Ophiomancy

location: Home Sweet Hovel

mood: nerdy

music: Silent Hill 3 OST

Author’s Notes: This story veers off into the realm of AU some time after the Rescuing the Kazekage story arc, and starts about eighteen months after it. Gaara has Shukaku back, among other things. I follow the manga as it is scanlated, so future chapters of this story may reflect the progress of canon. Just keep in mind that I’ll be picking and choosing what I use from canon, and that this story may very well be riddled with spoilers for those who do not follow the fan-translated releases on the manga. Or it may not. I haven’t decided yet.

The warnings and pairings are a forecast for the entire story. You may have to wait awhile for some of this fun stuff.

Warnings: Spoilers, Polyamory, Gender Bending, Not-Quite-MPreg, Homosexual Relationships, Heterosexual Relationships, Obscene Language, Sexual Content, Violence, and Moral Ambiguity.

Pairings: (arranged alphabetically, not by top/bottom) Starts off Gaara/Naruto, and winds up Gaara/Naruto/Sakura/Sasuke. That’s one big polyamorous mess, not a love quadrangle, just so you all realize. Sexual roles are very fluid in this story, so if you’re devoted to the idea of strict, permanent roles inside the bedroom, this may not be the most comfortable story for you.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto. That’s a bit of a no-brainer.

Chapter I: Audacity

Naruto trotted up to the gates of Suna with a sunny expression. Despite three solid days of traveling through brutal desert, he was in a good mood. He was on vacation, and he was determined to enjoy it. Even if it was on the Hokage’s orders. Trying to locate Sasuke has you on edge, she’d said. The villagers are afraid that you’re going to go over the edge, and I’m beginning to agree with them. So I’m giving you two weeks of paid leave. Do whatever you want, as long as you get the fuck out of Konoha. It’ll be a vacation for the rest of us, too.

It was insulting, but he wasn’t going to complain (much) about paid vacation. Really, Tsunade had been uncharacteristically generous.

There weren’t very many places that would welcome him with open arms, and fewer still that would act as a deterrent to the remains of the Akatsuki. Suna was one of them, and had the added advantage of being home to a friend that he hadn’t properly seen in ages.

Maybe during his visit, he’d even get Gaara to smile, for once. After having Shukaku shoved back into him on short notice, he could probably do with something to smile about.

Naruto whistled with more enthusiasm than skill as he strode through the village. Pedestrian traffic was lethargic under the hammer of the burning afternoon sun. The few people outside in the torturous heat directed stares at him that ranged from skeptical to downright hostile. Maybe everyone in Suna had their sense of humor removed at birth. That would explain a lot about Gaara.

As though thoughts of his brother had conjured him, Naruto caught a glimpse of Kankuro as he ducked into the shade of a small store across the street.

“Hey! Cat-Face!”. Kankuro popped back out from under the green and yellow awning with a comical, ‘Who, me?’ expression, then grimaced as he spotted the excited orange blur bearing down on him.

“Hey, how are you doing, I haven’t seen you in ages. I’m here on vacation. Is Temari here, too? Are you busy?”, Naruto blathered without Kankuro hearing a word of it. He was too busy wrinkling his nose at both the smell and color of Naruto’s outfit. People who didn’t live in the desert tended to sweat a lot more than the people who did live there when they came to visit, and Naruto had to have spent at least three days in those clothes. Plus, they were orange. Orange. What self-respecting ninja wore orange? His thoughts on the subject were cut short as he noticed Naruto looking at him with an anticipatory expression which suggested that he’d just asked a question, and was waiting for it to be answered.

“Sorry, what?”, Kankuro asked.

“I said, would it be OK for me to visit Gaara now?”, Naruto repeated. He didn’t look at all put off that Kankuro hadn’t heard him the first time. He was used to people blocking out half of what he said, and he knew that he had a tendency to chatter. If he really wanted someone to hear him the first time, he would just be extra loud. He was good at that.

Kankuro ran a dubious eye over Naruto’s sandy, smelly travel garb. Well, Gaara wouldn’t care. He’d probably want to see Naruto as soon as possible, and he needed to lay off the paper work any way. He’d started to do his subordinates’ out of the sheer boredom that running a ninja village in peace time could induce. Said he wanted to feel useful. Feh. Like dying once for his village didn’t put him down permanently in the history books as useful, at the very least.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll walk you.”, Kankuro said graciously. The ANBU would probably kick Naruto to the curb if he went in alone, looking like something a sandcat dragged in.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Naruto found Gaara in his office, slaving over a truly prodigious mountain of paperwork. He wished that he could take a picture of the scene back to Konoha with him, to show that old hag of a Hokage that she really didn’t have anything to whine about.

“Naruto.”, Gaara didn’t look surprised to see him, but he did look a bit pleased. Naruto thought so, at least. It was hard to tell.

“Gaara! I’m on vacation, so I thought I’d drop by.”, Naruto said, as though Suna was just a pleasant stroll from his own front door. Meanwhile, Kankuro waved sluggishly at his brother before showing himself out. He had to get away from that rancid, orange infraction against any sane ninja’s common sense. Naruto didn’t even notice him leaving, and Gaara was too focused on Naruto to acknowledge the gesture. But that was fine, because Gaara looked happier than Kankuro had seen him in months.

“Ah.”, Gaara said, pithy as ever. Naruto gave the mound of paperwork a measuring look. He wasn’t sure how much effort it would take to drag Gaara away from it. Unlike Tsunade, he took all aspects of his title seriously. Maybe a little bit too seriously, if Naruto was any judge. The rings around Gaara’s eyes looked even larger and blacker than usual, and stood out painfully against his pale skin. For someone who lived in the desert, Gaara apparently didn’t get much sun. And no wonder, if he had to tackle a pile of paperwork that huge on a daily basis. Still, Naruto had the uncomfortable feeling that Gaara’s troubled appearance had as much to do with a belligerent Tanuki demon as it had to do with too many overtime hours. He didn’t even know if Gaara was able to sleep these days.

“Gaara, you’re going to wither away in this office if you don’t go outside once in awhile. I know, You should give me a tour of your village! It’ll be great!”, Naruto said. Gaara didn’t look convinced that it would, in fact, be great. But he did stand up and sling the gourd, which had been hitherto resting against his gigantic slab of a desk, up onto his back.

