EP. TWO
(one month and three days)
“No. No way.” Shikamaru protests even as he lets Sakura drag him by the hand over to the group of kids playing on the sidewalk.
“Come on, live a little.” Sakura turns around to face him, walking backwards. She laughs at his frown and takes another bite of her vanilla ice cream cone in her other hand.
“Oh, I am very much alive, but I would like to spend my life with my girlfriend who isn’t in jail for attempted child kidnapping.” Shikamaru says teasingly, squeezing her hand and motioning his head forward so she would turn around and not fall on their way across the crosswalk.
Sakura faces forward and Shikamaru misses the way her cheeks blush red and a soft smile lights up her face. ‘Girlfriend’ he had said, ‘my girlfriend.’ She feels like a schoolgirl getting giddy at a title like this, but before he can catch how happy she is and comment something that would no doubt embarrass her, she continues on with barely a pause. “The only way someone would think I’m kidnapping a kid is from you saying it literally any louder than you just did.”
He snorts and takes a sip out of his cookie dough flavored milkshake and let's go of Sakura’s hand as she crouches down to be the height of one of the little boys that was currently coloring on the sidewalk with chalk. Before she starts speaking, she hands her ice-cream to Shikamaru and he takes a bite out of it in retaliation for whatever this woman is about to do.
“Hello there,” Sakura says softly, pushing some of her pink hair behind her ear, “I was wondering if I could borrow a few pieces of chalk?”
The little black-haired kid looks at her with a slightly suspicious face, and then looks up to Shikamaru behind her. They make eye-contact and Shikamaru shrugs, “I know, she’s weird.”
Sakura looks back behind her and hits his leg in response, about to argue. Before she can, the kid laughs and grabs a few colors of chalk and hands it over to them. “Here you go.” He says cutely, and Sakura can’t help but melt. “Ahh! Thank you so much, you’re too cute.”
The little boy blushes and a small but soft smile paints itself across Shikamaru’s face when Sakura stands up excitedly and shows him all the colors that they got like the secret five-year-old she is. “I can’t believe I’m dating an actual child.”
“You will be the one going to jail if you let anyone hear that.” The pinkette says in glee, as she leads him a little aways from the kids to find a clear spot of sidewalk. Shikamaru snorts despite himself and takes another bite of her ice-cream, just because he’s a little shit.
She plops down and starts to color with the pink, happy in her own world. Shikamaru pulls out his phone and sneakily takes a picture of her and sets down his milkshake and balances her cone on the pavement. He is content to just sit and watch her, but it turns out his girlfriend has other plans.
“Come on Shika, draw with me.” And with a smile like that, how can he refuse.
He instead rolls his eyes like it's a big deal and sighs dramatically like it’s taking up all of his effort, “Fine .”
The two end up coloring like little kids for the next thirty minutes, and Shikamaru can honestly say that he has fun. If it were anyone else, he probably would’ve bailed by now. Sakura was just glad that she finally found someone she could do stupid and fun stuff with, and the fact that he likes her? She is pretty sure she would wait for him for a hundred lifetimes, and they’ve only been dating for a month. ‘Oh god… I always fall too fast.’ A sudden bout of insecurity flickers through her as she looks up at Shikamaru, only to see him concentrating on whatever he is drawing on the pavement. Again, she gets a warm feeling and looks back down to where she’s drawing her cherry blossoms, only to have her attention caught by the man she is thinking about once again.
“‘Kura, can I get the pink?” Shikamaru says distractedly, not even looking at her and holding out his hand while scratching his nose with the other, thus getting green chalk dust across his face.
Shikamaru looks up from his very intricate, very cool drawing when he hears Sakura giggle. He narrows his eyes, “What?”
“You just have,” she starts crawling over to him on her knees, getting chalk dust on her skinny jeans, and then takes her pink dusted hands and smears them across his face, “a little something.”
It takes Shikamaru all of no seconds (because he’s a genius, come on now) to realize what's happened as he looks to Sakura’s pink hands and then to the impish smile on her face that scrunches up her nose cutely. His mouth hangs open as he registers just how covered in chalk he is. “You said you wanted the pink…” He sees the exact moment Sakura suddenly doubts her actions and he takes that moment to act. ‘We’ll be having none of that.’
And then promptly smudges all the chalk dust on his hands all over her face and hair, because no, he will not be outdone.
She squeals in surprise because she really wasn’t expecting her lazy boyfriend to retaliate, and it gets the attention of the kids still paying and drawing a few feet away from them. A little girl who looks around seven takes in their chalk covered faces and promptly yells, “Chalk fight!”
The other kids don’t hesitate as they start smearing and throwing chalk dust on each other, some going all the way and coloring their own faces. Sakura looks to Shikamaru with a grin and laughs at his frown. Escalating this mess was not what he wanted, but she started it first. He thinks a little childishly.
Sakura quickly joins in with the kids while Shikamaru is content to sit back and watch the scene unfold. He can’t help the soft smirk forming on his lips though. He sees the black-haired kid from earlier smear some blue across Sakura’s cheek and he doesn’t like kids, but he likes this one.
At all the ruckus, a woman comes out of the house the kids are playing in front of, and stares in horror. “Raiki, what the absolute devil is going on here?!” She yells, and the black-haired kid, Raiki, stands and sends a sloppy grin over to what must be his mother. It’s the only answer he gives before she brings the hose and starts spraying the kids lightly, her surprise turning into fond exasperation as she watches her son and his friends play around in the chalk. Along with two… adults?
Shikamaru sees the woman about to, most likely, accuse them of child kidnapping, so he stands behind Sakura protectively, but will not take the fall for her on this. So he promptly states, “She started it.” And his childish disposition makes him seem no older than the seven-year-olds around them.
Sakura opens her mouth and turns around, dumbfounded. “Well technically, you were the one-”
The woman scoffs humorlessly and looks upon the two of them with fond exasperation, much like she did the kids. “Get out of here, you lovebirds, before I decide to spray you too.” She says, moving the hose threateningly toward them. Shikamaru moves further behind Sakura to use her as a shield.
“Shika!” Sakura giggles, pushing him away, and then turns around to face the woman, “Sorry ma’am.” She bows sheepishly.
“Mah, just leave before I decide to bathe you like I now have to do to these bunch of tiny lunatics.” Raiki’s little ‘hey!’ of indignation carries over the wind as the two move back to their little area, looking at Sakura’s chalk cherry blossoms, and Shika’s…
“Is that Gaara?”
Shikamaru groans, a sudden blush on his face. “No, woman, it’s you. You wouldn't give me the pink, so I had to improvise.” He looks away in embarrassment as Sakura takes out her phone to take a picture.
She grabs his hand and kisses his cheek, “Thank you.” She says quietly, turning his face so they can rub their noses together.
The words hang heavy between them from the amount of emotion he could hear from Sakura’s voice, and he hums and squeezes her hand. “Let's go.”
He pulls her along, Sakura’s melted ice-cream cone and his forgotten milkshake sitting beside their chalk drawings in the setting sun.