Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Sound Sleep ❯ It's Working ( Chapter 10 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

TYK: I'm so glad to have uploaded another chapter. With all the things going on in life, I have definitely put this on the back-burner (understatement!) But, yeah, getting it going again.

Ooh, btw, CallMeSweetie, first reviewer of the chapter, yep... grabbed my head and LOLed at your review.

...I had the exact same thought. Unfortunately, we may have to wait just a little while longer for that to happen...


Sound Sleep Chapter 10

“Gaara, once again, what the hell are you doing?” Sakura would have forced him off like she had previously, but it seemed like a better idea to find out exactly where he was going with this situation. She found it so hard to believe that he was actually going to... do that to her... Would he eventually chicken out and stare at her blankly wondering what came next? The rosette was curious enough to find out just how far he was willing if only know what to expect the next time he tackled her. It might be an interesting story to laugh at later.

Gaara's thoughts didn't lay anywhere near Sakura's mouth, let alone her face. No, what he was interested in was somewhere buried underneath these...

“Haruno, what are you wearing?”

If there was anything short of a bucket of cold water that would have shocked her back into this sexually charged reality, it was that. As the Kazekage pulled back the fluffy comforter to reveal ratty, holed pajamas, Sakura struggled to at least keep some of herself covered. As cocky as she had become in the last few minutes concerning Gaara and how far he would go with her body, she had completely forgotten that she'd neglected to “dress to impress.”

The kunoichi mentally kicked herself as Gaara was suddenly more interested in what she was wearing that what was under it. Her face reddened, and without actually thinking about it she reached out to cup his preoccupied face and turned it up to meet her eyes. She had to regain control of the situation. What was that earlier about making him feel something for her? To make him let her go when the time came? That wasn’t going to happen if she lost his interest because of a couple stains and tears, and she would be loathe to have failed her personal mission.

“You didn't really crawl over here just to see what's I'm wearing, now did you?”

The sand nin was actually, truly surprised for a moment. Has it worked already? Could she actually have already fallen for his affections? He hadn't done anything yet! This couldn’t be it; he wanted more.

And that last thought surprised him even further.

Kankuro had told him to kiss her, touch her, and to make her feel so amazing as if there wasn't any other man in the world that might make her feel that way other than him.

“You might not even have to go that far, but no matter what, no less that that will reach a woman's heart... In my humble opinion, if I do say so myself.” The painted man had then chosen to go into great detail about his many experiences with women that were absolutely not on the same level as the kunoichi beneath him. That was about the time that Gaara stopped paying attention to his brother and walked away.

Just as Gaara was just about to dip back into his exploration of her warmth and her scent, a noise from outside the room suddenly commanded Sakura and Gaara to attention. Their little tryst forgotten, Gaara leaped from the bed and across the room in one fluid motion with sand from behind him flowed smoothly from the gourd that he'd picked up. It hadn't been a loud noise—quite the opposite actually—but he'd noticed it, and now Gaara stood at the door and finally, slowly opened it. There was a lingered scent he couldn't place, the warmth of the hall suggested a presence that was strong.

He hadn't detected the person until it was so close to the room. And now there was no one there. Like they'd disappeared from thin air. He had to know.

The Kazekage slung the gourd onto his back and shot out of the room without a word to Sakura. She knew as well as he that there was a presence outside the room that didn't seem to be anyone that belonged there. She didn't predict that Kankuro or Temari would be creeping around this late at night, nor had she ever seen any kind of palace employee this far into the living areas without someone calling for them.

Sakura bolted from the bed and into the hallway intended on following Gaara in his quest for whoever was creeping around. But she stopped short when she noticed it.

Mud.

A tiny speck. Something you wouldn’t even notice unless you were a ninja that was trained to pick up these things. Sakura knelt on the floor enjoying the cold surface against her knees and fingered the speck of brown. She rubbed it, smelled it, felt the moisture. There wasn't much mud in Suna, although it was plausible that this was from the village in Sand.

But what the pinkette noticed above everything else was that this was Konoha mud. There was something familiar about it that took her back to the days when she was first starting out as a ninja. Sakura remembered having her face planted in this very mud so many times, and so much of it had seeped into her wounds that she could taste the dirty, metallic flavor. There was no mistaking it.

Someone from Konoha had been outside the door, perhaps trying to spy on what Gaara and she had been... doing. The thought was enough to chill the kunoichi to the bone.

What if someone from Konoha knows about what Gaara was trying to do to me just now? What if it gets around? What if Shino hears?

What if it had been Shino?

Sakura stood up and ran into the room toward the desk. The letter that Shino wrote, she'd realized earlier, was gone—Gaara's doing no doubt. She'd yet to reply to the letter having been shocked at first and quite distracted later.

Twenty minutes later, Sakura finished folding the letter to Shino and sealed it with her personal mark. The first three drafts of this difficult letter lay crumpled into little balls across the room where she'd launched them previously. But this one—while it still wasn't the best way she'd wanted to put it—was the best thing she could come up with in the mild panic that had come over her before.

