A/N: Woot! I managed to update quicker than usual (pats self on the shoulder). Hmm, I think the next chapter will also be a "self-reflection" sorta chapter for the characters—though not sure if this is the type of thing you guys like to read.

Anyhow, on a separate note... I finally caved (!) and got me a Tumblr account. I plan to use it as a niche for my doodles that are starting to pile up, and maybe writing-related updates? It'll probably be about GaaSaku, mostly. For now I've just uploaded some of the cover arts that I did for my stories; more to come later, as I've got some sketches on the back burner that are waiting to be rendered.

URL is distant-voice dot tumblr dot com. Feel free to check it out or leave me some tips on how to navigate the tumblr-verse, cuz I have no idea what I'm doing lol.

Chapter 12

He'd wasted much of the morning being what he deemed the most unproductive in all his career, even if he was, technically, on vacation. Lounged slackly in an armchair, he was in the shadowy corner of his quarters. Layers of drapery over the floor-to-ceiling windows prevented the radiance of the sun from brightening the dark ambiance inside; the solemn air within the room corresponded to his dreary mood.

With his elbow propped against the serpentine arm of the chair, he rested his chin over the tight knuckles of his fisted hand. His unfocused gaze landed on the opposite end of the room, at the rumpled sheets that sprawled over the bed that was yet to be made. The unapologetic strays of red hair that he didn't care to tame partially obstructed his vision. The atypical lack of effort in his appearance was of no concern to him presently, for the mayhem in his head was dominating him so much so that he could neglect all else. The somber thoughts bogged him down, and the rationality that eventually reared in the aftermath of an impetuous night jeered at him for his current feelings of conflict.

Gaara narrowed his eyes. The deep line between his brows remained in place, close to becoming permanent. There was a dull pressure in his chest, and he felt the need to exert himself just to direct the steady airflow through his nostrils. Sinking more into his seat, he could hardly shake off the lethargy that overrode his ability to carry out his normal routine.

Still, despite his built-up tenseness, he couldn't negate the fact that his body felt undeniably refreshed. Without discipline, he relived in his head those moments with her, with Sakura writhing underneath him. In the secrecy of their world, he'd gotten to know her intimately. As he'd relaxed into his side of the bed from earlier after a satisfying release, the soporific rhythm of their gradually slowed breathing sedated him. His consciousness drifted, as his eyelids eventually became too cumbersome to stay open. Secured by their entwined limbs, in the warm refuge of his companion, he'd given in to his mortal needs. Surprisingly, he'd slept.

Waking up was not as much a pleasure when he'd found the space beside him empty and cold. Instead, he'd caught his partner fumbling about the room with what seemed like an intention to evade. His watchful eyes hunted her like she was his prey. The images of her barely clad body, her ivory skin, her long legs, and her shapely behind… they stimulated his nerves again, but what'd set off his fuse was the almost purposeful manner in which her eyes raked him from head to toe. Then he'd recalled their shared encounter: Heated, messy, reckless… exhilarating—a dangerous combination of sensations that gave rise to his animal self. Then he was functioning on pure impulse again.

"L-let's just forget about what happened."

Her flimsy words didn't reach him, as he lured her into the trap that was his desire. He couldn't let her simply walk away. No, not after what she'd let him taste.

Shutting his eyes, Gaara tried to exercise restraint on his mutinous thoughts. The cooling shower from a couple of hours ago had helped to clear the haze from his brain, but it was Sakura's eventual departure and the now palpably colder atmosphere she'd left behind that sobered him up. Over the waterfall that cascaded down his body and soaked his skin, he'd sensed her go; and he didn't stop her the second time around. Granted, he wasn't exactly expecting a heart-to-heart conversation, the so-called "pillow talk" that he'd remembered Kankuro bring up in his occasional unsolicited lectures on romance. But the brisk manner in which Sakura had left—without any announcement or acknowledgment—had disenchanted him with the wary notion that, perhaps, she had her misgivings after all about what had taken place between the two of them.

His jaw was set hard, prolonging the stiffness in his facial muscles.

A moment of weakness was enough a jostling reminder to Gaara that, despite being a ruthless former jinchuuriki, despite being an eminent leader of many, he was still human, with his carnal wants—indeed temptable, fallible, and corruptible.

