Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Questions ❯ Questions ( One-Shot )

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Questions

by Lemon Drops/thatreevesgirl (both me)

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Warning: Gaara might be OOC, because I made him twenty-five and assumed that perhaps he grew a voice, an opinion, and became a bit more human in those nine years I tacked onto his age.

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“If Kyuubi were removed, how much do you think I'd change?” Naruto asked as he stretched out beneath the warm, night air of Suna.

 

The response given to that question was preceded by a light snort and the soft hum of a low, thoughtful voice, “I think you'd be dead.”

 

“You're not dead.”

 

“I was dead.”

 

Naruto couldn't really argue with that, and it wasn't like he could ask someone to spare their life just so he could live without the demon residing within him. It was also impossible since only Chiyo knew the jutsu which brought Gaara back from the dead, and it was unbelievably selfish and merely unthinkable to ask for a life in exchange for something like that.

 

“Seriously, Gaara, do you think I'd change? You have definitely changed over the years. You speak, you smile…great deceased kages, you even laugh from time to time. When I first met you, you never did any of those things.”

 

Gaara raised a non-existent eyebrow, “I spoke before Shukaku was removed, I wasn't a mute, Naruto.”

 

Naruto couldn't argue with that either. Damn Gaara and his coyly correct answers which were always thwarting the blond at every turn. He was trying to make a point, but Gaara was not listening to the important things he had to say.

 

“You were nearly a mute. That better?”

 

“Much.”

 

The conversation between the two men lulled and once again Naruto reiterated his question, “Do you think I'd change?”

 

Gaara didn't have to think about it much, he only assuredly answered, “I don't think you'd change much at all.”

 

Naruto, curious to why Gaara thought he'd remain the same, peered at him with quizzical eyes and waited for the Suna leader to explain. Gaara didn't answer, only laid down on the sand beneath him and stared up and the sky.

 

“Oh for pity's sake, tell me why you think that,” Naruto exasperatedly muttered. Impatience was definitely at the top of the list of the Leaf shinobi's least attractive qualities.

 

“Because you wouldn't.”

 

Naruto glared, and then threw sharp words at his friend, hoping to goad him into speaking more. “You're still a damn mute.”

 

Taking a piece of jagged rock and rolling it around in his fingers, between the crooks of flesh, and even letting it twist about in his palm, Gaara decided the rock was much more interesting than Naruto. This was especially true when the Kazekage's chakra flared up around the tiny pebble and began breaking it apart bit by bit until it was merely a handful of sand.

 

“Why Gaara, tell me, please,” Naruto whined like a twelve year old, not the twenty five he actually was.

 

“You might change a little. You'd be quieter, that's for sure.”

 

“Tch, why would I become quieter? The exact opposite was true for you.”

 

Gaara threw the sand playfully at Naruto and picked up another rock, “Because you are loud in order to cover the silence.”

 

Gaara had a way of breaking Naruto's pretty little blond brain every time they started having a deep conversation, and this particular statement stalled the thought process in Naruto's mind for a good minute or so. By the time the Leaf jounin was ready to claim mental defeat, Gaara had another handful of sand, and tossed it at Naruto again.

 

A sharp, piercing shriek broke the silence between the two men. “Stop that!” Naruto shouted. “And do you mind explaining your strange theory, I don't get it.”

 

Gaara sighed, “You don't get much, do you?”

 

Naruto sure didn't have the ability to make and control sand like Gaara did, but the talented shinobi managed to toss a tiny pebble fast enough through Gaara's blind spot so that it plinked on the redhead's shoulder and onto the ground. Naruto was one of the few ninja alive who could get past Gaara's first line of defense, the sand which was always present around the Suna leader.

 

“I think you detest silence because you are afraid of what you hear amongst it. You cover it up because silence isn't truly silent to you, and never will be unless the demon fox is removed. Do you understand now?”

 

“No,” Naruto said flatly. Gaara grumbled and rubbed his temples with his fingers as thought of how to explain something so simple to someone so simpleminded. He didn't have to as Naruto started chuckling. Gaara's friend was always a sucker for goodhearted revenge.

 

“You are a walking migraine, you know that?”

 

Naruto's smile of triumph made Gaara roll his eyes, especially when the man added, “I guess that makes you a glutton for pain and punishment.”

 

“Obviously.”

 

Naruto threw another pebble at Gaara, but this time it was caught in sand and sent hurtling back toward its sender at a blinding pace, smacking Naruto right in the middle of the forehead. “Ow, you bastard, that hurt! It's your turn, ask your damn question.”

