Just Ice Cream
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by Flightangel
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There was nothing left. None. Zip. Zero.
Just an empty dented, cardboard ice cream pint lying upside-down in the trashcan.
Gaara stared at it. Stared at it long and hard.
"Gaara?" Temari, hair wrapped in a towel and skin still beaded with shower dew, stopped to address the younger of her brothers. Gaara didn't seem to be in a psychotic I'll-kill-you-now mood today, and certainly didn't look very threatening in shorts and a t-shirt three sizes too big. Though that jaw-clenching was a bit worrisome.
The red-headed boy slowly turned around, face indescribable. "Temari," he said softly, "who ate the last of the ice cream?"
Temari suddenly had the chilling urge to run out of the house. Run out of the house and... go buy more ice cream.
"I'll be right back."
The younger boy blinked a moment at where his sister had just poofed away from, before deciding to sit on the couch. That was because sitting on the couch took less effort than standing around, and that he was absolutely, positively sure that he was not going to do anything until he had his ice-cream-of-the-morning.
He curled up with his knees against his chest and waited.
--
He was still waiting when Kankuro moaned and whined and grumbled his way downstairs, hair a bird's nest and eyes barely open. Habitually, he opened the refrigerator door and took a long swig from the milk carton, before getting out a bowl and a box of cereal. He was on his way to the kitchen table when he suddenly froze, face pale and arm rigid.
He had just noticed the glinting green eyes of a certain homicidal maniac blinking up at him from the couch.
"G-Gaara."
The redhead gave his brother no acknowledgement; instead, he clutched his knees tighter against his chest and stared. Stared. And stared some more.
Kankuro proceeded to very slowly devour his entire breakfast, wash his bowl, and scuttle back up to his room to change under this... suffocating scrutiny.
Briefly, he wondered if this strange behavior had anything to do with his midnight ice-cream endeavor the previous night.
--
Gaara wanted his ice cream. Needed his ice cream.
When he was five, he was loved by his teddy-bear. When he was six, he was... loved... by his uncle. At almost fourteen, he, under logical circumstances, was loved by ice cream.
Yes, it wasn't he who loved ice cream-- the ice cream loved him. It was a fact that Gaara stubbornly clung to, a logical conclusion that had arose amidst an odd assortment of thought trains.
Neither Kankuro nor Temari have ever questioned where this odd ice cream obsession had come from, nor cared to. With a growling demon-possessed teenager hissing at you at eight in the morning, one didn't often question such things. They just went and got more ice cream.
Neither his sensei nor his Konoha... comrades... questioned why he would sometimes get his ice cream fix not at the marketplace nor at the ice cream shop, but at Naruto's house. Always Naruto's house.
Even Naruto didn't question why sometimes he'd wake up and find that his two carefully stashed vanilla ice cream pints were empty and thrown in his trashcan whenever the sand siblings were stopping by.
Maybe it was Gaara's extreme cravings. Maybe it was Shukaku and Kyuubi's inside joke. Maybe God just hated him.
Or, maybe, it was because Naruto always left his backdoor unlocked, because he knew how much Gaara wanted to be loved.
Even if it was just ice cream.
-fin-
AN: Simple. Hopefully, it makes sense. Any comments or critique appreciated 3 (just click "review"!)