Title: The Embrace of a Shadow
Genre: Romance
Rating: M
Pairing: Naruto x Shikamaru
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: "When I'm with Naruto… he makes me… want to walk with him…"
Word Count: 1,445
Warnings: Unclear timeline

Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine, the setting, characters, and summary all belong to Masashi Kishimoto.

A/N: I've said it about Neji and I'll say it about Naruto. Pair him with anyone and I will love it.

He falls in love slowly.

It was a slow-burn. What else could falling in love be like for Nara Shikamaru? He was slow to act, slow to move, slow to anger… slow to love. Things came slowly to him, things that others just leapt into full tilt, cannonball, heels-over-head. But Naruto wouldn't have it any other way.

There are some things that are spur of the moment decisions: fight or flight instincts that one can't help but obey or ignore in the heat of a single moment. Moments that are life or death for you or your comrades. Moments where your very world hangs on a precipice.

But there are other moments that do not seem like moments until years later. Naruto doesn't dwell on shopping or sleeping or brushing his teeth. They are daily chores, consistent, invisible. The way some people become when they are constant. The way his schoolmates are to him. It is only later, in the haze of hindsight that one can see them for the moments that they really are. Important. A fulcrum. A tipping point on a scale.

It is easy for Naruto to force his friendship on others. He has come a long way from being shunned and bullied. He had bled, sweat, and cried with these shinobi and to him being their friend is as easy and natural as breathing. They can push him away, leave, ignore him, but to him, they are friends and there is nothing that will change that. So when that friendship is slowly, softly, hesitantly returned, he barely notices, takes it for granted. When suddenly he finds that Shikamaru strolls beside him from the Academy to the Hokage Tower instead of abandoning him to go smoke and cloud-gaze, he thinks nothing of it. When the shadow nin makes more appearances at Ichiraku in a month than he has in the past year, he is merely full and pleased. When the hours after training are spend cloud-gazing, he merely naps and enjoys himself. He grins, happy and joyous, at the hesitant offer to teach him shogi. But these are his friends, why should these things not be commonplace.

He does not notice the difference.

He does not notice the look in brown eyes, introspective, contemplative, trailing over Naruto like he is a puzzle the Nara is trying to solve. He does not notice that his own boyish and exuberant touches (easy for him, who grew up so touch starved and alone) are met with tension and darting eyes. He does not notice the imperceptible shaking of a hand when it reaches out to touch in return.

Naruto does not notice these things. They are too slow. He is too much. Too much energy and motion and movement and life. Those slow moving moments are to him like a hawk paying attention to an ant. It is there, but not in a manner he understands. His eyes are too bright to see these teeny tiny instants. Naruto notices things on a large scale. There are no in-betweens. His goal is to be Hokage, not jounin, not ANBU, no stepping stones in his mind, just the end goal. He notices when Sasuke leaves, but not the moments that lead up to it. Naruto notices big moments.

So when the shadow-nin leans across the shogi table and presses their lips together, Naruto notices.

And suddenly, when Shikamaru pulls away, unsure in a way that Naruto had never seen, Naruto sees these moments.

Their walks growing slower, longer, the gentle brush of fingertips against his own as the arms swing between them, until a mere twist of wrist would entwine them.

The eyes looking at him from over a bowl of ramen are alert and intelligent and awake – aware of Naruto, of everything he does, taking in every movement, every line.

Smiles, soft and slow, so slow they seem to blossom like flowers, unfurling at the corners of a delicate mouth with a shy grace that no one could possibly know Nara had.

Shoulders bumping. Concern in those dark eyes when Naruto comes back from a mission bloodied and bruised and bone weary. There are hands, gentle and soft, checking him for injuries. They are shaking, how had Naruto never noticed before? The eyes are frantic, unsure, terrified. When Naruto wakes in the hospital, the relief in those dark eyes in palpable, churning around the hospital room as thick and cloying as chakra, suffocating with the feeling that it stands for something more, something bigger and permanent and real. If only Naruto could see it.

Shikamaru falls in love slowly, in every one of those moments another piece of his heart chips off and is given away. With every smile, with every brush of chakra against his own, with every accidental brush of hands, a little more. With every speech, every heartfelt motto, every life lesson he learns from the Kyuubi-vessel he feels his world unsteady a little more, teetering like a seesaw, just waiting for someone to sit on the other side.

Shikamaru falls in love slowly.

But Naruto falls in love like he does everything else: all in. All or nothing. Go big or go home

The moment those lips brush his, those moments crash around him all at once and settle into his chest as heavy and as real as a panic attack. They clatter down around him like hail, upending his life in a simple press of skin-to-skin. When the contact recedes, Naruto leaps in full speed like he has with everything else. Shogi pieces scatter, there is a startled gasp from several patrons in the café, when Naruto hurls his weight across the board in a clattering, ungraceful motion to fist his hands in a green vest, so he can pull that startled shinobi across the table and mash their lips together in a harsh kiss. It surprises a groan from the shadow-nin and Naruto swallows it down.

Naruto falls in love in a moment, leaping from zero to one hundred in the span of a single breath. It is nothing to him to flick a switch in his mind at the first brush of feeling that clenches in his chest and stomach. It is love. There is no second guessing or questioning. So he is in love. So he is freer with his touches, now swift and sure, and his kisses, in the street, in his apartment, on the lips, the neck, lower. He is in love, and he hurtles through it like a train, joyous and incandescent with it.

He loves like he lives: all at once. So when Naruto makes love it is frantic and bruising touches, handprints on hips and teeth marks on throats and hitching breaths and jerking hips. It is rutting against walls and doors, in broom closets and on the forest floor and against a tree. It is chakra booming out in an ever-widening gyre as he loses control every time. It is feverish, whispered words against sweating skin, almost too fast to separate. "Pleaseyesloveyoufuck" a groan "Fuckfucklovethisloveyouohfuckyesss"

Shikamaru makes love as slowly as he falls in love. Deliberate touches, meant to encourage, meant to draw notice, meant to linger and last. It is his bed, as soft and deep as his thrusting hips. It is kisses trailing from forehead to feet and back up again, slow and steady, ignoring the keening pleas, the clenching fists, the restless thighs as they fall open and closed in helpless invitation. It is the climb, slow, slow, slow. Shikamaru makes love for hours, savoring every breath, every step towards the precipice like how he savors a cigarette. Spiraling tighter and tighter and tighter. Shikamaru is good at lazy touches, grazing up a rib cage, across a collarbone, around a gasping pale column of throat. So lightly, so slowly, as soft as an exhale. It makes the skin beneath the touches twitch and jump. It makes Shikamaru want to go slower, to relish and cherish these moments, to lock them in the vault of his genius mind forever. To imprint the memory of Naruto falling apart so fiercely in his mind that it is all he can see when he closes his eyes.

Shikamaru falls in love slowly.