A story swap with Furuido. I wanted NaruSasu; she wanted – er – Kankurou and peanut butter. -.-

The knife dove deep into the sticky substance, burying itself to the hilt, and swept back up, sliding through it, stealing some of it away. It descended more gently toward the bread that awaited it on the countertop, and the peanut butter was smeared across its white surface.

Kankurou whistled while he made his sandwich, cheerful as always that there was edible food to be found in their kitchen (i.e. food Temari hadn't cooked), and was ecstatic that someone had had the sense to buy peanut butter, which he loved. It was his favorite thing to eat, with the friendly way it stuck to the roof of his mouth, and nothing tasted better with a glass of milk.

Besides that, it was a lunch food, the kind that was best eaten in the early afternoon. Lunch was the one meal that didn't depress him. Breakfast should be eaten with siblings before wandering as a group out the door to start their days of schoolwork and training. Dinner was the kind when families should slump wearily into their chairs, smiling around at each other and recounting busy days. Lunch was the only meal that could be successfully eaten alone.

Kankurou's siblings were distant creatures that preferred solitude, found life easier within it. Not since Temari, as the eldest, had tied on her first forehead protector as a genin had they eaten a meal as a family. They had never been much of a family anyway. They had always been almost afraid of each other, tiptoeing in circles to avoid each other's company until they had to be a team.

They were more of a team than a family, and that depressed Kankurou.

It had gotten better, of course. Gaara was still quiet, but they weren't so terrified of him anymore. He retreated almost automatically to his solitude now, even when they requested his company, like he was scared of scaring them, but Kankurou wondered if he was afraid they would eventually shun him. He wondered sometimes if he knew hoe much they cared about him.

His sandwich became whole, two pieces of bread smothered in peanut butter, pressed together inescapably and soon to be devoured by the hungry jounin who had mad it. All he needed was a glass of milk.

When he turned to the cupboard, he caught a flash of red in his peripheral vision, and his head lifted to look at his brother standing in the doorway, his blue eyes surveying the room and its activities with vague interest. Kankurou smiled when his gaze settled on him and didn't move. "Hey. Are you hungry?"

His previous task forgotten, he pulled out a second plate and went to work on making another sandwich, figuring that, if Gaara left the room like he thought he was going to, that was just two sandwiches for him. His whistling held back the silence in the room like a flashlight staying off monsters, and he found the metaphor amusing. Eventually, he spun toward the table, and halted abruptly, the two plates poised midair.

A full glass of milk sat on the table, and Gaara was in the process of pouring a second. Looking up, his eyebrow quirked in an "Is this okay?" gesture, as if he was unsure how to do anything properly when it came to normalcy.

But Kankurou grinned, setting the plates on the table, and they sat down, eating the sandwiches he had just put so much love into making. They chewed slowly, prolonging this moment. Silence filled the room, comfortable and light, and lunch didn't seem as lonely anymore.

The quiet shook into non-existence as a door opened and slammed closed. Temari's face appeared in the doorway, blinking at them in puzzlement. Kankurou smiled at her; Gaara ignored her, focusing on his sandwich; she smiled, sitting down beside the redhead. After a moment, food had made its way to Temari, and she was talking with Kankurou across the table. Gaara didn't speak, but a ghost of a smile haunted his lips as he listened to them. Long after they had finished eating, and their plates had been pushed into a stack in the middle of the table, the three sat there together.

"You know," Kankurou sat back, squinting through his purple face paint into the sunlight beaming through the window. "We should do this more often."

"Yeah, for a team, we don't know much about each other." Temari's blonde head bobbed in agreement as she absently pressed her finger to the crumbs littering the table.

"We're family," Gaara offered quietly, eyes downcast, "aren't we?"

Stillness followed his profound statement, and the almost innocent way he had said it. His older siblings stared at him, unsure of how to react, and suddenly Kankurou's grin reignited. "Of course, Gaara."

Lunch for them became to the time of day when they came together, recounting their mornings, talking about whatever came to them. Where, before the afternoon had been a lonely time, now it was the time when they remembered what life had been like when they were young, when death wasn't always waiting patiently on their doorstep, and a monster wasn't constantly controlling a young man from beneath his skin. They remembered that they were a team, a good team, but they were a good team because they were a family.

Kankurou thought peanut butter tasted even better now.