a/n: i finally felt the urge to do a re-write of MISTAKE! as far as I am concerned, it was initially poorly written but is kind of a classic shikatema storyline as far as ff goes. like it is the MOST generic shikatema plot omg. but i am rewriting it and hopefully it'll stay as cliche but will be a bit better! so read (i changed more than i thought) or re-read and let me know. also new chapter of tsaf v2 coming tomorrow (or today or the day after, idk, but soon). also tbh if you know me, you know i have legit trouble writing smut and sadly most of it is unedited here because i am incapable of anything but tears these days.

Mistake

She saw stars...

Maybe he didn't say it? Maybe it was a fleeting thought instead of the marrowed whisper she'd imagined?

It wasn't like she'd ever ask him about it. Knowing him, he'd deny it right away. He was always denying—they both were.

Temari knew the endgame before they'd even finished. After all, there were only so many moves before checkmate.

Either way, who was to say that he meant it? That he hadn't said it the other four times? He very well could have said it that first night and she'd still never know. So really, anything said in peaking moments held absolutely no standing.

So she didn't ask him about it. She pretended she had never heard anything.

She didn't want to ask. After all, Temari had never been good at confronting him.

(but she was especially bad a confronting herself)

She had made mistakes. Lots of them. Everyone did.

A mistake happens once, and shouldn't be made again.

Sometimes twice… and that wasn't too bad.

But when you make the mistake three (five) times, then it is wrong. You can't excuse it anymore. As someone had once told her: first time is an accident. second time is an experiment. third time is addiction.

But then if it wasn't a mistake, what was it?

As all first times seemed to, it involved alcohol. It involved lots of alcohol, warm and yearning beneath their skin. She said to him, the next morning, that it was a mistake. She didn't think of it as anything else. Neither did he.

"I am lucky it was you," he had joked. "I was so sloshed I would have gone down on Lee."

She just smiled, trying to wipe away the awkwardness that came with sticky thighs and headaches and accidental (incorrect) bedfellows.

But in the end, he was right: she—they—had been lucky. Temari didn't like many people in Konoha. She tolerated them, and found them both amusing and skilled for the most part, but she didn't like them.

She liked Shikamaru. She liked spending time with him. As difficult as he was, there was no denying they got along. She was lucky it was Shikamaru she had fucked in her drunken stupor, lucky it was someone she knew and could at least appreciate.

(though she was pretty sure the sex had sucked. how could it not? he was too lazy to be good in bed)

But she was lucky, nonetheless. True to his word, they both would have taken someone else—someone much less appealing—had they not found each other.

It was only a mistake.

The second time, much like the last time, they were drunk.

As they'd concluded the regretful morning after the last time, neither had remembered the night before. She could recall details: the party, the bar, wavering through streetlights on the way home— but nothing at all substantial in explaining why she'd awaken in a completely foreign bed with a completely foreign thigh draped over hers the next morning.

When they parted ways quickly afterwards, Temari had thought little of it. Understandably relations between her and Shikamaru might be different for a little while, but they weren't very close in the first place, so it was no matter.

After all, she'd had empty, drunken sex before. She had been okay with the people after that.

The bigger issue wasn't that she'd had sex with Shikamaru— it was that she had never not remembered sex. She had never slept with someone—a person she'd maybe possibly admit to kind of sometimes sort of theoretically being attracted to—and not remembered it.

And Temari was a thoughtful person. Not remembering something, especially something (she reluctantly admitted to be) relatively substantial, was less than ideal.

Thus the second time, she could condone some of it to simple curiosity. It was about her drinking again, with him, this time at another party a good month later, and then sleeping together again.

She remembered it all this time. She was drunk, but she wasn't completely wasted. She remembered—admittedly not wholly vivid—the details of the previous night.

The way he walked her home, stumbling onto her porch, trying to open up the door; and the way he cocked his head, smirking through clouded eyes. Shikamaru—whom had been so calm, so collected, and often so calculating in his gaze—was watching her with something completely new in his eyes.

She remembered staring at him for longer than appropriate, and then they were kissing, tongues against tongues. She bit his lip, slipping off his vest and moving to the nearest acceptable place—which at the time had meant the couch, but in reality had been the tatami-matted floor.

She remembered the way he was able to burn her skin with a touch. How he was able to push his fingers inside her so softly and controlled that she had no other option but ask (Temari didn't beg) for something more. How he, the laziest man in all the great shinobi villages, had made Temari literally ask for sex. No man had ever done that before.

Hell, no man three years younger had even aroused her, much less made her come so deftly.

Temari, although she was careful not to admit, had experienced some of them best sex in her life with the Nara boy.

When it was over, he rolled off her slowly, his body so spent and the night so late, he had no choice but to fall asleep where he was. She woke up the next morning when moving over and banging her head on the foot of the coffee table, only to discover that he had left.

