Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
A/N: Been meaning to write Anko/Temari for MONTHS now. Why haven't I?

Title: Sand Dunes
Summary: The desert hides her secrets well. (I don't think I love you.)
Pairing: Anko/Temari
Warnings: yuri

Xxx

I: Ashes, Ashes

She's taken a habit of smoking, but she doesn't smoke all the time.

Just when she feels the curse hurting (all the time) or when she feels stressed (all the time) or when she's had terrific sex (which doesn't happen as often as it should).

"You taste like ashes."

The cigarette caught between her lips dangles like a promise waiting to be spoken.

"What?"

Repeated in the same tone, condescending with a crinkling nose:

"You taste like ashes."

Temari shakes out her hair with a hand, and Anko wants to tell her to sit up straighter because her posture is terrible (but isn't that the pot and kettle situation?).

"I'll try and brush my teeth more."

"Or just quit smoking."

"If I quit smoking, you have to sit up straighter."

Temari looks at her over her shoulder, and the flesh on her neck crinkles together. Her shoulder is marked with Cheshire smiles, and the corner of her mouth is stained a pretty deep red from Anko's mouth and teeth.

"Fuck off."

"I love you too."

An undignified huff; her mother never taught her manners.

(Or how to love; or how to speak of love; or to tell the difference between love and a really good time.)

"I have to go."

"Will I see you again?"

"Maybe."

"I'll hold you to it."

Temari dresses like a reverse strip tease—every move slow and calculated.

Anko takes a drag off her cigarette, and the burn is a familiar friend.

"I'll see you."

Temari stands in the doorway like a pinup waiting for snap shot.

"Yeah."

After she leaves, Anko reaches for another cigarette and curses when she finds the pack empty.

II: Love is a Tricky Word

"Do you love my sister?"

If there is one thing Anko has learned about the young Kazekage, it's that tact and artifice are not a part of his core vocabulary. Everything about him is rigid and blunt but surprisingly beautiful—his red hair, his pale skin, the sharp blue-green of his eyes.

(Perhaps Temari and he truly were siblings.)

"Do you love my sister?"

He's not curious about the relationship (probably doesn't really give two shits about who his sister fucks and where), but he is a curious about the human mind and how relationships work, and Anko wants to tell him that she's just as curious, but she can't speak because Gaara's eyes are robbing her of her voice, and she thinks he would have made been a great asset on Sunagakure's interrogation and torture squad.

"Do you love my sister?"

His tone is dripping with patience, the same patience Temari had on the battlefield.

(Yes, they had to be siblings.)

"She's a great kid, but I don't think I love her."

"I see."

And that's all he says. His fingers create the steeple of the rotting church that sat at the very edge of the village, and his eyes are searching Anko's soul for something that only he knows.

After a few minutes, he goes back to his paperwork, and Anko takes that as a cue to leave.

III: Like and Love

"You're brother asked me if I loved you."

"Do you?"

"I don't think I do."

Temari smiles and the kiss she gives is all tongue and teeth.

"Good because I don't think I love you either."

IV: Words

She gathers up all her inhibitions and displays them in the mark on her neck. Temari kisses each curve of the seal like it's a prayer bead and mutters soft words against Anko's damp flesh.

"What are you saying?"

Temari shrugs, "Mother used to say them to Father all the time. I think they're love confessions or something."

"I thought you didn't love me."

Temari's smile doesn't fit her genetic coding; it's all soft and gentle and nurturing.

"I said I think I don't love you, but that doesn't mean I don't like you."

"I like you, too."

Temari's kisses taste like desert rain.

V: Silence and Ignition

Temari is always quiet at the start of sex.

Her chest heaves; her skin flushes a pretty shade of deep red; her eyes are glassy and cloud; her lips are swollen and red and demand to be kissed no matter how much Anko bruises them; she clenches hard around Anko's fingers and bucks her hips while she circles her clit with her middle, ring and pointer finger of her right hand.

However, Temari is not quiet when she comes.

She mewls and groans and moans and curses with her pretty kiss-bruised mouth. She speaks in a language that is only known to her and the members of her family, but she speaks with the devotion that comes with the rush of the orgasm.

And when Anko straddles Temari and rubs their sexes together, it makes Temari pant and buck and rub back, and she's always growling and cursing and sometimes begging (but those times are rare and few).

VI: Snake Skin

Anko dreams she sheds her skin and emerges as something different, not someone.

When she has sex with Temari, she manages to unhinge her jaw and swallow her whole.

When Anko wakes up, she can taste flower petals and defeat on the back of her throat.

VII: Vertigo

Spinning in white, Temari is a paradox of herself.

She's lace and ribbons and white; she's purity.

And walking up to Anko, floating on air with ribbons running through her sand-colored like Anko's fingers, Temari has never appeared more beautiful.

Anko reaches underneath the skirt to touch Temari through her panties, and she's vaguely surprised when she feels nothing but Temari's wet sex pressing up against her hand.

Some things never truly change.

VIII: Beauty

Anko stretches her limbs, and Temari kisses each of her ribs.

"You're beautiful."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm broken."

A smile and the brief pinprick of sharp teeth on her clavicle.

"I happen to like broken things. They're a lot of fun to fix."

"Will you fix me."

A chaste kiss and Anko moans when Temari slips two fingers inside her.

"We'll fix each other."

.