12. Married Life (I want my damn romance with this man!)
They meet during breakfast.
Temari is looking for Gaara basically everywhere because they have priority mail from Konoha that Baki dropped on her because he couldn’t find Gaara himself. She’s not actually sure what to do, because Gaara’s bodyguards don’t know where he is, and Gaara isn’t the type to disappear with no notice. She’s actually about to sound a general alarm, when she remembers the man Gaara took on as retainer (and what is a retainer, even? The definition of the word as she learned it, and the function that Jun seems to fill, are two different things), and scours HQ until she finds his quarters.
She comes in without knocking (she’s already a little skeptical about his skills as a ninja; who doesn’t lock their door?), already prepared to bitch out Gaara and shoot dirty looks at his retainer.
Then she sees gorgeous blue eyes situated above a jutting collarbone (that someone else has already bitten, apparently), and Gaara’s retainer turns to her with a hiss, hands already forming what she recognizes as common genjutsu handsigns. Gaara puts his hand on Jun’s forearm to stop him, which tells her everything she needs to know about their relationship. (It doesn’t stop her from looking, but now she knows Gaara got there first, and has much less desire to overwrite that bitemark with her own).
Temari hands Gaara the missive with a dirty look instead of the tirade she had planned, and Jun smiles brightly at her before taking back up the spatula. He makes enough for four without having to ask, and Temari can’t help but be impressed that he somehow predicted Kankuro coming when he slouches in with his ‘I’m going to insert myself into any situation that interests me’ face.
The look on the normally unflappable Kankuro’s face when Jun hands him a fully-loaded plate is more than enough reason to forgive him for hiding Gaara away when she is looking for him.
They first have sex after a mission.
In the two years between their first meal and their first shared orgasm, Gaara assigned one of the chuunin-bordering-on-jounin as Jun’s trainer. Were he a normal Suna-nin, he would have to go about finding a mentor himself, but with how incredibly different Otogakure ninja cells and Sunagakure traditions are, Gaara makes the decision to not put him on a normal genin team. (Temari can’t help but agree. He’s too old to be training with a bunch of twelve year-olds, and at the assessment – which she watches because she can – his shurikenjutsu is completely awful and his taijutsu is in a style no one knows how to evaluate. Trying to integrate him with a genin team would end in irritation at best and deaths at worst).
He quickly proves that Orochimaru is indeed mad for keeping his as arm candy, because he turns out to have a brilliant tactical mind and an aptitude for genjutsu that Suna has never seen. Unfortunately for any future wars Suna may have to participate in (kami forbid), he has no head for the intricacies of strategy, but he takes command of his surroundings as if they were his home turf no matter the landscape and enemy preparations, and he creates an entirely new style of genjutsu combining Otogakure’s sound-based techniques and Sungakure’s traditional instruments.
Jun makes chunin at the exams right after he’s accepted into the Sunagakure genin pool (Temari is a proctor, and barely stops her jaw from dropping when Jun ensares three competing teams with his vocal-genjutsu all at once during the second stage, and places third in the one-on-one tournament), and begins to accompany Gaara or Temari when they leave on official business.
Long story short, a “peaceful” delegation to the Land of Fangs gets messy fast, and Temari and Jun end up killing about seven attackers each.
They stand in the middle of the room, breathing hard and listening for any other possible assailants. When it’s clear no one else is going to pop out of the woodwork, their eyes meet.
Temari gasps, Jun growls, and they meet halfway, bodies colliding in a rough tangle. She yanks open his robe, he tears off her panties, and they fuck on the floor, rough and quick. Temari orgasms faster than the man she’s sleeping with for once (though to be fair, he’s not far after), and almost can’t believe how hard she comes. He leaves nailmarks down her back, and she leaves finger-shaped bruises on his sides.
They don’t talk about it, afterward, but she does catch him eyeing her legs some days. It’s so subtle she almost doesn’t notice, but when she does, he winks at her before going back to what he’s doing.
They go on their first date in Konoha.