Breathing a long heavy sigh, Gaara reopened his eyes, though they remained downcast. The conflict within him wasn't about to subside anytime soon. His opposing thoughts clashed with one another in his mind. To want or to regret, to indulge or to abstain? So like a living contradiction, he continued to sit, unmoving from his rigid position.

Before Gaara could resign himself to becoming an extension of his chair for the day, a string of knocks sounded on the door to his hotel suite to bring his awareness back to his environment. In his current state, the disruption had irked him more than usual. He ignored it; he wasn't in the mood to deal with the world today, and he hoped that the absence of any answers would make that known to his unanticipated visitor. His irresponsiveness, however, only prompted the one at his door to attempt once more. The unyielding raps that followed was a token of their persistence. Frowning as he shifted ever so slightly in his seat, Gaara was half bent on testing whose steadfastness would prevail in this case. But alas, his patience was wearing thin; and given the riot in his head, he wasn't about to let these incessant knocks worsen his headache.

Suppressing a groan of irritation back down his throat, Gaara extracted himself out of the sanctuary that was his armchair. He made his way past the living room and stalked toward the front entrance. Working the polite indifference into his expression, he reached for the door handle, ready to instruct the housekeeper that there was no need to refresh his room today. However, when he swung the door open mid-knock to reveal the person on the other side, the words that'd been programmed in his head died at the tip of his tongue. And the familiar pink and red colors filled his vision.

On the other side of the threshold, Sakura gaped at him as though mildly startled, her loose fist suspended in the air. Quickly letting her hand retreat to her side, she lowered her head a little to cower from his rather imposing gaze.

Gaara stared openly at the female before him; his surprise barely constrained under his consciously controlled facade. As a result of his bewilderment, silence was what he treated his guest with in the seconds after as they stood robotically facing each other.

"Hi... can I come in?"

Sakura spoke softly, finally taking the initiative in a situation unaccustomed to both.

Gaara canvassed her face for a moment longer, attempting to pick up any hints that might explain the purpose of her return. He'd detected a bit of nervousness from the way her eyes oscillated between him and the floor, but his exceptionally analytic mind had failed to read her intention. It seemed that at this point in time, Sakura was as skilled as he was in putting up an inscrutable front. Though, in his defense, he'd already consumed a great deal of his mental capacity trying to unravel his inner conflicts in the few hours of solitude she'd granted him; he hardly had any scraps of energies left to spare on other extraneous thoughts without striking up a migraine.

Eventually, his initial surprise diminished, giving way to the incomprehensible sting that she'd left him with from her earlier departure. Then he felt inexplicably relieved to the same degree by her re-appearance, yet the uncertainty unsettled him. Given Sakura's sudden arrival now, he hasn't had enough time to reconcile with his own actions and emotions to even begin to think about how they'd move forward from last night. As though he wasn't already conflicted enough…

Gaara hardened his gaze. Maybe she shouldn't be here…

But curiosity was every man's curse. To Gaara, it perhaps was what led him to his downfall in this case.

In response to her request, he turned around and retraced his steps back into the living room, leaving the door ajar and foregoing the social etiquette that dictated a friendlier interaction. He was far too vexed to have any desires for pleasantries. If she was adamant to be there, the unlocked door was her open invitation. It was her call.

The light footsteps that soon trailed behind him, seconded by the click of the door closing, told him that Sakura had made her choice. Gaara centered himself in the room. At his angle, he happened to catch a glance of his unmade bed in the bedroom, before he refocused his attention on his visitor.

With her hands interlocked over her legs, she stood her respectful distance. Her eyes continued to dart around him. At her apparent anxiousness, Gaara loosened the harsh edge in his gaze. This unnatural state of being between them—the tension and the unease—was the consequence of none other than their own doing. And he was no less responsible, even if she was the one who'd sought him out.

The friendship, the boundary… It took only one curious move, one experimental night, for it all to become moot. Was it all worth those fleeting periods of pleasure?

He'd be ignorant to think that things could return to the way they were before, when she used to lavish him with her warm smiles that reminded him of… home.

He felt clamped down with guilt, and he could but let his silence endure. The art of eloquence he'd gained through his profession could not serve him one bit, and he was unable to articulate. He didn't trust his own words, so he yielded the floor to his guest.

When Sakura finally trained her focus on him, Gaara mentally readied himself for what was to come. Would it be an explosive confrontation? Or cutting accusation? He'd had his fair share of fielding both from his political adversaries over the years, but to think that the kind of sharp words would come from the woman before him made his heart clench a fraction. There were scarcely few instances in his life where he was at loss at what to do, and this was one of them.

