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An Interlude of Bears and Insects	By : GrizzlyTeddyBear Category: Naruto > Het - Male/Female Views: 936 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto, and this makes me sad. It also means I make no money from this venture. Naruto belongs to Misashi Kishimoto.

Chapter List
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Authoress Pre-ramble:
I am alive! It has been longer
than I would have liked, but alas, many things have been conspiring against
me! Time is definitely one of them. There just doesn’t seem to be enough of it to
go around! There’s also the fact that work
is kicking my butt. And then there’s the
awesomeness of me getting to pal around with some Muskogee Creek Native
Americans I’ve recently befriended. As a
result, some totem information may morph a bit to conform to new information I
gather. And last, but not least…my
health has been uncooperative…mystery hives covering my entire body for weeks
on end is NOT fun.

A hearty thank you to all readers and reviewers who have
waited patiently and not so patiently!
And a shameless plug for CasaHouse The Code. Go read and
review! My next project is a
collaboration with him taking place after his fic, and that means you guys have
to get him to finish his current story!

Title: An
Interlude of Bears and Insects
By: GrizzlyTeddyBear
Disclaimer: I
don’t own Naruto, and this makes me sad.
It also means I make no money from this venture. Naruto belongs to Misashi Kishimoto. I do own Paige Stone, my OC! All information regarding animal totems was
collected from Dancing The Wheel by
Sun Bear and Animal Speak by Ted
Andrews.
Main Pairings:
ShinoxOC
Rating: M for
mentioned adult themes
Warning: AU,
Post-series start time. Rookie 9 is
23-24 years old. Fic mentions pagan
religions, if you can’t handle it, don’t read! Also is OC-centric. Hold your pants, all will be revealed as the
story progresses.

An Interlude of Bears
and Insects
***Chapter 1***

She was tossing and turning…again. This made for a solid week of sleepless
nights. Letting out an exasperated sigh,
Paige Stone kicked off the covers to let the cool night air get at her
skin. Squinting to get a look at the
clock across the room on the dresser, she let out a frustrated groan, rolled
over, and buried her face in the pillow Shino normally used. The clock announced it was only 2:00AM…15
minutes later than it was when she last looked at the time.

To say she missed her husband would have been a ridiculous
understatement. Paige filled her days
with her new found friends, family, and even a new job, but it was the nights
that couldn’t be filled. She missed
knowing he was next to her. She missed
falling asleep in his arms. She missed
his warmth and his strength that let her ease her mind and fall asleep
peacefully. Aburame Shino hadn’t needed
any shinobi skills to capture her heart.
The two of them seemed to just fit together. And it was this time apart that drove that
point home further than anything else for Paige.

Paige rolled over again, clutching Shino’s pillow to her
chest and let her mind wander, hoping that maybe sleep would come if she
stopped trying to turn off her thoughts and just let them run their
course. She found herself thinking about
the conversation that started her current predicament and also guaranteed that
she’d have future times of this as well.

***

The letter was delivered by courier—probably a recent
academy graduate—with the simple instruction of “For your husband,
Aburame-sama”. The seal on it signified
it was from the office of the Hokage.

“Thank you,” Paige replied.
“I’ll be sure he reads it right away.”

The courier left after giving a polite bow and another
“Aburame-sama”.

Shaking her head at her own inability to get used to being
addressed as “Aburame-sama,” Paige walked back to the office of the home where
she knew Shino was poring over paperwork for both clan and council. Her heart was racing. It had only been one month since their
wedding and three weeks since the announcement of her pregnancy to the clan and
their friends. The message had to be
important. The situation just had that feel to it.

Shino looked up from his desk as she entered the room. Tilting his head slightly he asked, “Who is
it from?”

“The Hokage,” she replied, handing over the scroll. Standing to read over his shoulder, Paige
felt as if the floor had been pulled out from under her, and leaned to grip the
desk.

Shino turned slightly to lend Paige some support.

The message read simply, “Your suspension is over. You are back in ANBU mission rotation.”

“We knew the suspension was temporary.” Shino ran his hand in comforting circles on
Paige’s back. “I’m glad she gave us this
much time without missions.” He
encircled her waist with his arms and she spun to shift her weight to her own
two feet again.

“I don’t like it,” she frowned. Trying to hide her frustration by looking up
at the ceiling, she continued. “I
understand it. I won’t ask you to leave
it... But don’t ask me to like it.” Looking down at her husband Paige tried to
put on a brave face. “You’re shinobi,
but I don’t like the idea of you being far away from me…of you in danger, of
you being hurt…” her voice trailed off, revealing her emotions.