Not willing to take the chance of Gaara finding these “rough drafts” and confronting her in the same manner as he had that day, Sakura put them in a pile on the windowsill and used a simple fire jutsu (she wasn't as proficient as Sasuke in those aspects) to set them ablaze into a pile of ash. The breeze of the night did the rest of the work to cover up her tracks.

She changed into her clothes and headed down to the common area all the while keeping an eye and an ear out for her captor. Unfortunately, Sakura was able to think about how the hands of such a dangerous man felt on her skin which then tingled at the very thought. It was as if bugs were crawling under her skin.

And of course with the thought of bugs her mind went straight to Shino.

“But will you be enough for him?” she asked the letter in her hand.


“Is there something you need, Miss?”

Sakura approached the desk where a young girl sat working on a few random papers. The kunoichi took her slight frown as an inquiry of what the pinkette was doing downstairs at this hour.

“I need this sent off to Konoha as soon as possible. It's urgent.”

The young girl's pale hand accepted the letter and looked its address over with her deep blue eyes. “Yes, Miss. I'll call up one of our messengers to deliver it as soon as possible.” She lay it on the desk on top of the papers she'd been writing on. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, thank you.” And Sakura turned around to head back to the room. She was timid to go back on the chance that Gaara might be in the mood to continue what he'd been doing when he'd left.

But Gaara was not in a good mood.

He had scoured the East side of Suna where he'd sensed the presence flee to—but to no avail. In the end he hadn't been able to catch up to the little eavesdropper, and that was enough to make him forget his mood when he had been “exploring” the kunoichi that was underneath him.

Even the thought of continuing his attentions—or even the fact that she should be there waiting for him when he got back—wasn't enough to get him back to the room any quicker.

Though he couldn't say it wasn't tempting. If doing things like that was going to keep her in Suna, this should be easy. Of course, he would have detected the person quicker had his senses not been otherwise occupied. That was the problem. In his quest to make her fall in love with him, he was loosing sight of the real mission and loosing sight of his sanity. She was changing him. Gaara couldn’t be certain, be he figured that it probably wasn’t for the better. He was afraid that it would make him soft, weak, much like those people he surrounded himself with on a daily basis. What set him off was the ability to look past all the human emotions and simply exist for his work and his country.

And now he couldn’t even do that. The sleep was wonderful and refreshing, but the damn situation came with a price. Even if it didn’t last, however, the price was something he’d pay to play around with the kunoichi some more. For all the annoyances she’d put him through, it was worth it to return the favor.

With that in mind, he almost flew to the threshold of the administration building but slowed to a walk when passing the state receptionist, Taki. It was her turn to take the third shift of the desk that night.

He stood tall and approached the desk when she made a motion to him.

“My lord, Ms. Haruno dropped this off about an hour ago.” She put the sealed letter in front of him. “She said that it was urgent and that it must be delivered tonight.”

“Thank you,” Gaara said as he tucked the letter into his robes and started toward his rooms for some much deserved sleep.

Although he was curious about what the letter said, Gaara figured it was best he rested and woke up refreshed before investigating this letter. It was bound to upset him either way. When he'd read that letter from the bug manipulator, Gaara had ordered Taki and the other staff that any message the rosette wanted to send to Leaf was to go through him first.

Kankuro had overheard the order and commented that, while it wasn't exactly the best way to her heart, it was the right way to keep others from getting to her heart before Gaara was able.

When he opened the door to his bedroom, the dim light behind him flooded over the bed where a pink tuft of hair protruded from underneath the comforter.

He looked out the window as he removed the gourd from his back. It was close to dawn, thought you wouldn't think so from looking at the sky. Not one to look at the time often, Gaara could smell the approaching day in the crisp air from the... now open window.

Gaara pondered for a moment why the window was wide open in his room, but paused when he sat on the very end of the bed. The Kazekage could already feel the power of Sakura Haruno calming the demon—and essentially the rage—within him. But this time, with the plush surface underneath him, Gaara found the desk to be more uninviting than usual.

And with the sensation of touching her slowly creeping back into his hands, the redhead crawled up further into the bed and lay next to her. Of course, he kept a solid distance, but was close enough to smell her hair and relive their tryst in his dreams.


So you can imagine Sakura's reaction when her eyes opened and the calm face of the Kazekage greeted her.

What the hell? Sakura kept her scream inside. She knew about her power to sooth Shukaku, but if something were to startle Gaara (and the demon) awake, she wasn't so sure that the sand across the room wouldn't jump out and put her in its grainy coffin.

But what the hell was she supposed to do until he woke up?

Very carefully, the pink headed girl rose from laying down watching his laconic face for any twitch of movement. But it never came. Sakura was undoubtedly shocked, especially when she sat upright and shook the bed.

Is he dead? He can't be! What the hell is going on here?

“Gaara...” She started to reach out for him, but once again she hesitated which the thought of sand crushing her to death. Finally, Sakura's hand touched the soft, unspoiled skin of his cheeks. She was amazed at the smooth feel of his skin—but realized that it had been protected by sand all his life. He had never had a reason to toughen up.