“Maybe.”, He said.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Gaara’s idea of maybe giving Naruto a tour consisted of walking through the village without pause, and out into the desert. He motioned to the indignant looking ANBU behind him to stay behind. They did so, with great reluctance. What if all that orange was contagious? Peer pressure was a great and terrible force, after all. They would have felt better if they’d been there to guard their Kazekage from it.

“You know, I was just out here. I can say with some authority that it’s really hot, and really boring.”, Naruto whined, his tone playfully exasperated.

“It’s peaceful.”

“Yeah, because all that paperwork was so exciting.”, Naruto groused. Nonetheless, he followed Gaara out over the dunes, until the red stone cliffs and eccentrically organic architecture of Hidden Sand were blocked from view. Gaara turned out to be leading him to a small valley strewn with scrubby vegetation, and large, flat rocks that looked good for sitting on. The shadow of the nearest dune kept the area just barely out of the direct rays of the harsh desert sun. It was a little bit less boring than the featureless mounds of sand that they had just trekked through, but not by much.

Gaara planted himself without ceremony on a particularly bench-like slab of granite, and Naruto sat down beside him. He tried to imitate his friend’s Zen-like calm and seemingly endless fascination with the desert with less success.

“Gaaaara, this is boring. I thought for sure that you would take me out for ramen or something.”

“Ramen is not popular in the desert. It contains too much water.”

“You would think that being watery would make it more popular.”, Naruto pointed out.

“It would be wasteful.”, Gaara corrected him. Naruto sputtered in outrage over the idea that ramen could ever be considered a waste. Still, he hadn’t come all the way from Konoha to argue. He had come to make new, more pleasant memories with his friend than most of the ones that he currently had of their time together. Many of which included either Gaara being dead, or making other people dead. Naruto wanted to ‘strengthen their bond’ as Sai would probably put it. But Naruto thought, rightfully, that Sai was a freak, so he settled for thinking of it as ‘hanging out’.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I guess you’ll have to take me for curry instead. It’s more expensive, but you make more money than I do any way.”, Naruto understated. One corner of Gaara’s lip quirked into what had the potential to become a smile, before smoothing back into a placid line.

“All right.”, He agreed. Naruto grinned at him for a moment, and then pinned him with a serious stare.

“You know, we haven’t really had a chance to talk since all that shit with Akatsuki went down, and you got your demon back. Not that we’ve ever really had a chance to talk. But, I just wanted to see how you were doing, and to say that you can talk to me about anything, if you want. I’ll understand.”, Naruto smiled brightly in conclusion, and just barely stopped himself from copying Gai’s infamous Nice Guy pose. He’d practiced that speech for three days, and was proud that it had all come out correctly. Now if only Gaara didn’t kill him for his presumption.

A lonesome locust chirred from inside one of the scrubby shrubs somewhere to Naruto’s left. The air bent and blurred above the distant, reflective dunes. At last, Gaara blinked.

“Anything?”, Gaara asked.

“Of course! Anything you want.”, Naruto said happily, pleased to not have become a red smear on the pristine sand.

Gaara mulled it over for seconds that dragged into an eternity, while Naruto fidgeted. Getting Gaara involved in a conversation was like pulling alligator teeth, only not as exciting.

“What do you think about sex?”, Gaara finally asked. There was barely enough inflection in his voice to make it a question.

That... wasn’t quite what Naruto had expected. He’d anticipated something closer to, ‘Does your demon talk to you?’, or ‘How do you cope with the frenzies of uncontrollable bloodlust’. Something of that nature. Gaara had wandered so far off on a tangent that it would take Naruto some time to catch up.

“Uh, well. That’s... What about it exactly?”, He finished weakly. There was probably a perfectly normal question buried in this topic, somewhere. Something about demons. Normal. Right.

“Would you have sex with me?”, Gaara asked. He didn’t look particularly excited by the idea, or interested in the answer.

Naruto stared, bug-eyed and slack-jawed, at his friend. One arm was raised, accusatory finger pointed at the source of his shock. It wasn’t a flattering expression. Gaara might have even gone so far as to call it stupid, except that he was trying very hard exercise his stunted sense of tact.

Naruto could have argued that the stone-faced bastard’s tact had aborted itself in his mother’s womb, because tactful was the definitive opposite of what Gaara’s proposition had been.

Naruto took a moment to let the word ‘proposition’ roll around in his head, like a marble on the deck of a seafaring ship. He tried to wrap his mind around the concept that he’d just been propositioned by one of his best friends. A friend who was not only male, and didn’t even live in Naruto’s village, but also a person that he had always assumed, insomuch as he thought of such things (which was almost never), to be completely asexual. Every effort he made to get a grip on the boggling idea was foiled as something in his stomach seemed to lurch sideways, and a wave of dismay washed over him. He wasn’t used to this kind of situation. It was the first offer of physical intimacy that he’d received from a person who wasn’t in the business of providing it. He felt justifiably annoyed that life had been unfair enough to once again run roughshod all over his hopes and dreams.

Not that Naruto’s hopes and dreams were all that clear to him. He’d had vague thoughts that maybe Sakura would finally view him as more than a friend. After all, he’d already made the leap up in her estimation from worthless pest to treasured friend, so surely he had a chance. Or maybe he would find out if she’d been right about Hinata having a crush on him. That could be worth exploring. Hell, much as he didn’t like to admit it, he’d even caught himself picturing violent make-up sex with Sasuke, after Naruto dragged his ass back to the village. Which he totally would. And he’d top, too.

The point was, Naruto had at some point or other considered nearly half of the people in his peer group as a sexual partners, if only because his teenage hormones acted like some insidious genjutsu, often at the most inconvenient times. But he had never once looked at Gaara in that light. The image wasn’t so much appalling as it was simply unthinkable.

Did Gaara really even like him in that way? Naruto knew that Gaara respected him, felt he owed him, and shared a deep bond of friendship and mutual understanding with him, but that wasn’t the same as physical attraction. Gaara hadn’t exhibited any noticeable warmth or even interest since the verbal bomb had been dropped. What could possibly be going on in his convoluted brain?