Although they both were more than capable of confronting things on their own (and they often did), it took a few days before either of them began brazening out what had happened.

"Just a mistake" he murmured, avoiding her eyes.

She knew he was imagining it in the way his gaze burned down and his voice lowered by that much. But she didn't pursue anything. She had never wanted to. She understood.

Curiosity: an experiment.

"A mistake" she agreed, honestly believing her words.

That was the second time.

That was the last time for a year. The last time it could be pushed off as anything other than interest, but that isn't what they said.

(after all, if it wasn't a mistake, then what was it?)

The third time: perfectly sober, in a closet.

They were both with other people—hers, a first date, his, a girlfriend—at a banquet in the Leaf: swank music, silk dresses, and gelled hair. She knew he was going to be there. Hell, he was the one who had told her about it when he handed her her schedule for the current trip. So seeing him wasn't a surprise and she wasn't going to pretend to excuse it as such. She'd attended knowing perfectly well that he was going to be there.

But it was no matter—after all, she had a date.

Pretty cute: brown hair, tall, strong, recently ex-ANBU. They met in a shop on one of the days she wasn't being guided around. He'd asked, she'd accepted. Nothing out of the ordinary.

And she'd met Shikamaru's girlfriend before. She was pretty too—certainly more so than Temari—but they looked quite different. She'd been seeing Shikamaru for a few weeks shy of a year, and so Temari was relatively well versed with her.

Honestly, Temari quite liked the girl. Shikamaru obviously did too.

And when they sat down to eat on opposite sides of the room, Temari glanced over at him, but Shikamaru didn't look back at her.

A few hours later, they switched partners and danced.

She had never danced with him. She was surprised he knew how. He had spoken of how troublesome this evening would be, and yet he seemed to be enjoying himself. He spun her, placed his hand on her lower back. She turned into him, hands along her hips, running over fabric.

After that, they parted and it was fine and Temari tried to stop thinking about those hands and just what they were capable of. She didn't want to feel those hands on her again.

But she did. She felt them in the coat closet when they were getting ready to leave and she maybe possible accidentally put her lips on his. She hadn't meant to. It had just happened. And then those hands were on her, differently this time.

They didn't go softly in a tipsy caress, rather, they grabbed at her breasts, squeezing painfully and forcefully till her she burned, her bottom, pulling her close so their bodies molded, pushing her down into a pile of coats.

And then those hands, pushing her dress up and pulling her underwear down as far as he needed to before he pushed himself into her, her sudden, unexpected arousal letting him slide easily, pushing into her harder than he had the last time. She let those hands grip her thighs, allowing him to move her at his will, pulling her down to meet him halfway.

(it ended too quickly)

His lips were upon her neck the whole time, stifling his moans while she whispered inaudibly in his ear; her fingers ripping hair from his scalp.

When he was done, he got off of her quickly, as if he hadn't realized what was happening. "Temari," he snapped, "why did you let me do that?"

She had never seen that look in his eyes before. A mix of disgust, confusion, and satisfaction all waiting for an answer. But she didn't have one to give him.

He hadn't meant to fuck her like he did.

She struggled to pull up her underwear and cover herself, pulling her dress back down and brushing stray hairs from her forehead. "It's a mistake," she tried in way of answer. It was, she hadn't meant to do it. Really, she hadn't meant to kiss him. It wasn't purposeful, an accident. "You just looked really good tonight."

She was mad. Mad at herself for fucking him, mad at him for fucking her, mad that they'd let it happen. That she, known for the stubborn perseverance she'd practiced since birth, had done something so unapologetic and barbaric

So much for her date.

He gulped and straightened his tie.

"Temari," his voice was softer this time, anxious, "we can't afford any more mistakes."

It was a mistake; his girlfriend never had to know. He wasn't having an affair, he just cheated. Except it wasn't 'cheating'. Cheating implied that he knew what was happening. He didn't. They didn't. It was all an accident.

"Never again," she agreed wholeheartedly, meeting his eyes with equal intensity, "I don't give myself fourth chances."

She did though. Because when your someone you love dies, you need to do something, anything.

(and sex is something like purging)

So when she returned home with Baki's hitai-ate in her hand, she acted on impublse and not by thought when she saw the light on in the embassy.

Had she thought about it, it wouldn't have happened. She wouldn't have made that mistake. But that was always the problem, wasn't it? She didn't think. Instead she rapped knuckles against the wood door.

It took a while but eventually he answered with a haphazardly donned shirt and a lacked attempt at putting his hair back up, still knotted from his pillow.

She didn't say hello, or ask how he was, and she didn't come out with it and tell him that she thought about him all the time, or how she wondered how he was when there was no news, or worse—that no guy had gotten her to where he got her in all the times she had slept around in a hapless attempt to rid herself of his touch.

She didn't say any of those things. She didn't mean any of those things.

