"Gaara?"
"What."
"Is that coffee?"
"Yes."
"Can I have some?"
It was probably the worst mistake she had ever made. The coffee looked and tasted like someone had replaced it with partially-molten tar. Her little brother obviously didn't have the same motives for making coffee that his sister did.
He had literally just poured hot water into the coffee jar. Well, two coffee jars – for Temari and himself – and then spooned in a decent amount of herbs. Yes, herbs. In coffee. Apparently it was supposed to add to the nutritional value.
He handed her the cup. If he had been anyone but a homicidal lunatic, she wouldn't have drunk it. She drank it.
'Urgh!' she wanted to say, 'What is this crap? Cement?' but, aside from the fact that her teeth were practically stuck together, she wouldn't have been able to muster up the courage. Besides, she would have just looked like she'd chickened out. And her brother was drinking it. As anyone would a normal, sane cup of coffee.
Though it wasn't really her fault she couldn't finish it. And, after all, her stomach was boss when it came down to these sorts of things. She promptly threw all of it back up into the sink. Gaara frowned.
"I thought you wanted to drink it."
"I did."
"Then why didn't you?"
"It was partially solid."
He gave her a funny look. "I drink it all the time."
It was her turn to give him the funny look. Unlike most of her previous boyfriends, he didn't immediately turn away. Instead, he gave her the foulest-looking, most evil, most twisted, most inhuman grin anyone ever went out of their way to see. Temari didn't blink. She upped the ante. Her look turned into a full out glare. His grin turned into a killing curse; the one that he used before they dropped like flies (or like the partially mutilated animal corpses he had sometimes handed to Yashamaru as retribution gifts). It was rather disappointing when she didn't faint. Or have a heart attack. Or die. But then his sister always was rather stubborn.
She sighed. "Why not just make a normal cup of coffee?"
He stopped grinning: it was making his face ache, anyway. "Think about it."
She thought about it. Coffee made you more excited, more awake, it was addictive, it... more awake. And the stronger the coffee was, the more... She nodded slowly.
"The more awake you are..."
"The less chance he has to get out." He swallowed the rest of his drink. "I never actually liked coffee much anyway."
And, before she could do anything more than gape at him, he had left the room in a swirl of sand.
