Work Text:
Pronunciation
“Gaara, I have a question for you!”
Gaara looks up from his book just as a bare foot resting in his lap swings to tap him in the belly. He gives it a soft squeeze as he places his own novel face down over the arm of the sofa. “Yes?” he replies, his gaze trailing first up the mostly bare, scarred legs, then over the green boxer briefs and pink t-shirt, and finally landing on an opened book blocking his view of big dark eyes. A knobbly finger steals around the side to tap a line of text too small for him to read.
“What does this mean?”
“Lee, I can’t see that from here.”
Lee makes a soft oh sound and lurches up from his position sprawled out across their couch, his feet leaving the pillow of Gaara’s thighs to fold up neatly underneath him. A warm body leans up against him, and Gaara drops his head onto Lee’s shoulder to peer at the aforementioned sentence. It’s a poetry book Lee is holding, written entirely in Suna’s native syllabary. Lee’s spent the last few months crawling through books, determined to learn to read Sunan as well as he can speak it now. He's not yet fluent, but he can hold simple conversations, and every time Gaara catches him practicing, his heart warms all over again.
“I know this first part, but I am not sure about this word here. Is it the same as this one?” he points to another word on the page.
“Yes, it’s just the conjugation that’s different. Up here, the author is addressing the reader, but down here, they’re speaking about themself.”
“That does not fit the grammar rules,” Lee complains under his breath, but he’s never been good at speaking quietly, and Gaara laughs.
“You’re right, it doesn’t,” he explains when Lee turns a pout on him. “That’s one of the verbs that doesn’t fit the regular rules because it originally came from another language.”
Lee’s lips part in a quiet ah of understanding. Quick as a flash, he’s across the room pulling a notebook from their bookcase. Gaara watches him flip through pages and then make a note, his tongue peeking out between his teeth as he scribbles. He then turns back to Gaara with one of his small, gentle smiles, the ones Gaara has only ever seen directed at him, and he says, “Thank you,” in heavily accented Sunan.
“Of course,” Gaara says, and smiles back.
Pasta
“You made it,” Gaara says softly, and though Lee has been in Suna again for at least two hours, going through customs and debrief for his mission, it is not until this moment standing in their front hallway with Gaara in his pyjamas smiling at him that he truly feels at home.
“Of course I did!” Lee says, a little bit confused. He always comes home to Gaara, will always come home to Gaara; there is nothing in the world that will keep him from returning to Gaara’s arms and his quiet words and his secret smiles.
“I didn’t think you’d be back in time before I have to leave for the Kage assembly in Iwa. Kankurō was going to come if you didn’t make it back in time.”
Lee could have smacked himself. He stammers briefly before confessing. “I forgot!”
Gaara huffs a laugh. “Come have some food, you must be starving.”
Lee is starving, having run full tilt for a better part of the day after splitting with his team—Naruto and Sai—around noon. He had not remembered why he needed to be home, to be honest, but he had remembered he needed to be home, and so he had skipped meal breaks to get back to Suna faster. Food sounds like heaven, although admittedly, he would really rather not—
“I made pasta, if that’s alright. I got home later than I planned to today,” Gaara says, pulling Lee’s bag from his shoulders and dropping it to the side.
Completely against his will, Lee cringes. He is being silly and unappreciative; Gaara made food and he should be happy about it. All things that nourish the body are to be valued! He tries to recover, saying, “That is fine!” but his throat is curdling at the thought of yet more noodles, and his voice sounds strange. He hopes Gaara does not notice.
But of course, Gaara is attuned to him, and catches the shift in his shoulders, the creak in his voice. “Is something wrong?”
“I do not want to sound ungrateful,” Lee says, chagrined.
“Lee, you’re allowed to have opinions about things,” Gaara says, unzipping his jacket and stripping it off his shoulders. With a hiss, all the sand peels off his bag, clothes, and skin, and scurries out the open window. “What is it? Tell me.”
“It is just,” Lee sighs, “Naruto-kun oversaw ration prep for this mission. I think I have eaten only pasta for two straight weeks now.”
Gaara nods sagely. “I see.” He makes a pensive face, then picks up Lee’s bag and drops it into his arms. “Go shower and unpack. We can eat after.”
Too tired to wonder why Gaara has suddenly delayed dinner, Lee obeys.
When he returns half an hour later, clean and dressed in pyjamas with his bag repacked for tomorrow’s departure, Gaara bids him go sit, and he does. A moment later, a steaming tagine is dropped in front of him by sand, and Gaara himself places down a stack of flatbread that smells wonderfully of garlic. When the lid of the tagine comes off, Lee is greeted with poached eggs in a bubbling tomato-red sauce, the mouth-watering scent of spice, and not a noodle in sight.
