Short Note: So, you all voted and my decision is to do… all three of them! I ended up getting some great feedback and I had already liked all of the prompts, so I figured, hell, I got such mixed responses may as well do all of them! Sorry #11 is so short and well kind of… bleh, I'm working on getting back into the swing of things.

Stranger Than Fiction

By Socially Suicidal

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

Drabble # 11

Sakura stared levelly across her small kitchen table at the expressionless man seated there. Her lips twisted as she pursed them, shifting in her seat and furrowing her pink brow. She was obviously assessing him, calculating the best method of approach, planning meticulously. Gaara appeared unaffected after several moments of her piercing emerald gaze. Without deflating, she finally blundered across her chosen tactic. Her voice was flat, even, her expression hard and adamant.

"Gaara, you are going your own sister's wedding."

The man was an ice wall. Only a direct hit could get through that frosty exterior… or a really big heater. But Sakura simply did not have the energy or the time to generate that much heat.

He frowned, his charcoal rimmed eyes drooping slightly more than usual. Leave it to his pink haired doctor to broach this topic when he was weakened in his exhausted state. For such a fundamentally caring and compassionate woman, she truly was as cruel as him, sometimes.

The redhead inclined his chin, snorting defiantly as he set his now empty glass on the table. The look he gave her definitely meant something along the lines of, "Make me."

Sakura frowned at the direct challenge, choosing to otherwise ignore it, "And you will be dressed suitably. We'll go get you a tux first thing tomorrow."

She could have sworn his lips actually quirked and the guttural sound that his chest emitted was a laugh in her expense. Gaara leaned forward, remaining silent for a moment before speaking. "Not a chance in hell," he told her blandly.

Huffing, the pinkette stood abruptly from her seat, gathered their empty glasses and carried them to the sink. "We'll just see about that, Mr. Sabaku."

How Gaara managed to find himself standing with his arms spread at his sides in front of the mirror with the pinkette fussing over minute parts of his wardrobe a few weeks later was an absolute and utter mystery to him. Somehow she had finagled, convinced, forced, bribed, and pleaded with him to go to this stupid ceremony. Even more than that, though, did she somehow get him in this ridiculous outfit. Most of the messy charcoal around his eyes had been scrubbed off, leaving only shadowy remnants of the stubborn stuff that had been resilient against her best efforts and the more permanent purple hues that were the natural result of a life of sleep deprivation.

And in that moment, Gaara regretted ever agreeing to climb into this monkey suit. If only he could have resisted the wiles of the woman that beamed up at him as she adjusted the bow tie constricting his wind pipe.

Weddings, in his opinion, were an exercise in futility, a waste in time, effort, and money that really produced no worthwhile results. Marriage, in general, was a concept he could never, and probably would never, understand or approve of. Being legally bound to one person until death set off all sorts of alarms in his head, his primal escape instincts nearly kicking in by the very thought. Besides, he had never been a man that felt obliged to make his commitments, feelings, attachments, or lack thereof all three of those things, public.

He ignored the fact that the pink haired female fussing over him was a contradiction to that sentiment.

Grabbing her wrists, he brought them up to his face and waited for Sakura to turn her surprised, if not a little cheeky, gaze up to meet his. "Enough," he rasped quietly. She nodded in assent, equal parts surprised and grateful that he had allowed as much as he had.

"Alright, but you should really stop dreading this so much. Weddings are a lot of fun! It's Temari's day to celebrate how much she loves Shikamaru with all of their family and friends, what's so bad about that?"

Despite the utter lack of expression adorning his pale face, he released her deftly and she quickly reached her hands to his neck, pulling him down just slightly to place a chaste kiss against the side of his mouth with a mutter of, "Brighten up, grumpy." If that was the only consolation he received as reimbursement for his irritation, he mused as he watched her turn and walk into the kitchen, there would be hell to pay.

"You should probably get going soon," Sakura called to him before emerging from the kitchen with a steaming styrofoam cup in her hands, "Temari wants the entire wedding party assembled exactly at noon, and it'd probably be better for everyone if she didn't get married in a gown covered in your blood because you decided to show up late."

Pushing the freshly brewed cup of caffeine into his hands, his pink haired woman wasted no time in steering him out of her apartment. Upon reaching the door, Gaara allowed himself to be pushed no more and turned in the threshold to stare at her. She understood what the look he gave meant immediately.

"I'll be sitting in the left section, probably next to Kakashi – you know, with the grey hair – in a silver cocktail dress at exactly two o'clock, I promise," Sakura repeated their earlier agreement and offered her pinky with a rather cheeky looking smile.

Gravely lacking appreciation for her jesting and indifference regarding how very much he didn't want to do this, the redhead wrapped his long pale digits around her prone one and lowered her hand. "You owe me for this."

Sakura rolled her eyes as she weaseled her hand from his grip, "For convincing you go to your sister's wedding? Sheesh you're right, I'm a regular she-dragon."

Although unimpressed yet again by her sarcasm, Gaara heaved his equivalent of a sigh before stalking down the hallway of her building, muttering, "No, you're whatever eats she-dragons."

"I heard that you bratty redheaded prick!"

He merely threw up his hand in the wave that usually meant, "See you later," as she slammed and shut her door behind him.