In the aftermath of the war, I ask to stay with Shikamaru's family. There are no questions asked – Yoshino-bachan makes up a room for me and tells me to make myself at home. It's not a difficult task. Within the first few hours, I'm lounging comfortably in the living room, helping Yoshino-bachan clean, offering to watch over the children when the adults have clan matters they need to take care of.

Shikamaru, similarly, doesn't question my presence when he comes home to see me in various parts of his house. He isn't home very often, anyway, because he keeps being pulled into meetings with the new administration. Even when he is home, Shikamaru usually meets with the clan elders, and they talk about how he'll take over for his father, though they haven't formally invited him into the role yet.

Every once in a while, I'll see Shikamaru as he's leaving in the morning or coming home for lunch. We exchange the bare minimum pleasantries, like we haven't known each other our whole lives. Shikamaru's started wearing a different look on his face whenever I run into him, one that makes me feel like he's seeing me for the first time and doesn't quite know who I am anymore.

When Shikamaru comes home this evening, I'm working through some charts at the kitchen table. He warms up the plate his mother had saved for him and sits down beside me.

Shikamaru doesn't speak as he eats, and I don't speak as I work. This isn't unusual – Shikamaru and I have worked in silence together a hundred times in the past. But something about this time feels different. Just like the way he looks at me now when he comes home – familiar, but in the way you find a stranger you pass every day familiar. I find myself chewing on my lip and tapping the table with my pen, unable to pay attention to what I'm reading. Shikamaru keeps his focus trained on his food.

I could ask him about his day, but honestly I don't want to know about it. He's been working with the new administration to get things in order, to figure out who will be proxy commander of the Jounin teams and chief strategist to the Hokage while he finishes his training for both roles. I doubt anything has really changed since I last asked about it. My days have been similarly boring. I'm doing interesting work, but it's the same every day: all I do is sit with Sakura and Ino in the library, researching methods to help shinobi who develop with post-traumatic stress disorders and other mental health diseases after difficult missions.

Anyway, recently I've found myself wanting to talk to him less and less. Which is not to say I want to be around Shikamaru any less. In fact, if anything, I want to be around him more. Talking just isn't one of the things I want to do with Shikamaru right now.

Holy shit. What am I saying? Of course I want to talk to Shikamaru. What else would we possibly do together? It's that I don't want to talk about the things that we currently have to talk about.

"So, how is your research going?" Shikamaru says, and I startle, my pen dropping from my hand. The timbre of his voice catches me off guard. It's lower than I remember, silky, like he's preparing to negotiate with me. This must be the voice he uses to speak during all those meetings. Shikamaru has been practicing it so much that he doesn't know how to switch it off and go back to the languid tone he had before.

Shikamaru doesn't look up from his food.

"It's fine," I say curtly, still caught up in my earlier thoughts. Talking isn't something I want to do right now – if I had said that about Shikamaru aloud, imagine the field day some of our friends would have. And now I'm analyzing the way he's speaking? Who am I? What happened to enjoying just being in each other's company?

"Nothing new?"

"Nothing new," I confirm, sticking my pen behind my ear. I shuffle my papers together and close the folders. God, I can't be around him now. I feel dirty, like I've been fantasizing about him. Which I haven't. I just thought the wrong thing. Wait a minute, I hadn't even meant – I clear my throat, cutting myself off. Shikamaru watches me expectantly. "I'm going to call it a night."

"Oh. Okay," Shikamaru says, and I can't tell if it's uncertainty in his voice or disappointment. But when I get up, he gets up, and we bump into each other at the corner of the table. Shikamaru's solid enough to send me reeling backward. I brace myself on my chair just as Shikamaru catches me.

"Sorry," Shikamaru says as I straighten. He doesn't seem to notice that he's still holding onto me despite that I'm steady on my feet. "I was going to put my dishes away."

"Um," I start, unable to look him in the eyes. His hands are on my bare skin, the sleeves of my night shirt not long enough to cover my shoulders. Shikamaru's grip is light enough that I don't feel trapped but firm enough that I don't feel as though I could easily get free of it either. "It's okay."

Shikamaru's touch lingers for a beat too long. He lets me go and says, "All right, well. Goodnight, then."