Naruto latched on to the sudden hope that Gaara’s lackluster social skills had just led him to misinterpret somehow. He didn’t bother to entertain the thought that Gaara might have been joking. After all, the guy was still work on a sense of humanity. A sense of humor was expecting too much.

“Do you mean, if I were gay, or if we were all alone on a desert island, or that sort of-”, he was cut off before that hope had much chance to grow.

“I didn’t mean it as a hypothetical question. I chose a turn of phrase that I thought would be more polite”.

Naruto set aside a moment to wonder what phrase or phrases Gaara had culled as impolite.

“G-Gaara, look, I’m flattered...”, He wasn’t, actually, but it was a nicer word that ‘bamboozled’. He didn’t want to offend a friend, and just as important, he didn’t want to offend a guy who had metric tons of animate sand at his disposal. Not to mention the shared head-space with a murderous Tanuki demon.

“But I’m not really interested in guys.”, he finished triumphantly. A small, white lie. Hardly even a lie at all. He had almost no interest in guys other than Sasuke. But that was completely OK, because damned Sasuke was always being an exception to the rules, and Naruto was used to that by now. At least as used to it as he would ever get.

Naruto’s impenetrable defense turned out to be not as foolproof as he thought, because while Gaara didn’t look angry about it, he also didn’t look convinced.

“What about Sasuke.”, Gaara wasn’t asking a question, he was issuing a challenge.

“That- that’s just different.”, Naruto sputtered. Gods, he must have been even more obvious then he’d thought if Gaara, of all people, was able to pick up on that. Gaara, who was about as empathetic as a rock. Naruto was too surprised by Gaara’s unexpected emotional perspicacity to deny anything.

“Sasuke, he’s my teammate, even if the bastard thinks that he’s left me and Sakura behind. We went through a lot together. A lot of it sucked, and we didn’t always like each other, but even then we were still connected. We made each other stronger. There’s a lot of history there, so even if he is an ass, he’s still one of my most precious people. That makes all of the difference. I mean, that and he’s pretty. It’s not my fault that he emits some kind of stupid Uchiha sex pheromone that makes half of Konoha wanna’ bang him ”. That was Naruto’s favorite theory on the matter, at least. Unfortunately, Gaara still didn’t seem convinced.

In fact, Gaara looked worse than unconvinced. His eyes had narrowed further, and his mouth tugged down first at one corner, then the other, in a worrisome frown. Worrisome for Naruto, that was. His fingers were twitching in a way that made Naruto expect them to clench into fists at any moment, and faint ribbons of sand undulated about their master’s heels in a manner that made Naruto want to take a step back into defensive posture. He didn’t, because that would have been insulting, and insulting his friend any further would be cruel, as well as stupid. He wished that he knew what he’d said wrong in the first place. Gaara hadn’t seemed offended by the initial rebuff, so Naruto knew that he must have stuck his foot in his mouth somewhere along the line.

Even as Naruto tried to remember his exact words to review them in his mind, Gaara drew in a deep, cleansing breath, and forced himself to relax a little bit. Without the added pressure of the possibility of having to fend off an impending Desert Coffin, Naruto was able to pinpoint what he had said wrong. Or rather, what he hadn’t said right.

He’d stated that Sasuke was precious to him, and sexy as hell, as the reasons that Naruto would make an exception. Which implied that Gaara was neither of those things. And while it was true that Sasuke was more important to Naruto than any one, since the two boys had been obsessed with each other for years (Naruto refused to think that it was one-sided), he really did care about Gaara, too. And Gaara had to be at least a little bit sexy, with all those fan-girls, even if Naruto personally couldn’t see it. The lack of visible pupils and blank expression weren’t exactly turn-ons for him.

“Gaara...”, Naruto trailed off. He wanted to make things right between them, but he didn’t know how to go about it. He wasn’t sure that there even was a right way to reject someone. Reject. It was a harsh word. He felt a shiver of guilt at the thought of adding another rejection to the long list that Gaara had already suffered, and forced himself to firm his resolve. He was not even going to consider having sex with Gaara out of some misguided sense of guilt or pity. He wasn’t. Even if Gaara might not be able to tell the difference between pity sex and genuine affection any way, it would still be unfair to both of them.

“Look Gaara, I did a crap job of explaining myself. It’s not that you aren’t important to me. You’re one of my precious people too, you know”. Some of the stony edge to Gaara’s expression softened at that. Apparently he hadn’t known, or had at least needed to hear it. Encouraged, Naruto forged on. “And it’s not like you’re hard on the eyes, really. It’s just that I’ve never considered you in that way before, and well... It’s really weird to have the idea suddenly dropped on me. And maybe I could warm up to it given enough time, but right at this moment, it just feels wrong. Sasuke is the only guy I’ve ever felt that way for, and it took me a long time to realize it. And I saw him every day, touched him every day, even if it was just us trying to beat the shit out of each other. Even after all that, I only recently started to feel OK with the whole thing.”

“Which sucks, with him being a missing nin, the bastard”. Naruto concluded, with a wry frown. Gaara cocked his head to the side, and let out an amused snort. At least, Naruto was pretty sure that it was amused, and not condescending, but it was always hard to tell with Gaara. He didn’t look discouraged. Instead, his inward-focused expression spoke of mental gears turning. If this were a fight, Naruto felt that Gaara would have just executed a test-strike to gauge his response, and was now tensing for a more serious attack. It made Naruto uneasy to see that look in the context of a personal conversation between friends. I made him uneasier still when Gaara opened his mouth to speak.

“As I understand it, most of your reluctance to have sex with me stems from me being male. You seem to have lower standards for women. Would you be more open to the idea if I were female?”, Gaara asked. Naruto was puzzled by the question, and Gaara’s opaque expression and lack of inflection didn’t help to shed light on the matter. He was belatedly a little bit miffed on Sakura’s behalf at that ‘lower standards’ comment, but couldn’t bring himself to disagree with it in a broader sense. Still, Gaara was asking a question about a hypothetical situation, and last that Naruto had checked, Gaara didn’t really do hypothetical.

“Ah... I suppose so. I guess that would seem a little bit more normal, though really-”, He was cut of by a sudden motion of Gaara’s hands. It took a moment for him to recognize the movement as a seal. He leapt back a few strides out of reflex, even though he trusted Gaara, as he was these days, not to attack a friend. Mostly. It took a moment longer for him to recognize the series of seals that Gaara was forming as slightly familiar. Naruto’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. Surely Gaara couldn’t be serious. That jutsu wasn’t useful as anything more than a distraction.

