Fridays

Gaara knows even before Sakura mutters his name who this guy is. Sasuke Uchiha. The guy she had waited for patiently all her life, the guy he is supposed to remind her of. And somehow, he can see himself in this arrogant bastard, but they are still very different. Sasuke has love showered upon him, even though he remains cold to all forms of affection. He thinks himself better than everyone else because he was blessed with a face, though Gaara can fix that soon enough. He knows that Sasuke is thinking the same thing, his eyes a threat. Even though Sakura was convinced Sasuke doesn’t care for her, it’s obvious that the fact that Gaara has been the one she’s been lavishing attention on hasn’t escaped the guy who was too stupid to keep her. His loss.

Sakura shifts, nervously because she’s both aware that they don’t like each other already and because this is the closest she’s been to Sasuke in about two months. The old longing is there, as always, but it’s not the same, she’s surprised to notice. It’s almost as if she had been playing a part that she had assigned to herself, only to find out that she hadn’t gotten the role and didn’t need to pretend anymore. It made her sad yet oddly elated at the same time.

“What’s your name?” Sasuke says, not nicely, sizing him up and deciding that perhaps Gaara is worth the effort. They both wear identical feral smirks, like two predators finding each other trespassing on what they consider their territory. It’s not going to be pretty, but Gaara was never one to be intimidated by anyone. He was always the scariest monster on the block.

“Gaara.” He answers, a challenge as he stares impassively at his opponent. This fucker is going to get it bad if he thinks that he can stand up to him. Somehow, he feels the old urge for blood and destruction welling up in his veins, and he welcomes the delicious feeling. It always made him feel alive to know that he could sap someone of blood or break their bones until there weren’t anymore left in their body to help them stand. He hadn’t realized up until this point how… peaceful Sakura made him feel. He wasn’t sure if this observation was a good or bad thing.

Sakura by now, seemed to understand that this was more than hard headed animosity, and was looking back and forth with an alert look on her face.

“Gaara…” She said in a warning voice, though he doesn’t bother to spare her a glance. He wants to fight this guy, more than he had anyone before. Perhaps this was the person whose fall would finally bring him the feeling of nirvana that he had longed for… “Oh, hey look! We better go separate Kiba and Naruto! Come on Gaara, let’s go.” Without waiting for an answer, she dragged him away from Sasuke, though the way that the guy was looking after them, longingly for Sakura and full of a dark hatred for him, Gaara knew that no matter what Sakura pulled out of her sleeve, he was still going to clash with the brooding man who once had ruled her life.

Though Sakura did her best to keep them apart, she couldn’t completely erase Sasuke out of the picture. It was nearing the end of the party and Sakura was off thanking Naruto for the great time that Gaara didn’t have so he didn’t feel inclined to stay with her, when Sasuke challenged him. It wasn’t so much in words as it was a fist flying towards his face.

The lust for pain and blood was an audible roar in his ears, and soon the two of them were a blur, trading blows like most people would fucking pleasantries, everything in their wake being destroyed in the maelstrom.

“P-P-Please!” Hinata cries, wringing her hands in distress as she tried to get near them as if to separate them but fear kept her a safe distance away. “Don’t do that here!” Gaara decided he’d damaged enough furniture and could comply with her request. He managed to pick up the Uchiha and bodily throw him out the door into the front yard, right past a startled Sakura.

“Gaara! Stop it!” However Sasuke’s on him in a flash, the two bleeding from countless face wounds, skin marred with matching bruises. “Sasuke what the hell are you doing?” It took ten minutes to separate them, Sakura and Hinata holding Gaara back while Naruto proved to be more than enough to hold Sasuke back. “What are you doing?” Sakura hisses angrily in his ear, and it might have had a pleasant affect on him if he wasn’t hungering to break every bone in a certain dark haired boy’s body.

“He started it, I’ll finish it.” Gaara growls gutturally, and from the fearful look on Hinata’s and even Naruto’s face, he was sure it was the dreaded expression his siblings often ran from, tails between their legs.

“What did you do? I leave you alone for five minutes and you manage to destroy half of Naruto’s furniture!” Sakura accuses, her tone of voice hurting him far worse than anyone who had ever called him monster. And that fact alone made him angrier than Sasuke could ever make him. He was the one to blame, was he? Well, he’d show her.

