Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Thanks for the reviews/favs/follows! I'm sorry it's taking so long to update now, but I graduate in a little less than a month, and between all the last minute BS from school and preparing for my licensing exam, I've barely had the time to even make revisions. Hopefully, things will be calmer come summer.

Gaara Gets a Girlfriend

The Number One Private Detective in Wind Country

Chouji and Shikamaru had returned from their afternoon of sparring flooded with testosterone, and since there were no distressed damsels to rescue or empty beer cans to crush, they'd channeled their energy into making a flip chart for the trade negotiations.

In their free time, Chouji and Shikamaru were enormous dorks.

"I don't get the point of this," Ino told them when they showed her their outline for it. "We've already met with the Kazekage, like, eight times. Isn't it kind of late now to bust out a chart?"

It was a Monday afternoon, and they were lounging around in Chouji's room. They would have been outside, in their usual hangout spot in the backyard, but Ino's sunburn was starting to think about peeling, and she didn't want to further anger her skin by sitting out in the heat. She was doing just fine without melanoma, thanks.

"How is it too late?" Shikamaru asked as he grabbed a pillow off of a chair to rest his head on. "The chart's going to illustrate our points as we're talking. It'll be helpful."

"Talking illustrates our points as we're talking," retorted Ino. "That's why it's called a negotiation, not quiet reading time."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes at Chouji, who shook his head. Some people in the world appreciated the value of a well-designed visual aid, and some people did not. Ino just wasn't down with flip charts. It was her loss.

"Shouldn't we be coming up with a real strategy, anyway?" she went on. "We're going back home in fifteen days, and we have no progress to show Tsunade-sama so far."

Shikamaru snorted mirthlessly. "I don't think we're going to get anywhere until the Kazekage hands this over to someone else. Bargaining with that guy is like talking to a wall."

Ino sat up a bit on Chouji's bed. "What do you mean?" she asked. "You don't think he knows what he's doing?"

Those were fighting words. Chouji leaned over the jumbo pad of paper and attempted to look busy.

"No, he does. The Kazekage's a smart guy." Shikamaru shrugged. "I just don't think building diplomatic relationships is his strong point."

"Huh." Ino flopped backwards and twirled a lock of her hair around one finger, thinking the matter over. "Tsunade-sama seems to like him," she said finally. "We didn't have a good relationship with Suna before he took office."

Shikamaru stirred in his spot on the floor, annoyed. He was trying to take a nap, not discuss the Kazekage's strengths and shortcomings. Converting the outline to an actual chart was going to fall to Chouji, but he always had been the man of action between the two of them. Ino was disrupting a beautiful system.

"He's great at building goodwill between Suna and other villages, but working out treaties is a completely different thing," he explained. "A successful diplomat has to know how to read people, and how to figure out what they'll respond to. It's all about personalities."

"Maybe the Kazekage just likes being upfront," Ino suggested. "Flattery and mind games aren't his bag, but there's nothing wrong with that."

Shikamaru sighed. Why wouldn't she stop talking? Couldn't she see how into this conversation he wasn't?

"Ino," he said flatly, "the Kazekage is excellent at most parts of his job, but not at this part. It requires good social skills, and he doesn't have them."

Chouji focused super extra hard on tracing lines on the chart, praying that neither of his teammates would remember he was in the room and call him in for backup. Things never ended well when he was asked to pick sides in their disagreements. Shikamaru was an immovable object, Ino was an irresistible force, and whenever they collided, he got squished between them.

"He has some social skills," insisted Ino. "He's not a robot. And actually, I think he's a pretty nice guy once you talk to him a little."

"I'm not saying he isn't a good guy, I'm saying he's weird," Shikamaru snapped. "You've said he's weird, too, so I don't know why you want to fight with me about it now."

That she couldn't argue with, because he was right. The Kazekage was indeed strange, and she'd said so on more than one occasion. Of course, she'd also said that Shikamaru was lazy and Chouji was fat on more than one occasion, but that didn't mean she liked hearing other people agree with her.

Ino had been watching Gaara closely over the last few weeks, and she'd picked up on his mannerisms well enough to recognize when he was feeling uncomfortable. An awful lot of situations elicited his 'I'm-not-cool-with-this' face, she'd noticed: the time Kankuro said he thought that a popular actress had fake breasts, the time Ine related a story about how her cousin had started a cult, once when Temari mentioned the Chuunin Exam over dinner, and during most of his conversations with her, just to name a few instances. The rule of thumb seemed to be that the further the topic strayed from the weather, the more uneasy it made him.

She could see that it was difficult and unpleasant for him to act sociable, but the Kazekage was expected to maintain a certain image, and he wasn't one to shirk his duties.

He was trying. Hard. Ino had to respect that.

Shikamaru, on the other hand, didn't seem to appreciate his efforts at all, so she got up from the bed and tossed the outline for his dumbass flip chart in his general direction. She stood there with her arms crossed, waiting for him to tell her off so that they'd have grounds for a real argument, but he just rolled over on the carpet and pretended he'd somehow fallen asleep in the last five seconds.

Lame.

"I'm going to go call Sakura," she informed Chouji.

The moment Ino had flounced out the door, Shikamaru turned back around and propped his head up on one hand.

"She's troublesome on purpose," he complained.

"The phone is right here in the hallway, Shikamaru! I can hear you!"

Shikamaru cast a tired, beseeching look at Chouji, as though asking him to handle this so he could get back to his nap.

Chouji fiddled nervously with his marker.

Squish.

{}{}{}{}{}

Ever since the trip to the zoo, Shikamaru had been in a sour mood.

It had been his and Temari's first real date (some people probably wouldn't have counted an excursion that included a platonic friend as such, but he suspected that was as close as he was going to get), the first time she'd spent more than an hour with him on this particular trip to Suna, and the last time she'd talked to him in nearly five days.

Oh, they still saw each other over group meals, and he'd helped her and Ine dig through the basement for the dishes they were going to use for New Year's one afternoon, but they couldn't talk talk when there were other people around. He'd attempted to get her alone several times, without success. Ine had even made a point of suggesting the two of them look through the darkest, most secluded corner of the cellar during their flatware hunt, but Temari wouldn't take the bait.

Shikamaru had no clue what was going on between them anymore. He was in love; he'd never told her that in so many words, but he'd been operating under the assumption that she knew, and felt the same. Now, though, she seemed to be waffling between her usual brand of understated affection and complete apathy.

As he'd said before, Shikamaru did not like waffles. He liked wafflers even less.

He'd taken to periodically dropping by the kitchen, which was New Year's Headquarters, in the hopes that she would ask for his help with something, but she shooed him away most of the time. He was starting to wonder why he bothered with a woman who didn't recognize the significance of him, of all people, volunteering for jobs, but his persistence finally paid off on Thursday.

He strolled into the kitchen not long after breakfast, intending to ask if anyone wanted him to pick something up for them at the corner store, to find Temari washing the dishes by herself.

"Where's Ine?" he asked, leaning against the counter next to the sink.

Temari scowled down at the plate she was scrubbing. It was covered in something reddish and sticky, and little bits of sponge fuzz were adhering to the gunk. It looked less clean now than when she'd started.

"She had to go home," she said. "Her neighbor called and said the wall between their houses is leaking. She thinks a pipe burst."

"Oh. That sucks." Shikamaru glanced at a dish rag on the back of a chair. "Want some help?"

Temari shook her head. "No, you don't have to. But if you've seen Kankuro, you can ask him to come in here."

Shikamaru grabbed the dish rag and a bowl from the strainer. "I've barely seen him since Saturday. He might be off training some more—I guess soap operas get old after a while. Where does this go?"

He held up the bowl. Temari paused her ineffective scouring.

"I said you don't have to do that," she told him. "You're a guest. We're not going to put you to work."

He shrugged. "I don't mind. And I'm not just a guest, am I?"

An unreadable look flickered over her face. They stood staring at each other for a moment, Shikamaru still holding up the bowl, soapy water trickling down over Temari's elbows, and he thought how funny it would have seemed to his twelve-year-old self that he would one day be arguing in favor of doing the dishes, with that smirking Sand kunoichi who was two years older and two inches taller than him, no less.

"It goes in that cabinet over there," she said, jutting her chin at it. "On the middle shelf."