Gaara didn’t vocalize the name of the technique, but after the hand seals were complete, a thin veil of sand rose up in a cyclone around him. Naruto could still see Gaara’s figure beneath the translucent shimmer of the sand, but the details were blurred. After a moment the pale grains slowed, then ceased their circling, finally drifting down like dust motes to settle around Gaara’s sandaled feet.

“Is this better?”, Gaara asked. His voice sounded closer to how Naruto remembered it from when they were twelve years old and participating in the Chuunin Exam than the his usual low tone, though without his past self’s hateful growl infusing it. Naruto would have paused to think more on that, but Gaara’s eyes were the most intense that Naruto had seen them in a long time. Naruto couldn’t identify the emotion in them, but there was an evaluating quality that reminded him of Hyuuga eyes, as if Gaara was trying to gauge Naruto’s thoughts by boring straight through his skull and into his brain.

“Huh?”, Naruto said after a moment, tearing his gaze away from Gaara’s face to stare awkwardly into the space above his left shoulder. It wasn’t the same as a piercing glare of killing intent, but Gaara’s eyes were still pretty creepy at that moment.

“This. Is this better?”, Gaara said, with a hint of annoyance in that strangely young voice that hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier. Naruto belatedly noticed that Gaara was gesturing to his own body as he said it. And Naruto could all of a sudden see the reason for those gestures, because Gaara body had definitely been changed by that half-familiar jutsu.

The first things to catch Naruto’s attention were the softer jaw-line and more rounded face, although the changes were subtle enough that Gaara still looked very much like himself. It was like looking at a familiar object through the bottom of a glass. The eyes were the same, and the dark rings around them. Hair was the same. The impatient and increasingly annoyed expression was the same. Naruto also had to look down a little bit to see the growing irritation in those eyes, because where Gaara had been just a hair’s breadth shorter than him before, he was now lacking a few extra inches. He may have even been shorter than Sakura.

Speaking of comparisons to Sakura, there was one addition lower down, just noticeable under Gaara’s heavy (and now baggy) clothes. Hips. Slightly flared out girl-hips that tapered inward at the waist, leading the eyes up to...

Naruto tried not to goggle to much at the slight, decidedly unmanly swell of Gaara’s chest beneath the dusty, red fabric and worn buckles of his coat. Breasts. Girl-hips. The higher voice.

‘Is this better?’

Gods, Gaara had gone and made himself a girl. Because he wanted Naruto to have sex with him. When exactly had Naruto’s day taken a turn into utter madness?

Still, curiosity was slowly burrowing through Naruto’s shell of shock. Whatever Gaara had done, it was not the Oiroke no Jutsu, of that Naruto was sure. As the maker of that technique, he would know. The seals weren’t the same, the flow of chakra involved didn’t feel the same, and the results weren’t exactly the same either. Whatever Gaara had done was more complicated, and involved a much larger expenditure of chakra than Naruto’s little distraction technique. Had he seriously found a way to change sexes for real?

Onlookers didn’t usually have the chance to notice, but the Oiroke no Jutsu wasn’t much of a transformation technique. ‘Naruko’s’ body may look sexy and feminine behind clouds of smoke, but the truth was that ‘she’ hadn’t even had nipples until Konohamaru had tweaked the jutsu for realism. The anatomy lower down was even less realistic, and below the skin, the user’s anatomy remained all male, even though the body’s shape was strangely deformed.

Gaara seemed pretty convinced that Naruto could actually have sex with him in that form, which meant that he was either very naive, very confused, or that he’d come up with an extremely complex and useful technique. The possible uses for undercover missions alone were phenomenal, and Naruto was certain that Sakura would find such a complete body transformation technique to be a valuable springboard for medical jutsu.

He had to know for sure exactly how far Gaara’s technique went.

“Take off your coat”, He said, voice rough, words more direct then he had intended. It took Gaara’s smug expression afterward to remind Naruto that to Gaara, this wasn’t about making an incredibly impressive and useful new technique, this was about getting into Naruto’s pants.

And Naruto had just told him to take his clothes off. Fuck.

Well, he’d sort it out in a minute. First he had to confirm that the technique really was as revolutionary as he thought it was. Though how he was going to do that without really giving Gaara the wrong idea, he had no clue.

An anticipatory silence hung between them as Gaara worked at his harness and coat fastenings, broken only by the creak of dry leather straps and the shush of the red cotton canvas over skin as he slipped his arms from the sleeves. His gourd fell to the ground with a solid thunk, and the coat was tossed after it with little ceremony, leaving him in his darker, more light-weight shirt and trousers. The material was thin enough that Naruto could immediately tell that at the very least, Gaara had improved one thing over the original Oiroke no Jutsu. There were small peaks on the twin swells of flesh that lay just under that fabric.

Naruto raised his hands in an unconscious gesture to confirm through touch. The fingers of his right hand brushed against the side of Gaara’s left breast before his mind caught up. Mortified, he aborted the motion and laid his hands on Gaara’s shoulders instead.

“This isn’t my jutsu”, he said, after an awkward moment spent staring into Gaara’s widened eyes. The body beneath his palms was motionless, breathing steady, but Naruto still felt as though Gaara seemed anxious. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part, so he wouldn’t feel like he was making such an ass of himself.

“No. I fixed it”, Gaara replied.

“Hey, it didn’t need fixed! It worked just fine!”. Naruto flung his arms wide in a surely-you-can-behold-my-genius sort of gesture. Gaara’s lips fell into a small frown, hairless brows bunched in a doubtful expression.

“It was incomplete.”

“It did exactly what it was supposed to! It was only ever meant to be a distraction technique. I admit, if yours is really as complete as you say it is, then that makes it more useful, but it must have been horrible coming up with something so complex, not to mention hazardous to your health. I didn’t think that it could be done. How long did it take you, any way?”.

