Shikdai looks like his father, but that sass he must have definitely gotten from Temari. Young Shikamaru would be all "I'm not gonna get involved" and try not to anger his mom, but Shikadai gives no f*cks. He tells it how he is, the way his mother did. At least that's what I interpreted from his ridiculously little appearance in the final chapter.

PS SHIKATEMA FTW. Had to write something about them to celebrate the canon status.

There had to be a solution to this problem.

From an early age, Shikadai had a knack for problem solving. He would take everything in, break down the facts, and he would continue to test various methods ranging from avoidance to outright destroying the issues that bothered him (like the triumphant moment he burned that dreaded deer onesie his Uncle Kankuro got him for Christmas one year, but unfortunately his mother still had pictures). Shikadai wouldn't stop until the annoyance disappeared, or was at least at a tolerable level.

But this problem at hand required a higher degree of care to try to solve.

He first identified the issue when Inojin had to cancel on their plans to laze about in the Nara forest. They'd stumbled upon an open field just outside the grassy expanse his family's deer frequented. There, they were largely left alone by peers and family alike, but they weren't necessarily always allowed much time there.

One afternoon, Inojin's mother forbade him to leave their house until he'd cleaned his room. Shikadai himself knew how to avoid his own mother when she was being excessively troublesome – more so than she normally was, anyway. She liked his room a certain way, and Shikadai always complied with her set standards, because it was more of a headache to resist more often than not.

But that wasn't the problem.

Well, it was a problem, but he already had a solution to it. No use spending more time thinking about it.

At first, his knowledge had been that this type of bossiness was limited to mothers. That theory died before Shikadai could think too much about it. Chouchou wasn't a mother. Neither was Sarada. And although the latter usually kept to herself, she could turn from quiet company to an absolute pain at surprising speed. The only girl who could pass as not-so-troublesome was Himawari, but the girl cried far too much to be pleasant.

He began to have a larger pool of people to categorize. After all, it couldn't be coincidental that they were all female.

(He briefly wondered if Boruto could somehow be thrown into that pile, but Shikadai decided that was a different category of troublesome altogether)

First, there was that tidbit with Auntie Ino. All he said was that she could have prevented her five-pound weight gain had she stopped indulging in the chocolates that Inojin gave her every time he had done something wrong. Both he and Inojin had gotten into enormous trouble for that, even if Shikadai had only been trying to help. Crazy, angry pig-woman.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the last of his unpleasant encounters with females.

He once told Sarada Uchiha that her new pair of glasses didn't suit her face (the dimensions of her round face had jutted out of the rounded red frames, a look he had concluded that she wasn't going for), and she had replied to his helpful suggestion to get new ones with a fist.

Chouchou, he quickly found, would not listen to anyone other than Anko-sensei, no matter how reasonable they were, and her constant backtalk was too annoying to even provoke. Wasting his breath would be stupid to do. Silly brat.

Even his grandmother eventually proved to be a handful. If Shikadai could pinpoint the moment he'd stopped being her adorable first grandson to The Heir to the Nara Legacy, he'd attribute it to the time he'd stumbled upon a messy linen closet. Since grandma always prided herself on a clean and well-functioning house, he thought she'd appreciate his criticism of the closet, but then she made him do chores all afternoon that had been a new level of troublesome he didn't want to repeat ever again. It gave him great insight as to why a visit to grandma wasn't something his dad did happily. Up until that point, she had been all cookies and hugs.

And when his grandma was angry, she might have been scarier than his mom. It was too close to tell just yet, but to avoid having more data to compare the two, he had to readjust his actions quickly.

The logical answer he came up with is to keep his thoughts to himself, especially around women, except he hated doing that. At least boys would either laugh it off or something and it would be done and over with. Girls had a tendency to talk his ear off when they were not pleased. Logically, women and girls were troublesome. His mother, his grandmother, his female peers… it was better to keep his mouth when he couldn't avoid them.

Still, he hated keeping his opinions to himself. Nothing got better when he did, but girls never appreciated it anyway.

After coming up with that solution, he didn't get into much trouble again. The consequences were too troublesome to try to wriggle out of. His mother saw to that.

After all, from the moment he could speak, he learned pretty quickly that there were too many times that he shouldn't. Not around her, at least.

XXX

It didn't take Shikadai long to see that his father had also developed a similar system when it came to dealing with his mother. It had been clear she would be the one to go to whenever he needed to ask for anything like signed permission slips, or if he needed permission to go hang out with Chouchou and Inojin. His father would always say, "go ask your mother", if Shikadai hadn't already.

In other words, she practically had his father trained to do everything to her bidding.

His theory had been proven during one of her first weeklong trips to Suna. The rules were (predictably) a lot more lax around the house. She decided to go back on duty fulltime when he started school at the academy, and she would be gone a week or so every couple of months to act as a liaison between Suna and Konoha. She would then work her way up to higher-ranked missions.

Shikadai looked forward to her prolonged absences (even if he would never admit to missing her terribly during the last few days - not in a million years). He and his father would then spend the week playing shogi, eating all kinds of junk food that his mother always expressed her disapproval of, and generally lazing around. It was heaven.

Of course, the day before her expected arrival home, they would make sure the house would appear as though she had never stepped foot outside the house. There would be hell to pay otherwise.

On this particular afternoon, he and his father were doing just that: cleaning the house. His mom would be back later tonight, and they couldn't put off the housework anymore without risking the quality of their task and having to face a tired, angry kunoichi.

