A Virgin Kiss

Chapter 9: The Negotiations

Gaara stood in the doorway and looked at his older sister. She was sitting at the little desk of the hotel room with a few scrolls in front of her. But she’d been sitting there, daydreaming. Was she in love with Shikamaru? Although he’d been confident in his ability to understand Kotetsu and Izumo, Gaara wasn’t sure about Temari. Maybe he just understood men better than women?

“Come on in, Little Brother,” she said with a smile, “Good night, last night?”

Gaara felt himself blushing again—and marveled once more at how different sex with prostitutes and sex with Neji was. He’d never once blushed after a night spent in seedy brothels or experimenting with some of the weirder aspects of sex--those things he tried once and never wanted to do again.

Temari looked at him, tilting her head. On her face surprise, amusement, and curiosity fought for dominance, “Gaara, you are blushing.”

Gaara knew he needed to turn this situation around—if he didn’t get a grip on things, Shikamaru would be spending a month in Suna, not Neji. It wasn’t yet confirmed this would be a long-term thing, this exchange of ninjas. Leaf and Sand were starting slow.

Gaara just walked up to his sister, leaned down, and kissed her forehead, “Neji said that brothers kiss their sisters; did I do that right?”

Temari was speechless and just hugged Gaara fiercely. Her voice was a little husky as she said, “Yeah, little brother, you did that right,” and she then kissed him on the cheek. Gaara felt a surge of happiness in him, and a little bit of panic too. Deep within he felt Shukaku stir.

“It looks like Neji did more than talk about kissing,” teased Temari, and Gaara’s fears of love and the faint stirring of his demon were forgotten as he remembered Neji’s kisses.

“Wow, that good, eh?” said Temari.

Gaara shrugged his shoulders and focused carefully on the scrolls on the table. He felt very odd—he was normally a very simple and direct person. This acting like a normal person was probably a good way to hone his diplomatic skills. His problems with the unsaid things were the reason why he never went on a diplomatic mission without Kankurou, Temari, or a member of the village council.

He focused very carefully on everything Temari went over before they decided to head down to a quick meal before going to over to Tsunade’s. When they finished eating, they lingered in the lobby talking to Izumo, waiting for Kotetsu to join them. But when Kotetsu came down the stairs, Neji came with him.

Gaara felt like he’d just been hit by a punch from Lee. Oh—he’d been in the room all this time—maybe sleeping on the bed where they’d had sex—maybe even masturbating. God, he was sexy, and, fuck, he knew it. He moved with that superb grace, catlike, down the stairs. He was wearing his normal jounin garb and looked his usual calm, perfect, smug self. Gaara felt himself starting to get hard just looking at him. He couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his mouth and moving towards the foot of the stairs as if compelled. Gaara so wanted a kiss. Neji walked up to Gaara, and Gaara had no clue what he would do, but he knew he would let Neji do anything to him right now because—well, because, he was hungry for any show of affection from Neji, and they’d only been apart for a little over an hour.

Neji’s white eyes were meeting Gaara’s green ones, then he was close, then he was kissing the Sand nin, slipping his tongue in Gaara’s mouth. Gaara forgot about playing cool and struggled with himself not to wrap his arms around Neji, not to moan, not to shove his hardened cock against Neji’s groin. But he couldn’t stop his tongue from welcoming Neji’s, from pushing out and into his lover’s own mouth. And he couldn’t break the kiss. It was Neji who pulled away, “Good-bye, Gaara,” was all he said and then sauntered over to Temari, whose mouth was hanging open. Gaara ground his teeth together, making sure his mouth was closed. He moved towards the door casually, “Hey, Hyuuga, we’re off to see the Hokage, you going our way?”

“Nope, got to check in with the family,” said Neji coolly, nodding. Gaara nodded back and started off with Izumo, leaving Temari and Kotetsu to follow. It was ridiculously painful to just walk away as if he wasn’t leaving the most important thing in his world without another good-bye. But on the other hand, it was nothing, nothing, to the pain of being alone, that pain that both Naruto and he understood.

Gaara spent the day fighting for Neji in the negotiations with Tsunade, without once mentioning his name. The early proposals for the ninja exchange were ridiculous and mere ritual. Suna proposed Baki, the jounin sensei of the Sand siblings, but also the killer of Hayate during that temporary alliance of Sand and Sound against Leaf. The Fifth countered with Kakashi, son of the greatly hated White Fang. Suna then proposed Sajin, a mere chuunin, who had been rendered inactive in the Sand-Sound invansion by Shikaku, Shikamaru’s dad. Tsunade countered with Inuzuka Hana, Inuzuka Kiba’s older sister, a chuunin who mostly acted as a vet. They’d worked through a number of other proposed chuunins before breaking for lunch.

After lunch, they spent a lot of time on silly things, like officially deciding the two exchanged shinobis would be called “liaison officials” and agreeing that both must be jounins. However, that was all the time Tsunade could spend on negotiations today, so at a little after two, Temari and Gaara were sauntering through downtown Konoha. It took about ten minutes for Shikamaru to surface, and Gaara didn’t blink when the two of them set off to do some “cloud watching.” Gaara set off to find Neji. He knew where Neji, Lee, and TenTen liked to train from his previous visits with Lee. He could claim he was asking about if Lee would in fact be back tomorrow with Guy or not. It was lame, but Gaara didn’t care. He hadn’t seen Neji for close to six hours.