At Anime Expo, spreading con plague to the Alley. :D

ooo

"What do you mean, you're kind of seeing him?"

The clash had been coming. Gaara's most determined devotees didn't understand Sakura's strange agreement with their Kazekage, or how the "relationship" they so begrudged her was built primarily on insomnia and a few hugs. They waited until she was alone and on her way back to Temari's; they waited until the street was mostly clear.

Sakura looked over her opponents' faces and, instead of apprehension, felt relief: Here it was, and soon it would be over.

"I don't see why it matters," she told them, and kept walking.

"Because some of us didn't think it was fitting to pull a damsel-in-distress routine with him."

The accusation was a knife's edge against an already open wound, and Sakura turned on her heel. "Do you think I actually want this?" she snapped. "That I wanted to give up my home and almost everyone I know—and that having a boyfriend could somehow make all that better?"

"It's awfully convenient," one replied—then all three went completely silent and still, and she knew who else had been following her. Fifteen feet away, Gaara leaned against a building's wall, arms folded, expression perfectly blank.

"I can take care of myself," she growled at him, as angry that she'd been caught up in this mess as she was with the possibility that he'd seen it, that he'd stepped in to clean things up for her rather than let her hold her own.

He closed his eyes, opened them with a small, vicious, knowing smile. "Go ahead."

Everything that still needed an outlet, that couldn't be talked or cried out, welled up in her, and she turned to the three kunoichi. They returned with smiles, and she couldn't help but think that at least Sand created confident shinobi.

Her chin and eyebrows raised, and Sakura cracked her knuckles. "Is this really how it's gonna go?"

Apparently it was.

A few moments of violence later found one ninja backing away, leaving another unconscious on the ground and the third squealing for mercy as Sakura pinned the girl's shoulders with her knees and reared back to hit her again. At the apex of her swing she paused, realizing her battle'd already been won—and Gaara swooped in, grabbed her wrist, and dragged her away before the crowd could get any larger.

"You didn't stop me," she said, reeling as much from the adrenaline as from the punches she'd taken.

"I knew you'd know when to."

"How sure were you?"

"Sure enough."

"Like you were sure I'd win?"

"I know you're good. I know they're cocky." I wouldn't have let it go wrong was the unspoken addition, but she seemed to hear it anyway.

He led her to his quarters, sat her down on a chair, knelt in front of her with a washcloth, and had started wiping the grime and blood from her scratches before he spoke again: "Also, it showed me that no matter what they say to me, they're still the same as they were twelve years ago."

"If I give them another twelve years," she said, determined to crack the gravity of his expression, "do you think they'll want to sleep with me, too?"

His smile came a little easier this time. "For your sake, I hope not."

It wasn't so much for him that the girls had decided to harass her; it was that their tone, their expressions. Because while the aggression was something they never would've dared direct at him, the rest was still far too much the same.

She brought back everything, everything from his past that he'd struggled to step away from; she let him know that under the callus and the coldness, he was still bleeding.

Her face was clean; he began work on her knuckles. Not much of the blood there was her own.

Sakura squeezed his fingers. "Did you not stop me because you're not supposed to hit them yourself?"

"A little."

"And the rest?"

This question was harder to answer. "Because . . . I wanted to see if you understood."

Her fingers tangled with his, with the washcloth, idly toying with it more than cleaning. "I don't . . ."

"How did it feel?"

For a moment she couldn't look at him; her hands on the washcloth stilled, and he took the opportunity to carefully wipe her fingernails. Finally: "It felt good."

"I knew. I saw." His hand raised towards her face, his expression a mixture of wonder and excitement. "You understand, then, what it's like. You're like me."

She was a wreck—skin scuffed, hair mussed, with a faint trace of blood on her split and swelling lower lip. He kissed her anyway. His tongue touched her wound, mingling her blood with their kiss; almost delirious with the perfection of it, he pressed closer—holding her face with just his fingertips and, as her lips parted, kissing her so carefully she could barely feel the sting of her bruises. Any more force and she might want to stop, and then there would be no more of this rapturous combination, of wet and friction and the slightest taste of coppery salt.

Like metal, he thought distantly, it tastes like—

He moved closer almost without intending to; her knees parted to either side of his hips without a hint of resistance.

Sakura ran her fingers into his hair and sighed against his mouth, flinching just a little as he tasted her lip again. Gaara shuddered and murmured something she couldn't understand, and the combination sent a shiver down her spine, turning her appreciation to full-blown want. She didn't want to think, not anymore; she just wanted this to continue. The future loomed and threatened them both with decisions and politics and disappointment and fear, but here, now—here and now were perfect.

She reached for his hands, intending to tell him to touch her, that it was all right—and he froze, wide-eyed, confused and lost and suddenly finding himself in way over his head.

Because if the taste of her blood reminded him of Yashamaru's, how his uncle's was the first human blood he'd tasted; because if she'd reminded him of his mother's brother before, the closest person to a mother figure he'd had; because he'd drawn so many mental parallels between her and his own mother and because he recognized all these things and was still aroused by the contact—

His mouth opened and closed, and he stared at her, seeking differentiation, desperately searching for the features that made her her and not anyone else, anyone half-forgotten or never-known.

If not for the years of rejection, of never being good enough, Sakura might not have felt the same sinking, crushing sensation of having done something terribly wrong. "Is— is it me? Did I do something—"

He shook his head—no. His hands cupping her face were no longer gentle, but his concern was now with convincing himself that it was her he'd confessed to, her he'd spent time with, her he'd wanted. The words that finally came weren't a declaration of affection but a plea for understanding: "There's something wrong with me."

There were some things, Sakura realized with the clarity of hindsight, that he might just be too damaged for.

And there were some things, Gaara realized, that he could never tell her.

"Sorry," he said, and closed his eyes.

"It'll be okay," Sakura murmured in return—though she had no idea what "it" was. He didn't resist when she pulled him closer, though before his cheek settled against her shoulder she could see the tension in his jaw and pained tightness around his eyes. She didn't ask any more, but stroked his neck until he relaxed, wondering what she'd possibly gotten herself into.