“I started researching the possibility shortly after you and Elder Chiyo brought me back from the dead”. The phrase ‘brought me back from the dead’ was spoken with as little inflection as a more ordinary sort of person would say ‘brought me back some eggs from the market’. Ever since his participation in the Chuunin Exams, Gaara never seemed to get excited about much. Which was probably a good thing, since ‘excited’ was usually synonymous with ‘homicidal’, in Gaara’s case.

“You’re telling me that you spent eighteen months working on this, for the sole purpose of seducing me.”

“Only on my own time. And I plan to unveil it for other purposes, just as soon as I’ve tested it more”, Gaara said peevishly. He didn’t take kindly to the inference that he had neglected his duties as Kazekage for something frivolous. “I wasn’t able to complete it until after I accepted Shukaku back into me. The increase in my base chakra level made the testing go much faster, although I’m sure that I could have eventually finished without it.”

“I-, Gaara, to be honest, I’m not quite sure what to say. But could we maybe take this somewhere a little bit more private?”. Naruto felt awkward enough, without the added discomfort of the boiling sun and pale, reflective sand shining in his eyes like an unsubtle interrogation technique.

“There is no one else around. In my own element, I would know.”

“Humor me, please.”

Gaara nodded, and stepped closer to Naruto, not quite touching. As a vortex of sand surrounded both of them, Gaara spoke quietly, “You still haven’t answered my question”.

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Gaara’s private quarters were large, comfortable, and looked less than half as lived in as his office. They also had no windows, unless you counted the tiny air vents that ran vertically down from the ceiling here and there. Naruto wondered if Shukaku was a burrowing animal, or if Gaara was just that paranoid. He didn’t ask.

He probably would have asked, in fact, except that Gaara chose that moment to start shedding other articles of clothing. Gaara noted Naruto’s horrified expression, and forestalled whatever unpleasant, and undoubtably loud comment was about to come out of Naruto’s mouth with words of his own.

“You want to see how complete the jutsu is, don’t you?”

It was true, Naruto did want to see how complete the jutsu was. Still, he couldn’t adopt Gaara’s cavalier attitude, especially since this wasn’t just about seeing a new jutsu in action. To Gaara, it seemed to be about getting some action.

He fidgeted awkwardly as his friend continued to divest himself of his inner garments. Naruto’s eyes ricocheted from the pale expanse of skin that was all too quickly being revealed, to the bare dressing table to his left, then to his own shoes, and so on and so forth. No matter what else he tried to look at, he couldn’t prevent his gaze from flitting back to Gaara every few moments. His years of traveling with Jiraya had instilled in him a deep wariness of staring at a naked woman’s body. Part of him was tense and expecting to get slapped at any moment, no matter that this was entirely Gaara’s idea.

Just as he started to develop a headache from trying to look in twenty different directions at once with only two eyes at his disposal, Naruto’s efforts to not look too closely at Gaara came to a screeching halt. It was hard not to stare at someone who was staring at you first, much less someone doing so while stark naked. Gaara’s head was tilted slightly to the side again, expression serene, but the arms crossed just under his, her, breasts spoke of defensiveness, impatience, or some other mildly unpleasant emotion that it wasn’t wise to evoke in a demon host.

Gaara let her arms fall slack to her sides, brushing against pale skin, and tilted her chin up slightly. It wasn’t a ‘come hither’ expression so much as it was a challenge, but regardless, she obviously expected Naruto to perform a closer inspection.

Naruto took a reluctant step forward, then another. He took in the swell of breast, the soft curve of hip, and the triangular thatch of red curls nesting above the shadowed cleft between Gaara’s thighs. Her skin had a strange, matte quality, which Naruto took a few seconds to recognize as the still-active sand barrier. He raised a thumb to her collarbone, stroking over it to get a feel for the fine-grained texture. His stomach was squirming uncomfortably with some nameless feeling, and he knew with sudden clarity that he wanted, just once, to see his friend shed that barrier of his own free will. Not because he had been struck hard enough to crack his defenses, but as a gesture of trust.

“Take it off”, Naruto whispered, not quelling the impulse. Gaara didn’t have to ask what he meant, and a moment later fine streams of sand began to trickle down onto the tile.

Gaara’s skin, shed of sand, was milky pale, and just translucent enough for Naruto to faintly make out the network of arteries branching beneath it. He again raised a hand to Gaara’s shoulder, and traced over the bony ridge of her collarbone. Her skin was very soft, but very dry, almost as though it had been talced. He watched his own fingers, hardly feeling as though they were connected to his body, as they trailed along her shoulder, down her arm. They settled just above her elbow, and Naruto finally took note of the fact that Gaara hadn’t so much as breathed since Naruto had touched her.

As if on cue, she inhaled suddenly, a short, nervous gasp. Naruto dragged his sluggish eyes up to look into Gaara’s. They were wider than he had ever seen them before, the unsettling, pale irises completely surrounded by white. Her breaths came in increasingly short huffs, working quickly into hyperventilation. Naruto’s eyes widened in response. This wasn’t the reaction that he had anticipated.

Then again, what did I expect? I don’t think that anyone has ever touched him like this before. Gods, this is-

Both of Naruto’s hands swept up along Gaara’s arms, then swiftly pulled her into an embrace. He didn’t know what else to do. He doubted that this would even be comforting, but maybe for Gaara, human contact was like jumping into cold water; something best gotten over and done with in one abrupt shock. She stopped breathing again for another few seconds, followed by a few hiccoughing gasps, then released a ragged sigh. She didn’t exactly go limp in his arms, but some of the tension corded in her muscles eased. He pulled her more firmly against himself, and rested his cheek against her short, wild hair. It wasn’t bristly the way he expected, but it wasn’t completely soft either. He brought one hand up to her scalp, and combed his fingers through the haphazard spikes that felt like an animal’s pelt, all long, rough guard-hairs at the outsides, and fine, downy fur toward her skull. Maybe it was a Bijou thing. Naruto’s own hair was similar, but the contrast of harsh and soft seemed more exaggerated in Garaa’s. Then again, Gaara always had been more connected with his Tailed Beast than Naruto. His seal was less refined, and didn’t cordon the demon off in a convenient corner of his subconscious the way Naruto’s did.