 

Gaara looked rather pleased with himself and gave one of those smiles which had started to surface more and more over the years. After thinking for a moment, Gaara asked, “Are you ever lonely?”

 

Naruto never teased Gaara by withholding answers, he spit them out as soon as he could decide on one, so after a few seconds of thinking the blond was ready to present his case. “I suppose that depends. I have a ton of friends, and when I'm with them I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the entire world, but sometimes I wish I could find something more. So technically I'm not alone, but sometimes I'm lonely, especially on nights when I'm in need of a little bit of, um, carnal comfort.”

 

“So you're lonely when you aren't getting laid?”

 

“That's two questions, completely against the rules,” Naruto responded sharply.

 

Gaara growled under his breath, “No it is isn't, it's clarification. Clarification obviously doesn't count as two questions.” The soft thud of Naruto laying back in the sand was Gaara's only received reply, so he added, “I play the silent game much better than you, just answer the damn question.”

 

“I'm thinking, give me a second,” Naruto hissed back. Naruto squirmed a bit, a look of deep concentration splayed on his face. “I'm lonely when I can't be intimate with someone, sex is fun and all, but it's nice have someone to connect with on a deeper level.”

 

“There are deeper levels of Uzumaki, heaven forbid…” Gaara chuckled as his voice trailed off.

 

“Mock me now, sandman, it's my turn, and I'll be evil if you keep laughing.” Naruto watched as Gaara made no attempt to quell his quiet laughter, so Naruto started to think about what things would really piss his friend off, and there was one question which definitely made the top of the list of things Gaara hated discussing.

 

“Why, in the name of all the dead kages, are you still a virgin at twenty five?”

 

Gaara's laughter was immediately silenced. Naruto knew how to go straight for the jugular, that was for sure. Gaara grumbled as he tried to think of a suitable answer, one which would lead to the least amount of teasing from the blond. The most important rule of their game was to be honest with all answers, but sometimes (thank the gods) there was more than one. So Gaara didn't have to say, because I'm not ready to be intimate with anyone yet, or, at this point, I've had such a long standing relationship with my hand, that I think it would get jealous if I found someone else.

 

Gaara settled on this instead. “I'm not exactly a warm and fuzzy kind of guy, so it's hard to find a willing participant. I haven't exactly had a lot of offers.”

 

Naruto's face turned pouty for the sake of Gaara, trying to show he felt bad for the Kazekage. “Aw, I'm sure there's some cute girl out there for you, one that's ready and willing to deflower an attractive guy like yourself. You have to at least have someone you're considering, right?”

 

“Now who's breaking the rules?” Gaara hissed.

 

“No, I'm CLARIFYING,” Naruto mocked with big, slow words, and then gave a hearty laugh to punctuate his point. “It's within the realm of the original question and it pertains to your answer, so cough it up, sandypants.”

 

Naruto had a thousand horrid nicknames for Gaara, and most of them revolved around sand. Gaara cringed at the damn petname, but answered anyway. “I suppose I've considered a few people.”

 

“Who?”

Gaara glared at Naruto, “This line of questions isn't really pertaining to clarification.”

 

“Just answer the question. You and I both know that you are only avoiding the topic, so spill it, master of all things cacti and tumbleweed,” Naruto prodded.

 

Gaara swallowed hard, usually he had successfully avoided this topic during the previous times they had played their silly game of questions, but not tonight. Naruto seemed determined to discover the truth. “Well, there is one person who is nice enough.”

 

“Is she pretty?” Naruto asked while waggling his eyebrows.

 

“Er, pretty isn't really a good descriptor,” Gaara replied. Naruto snorted, wanting more, so Gaara continued, “They are more strong than pretty, but I suppose they're attractive too.”

 

Naruto was fairly sure he wasn't going to get a name out of Gaara, mostly because the he was famous for his meddling. Naruto was known far and wide as the person who set Sakura up on a hundred horribly bad dates after things didn't work out between the two of them. Naruto was the furthest thing from cupid as a person could get, but he still liked playing matchmaker. “Tell me more about your mystery girl.”

 

Gaara thought for a moment, “Well…” followed by a significant pause, “She…” followed by quite a bit of hesitance, “She has an infectious laugh, one which makes me want to smile every time I hear it.”

 

“That's quite a feat,” Naruto told his friend with a grin, “She must be pretty amazing.”

 

“Yeah, she is,” Gaara muttered before continuing his description of his dream-partner. “She also has a great sense of humor, and she has these crystal clear eyes so I know she gets me, I can always tell by someone's eyes if they get me or not. She is also a talented ninja, and she has this hair…it kind of reminds me of a field of sunflowers, especially since it's so damn spiky, just like the petals.”