Shino stood and wrapped her in a fierce embrace. “I do not like those ideas either. But I am shinobi…trained to protect village
and clan. I will do whatever it takes to
come back to you from every mission.”

With that declaration from him, Paige lost her battle and
began crying. She knew that was not a
promise that Shino could make. He would
try, she was sure of that. But no
shinobi can promise to come back from every mission alive. That was part of the job…being ready to die
for village…and clan.

***

Sitting up in bed, Paige violently wiped away the tears that
particular memory stirred up.
Unfortunately she had been a bit too violent and disturbed the carefully
hung shelf that was above the bed’s headboard.
Paige was now buried under a small avalanche of teddy bears. Chuckling at her predicament, she picked one
teddy off the top of her head and looked at it.

Shino really was a big softy. Each and every bear was from him. It had started with the one he gave her in
the hospital. Paige sifted through the
pile of plushies looking for that particular one and flopped backwards,
cuddling it after she had found it. He
was her favorite one. The second one had
been innocently sitting upon her bed when she was released from the hospital
early. More sifting through the pile and
that one joined the other in her arms.
She mused that Shino really was enabling her “addiction” to the cuddly
bears. Never knowing when one would show
up in their bedroom, Paige had an additional reason to enjoy going to bed with
Shino.

She blushed at her first reason for excitement at going to
bed with her husband. The sex was
amazing! Passionate. Fiery.
Gentle. Loving. Never boring.
How could it be boring with an Aburame?
Shino was stoic outside, but with her, he was open. And Paige reveled in all of his emotions that
were revealed to her and his family, no one else.

Paige looked at her armful of teddies. “Well, now that I’ve made myself lonely and sexually frustrated…”

Glass and plastic eyes blankly looked back at her.

Groaning at herself for talking to plushies…again…her
thoughts wandered next to the one bear that did
talk back. Matohota’s twisted sense of
humor always kept her guessing. Paige
was thinking of one lesson she got that almost ended up in political disaster.

***

“Hunting?” she asked.

“Hunting,” was the reply.
Matohota’s expression hinting at the amusement he was getting out of
Paige.

“And how are we going to accomplish this, Tiblo? Throwing kunai at squirrels?” she retorted to
the smirking grizzly. She never knew one
could pull off that facial expression until she started meeting regularly with
her totem.

A snort was her initial reply. “I’m going to show you how to build your own
bow and make your own arrows.”

“Uh huh,” Paige raised an eyebrow, “and then we shoot
squirrels?”

“Hardly,” the bear shook his head and then grinned. “There’s a herd of deer close by, I’ll take
you on your first hunt.”

Unfortunately for Paige, what Matohota had hoped would be a
quick lesson, took 2 weeks. Work was
done in the afternoons since Paige had started her shifts at the Konoha Hospital
with being appointed the clinical manager of their psychiatric ward. One afternoon was dedicated to carving the
bow. It took another afternoon of
struggling just to string it. She left
that lesson with a few bloodied fingers and a black eye from sudden lack of
tension when the string escaped her grasp.
The rest of the first week was taken up with the making of arrows. There was a lot of cursing, but damn if Paige
didn’t take pride in a job finally completed.

Next was target practice.
That week started out easy enough, and similarly to how Shino trained
her to throw kunai. Paige attempted to
hit a stationary target from an ever increasing distance and then at different
angles. The real challenge came when
Matohota wanted her to try and shoot the target while it was moving. “Did you think your prey would just wait
around for you to kill it?” snarked her totem after she failed to hit her
target again.

“Survival of the fittest.
I’ll pick off the ones dumb enough to wait around,” was the sarcastic
reply she gave with a shrug and a smirk.
Paige knew she should really start learning how to predict her targets
movement and shoot where her target will
be instead of where it was, but she
was also getting frustrated.

This whole “lesson” started when she bugged Matohota to
teach her more of the old ways. But the
day that stood out the most about that particular lesson was the day of the
actual hunt. Paige should have asked
more questions, but hindsight was always clearer vision.

It was one of those perfect days, not too hot, not too cold,
and not too many clouds in the sky.
Matohota lead her to where the deer were foraging in the forest,
carefully explaining to her the importance of keeping downwind of prey. He led her to a small bottleneck in the
undergrowth. “Stay here. I will drive the deer to you while you take
aim from under cover.”

