Teach Me

Sakura lifted her chin at Temari. “I am not trying to seduce Gaara. Who told you I was?”

“Kankuro. He heard the servants saying you were having lunch with the Kazekage.”

“The servants have big mouths. And so does Kankuro. The Kazekage asked me to help him as a favor.”

“Help him with what, exactly?”

Sakura sighed, seeing that Temari refused to be deflected. “He’s getting married in a couple of months and he doesn’t want to hurt or scare his bride. That’s all.”

Temari looked thoughtful. “Well, I can see that. He doesn’t get much chance to date in the Palace, and he avoids the harem, so his entire source of information about women would be, well…”

“You,” Sakura pointed out.

“And you,” Temari returned.

Sakura put her hands on her hips. “Are you afraid I’m going to corrupt him? Me? I’m a medic-nin, not a slut.”

“Hey, claws in, Sakura. I have every right to be protective of him – he’s my brother, after all.”

Sakura sighed. “Just don’t go leaping to conclusions, is all I’m saying.”

“Need any help?”

Sakura considered the question. “As a matter of fact, you can get me a couple things…”

*****

Gaara wasn’t sure what to think, how to react. Had he done something wrong, that she was suddenly in such a hurry to leave? He’d wanted her to stay, but… his sand had frightened her. He’d tried to hold onto her as she slid off his bed… and she’d been afraid of it. Of him. This was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid.

What frustrated him was the fact that by her own assessment he’d been doing to well up to that point – but suddenly she had to leave. She’d been looking at him, and it wasn’t with fear or horror, but then she’d gone a bit pink and then she had to go. She had to go away. He paced, still bare-chested, his sand making agitated patterns in the air and across the floor behind him. He’d been doing so well – where had he gone wrong?

She’d said she would teach him. He would ask her what had gone wrong. And she would have to tell him.

And maybe…. Maybe she would let him hold her again. He liked holding her. Holding her made him happy – the fact that she trusted him, trusted him to put his arms around her without killing her. She was soft in those very delightful, feminine places where women ought to be soft – but because she was a ninja, a kunoichi, she was also firm and muscular in so many other places. And maybe she would hold him. He liked being close to her. Her hair smelled like strawberries (something that didn’t grow well in the Land of Wind but which he’d tried the last time he’d been to Konoha), and she smelled of sandalwood and something faint but mysterious and musky that excited him, made him want to smell it again and find out where that smell came from. He rubbed his forehead, and then raked his fingers through his hair.

He wanted to touch her. He wanted to know how to touch her. He wanted her to want to be touched by him. And he wanted to be touched by her. She was so gentle to him – he knew that she was powerfully strong, and she could easily break his arm if she wanted to – and he wanted her to touch him again. It was a craving, like a man craves water in the desert, or a mouthful of bread when he is starving. He wanted to see her, to smell her, to touch her, again. He wanted to possess her.

He shook himself. No – she would not allow herself to be a possession, and in any case that would miss the point of her lessons. He had to get control of himself. He had to redirect his energy someplace safe, before he did something he would regret. He gathered his sand back to the gourd as he put his robe and belt back on. He strapped the gourd – his constant companion, all his life – onto his back and headed for the palace dojo. There was a practice stone there; a seven-foot-high pillar of granite that he often used as a medium for the aggressive urges he still had sometimes. He could utterly destroy it, and it would be replaced by the next day without fail.

That afternoon, he reduced it to a pile of rubble. Afterwards, he shaped his sand into a facsimile of Sakura and watched it for a while. He touched it, but no matter how smooth he made the golem, it never quite felt like her – so he had it sit next to him for a while, and lean its head against his shoulder.

It wasn’t the same. A sand sculpture, no matter how artful or beautiful, would never substitute for a real person. He had tried before, as a child, shaping his sand into what he imagined a mother would be like, but it was crude at best, its touch rough and abrasive, and it could not speak. None of his sand sculptures could speak. They also could not love. They could not comfort him when he was sad.

Finally, he dismissed the sand-Sakura, and it dissolved into sand and flowed back into his gourd.

*****

The next day, Sakura arrived at Gaara’s quarters at noon with a basket filled with the supplies that Temari had helped her gather. He glanced up as she entered, surprised by her return. Her hair was pinned up at the crown of her head, but a few loose pink locks fell around her face.

“You came back,” he said, almost a question.

“Of course I came back,” she replied with a smile, “I still have lots to teach you.”

She set down the basket, and as she straightened up, Gaara saw that her outfit was different from her usual clothing. Her top, though possessing long, flowing sleeves, ended suddenly at her midriff, and had a neckline that offered a tantalizing view of her cleavage. The skirt – which was red like the top – sat on the curve of her hips and fell to mid-calf. She wore no shoes, and between the top and the skirt there lay the collective expanse of her toned abdomen and back – which, he noticed, were well-tanned. Up till then he had assumed that the bronzed skin he’d seen ended at the edges of her dress, and at the cuffs of her shorts. He made a mental note to find out when she got in her sunbathing time.