I grab my papers from the table, saying, "Okay, goodnight." When I turn back, Shikamaru is standing too close for me to move around him without brushing him. Even the simple act of sliding sideways, away from him, would force our shoulders together. I think about asking him to move, but—

I don't want Shikamaru to move. I want our shoulders to touch. I can still feel the imprint of his fingers on my arms and imagine now what his hands would feel like if they had moved up and cupped my face – or if they had moved down and held my waist. I want to know what it would feel like for him to touch more of me.

I've stood here for too long now, and Shikamaru is getting suspicious. He leans down to meet my gaze, making it impossible for me to look away: Shikamaru's face takes up my whole field of vision, the kitchen blurry in my periphery. It's then that I realize I'm holding my breath, biting the inside of my lip so hard that I must look like I've eaten something sour.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asks, and there's the sultry voice again. There's no way Shikamaru has always sounded like this.

I'm getting too inside my head about him. I've been stuck in a room full of women for who knows how long, and Shikamaru, being the only consistent male presence in my life who I find I'm even remotely attracted to, not to mention we've just survived a war—

"Ren."

And then Shikamaru has my face in his hands, his thumbs pressed over the apples of my cheeks. He looks between my eyes, examining me, as he says, "Hey. Are you all right?"

"I'm—fine," I manage, feeling my face grow hot under him. Under his hands. I feel my face growing hot under his hands.

Thinking is not my forte right now, that much is obvious. With Shikamaru so close to me, I can't even look away from him and give myself a false sense of security that he isn't somehow reading my mind through contact alone. Our faces within inches of each other, he must see it, the red flush coming over my face. I see him seeing it, see it catching like wildfire across his cheeks too. But he doesn't let go.

"Um," I say and give a weak laugh, trying to look everywhere but at Shikamaru. "I'm—okay. Uh, ha ha, okay, so. Goodnight."

Having exhausted my attempts to find an escape, I settle my gaze back on Shikamaru, only to find his gaze has wandered too. His eyes snap back to mine but just a second too late—I've caught Shikamaru staring at my mouth.

"Sorry," he says again and, finally, releases me. There is an undeniable blush, red and all-consuming, on his cheeks now, and he quickly turns to the table to gather up his plates. "Goodnight. I'll see you later."

"Okay," I say, because what else do you say when you catch your best friend inexplicably looking at your mouth? Not "Hey, were you thinking about kissing me?" Because Shikamaru wasn't thinking about kissing me. He's my best friend. I don't think about kissing my best friend. And I certainly don't think about what kissing him back might be like or about how soft his lips might be or how he might taste or how much I would like it, all of which is definitely, definitely not what I'm thinking about now. "Yeah, goodnight."

"Goodnight," he repeats, and, addled by the awkwardness of the situation, I say, "Goodnight," again.

Shikamaru walks to the sink at that moment, thankfully breaking us out of what could have been an endless cycle of goodnights. All I have to do is walk out of the room, too, and everything will resolve itself. I'll stop thinking about Shikamaru's hands or whether he's thinking about kissing me or even why it matters whether he's thinking about kissing me. I just have to leave. Go to my room down the hall. Which, actually, just so happens to be right next to his.

Wow, I'm not seriously thinking about walking him to his room, am I? Among the many other things that could lead to? Well, hold on, what would it lead to! I already said I wasn't—no, present tense! I am not thinking about kissing him! We can walk to our rooms together! Innocently! It's fine! No concerns here!

"Ren?"

Shikamaru is paused in the middle of drying his hands. The pink tea towel with bright yellow fishes reminds me suddenly that he's very much at home in what is his home, and of course he should be. It's his home and also there's nothing to feel awkward about! How many times have I spent the night at his house now? How many times have we slept together, even? Again, not like that—

"Are you lost?" Shikamaru quirks his brow, a faint shadow of amusement on his face replacing the embarrassment from earlier as though it had never happened.

"No," I say, my voice cracking. "No," I repeat more firmly to recover some modicum of dignity. "I just thought maybe we could walk together."

His eyebrows go higher. "To our rooms?"

"Ha ha, exactly," I say. Yes, good, play it off as a joke. That will make things feel like we're back to being normal best friends and not two people who were just one second ago thinking about kissing each other. Or, at the very least, one best friend who was thinking about kissing the other, though who is who in this situation I can't say for sure. "Unless you were going to stay up?"

"No," he says a little too quickly. "Sleep sounds great. Let's go. To our rooms," he adds. "Separate. Your room and my room, which are separate."