“It’s what you did, Sakura.” Gaara laughs, almost insanely, feeling the few inhibitions he had slipping away like sand between his fingers. If these bitches didn’t let go of him soon, they’ll be missing limbs.

She freezes for a moment, and it’s almost enough to set him free, but when she regains her senses, her strength doubles on his arm. He gave a warning snarl to let him go, but she ignored him.

“Uchiha Sasuke, are you fighting with him because I was with him instead of you?” The dark eyed man didn’t say anything to deny or confirm this, but his eyes are flashing with a murderous intent that mirrored Gaara’s own. However, everyone is acutely aware of the ache in him, this wound that Sakura inflicted there by merely drawing away from him. From finding someone better. It seems that even if he doesn’t love her, which he hasn’t come to terms with, he wants her to love him and only him. The fact that she’s shown up with an unknown male who eats up all her attention kills him. He can’t let that happen, but then again, he’s not the only one hurting here.

Sakura’s in front of Sasuke, the sound of a hard slap meeting flesh and the stunned expression on the Uchiha’s face a slow snapshot that Gaara is sure he’ll treasure forever. Bastard deserved it.

Gaara has stopped his struggling in favor of watching Sakura take care of this herself. When she had shown her darker side she managed to keep caged, it was far worse than anything Gaara could ever do. Seeing her tear down cities, people, and obstacles in her path had stirred something primal and dark within him, and his only salvation was she rarely if ever got pissed enough to unleash the beast she kept caged within her skin. It was a temptation he almost never has to deal with.

“What is wrong with you?” Sakura is shaking so hard that the tears that she had been trying to keep behind her eyes spilled out. “Don’t you remember?” Sasuke is unmoving, his eyes focused on her, both of them the only actors in this play that only the both of them can ever know since they have been the only witnesses. “‘You are a hindrance to my life and happiness. You would be more useful dead.’” She says this in a rather detached voice, and Sasuke is looking at her with his expression unreadable. If Gaara wasn’t so much like him in an odd way, he wouldn’t have been able to know that Sasuke truly regrets saying those things. But it’s too late for him to even take them back, they all know it. “That cut me so deep Sasuke, and though I’ve taken so much from you, I couldn’t take that. So I decided if I was a hindrance to you, then I’d just leave. I went out and got drunk and who knows what would have happened to me if I hadn’t met Gaara.” Sasuke’s looking at him like he’s about to kill him and eat his insides, and to this Gaara can only smile. It feels good, to be the savior for once.

Sakura wipes her tears away, glancing down at them with the clinical interest she must give her patients.

“I’ve cried too much over you, Sasuke. I’ve given up too much. I don’t have much more to give, and I’m tired of hanging onto you when it’s apparent to me that you were the one holding me back.” She pauses, an almost sheepish expression crossing her face. “Not that it’s anyone’s fault but my own. I was stupid back then. I thought you could be my true love, but I know now that love can be more than misery and tears.” She’s quiet for the longest time, and Gaara can feel everyone waiting breathlessly for her next words. Hell, even he wants to know what will happen between them.

In a strong voice that Gaara is glad to hear, since it’s the only voice Sakura has used around him sans the first time they met incident, she looks the bastard straight in the eye and says softly, “I don’t love you anymore.” The guy takes it well, Gaara has to give him that, but all the fight is drained out of him. It’s almost sad, but Gaara is pleased all the same to see how Sakura deals with her foes. He’s not sure if her method makes him want to fear her or…

Without looking at Sasuke, she turns back to him, a fragile but beautiful smile on her face. Wordlessly, he nods his head in approval and her smile widens even as tears fall down her face. She’s transformed, he knows, and the moment her hand meets his and she looks up at him and tells him to ink her, he knows exactly what he’s going to do.

But he’ll have to save that for another Friday, since there were other things much too pressing to wait…

Gaara hates Fridays.

