Short, sweet, & simple: Crackfic. Created by Annette and Bertha. Or Bertha and Annette. Whichever floats your boat.

Summary: Gaara's living in Konoha with Temari and Kankuro. He's seeing a therapist who diagnoses him as antisocial. He gives Gaara the ultimate assignment: to become a progressive member of society.

Warning: It's a crackfic. Watch out for major OOC-ness and crazy pairings/happenings. Random and horrific cussing/swearing AKA profanity to the highest power. All research on psychobabble was HALF-ASSED. Do not trust our psychobabble or diagnoses or prognoses or whatever other noses we may put in here. You have been warned.

Rated: Monkey. Er, we mean M.

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A Progressive Member of Society

Chapter I: Mr. Bear and Movie Star Smiles

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"Gaara, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you."

There was a pause as Gaara stared at the therapist with his dull green eyes. He didn't really expect him to answer, did he?

"Now, don't you want to know what that news is?"

Apparently, he did. That was another fact supporting the fact that this therapist had no idea who he was dealing with. Not that Gaara expected him to, but the guy could have at least tried.

Again, there was a pause. The phone rang, interrupting their bout of silence.

"Excuse me a moment," said Mr. Bear, as he picked up the phone, "this will only take a second." His shining, black eyes gleamed in the light as he spoke animatedly into the receiver.

Gaara stopped his gaze from wandering and continued to glare menacingly at Mr. Bear, as though meaning to drill a hole straight through his overstuffed head. He was incredibly annoying, even for a therapist. Gaara really didn't know why he continued to come to these sessions. He didn't need someone else to tell him what was wrong with him; he already knew: he was antisocial and vaguely misanthropic. If it were up to him, he'd destroy anyone/anything that rubbed him the wrong way. Who really cared if that meant just about everyone/everything ever?

"All right then," spoke Mr. Bear, interrupting Gaara's train of thought. "Where were we? Ah, yes, don't you want to know what's going on?"

Gaara decided to humour the guy. Why? Well, because lying on an uncomfortable red chaise longue for over an hour, answering silly questions ("If you were a cloud, what kind would you be?"; "How many types of pretzels do you think there are in the world?"; "If you could dance naked down the halls, would you?") was annoying as hell and the sooner he could leave the better.

He wished to Kami-sama that the Hokage hadn't coerced him into not killing anymore. It left his nights empty and himself as well for something he wasn't sure of. He wanted to stay alive and free, and if not going on murderous rampages would allow him to liberally stroll the streets of Konoha without being attacked by a squad of jounins every five minutes, he'd do it. But he didn't have to be happy about it.

Did he really have to go to these therapy sessions just to cure his "antisocial personality?" Well, maybe "antisocial personality" shouldn't have been in quotation marks. But that still didn't mean that he needed to go to these stupid sessions. After taking various online tests and reading up on personality disorders, he knew exactly what was wrong with him. And just what was wrong with doing things that were the violation of the rights of others?

And why hadn't the therapist just given him a bunch of personality tests to see what was wrong with him? Asking him "Which color do you think best personifies the mockingbird?" just didn't seem to cut it.

"Yes, Mr. Bear," he answered in his usual monotone.

"Oh, really," Mr. Bear chuckled. "Call me Ted; it's so much more hip!"

Ted?

Hip?

Right….

Gaara went back to his usual answer of silence.

"Well, Gaara, it seems that you have a few problems."

No shit, Sherlock. I like to kill people. You don't see a whole lot of people writing that under "hobbies and interests," now do you? Well, not a lot of sane people, anyway.

"You see, Gaara, you have antisocial tendencies. Well, more than that, you have an antisocial personality. An antisocial personality is a personality characterised by a continuous and persistent pattern of aggressive behaviour in which the rights of others are violated. There are times when your demon friend, Shukaku, comes out and you become psychotic. I do believe you're taking pills to fix that problem?"

"They don't let me sleep."

At all.

Hence the dark eyeliner and mascara; it's not there to look pretty, it's there to cover up the dark circles under my eyes. And maybe to look a little pretty, though I won't admit that to anyone but myself and grudgingly even then. I have noticed several other people walking around with eyeliner like mine. I suppose I may have started a trend.

"Ah, well, that's just a minor side effect! They are helping you stave off your eminent psychosis. As you go on in life, if you allow your antisocial behaviour and your tendencies towards misanthropy to flourish, you may begin to suffer from a host of various side effects which may include psychosexual dysfunction.

"Do you know what that is?"

Gaara looked at him blankly, arms crossed across his chest with his legs crossed at the ankles. There was a spider crawling along the ceiling.

"Psychosexual dysfunction includes impotence, anorgasmia, and premature ejaculation."

Gaara stared at Ted, horrified. However, his horrified stare looked just like all of his other stares, so Ted didn't notice this change in his demeanour.

Premature ejaculation? Ted just said premature ejaculation. Gaara was sure Ted had just said premature ejaculation.

If he didn't fix his stupid antisocial personality he would be doomed to be known as the early cummer?