"Yeah," I say. "I get it. Separate rooms. We have them. But we'll walk together."

"Yeah," he says and shrugs. Wow, great blasé attitude, another good play at alleviating the tension that is absolutely nonexistent and was totally misread earlier. Everything is normal. "You get it."

I hold onto my papers, and Shikamaru comes to the kitchen threshold and flips off the light, plunging us into an abysmal darkness before our eyes adjust. He doesn't step forward. I can imagine him pursing his lips—not that I'm imagining his mouth, okay, anyway it's a thing he does, which is only something I've noticed because we're best friends, not because I've spent time breaking down the curve of his lips.

"Do you know your way?" he says. "Can you manage, I mean, in the dark?"

"Yeah," I say. "I have the vibrations. You're the one who should be careful. I always hear you bumping around the house when you come home in the middle of the night."

A pause.

"Do I wake you up?" he says. Unable to see, my other senses are heightened. My ears pick up his voice, soft, smooth, seductive in the way it can only be when you think too much about wanting someone, and so clear it sounds like he's leaning into me as he talks. I can feel the heat radiating off his body.

Do I wake you up? he'd asked. But from the way he said it, it felt more like, Does the thought of me keep you up at night?

I swallow, thankful for the darkness. I only have a few more seconds of its grace before our eyes adjust and he can see me, see the way I push my hair from my face, the way I have to squeeze my hand over my mouth before I speak to make sure my voice doesn't shake. "I...I just happen to be up," I say. "Anyway, just be careful."

"You lead the way, then."

I lead the way, then. But we don't make it two steps into the living room before I hear a thump!, followed by a hiss of pain. I can't help but laugh at his almost immediate stumble, saying, "Come on, Shika. This is your own house. You should know it better than I do."

"Forgive me if I was trusting you to lead me so I didn't have to think about it."

"Well, that's your own fault. You said I should lead the way, but you obviously weren't following very closely."

"You're right. I'll just," Shikamaru says and comes up so close behind me that I can feel the rise and fall of his chest against my back, "have to follow more closely. Is this okay?"

I can't help but laugh again, though this time it comes out breathless and shrill. "It's...it's okay," I say. If I turn around right now, I bet Shikamaru would be close enough to kiss. I can already feel his breath on the back of my neck, warm, inviting, like he's already anticipating that I'll turn around and is ready to catch me. I would barely have to lift my face to reach his mouth.

Instead, I reach behind me. My fingers tap his palm, then grasp the whole of his hand. "Why don't I just hold onto you?" I say and step away. "Come on."

I maneuver us through the living room, taking us to the hallway with relative ease. From here we have to turn a corner to make it to our rooms, and that's it. Nothing left to bump into. But even so, he doesn't let go of my hand.

To be fair, I don't let go either.

Our rooms are next to each other, the doors side-by-side. My door is first—I go to reach for the doorknob, but both my hands are full—one holding onto my papers, the other holding onto Shikamaru.

I should let go. Obviously. A little twist and my hand would be free to open the door. "I, uh," I start and turn to him. A little nightlight in the hallway makes Shikamaru glow an unearthly green that somehow suits him. The thought of letting go leaves. "This is me."

"Yeah," Shikamaru says. "Let me get that for you."

He reaches behind me, stepping so close I have to press my back against the door or else risk our bodies touching in a way I wouldn't be able to handle at the moment. I hear the soft jiggle of the doorknob. But Shikamaru doesn't open the door.

Instead, he keeps his gaze steady with mine. The green light makes Shikamaru's expression seem even more intense, the shadows contouring the sharpness of his cheeks and somehow emphasizing the warm brown of his eyes. He stands straight, having angled his body toward the door rather than leaned forward to open it, leaving him sure and strong in his stance.

"Well," Shikamaru says, his voice a hum, low, breathless. He tilts his head to the right. "Goodnight."

"Yeah," I respond, and his fingers tighten around mine. "Good…good…um."

"Night," he finishes for me. Shikamaru is closer now, has somehow moved toward me without my notice. If I shift my head even a little, for sure we'll kiss.

There's no mistaking it now, right? Someone is trying to kiss someone here. It's not possible for me to have imagined all this tension between us. And definitely not possible for me to imagine the way that Shikamaru is looking at me now, like he would like nothing more than to touch me.