 

Get Gaara started and he was such a chatty person, Naruto thought, but after listening to Gaara's description Naruto cringed, “Kami-alive, you aren't lusting after Temari, are you?”

 

Gaara's eyes bugged out of his head, realizing his descriptions of his dream partner could be misconstrued as being his own sister, “No! Absolutely not, Naruto, what kind of person do you think I am?”

 

“The weird, kinky kind. But really, it sort of makes sense in a strange, warped way. She is one of the few people who you've ever cared deeply about.”

 

“But not like that,” Gaara retorted with a loud huff, “Never, NEVER, like that.”

 

“Yeah, obviously. So you like some strong, giggly blond, with a sense of humor,” Naruto recapped. “I never pictured that as your type. I was thinking more along the lines of a dark, brooding, bloodlusting kunoichi with a penchant for mesh, or maybe someone like Anko. I would have completely believed it if you would have said you liked Anko.”

 

Gaara merely let his eyes portray the disgust he had for that idea without any need for verbal rebuttal. Dark, brooding, bloodlusting…that brought to mind a particular someone who he had a great disdain for (if not flat out hate), so no, that definitely wasn't Gaara's type.

 

“So why haven't you pursued this girl yet?” Naruto asked, once again waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

 

“They wouldn't be interested in someone like me,” was the succinct answer Naruto received from the Kazekage. It tumbled out of Gaara's mouth quick and rough, and Naruto saw the hurt in his friend's eyes.

 

“Aw, don't say that, you're a great guy, any girl would be lucky to have you.” Naruto said while coupling it with his most disarming grin possible, hoping to cheer the now depressed Gaara up. He hadn't meant to open a can of worms, but apparently he did. Naruto had only wanted to tease Gaara about being a virgin, not make him feel bad about being alone. “You really should ask before you assume someone isn't interested,” Naruto tried.

 

To avoid further conversation on the topic, the Kazekage presented his friend with a new question, “Have you ever been in love?”

 

Well, that was a rather loaded question, one which Naruto wasn't sure how to answer, mostly because he really didn't want to answer it. Gaara and Naruto had been playing this game of questions for years, and it was usually just good natured fun between friends. Like Gaara, Naruto respected the most important rule of their game, be honest, and had never broken that rule once.

 

Naruto settled for a, “Yes.”

 

Gaara counter with a, “Who?”

 

“Please don't make me talk about it,” Naruto pleaded softly. “I'll let you ask anything else about it, just not who.”

 

Gaara sighed, “Did you ever tell them?”

 

The blond man shook his head, “No, they died before I even figured out what it was I was feeling. I was young and stupid.”

 

“Well you're still relatively young and relatively stupid,” Gaara joked. The one nice thing was that the Kazekage had indeed formed a sense of humor over the years, one which he attributed to Naruto more than anything else.

 

Naruto's lips curled into a snarl as he pouted in his pile of sand, “You are not a nice friend.”

 

“No, I'm an honest friend,” Gaara offered, “Because you are still fairly dumb...”

 

Naruto rocketed another pebble at Gaara, this one making it past the sand and thwacking the other man in the back of the head. “My turn,” he grumbled as he successfully silenced Gaara. “What's the name of the girl you like?”

 

Naruto was done playing, because Gaara had actually pissed him off. He knew Gaara wouldn't want to tell him that tidbit of information, so it was now Naruto's number one objective to discover the identity of the mystery blonde girl Gaara liked.

 

“There is no girl,” Gaara muttered, once again being begrudgingly candid with Naruto.

 

Naruto sometimes hated playing their game of questions, because Gaara's answers were so cryptic, or in this case just ass-backwards. “You already told me that you were interested in someone, so you either lied about that or you are lying about this, which is it?”

 

“Neither.”

 

Naruto wished he could reach over to Gaara and strangle his friend. “It is one or the other, it has to be.”

 

Gaara stood and brushed off his pants gently. Taking a good long look at Naruto and then letting a sigh escape his lips, the Kazekage started walking back toward the village. “I'm not lying Naruto, there is no girl. It doesn't have to be one or the other, the answer to your question is simply: there is no girl, no woman, none. Understand?”

 

Naruto shook his head in response and laid back down on the sand, watching as Gaara continued to go. The leaf shinobi growled under his breath and yelled at the retreating redhead, “I'm going to watch the stars for a bit, I'll be back in a few hours.”

 

“Sure, whatever,” Gaara replied as he kept walking away.

