Lost and Found

By: Junsui Kegasu

A/N: Wh00t! I'm working on my chapter quickness!

Disclaimer: . . . . Don't tell me you haven't figured it out. Gawds, don't tell me you're as stupid as SAM!

Kankurou and Gaara found themselves walking home alone that day after school. Temari had decided to chance staying with a friend after school. She claimed that their father already knew and had granted her permission, but Kankurou doubted that.

"And he did WHAT now?" Kankurou asked for possibly the umpteenth time since Gaara had started rambling.

"He hugged me and it felt really weird and I think he's figuring it out and he's not s-" the redhead said frantically, going over his entire story again.

"Gaara! Calm down!" Kankurou said, stopping him in mid-rant. "If you keep up like that, you'll have another asthma attack!" They were nearly home, and from where they were, they could already see the black car parked in front of the house. If Gaara were to have an asthma attack, Kankurou wasn't sure how and if he'd be able to get Temari's inhaler in time.

"I'm fine! It was only once!" Gaara tried to protest.

"Gaara, asthma does not happen only once! You can't push all this health stuff aside!" He said, almost angrily. Sighing, he rubbed his temples. "Now, say that again. Only the first thing that happened…"

"He hugged me?"

"WHO HUGGED YOU?" Kankurou's eyes felt like they were going to pop out of his head. School was NOT a safe place for his brother.

"Neji! Kankurou, were you listening?" Gaara said, as loud as his voice got in public situations or when their father was home.

"Kind of, I was trying to make sense of what you were saying! Now, go onto the second thing."

"And…it felt really weird?" Gaara was confused. Why was Kankurou breaking it down like this?

"What kind of 'weird'? Was it a bad kind of weird?"

"…No." The redhead was seriously starting to wonder about his brother's sanity.

Kankurou couldn't help a grin that spread over his face. "What kind of weird WAS it then?"

"It was…" Gaara had to recall just what the feeling had been when he was hugged. "It was…tingly. And…and…it felt kind of like when you and Temari hug me, you know, safe. But it was a little different."

Kankurou's grin grew wider, and Gaara thought he looked very much like a Cheshire cat. "Methinks someone's having his first crush!" he said, almost girlishly.

Gaara stared at him, bug-eyed. "WHAT? ON NEJI?"

The painted boy laughed. "I don't know, you tell me!"

Gaara blushed deeply. "I d-d-don't know…."

"You're even blushing. Don't worry, Temari and I don't disapprove gay-ness, and Dad'll never hafta know!"

Dad. What if Dad found out?

"DAD CAN'T KNOW! EVER! HE'LL KILL ME!" Was Gaara's freaked out reaction.

"Whoa, calm down there! It's okay, it's okay!" By now, both were in front of their house, and Gaara needed to compose himself or their father would get upset for one reason or another.

Cautiously, the two boys entered the house. Gaara braced himself for any form of attack out of habit, but both blinked in surprise to find their father dead asleep on the armchair, beer bottles scattered around the room.

It stank. He must have gone out, got beer, and stayed on a drinking binge all day.

"Well," Kankurou whispered so only Gaara could hear. "This is actually a pleasant change."

The redhead nodded. "Do you have any homework?" he asked, just as softly if not softer than Kankurou.

"Mm…a little. Why? D'you?"

"Tons…"

"Well, there's something to do when he's asleep. Homework without worrying about him barging in." And with that, Kankurou led Gaara upstairs to his room, since his room had a desk and Gaara's was quite literally still an empty room. He hadn't brought a lot to unpack, and he had never had a bed since he wasn't supposed to sleep.

"Ugh…I don't get some of this…Algebra…" Gaara mumbled quietly, pulling out an algebra book, pencil, calculator and notebook paper.

"Hm? Algebra? Oh, that stuff sucks balls. I hated it when I had to take it. But, lookie here. I've got Pre-Calc. Temari's got Honors Calc. It's insane."

(A/N: Do not expect me to go over what they're actually DOING in these subjects…maybe Gaara's Algebra, but definitely not anything else. See, I've only just gotten out of 7th grade, so I've only completed Pre-Algebra and probably some Algebraic concepts. For us, it goes 7th Grade – Pre-Algebra; Honors: Whole book, Regular: Half book. 8th Grade – Honors: Algebra 1, Regulars: Second half of Pre-Algebra book. And then I'm really not sure how it goes in high school. All I'm sure about it my freshmen friends who are in honors are taking Algebra 2, and I HEARD one might be going straight to geometry. So, excuse the a) very long A/N and b) the probable incorrectness of curriculum.)