Since Shikamaru had to ask where everything belonged, and the dishes had been sitting out just long enough for stuff to harden on them, progress was slow. They avoided talking about anything important while they worked—Shikamaru told her about the flip chart, which would be making its debut in that afternoon's meeting, and Temari complained about how difficult it was to find theme party decorations that weren't made with glitter, or flimsy plastic, or, worst of all, flimsy glitter plastic—but at least they were in the same room again.

Just as Shikamaru was about to broach the subject of him maybe hanging around in Suna for the holiday instead of going home, there was a knock on the back door.

"Oh," said Temari, casting about for something to dry her hands on. "Kankuro or Ine probably forgot their key… Would you mind getting that?"

Shikamaru crossed the kitchen and opened the door.

Standing on the stoop was a man he had never seen before. He wore a fishing hat and a heavy trench coat, which would be like taking a bath in sweat by the time noon rolled around, and he was chewing on a toothpick. Shiranui Genma had always used to chew on a senbon before he chipped his left incisor on it one day, but Shikamaru had never known that people outside of old movies actually did that.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

The man plucked the toothpick from his mouth. "Maybe you can, maybe you can't. I'm looking for a dame by the name of Ina."

Shikamaru was about to ask if he meant 'Ine' or 'Ino,' but something made him stop. He wasn't sure if it was the man's bizarre use of the word 'dame,' the unfriendly gleam in his eye, or his obviously fake accent, but the guy seemed off.

"Who is it?" Temari called across the room, craning her neck to try and see outside.

Shikamaru looked at the stranger expectantly.

"The name's Juro," he said. "Ueno Juro."

Ueno Juro paused and squinted off into the distance thoughtfully. "But I just go by Ueno, so I guess… Yeah, it was supposed to be the other way around. Let me do it over."

"What?" Shikamaru asked in confusion.

"I'm introducing myself."

"I…you just said your name was—"

"Shh! It's a do-over."

Ueno Juro cleared his throat and screwed his face up to look tough again. "The name's Ueno. Ueno Juro."

By this time, Temari had decided to just wipe her hands on her skirt and come over to see who this strange person who couldn't get his own name right was.

"Alright," she said doubtfully, "and you're here to see someone?"

"Yes, ma'am." He'd dropped the unplaceable accent in favor of a low, gravelly tone that sounded like a mash-up of Popeye and a frog. "Ina. Is she in?"

Temari looked him over. "Can I ask what your business with her is?"

"Afraid not, ma'am. It's highly confidential."

He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

"Ueno Juro, number one private detective in Wind Country. Here's my card."

He forced it into Temari's hand, his face turning thoughtful again as she read it. "I should have gone with that introduction. Let me get another do-over."

"We know who you are now." She gestured at his card. "And this is just a sheet of loose-leaf."

He half-nodded, half-shrugged. "There was a delay at the printer's. I had to improvise. Anyhow—Ina. Is she in?"

Temari ignored his question. "It says here your office is in the Dune Village." She glanced up from the paper. "You're pretty far from home, huh?"

"Sure am. I'm, ah… on a trail, you could say."

Ueno Juro cast them a smug, sly look that made Shikamaru itch with the desire to slam the door in his face.

Temari folded up the paper and put her hands on her hips. "Well!" she said cheerily. "I'm sorry to tell you Ina isn't here, and we're not sure when she'll be back. I'd be glad to take a message for her, if you like."

The man's eyes narrowed. Shikamaru had serious doubts about his competency as a private detective, but apparently even he wasn't going to be thrown off that easily.

"Tell her…" He put the toothpick back in his mouth and tugged his hat lower on his face. "Tell her not to skip town."

With that, he swept away. A sweat stain was spreading down his back. Trench coats were really not practical for the desert.

Shikamaru closed the door. "So that was strange," he observed. "Who do you think he was looking for?"

"Ino," Temari said tersely, shoving Ueno Juro's 'card' into her front pocket. "He was looking for Ino."

"How do you figure that?"

Temari wandered over to the kitchen counter and pressed her hand to the coffee pot to check how hot it was. "The Dune Village is that town next to the zoo, and we had to sign a guest book to get in last Friday." She took her mug from the dish strainer. "My guess is that they couldn't read Ino's handwriting, but someone must have recognized me or my name."

"The zoo? What does… Wait. You don't think he was here about that plant we took?" Shikamaru asked incredulously.

