Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.
Summary: Modern Fantasy AU. You never know, really, but you know, really. Kakashi x Gaara x Kakashi, YAOI.
Warning: YAOI obviously, male on male if you need it spelled out for you, implied sexual content. Weirdness. Grammar mistakes.
Author's Notes: I think this fic is doomed to have short chapters. I don't mind, personally. I also don't mind, personally, that tomorrow is the due day of 1 essay, 2 midterms, and 1 performance, and I haven't got anything written yet. Really. But again, not.

"Sugar Me"

"Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is." - Ashleigh Brilliant

Chapter 1

I dreamt of myself flying a kite alone last night. The wind was laughing in my ear like it was mocking me.

When we were children, we were taught how to fly a kite. There must be a large meadow. There must be a string. There must be money to buy or make a kite. There must be wind. I told the boy this as I look at leaves flutter slowly around us. He did not realize that I was talking to him until he turned his tired, black rimmed sea-green eyes to mine. "The wind must be strong." I continued, acting like the bland passerby that I was, "And we must learn to run."

The boy maked no comments on this, but seemed to think about this inwardly. Maybe he was wondering why he always had to wait for the bus with a delusional adult. Maybe he was wondering what got me talking all of the sudden. Maybe he would deem me an old pervert and scoot away from me before his safety was breeched (he didn't, but I'm saying it's a possible line of thought).

"What's a kite?" the boy suddenly wondered out loud. I guessed there's my answer. What kid didn't know what a kite was?

I thought about the answer carefully, trying to make the explanation condense and precise. "It's a..." And that was when I realized that describing a kite as the concoction of six sticks and a diamond-shaped clothe on a string was never going to cover what a kite was. One had to fly it to know that kites were for flying. "I'll show one to you next time." I decided. He looked at me weirdly, perhaps wondering why anyone had to go that far when a sentence was sufficient for explanations. He didn't understand. I sometimes don't understand myself either.

---For my daily routine was simple; I needed not to think too much beyond the Who, the When, the Where, and the How. I would take the bus uptown to the gas station nearest the beer factory museum. At one of the corners of the gas station there would be a mailbox, a dark blue one with chipped paint that looked like it was from the early 70s. I would check the side panel of the mailbox for any black marks as I walk pass the mailbox facing the museum straight ahead. And then it depends.

If there was a marking, it would have meant that I must carry out whatever assassination mission I was given inside a yellow envelope inside that mailbox. If nothing was on the mailbox, however, I would have walked right past it and went to work as a labour worker inside the factory for temporary cash. Assassinations payed quite well, (much better than they did during the war time, in which too many people died so the price of one head was cheaper) but making the extra bucks saved me from sitting at home with four blank walls to stare at all day.

I had a simple life, you see. It involved job, and no job. And while I contemplated on the simpleness of my dull life, the flame-hair boy who sat beside me turned to me again. "The bus is here." he said, for we had been waiting for the 6:19pm bus together often enough (everyday together, in fact) to expect each other to announce it when one saw the bus. It was a rather pointless ritual, but it felt a little comforting to know someone from a bus stop.

I got up with the boy simultaneously, and each of us went for our daily routine. For when the bus came, none of us were dreaming anymore.

Later that night, (or the next early morning, really) I killed a man.

He had brown eyes and a missing canin tooth on the right side of his lower role of teeth. I was given no information as to what he did or why he was to be killed. Although I found out that he had a family of five by the time I finished surveying the house he had been taking a nap in. So, although I killed a man today, the rest four -- the wife, and her three daughters, were also dead for confidenciality purposes stated in the agreement papers.

Vaguely I remembered that there was a movie playing on the television at 8am, and if I hurried and took the bus that came at 7:44am, I would make it in time. (1) I put down my black duffel bag and dropped off the completed mission proof papers at another nearby mailbox to inform the buyer that the target(s) had been eliminated. I then changed into a dark hoodie and put on a pair of jogging shoes that I had been carrying inside my duffel bag. I jogged past some other joggers and said good morning to them as I continued my way toward the nearby bus stop.

This bus stop was alone at the intersection of two yellow, dusty country roads. The wind made swishing sounds at the back of my ears. It sounded like blades cutting into a carcass of some dead animal.

I wished, fleetingly, that that carcass was me. (2)

To be continued

(1) - Not to be cliche, but as an assassin, Kakashi doesn't even think about the fact that it was horrifying of him to have killed an entire family. Thus, naturally, his thought process moved onto the next task he had listed for the day, not unlike a robot.

(2) - While Kakashi does not think about the horrors of his actions, it does not mean that he never had a guilty conscience in the first place. It was probably buried deep under his nearly nonexistant childhood memories. Deeply underneath.

A/N: This fic has incredibly boring start, I realise. It's when it gets to the middle part when things get blurry and heated up. I'm reminding myself to be patient until those chapters come. I can't let them progress too fast. After all, how fast do you warm up to a fellow bus rider?