AN: Heh, this one's pretty short, but I've always sort of liked it. Shikamaru/Temari and Sand siblingry, for Alyssachan.
"I'm leaving in the morning," Temari says.
Kankurou looks up from where he's been trying to jam another trap between Karasu's third and fourth set of arms and squints at her. "Again?"
She snorts, grabbing up her bag and dumping the flotsam left over from her last mission out onto the floor, then sifting through it. "Messenger duty," she says, and won't meet his eyes.
"She means she is going to bother that Leaf-nin again," Gaara puts in calmly from where he's methodically making his way through a small mountain of paperwork.
Kankurou barks a laugh and dodges the canteen Temari flings at his head.
"Seriously? You're still after him?" he asks.
Temari's "hmph", nose in the air, is more than enough answer for someone who knows her as well as Kankurou does.
He shakes his head. "All your taste is in your mouth," he says, and catches the mug she throws at him with a chakra string, setting it carefully down on the floor. No point in actually breaking stuff. "What gives, Temari? I thought you were after that Sas-what's-his-name kid?"
She rolls her eyes. "What did you do, sleep through that retrieval mission?"
"Him being evil doesn't seem to have slowed down that pink-haired girl," he points out.
"She's obsessed," Temari replies absently. "Did one of you steal my comb?"
Her brothers both give her a long look. She rolls her eyes again, and Kankurou wonders if she's picking up any other bad habits from this guy she's been seeing.
He remembers Temari's Leaf-nin, mostly because he's never seen Temari get outwitted by anyone and had been in something of a state of shock at the time. Of course, he'd been sidetracked by the arrival of Sas-whatever-his-name-was and the sudden immanence of The Plan, so all he remembers is a slightly blurred impression of a skinny kid, younger than himself, with sharp eyes and dark hair.
Kankurou supposes he must be an all right sort. Grudgingly, he awards the kid points for beating Temari, and later for neutralizing five A-class Sound-nins with only a motley collection of genin at his disposal. With no fatalities on his end of things, which Kankurou secretly finds pretty impressive.
But still.
"What do you see in him?" he asks, because he's her brother, he's allowed to ask, supposed to be protective.
Her hands still for a moment on the table, and she looks thoughtful. The scratch of Gaara's pen ceases for a moment.
"I don't know," she says finally. "But I'm going to find out."
Kankurou snorts and wonders when his sister turned into a girl.
Endnotes: So one of these days, I'll write and/or upload something that's longer than a few hundred words. That day is not today. ...I think Gaara would sort of like paperwork. Mind-numbing, relaxing, doesn't involve interaction with people...