Part 5

I was bored, so you all get fic! Remember this? It was logged under humor. Let's see if I live up to that.

Fanart for the fic! I'll get links up in my author profile soon. (i.e. when I am not lazy.) It's good. It makes me happy. And I love pictures. They help me write faster.

Hurumph. Was supposed to be shorter. That was the idea. I guess this just had to play out as it would.

Disclaimer: (see Part 1)

"But you work in clubs." Sakura brandished the paper in front of him and he backed away from it bodily, faster than if it had been on fire. The chair he was in made an eerie screeching noise as it cut a path through the linoleum.

Gaara gave her a dark look. He feared that this was only the beginning, and he was very right in that respect.

"You can't make me believe that with as many concerts as you have seen that you don't at least like music."

"I like some music." He looked at her as if she had forced him to speak.

"Well, it's just moving to music."

"I don't like that music." He looked more than a little consternated. "I am not going to a dance class with you."

Sakura gave him a pouty look. "But I never had someone to be my partner before. . . well not anyone I wanted to be touching me anyway. Just one waltz. I won't make you do anything that requires hip twitching. Really, you'll look perfectly dignified. Please Gaara, pleaaaaaase?"

"Your friends are going to be there, aren't they?" Gaara found he dreaded that more than making a fool of himself in front of strangers. No one in a beginning ballroom dancing class would probably frequent death metal and goth bars so the risk of being spotted and later made fun of was slim. (Honestly the risk of being made fun of was slim anyway due to his appearance.) Sakura's friends were all people who he had managed to meet with varying degrees of success, but if even one person recognized him there it would just punish him.

Pushing back her pink bangs from her face, Sakura put on that oddly thoughtful look that she got when she was searching her powerful brain for a fact she couldn't quite remember. Gaara wondered if she was pretending not to remember so she wouldn't have to tell him.

"I think Lee is going; Tenten told him that ballroom dancing classes are a good way to stay in shape. . . but I think that she just wanted someone she trusted to go be her partner. It's either that or getting pawed by old men half the time. . ."

"And why is this fun?"

"Oh!" Sakura said in a slightly exasperated tone as she took a sip of tea and looked around for a waiter to get some more hot water. "When you are dancing with someone you like it can be. . . sort of magical." Obviously, from the timid way in which the last words had come out she was aware that this was not exactly a good pitch to get Gaara to change his mind.

She was a sneaky one, this girlfriend of his, choosing to tell him someplace where he couldn't easily make a scene or escape. Breakfast had been good here and he was feeling full and even satisfied when she had dropped this in him lap like hot spilled coffee. It burned. From the way she was clutching that paper with details on it and the fact that, unlike most losing battles she engaged in, she was not wisely retreating. . . Gaara felt the grim and ghastly fingers of his future claw at him.

"You have to admit, I've been very stressed out the past few weeks. . ." She hadn't changed the subject in her mind, she was simply changing tactics. Gaara warily nodded, picking at the remains of a piece of sausage on his plate. The processed meat had no revelations in it for him.

Sakura continued. "There's finals soon, for the semester, and I really wanted to do something special with you. After all, I go visit my family for a week once break hits." The waiter finally arrived with the hot water and Sakura smiled her thanks at him before going on. "We can celebrate Christmas on our own when I get back, if you like. . ."

"Whatever. I never really celebrate any holiday."

"It will be different this year," she said it with such conviction, such fire, and Gaara believed her. "What would you like, by the way?"

Gaara thought about it, trying to pin down something he could actually use that he hadn't already bought for himself. Most of his clothing was purchased on whims, he had all the stuff he could need, and asking for groceries sounded like it would simply provoke another argument of sorts about him having no imagination. He churned through possibilities and while his mind was busy he played right into her hands.

"I don't know. What do you want?" He said it absently.

As soon as she opened her mouth with that devilish look of triumph he knew he had brought this on himself. It was misdirection. That's all, and he knew he should have been more careful. Dammit, he just wasn't a morning person.

"I want to go dancing."

Yep, definitely not a morning person. He needed more coffee. Facing doom this early without a fourth cup of coffee was cruel and unusual punishment.