And when she absentmindedly pushed on his cheek, he took a big breath and sighed before rolling onto his back and snoring slightly.

“Seriously? He is asleep!” Finally comforted with the fact that a heart attacked hadn't suddenly killed him in his sleep and thus far his sand had remained in the gourd, Sakura leaped out of the bed and stood near that door.

Once she was out of range, Gaara started to feel a tug in his lungs and his chest. The sleep that seemed so easy to grasp just hours before was pulled from his grasp, and he opened his eyes to the new sunlight shining through the still open window.

Sakura stared from the other side of the room unable to move now that Gaara had woken up from whatever kind of sleep he was just under.

“Are you... okay?”

Without even missing a beat Gaara said, “what's that supposed to mean, Woman?”

“Well, to put it bluntly Gaara, you were sleeping like a man!”

The Kazekage could only raise an eyebrow.

Sakura almost sweat dropped. “That didn't quite come out how I thought it was going to. What I mean to say was that you were asleep. In a deep sleep. Like a log. I touched you, and you didn't even wake up. You just rolled over like nothing happened.”

The stoic Gaara made no move but to raise his hand to his right cheek where there was still a tingling sensation. This relationship between Shukaku and this woman was starting to get a little out of hand. To lose his senses and drop his guard like that was unthinkable.

¡°You should be dead right now,” Gaara said absentmindedly.

He didn't notice the appalled reaction on the rosettes face; instead the Kazekage drug his eyes from the bed to the desk and back.

Could the distance from this woman be a factor? He remembered the tug he felt as (he assumed) she crossed the room. But Gaara wasn't prepared to think about this in his current position on the bed.

Sakura moved just in time for her (whatever Gaara was to her—captor maybe?) to pass by and move down the hall until he was out of sight. For a moment, she contemplated crawling back into the big warm spot where they're been in the bed. Covering her head trying to forget the fact that she'd woken up almost nose to nose with Gaara of the Sand sounded like a good idea, but she didn't figure sleep would take over. She'd probably just end up thinking about what just happened.

Perhaps Temari could offer some kind of distraction to last the day until darkness set in and the Suna ruler descended on her once again.

Meanwhile, tucked away in his office, Gaara was quite occupied with the situation he was in. On one hand he had this girl who had the power to give him glorious sleep that until now had escaped him. On the other hand, however, was an entirely different situation altogether. It was a new world in itself where he was not in control anymore. Not only had he discovered a new liking for contact with a certain female ninja, but he had let down his guard that night before and slept deeper than he ever had before.

If he wasn't so stressed out with the situation, Gaara figured he'd be feeling pretty good at that moment.

But the fact aside, he would have to think about how far was too far when it came to Haruno. Obviously the distance between them affected the depth of the sleep he had—which as was demonstrated that morning could be both good and bad.

He fingered the message she's written the night before—he was surprised (and pleased) that it had remained in his placket all night and that she hadn't discovered it.

Finally, he removed it from its warm hiding place and studied the seal on the back and the distinctive handwriting on the front. It was addressed to Shino, that ninja she stayed with in Konoha.

That man had been a thorn in his side the entire time—getting in the way when she was living with him, fighting for her to stay in Leaf when Gaara threatened to take her away, and now trying to interrupt from afar.

Gaara leaned back in the chair. He could go over Shino's head and talk to the Hokage. It would be easy to flourish a political reason for her to have little to no contact with Shino (or anyone for that matter) on the grounds that it was disrupting her work there. But he decided that he wasn't going to be that person. If Shino wanted a fight, then he was going to get one.

And with that thought, Gaara flicked his thumb on the seal of the letter and opened it before any other thoughts came to mind.

 “…I don't know just how to reply to your last message. I'm not going to return the sentiment if I don't feel it fully, and right now I can't judge my feelings. Not in this place.

The Kazekage is ultimately confusing me with the way he interacts with me. I was sent here on the pretense that I would actually be doing some good for Suna, but I'm just someone for Gaara to use. Should I tell Tsunade about this? Would she understand that this contract with Konoha is just a lie?

My main concern lies with what Gaara's been thinking or doing lately... I can't even describe everything—one, because it would take many pages to explain it, and two because I can't figure out what his intentions are.

But I don't want to trouble you with this right now. I just needed to get a reply out while I could. For now, I'm alright. And I will eagerly await your reply. Tell me what I should do?

Sakura”

Gaara didn't know whether to be ticked off or amused.

If anything was proven from this letter it was the fact that he was getting inside her head. Everything that he'd been doing was in the front of her mind. And that proved that Kankuro's (and his own) plan was working.

Quite well, he might add.


Tsuyoku: I know that this chapter is a little shorter than a lot of them, but I was kinda anxious to get it out so close to posting the previous one. Especially when I've gotten a lot of reviews and people adding me or the story to their alerts. Thank you everyone! And, as you all well know, reviewing usually helps me get out another chapter just that much faster. R&R!!!