Instead, she grabbed his shoulders and pushed him into his apartment, kissing him right away, because when they kissed, all thought was lost.

If she could pinpoint it, that was when the mistake was made, because when their lips were together, there was no inhibition. They didn't turn around from there. They didn't stop once that boundary was broken.

He stepped back with her, accepting the assault. His hands made their way to her hips, and then curved around her rear, squeezing as he pulled her up and into him, rubbing her groin against his. Within moments she was on top of him, hands on his chest, robe pushed off her shoulders, fishnets halfway off and underwear pushed aside.

There was something inside her this time, something she wasn't been familiar with before. It was a burning in her chest that led into her gut and then further into her groin. It was something so painful and so needy, that by the time she finally lowered herself onto him, she cried out at the touch.

For the first time, his eyes weren't shut, the dark color of them appearing even darker with the fog of lust. He watched her, his eyes beading into hers as she began moving. She stopped suddenly, and pulled her hands away from their resting place on his abdomen. "Don't look at me like that." She grunted, looking away.

"Tema—" he stopped and sat up on his elbows.

She wasn't crying. Temari wasn't like him—she didn't cry. She had learned long ago: this world was just as cruel as everyone said it was.

But she wasn't not crying either.

Unsure what to do, he waited.

It took no more than a few seconds before she looked down at him again, non-existent tears clouding cloudless eyes.

"Shikamaru" she choked out eventually, "fuck me." It was barely audible, but he caught it, and in response, grabbed her neck and pulled her down, rolling her over and taking control.

He fucked her like he had the last time in the closet. It was quick and it was rough.

When she came she let out a cry so sharp and so sad, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had morphed into a sob. But it didn't, and he wondered why he ever imagined it might.

Her fingers scarred his shoulders as he continued to push until she was done riding out the orgasm. Her body shook, wave after wave hitting her. She kept her head away though and didn't look at him the rest of the night. Soon after, he collapsed on her, breath heavy and wet on her shoulder.

She pushed him off and got dressed quickly.

He just lay on the ground, underwear pulled back up, looking at the wall, thinking. She couldn't recognize his thought, as she sometimes did, so she didn't ask.

"A mistake," was all he said, still looking at the wall.

She took him in, the soft light forming shadows around his body, hair splayed out, bare chest moving up and down with deep breaths. He bit his nail, not blinking, eyes burning holes into the plaster. She crossed her arms over her chest, watching him for the first time in so long.

"It always is." She said before gathering her things and walking into the entryway.

"I never mean to do it." He continued, more to himself than to her. He had a girlfriend. Some may consider his words a justification for what had just happened. She didn't. She felt the same way. But she pretended not to hear him as she shut the door and descended down the street as though nothing had happened.

It was almost a year before it happened again.

This time they were in her house, writing and finalizing meaningless, bureaucratic reports. After hours, when the light started to yawn past the windows, Temari announced that she was done for the night.

He didn't acknowledge this, choosing to continue writing distractedly on a piece of paper.

"Shikamaru," she pressed, hoping he would leave so she could get some rest. "We can continue in the morning."

As it always was, the last tryst in the Konoha embassy went unmentioned. They continued on, as if nothing had never happened. Every month or so they would meet while working on either Chunin exams or political obligations, these meetings never becoming anything more, never leading to anything accidental.

But tonight it did. She didn't know why. It was obviously something on his mind, and she wouldn't deny it was ever far off hers, but as soon as she stood up and walked over to his side of the desk to pressure him to leave, Shikamaru reached for her wrist.

She paused, waiting with baited breath for him to say something, not expecting it (though not wholly surprised) when he responded with: "Sometimes, when I screw up, I give myself more chances."

She took his hint and cocked her head, "how many more?"

Their kiss was gentle this time. Not sloppy like when they were drunk. And not rough when they were fucking.

It was patient and graceful and Temari made no comment when he pulled her onto his lap.

The sex was the same: calm and considering, sympathetic and gradual, and altogether electrifying. It was different from other times, sure, but that was no excuse.

And they were, if anything, huge supporters of excuses.

But when she whispered his name into his ear—and names were something they didn't do—she didn't try to excuse it.

It was an addiction.

There was denying it anymore. How could she? And she let him know as such, which she figured became triggers for his next words—which, while acknowledging that this was no longer just a mistake, had no real justification for.

But at the time she was climaxing, so when he said I love you maybe she hadn't actually heard anything and it was all in her head. She saw stars...

okay okay there it is!

So 1. new chapter of tsaf isn't the assassins au because i need to finish reworking my tie in sasunaru piece for the shiktema one to make sense and yeah, but i have a substitute chapter that will hopefully make up for it. 2. go read station X because it is my favorite story yet and no one seems to like it as much as me, 3. the second chapter mistake (which was previously available by email) is no longer offered. apologies to all those who missed it. 4. review review review! even if you've already done it!

Love you all.