Sakura was, in an oblique way, surprised that she had gotten him this far. After all, Gaara simply hated putting himself in new situations. There were places he was comfortable with, and a few people, but he had absolutely no will or inclination to push those comfort zones. Meeting her friends was a good example. She had to make sure they went to places she knew he liked to eat, or in parts of town he knew well otherwise he would simply be unavailable or (on one occasion that necessitated a long discussion) not show up.

This evening was so far out of his comfort zones that her head was spinning in sympathy. However, her mercenary feelings overweighed her sympathy and she was still standing in the mostly empty community center basement and waiting for him to exit the bathroom wearing the clothes she had brought for him. This was necessary and he had been warned of it ahead of time. The "I refuse to let you scare old people" convinced him less than the "I refuse to tell you where I hid your eyeliner" portion of that discussion. She would find some clothes for him that were normal enough, and she would only force him into going to exactly one lesson plus the dance afterwards. These were the terms.

In return, she had agreed to an undisclosed demand of his so long as it didn't involve more than one day of effort. She was actually a little scared because when he smiled he had showed all his teeth and more of his bloodshot eyes than usual.

He was taking too long, something was wrong.

"Gaara, you're still in there right? You didn't climb out a window. . ." She knocked on the door.

". . . I'm still here."

"Are you coming out?"

". . . I'm thinking about it."

Sakura had triumph within her grasp, a night of dancing, and she wasn't about to give up on it when she was so close.

"You're coming out, or else I'm coming in and dragging you out. And if I have to drag you out then there's no way you're getting your present."

There was a silence following this that she was sure was sullen. "Fine." The door opened and out stepped Gaara. At first her brain glossed over, and she looked passed the person who exited, trying to see if maybe Gaara was hiding in back somewhere. But then she saw the eye makeup and knew that this indeed had to be Gaara. Sakura's eye twitched as she tried not to laugh.

"The window was too small wasn't it?" She asked, firmly clamping down on her twitching lip. If she laughed it would all be over.

"YES." He said with vehemence that told her he had tried and that it wasn't a joke.

Honestly, he didn't look bad. He just didn't look like Gaara. The slacks were clean and pressed, their creases sharp. . . and they were tan. The shirt was pastel blue, and not ripped in any way. The vest he wore was navy, and didn't have any slogan, buttons, abstract art or anything at all creative decorating it. If not for the eye makeup, he would look not just normal, but conservative. Something inside of him must be slowly dying. He really had to love her to put himself though this.

"Let's get this over with." Gaara said, the look of pure agony on his face moved her past amusement and back into compassion. He was doing this for her. She would try to let him retain what dignity he had left. She took the bag in which his regular clothes rested and heard them clink as metal clasps hit one another softly. Yes, this was certainly a change for him.

They moved in the direction of the dance studio up the stairs and on the main floor, an old one used from everything from community college ballet classes to jazz and tap when people wanted a cheap place to practice. The center often had dance lessons here, and you could drop in and pay at the door if you wanted a lesson for the night. Every lesson went over a few beginning steps of some kind of dance for an hour or so and then for another few hours there would be music going to practice with and in general more people showed up to dance. It was a very low key kind of social event and attracted lots of different kinds of people. Sakura often saw high school kids as well as elderly couples, and the prerequisite number of bachelors of various ages who came to dance with the women who showed up with no partner. It had only taken a few leering fiftysomethings to convince her that she had to return with a partner if she did this again.

Lucky for her, she had one with her this time.

The board on which announcements were posted said, "cha-cha, polka, waltz" and below that "$3". Gaara had moved into a form of shell shock and so Sakura paid the money and dragged him in by the hand. She would make him enjoy this. Naturally, some portion of her mind had conveniently blanked out why and how she knew about this dancing class in the first place. Sakura was forcibly reminded almost the second she entered.

"Sakura! What a pleasant surprise!" Lee zipped over to her, leaving Tenten behind to shake her head and smile. His puppy-like crush on Sakura had mostly abated since she had gotten a boyfriend, but he was always eager to see and talk to any friend. Something inside of her told her that the crush was not quite gone yet, as well. A slightly disturbing thought. Good thing for her that Gaara seemed to get along with Lee better than most of her other friends. Otherwise, this might have been a tragedy as well as a catastrophe tonight. Gaara's back stiffened upon seeing the boy and he gripped Sakura's hand painfully.