Wait, anorgasmia?

What the fuck is that?

"Now, Gaara, to keep yourself from developing these side effects, there is only one thing you can do."

Gaara stared at Ted. This was where Ted was supposed to tell him what he had to do, right?

"I've been wondering what could have happened to you to make you this way, Gaara."

Kami-sama.

So this was how therapists made their dollars. They stretched their sessions on for hours and talked about nothing and asked you "Why do you think the sky is blue?" It was a conspiracy, that's what it was.

"I think it might have had something to do with your mother dying so suddenly after childbirth. We talked about this, yes? What did I tell you to repeat every night?"

Gaara answered dutifully instead of his usual answer of silence. He'd do anything to find out how to ward off premature ejaculation. "My mommy's death wasn't my fault."

"Now, if only you'd come to see me before that Yashamaru fellow drilled those silly ideas into your head. You've been saying it every night before you go to bed?"

Over my dead body.

"Every night."

When was the last time Gaara had gone to bed? When he was six?

"Right, so I also thought that it had something to do with having your father try to kill you all the time. I'm sure he was suffering from a disorder as well, but which one? Ah, we'll never know. And then, I'm sure this upheaval from your hometown and being relocated in Konoha has put a considerable amount of stress on you. Having to leave all your friends behind and all."

What friends?

Gaara wished the damned therapist would hurry up and tell him how to stop the onset of his premature ejaculation and anorgasmia and whatever else he had mentioned.

"So, to stop the development of psychosexual dysfunction, there is only one thing you can really do."

He paused and Gaara considered hacking him to bits, regardless of what the Hokage had said, and simply Googling "premature ejaculation anorgasmia prevention" online.

"You, Gaara, will have to become a progressive member of society!"

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Gaara sulked down the stairs of the two-story, five-bedroom, tastefully decorated house he was currently residing in with his siblings, Temari and Kankuro, at six o'clock in the morning.

Gaara was sulking because of the horrific predicament he found himself in at the moment. Normally, he didn't sulk while going down the stairs. In fact, normally, he never even went down the stairs. Gaara had only used the stairs of his new house three times. Once to go up and see how it compared to the downstairs, once to go down and tell his brother and sister that he preferred the upstairs, and once to go back upstairs. After that, he just walked onto the balcony, which was conveniently located in his room, and leaped out on to the road below (or occasionally on to the roof of the next building) when he felt like getting some fresh air. He jumped out, and he jumped in. Simple.

So why was he perusing the stairs this fine and sunshiny morning which was so not helping his bad mood?

To have a quiet breakfast with his siblings, of course. Therapist's orders. Well, the therapist had given him many orders, many of which he didn't want to think about. Ted had given him many bits of advice on how to become a progressive member of society.

The first had been to have a family breakfast. The second… well, he didn't want to think about it at the moment.

He got to the floor and shuffled through the rooms until he found the kitchen where Kankuro and Temari were sitting, eating what appeared to be waffles. He paused in the doorway, wondering what to do. What had he been instructed to do?

Oh, yeah.

"Hi."

There, he had said something. He had greeted them. Now, by obligatory rights and rules and this odd thing called "manners," they were supposed to respond to him.

"Ga-gaara!" shouted Temari, her eyes as big as saucers. She stood so suddenly that she knocked her chair out from under her and it fell to the floor with a clatter. "What are you…" she paused, gave Kankuro a worried look and then glanced back at Gaara who was still frozen in the doorway, arms crossed across his chest. Oh, right, he was supposed to be less defensive. He uncrossed his arms.

"Gaara," said Kankuro slowly, as he rose from his chair. "What are you doing down here?"

Gaara refrained from twitching his right eye. Granted, he never came downstairs, but that didn't mean that when he did come downstairs that they had to make a big deal out of it.

"Is, is something wrong?" asked Temari, as she shuffled around the table, slowly edging farther and farther away from him. "Did something happen?"

Gaara's left eye twitched and he rubbed at his temple. This was not supposed to happen. They were supposed to ask him to sit down and have breakfast and ask him how his day was and ARGH.

He stalked over to the table, glowering horrifically. "Nothing happened," he informed them. "I'm here for breakfast." He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

"Oh…" said Kankuro. "Well, here, you can have my waffles," he said, pushing his plate towards Gaara. "I'm not hungry."

Kankuro's stomach growled.

"No, don't go," said Gaara. But if you try to touch these waffles, I will kill you. Oops, best to not say that out loud.

"Sit down. Let's all have breakfast together."

Gaara watched as his siblings looked at each other and then back at him. Was that some sort of secret signal? Or were they just seeing which one of them would flee first? Was he really that frightening? Why was he asking himself these stupid questions? And more importantly, where was the maple syrup?

As Gaara searched the tabletop for the maple syrup, Kankuro and Temari hovered anxiously at the sides of the table. Temari had righted her chair, but both of them were refraining from sitting down. Temari passed Gaara the maple syrup which had been hiding behind the floral centrepiece.