"Sarada says 'thank you' for the birthday gift, and she wants to know if you'll have some time to train her."

Never mind her stiff tone; her comment couldn't be farther from what he'd imagined that he could only goggle at her, dumbfounded. She dared to hold his stare, seemingly waiting with infinite patience for his reply. His brows creased. The way in which she'd spoken so casually, skirting around the obvious topic, made him question for a second that maybe their encounters were just all a hallucination.

But it couldn't have been. The fact that he knew how she looked under those clothes and how soft her skin felt under his fingers was his validation.

Gaara finally found his voice for that morning, though it came out husky and low. Deliberately, he tried to steer the conversation to the real issue. "Do you wish that I continue the training routine with her while I am here?"

"I..." His rhetoric had effectively put the spotlight back on her, and it caught her by surprise. Sakura stared open-mouthed at him, wordlessly, as she seemed to debate within herself. In the end, she averted her eyes from him and concluded, "I think it's fine with me…"

If he'd read between the fine lines correctly, Gaara suspected that her intention was to dismiss, to "forget about what happened"—after all, those were her exact words in their previous exchange, he recollected. He let his gaze fall downward. Somehow, he had an impulse to refuse. They were speaking in coded language; on the surface, still, the subject of the matter concerned Sarada's training… and it'd be a gross breach to extend the complication between two irresponsible adults to a child.

"Then I shall do as you like," he conceded grimly, with a frown on his face that was starting to be more painful than it should.

If Sakura wanted to pretend… could he? Would he?

"A-also..."

She'd started to murmur again. But Gaara was hardly present anymore, getting drowned once more in his own deep confusing thoughts. So Sakura in essence was branding their encounter as a "one-night stand," something he admitted with not even a speck of pride that he was no stranger to. They were tasteless memories from a period of his youth when his renewed earnestness to bond, precariously combined with his hormones, made him susceptible to his older brother's all-too-questionable ventures through some remote unheard-of villages; and no amount of wheedling from Kankuro was going to make him acquiesce that he'd indeed "learned a thing or two" after the fact… But Gaara wasn't anywhere near to want to recall those experiences right now.

In any event, could he really regard what he had with Sakura as a one-off and resume their old routines with a poker face? For what it was worth, having a pretense was always one of his strong suits when it came to playing political mind games…

"…can… can I see you more?"

With Sakura looking askew and her bangs curtaining her eyes, she'd missed how he'd gone wide-eyed at her barely audible question. Gaara whipped his head back in her direction.

It was not so much a request as a confession… An affirmation.

With her dangerous words, she was rocking not only his mind but his emotions back and forth like a ragged sailboat in a sea storm. Gaara laid his intent eyes back on her; gradually, they grew soft at the sight of her: Her right hand rubbed her left arm at the elbow. The beet red shade that tinted her face made her look as lovely as always, and the way she shyly fixated her focus on the floor was endearing. Through her demeanor she'd exhibited her inner struggle, and it was an absolute contrast to her bold question.

The temptation was as deadly as it'd presented itself the first time. It should've been a non-starter. Even at the minimal, he should give this a second thought, Gaara supposed. But, he was already spent from warring with his own mind since the crack of dawn. His impulses jumped at the opportunity to put his weary mind to rest, and his feet moved on their own. Before he knew it, he'd closed the distance between him and Sakura.

That familiar voice of reason in the back of his head, one that was losing power, told him that what they did was a mistake, but it didn't mean that they needed to go down this road…

A little too late for that, he surmised, as the back of his fingers skimmed her flushed cheek, startling Sakura and causing her to look up. There was something delightful about giving in to the lull that fogged up his senses and suspended his brain… Just then he thought he'd caught a glimpse of the lust that was hidden behind those hooded emerald orbs—or perhaps, in reality, it was simply a reflection of his own… He didn't care to tell the difference. At such proximity, the only things left to make impression on his awareness were the sweetness of her scent and the set of two pulsating heartbeats resonating with each other.

Given what he was about to say, what they were about to do… he thought he'd pay the price at an unforeseeable date. They both would. But until then—

"Come find me as you please…"

And that alone, was enough permission for her to tiptoe and swiftly plant her lips upon his waiting ones.