"Lee, so you and Tenten showed up after all. . . Tenten had said she was so busy that I hadn't expected to see you. . ." Tenten was wandering over, a slightly apologetic smile on her face.

"As always it's a pleasure to see you, Sakura. It was a last minute decision to come, really. I thought that I should grasp the opportunity to try out new experiences. We're only young once, right?" The smile he gave her was almost blinding. She swore he had to bleach his teeth to get them that way, but this was Lee. . . it probably was natural.

Well, that explained why Tenten and Lee were here. Even though Sakura had warned Tenten and told her that they needed to have this class with as few encounters as possible with people they knew, if Lee had been the one to insist then no wonder any of her protests had fallen flat. Lee was simply too determined to be denied. Meanwhile Gaara's breathing was becoming significantly more ragged, as if he were slowly beginning to hyperventilate. Not good.

"Sakuraaa. . ." He said under his breath. She actively chose not to look back at him.

With an excited demeanor Lee pointed out that the teacher was here and quickly moved to Tenten's side with fire in his eyes. He was ready for this like nothing else. Gaara wished it was anything else. Sakura was somewhere in the middle, looking down at her comfortable, low heeled dancing shoes and wondering if she could get a refund for them if she took them in tomorrow.

"Ok everyone!" The instructor said into the headset she had just put on. "Let's begin with the cha-cha."

The lesson actually didn't go too badly. Gaara wished for death at every turn, naturally, but he had been subjected to worse things. Actually, the only thing that really began to grate on him towards the end of the lesson was the way that the Lee kid actually picked up on it quickly. Gaara simply wasn't prepared for the way they were asking him to move. The cha-cha was a pointless dance, and Sakura had promised no hip swinging so he got out of that one on a technicality. The polka, a horrendous dance that basically consisted of galloping around the room as fast as possible while sometimes swinging in a circle or something along those lines. . . was more exercise than he had had to do in quite a long time. For Gaara it was all about short spurts of energy and this business with the continuous motion was far more wearing on the body than he had thought. Lee was eating it up, excited for the exercise.

Sakura may have lost Gaara after the polka if not for the fact that he saw Lee as direct competition and Gaara didn't consider losing an option. He would be better than that weird kid with the bowl cut at one of these dances if it killed him. Lee twisted and spun Tenten about with almost indecent enthusiasm. Gaara had his attention so focused on Lee that he didn't even try for a playful grope while his hands were placed at Sakura's hips. He was aware of her amusement, but he chose to tune it out. Lee did something complicated with his feet and Gaara gripped Sakura a little too hard so that she yelped.

"Watch it. We get enough stares as it is. Bruises won't help, especially with this crowd. That little old couple will call the cops on you if you manage to look any more threatening." Sakura rubbed his back in comforting circles, while Gaara glared over at the couple she had been referring to only to see them avert their eyes quickly. He knew the clothes wouldn't work. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing and everyone in the room knew it.

At the end of the lesson portion, he thought maybe the worst of it was over. Then more people began to arrive and he revised his opinion. It was one thing to be stared at by old people. That was nothing new. It was something else to be giggled at by high school students. A whole gaggle of them came in together, a few with reluctant boys in tow much like he had been with Sakura. One or two looked in his direction and covered her mouth while whispering to the girl next to her. Sakura had abandoned him to a corner while she talked with Tenten and Lee. Great, now little girls were snickering over him and old people were ready to throw him out by his tan slacks. A scuffle with the police sounded like fun in comparison to tonight.

"So glum." Sakura rejoined him, claiming his arm in such as way that a couple of the teen girls began to pout in disappointment. Good, thought Gaara, that should at least take away some of hemorrhaging agony of the evening. Dancing with Sakura he would bear, maybe. Dancing with teenyboppers was not part of the contract. "The first dance is a waltz. We just learned this, please, can we?"