“This…” Lee mumbles, “is not pasta.”
Gaara settles into the seat next to him and leans on his shoulder. “I put it in the freezer. We can have that when we get back.”
Lee’s mind turns over, sluggish from exhaustion and hunger, but after a minute, the realisation finally clicks. Gaara shooed him off to get cleaned up specifically so he could make Lee something he would enjoy more than pasta. Gaara, who is so busy all the time, who is probably equally as tired as he is if not more so, went to the effort of making an entire second meal just to accommodate Lee’s preferences.
His eyes water.
“Gaara,” he croaks.
Arms snake around his waist. “Yes?”
Lee turns and crushes their lips together. “I love you,” he whispers in between tasting the mint tea on Gaara’s lips and the saltwater coursing down his own face. “Why are you so good to me?”
“Because I want to be,” Gaara says, and he kisses Lee back tenderly, stroking the tears away while he hiccups his way into silence.
“Better?” Gaara asks.
Lee nods, smiling rather wetly.
“Good,” Gaara says, and his thin fingers find Lee’s hand. “Now, eat, before it gets cold.”
Closet
“You look marvellous!”
“I look ridiculous,” Gaara says, disgruntled. He peers at himself in the mirror. The green fabric ensconcing him coupled with his shock of red hair makes him look like an abstraction of a Christmas tree. He says as such, and Lee giggles from his position cross-legged on their bed, his eyes squinting under the force of his laughter.
“Well, it is the appropriate season!” Lee announces.
Gaara looks behind him through the mirror and crosses his arms. The sleeves are too long on him, and he nearly trips when he steps on a hem while shifting his weight. Lee’s smile only grows wider.
“Suna doesn’t celebrate Christmas.”
“Well,” Lee says, hopping off the bed, “Kumo does, and that is where we are going next week, is it not? You can keep it; it is good in all climates!”
Gaara sighs, fondness and exasperation in equal measure.
“I’m not wearing this outside of this room.”
“That is fine too,” Lee says with soft eyes. “I am just happy you agreed to try.” His arms wrap around Gaara, and lips land in his hair. Gaara relaxes into his embrace. Quiet descends for a moment, punctuated only by the muted sounds of a city settling in for the evening, and Gaara breathes in the moment, content to simply be. Everything smells of their lives; Lee’s herbal balm and shampoo, Gaara’s favourite cologne, the lingering smell of coffee that permeates their heavily caffeinated household. It's a cozy smell that makes Gaara feel, more than anything else, safe.
“You have to admit, though,” Lee whispers, “it is very comfortable.”
Gaara refuses to agree, although a week later enroute to Kumo, bundled in stiff winterwear that limits his movement while Lee tromps along next to him in his customary gear, nothing but a cloak, boots, and neon-orange scarf as concessions to the cold, he thinks to himself, the jumpsuit really was comfortable.
Desperation
Two whole months.
It has been two whole months since Gaara left Suna with Kankurō as his backup. Two whole months where Temari has been acting as interim Kazekage—with Shikamaru taking over her normal cross-village envoy duties—and Lee—to the great amusement of everyone involved—stepping up as her advisor per Gaara’s very exacting instructions. Temari had laughed aloud and continued laughing, until she had gotten into a legislation argument with the Council and Lee had been the one—to the apparent surprise of everyone involved—to fix it. Since then, he has held a startlingly high authority in Suna’s upper echelon of administrative powers for a shinobi from a foreign village.
Lee wonders if, somehow, Gaara expected this, planned for it even. It seems something Gaara would do, a way to cement Lee's position in Suna, given what few people of import who still dissent to their relationship all sit on the Council.
He also wonders, as his daily tasks have shifted heavily to village management and advisory over the last several weeks, why people always assume he has no head at all for politics; he is a shinobi, and shinobi are both trained in the art of warfare and in political manoeuvring. He is prone to being loud and exuberant, he knows this, but that does not mean he does not know how to negotiate.
Plus, Gaara talks in the shower. He also talks at dinner, and when he joins Lee for his trainings, and when they are cuddled up in bed together. He actually talks quite a lot in private, and Lee adores this. He can listen to Gaara speak in his low, calm rasp all day long and never once find himself distracted.
It just so happens that the very issue Temari ran into with the Council in the beginning—and quite a few others in the last two months, to be frank—are issues that Gaara has talked at length with Lee about, because Gaara has never once treated Lee like an idiot. He may be the only person except, possibly, Gai-sensei, who has never treated him as such.