Gaara nodded, chewing on his eraser while punching in the x and y coordinates into his calculator. None of this made any sense to him. In Sunaga, he had hardly grasped the concept, and the teachers never went over to help him when he struggled like they would to other students.

He frowned when the answer he had concluded wasn't in the answer banks. As if sensing his frustration, Kankurou slid over, reading some of it over his shoulder.

"Nn…I don't remember any of that crap. You know who I bet knows?"

"Temari?"

"…And Neji." The older teen grinned when Gaara turned beet red.

"Sh-shut up a-about that!" The redhead stammered, going back to try to work out the problem.

A minute later, Gaara abandoned the math homework, pulling out an English writing prompt.

Doing that easily enough, he finished through the rest of his homework and then frowned at the math. Kankurou noticed this and came over.

"Seriously, I bet Neji would know this. You should ask him," he said matter-of-factly.

Gaara once again turned the color of his hair. Seeing this, Kankurou grinned, and then put up a straight face. "No, I'm serious, Gaara! Do it!"

"F-f-fine! I'll d-do it!" he managed to stammer, beet-red.

Kankurou beamed, patted him on the head, and looked at the clock.

"Oh, crap! It's like…5:30! Why isn't Temari home yet? I'm gonna go fix us something to eat. You stay here just in case he wakes up, alright? Anything you'd really care for?"

Gaara shook his head. "Not really. I'm not actually that hungry, though…"

Kankurou gave him a stern look. "Gaara, you are eating. Temari told me that you're 16 pounds underweight. That's…really not good, Gaara."

Gaara looked away. "I know…I know it's not good…b-but…I'm really not hungry and I feel like I'm gonna throw up…" There. He said it. He had felt it all day and he felt it now. And now Kankurou would worry…just like he always did.

"Are you sick…?" he asked, walking back towards him.

"N-no! I'm okay…I'm just…my stomach…ah…I don't know…"

Kankurou placed a hand at his forehead. "You're not running a fever…Gaara, is it a mental thing?"

The redhead shrugged miserably. "I'll try to eat something…for you guys…" he mumbled.

Kankurou sighed. "Alright…but if you feel the urge to heave, run to the bathroom, alright?" He ruffled the smaller boy's hair and went downstairs quietly to make them both something.

Tiptoeing down the stairs, Kankurou took a fleeting glance at the over stuffed chair in the middle of the room. Giving the snoring figure the finger, his curiosity overtook him.

He quietly padded over to the living room, being careful to avoid the creaky spots in the floor he had staked out within the first couple days they had lived there. Standing a mere foot away from the normally dangerous man, Kankurou felt nothing. No fear, no apprehension, even the immense amount of hatred he normally had for his father wasn't there.

He felt numb.

Watching the man sleep, he noticed little things that made him appear almost human. His brow was furrowed ever so slightly, but other than that, he looked more at peace than Kankurou had ever seen him in the last eleven years.

A beer bottle was still loosely clutched in one large, callused hand. That was the only impurity. If he were to take a picture of this moment, excluding the background littered in empty beer containers, no one would ever suspect what went on at home.

No one suspected it anyways.

He almost lost his balance and fell over onto his father when he heard the door open. Temari. He ran to stop her from yelling out the customary "Tadaima!".

"Kankurou!" she said, almost too loud for comfort.

"Shh! Dad's asleep for once instead of beating the shit out of Gaara. I was gonna make dinner, but you claim I can't cook so it'd probably be better if you made it. If you want, I can help though. I think Gaara's sick."

"…Since WHEN are you this helpful?" she asked, in awe, a lot quieter.

Kankurou shrugged. "I'm just in a good mood. Anyways, who were you with?"

"Why do you wanna know?"

Kankurou gave her a look. Even though Temari was the oldest, it was only by less than a year. Kankurou completely disregarded this and always took the most responsibility. She wished he wouldn't but she could she do?

"Alright, alright. I was with three friends of mine, Hoshigake Kisame, Uchiha Itachi, and Akuhibi Orochimaru." She said. At his pointed look, she added. "They're all guys."

"All guys? Did they pull anything?"

"Kankurou! Stop being so overprotective! I…ah….I don't like any of them!" Okay, okay. So what if Itachi and Orochimaru were girly and therefore hot? She didn't like them!

"You're stuttering!" Kankurou sang, grinning wildly. "Jeez, you and Gaara both! Wow. Life has certainly gotten rather interesting since we moved here!" and he started going on about how they were all so much more cheerful. He wasn't mocking her, but rather, he was also overjoyed that things were going so well outside of the four walls of their house.

"Wait! Wait! STOP IT RIGHT THERE!" Temari screeched, forgetting that the man in the other room was asleep. Kankurou paused in his rant, raising a painted-over eyebrow at her.