"That's exactly what I think." She took an enormous gulp of her coffee. "Luckily, we didn't commit an assault. It's illegal to use genjutsus on civilians in Wind Country, but since the Yamanaka clan's ability isn't—"

"Hang on a second." Shikamaru sat down at the table, his mind spinning. "Let's think about this. Ino was positive no one saw her digging the thing up, right?"

Temari shrugged her agreement.

"Well, she has some of her family's sensor abilities. Unless there was a ninja who knew how to mask their chakra spying on us, she'd have known if there was somebody close enough to see what she was doing. Also, if the town was looking for us because we committed a crime, why would they send a private detective? They would have sent a cop. Or called the police here in Suna, probably."

Temari blew a puff of air into her bangs. "Maybe that groundskeeper realized he'd been caught in a ninjutsu after we left, or maybe someone saw us outside with the… the whatever flower. I can't say for sure why they would hire a detective, but I think the zoo is a separate entity from the town itself. He might have a contract with them or something."

"So he's like the special forces of the zoo police?" Shikamaru joked.

Temari glared at him. "Be serious."

"I am. I just think it's kind of farfetched that they would go to all this trouble just to get some crummy plant back."

She pursed her lips. "So we stole something from the middle of nowhere, and then less than a week later, a detective who's also from the middle of nowhere comes by on unrelated business, asking for the person who planned the whole thing? That's an amazing coincidence."

"But he didn't ask for Ino," Shikamaru pointed out. "He could have meant Ine, for all we know. Or maybe he was at the wrong house."

"Shikamaru, everyone knows who lives in Kazekage Tower," Temari said irritably. "People don't end up here by accident. And Ine hasn't left the village recently—she tells me every last detail of what she gets up to on her days off, so I would know if she'd gone out to the Dune Village and gotten herself in trouble."

Shikamaru fell silent. He didn't know why he kept letting women draw him into arguments lately. There were never any winners in these fights.

"I'm such a moron sometimes," Temari muttered, staring disconsolately into her coffee. "What was I thinking, even?"

If her theory was right, this could become a stumbling block to her political ambitions, he guessed. A part of him wanted to say 'I told you it was a bad idea,' but a bigger part of him didn't want to get jawed.

Also, you know, there was that whole 'supportive boyfriend' thing to do.

"Want me to make you some fresh coffee?" he offered. "That stuff's been sitting there all morning."

She shook her head. "Nah. I drank almost a whole pot, and it's only ten. I'd be climbing the walls."

Shikamaru hesitated.

"So then… you wanna go hang out in my room?" he asked tentatively.

Temari raised her eyes to his face.

"Just because I always feel better when we… hang out in bedrooms," he explained, making a hand gesture that didn't actually mean anything. "It's endorphins or whatever. You know."

She rolled her eyes. "When you say it like that, what woman could resist?"

But she dumped the rest of her coffee into the sink, and beckoned for him to follow her from the room.

{}{}{}{}{}

Nara Shikamaru had shown up in Gaara's office for their three o'clock trade meeting at 2:55, with his teammates trailing almost a full minute behind him, a spring in his step, and a flip chart.

Gaara had never seen him so animated. Once the chart was set up on an empty chair, he immediately took charge of the meeting by launching into an explanation of why Suna should buy more grain, and no one else had had to say a word since.

For that, he was grateful. The flip chart was very distracting; everything Shikamaru said was repeated in the bullet points, and Gaara wasn't sure if he was supposed to be listening or reading. He tried doing both, but that just made it harder to do either. This was not an enjoyable experience.

"…So as you can see here in the chart, increasing the amount of grain you buy from us by 2 to 6% would save you money in the long run," Shikamaru was saying. "We would be spending at least 30% of that on buying more spices from…"

Gaara kept his face as blank and composed as ever, but after he'd lost focus, his mind had begun to wander.

At that particular moment, he was ruminating on how dull his job was most of the time. Six years ago, he'd imagined that he was going to be something like Suna's hero, the face and brain of the village, their last line of defense and ultimate protector. And he was all of those things, he guessed, but he had been picturing more smiting of enemies and less of… well, this.

"…increase revenue in a symbiotic relationship, rather than a lateral one, which I think we can all agree is…"

This was soul-crushingly boring. He already knew the gist of everything that Shikamaru was saying anyway, but the fact remained that unless Konoha bought their fabric, Suna had no money to buy much of anything from them in return.