"Gaara," said Kankuro once more. "Why do you want to have breakfast with us?" He paused when Gaara's stolid gaze fell upon him. "I mean, not that it's unwelcome or anything, but a guy wonders, ya know?" He finished it off with a cheesy laugh which turned into a cough as Gaara glared down at his waffles.

He looked up again as he poured maple syrup onto the waffles. They were chocolate chip. Yum. "Ted said to have breakfast with you."

"Oh, oh," said Temari, smiling and blinking her eyes at Kankuro. Kankuro looked at Temari in confusion as he returned her smile, albeit a tad awkwardly. "Ah, well, that's nice, Gaara."

They both smiled at him.

And suddenly Gaara realized he had to do the second thing on the list of what he had to do. Oh, why, oh, why hadn't he taped his eyes shut today?

He shut his eyes and smiled at his two siblings.

When he opened his eyes… neither of them was there.

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"Step two, Gaara," said Ted, in his crazily loud voice, "is that whenever someone smiles at you, you must smile back."

Gaara stared at him in disbelief. Which again, was not quite so different from his stare of belief, or his stare of anger, or his stare of murderous rage. Well, maybe a little different from his stare of murderous rage.

Perhaps it was because Gaara kept on staring at him that Ted thought he was paying the utmost attention.

He wasn't.

"Well, show me that winning smile!" Ted exclaimed boisterously.

Gaara smiled, or at least tried to. His features contorted into the usual demonic, snarl-like grin that took control of his face when he was on a mad killing spree. His usually dull eyes shone with the manic glitter of insanity and he subconsciously clenched and unclenched his hands.

But of course, Gaara couldn't see this.

But Ted could.

"Ah, right," said Ted, loosening his tie. "Well, um…" He paused. "Well, you might want to work on that smile, there, Gaara, before you try it out." He coughed and moved onto the next order, leaving Gaara vaguely confused.

What was wrong with his smile?

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What was wrong with his smile?

Gaara wondered this again as he trudged through the house into the living room. In the living room, atop the fireplace, Temari had made the decorator hang a large, gold-gilded mirror. Gaara didn't know why she had done so (nor did he care, for that matter), but he was glad of its presence now that he was in need of it.

Did he have something perpetually stuck between his teeth? Were his teeth rotting out of his skull? That couldn't be possible, though; he brushed (and flossed) after every fucking meal. (Hey, a guy had to do something to pass the time, right?) And it couldn't be his breath. So…

What was it?

After pacing back and forth for a few minutes, Gaara finally decided to move an ottoman in front of the fireplace. He stepped on top of it, finally able to see his reflection in the mirror. He exhaled slowly, took a deep breath, and then smiled into the mirror.

Shortly after, he found himself cowering under the dining room table.

Did he really look that creepy when he smiled?

No wonder everyone screams before I kill them. It isn't death that scares them, it's probably my smile.

Most people would have been terrified of facing themselves after such a devastating realization. But most people weren't Gaara. In fact, no one was Gaara but Gaara. And so, it was only Gaara who was brave enough to face himself in front of the mirror again.

But once in front of the mirror, he ran into a little problem.

What was a normal smile supposed to look like? And how did a smile come about one's face? How did the muscles pull and which ones moved first? How did one do those little smirks and those large cheesy grins?

Surely, there was a trick to this smiling business. And Gaara was about to find it.

Now… who could he watch smile? He couldn't watch any people in real life, that was for sure. It would be too troublesome and annoying. He'd never be able to copy the moves fast enough. If only he had the Sharingan, or some sort of machine that made everything appear in slow-motion.

His eyes were scanning the room when they came across the TV.

Bingo.

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Several hours later, Gaara had perfected the art of smiling.

After hours of watching and rewinding and fast forwarding and mimicking, he had mastered almost every smile that a human could make. Well, that a human male could make. Well, he had only mastered the ones that seemed like they would make him look cool.

He pressed pause on the TV, freezing a movie star who had recently made it big as he flashed the cameraman a devious smirk. Gaara looked into the mirror and smirked a devious smirk.

Whoa.

He looked good.

He fast-forwarded to a happy, middle-aged male who was smiling very cheerily. Gaara again looked into the mirror and smiled cheerily.

He was so good at this. He could probably become a mime. He would mime a smile for $2.00. He'd make millions.

Gaara deadpanned into the mirror as he fast-forwarded the awards show to a movie clip of a very handsome half-naked male looking at a very beautiful, long-legged female. As it played out, he realized that he was glad he had found this awards show of Temari's. All of Kankuro's movies consisted of naked people having sex. The only smile he had seen in there had been on the women and they hadn't lasted long. Thank goodness Temari liked awards shows.

He looked himself up and down. "Looking good, hot stuff," he said in perfect timing with the actor.

He turned off the TV. He had mastered the art of smiling.

Now, it was time to deal with his third order.

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Whee, the end of chapter one.

In the next chapter, we will feature soup kitchens and poor people! Yay! Let's all take a leaf out of Gaara's book and practice smiling in front of the mirror!

… We've had too much sugar. ("Correction: Annette had too much sugar," said Bertha.)