"No," Gaara said quickly, caught off guard. There was barely anyone on the dance floor. He wanted a crowd to be lost in before he risked this dancing business. "I want to watch first." It was a lame cover, not quite masking his obvious unsettlement. It was just the beginning of the evening, so Sakura seemed at ease.

"I'll be back, but I swear if you keep me waiting too long I'll tell those girls over there that you love the cha-cha." There was not enough venom in the world to match what was in his eyes. He toned it down when he saw the elderly couple looking at him again, then thought better of it and bared his teeth at them. They gave him a huffy look and spun out onto the dance floor. If only the teenagers were so easily intimidated; they were inching nearer to him.

True to form, the first few dances featured songs that you could apply the lessons to. The cha-cha was next and Sakura found herself partnered with Lee. Gaara would have been jealous if not for the fact that watching the mop haired man swing his hips in his too-tight pants was bizarre and just about everything that could be the opposite of alluring. Sakura didn't seem that taken with him and kept as much space between their bodies as possible. Lee didn't seem to notice, so keen was he to dance.

Tenten, without a partner and not really knowing anyone else, wandered over to Gaara's corner. She shrugged, pushing some stray hairs that had fallen out of her bun behind her ear.

"Sorry about Lee. I tried to tell him today wouldn't work, but Lee can't be denied when he's determined."

"You're wrong." The flat, rude statement made Tenten frown. "He didn't get Sakura."

He was baiting her, wanting to see how she would react, amusing himself while Sakura was busy. For a while now, her friends had been aware that he was only a nice person to her, but it still shocked them how uncivil and blunt he could be after this long. The things they said to her about him were probably building behind the scenes until they tried an intervention to get her away from him. Maybe that was just a paranoid thought on his part. Either way, he was bored, he was irritated, and this is the only outlet he had that didn't involve blood or caffeine. God he wanted a cigarette right now, those stupid patches weren't worth shit and the gum was like licking asphalt.

"I suppose he didn't." Tenten finally supplied after a long pause. "But she's just as stubborn. I didn't expect that you'd actually be here tonight."

"Hmph." The way Gaara was staring at Lee sourly hadn't been lost on Tenten. Her pity for him only managed to aggravate him more.

"Look, Lee is just all about moving his body. Sometimes people are naturals at things like dancing. You don't need to worry about it. Why when I first started—"

"We're not going to talk about this."

"Fine." Tenten looked like she was ready to throw her hands up and dance with one of the older men who had come in, but she tried to talk to Gaara again anyway. It was a bad time either way. "Have you ever thought about smiling once in a while? You wouldn't look as scary if you didn't glower like all the time."

"This is not a glower." It wasn't. When he really glowered, people gave him more space than Tenten was giving him right now. "This is a frown. It's something I do when I'm displeased. And wouldn't you be displeased if you were coerced into doing something you didn't want to?"

Tenten smirked. "From what I heard from Sakura you weren't coerced, you were bribed."

Over to the side, the teen girls giggled and pointed at him. A glower was threatening to emerge.

"It's hopeless, I tried to get him to move out of the corner, but he just can't be budged. I'm pretty sure he didn't rip or stain his pants in any embarrassing way so it must just be because he's mortified of people seeing him dance. What can I do?"

Sakura whined in the girl's room while Tenten reapplied her lipstick. Lee was chatting with Gaara back in the dance hall, his purposeful obliviousness to Gaara's rudeness somehow allowed that conversation to move forward without too many kinks in the works.

"You tried threats?"

"What could I possibly threaten him with? When push comes to shove I could barely put a dent in him, and he doesn't fear anything."

"You tried promises?"

"There isn't anything he wants that he doesn't already get and holding sex over his head as an enticement seems childish."

"You tried reverse psychology?"

Sakura stared scathingly at Tenten using the mirror until the older girl shrugged and went back to fixing her hair more thoroughly.

"I don't know what to say then. You're really on your own with this one. There isn't anything I can do for you."

With a spark of an idea in her head, Sakura leaned on the sink counter and caught Tenten's eye again. "Maybe nothing we can do, but I bet Lee could get him out there."

"That's just cruel to sick Lee on him. You know what he's like. One or the other would probably end up dead."