It isn’t because of the costumers, because he knew soon enough they’ll leave him in peace and if they piss him off enough, he can just get Temari. The two of them have reluctantly started working together, and now that he decided her nagging was just her way of showing affection instead of an effort to remind him why he should kill her, he reaps in the benefits. Such as shoving the butterflies her way. It isn’t because Kankuro has stopped paying him to wear the fucking nametag and is slowly but surely becoming less afraid to speak to him, though Gaara still finds himself wearing the wretched abomination and sometimes not minding that Kankuro isn’t as straight as Gaara himself. It isn’t even because Friday is the one day that Sakura’s friends have deemed appropriate to visit him, and he has to suffer through Rock Lee’s energetic speeches about youth or Naruto’s preaching about the benefits of Ramen or Ino’s bitchy voice.

He hates Fridays for the sole reason that he has come to look forward to them. Fridays are unofficially Sakura’s day where she spends most of it with him. It is also the day he works on her tattoo. The amount of… tranquility that spreads across him whenever she strides in through the non-hooker bell guarded door makes him sick. Really, one pink haired butterfly shouldn’t have this affect on him. But she does, and he hates it. Or something else that is equally strong.

They had finally settled on a tattoo the night that Sakura confronted Sasuke. “I want you to ink my transformation. I don’t care what it is so long as it is me.”

And Gaara can’t be more pleased. About fucking time. It doesn’t even bother him that this tattoo has to be the most challenging one he’d been commissioned to do since he’d decided to ink himself, or that it has some pink settled in it. Overall, he knows she’d love it because it was her. Every bit of her, and Gaara was proud to say that it was he who captured her.

She walks in every Friday, making his breath hitch in his throat, though this no longer bothers him because he’s become used to it, smiling at him that lets him know it’s only for him. Her eyes light up and she practically jumps into his arms. He doesn’t mind her touch so much as he should, though he has to admit that it feels good to have her fit snugly into him as if she was the piece that the world stole from him only to bring back. He won’t say anything romantic to her, but they both know that they’ve changed each other. “You’ve given me much more than ink. You gave me back my spirit.”

She waits until he’s finished for the day, when the lights are down low and it’s only them because Temari and Kankuro understand the unspoken promises between the two. When it’s just them, Gaara works on transforming her.

He’s finished everything but a few shades of coloring, and he knows the only reason it’s taken him so many sessions is because Sakura is a lot more distracting than she should be, though he really never wanted to rush this anyway. This is Sakura. She deserves only the best, even if somehow she believes it’s him. “I trust you.”

“Try to finish it this time Gaara.” She teases, and he only lets her get away with it since she’s taking off her shirt, which isn’t a requirement, but he allows this for some odd reason. Then she sits down in the chair, back facing him, and he admires the work he’s done so far, tracing a finger across the dark outline of her wings, smirking when she shivers agreeable and gasps a little. He’s had to actually look up pictures of the creatures he used to despise so, still does when it comes to girls like Ino, but when he sees butterfly wings on her, it just makes sense.

He’s woven in everything about her, good and bad. Hearts, flowers, trees, tiny butterflies, bells, vines, thorns, crystals, tears, kanji for love and laugher. He manages to twine them into the black outline of the wings, all the while coloring in the good because he knows those are what stand out brightest about her. He uses reds and pinks and greens and yellows to shade in the color of her character, and as he starts up the machine again, he knows this time is going to be the last. She’s almost complete, and he knows that this will be her only tattoo. Neither of them need reminders of what love is. There is something living and breathing between them, and even though Gaara hates this, he also needs it. He’s learned it’s easier to live with it than to deny it.

They don’t say a word as he finishes, there is no need, and when he’s done he rests his chin on her shoulder, arms loosely around her.

“I hope you don’t do this for all your costumers.” She teases, and though she talks just as much as she did when he met her, she’s learned the value of silence just as he’s learned that laughter is golden.

“I should. I might get better tips.” Gaara muses, and she can only laugh. There’s quiet again, and he feels her inner peace, knowing that her metamorphous from a caterpillar dependent on a toxic someone else for joy to a free flying butterfly is complete. The feel of each other’s beating heart, captured like the elusive butterfly of happiness, is enough to make them both feel satisfied.

Author’s Notes Hope this was decent! To tell the truth, I was going to make this way, way longer, but I decided not to drag out an already stretched story. This was short since I decided not much point in letting so many words getting in the way and just trying to capture how different both of them are now compared to how they were in the beginning. I hope that I kept them somewhat believable, and that this was enjoyable. Any comments are welcome! Thank you those who reviewed and for those who support!