Chapter Text
As a boy, Shikamaru hoped he’d be able to spend the rest of his days lying in the grass looking up at the clouds. Not a care in the world besides what shapes they made. Sadly, life had very different plans for him.
His day had started in the worst way possible: he had forgotten to set his alarm and missed the bus to campus. It was just his luck that the day that finally happened to him was when his car was in the shop. Then, once he finally arrived, his professor called him out for being late in front of the entire class. In his opinion, the professor should be well past the point that makes him feel the need to do that, but he had experienced enough issues with the man to know that it was really because he was rubbed the wrong way by Shikamaru's “attitude”.
He usually wouldn’t care about the opinions people had on his character, but it really bothered him that it made his professor cause problems. He spent the rest of his class wishing he were looking at the clouds.
Then, just as he was leaving class, he got a phone call from his internship supervisor.
“Hey, Shikamaru, hope it’s going well. Just wanted to let you know that the presentation has been moved up, so if you could get it to me by the end of the week, that would be great!” his supervisor exclaimed as if he hadn’t given him an almost impossible task.
“Wait, but isn’t that supposed to happen in 3 weeks—“
“It was,” his supervisor interrupted, “but after hearing your amazing ideas, I thought we should share them even sooner!”
That stopped him in his tracks.
Sometimes, Shikamaru wondered if his supervisor had some secret grudge against him or whether he was genuinely that oblivious.
“Hey, if it’s too much, I could get someone else—“
“Nope. It’s fine. It’ll be on your desk by the end of the week.” Shikamaru forced out. He really didn’t want to do it, but there had already been too many instances where he had passed work on to others and couldn’t risk losing an internship he had fought with hundreds to get.
“Great! I’ll see you later then,” his supervisor replied as he hung up the phone.
Lovely. Add that to the million other things I have to do, he thought to himself as he walked to his next class.
“There is really no way this day could get any worse.” He muttered to himself as he hopped off the bus that took him to the office where he did his internship.
Overall, he didn’t mind being an intern. He’d get assignments frequently but was usually able to take them at his own pace. He definitely had it better off than others, which he was grateful for because an internship of that caliber looked damn good on a resume.
He received greetings as he walked to his desk, but before he could even set his things down, he was already being summoned by his supervisor.
“Hey, Shikamaru, good to see ya. Look, I was hoping you could go get the office some coffee. You see, we have a couple of guests and the girl who we’d usually send doesn’t seem to be around.”
The “girl” he was talking about was actually a friend of his, Sakura, and she had actually let the supervisor know a week before that she would be on leave, but that seemed to slip his mind. While it wasn’t in his job description, he didn’t think it’d be that big a deal to go down the block to the local Starbucks. After all, Sakura complained about how mind-numbingly easy all of her tasks are.
“Sure,” he replied, unenthusiastically.
“Great! Here’s the name of the coffee shop, one of the guests was adamant that he wanted to try their specialty beans.”
Shikamaru took the paper and immediately walked away. He’d never heard of the place but hoped it wasn’t too far.
Boy, was he wrong. The place itself was only a few miles from the office, but the city traffic and public transportation made his trip there well over half an hour. He didn’t even want to think about how he was gonna get all that coffee back to the office, but that soon became the least of his problems when he realized the line to order wrapped around the block.
“There’s no fucking way.” He said under his breath, but loud enough for those around him to hear. Their stares were proof enough that the sentiment was, in fact, not shared.
The line moved at a somewhat regular pace, but it still took forever for him to even see the register. His irritation was through the roof, and his patience was almost nonexistent. He knew that the next bad thing to happen would make him snap. Shikamaru tried to keep his mind occupied with other things (like the clouds he liked looking at), but when the lady in front of him spent almost ten minutes trying to decide what she wanted while already at the damn register, something in him snapped.
As the lady walked away from the register, Shikamaru said, “You’d think a place like this would have more registers open.” It was meant entirely for himself, but there was no way anyone in a 5-foot radius from him DIDN’T hear him, especially with the tone behind it.
“Look buddy, in case you haven’t noticed, we are incredibly short-staffed! So you can either place your order or take your nasty attitude out of here!” yelled the blonde-haired barista in front of him, while slamming the register shut.
The entire shop went silent, and he was left the most embarrassed than he’d ever been in his life. He’d never been yelled at like that, not even by his parents. Throughout his life, he’d made people happy, annoyed, disappointed, but never had he made someone that upset. Guilt filled him immediately, leading him to quickly apologize.
“Oh, um…my bad.” He said just above a whisper.
“Yeah, whatever. Can you please just order?” She asked, getting frustrated at the way he was back up the line.
He quickly placed his order, and ran out of the shop to catch his bus.so
On his ride back to the office, that interaction filled his thoughts. It started with him feeling incredibly bad for what he’d caused, but quickly turned into him being intrigued by the way she’d reacted. Of course, he had seen people get angry and yell, but it had always been as simple as that. Something was different about her; there was a passion in the way she spoke. For what? He didn’t know, but he was going to make it his mission to find out. Starting tomorrow, he’d go back to that coffee shop and make sure she forgave him.