"It's not a fight. It's just trying to get him to dance."

"Fine, not death, maybe just a broken bone or two."

Sakura huffed at Tenten's over dramatization of the situation and went out to find Lee. Gaara was looking amused as he watched Lee lecture some young kids about the importance of staying healthy. Sometimes Sakura saw life as a personal trainer in Lee's future, and then realized that his strict regimen might kill a lesser being.

"Lee! Let's uh," she paused to identify the style of the song. "foxtrot. You did it earlier with Tenten. Just a box, right?"

"Of course, Sakura! Excuse me, but I must leave off there. Remember, you have to take care of yourselves now while you are in the prime of your life. Your body will thank you for it later." The high schoolers looked very gratefully to Sakura who dragged Lee away.

Once they were dancing, she couldn't help but ask. "How did you start talking to them?"

"Oh, that?" Lee gave her a blinding smile as he expertly moved them around the floor. He really was a skilled dancer, with almost no practice. No wonder Gaara obviously resented him. "Why Gaara and I were talking when one of the girls began to speak very loudly about how the dance was so boring and they should go somewhere to get fast food. They were looking in our direction, and I commented on how such things would only corrupt the body. Gaara suggested I tell them that, and I went to go do that very thing. He's surprisingly thoughtful sometimes."

A voice in her mind snickered at Gaara's obvious manipulation of Lee. He didn't even have to try. Then she realized she was about to do something just as bad and silenced that inner voice before the hypocrisy knocked her on her butt.

"Lee?"

"Yes?"

"The night's almost over and Gaara hasn't danced once. I wonder if you could show him a few steps. He might just need to go over it again. I'm sure that I could get him to dance if you could just refresh his memory about how the steps go. I would show him, but I don't know the leader's part. I would just get confused."

It was almost sad the way his face lit up. Lee so liked to be helpful. "I would be glad to help you! Let's go over right now. I thought he looked a little sad all night. Why didn't he say he couldn't remember the steps?"

"He's just very proud."

They walked over and Gaara tilted his head to the side curiously, not fully comprehending what was in store. Then Lee began to lecture him. Gaara froze, unable to process this new onslaught. After the initial explanation, Lee began coaching Gaara by grabbing his hands and placing them in dance position on his body. Lee put on a simpering expression, trying to look like a girl, and told Gaara to follow his feet just like he had demonstrated before. They took one step before Gaara mumbled something about understanding it perfectly and grabbed Sakura's arm to lead her onto the floor. The whole process had taken almost four minutes to do what Sakura had been trying to achieve for nearly two hours.

"You're evil, but I think you know that." Sakura allowed herself a small chuckle. Gaara formed up his hands and arms, carefully getting them right so that he could receive Lee's patented smile and thumbs up from the sidelines.

The next song had already started and lo and behold it was the waltz that Sakura had been pining for. It was everything she had wanted and. . . extra. The extra was when Gaara stepped on her foot rather hard a couple times, but that was fine because for the most part it was very enjoyable. They glided along the dance floor, even swinging around in circles, until they were both too dizzy and went back to the simple box. Gaara eventually lost that fierce look of concentration as he tried to get the steps right and things actually flowed.

To Sakura, the song ended much too soon.

"Good?" Gaara asked. They lingered on the floor as the next song started up.

"Yes." Sakura had a dreamy look on her face, thinking that they could manage this next song too. It didn't seem to complicated. She turned out to be far too optimistic.

"Right then." Gaara began to drag Sakura off of the floor and out of the room.

She sputtered a protest as they lingered only long enough to pick up their things. "Where are we going?"

"You're happy and I've fulfilled my part in all this. All that's left is what you promised me and we've got lots of time tonight to do that."

They snapped up his clothes, and Sakura noted that he must be really eager for his gift since he wasn't even pausing to change out of his preppy outfit before they headed for the car.

"And what exactly am I doing?"

"Just posing for a few pictures." Gaara said, the frightening smile back on his lips.

Sakura drew her brows together as she thought back. "But I returned that vinyl outfit."

"Who said you'd be wearing anything?"

She wondered if the waltz had been worth it.