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Sakura is curled up underneath the kotatsu, her knees up to her chest, dozing in front of the television. Shikamaru throws a shuriken that lands an inch away from her face, and her eyes don’t so much as snap open.
“You’re an asshole,” she grumbles.
“And you’re going to make us late,” he replies.
He’s already dressed and surprised that she isn’t. Sakura had been unwillingly helping Uchiha ‘Helicopter Parent’ Sasuke prepare for the day they brought their child home. The baby shower was today, and the baby herself would be coming into the house the next day.
“Like you care,” Sakura says from her place on the floor. “I could give a shit.”
Shikamaru sticks his hands in his pockets.
“I can see that.”
Sakura rolls over, ignoring the shuriken Shikamaru had only just thrown at her. That makes him pause. Usually, she was more likely to throw it back at him, or throw the whole kotatsu at him if he caught her in the wrong mood.
“I’m not going.”
Shikamaru narrows his eyes.
“Oh, you’re coming,” he says, sounding suspiciously like his mother. Or Ino. Or both. “Even if I have to drag you through the snow in your pajamas.”
Sakura groans.
“Who adopts a baby in the middle of winter?” she asks. “Who has a baby shower when there’s a blizzard out?”
Shikamaru shrugs.
“They’re your friends, not mine.”
Truth be told, Shikamaru would much rather get under the kotatsu with Sakura and watch bad ninja movies until they both fell asleep. But his mother had told him to go personally to congratulate the incumbent Nanadaime and his husband on their precious in vitro fertilized gift, and that she would know if he didn’t go because the deer on the Nara compound would tell her if he left or if he sent a shadow clone.
Shikamaru sincerely resents having an ANBU Commander-deer-summoner-Nara-clan-head for a mother. It’s a pain.
He had the gifts and everything. The one from his mother (a nice box of little salves that every baby would eventually need; ones for diaper rash, ones to soothe fever, one to help with colic) and the one he and Sakura had picked up as soon as Sasuke and Naruto updated their registry (a collection of short stories for children by Jiraiya’s old editor, featuring a story about an old toad who loved balloons).
And it isn’t like he can’t show up without Sakura. He just wants to show up with her. She’s his girlfriend, and he has a better time when she’s around.
Besides, she’s Kokomi’s godmother and it’d be a dick move for her to stay home.
“You’re Kokomi’s godmother, and it’d be a dick move for you to stay home,” he says.
Sakura groans. Loudly.
“Don’t guilt trip me!”
“But it works so well every time.”
Sakura lifts her head, her pink hair in disarray about her face. Her eyes are pinched at the temples, and now that she’s sitting up, Shikamaru can see the heating pad on the floor. There’s a bottle of aspirin beside her, and wrappers for those cheap convenience store purins and an obscene looking plate of what only could have been tonkatsu before she decimated it.
“Ah,” he says.
“What?”
Shikamaru walks around the living room to get to her, and drops to his knees beside her. He drops a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle press so she lays back down. She drops her head on his lap and Shikamaru cracks his knuckles before he digs them into the tight muscle of her lower back.
Sakura lets out a sigh and kisses Shikamaru’s knee. He snorts, but he works at the tension in her back, fanning his fingers out over her hips where he knows she feels it the worst.
“We can be a little late,” he says.
Sakura looks up at him, a little grin on her face. She pats his knee a couple of times, then opens another store bought purin and pops the whole thing in her mouth like it’s a shot.
“You’re a monster,” he says, shuddering.
Sakura beams, pudding in her teeth.
“I’m your monster,” she says.
Shikamaru rubs her back. In another half hour, when the pain meds kick in, they’ll head out. Now, Sakura changes the tv to some trashy soap opera, and they both watch, enraptured as the snow falls outside.