Naruto ran his fingers through Gaara’s hair more assertively, curled fingers massaging her scalp in a way that he had sometimes seen parents do to comfort their younger children. Sakura had even done it a handful of times for him in this frustrating last year of trying and failing to find Sasuke and bring him home, when his usually bottomless pool of enthusiasm dropped to shallow, listless levels. Gaara made a small, surprised sound, and tensed back up before she let go completely and slumped bonelessly against Naruto’s chest. The action spoke of exhaustion more than pleasure, but Naruto took it as encouragement nonetheless. They stood that way together for a few timeless minutes, before Naruto dared to pull back enough to look at Gaara’s face.

Her eyes were almost sleepy under half-mast black lids, but her expression was hard to interpret. Gaara didn’t seem to be any more emotive as a girl. She seemed almost braced for something, and Naruto realized that the thing that she was hardening herself against was his rejection. It suddenly came to him that what he was doing, pushing physical boundaries and comforting her this way, was a cruelty. He had no intention of following through. Gaara hadn’t expressed any genuine sexual interest him, even in close contact, which made Naruto feel even more guilty. He knew now that this wasn’t about curiosity or pent up sexual frustration. He was sure that Gaara had gotten himself somehow twisted up over the idea that sex was something that human beings did, something that they desired almost above anything else, and Gaara so badly wanted to be human.

Nothing that Naruto could say would convince him that human was exactly what Gaara already was.

But maybe he could show him.

Naruto had always been geared toward action. He made instantaneous decisions with often surprising and sometimes disastrous consequences. And he knew that he had just made another one. He was going to give Gaara what he had asked for. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that Gaara was now wearing a female body, and while rationally Naruto knew that Gaara was the same as he always was in mind, Naruto couldn’t help being more gentle and attentive with the girl version. Sakura would probably kick his ass for his sexism if she found out. Then again, she might kick his ass for a lot of other reasons if she knew what he was about to do.

“Gaara... Alright.”, He said. “Alright”. He smiled warmly, not his usual infectious grin, but still genuine, and leaned forward to press his lips to Gaara’s.

Gaara was doing his best impression of a statue again, but Naruto knew how to fix that. He allowed one hand to trail down to her waist, and the other to resume its scalp massage. She relaxed again, lips slightly parted. Naruto thought about trying to bring some tongue into things, but decided against it. He wasn’t confident in his more advanced kissing skills, as this was his first real kiss. That accident with Sasuke and practice with his own shadow clones really didn’t count. Then again, at least he was better than Gaara, who was just standing there like some kind of limp dishrag.

Further uncharitable reflections on Gaara’s inability to kiss were forestalled as Gaara finally took a more active role in events. It wasn’t much, just a slight return of pressure against Naruto’s lips, but it made all of the difference in the world. He hummed into her mouth encouragingly, and she reached out to him for the first time, bringing one hand to his hip. Her fingers clenched tightly at the orange fabric of his pants, and clawed somewhat painfully at the flesh beneath. Gaara was a stranger to gentle touch, and it showed

Naruto slowly came to the realization that his scratchy, sandy clothing probably wasn’t very comfortable rubbing up against Gaara’s bare skin. He made a soft noise against Gaara’s mouth before lowering the hand in her hair to his jacket zipper. He took a step back, and set about peeling off his travel-worn clothing. He scrunched up his nose at the rank odor of his own body, but this thing, whatever exactly it was, with Gaara was delicate enough that he didn’t feel he could risk time out for a shower. Gaara, meanwhile, had relocated to the bed, probably with the practical notion that that’s where they were supposed to end up any way. She was perched on the edge of it, legs spread in what would have been a lewd manner on any born woman, but was completely guileless on her. There may not have been anything sexual in her manner, but it sure as Hell didn’t leave much to the imagination, and Naruto felt his face warm in a fierce blush that was only partly to do with the fact that he was stripped down to his socks and underwear.

This was all incredibly weird.

He tossed the last of his garments aside in clumsy haste, then moved forward to stand between Gaara’s splayed thighs. Gaara was staring down at Naruto’s crotch with a vague frown, which Naruto found more and more insulting with every second.

“You’re not aroused. You don’t want this.”, Gaara finally said. Naruto rolled his eyes in exasperation, although he felt just a hint of relief that that was the problem.

“Give me a few minutes, geez. I’m nervous. That takes some time to work off, you know?”. To judge by her puzzled expression, Gaara obviously didn’t know. Naruto tamped down ruthlessly on the surge of hysteria that he felt over the now apparent fact that he was about to have sex with a person who had never so much as experienced sexual arousal. Some men would have been delighted to take the virginity of someone so naive, but Naruto was horrified. If he messed up, Gaara would probably be turned off of sex for life. This was way too much responsibility.

On the other hand, people were always telling him that he had to be more responsible if he wanted to be Hokage some day. This seemed like a good place to start, although he was pretty sure that his well-intentioned advisors wouldn’t agree.

A newfound sense of determination welled up in him. Rising above expectation was familiar ground to him, and familiarity was just what he needed to make him comfortable. He was going to have sex with Gaara, and Gaara was going to enjoy it! He would make it so.

“Lay down.”, He ordered. Gaara scooted back onto the mattress with incongruous grace. Then she laid down flat on her back with her arms to her side, like a corpse on an autopsy table. Naruto wasn’t sure wether he wanted to laugh or cry. This was going to take a lot of work.

He crawled up until he was straddled over her, their only point of contact his knees against the outsides of her thighs. He buried his fingers in the soft hair at the base of her skull, and circled his thumb over the delicate skin behind her ear for a few moments, before leaning down for another kiss. Quick on the uptake, she pressed forward to meet him almost immediately. This time Naruto allowed himself to tentatively sweep his tongue between her parted lips. He tried not to make it too harsh or slobbery, as he had it on loud authority from Ino that girls hated that. Of course, Gaara wasn’t really a girl, but Naruto was trying to ignore that small detail.

Eventually, the hand in Gaara’s hair migrated down over the now familiar territory of her clavicle, and onward to the less familiar rise of her right breast. It was small and firm, about the same size as he expected Sakura’s to be, and that thought shot a tremulous spike of arousal shivering down his spine. He circled over her nipple with a calloused thumb, and she squirmed almost imperceptibly beneath him. His hand migrated to her other breast to repeat the action, but this time Gaara just tensed up slightly instead of repeating that intriguing squirm.

