Kankurou was on the porch again, sprawled across the steps with a file and an irregular lump of sandstone. His shoulders tensed very slightly under the mesh shirt he wore, but he kept his eyes on the stone in his hand, even when Gaara sat down on the top step.
"Temari wants to know if she should just drag your futon out here." Gaara's voice was rarely anything but cold, and he never smiled unless he was killing something, so Kankurou made a leap of faith and assumed it was a joke.
"Her snoring keeps me awake at night. Might not be a bad idea." Summer made him terse, but not even the heat could keep him from messing with his siblings. The tiny almost-smile Gaara gave him in response was worth the effort of speaking.
The silence slid between them comfortably as Kankurou started on the carving. The steady rasp of the file mingled with the sound of crickets, soothing in its monotony. Gaara watched the gritty dust fly up from the file with the same intensity he used for still-beating hearts and steaming viscera.
"I could do it faster."
His hand slipped at Gaara's soft words, and he cursed as the file took off a patch of skin. "You don't even know what it's going to be." He stuck his bleeding thumb in his mouth before the sight of blood could set off his brother. Things were better now, but that didn't make Gaara any less insane.
"You could tell me. I could help."
The entire situation was surreal. Gaara looked so earnest, it was almost comical. His face wasn't suited for showing emotion- his eyes were too big in their sunken sockets, and every expression was overexaggerated to the point of being grotesque. Kankurou shook his head and hoped he'd stopped bleeding. "I don't offer to help you kill people."
Gaara scoffed, contempt fitting easily over his face like a second skin. "I don't need your help for that."
He nodded and resumed filing. "Exactly."
He liked treading on thin ice with Gaara sometimes. He was normally too much of a coward to invite the possibility of an attack, but the part of him that was an older brother rebelled against that. He was supposed to irritate his little brother. It was Temari's job to be bossy, Gaara's duty to be a spoiled brat (spoiled, homicidal brat), and his obligation to make both his siblings miserable, but not so miserable that they were actually miserable.
He never tried to tell either of them this, because he knew they'd think he was crazy. Pot, kettle, black, but they never kept score properly.
Gaara looked thoughtful; that was sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. He usually looked thoughtful before coming up with new and disturbing ways to take a body apart from the inside out with his sand, but he'd also looked thoughtful (and rather beaten) the first time he'd said thank you.
"I'm almost done with it, so you can polish it for me once it's finished if you like." The silence had gotten uncomfortable; it really wasn't a good idea to encourage Gaara to think too much. And Gaara never smiled his almost-smile when he'd been left to think.
The silence went back to being comfortable again, with the rasprasp of the file on the sandstone and the soft hsshhh of sand through Gaara's fingers as he played idly and the low chrkchrk of crickets in the darkness.
Temari came and ruined it, of course, her heavy boots clunking hollowly across the porch. She sat down on the top step beside Gaara with a thump and wrapped her arms around her knees.
"Hey." She leaned forward and peered up at the sky. "The stars are pretty tonight."
Kankurou looked up for a moment and shrugged, turning back to his carving.
"Yeah," Gaara said. "They are."
-----
Why? 'Cuz I love the Sand Siblings, and I think Kankurou is hot underneath the silly hat. (Facial markings and a giant puppet? Dude. How can I not adore him?) I also like the idea of him spending his free time carving stones. He does wood, too, when he's got it on hand. Sandstone's easier to find, though, and Gaara's less likely to destroy it.
He's carving a fox for Gaara, actually; had I the attention span to do a multichapter thing (and had I not the tendency to butcher characters beyond recognition) I'd write the crazy Naruto/Gaara/Sasuke thing that's in my head right now. It's silly and involves Naruto working at a bookstore, and Gaara developing a disturbing love for books. I think I may have a secret love for the idea of Kankurou/Sakura, but I'm not sure. It might be Ino instead.
Unfortunately, this involves Naruto yaoi cliche #37, in which Naruto gets sick of being ostracized and runs away from Konoha. Also #583, in which Sasuke gets wrecked on and realizes Naruto is his One True Wuv. *sigh* The whole fandom is easy like a two dollar hooker, you know. Easy like Sin eating pie, and that's damn easy.
I need to stop loving this series, for serious.
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