It is one of the many things Lee loves—and misses dearly—about Gaara.
And he misses Gaara with a desperation that is starting to border on the insane.
He thinks about Gaara constantly. It is like his words live in Lee’s bloodstream, like Lee’s heart beats out a tempo to the syllables of his name. In the mirror, Lee sees his own scars left by Gaara in their preadolescence not as scars anymore, but as a reminder that he is real, that he is somewhere out there, that no matter how far away he might go he will always be, in some small way, here. With Lee.
But the reality is that right now, Gaara is not here. The mission he and Kankurō are on is beyond S-class, so high on the classification scale that even Lee and Temari do not know the full details. He has not written in two months. Lee does not even know if they are alive out there. He refuses to entertain that notion entirely, but sometimes he wakes at night panicked and alone in their room, devoid of the presence and scent of his precious one, and while he has not cried yet, he has come dangerously close to it.
Waking up feels harder without him. Training feels less productive, food tastes like dust no matter how it is cooked, and even the world around him feels sapped of its colours. Lee has always thought the desert beautiful, but he did not realise how much of that beauty ties to Gaara.
He knows now.
He packs up his work for the day—it is sunset now and he has been here since just after dawn; he is truly starting to understand why Gaara is so often apologising for being late for dinner and resolves to never ever think unkindly about it again—and heads for the door, hoping that no one will stop him with questions or even try to engage him in general conversation. Lee usually loves talking to people, but he is feeling so very drained these days, trapped in a cycle that nothing seems to break. He will leave the office, complete his evening training, eat dinner, shower, and sleep alone. When he wakes before dawn tomorrow, he will repeat everything all over again, and gradually the whole world will lose its colours, and sooner, rather than later, Lee is probably going to break down sobbing in Gaara’s office in front of Temari because he misses him so much it aches like a raw wound and what is the point without him—
“Lee!” Temari calls, jarring him from his rapidly spiralling thoughts. She is running down the hallway towards him, her hair bouncing behind her. Her fist is clenched like she is planning to hit him. He hopes that is not the case; she has whacked him before during a rare spar and it hurt. She has a right hook to rival Sakura.
“Yes, Temari-san?”
She stops in front of him and lifts her closed fist. This close, Lee can see something clasped in it. “I have something for you,” she says with a smirk, and drops a small curl of paper into his hand, rolled tight with a tiny ring around it made of sand. It is Gaara’s sand, chakra-rich and vibrant, and when he touches it gingerly, the sand is warm. It rolls up his hand at his touch before it dissipates. Lee’s heart skips in his chest, and he unrolls the tiny scroll to reveal Gaara’s precise script. It contains only a few words, but Lee feels each stroke of the characters like a caress against his battered soul.
Lee,
I’m sure you’re worried by now. We’re safe. We should be home next month.
I love you.
Gaara
Just like that, Lee’s whole body feels electric. He jitters out a thank you to Temari, who laughs and shoos him off, and he throws himself out a window onto the rooftops, racing towards the training grounds amidst a backdrop of vibrant dusk.
Gaara is alive. Gaara is alive, and safe, and will be home soon, and loves him.
Lee is not sure the sunset has ever looked so bright.
Good Soup
“Gaara, welcome home!” echoes from somewhere in the house just as Gaara closes the door behind him.
Gaara shucks his robes onto a hook by the door and removes his shoes before padding further down the hallway. Lee’s chakra signature is strongest in the kitchen, so he heads there to find Lee with approximately every surface in the room covered in cookware and ingredients. Lee’s on the floor with his upper body wedged into a cabinet, apparently digging for something. Mess aside, something is simmering on the stove, and it smells wonderful in a way that provokes an unexplained familiarity.
“Did you set a bomb off in here?” Gaara asks him dryly.
Lee bashes his head while attempting to extricate himself from the cabinet and muffles a yelp. “Wuh?” he says, rubbing his head. Gaara reaches out and helps him to his feet, and once he's standing, Lee shakes his hair back and offers Gaara a guilty smile. “I was looking for that sauce I bought a few months back, near the coast. I was trying to recreate that one soup they made that you said you liked!”
“The chicken one?”
“Yes!”
The smell resolves into a memory—Lee had come with him in lieu of his ANBU on a quick trip to visit some of the smaller outlying towns under Suna’s protections and to check up on the shinobi outposts there. They’d been invited by the guard captain to sample some of the local cuisines while visiting, and their kitchen currently smells of that outing; a savoury blend of wine and tomato and spices lingers in the warm air. Upon being asked his opinion that day on the coast, Gaara had said, “It’s very good.”