 

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Before going to sleep Gaara had spent a good twenty minutes just sitting on the edge of his bed staring off into the distance at nothing in particular. Sometimes Naruto just got a bit too far inside, so much so that it made him hurt, like he was hurting now. Gaara buried himself under the light blanket on his bed, hoping that perhaps sleep would help make everything just disappear.

 

The Kazekage awoke to find his sand shifting nervously around him, shaking and forming a barrier directly above him. What was this? An assassination attempt? There was definitely someone caught in the sand hovering above him.

 

“Call off your damn sand,” came a familiar muffled voice hidden among the granules of the sand barrier.

 

Gaara grumbled as tendrils hissed and fell away from the body of his friend, slinking back into the gourd sitting at Gaara's bedside. “What in the hell did you do to cause that? I know your chakra, so it shouldn't have attacked you.”

 

Naruto didn't answer that, he only glared at Gaara, which the sand leader saw as the bright blue depths of Naruto's eye squinted at him in the ill-lit room. Gaara almost asked again, but Naruto sat on the side of the bed and let loose a deep sigh.

 

“I came here to tell you that I'm not stupid,” Naruto began. “You think I'm a complete dimwit, but I'm not. I may not be as smart as you, Kakashi, or Shikamaru, but I'm not an idiot.”

 

“No, you're not an idiot,” Gaara murmured, realizing that his teasing must have really upset Naruto earlier.

 

Naruto leaned over Gaara and growled, forcing Gaara to lay down against his pillow as Naruto snarled at him. “No, you don't get it, I said I'm not an idiot.”

 

“You must be an idiot, because I already told you I know you're not an idiot,” Gaara hissed back. He wasn't getting what Naruto was saying at all, so it made him respond irrationally.

 

“NO!” Naruto gritted through his teeth, gripping Gaara's shoulders and digging his fingernails into the kage's skin as he tried to make his point, “I'm NOT an idiot. You don't get that, you don't get it. I actually understand, you don't know how much I understand.”

 

Gaara was quiet, he didn't know what to say, because however much Naruto affirmed he understood whatever it was that he understood was how much Gaara didn't understand what the hell Naruto meant by that.

 

Naruto's tone was slow and soft, “There are two people who you know that are described as spiky-haired blondes. As far as I know, and according to what you said, Temari and her little spiky ponytails aren't your cup of tea, so apparently I am. I got it, I understood right after you left. I might be a little slow on the uptake, but I get there eventually.”

 

“Naruto…”

 

The blond man interrupted his friend, “You are interested in some spiky-haired blond, who isn't a girl, so I'm pretty sure that leaves you with me. What you don't know is that you are an idiot, more so than me.”

 

The grip on Gaara's shoulders went slack and Naruto leaned down further, so close to Gaara that the Kazekage could feel the soft pattern of humid breath puffing onto his lips as Naruto continued his little rant/speech, “You are an idiot, because you should have told me, or maybe I should have told you, maybe we are both just idiots.”

 

Gaara could feel ever single word Naruto spoke, and he could definitely feel Naruto as the Leaf shinobi settled his lips into the crevices of Gaara's own mouth. The contact was gentle and warm and made every inch of Gaara's skin shiver as Naruto kissed him.

 

Naruto pulled away, and Gaara murmured, “My turn, my question.”

 

Naruto nodded slightly and waited for the question from his friend.

 

Right now, are you lonely?”  Gaara asked.

 

Naruto shook his head yes, then no, then stilled and just stared into Gaara's eyes.  “I was lonely, yes, but I think right now depends on you.  My turn, my question.”

 

Gaara reached up and stroked Naruto's cheek and nodded, letting Naruto know he was ready.

 

Naruto trembled slightly and choose to look at Gaara's pillow instead of right at Gaara as he softly stammered out his question, “Am I going to be lonely?”

 

The pained tone in Naruto's quivering voice tugged at Gaara's heart.  Naruto really was a moron if he thought Gaara would ever let him feel loneliness again.  “Never again…never, ever again,” the Kazekage whispered as he pulled Naruto down into another kiss.

 

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END OF STORY (?)

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End A/N's: Yay, I love writing NarutoGaara fluff. I must profusely thank my friend Mako-chan, because without her guidance and advice this story wouldn't have an ending. She is awesome (and her NarutoGaara artwork is phenomenal). If it is requested, I wouldn't mind doing another chapter of this when I have the time (which might not be for awhile). Lemons, more fluff, whatever you guys want. Thank you for reading.

 

(p.s. I *adore* comments and constructive criticism, I would love to know what you thought.)