As Naruto trailed his hands over more of her body, she tensed up tighter and tighter, until even her lips stopped moving against his. It was horrible, like embracing a plank, and the worst part was that Naruto’s body had finally decided to take interest in current events. It was completely unfair, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

“What am I doing wrong?”, he asked, a hint of a whine coloring his voice.

“I don’t know.”, Gaara’s tone was withdrawn, almost mechanical. Naruto sighed in misery and slumped down onto his elbows, feeling very put upon. Without intent, his arousal bumped against the wiry patch of hair above Gaara’s sex. The effect was electric.

Gaara’s eyes widened and her mouth parted slightly in shock. Before Naruto could draw back or apologize, her arms and legs clamped around him like manacles, and she hauled him down against her. Naruto couldn’t hold back a groan at the startling sensation of finding himself wedged between her thighs. And maybe that was just as well, because suddenly she was clawing at his shoulders, and mumbling into his neck.

“You want this. You want me. You’re not just doing this out of pity.”, Which was... somewhat accurate. Naruto wasn’t about to correct her by saying that he had only agreed to this out of guilt, especially since he was now much more enthusiastic about the idea based on its own merits. So instead of saying anything, he rubbed himself gently against her, and tongued at the hollow at the base of her throat.

She made a low sound of approval, and her grip on him slackened under pleasure’s lazy influence. He slid down to mouth at her breasts, sucking softly on one nipple, then the other, as his fingers massaged whichever breast he wasn’t currently nuzzling. One hand voyaged bravely down to the juncture of her thighs, brushing over red curls and against promising wetness.

Naruto’s only real sexual experience had been a drunken and embarrassingly short encounter with a prostitute that Jiraya had paid to service him. It had been an inebriated joke, of sorts, one in extremely bad taste. Still, Naruto had learned one thing from it, and that was that he’d need to have a better idea of what the fuck he was doing when he tried it with someone that he actually cared about. He’d read one of Jiraya’s books for the first time soon after, and now it was time to put his textbook knowledge into practice. With Gaara already wet and writhing against him, he was off to a good start, but much as he wanted to just thrust into her, that probably wasn’t the best way to go about it. Especially since displeasure on her part could result in a Desert Coffin for him, and he was too horny now to properly defend himself.

In the interest of keeping things pleasant and nonviolent, he licked his way further down her body. He paused briefly to flick his tongue into her navel, which seemed to amuse him more than her, and then got down to business. She tasted something like earth, and something like ocean, and he found that it was not nearly as bad as he’d expected it to be. And even though he felt like he’d be picking short, red hairs out of his teeth for days, the delicate trembling of her limbs, and the muffled sounds that it pulled from her made it all strangely gratifying.

Naruto kept at it until his tongue was numb deadweight, and hoped that was enough preparation. He slid back up her body to kiss her, and she didn’t seem disgusted by the taste of herself in his mouth. Finally, he let himself sink down into her. Or that was his intention, but reality was much more awkward, and left him sliding against her in a way that she seemed to find very rewarding, but wasn’t quite what he was going for.

“Put me in.”, He growled. She wrapped one hand around him without further prompting, and the expression on his face was probably comical as she did so. But he wasn’t going to worry about that, because she guided him as he pressed forward, and it was indescribably good. He moaned and buried his head into her shoulder, trying not to start humping her like some kind of mindless animal, however much he felt like one. It took him a few deep breaths to realize that she was tense as a board again, and that there was an ominous, gritty, slithering sound coming from the part of the room that her gourd had been resting in. This was very, very bad.

“Shh, just relax. It’ll feel good in a minute, I promise.”, He crooned, then winced at his own patronizing tone. The glare that Gaara projected up at him let him know of her own displeasure. Despite that, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from babbling more useless reassurances, even as her brow furrowed, and her mouth fell into an annoyed frown.

“Shut up. The sand won’t hurt you. Just move.”, She gritted out. Naruto shut up as instructed, and began to rock his hips in delicate little motions that had her digging her unpleasantly sharp nails into his back in warning. He took the hint and was a bit more forceful, and after a few minutes she relaxed under him again.

Unfortunately, by the time she started to actually enjoy herself, he was reaching the end of his endurance. All it took was one guttural moan from her, and a sharp squeeze from the thighs wrapped around him that had him sinking in deeper than ever, and he was finished. She snarled in unfamiliar, aching frustration as he panted on top of her, limp from the most intense climax of his life.

He didn’t get to enjoy that pleasant lethergy for very long, because he quickly found himself slammed onto his back, with Gaara perched on top of him. She looked angry and bewildered. Naruto really wanted a few minutes to himself for his over sensitized flesh to recover, but he wasn’t just going to leave her hanging. Aside from being rude, it wasn’t good self-preservation. So he rested his hands on her hips, and guided her into a rocking motion that he hoped she would enjoy. She must have liked the new position, because her hands shoved at his chest, and she ground herself against him with all of the power and subtlety of a landslide. It didn’t take long for that relentless intensity to inspire matched enthusiasm on his part, and soon his own hands were gripping fiercely at her deceptively soft hips as he thrust up into her.

Gaara made an abrupt sort of yowl, and arched her back as she clenched around him. She sank bonelessly across his chest, and Naruto slammed into that slick tightness a few more times before unwinding to join her in a limp tangle of limbs.

She slid off of him, and curled against his side, and Naruto grinned at her. This was about as good as he’d ever felt in his life. Gaara herself looked sleepy and content. Her expression wasn’t quite happiness, but she was more relaxed than Naruto had ever seen her. The softening of the usual sharp lines of tension around her eyes and mouth made her look younger, less dangerous. Combined with the deceptively soft look of her body (Gaara never had been much for taijutsu), she barely looked like a ninja at all. If one didn’t dwell too much on the black rings around her eyes, or the bloody red symbol on her forehead, that was.

Naruto lay with her for a few minutes in a happy absence of thought, before his own body odor caught up with him again. And looking over his splayed body, he noticed a sickening glisten of red that let him know that Gaara had bled on him. Ugh.

“I need a shower. Desperately.”, He said. Gaara waved a lethargic arm in the vague direction of what Naruto had assumed to be a closet. On closer inspection, it was a bathroom. It was small but clean, and the strange, dry quality to the air let him know that it wasn’t used much. That, and it had the neat, vacant soap and towel arrangement of a hotel room. Did Gaara ever spend time in his own quarters for anything more than a change of clothes?