Lee had not-so-secretly smiled into his teacup, then purchased a jar of the marinade to take home.
“Kankurō has it. You used it last time he came for dinner, and he wanted to borrow some.”
Lee frowns. “I forgot about that.”
Gaara wanders over to the currently simmering pot and lifts the lid. Steam billows over his face, and he breathes in deep. Even without the marinade, it smells heavenly. He goes for a spoon to taste it.
“Gaara, it is not done yet!”
He sticks the spoon in his mouth. Closes his eyes. Whatever people say about Lee’s penchant for overdoing it with spices, they can’t deny that he’s excellent at cooking when he puts his mind to it. Which is rare, to be honest; Lee usually goes for rote nutritional value when he’s busy, and he’s flat-out most of the time. Gaara is more likely to simply eat whatever is nearest. In fact, he hasn’t eaten at all today, his time was taken up entirely by meetings and legislation talks. Lee’s no less busy, but he clearly took time out just to make something he remembered that Gaara had enjoyed months ago.
If anything, this version tastes even better, because Gaara can see the love put into it.
“Is it okay? I am sorry if it does not taste right, you do not have to—“
He turns to Lee and plants a soft kiss on his nose. “It’s fantastic, Lee. Thank you.” He then moves to start cleaning up the explosion of cookware Lee has left across their countertops.
Lee turns just as red as his cooking, and he splutters.
Mood
Lee’s well known in Suna these days for a myriad of reasons, and one of them is his irrepressible good mood. He leaks it the way he leaks chakra without meaning to; happiness swirls around him and brightens the day of everyone he interacts with, whether they want to be cheered up or not. Gaara’s been asked—most recently by Matsuri—if Lee even knows how to be any other emotion besides happy. He usually doesn’t deign to answer this inane line of questioning, but it warms him to know that Lee is just as much a beacon of light to everyone else as much as he is to Gaara.
But Gaara is Lee’s partner, and that means Gaara sees all of him, including the parts he tries hard to never show anyone.
Gaara doesn’t know what’s caused it this time, but when he gets behind the warding of their home, Lee’s chakra hits him like a brick wall. It’s wild, erratic, almost violent the way he’s only seen a few times—at their first match, in the war, on the rare occasion Gaara gets hurt. He walks in the door to no greeting and no acknowledgement, and he doesn’t take off his shoes, because he thinks he’s going to need them in a few minutes. He finds Lee in their kitchen standing there with a glass of water that has a clear crack in it, and his hand isn’t steady. There’s more broken glass on the floor. An opened letter rests on the table, but Gaara can’t read it from here, nor is he going to unless Lee wants to show it to him.
“Lee.”
Lee turns to him, and oh, he’s upset. His eyes are red-rimmed and his jaw is tight. His gaze flickers, a little bit manic.
“Oh, Gaara,” he says, clearly trying for calm and failing. “I did not hear you come in.”
The crack in the glass he’s holding grows wider.
Gaara has seen Lee like this a few times before. He rarely snaps, and he never lashes out, always bottling his negative emotions in and in and in until something awful happens and he boils over. He’s not good at releasing those emotions, too bogged down under the weight of his self-imposed rules and formality.
But Gaara is Lee’s partner, and he knows how to fix this, because he’s done it many times before. He’ll take Lee out with him into the desert and insist on sparring with him until Lee finally agrees. Lee will try to pull his punches until he finally blows his top and probably a Gate or two. They’ll wreck their surroundings and scare anyone in a five-kilometre radius with the destructive nature of their chakras until Lee finally burns out whatever is eating him alive and breaks down crying, then they’ll sit there in the cooling desert evening and Gaara will hold him until he’s ready to talk about it. When they get home, they’ll take a shower together to pool their ration time, and Gaara will wash his hair while Lee croaks out thank you’s that he doesn’t need to say. Then, they’ll get Lee’s favourite takeout and curl up to share a novel, and by the end of the night, Lee will be kissing him and smiling, because he knows by now that Gaara will never let him apologise for something so intrinsically human as a bad mood.
Gaara rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck. He’s probably going to take some damage from this, he usually does, but he doesn’t mind.
When it helps Lee, it’s always worth it.
Knowing
“I am s-so sorry,” Lee hiccups for the dozenth time.
“None of that,” Gaara says, and his voice is soft in the darkness, winding down Lee’s body like a sip of hot tea on a cold evening. His lips settle somewhere on the crown of Lee’s head, and his touch there is warm too. “I know.”
