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“We’re not going.”
Sakura folded her arms, and looked to Shikamaru beside her. His hair was still loose around his shoulders from his shower, damp and drying onto the fabric of his turtleneck.
Neji was still in bed, despite the fact that all of them were supposed to be up and ready to go about ten minutes ago. And even though his face was firmly pressed into the pillow, dark hair still in the usual braid he wore it to sleep in, Sakura and Shikamaru could very clearly hear his protests.
“Your husband,” Sakura says, “is the head of the Nara clan.”
“I’m aware.”
“Your wife,” Shikamaru adds, “is the director of the hospital.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Sakura puts her hands on her hips, trying in vain to ward off annoyance.
“What we mean to say,” Shikamaru says, clocking the change in her mood, “is that you are married to two very influential people. And that you need to come to this dinner, not only because we have to go, but because the Nanadaime is your friend, and also because you are thirty years old.”
“Then I am sure,” Neji grumbles, “that my very influential wife and husband will do just fine without me for one night.”
Shikamaru pinched the bridge of his nose. Sakura narrowed her eyes.
“If I have to go there and get leered at by the daimyo’s dumpster fire of a grandson, then you can handle playing nice with your dumpster fire of an uncle,” she snaps.
Usually, mention of Hiashi makes Neji’s blood boil in his skin. His uncle has long since stepped down as the head of the Hyūga clan. Hanabi had ceded leadership to Hinata in a political upheaval that had left the remaining elders of Konoha clutching their pearls, and everyone under the age of thirty splitting their sides with laughter.
But the old man still wasn’t dead. And now that he had stepped down, he was an honored elder. Which meant he was invited to entertain the daimyo when he came to visit the village, to celebrate the prosperity that came once the war was over.
Which meant Neji probably had to stand in the room with one of the people he had hated for most of his childhood, and absently loathed for his entire adulthood. He had long worked out his issues with Hiashi, had accepted his apology and all, but that didn’t mean he had to like the man. And Neji really, really fucking didn’t.
“That’s why we should all not go,” Neji says, burrowing deeper into the bedsheets. “Sakura doesn’t want to get leered at, and Shikamaru doesn’t like moving his eyebrows if he can help it. We should all just stay home.”
Shikamaru scratches the back of his head.
“This will cause an incident. A political one.”
“I’m about to cause an incident,” Sakura grumbles.
“Spousal abuse is illegal, Haruno-sensei,” Neji replies.
“Nara-san,” Sakura says, voice sweet the way it gets when she’s about to say something rude. “Go fuck yourself.”
Shikamaru huffs, then walks around the edge of the bed, sitting down near Neji’s outstretched arm. He carefully lays his hand on his husband’s shoulder, moving the braid Neji keeps his hair in for sleeping as he does.
“Are you going to tell us what’s wrong or are you going to make us guess?” he asks, letting his hand trace gentle patterns over the old battle wounds that mottle Neji’s back.
Neji flinches, only slightly, when Shikamaru’s hand brushes the scars from the ten tails. Shikamaru’s movements become even more careful, but heavier as well. More pressure was better than less on those scars, the three of them had learned that the difficult way.
Sakura goes to sit down, her own irritation giving way while Shikamaru tries to get to the root of the problem.
The next time Neji speaks, his voice is soft. So quiet that he has to move his face away from the pillow so that the both of them can hear him.
“It’s tomorrow.”
Sakura and Shikamaru look at each other, understanding snapping their shared confused irritation in half.
The anniversary of Hyūga Hizashi’s death was in the morning, and Neji did not want to see his uncle the night before.
Sakura kicks off her heels so that she can lay down beside Neji, and Shikamaru slowly drags his palm down Neji’s back so that he can take his hand.
It was not a day that Neji ever talked about. Instead, he would get solemn, or shorter for about a week out of the year. Sometimes, it could be chalked up to feeling cagey; his wounds in the war had ensured that he would never be an active duty shinobi again, but he was a brilliant tactician.
In the hierarchy of nepotism that was Naruto’s cabinet, Shikamaru was his right hand, Sakura was his left, while Sasuke covered his back, and Neji protected the front. He was the favorite to succeed Nara Yoshino as Jounin Commander, if he wanted it. Shikamaru liked to joke that only those that married into the Nara clan were qualified for the position.
Sakura reaches out, and places her hand on Neji’s cheek. He looks at her, eyes weary with grief that will be insurmountable in the morning, and is already difficult to stomach now.
Her eyes rise over his shoulder to look at Shikamaru, who is pressing Neji’s knuckles to his lips. They’re both aware that this ridiculous meeting with the daimyo is too important for the three of them to miss. Not when they hold such clout with the Nanadaime. Not showing up would be an insult to the daimyo, and that would only hurt Naruto in the long run.