They were currently scrubbing the kitchen floors. They normally did this task in silence, and Shikadai used this time to mull over the question he wanted to ask his dad. In class that morning, Shino-sensei had talked about how bugs sometimes had a preference for their own gender, and Shikadai had found this to be a neat idea when it came to future partnerships. That would certainly avoid the troublesome headaches in his future.

He was elated all through his walk home. He felt like he solved world hunger.

Because of the greatness of this sudden revelation thanks to Shino-sensei, he was eager to share it with his dad, who was never too keen on the idea of being married to his troublesome wife anyway. He would wish he had thought of it sooner.

"Dad," he began, all serious and grave. His father didn't even look up at him, but Shikadai knew the man was at least listening, so he continued, "I prefer boys over girls."

At that, the older Nara stopped. Shikadai had his father's full attention now. The scrubbing brush was forgotten in Shikamaru's complete surprise. His son, however, continued on as though it was a brilliant idea, which he thought it was. "Shino-sensei told us today that bugs sometimes mated with the same gender, and I thought that was a great idea.

"So I'm gonna marry a boy, if I ever plan to get married." He declared proudly. Really, the logic was simple. Shikadai wondered why his dad didn't come up with this conclusion sooner before marrying his mom. That would have saved him a lot of complaining.

Still, his father wasn't responding, choosing instead to openly gape at him in disbelief. The young boy found himself having to elaborate. His father had a way of staring right at him until he had to make sense. It made Shikadai feel like all his thoughts were open to him, like he would pick apart the strategies he would come up with, since he was the expert at doing that.

Because of this, he found himself rambling on, panicked that his father might have found a flaw in his logic. "I mean, women are troublesome. You say so yourself. Auntie Ino, Sarada, Chouchou, grandma… they're bossy. You said it before, too."

Shikamaru still couldn't even put a sentence together.

"I would never marry a woman," he reiterated, though he did so less confidently this time. "So, I think I'm going to have a male partner, because a man wouldn't boss me around."

Sometimes, Shikamaru has a hard time remembering that his son is still so young. He seemed to grow at a ridiculously fast rate, never mind that mouth of his. The boy also had a vast vocabulary for someone his age, and to hear him try to wrap his head around the complexities of marriage was definitely surprising, even if he should have seen it coming.

But of course, Shikadai didn't stop there. Just when the older Nara thought that his son was finished surprising him, the boy turned to his father, accusing now. "And you don't like girls either. You should have married a man if you wanted to get married."

That was the last straw. He could handle the concept of homosexuality fine; ninjas had far more things to worry about than spreading hatred that didn't affect their lives in any dangerous way, though it's still another thing for his own son to think him in such a light when he's happily married. To a woman. Okay, it's time to end this.

Shikamaru decided to put himself into a more comfortable position before trying to tackle this problem at hand. Hovering over hardwood floor on all fours was taking a toll on his knees and wrists. "Troublesome…" he muttered under his breath before leveling his eyes on his son.

"I wouldn't have married your mom if I wanted to marry a man," he began. Shikadai lazily nodded in understanding, though the kid's eyes were bright with interest. "I didn't want to marry a man. Let's get that straight, here."

Shikadai mulled this over for a bit. "But you think women are troublesome." The younger Nara stated.

"Correct."

The scowl doesn't leave Shikadai's face. "Yet you're with one."

"That's just how I was wired," Shikamaru replied as calmly as he could. He was still anything but.

"But you complain about them. Constantly."

"Yes."

"Especially about mom."

The older Nara almost said something along the lines of "it's because I love her", but then he would have to explain the definition of that, and frankly, he's getting a headache. He'll let the kid put something together before correcting him. He was good at that, after all.

In his silence, Shikadai appeared to have put together some sort of (hopefully) plausible explanation. He just needed his dad to clarify. "You complain about women. Mom's a woman. But you didn't want to marry a man," he went on, "So you married a woman, mom, who you find troublesome, strict, and scary." He stared directly at his dad with those familiar teal eyes, scrutinizing him.

He watched the young boy scowl, trying to wrap his mind around the idea. He knows firsthand the speed in which the boy formulated new links and connections between new information he'd been given. Just as quickly as they'd appeared in that curious pineapple head of his, it was clear in his blank, still baby-like expression that the matter was largely inconclusive without further data. Finally, Shikadai gave up and said, "I still don't get it. Why would you marry a scary, strict, troublesome woman?"

Well... doesn't that question bring back memories?

If the situation at hand wasn't such a pain, Shikamaru would have smiled. At the very least though, he could answer this one. "Even the toughest woman will show her gentle side to the man she loves."

That appeared to have left the boy in more confusion than at the beginning of their conversation. All Shikamaru could do was smile wryly and say, "you'll understand when you're older." He couldn't understand it at twelve years old. What were the chances that the boy would at five?

Not that it stopped him from trying to, naturally.

A couple of years later, Shikadai watched the wrinkly, tiny red face of the minutes-old newborn in the bassinet. Seeing this, Temari instructed her son on how to hold her properly, and even then, the baby began to put up a fuss the moment she'd been deposited into his stiff arms. It didn't take long for her to demonstrate just how healthy her lungs were, as well as how even her small arms and legs could already pack the punch.

Temari made a move to retrieve the newborn, but Shikadai insisted, with a scowl, on holding the small, squiggly bundle.

Over the screaming, his mother asked why.

Shikadai's dark teal eyes remained on his sister with a determined look on his face. He was waiting for her to be quiet and gentle. "I'm trying to see if she loves me."

Nope, he still doesn't get it.

I mean, I doubt Shikamaru really took his dad's words to heart until Temari.