Gaara leaned back a bit in his chair. From this angle, he realized, he had a clear view of Ino, who was wearing the same expression of feigned interest that he was.

Ever since he'd decided that she was reaching out to him, Ino had become deeply intriguing. All week, Gaara had watched her at every opportunity to see what new insights he could gain into her character, her likes and dislikes, so on and so forth. He was waiting for a good chance to strike up a conversation, or to do something else that would let her know he was interested in her friendship, but he had to first conduct all the proper research, of course.

One does not simply make a friend. It requires planning.

"...dividends are the key in that scenario, but I think if your accounting department would run some numbers for us, we could get a better idea of…"

So far, his list of Yamanaka Ino facts included the following: she was a chuunin, a medic, and a part-time florist. She liked hair accessories and the color purple. She did not like asparagus, shoddy flower arrangements, or his sister. She claimed to be on a diet, but based on his observations of her eating habits, it was either a very lax diet or a joke. It was possible she had a fondness for animals—she'd given him a panda cookie jar and an elephant postcard, and she'd been wearing flamingo sunglasses lately—but that had yet to be confirmed. She talked and smiled and laughed a lot. When she wore perfume, she wore too much.

"…in regards to Plains Country. Since neither of us has a specific agreement with them for…"

All in all, Yamanaka Ino was not the sort of person Gaara would have ever imagined himself befriending. Each new thing he learned about her made him more aware of how little they had in common, but, oddly, he didn't find that disheartening.

Getting to know her, even passively, was sort of… exciting.

"…to the average citizens of Suna and Konoha. It's all well and good for the Kages to have an agreement, but…"

Chouji was talking now. That might mean he'd be expected to say something soon, too.

Gaara tried to rein in his attention, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. No matter what Konoha was offering, the only answer he could give them until they bought more fabric was 'Buy more fabric.' He'd told them that in every way he knew how. It didn't seem to be getting through. It was like he was asking someone on the other side of a locked to door to give him the key so he could get out, and they kept telling him they would, just as soon as he opened the door so they could pass it to him.

He couldn't pinpoint what the exact problem was, but they were in a real pickle here.

"…thoughts on this, Kazekage-sama?"

Gaara blinked. It seemed he was now in an even bigger pickle.

"We-e-ell," he said slowly, casting about for a response non-specific enough to conceal his inattentiveness, but that had enough relevance to the topic at hand (whatever it may have been) to pass for a real answer.

Shikamaru and Chouji were looking at him, waiting. His palms were starting to feel damp.

"Sorry to cut you off, Kazekage-sama," Ino interjected, "but can we go back a page in the chart? I think I missed something."

Shikamaru shot her a reproving glance as Chouji flipped the page.

"So basically, this is a breakdown of Suna's revenue from various tariffs. Not all of the goods…"

Good God, that had been timely. It probably wasn't intentional, but Gaara still felt a surge of gratitude towards Ino for rescuing him. He leaned back in his seat again, intent on Chouji.

From his peripheral vision, he could see one baby blue eye watching him through a veil of hair. Well, one last peek wouldn't hurt. It was rude to avoid eye contact, after all, and that wouldn't be very friendly.

He looked at Ino sidelong, and was met with a cheeky little grin. If cheeky little grins could talk (they can't, and Gaara usually found anthropomorphism juvenile and cloying) this one would be saying 'You're welcome,' mixed with a dash of 'Gotcha.'

Her sunburn had started to peel, making her resemble a particularly pink and blotchy onion, but Yamanaka Ino was quite lovely when she smiled.

Gaara quirked one corner of his mouth up in response before they both turned back to Chouji and the chart.

"…isn't a perfect analogy, but the point is that Suna stands to gain if Konoha increases trade with Plains Country. We're also recommending levying the tax on…"

This wasn't working. Once again, he was completely and fully lost.

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A/N: I just wanted to explain the bit about the leaking wall and burst pipe- I was picturing Ine living in a row home, which are pretty much the standard where I am, but I realized that not everyone might be familiar with them. They're like a long string of houses with no side yards, and backyards that are separated from the people on the next street by an alley about as wide as your shoulders.

It's like living in Lego City, basically.