Paige nodded her assent and moved to take cover behind some
undergrowth. She watched through the
leaves as Matohota walked towards the herd and strained her hearing for signs
of an approaching stampede. Granted this
was not going to be the most graceful of hunts, but it looked like her totem
was going for something she couldn’t screw up too badly for her first hunt.

A roar sounded not too far off.

That was her signal to be at the ready.

The sound of angry men shouting.

Releasing the tension she had built up in her bow, Paige was
officially confused. Closing her eyes
she listened and could hear the
oncoming deer. Paying attention to her
gifts she then felt Deer approaching
her and groaned. Paige Stone of the Aburame
was apparently on Nara
clan holdings. Putting away her weapons
to hopefully smooth over any ruffled feathers…or fur, she tried to convey a
very large BAD IDEA feeling
towards Matohota to get him to stop the chase.

“Why should we stop when we have a chance to count coup
against a rival tribe?” her totem suddenly asked from beside her.

After letting out a rather undignified squeak at being
surprised, Paige explained. “They are
not rivals. The Nara are part of Konoha and our allies.” She stood up and waved with a smile on her
face at the oncoming angry shinobi. “And
I really hope we just didn’t start a war between the Aburame and Nara,” she muttered under
hear breath while still smiling. Spotting
Shikamaru she began walking towards them.
“As someone who is representing the clan as co-leader, and especially in
Shino’s absence, I’m hoping we can fix this.”

“As representative of the Aburame…does it count that I have
3 kunai stuck in me as compensation?” was the snidely asked question from her
totem.

Stopping to pull out the mentioned kunai and inspect the
damage, revealing it to be relatively minor, Paige replied, “It’s a negotiation
point.”

Shikamaru and his father stood opposite Paige, flanked by
unhappy Nara. Technically the head of the clan was
Shikamaru, but he was too lazy to be bothered with clan politics. His father still ran things.

Bowing a little lower than protocol demanded and holding out
the kunai, Paige addressed both Shikaku and Shikamaru, “I apologize for our
unannounced entrance. I did not know we
had passed into Nara
clan holdings.” She righted herself when
she felt the kunai taken from her.

“How troublesome,” announced Shikamaru. “I didn’t want to have to do anything today and
then you two showed up and made trouble.”
Somehow managing to look rather bored, he asked, “Just what were you
doing scaring all of our deer.”

Deciding one couldn’t really outwit a Nara, Paige replied, “I was being taken on a
hunt.” Paige gestured at the grizzly
next to her that looked a little put out by politics, “Matohota said he would
teach me more of the old ways. Although
I would have suggested somewhere else if I had known this was your land and
your deer.”

“There are no other deer in Konoha besides the Nara. We have ensured they have little
competition. It was a troublesome thing
for our ancestors,” Shikamaru sighed.

“Hunting deer in Konoha is poaching from the Nara,” announced Shikaku.

The grizzly shifted next to Paige. “I acknowledge the Nara’s ability to thwart my attempt at
counting coup on their herd and in turn their warriors’ abilities to count coup
on myself. I do not seek
compensation. I am not Aburame and my
actions should not be held against them or Taksi.”

“He means me,” explained Paige to the raised eyebrows she
received. “It means little sister.”

“You have a talking bear as your brother?” questioned
Shikamaru. “How troublesome.”

“We wish to negotiate a treaty for hunting privileges,”
announced the mentioned talking bear.

It was Paige’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Who is apparently good with negotiations…”

Within the next hour the strangest agreement between clans
to go into the Konoha legal archives was composed. The Nara
would call upon the Aburame, in the person of Paige Stone when they needed to
harvest antlers to make medicine. The
Aburame agreed to use tranquilizers during the harvesting period. This allowed Paige some target practice. However, at select times of the year, the
Aburame were to be called upon to thin the herd and maintain the optimum
balance between the genders to encourage breeding. The two clans parted ways, each with what
they wanted. Matohota and Paige got
their hunting privileges, and Shikamaru had even less work to do when it came
to tending his clan’s deer.

One successful hunt later, Paige looked down at the deer that
was transported back to her little clearing on Aburame land and wondered what
next. And to her growing nausea,
Matohota explained in detail exactly
how to go about skinning and sectioning a deer.
Setting about her new task, she was extremely thankful it was late
afternoon and well past when her morning sickness lasted.

However after the skinning and sectioning, her totem
described her next assignment for the next day.

“You want me to do WHAT
with the brains!?!”

***

Authoress Post-ramble:
Comments, questions, criticisms?
Leave a review or send me an email at ekuepper@gmail.com and just leave
something in the subject line about the story so I know it’s not junkmail!
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An Interlude of Bears and Insects