Maggie and Millie and Molly and May

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

millie befriended a stranded star
who's rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.
- E E Cummings

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"It won't come off."

Naruto rolled onto his back and sat up, rubbing sand off his cheek. "Huh? Oh, hey, you're back. How was the water?"

There was a distant, lonely look on Gaara's face, and it made Naruto want to hug him. "It was wet. And cold. And now this thing is stuck to me and it won't come off." He crossed his arms and looked down at his feet.

Naruto followed Gaara's gaze and snorted into his hand when he saw the problem. There was a bright orange growth stuck to the side of Gaara's leg. "It's just a starfish. It must've thought you were a rock, sitting out there with the tide coming in. That, or it's trying to eat you." He reached out and peeled it away carefully, feeling it go rigid in his hands. "There, see? No problem."

The redhead crouched down beside Naruto and looked at the creature in his hands. "It's a fish? Will it die out of water?"

"Not for a while yet, they can survive for a few hours before they dry out. They taste pretty good, though."

A tendril of sand crept across the blanket and snatched the starfish out of Naruto's hands. "You're not eating it." Gaara stalked off, starfish bobbing beside him on a floating handful of sand.

For a moment Naruto thought he saw it wave to him as Gaara walked away; he shook his head and lay back down, returning to his sunbathing.
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I had huge segments of the beachfic running through my head this morning. This isn't actually how this particular scene is supposed to go, but I can never resist the opportunity for bizarre cuteness.

The beachfic is a sequel to Blindsided, though I imagine I'll write it before I finish BS. It's an introspective-y oneshot; Naruto decides he needs a vacation and drags Sasuke and Gaara to the beach. Gaara has never seen the ocean before, and Sasuke spent some of the the best moments of his life pretending to be a pirate (though he does decide, in the end, that ninjas are better). Naturally shennanigans ensue- and by shennanigans, I mean people stare at the waves and exchange lots of meaningful glances, and eventually they have sex.

Blame Vincent Persichetti, if you need to blame someone. If he hadn't set several EE Cummings poems to music and if we hadn't had to sing them in glee club, I never would have come up with the idea. Glee club is actually responsible for several of my crazy fic ideas, now that I think about it...