Although Lee is well known for his ability to sleep anywhere, what is less known is that he sometimes has truly awful nightmares. Most of them stem from the fears he has not quite been able to conquer: the words of bullies from his childhood, Tsunade’s suggestion to quit being a ninja, Gai-sensei’s dying body on the battlefield before Naruto came to save him.
His teammates know, of course, they have needed to subdue him when he has woken crying more than once. It is always rather embarrassing, although neither Neji nor Tenten begrudge his occasional panics. He has held them when they have cried, too.
The first time he had woken sobbing next to Gaara had been sort of horrible, because he had forgotten to warn Gaara of his tendency to lash out while still unconscious, and Gaara had suffered a nasty bruise to his jaw and cheek, even through the sand’s defence.
But it has happened many times since then, and Gaara knows him now.
“S-still,” Lee croaks, “I did not mean to w-wake you.”
Gaara is typically slow to rise, sluggish and grumpy in the mornings, but on the occasion Lee erupts from a nightmare with a strangled scream and unwieldy fists, Gaara is up and moving instantly, faster than anything Lee has ever known him to do. He catches Lee’s wild throws with sand before he moves in, then he curls around Lee and whispers, “You’re dreaming. Wake up. I’m here.”
“I’d rather be awake than let you deal with this alone.”
More tears force their way from Lee’s eyes, as they do every time this happens and he remembers just how many times Gaara has said I love you in his quiet, unassuming way. He rarely says the words, but it is moments like this where Lee knows, with more surety than anything else he has ever known in his life, that Gaara loves him.
Lee sags into his chest and reaches for his hand. “I love you,” he whispers.
Gaara’s lips move to his ear and kiss it tenderly. “I know.”
“So much.”
“I know.”
Braid
From across the room, Lee makes an irritated noise. Gaara looks up from where he’s brushing his teeth to see Lee with a fistful of his own hair, frowning in the mirror. He rinses his toothbrush and spits.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have apparently forgotten how to braid my own hair,” Lee announces, detangling his fingers from the now long and unwieldy strands.
Lee has beautiful hair, thick and shiny and silky-soft to the touch. Gaara tells him this often, and each time, Lee seems to accept the quiet compliment a little bit more, though never completely; he always ends up blushing and trying to change the topic. He’s been growing it out for a while save his bangs, and to date, Gaara has only seen him tie it back in a ponytail. Gaara suspects he keeps it this way because Lee knows how much Gaara likes to run his fingers through it. Whenever he does, Lee melts into his touch with a happy sigh.
“I can braid it for you,” Gaara murmurs, padding over and taking the brush out of Lee’s suddenly slack hand.
“You can braid?” Lee asks, dumbfounded.
“There were only so many things I could do to occupy my time at night before I could sleep,” Gaara answers, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Come here.”
Lee sits between his legs on the floor without complaint. Gaara pulls a brush through his hair quickly, then switches to raking through it with his fingers. Lee hums a content little sound, and his arms snake around Gaara’s calves. His hands find their way under the hems of Gaara’s trousers and settle on the skin there, his thumbs stroking gently up and down Gaara’s Achilles’ heel. Like this, Lee could disable Gaara with a single gesture, render him completely unable to walk with a twitch of those rough fingers, but he doesn’t. He never will. Gaara knows this in the same way he knows the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the way he knows the mineral composition of the desert sands, the way he knows that he loves Lee and Lee loves him in return.
His fingers knit black threads into patterns, strand over strand over strand. He may not be very good with declarations of love, but he can put his feelings into his actions, and so he does, every time. Each loop of hair is smoothed down to perfection, each knot detangled so carefully Lee doesn’t even notice it’s there. He’s pulled one of Gaara’s bare feet into his hands now, gently manipulating the arches to drag tension free. They say nothing, simply moving through tender motions that speak love louder than words ever could.
Finally, Gaara reaches the end of Lee’s hair, and Lee has nearly finished massaging Gaara’s other foot. “Do you have a hair tie?”
“Here,” Lee says, and offers him a tie pinched in two fingers. Gaara takes the whole hand and kisses his recently stitched knuckles before securing his braid with three twists of elastic and another kiss, this time to the crown of his head.
“All done.”
Lee cranes his neck to look up at him. “Thank you,” he whispers, and his eyes are shining.
Trees
“Did you ever climb trees when you were a child?” Lee asks. He rocks back onto his heels and forward again, perpetually in motion. He is really not good at keeping still unless he needs to.
