It All Started With A Smell

The Monster You Know

Naruto's POV:

She hadn't even realised that she pushed her limits with Shikamaru. Even when she pulled pranks and was loud to get attention she never drew individual attention to herself. Except when Shikamaru ended up with chalk in his hair. It wasn't that she couldn't help laughing at him. It hadn't bubbled up in a way that she couldn't force back down. At the time she had figured she acted the way she did because Shikamaru looked so much like his father who had always been kind but it was Shikamaru's attention afterwards that made Naruto realise why she had stepped out of her usual bounds. He had never looked at her with hatred or disgust. Normally his eyes glazed over her, not really noticing her. Unlike the other students he didn't see her as annoying, and unlike Choji he didn't see her as an eyesore. That realisation helped to soothe the sting of Choji's rejection. She came to this discovery when Shikamaru started to notice her.

From the day that she brushed the chalk off him his eyes had stopped glossing over her. On the contrary, his eyes saw her in a sharp focus that Naruto wasn't sure she was comfortable with. The idea that someone saw her as something other than a monster was foreign to her. Even those who didn't spit her name with acid often had a formal, distant air to them. But Shikamaru hadn't been formal. He had studied her. Ever inch, every gesture, every inflection. And that terrified her. What if she really was the monster everyone said? What if she was an incompetent moron?

Even though she was scared, she also didn't want Shikamaru to stop. It was exciting, to be seen with something other than hatred. There was something about her that intrigued him. So when he asked her to spend time with him and his friends she had said yes, even if it meant being near Choji. Maybe she didn't have to worry about becoming a monster, maybe she could become something else and Shikamaru could help her discover what that was. She let him study her, even though he discovered she couldn't read. Instead of hurting her with the information he used it to help her. It was the first kind act someone had done for her since Choji's rejection, and she held her breath, waiting to find where it would go wrong. But it didn't.

As they grew older, Shikamaru's gestures became more subtle, gentler, more frequent, and yet bolder. Every time he did something she had to remind herself that he was just being kind. That he probably pitied her. Even when constantly reminding herself of this she still fought hard to commit every touch and kind word to memory. When they left the academy she had thought those memories would have been enough. She had never expected to miss Shikamaru's annalistic gaze. Was she no longer interesting? Or had he realised she was a monster and wanted to be as far from her as possible?

It began to bother her that Choji liked to frequent Ichiraku ramen. Whenever she saw him appear at the food stand she would feel herself smile and look around for a bored looking boy. The disappointment that followed not seeing said boy was a sharp reminder that she was a monster and no longer interesting enough for Shikamaru to seek out.

She had tried to smother that feeling, especially when she was riding on the exhilaration of completing an A rank mission. And yet she had felt her smile drop at seeing the singular Genin joining her and Sasuke at the ramen stand. They had swapped stories about their recent missions, Sasuke pressing Naruto to tell Choji about the bridge named after her. When they left nearly an hour later Sasuke started laughing.

"What?" She sighed, wondering what weird thing set him off this time.

"Trust the emotionally repressed one to like the emotionally suppressed guy." When the blonde just raised an eyebrow in confusion he rolled his eyes. "You, you dummy, like Shikamaru! You were like a pouting little pup when you realised he wasn't with Choji. I thought you had a thing for him in the academy but now I know for certain."

"You're imagining things. You've been spending too much time with Sakura and now you just want to spread gossip," Naruto huffed. In reply her teammate just laughed.