“Do you want a shower?”, Naruto asked, popping his head out of the bathroom door like a gopher from its den.

“Not right now.”, Gaara mumbled. She looked half asleep, and Naruto wondered if he should be worried about that.

“Uh, you look really tired. Is it alright for you to take a nap?”, Naruto asked. He tried to sound casual, and not like he was waiting to hear confirmation or denial of the possibility of Shukaku going on a rampage.

“Mm. Not for too long, but a nap is fine. Don’t use too much water. You’re in the desert.”, And with that Gaara closed her eyes, and pulled the sheets up over her head like a cocoon. Well, that solved the burrowing animal question, among others.

Naruto shut the door behind him, and started the shower. As tepid, weirdly saline water ran over him, the pleasant disconnect that he’d been feeling ever since Gaara brought him in out of the desert began to dissipate. He felt queasy.

What had seemed like the only kind option at the time now seemed profoundly stupid. As soon as things had started to get physical, he’d stopped really thinking of Gaara as Gaara, and started thinking of her in terms of some strangely identical twin sister. But that wasn’t the case, as their little conversation had reminded him. This was Gaara. The Kazekage. A guy with a demon inside of him, who Naruto had always empathized with, and wished that they saw each other more, so they could be better friends. And there went that notion, the idea behind this little excursion to Suna, because everything was going to be awkward and horrible now. He didn’t even know what Gaara expected from him after this. He felt a wave of resentment toward his friend wash over him, and guilt followed swift behind it.

He ran himself in mental circles until it occurred to him that he had just taken an extremely long shower, and Gaara definitely wasn’t going to approve. Then he let the water run another five minutes, because he had the perverse urge to do something that Gaara didn’t approve of. That lasted until the guilt caught up with him again, and he reluctantly turned off the spray and dried himself with a very fluffy and obviously never used towel from the nearest rack.

He slunk out past Gaara, who seemed to be dozing under the covers, or at least faking it convincingly. The smell of his traveling clothes was even more offensive after he himself was clean, but Naruto pulled them on any way. This situation was likely going to call for a lot of unpleasant but necessary things. The first thing being to wake up Gaara, because Naruto needed to strike out on his own to think for a while, and he wasn’t callous enough to leave without saying anything.

That proved unnecessary, because Gaara was sitting up and staring at him from the bed. Still naked, although the sheets were crumpled over her thighs, and Naruto was glad that they hid any tinge of red from view. He wondered how Gaara was going to explain that to the housekeeping staff, but being Kazekage probably meant that you didn’t have to explain that sort of thing. Being a demon container with a history of violence and bloodlust might help, too.

“Gaara-”

“He’ll be near Konoha in four days.”

“Huh?”, Naruto had no idea what Gaara was talking about. She was tense and shut down again, and Naruto didn’t know what to make of it.

“It takes three days to get there.”, Gaara continued, as though she was making any sense.

And suddenly it did make sense, because there was only one ‘he’ that plagued Naruto’s every waking and dreaming thought. And he was suddenly so enraged that he knew his eyes had to be glowing red. How dare Gaara waste time playing this sick little game with him when he had that kind of information to share. Gaara really was a monster if he could discard his only friend’s most important goal so callously. And Naruto was back to thinking of Gaara as Gaara, and not some vulnerable girl that he had to be nice to, and he knew that whatever came out of his mouth next was going to be mean, and aimed to hurt. But for this betrayal, Gaara deserved it.

“What, is this my pay for getting you off? If I didn’t fuck you, were you even going to tell me?!”, His volume rose until he was shouting the last two words. Gaara was standing in front of him now, expression unruffled, with tacky smears of blood on her thighs. Naruto had a fist raised to strike him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to strike a naked, bleeding woman, even if that woman was a man who really deserved it.

“I was going to tell you as soon as you said no. I didn’t expect...”, Gaara trailed off, although there was no sign of uncertainty in his expression.

“Let me get this straight. You spent eighteen months working on a jutsu designed solely to get into my pants, and you didn’t even expect it to work? That’s pathetic.”, Naruto couldn’t even begin to understand that. What kind of nutjob spent so much time and effort on a plan that they expected to fail?

Gaara didn’t flinch, but his chin rose, his spine straightened, and his hands clenched at his sides in what was a clear ‘fuck you’ from someone who was usually so reserved.

“Four days.”, Gaara repeated.

Naruto was already slamming the door behind him.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Gaara sat on the bed for hours, and watched the blood on his thighs turn brown and fissure with hairline cracks. There wasn’t much of it, but he wasn’t used to seeing his own blood at all, and it stood out starkly against the white of his skin. It was disgusting, so he took a shower, being careful to use water sparingly after Naruto’s selfish waste.

Afterward, he curled up in the middle of his soiled bed, and laid there under the covers until dawn.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

End Notes: Well, I started this chapter with the intention of making it to 5,000 words, but it wound up being almost twice that. Apparently I like to hear myself talk. Type. Whatever.

You’ll most like have noticed that the pronouns in this story are a little bit strange. I’m not randomly switching between them. I pick whichever one seem most appropriate for the occasion. Having skulked at the fringes of the genderqueer community on and off for years, I’ve learned that pronouns are slippery things, and not always as fixed as you would imagine them to be. It should also be noted that this chapter was Naruto-centric, and thus reflects Naruto’s personality and thought patterns. I figure that Naruto’s attitude toward sex and gender is that they’re the same thing, so whenever he’s focusing on Gaara’s girly-bits, he’s going to think ‘her’, not ‘him’. More familiar aspects of Gaara are still going to register as male.

The next chapter will be Gaara-centric, with maybe some Temari thrown in, and it will be interesting to see their take on the whole thing.

I briefly considered the idea of using gender-neutral pronouns for Gaara in this story, but rejected it as, 1.) Distracting, and 2.) Not in keeping with the ongoing theme of gender confusion.

I have no beta, so this story is entirely self-edited. Feel free to notify me of any errors or inconsistencies that you may come across. I’m hoping to get the next chapter out in a week or so, but I am terribly unreliable when it comes to WIPs. Here’s hoping.