“Never,” Gaara says, looking at the forest around them. His eyes are luminous, even in the dappled shade of late afternoon, and he is nearly motionless, a complete contrast from Lee. “There aren’t really climbable trees in Suna.”
“Oh,” Lee says, feeling suddenly quite dumb. “I did not think of that.”
Gaara looks at him with something slightly mischievous in his eyes. “In a way, I did climb a few trees when I first came to Konoha.”
“In a way?”
Gaara turns and walks directly up the nearest tree trunk. The tree he has chosen has a large branch arcing over the path, and he walks onto it upside down. His gourd, belted to his hip, thunks against his waist. He crosses his arms and stares sedately at Lee, as if this is totally normal and the Kazekage of Sunagakure is not dangling from a tree in the middle of the forest path outside Konoha’s main gate.
Lee chortles. “What, did you simply hang upside down like a bat?”
“That’s exactly what I did,” Gaara says, and he smiles, the tiniest curve of his lips. “Now, come here,” he adds.
Lee steps closer, lulled by the bright gleaming of those seaglass green eyes. Like this, Gaara’s eyes are level with his own, their thick lashes and dark rings a sea of black in which the tide swirls.
Gaara does not have to voice his next request; Lee already knows what he wants. He tilts his chin up and cups Gaara’s head in his hands. Kissing upside-down is strange, but Gaara’s lips are warm, and his hair is soft, and when unarmoured hands steal gentle into his hair, he thinks that this, certainly this, must be what happiness feels like.
Lights, Sky
“Lee, I’ve been to the river before, it’s not a surprise for me,” Gaara says. Lee’s hands, currently held over his eyes, don’t move.
“It is not the river I want to show you!” Lee declares. Gaara sighs.
“I’ve seen the night sky on the water before too, and I’m not going swimming right now.”
“Those are also not it!”
Gaara allows his head to loll back against Lee’s shoulder, tilting towards where he knows Lee is probably watching him. He attempts a glare that Lee can’t see, but Lee’s hands still don’t move. He’s definitely watching Gaara, because he chuckles and says, “Do not look at me like that.”
“I would like my eyesight back, thank you.”
A kiss lands on his temple, and Gaara feels some of his disgruntlement slip away. “We are nearly there.”
They walk another two minutes in silence, Gaara stewing about his lack of vision but otherwise calm. He knows Lee won’t let him trip on anything or lead him otherwise astray.
Lee stops them and turns Gaara. The magnet release tells him he’s facing north, and the slightly peaty scent on the breeze caressing his face indicates they’re in the clearing near the river. The ground here is soft, a little damp. It sags under his sandaled feet.
“We are here!” Lee cheers quietly.
“Can I look now?”
In response, Lee brushes his thumbs over Gaara’s cheekbones and withdraws. Gaara blinks a few times at his feet while his eyes adjust, then he looks up and forgets entirely how to breathe.
The clearing is filled with lights. Tiny ones, thousands of them, flicker between the blades of tall grasses and alight on lily pads in the slow-moving water. They float on the slow, muggy breeze and settle on the trunks of trees on the edge of the clearing. When he looks at the reflection in the river, they look like shooting stars in the sky, arcing through constellations. It’s something out of a painting, and it’s so peaceful Gaara feels he could sink into it and drift away.
He stares at the scene for so long he forgets he’s not alone.
“Gaara?” Lee murmurs behind him. Gaara turns to him, perhaps to apologise for his distraction, perhaps not, he will never know, because every thought flies from his head when he sees Lee with his big dark eyes just as reflective as the water, galaxies spangled in their inky depths.
“Yes?” he replies quietly,
Lee holds out his hands. There’s light spilling from between his fingers, yellow and winking like the ones currently swaying in the grasses. Gaara cups his own hands over Lee’s, and calloused fingers part to reveal several small insects, their abdomens glowing in erratic patterns.
“They are called fireflies, Temari said you do not have them in Suna? They are only here a few weeks of the year, and I do not think you have been in Konoha at the right time before.”
“We don’t.”
“I thought you might like to see it,” Lee says with a smile, and Gaara nods. Lee unfolds his hands entirely, and after a moment, the fireflies take wing and become one again with the hundreds, a scintillating dance of light through empty air.
“Beautiful, is it not?”
“It is,” he answers, but he’s not thinking about the river, or the reeds, or the great starry sky, or the floating lights of the fireflies anymore. He’s thinking about Lee, the way his smile is a brighter light than any he’s ever seen, the way the map of his skin is as detailed and complicated as the wild arrangement of lights that gleam around them, the way everything seems more colourful when he walks into the room.