“You like it?” Sakura asked, giving a twirl to show off the outfit. The skirt flowed in scarlet waves around her legs, and it occurred to him that it might be silk. Gaara realized to his private horror that he’d been caught looking her over. “Temari suggested it. She said it had more of a desert feel to it.”

“Hn,” he agreed, but frowned. “I thought you might not come back.”

Sakura glanced up, puzzled by this remark. “Why wouldn’t I come back?”

“I thought I hurt you, with my sand.”

She rubbed the wrist that he’d caught with the shackle of sand. “It didn’t hurt very much. See? Not even a bruise.” She held out her arm so he could see. “Don’t worry too much about it. You’re still learning.” She saw the relief in his eyes, and she smiled. “Now, one thing you’ll need to remember about courtship is that women enjoy compliments. Even when she’s married to you, she’ll still enjoy knowing that you think she’s beautiful.”

“But what if she’s not beautiful?”

Sakura considered this – it was a valid question, after all. “Then you’ll have to find something about her that you think is beautiful. It could be anything – the color of her eyes, a certain outfit she wears, the sound of her voice or laughter, or even the way she walks.”

She took off the basket’s lid and started arranging the contents on the table: A bowl of fruit, a can of chocolate syrup, a tub of whipped cream. He looked over the implements – dessert items, as far as he could tell, but so soon after lunch?

“Of course, the best way to find out what’s beautiful about a woman is to savor her. Take the time to explore and enjoy every part of her, like you might not ever see her again.”

He looked at her, not quite understanding.

“And not just what she looks like, either – what she smells like, sounds like, and feels like. And, to a certain point, what she tastes like.”

“Tastes like?”

“For example,” she continued, “Temari says that it’s really hard to get milk chocolate here. Most of what I’ve had is bitter, dark chocolate.”

“This is true,” Gaara replied, and she held up the chocolate syrup.

“My own personal stash,” she said, “Of sweet milk chocolate. Ever had any?”

“Once,” he said, “In Konoha. It was… good.” In fact, it was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. He watched closely as she popped off the lid.

“I’ve had to ration this out pretty stringently,” Sakura continued, “I can make a can like this last up to a month.” She took up a strawberry, grasping it by the leafy top, and dipped the end of it in the chocolate. Then she lifted the strawberry and began licking the chocolate off it with the tip of her tongue, flickering and circling her tongue around the strawberry until, laboriously, meticulously, it was clean. “Mmm.” She smiled as she dabbed at the bit of chocolate that had dripped onto her chin. “Gomen.”

Gaara was watching her closely. He had been positively riveted on the process of her licking the strawberry clean, the delicate little catlike flicks of her tongue across the berry, the way she swirled her tongue around the pointy end. It was very… suggestive. His fingertips grasped the table so hard they had turned white.

Sakura took another strawberry, dipped it in the chocolate, and offered it to him. “Now you try. Just like I did, just clean off the chocolate without bruising it.” She held up her own strawberry, which had come away from the tongue-bathing completely unharmed. “The tongue and lips are very sensitive, making them ideal for exploring one’s partner.”

He closed his lips around the strawberry, closing his eyes in bliss as he tasted the sweet chocolate. He wanted to take a bite of the strawberry, but that was not the point of this exercise, it seemed, so instead he sucked at it, then licked delicately at it, doing his best to remove the chocolate without damaging the strawberry, as she had done. Finally, he presented the result, which was not quite perfect, but a good first attempt.

Sakura covered her smile. “Very good, Gaara. Um, you have chocolate on your mouth. Let me get that… just close your eyes.”

Obediently, he closed his eyes. What happened next he could not quite account for, nor could he account for the whereabouts of the strawberry afterwards. He felt her lips against his, sucking gently at the chocolate on his lips in the same way that she had sucked at the strawberry. It was such a curious, unexpected, delightful combination of salty and sweet that his eyes snapped wide in shock. The strawberry fell from his numb fingers. Her own eyes were closed, but when she pulled away she opened them again – and immediately saw the shell-shocked expression on his face. She blushed.

“Sorry – that was improper of me. I shouldn’t have—“

“Do that again.”

“… just an imp—what?”

“Teach me how to do that.” His green eyes locked onto hers with his usual intensity. “We need to cover this eventually, right?” One corner of his mouth quirked upwards slightly, the first time she had ever seen a smile on his face that wasn’t borne of impending homicide. “Teach me more,” he said, hungry for knowledge. She had definitely broken down a significant barrier there.