Jun is reluctant to leave Gaara’s side, Temari can tell. Unfortunately for him, Gaara is still trying to court Yamanaka Ino, who has been chilly toward Jun since finding out he took Gaara’s virginity. (Temari should probably feel dirty or guilty about having sex with Jun after her youngest brother, but really? She just doesn’t care. Gaara didn’t treat Jun any different after they had sex than he did before, so it’s one of these emotional things that Gaara processes differently than most people.)
Temari requests an escort, mostly because she doesn’t want to be a complete bitch to the Nara kid, but needs a reason not to be alone with him. (So she likes him, so what? He’s fun when he’s not drooling over her). Jun is fairly well known as the Kazekage’s retainer; she can get away with including him on her diplomatic trip.
He spends the first day of their journey in what she can only describe as a snit; he is still very polite to her (and looks at her legs at least once), but doesn’t speak much. On the second day he opens up, and by the time they reach Konoha, he’s joking with her in his reserved, razor-sharp way.
She mentions she’s hungry when they arrive, and he points out a hole-in-the-wall bakery/cafe. They shower and change at the embassy, then go out. Temari devours their entire selection of sweet rolls, and Jun teases her about being what she eats. Temari laughs like she hasn’t laughed in years, until the sharp edges of her jounin mask slip away and she (with less horror than she would have thought) finds herself giving him a genuine smile.
He pays, much to her amusement, and they fuck again on the floor of the ambassador suite in Konoha HQ. (It’s slower but not gentler; she still ends up with marks and so does he, but they have time for multiple rounds instead of a single frenzy of post-fight lust).
He kisses her for the first time on the day he makes jounin.
There’s a small party. Gaara shows up to be polite, congratulates Jun gravely, and leaves. Kaida, his ever-grinning former mentor, hugs basically everyone in sight, and even Kankuro shows up to pilfer food and alcohol.
Temari ends up being the last one at the bar, and they walk back to HQ together. Before they can enter, he takes her hand and tugs. She tilts her head but follows him.
They end up on one of Suna’s tallest buildings. He pulls her flush against him – slowly, carefully; he gives her ample opportunity to get away, knowing she hates feeling coerced or rushed into absolutely anything – and presses his lips to hers.
Her breath catches when she realizes how soft his lips are. She’s bitten his lips, sucked on his tongue, panted into his mouth, but never simply kissed him like this. She sighs into his mouth, and they stay pressed together until the sun comes up.
They see one another for the last time during the war.
He disappears going after Yamanaka Ino, ironically enough. She comes back, shell-shocked and pale, clutching Jun’s missing-Sound hitai-ate. Temari finds out through Gaara who is told by Tsunade that Jun lead away a squad chasing down Ino’s trademark Yamanaka platinum-blonde hair.
He doesn’t come back. She waits a year for him (longer than she would have thought, when they first met), then has brief, completely unsatisfying sex with the Nara kid. She manages to get out of his apartment before she bursts into tears.
They’ll both deny it until the end of time, but she ends up at Yamanaka Ino’s. Ino lost her father a few days after Jun died, and her mentor not long before, and they sleep in the same bed the same night she fucks Ino’s teammate.
(Temari almost wishes she was one of those war widows who have nothing left of their husband but a newborn from the rash of post-war babies. They’d been too careful for that, too cautious about possibly removing Temari from her brother’s side for something as avoidable as pregnancy. Jun was very good at what he did, but Temari and her brothers had a decade of experience together at that point; there was no replacing her).
She does eventually move on. He’s got bright blue eyes, but his hair is light and his skin is the deep tan of the Land of Wind. He doesn’t tease her, but he does make her breakfast every morning he has the opportunity, and her brothers don’t completely hate him, even if Kankuro does compare him to Jun every time they’re in the same room.
(She calls out Jun’s name the first time they have sex, and slaps her new lover when he tries to demand if she’s been stepping out on him. She goes back to him a few weeks later, he apologizes, and she spends a good deal of the rest of her life pretending she doesn’t stay with him because of those eyes.)