Lee takes his hand, and his grip is gentle, tender the way he cradled the fireflies and the way he always cradles Gaara’s heart.
And Gaara, safe in a world that Lee has made so very, very beautiful, grips back.
Tacos
Lee opens the window to Gaara’s office and slides in, a practiced motion. Gaara does not move from his position bent over some very text-heavy documents, but Lee knows Gaara can sense him, and he does not react with surprise when Lee drapes himself over Gaara’s shoulders. Instead, his free arm wraps around Lee’s thigh and pats absently.
“Hello love,” Lee says, kissing down the side of Gaara’s face, and he watches Gaara's lips twitch up into a small smile as he continues to scan the documents scattered across his desk. “I brought food.”
“What is it?”
Lee deposits a bag directly onto Gaara’s paperwork, and Gaara huffs at him before peering in and picking up one neat semicircle of foil. He looks at Lee questioningly.
“There is a new stand in the markets—the proprietor said they are called tacos! They are apparently popular in the Land of Waves.”
Gaara unwraps one and bites into it. After a thoughtful chew, he says, “This is good.” He then sits back while Lee drags around a chair and properly unloads their dinner. Lee tells him about his day’s work and training in detail, as he usually does, and Gaara listens with a smile in his eyes, asking periodic questions. Their conversation shifts around at random while they eat, and Lee savours the moment. It is not unique; they do this often, but Lee makes an effort to appreciate every moment he has of Gaara’s time. How can he not, when he loves Gaara so?
All too soon, the pile of food becomes a pile of wrappings. Lee goes for a last taco, and so does Gaara, but after a moment, they both freeze with an arm outstretched.
There is only one wrapped taco left.
Lee looks at Gaara and Gaara looks at him. Slowly, Gaara’s expression shifts into something subtly mischievous.
Oh, Lee knows this game well.
Quick as a flash, he grabs the taco and bolts for the window. He does not make it. A lariat of sand encases his ankle and trips him, while another snatches its foil-wrapped target from Lee’s flailing hands. When he rights himself, he finds Gaara waving the taco at him teasingly.
“Give that back!”
“Come and get it.”
Lee tries another tactic.
He walks up, slow as anything, and kisses Gaara deeply. While Gaara is distracted, he grabs his wrist and bends his pinkie back. Gaara grunts into his mouth and Lee steals back his taco. For good measure, he then tosses Gaara across the room. A startled laugh sails through the air with him.
That is when the fight really begins.
It is not really a fight, per say, it is more of a tradition they have built that Lee cannot exactly pinpoint the origin of. One of them shows up with food, but there is never quite a shareable number, and they end up battling for who gets the last piece. Typically, whatever food is involved—in this case it is one very unfortunate taco—ends up smashed or shared or entirely forgotten about, and Gaara ends up in Lee’s lap kissing him instead.
Lee does not ever complain about this rare instance of wasting food. Besides, what better way to interrupt the long monotony of Gaara’s days in the office than with an invigorating spar?
Granted, they have caused more structural damage than Lee would like to admit, and Gaara’s poor assistant, Shijima, has dealt with their impromptu food wars probably more than is sensible, so when Lee crashes straight through the door of Gaara’s office in a cannonball of sand, she simply looks up and bellows, “Again!?”
Lee is laughing too hard to climb back to his feet, but from his place on the floor, he sees Gaara step up to the broken door frame, lean against it, and bite into his prize.
“Can you please keep your weird food-related flirting out of the office?” Shijima complains.
Duty
Lee wakes with a start.
He is in a hospital bed, which is, unfortunately, not an uncommon way for him to wake up, but he is rather more concerned by this fact than he usually would be, because he does not exactly remember how he got here.
It is dark, and a bleary-eyed glance at the clock across the room indicates it is the early hours of morning. His jumpsuit and weights have been removed to who-knows-where, and quite frankly, he is not sure which village he is in. It smells humid, so that removes Suna as an option, but the curtains are drawn save a sliver of weak moonlight, and there is no ambient noise from which to draw conclusions.
Where is he?
“Oh, you’re awake!” comes a familiar sounding voice in a nearly inaudible whisper. He looks over to see Sakura in her medi-nin uniform.
Well, that does answer a few questions. He must be in Konoha. Last he remembers, he was in Suna, working in his office.
“S—” he starts, but she silences him with a finger to her lips. One of her hands lights up green, and she runs it over his head, then nods, satisfied.
“You’re alright, Lee-san,” she breathes, “but be very quiet, okay?”