“What if,” Sakura says, reckless as only a member of Team Seven can be, “we showed up drunk?”
Shikamaru rolls his eyes at her and Neji huffs out a laugh.
“Wouldn’t that be worse than not showing up at all?” Shikamaru asks.
“Depends,” Sakura replies. “You get giggly, and Neji gets red, but I’m pretty reasonable. It’s only a dinner and some dancing. I think we could make it.”
“You want me to meet the daimyo’s grandson drunk?” Neji asks.
He sounds incredulous, but there’s a look in his eye that says he’s considering it, and that it isn’t as stupid an idea as he wants to say it is.
“So we’re not going to cause a political incident by not going,” Shikamaru says, laying down over Neji’s body. “We’re going to cause one by showing up inebriated.”
“That’s the plan,” Sakura chirps.
“Everyone thinks you only got the attitude and the punching-through-walls thing from the Godaime,” Shikamaru says, narrowing. “But you drink like her, too.”
Sakura blinks her eyes prettily at him, and blows him a kiss.
“I’m pretty sure meeting the daimyo drunk is against the rules,” Shikamaru adds.
“What rules?” Sakura asks, idly twirling a bit of Neji’s hair around her finger.
“The rules of polite society.”
Sakura blows a raspberry.
“What do we have in the liquor cabinet?” Neji asks, speaking up again.
Both Shikamaru and Sakura look at him, moving as he rolls over on his back to look at them. He had been legally dead for about forty-five seconds, but a field medic had been on hand to bring him back. Shizune had stabilized him in-field, and Sakura had seen over his progress in the medic’s tent at base camp.
His brief interlude with death had erased the Caged Bird Seal from his forehead. Some days, he still wore bandages across it out of habit. He wasn’t used to not feeling as though he had to cover it up an any longer.
“Tequila,” Sakura says, eyes glittering.
“Absolutely not,” Shikamaru quips. “You’re awful when you drink tequila.”
“I’m awful generally speaking,” she replies. “But Neji is cute when he does it.”
“Are we thinking shots or a cocktail?” Neji asks.
Sakura sits up and puts a finger on her chin.
“Shikamaru’s the only one good at making cocktails, and he doesn’t look like he wants to help.”
“We don’t need his help to get plastered,” Neji returns.
“Plastered?” Shikamaru asks, already looking like he’s going to be nursing a headache all evening. “How drunk do you think you should be getting?”
“Roaring,” Neji says.
“But that’s against the rules,” Shikamaru groans. “I thought you were one to actually follow those.”
“Out of the three of us,” Neji muses, “usually.”
He sits up, knocking Shikamaru out of his way as he does. He stretches his arms and then inches out of bed, going over to the closet where the nice suit Shikamaru and Sakura picked out for him is hanging.
“But tonight, I have to look at my ‘dumpster fire’ of an uncle for more than two minutes at a time. So we’re going to be a little unreasonable.”
Sakura lets out a whoop, and jumps out of bed, darting out of the room and towards the kitchen.
“I’ll get the first round ready!”
Shikamaru sighs, but he can’t help the little grin on his face. He turns his head to watch Neji shuck off his pajama pants to step into the nice grey pants. They’re a bluer shade, so they flatter his eyes, and the red dress shirt to be worn beneath it was a nod to Sakura’s family.
He watches Neji dress for a moment, before he stands and comes up behind him. He tucks his chin on his husband’s shoulder as Neji fiddles with the cufflinks, stamped with the Nara sigil, and wraps his arms low around Neji’s waist.
“Are you doing this because it will make you happy or because it will upset Hiashi?”
“Both,” Neji says, not even missing a beat. “Besides, Hinata will think it’s hilarious if she manages to sit through the whole evening without her wife pawing at her.”
“Please,” Shikamaru mumbles. “Ino loves Hinata in dresses. They won’t make it half the night.”
“And neither will we!” Sakura bellows, returning with a handle of tequila, and a plate with three shot glasses, a salt shaker, and lime slices in hand.
“I didn’t ask for any,” Shikamaru says, eyeing the plate.
Sakura bounces over to him and kisses his cheek.
“You didn’t have to.”
Sakura and Neji lick and salt the backs of their hands with a quickness that makes Shikamaru deeply concerned for how much they’ll be drinking before they even get to the dinner.
“Salud!” they say as one.
As they knock back their shots, Shikamaru undoes Neji’s braid and lets his husband’s hair fall freely down his back.
“C’mon, stick-in-the-mud,” Sakura says, nudging him with a shot in hand.
Shikamaru rolls his eyes, but takes it from her. If he really hadn’t wanted any, he would have said something, and Sakura knows that. He licks and salts the edge of his thumb before lifting his shot glass to his husband and wife.
“To being disrespectful in public,” he says, a wry grin on his mouth.
“Salud!”
Shikamaru tilts his head back, and takes his shot.