about two in the morning. Ino fell asleep on
Chouji's shoulder at about midnight, so he excused himself early to
bring her home, they had a mission tomorrow. “No relapses,”
he told Shikamaru. “This is good for you, so do us all a favor
and let Naruto have his way, just this once, you know?”

Shikamaru sighed and looked at the mic where Naruto was singing some
idiotic song about boots with fur, extremely badly. Their slightly
drunken friends didn't seem to notice, except for Sakura, who was
booing him and throwing popcorn. “...he's a pain in the ass,”
Shikamaru complained, “but, I guess his intentions don't suck.”
And immediately after that he said, “geez, is this song ever
going to end?”

Ino, groggy and half leaning on
Chouji giggled. “You take care, okay, Shika?” she said.

“You guys be careful on your
mission,” he answered. “Go get some sleep, you need to
be up early.”

“That's our Shikamaru,”
Ino said sleepily as Chouji started walking her out, “always
worrying about people but never letting people worry about him.”

Chouji rubbed her arm a little. “I
think it's admirable.”

“Aa, me too.” she
yawned.

Shikamaru sighed. “Honestly, I
can still hear you, you know,” he complained.

Ino turned and stuck her tongue out
at her friend, almost toppling over in her tipsy half-asleep state so
that the Akimichi had to catch her around the waist. “Tonight
was fun, Shikamaru,” she said. “Let's do it again
sometime soon, okay?”

“Go back and go to sleep,”
the Nara griped, but he didn't get the time to say more as Naruto was
suddenly at his side, dragging him back away from the door. “Don't
think you're going to escape without singing anything!” he
declared. “You're the only one who hasn't yet!”

“I told you I wasn't going
to!”

“Oi, Neji, pick a song for
Shikamaru to sing!”

“How about this one?”
Neji asked Lee, who was no longer really responding to human speech.
Tenten peered over the back of the couch. “No no, this one,
definitely, this one, right Sakura?”

“Oooh! I love that one, yeah,
let's make him sing that one!” Sakura declared.

Mic shoved in hand, Shikamaru's
first sullen words were “I hate you all.” Everyone
started laughing.

The
next morning, the song was still stuck in his head. He hummed it
while brushing his teeth without thinking about it, and by the time
he was opening the window while the coffee was brewing he was singing
it around a yawn while he brushed his hair. “Old
love affair.../Floating like a bird resting her wings./ You were
there... /Smiling in my arms for all those years./ What a fool...”
He sighed heavily when he realized what he was doing. “They're
right. I've been such a moron about all of this. This smoking habit
doesn't have anything to do with remembering the past or Asuma.”
His fingers twitched. “But even if that's the case, I really
want a cigarette right now.” He hadn't realized how addicted
he actually was until Naruto had gone and shoved the fact in his
face. He turned into the room to get a cup of coffee just as the
blond was bumbling his way towards the bathroom and for some reason
got really irked all of a sudden. “Do you have to wear that
stupid hat?”

Naruto
blinked at him groggily. “What's wrong with it?”

“Everything,
obviously. For one, it's staring at me.”

If
Shikamaru was this edgy already, Naruto had a feeling this 'cold
turkey' thing wasn't going to go well at all. He was right, he spent
the better part of day two snapping at the blond, and by day three he
declared “I give up! Get the fuck out of my house!” and
stormed towards the front door.

“Where
are you going?” Naruto asked. Generally if someone told someone
to get out, they didn't leave too...

“I'm
going to get a pack of cigarettes, damn it, and if you try to stop me
I might just shove a kunai up a very uncomfortable place!”
Slam.

Naruto
blinked a bit, and then launched out the window, tackling the poor
Nara to the ground. “Okay, on to plan B!”

Shikamaru
paled. There was a plan B? Knowing Naruto he'd just come up with it
right now. But before he could protest, Naruto had grabbed his wrist
and was dragging him down the street almost faster than he could keep
up. “Narutooo...” he insisted in his rarely used
dangerous tone of voice.

“No
no, you don't have to thank me!” Naruto grinned at the Nara
over his shoulder. “Going cold turkey was probably a bad idea
anyway. But this plan will definitely
work.”

The
Nara couldn't fight a strong sense of foreboding. Why did he agree
to this again?

~TBC~

To Reviewers:

llyoung: haha
yep. Ooo. Foreshadowing. Or maybe not.

Lady Laran: well,
hopefully this will be a good one then—though, I'll admit I'm
not that confident right now.

jewel: while
I agree with you, that would force this story to be a lot longer than
what I'm planning on, just through the awesomeness that is Chouji.
So, I sent him away on a mission. I hope you'll forgive me for that.

BrokenSouledPoetess:
can't say I like
SasuNaru (but okay, I'm biased. I just can't stand Sasuke and think
Naruto deserves and can get much better!, ahem, but anyway, I
digress), but I'm glad you're willing to give ShikaNaru and this
story a try. Thanks for the review.

FairyNiamh: I
can't speak from personal experience, but I do have a lot of friends
and family members that have had trouble kicking the habit, so I know
what you mean. Unfortunately, I'm planning a SHORT story, so I
probably won't do justice to that particular struggle. Well, can't
win 'em all.

PrplGrl: hah,
I still don't consider myself a reader/writer of angst. I think
every great story involves someone getting a little overemotional
(angsting, if you will) but I generally avoid stories where that
takes up the bulk of the action, is what I mean when I say I 'don't
do angst'. Suicide stories, or just general angsting really aren't my
thing, but I'm not going to avoid it entirely either. Shikamaru's
lover died on him, so of course he's going to be upset! Buut, Naruto
will cheer him up, definitely!

yaoilovergirl: I
know what you're trying to say and I'm glad I'm managing to keep them
in character. Hope you continue to enjoy the story.
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Kicking the Habit