"Gaara's got a crush? On who!"

"AHA! So you DO admit it!" Kankurou said, accusingly pointing a finger at you from where he was at, cutting carrots. He also seemed to forget the sleeping drunk.

Temari ignored him. "KANKUROU!"

"Okay, okay! He's gotta crush on-" he was cut off short by the angry, tired slur from the threshold to the kitchen.

"Hey! Shut th' fuck up! God DAMMIT I have a headache…" Sabaku Kazekage in all his glory leaned against the doorframe, loosely clutching his head with one hand. He obviously had a hang over, but he looked like he was too tired to yell at them much, much less to lash out at the oblivious redhead upstairs.

As soon as they heard the door slam, Temari started up again, completely unfazed in her knowing that the auburn haired man wouldn't do anything to them if he was in pain himself.

"KANKUROU, TELL ME!"

"I AM! I'm using suspense!"

"YOU ASS!"

"Wh-what's going on?"

Temari stopped in mid-temper-tantrum to look at the petite figure in the doorway. Smiling gently, she gave him a reassuring wave. "N-nothing's going on, Gaara. We're just making dinner." She then remembered Kankurou's words. "Mou, are you sick?"

Gaara shook his head. "Nn….my stomach is just buggin' me…nothing really big." He said quietly.

"Alright. Well, I planned on making chicken soup anyways. Is that okay for your stomach?"

He nodded. Temari's cooking was rather good, and he really hadn't eaten much lately. His stomach was still bothering him, but at the same time he was hungry. It was kind of like wanting what he knew he shouldn't want.

Like Neji.

He hoped he wasn't blushing too noticeably. 'Where did that come from? I am NOT attracted to Neji!' he said, trying to reassure himself.

Damn straight, you're not. 'cause if you are, then it'll probably be a problem for me. Love. Ick. Don't make me sick with your stupid hormone induced crushes, boy!

Maybe that's all it was. Hormone induced. But, as much as Gaara tried to tell himself this, he knew that it wasn't true. He sighed. Life was too complicated for it's own good sometimes.

"Gaara? Dinner's ready."

Snapping out of his thoughts, Gaara nodded and took a place at the table.

Neji was dead bored. His cousins, Hinata and Hanabi had dance lessons tonight, and his uncle went with them. Usually, he would hang out with a friend, but everybody appeared to be busy.

Well, he hadn't really tried Gaara…No, no he hadn't! Well then, he would just have to do so, then!

Picking up the phone next to his bed, he dialed the number and waited. The phone rang six times and then an answering machine came on. Kankurou's voice rang in his ears.

"Hey, this is the Sabaku residence." BOOM! CRASH! And was that screaming in the background? "We're probably just bein' too lazy to answer the phone, so whatever. Leave a message and maybe we'll check this piece of crap. Kay? Bye."

What was going on in the background? He didn't have time to think about it, because then the beep sounded.

"Uh, hey, this is Neji. Just wanted to know if it'd be possible to get together. Maybe over here this time, ya know? Alright, well, you have my number. Call me back when you can, okay? B-"

He didn't have time to finish when someone picked up the phone.

"N-neji?"

"Gaara? Hey!" he was rather happy his crush had answered.

"Sorry for being so late. We were eating."

Neji instantly felt bad. He hated interrupting these things. "Oh…I'm sorry. If right now's not a good time-"

"Oh, no! It's fine, really!" Neji was sure the redhead on the other line wasn't lying this time. "So…do you think we'd be able to get together? I'm bored. You guys could come here this time."

"Hm…I'd hafta ask Kankurou. Hold on." There was a click as the phone was set down. Neji was glad he had said Kankurou instead of his father. For some reason, Neji thought that might've been bad.

Gaara picked the phone up again. "Yeah, Kankurou says it'd be cool to. B-but we gotta finish dinner first…I-is that okay?" the question was asked as if he expected Neji to get mad and tell him it wasn't.

"That's fine! Yeah! Take your time, really. Alright, I guess I'll see you in a bit then. Bye!"

"B-bye."

Click.

Neji took a glance around the bedroom. The place was really a pigsty. He needed to do some cleanup before Gaara and his siblings came over.

WH00T! I FINISHED! GO ME, I'M SO FLY! Wh00t!

I've been told by H-R-chan that answering reviews is now a no-no on ff.n and I'd hate to have this removed because I deleted all the chapters so my dad doesn't stumble upon them. That'd be reaalllly bad. So…yeah. Um, if it's a realllly good question that I KNOW won't be explained later, I'll be sure to answer it in an A/N, but I won't be individualizing things anymore, just in case. So..SH'BYES!