Stranger Than Fiction
By Socially Suicidal
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
Drabble # 5
It was about fifteen minutes shy of two in the morning when the sharp knock Sakura had been waiting for all night resounded against her door. Pushing herself from her beige couch, the pink haired doctor tugged at the tank top she was wearing for pajamas as she approached the entrance. A quick look through the peak hole of the door confirmed that her late night visitor was, indeed, the threatening redheaded bouncer.
She stepped away, unlocked the door, and swung it open. His burning jade eyes lifted to her beaming face. "Hey, Gaara!" she chirped, forcing down the urge to throttle him for his earlier offense of standing her up at the restaurant they had agreed to meet at – well, the restaurant she had convinced him he wanted to meet her at. Well, hardly convinced. But regardless, he said he would go and he didn't.
Gaara offered no sign that he had even heard her greeting and continued to stare at her listlessly, shifting from one foot to the other as the discomfort at being in the vicinity of the strange woman's home coiled in his gut.
The young doctor stepped aside and motioned him in, shutting and locking the door behind him. He watched as she strode around him and turned left into the kitchen. She wore a light blue tank top with a pair of white boxers, her feet left bare. The redhead was surprised she even owned a pair of shorts like that and wondered if they were perhaps a past boyfriend's, or maybe, a current boyfriend's.
Scowling suddenly at the thought, Gaara stepped forward with full intent on finding out where exactly the offending things had come from when his path was obstructed by a small, orange, furry… thing. It sat indignantly in his way, round green eyes staring up at him impudently. It meowed loudly as he took a step towards it, rising to stand tensely.
Gaara had just brought his foot back as to kick it when Sakura reappeared, holding a glass in each hand, "I see you've met Whisk- Gaara! What are you doing?!" She cried, her emerald eyes wide as she noticed the precarious position of his foot. He lowered it and stared back at her, unblinkingly.
"Were you about to kick my cat?" Sakura asked in disbelief as she shoved one of the glasses into his hand, reaching down to scope up the furry little thing and nuzzled it, cooing, "Don't worry Whiskers, baby, I wouldn't let that mean man hurt you." The feline just stared at Gaara mockingly.
"It's ugly."
Sakura gasped, snapping her attention back at the redhead. The cat snorted. "How dare you! You're ugly," she retorted childishly, turning on one heel and stalking off to her living area. The pinkette placed her glass on the coffee table and settled on the end of her couch, cuddling the purring feline.
He just stood there, glancing down at the glass that had been placed in his hand and considering if he would find the need to knock the entire contents of the thing down in order to spend any more time with the pink woman.
"Well?" Sakura spoke up, eyeing him with a raised brow, "Are you just going to stand there?"
Taking a healthy sip of the liquid as the woman answered his internal dilemma, Gaara slowly approached to stand next to the couch, looming over her and that stupid cat.
"I cannot sit with that… thing," he informed pointedly, almost glowering down at the snarky looking feline.
Sakura sighed, placing Whiskers down on the loveseat to her left. She looked back up at him, both brows raised as she motioned toward the other end of the couch. Grudgingly, he sat down, staring stiffly to the side and crossing his arms across his chest.
She took the moment of deliberative silence, with just the din of her TV humming quietly in the background, to drink in his appearance. If work was where Gaara was when he was standing her up, he had changed clothing since as she noticed the lack of the Sabaku logo sprawled across the chest of his shirt. Instead, he wore a grey short sleeved shirt with a black and red striped long sleeve shirt under it, the sleeves of which had been pushed to his elbows, revealing his pale forearms and the spikey rubber cuffs adorning both of his wrists.
His black, baggy cargo pants had many pockets – she wondered what exactly he could be keeping in all of those, hm? – and zippers and the like, and tucked not so neatly into his, unusual, laced up boots – opposed to the normal buckled ones. A thick chain hung around his neck, a padlock locked into one of the metal links.
"So, where were you today?" Sakura asked nonchalantly as she picked up the remote and switched stations.
Gaara blinked, sipping from his glass. "At the club."
The pinkette ignored the pulsing of a vein in her forehead and continued her questioning, "Did you forget you agreed to meet me at dinner?"
"No."
Her left eye twitched, teeth clenching together momentarily, "Then what happened?"
Gaara shrugged.
The remote clattered against the wood floor as she dropped it, a vein pulsing from her forehead. The redhead regarded her calmly. She swallowed forcefully and gripped the couch cushion, "Right," she murmured with no conviction at all, "Well, you're here now."
"Apparently."
She resisted the urge to leap across her small couch and throttle the stupid stoically arrogant man.
The air was thick with her fuming rage for the few tense moments that followed until Sakura took a deep breath and attempted to disperse the awkwardness.
"Whiskers isn't bad at all, you know," she commented conversationally as she leaned over to the table to retrieve her own glass.
Gaara spared a glance at the cat that was currently attempting to glare holes into his skull before he peered over at the odd woman. "Ugly is a much more suiting name. Does that thing even have whiskers?" Really, the face of the little hairy thing looked oddly hairless.
That was the first time he'd witnessed her pout. "Yes, he does!"
The redhead didn't look convinced.
"Well… I sort of trimmed them," she admitted with a sigh, taking a short sip of her drink.
When she looked up at Gaara, the wrinkled skin of his brow told her he was surprised. Or amused. It also did that when he was angry. He was damn hard to read. "You… cut your cat's facial hair?"
Sakura's face began to burn, "Hey! Don't say it like that. It's just, well, it tickled my face, okay!"
She earned herself the full effect of his gaze as he stared at her as if she had spontaneously sprouted extra limbs, well, his version of that anyway. He wasn't the most expressive. Gaara then shook his head, turning back to his drink and taking yet another healthy gulp.
The doctor scowled, "What was that for?"
Gaara's eyes lifted toward her in question.
"You shook your head at me."
The redhead took his time as he slowly and deliberately placed his now empty glass on the table before he spoke, "I thought I was the fucked up one between us."
Sakura huffed indignantly, standing from the couch and snatching his glass from the table. "I am not fucked up!" She retorted as she marched into the kitchen. Gaara had taken to a glaring contest with the ugly feline when she poked her head back out of the kitchen,
"And neither are you, Gaara," she continued softly before her head disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared.