Twirlygigs and Gizzards: An Unlikely Continuation of an Unlikely Romance

Chapter 3: Fools on the Hill

Ino was bored, so, remembering Sakura's promise to get together with her sometime, she called up her ex-friend. Her little brother answered.

"Hey, is your sister there?" Ino asked.

"She can't come to the phone. She's putting on a bunch of make-up 'cause she's got a date. With her boyfriend."

"Oh." Ino hung up and turned to Chouji. "Grab your stuff," she ordered. "We're going stalking."

"I'm going out," Gaara informed his family on his way out the hotel room door.

"Ok." Temari shrugged, not looking up from the house-buying related paperwork she was filling out.

"... aren't you going to ask where?"

"No."

"Or who with?"

"No."

"...Oh. Well, bye."

"Bye."

Gaara put his hand on the doorknob, then turned once more. "Or when I'll be back?"

Temari set her pen down and looked at him. "Do you need money or something?"

Gaara shook his head and left.

"I'll never understand that kid," she remarked to Kankuro, who hadn't felt that it was necessary to interrupt his GameBoy to participate in the conversation.

"What's there to understand? He's going to go hang out with that Sakura girl again, and he wants to brag to us."

"How do you know all that?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

Shikamaru wasn't planning on getting involved in any scandals that day. All he wanted to do was lie on his favorite hill, away from the bustle of the city, and watch the clouds roll by. If more people spent their days watching the clouds, Shikamaru felt, everyone would be more relaxed, but he'd have to put up with a lot more idiots ruining his solitude, so maybe we should just forget the whole thing.

As was, the quiet early afternoon was still interrupted by the sounds of two people approaching, talking intently. One of them let out a high-pitched giggle that he recognized.

"Hello, Sakura," he greeted without moving his head to look at her. "What are you doing here?" He hoped her team wasn't meeting on his nice, peaceful hill. Squad 7 was the loudest group of people still allowed within Konoha city limits.

"Oh, hey, Shikamaru!" the girl trilled, sounding a little startled that the lump on the hillside was speaking. "We're just passing though. Sorry to bother you."

"Eh," muttered Shikamaru, going back to his sky-watching trance.

"See, Gaara, I told you you can see the sky in Konoha," Sakura said to her companion, presumably pointing up at the cloud scape.

The name didn't sink into Shikamaru's brain at first. When it did, he was certain he had heard incorrectly. And when a voice that quite distinctly belonged to none other than Gaara of the Sand of Chunin Exam fame said, "You were right," very civilly, even kindly, he was convinced he had fallen asleep. His head snapped up, and, low and behold, there was his ditzy pink-haired classmate skipping along next to the gourd-sporting bloodthirsty boy from Suna.

"Well, I'll be," he said to himself, going back to watching the clouds. A few minutes later, his eyes were half-open and he was just getting into that nice place between sleeping and waking that he loved so very very much when,

"Shikamaru!" shouted Ino and Chouji, coming up to him. "Hey, we're stalking Sakura, we think she's up to something. Want to come?"

Shikamaru had never hard a question that was such an obvious waste of breath. "Nah. I'm chilling."

"Oh. Well, all right, then," Ino shrugged, and she and Chouji walked off the way they had come.

"Uh, Ino?" Shikamaru called after them, "Sakura went that way," he pointed, but they didn't seem to hear. With an indulgent smile, like an uncle watching his nephews and nieces play with sharp objects, he shook his head and went back to watching his clouds.

He barely had the chance to mellow out again when Naruto, Sasuke, Rock Lee, and Hinata ran up to him. Well, not up to him in particular, as they didn't spot him at first, but up to his general vicinity.

"We've lost them," Sasuke panted, catching his breath.

"We can't have!" Lee stared around in disbelief. "We saw them come up here a second ago!"

"How an such a short kid move so fast?" asked Naruto.

"Maybe Shikamaru-kun saw them," Hinata suggested, calling attention to the boy on the ground.

"Oh, yeah, Hey," Naruto greeted belatedly but enthusiastically. "We're looking for Sakura-chan and that Gaara kid, have you seen them?"