Just a little distance. I just have to close a little distance and then the tension will snap and whatever happens, happens. We'd been too busy worrying about a war and the constant collapse of our village to deal with these kinds of things properly when we were younger, but now we're eighteen-years-old—we can handle a little kissing. And whatever else comes after.

I shiver at the thought of everything that will come after, and Shikamaru smirks, and finally I twist my hand free of Shikamaru's. But only so I can touch his face and guide him toward me.

Shikamaru's lips are soft, warm, a little damp, like he had licked them in anticipation of kissing me. I relax with the pressure of his mouth on mine, though I respond to his kisses with a hunger I feel will never be satiated. Shikamaru presses me against the door, his body flat against mine, his hand slipping down my waist, to my thigh, lifting my leg as though he means to hoist me up. He kisses my throat, my collarbone, and—

The door unceremoniously falls out from behind me and I slam into the ground, Shikamaru on top of me. I'm gasping for breath as Shikamaru struggles to get back on his feet, the sudden fall dropping us both out of whatever we were imagining was going to happen next. He braces himself on the doorframe to pull himself up, grabbing my arms and lifting me to standing, too.

"Sorry," he's muttering. Shikamaru is out of breath and dazed. "Sorry. My hand slipped on the doorknob. Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," I say. My head feels a little tender. Though I can't tell if that's because I'm lightheaded after kissing him or because I had hit the ground so hard. Either way, it's nothing that a little more kissing couldn't fix. I'm about to tell him as much when we hear a squeak, the groggy voice of his mother saying, "Is that you, Shikamaru? And Ren? What's going on?"

We both freeze.

Holy shit. His mother. I had totally forgotten to take into consideration Yoshino-bachan. I was about to do terrible things to her son—her only child—right underneath the roof of her house. With her just two doors down from me.

"Sorry, Mom," Shikamaru is saying as I clear my mind of Shikamaru, his body against mine, how I was planning on getting him into my room, into my bed so we could continue. "I—we were—"

"I thought I heard something," I say quickly, again thankful that the darkness keeps her from seeing too much of us and how our body language would give us away. My papers are spread on the floor. I bend down to collect them all, the shushing of papers filling the space between our talking. "I was going to check out what it was. But it was just Shikamaru. He surprised me, is all."

"Yeah," Shikamaru says. "Sorry. It's nothing."

I finish gathering my papers and stand. There's a deep silence. In any other situation, I would think it's Yoshino-bachan taking time to process what we've told her. But filled with guilt, I fill the silence with Yoshino-bachan's suspicion. She knows. Somehow, she knows what we were just doing, what we were planning on doing, can hear all the inappropriate thoughts I'm having about her son, and now she's assessing the situation to see what she should do next so that we don't go through with the plan of what we had wanted to do to each other. I grip the papers to my chest, breathless now, but not in a good way.

"Mm, okay," Yoshino-bachan says, no trace of suspicion in her voice. "I thought I heard Shikamaru come home. You're always bumping into things in the living room, honey."

"Yeah," Shikamaru says. "That was me. Bumping into things in the living room."

"Okay." Yoshino-bachan yawns. "Well, goodnight, kids. And, Shikamaru, for heaven's sake, try to get home early once in a while so you don't wake up the whole house stumbling into things."

"Okay," Shikamaru says. "Sorry again. Goodnight, Mom."

"Goodnight, Yoshino-bachan," I say, only to have her mutter in response.

After she closes the door, Shikamaru and I wait. Seconds pass, then a full minute. During the quiet, as we give time for Yoshino-bachan to fall back asleep, Shikamaru reaches out. He takes my hand.

Shikamaru turns to me, and even with only the little green nightlight shining on us, I catch his eyes flashing with the knowledge that we have just gotten away with something. Shikamaru gives me a devilish grin.

"I think maybe," he says so quietly that he leans in to let me feel the words on my lips rather than hear them, "we've used up our luck for tonight."

"Maybe," I say. Shikamaru's hands find their way back to my waist. He steps so that his hips are square with mine again. We're not in the hallway anymore, half-hidden in my room. "So...let's not push it?"

Shikamaru laughs, his feet following mine as I trail into my bedroom. "No," he says. "We shouldn't."

"Okay," I say, finding the door with my free hand. Shikamaru leans his forehead against mine. I can still feel his smile against my skin. "Well, goodnight then."

"Goodnight," he whispers.

I close the door behind us.