A/N: Welcome to my motley collection of ShikaTema drabbles that I've collected over the years. I've been writing them for the longest time but only now joined . There's a lot of uploading to do! These drabbles span a good five years. I started writing them in 2006 and aside from a break of a year or two, haven't stopped. What I love about this pairing is that there's always something to mine, always something new to write about. I'll do my best to get these uploaded in as chronological a fashion as I can, so that you can see how I've grown through the years.

The first drabble I ever wrote was a piece of crap so I'm going to pretend it never existed and move on. This here is something I titled QED. I always thought that if Shikamaru knew what Latin was, he'd have a deep appreciation for it. This was written in early 2006. It spans 223 words, and took me 19 minutes.

When their relationship first started, the most common question asked by just about everyone was why. Why Temari? Why not someone else, why not someone less opinionated, or someone prettier, or someone from their own village?

It wasn't as if he couldn't come up with good reasons, but to him, they all sounded silly. What could he say? That she was really good at Go and Shougi, and he could easily spend all day playing against her? Or maybe that he was too lazy to find someone better? Or could it be that he was dating her just to keep the relations between the two villages good?

What he wanted to say, but couldn't because he'd just get teased about it, was that she was a challenge he was willing to face. He weathered her flashfire temper and her embarrassing nicknames for those peaceful afternoons and early mornings together. He put up with the distance between them for breathless nights and the smell of lavender and that private, tender smile.

And really, it was the way she kissed him, kissed him with a heat reminiscent of the desert she came from, marking him as hers, hers, that left him with an ache in his heart and the knowledge that there was no one else.

Quod erat demonstratum, after all. He couldn't argue that.