Shikamaru pointed out the way the pair had gone with a sigh. The sky was getting grayer, and he felt the first drop of rain land on his cheek.

"Relaxation. What a drag," he muttered to himself, sitting up to talk to the kids around him before they could run off after their quarry. "It's going to start raining pretty hard soon. If I was you, I'd go to that vaguely-bohemian café down there. It's the nearest shelter, and they'll be running in there out of the storm before long." With that, he stood and directed his footsteps back towards the Konoha outskirts, taking his own advice.

Lighting streaked across the sky, and the group of stalkers decided that the plan had definite merits, and joined him speedily.

"Uh-oh," Sakura looked up at the sky as the wind picked up, noticing the ominous gray color for the first time. It was stupid of her, but she had been so wrapped up talking to Gaara she hadn't noticed the storm.

"Come on," she said to him, grabbing his hand as she ran downhill. "We'll get soaked if we don't get a move on!"

A clap of thunder signaled the start of the downpour. Not hard, exactly, but lots of it. It slicked down the grass, making the ground slippery. Sakura lost her footing and flew face first towards the ground. She had been running so fast that her feet left the ground, making her airborne as she pitched downwards. Gaara's hand slipped out of hers, although she sensed she had given him enough momentum to send him lurching downhill right after her.

Sakura was just about to hit the ground when something wrapped around her waist, knocking the air out of her as it yanked her backward, into Gaara.

The force of the impact stopped him as well and both of them landed uphill; Gaara flat on his butt, Sakura on Gaara.

By this time she was laughing uncontrollably, gasping for breath all the while because, as noted earlier, the wind had been knocked out of her. Still trying to regain control of herself, she happened to glance down in time to see a sand rope disintegrating around her waist. This wasn't what shocked the laughter out of her, though. That was caused by Gaara wrapping his arms around her from behind and holding her against his chest.

"Watch," he whispered into her hair.

Sakura watched. She twisted her head around to the best of her ability, but she had to be careful, because Gaara was still holding her and she didn't want to accidently break his nose or something.

Her mouth dropped open as she realized that sand was swirling around them. Within a minute, they were safely (and dryly) ensconced in a gritty egg and she laughing in amazement.

Perhaps, with all this laughing and gasping, Sakura was hyperventilating by the time Gaara released her and that was why her first action was to turn around and kiss him. She certainly didn't think about it first, she just acted completely on impulse.

It wasn't a deep kiss or anything. Just her pressing her lips to his briefly, but it sent Gaara into a state of shock. Almost as soon as she pulled away, he began to wonder if it had really happened or if he had made the whole thing up.

Sakura, completely unable to read the expression on his face, was mortified. She scooted away so they weren't touching any longer, stammering, "I'm sorry, I was just, I thought,"

This behavior puzzled Gaara even more, although it did prove to him that the kiss had occurred after all. "What? What did you think?"

The question made her think he was angry, and who could blame him? Sakura had never been more embarrassed in her life. She wished that their sand shelter offered a better place to hide, but she had to make due by facing the wall. "I just really like you," she whispered, her face the same shade of pink as her hair.

It may be safely said that nobody had ever said this to Gaara before. It may also be said that nobody had ever kissed him, that nobody had ever wanted to wander around town eating gizzards with him, and nobody had ever made him feel quite the way Sakura did. Describe this feeling? Well, kind of like he wished he had been paying attention when she kissed him. Or, even better, kind of like he wanted to kiss her again.

Sakura was feeling like she wanted to disappear and never be heard from again. Stupid stupid stupid stupid, she repeated to herself, closing her eyes tightly. For some reason she thought she would cry if she looked at Gaara, as if the whole situation wasn't humiliating enough already.

Someone (well, Gaara, obviously) grabbed her arm. "Sakura,"

She opened her eyes, only to close them again as Gaara kissed her.

Something rather random occurred to him out of the blue. "You know, I've never been in a thunderstorm before."

The subject change matched up well with Sakura's emotions, which were really confused at the moment. "How do you like them?"

Gaara kissed her again. "A lot," he whispered, his lips twitching into what might have been a smile, if you squinted. "I like them a lot."