He pitches his voice down as low as he can make it, although he does not know why she is insisting on such quiet. “Sakura-san, why am I here?”
She gives him a reassuring look, then whispers, “You were escorting the Kazekage to an assembly being held here this week”—she pauses and wrinkles her nose—“or was, at least… but anyway, enroute you two were attacked by a rogue cell. You took a serious blow to the head, and you’ve been asleep a few days since he brought you in. You have a concussion, but no bone damage. Now that you’re awake you’ll be cleared to leave in the morning.”
Blurry memories surface like oil rising through water. He remembers a campfire, soft kisses, then shouting. He remembers seeing a ninja appear out of thin air, swinging a club at Gaara’s back, and throwing himself in the way. He remembers pain, then silence. He must have been knocked out.
“Is Gaara okay?” Lee blurts, horrified. Sakura shushes him again and points behind him. Lee cranes his neck, wincing slightly.
Slumped in a chair in the corner is Gaara, totally asleep. He has purple bags visible under the thick black tanuki rings around his eyes, and a pen is teetering precariously in his hand resting on a small stack of paperwork on the end table. Lee has seen him fall asleep like this before at home, and his typical response is to strip him of his coat and shoes and carry him upstairs to their bed. He cannot do this now, of course, but the memory relaxes him slightly and makes him want to smile.
“He’s been really worried about you, Lee-san. He won’t leave this room. Oonoki is really annoyed at him for delaying the assembly, but Kakashi-sensei and Naruto have been running interference for him. He’ll be glad to see you awake.” Sakura sighs, then says, “My shift is over in an hour, and I have to finish the rounds, but I’m sure I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Of course!” Lee cheers in a stage whisper. In the corner, Gaara stirs, and Sakura squeezes his shoulder and departs. Lee turns to Gaara and says nothing, only watches as he stirs to wakefulness with a displeased sound. Then his eyes crack open and find Lee sitting up and watching him.
“Lee!” he says in a rushed whisper, then hands are on Lee’s face and big green eyes, wide as they ever go, bore into his own. “Are you alright?”
He cradles those smaller hands in his own. “I am fine,” he says. “I am sorry I worried you.”
Gaara sags against him and says nothing for a while. Lee does not either, even when he feels Gaara’s breathing hitch against his shoulder. When Gaara calms again, Lee takes his damp face in hand and kisses him.
“Gaara,” he says between kisses, “come sit.”
Gaara climbs onto the bed and settles next to him, and Lee puts a hand on his thigh.
“Do you remember what happened?” Gaara asks him.
“Mostly.”
“Why did you do that?” This question is harsher, more ragged. He looks away, abruptly incensed, his jaw tight and his eyes bright like a summer tempest. He is angry, though Lee knows it is not meant for him so much as it is Gaara’s own fury that he cannot always keep Lee safe.
“I am meant to protect you! Just like you are meant,” Lee says, shouldering him lightly, “to attend the planned assembly to represent Suna, not sit here and watch me sleep.”
Gaara’s face softens by degrees, rage melting like snow in sunlight, sliding off his face to reveal an expression soft and light, like new blades of grass in the early spring. “I have a duty to my village, yes,” he murmurs, and he takes Lee’s bare hands, holding them with tender care. He meets Lee’s eyes, and in them, Lee sees only love. “But I also have a duty to you.”
Training
“Two-hundred seventeen, two-hundred eighteen, two-hundred nineteen…” Lee’s breathless tenor cranks out the repetitions of his push-ups. Gaara listens absently, ignoring the bounce of the horizon in his eyeline, focusing on the space between his fingers. Chakra-infused sand swirls there, the tiniest, most delicate of movements. He’s never taken such care before, and manoeuvring with such precision is exhausting, but this is important. This is the most important thing he’s ever tried to make.
“One-thousand!” Lee cheers, then settles flat to the floor on his belly. Gaara relaxes, his own task complete. He slides off Lee’s back and reclines on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Lee rolls onto his side and wedges his arm under Gaara’s neck, supporting his head.
“That was most invigorati—Gaara, you are sweatier than I am!” Lee exclaims. “What were you doing?”
“Sitting on you,” Gaara says deadpan, then smirks at the instant annoyance that blooms on Lee’s face.
“I knew that much,” Lee gripes at him. “That does not explain why you are sweaty.”
“I was training.”
Lee props himself up with the arm under Gaara’s head, bringing him in close. He pecks Gaara’s cheek. “What were you training?”
“I was fine-tuning my chakra control.”
Lee snorts, then pulls him into a seated position. “You have perfect chakra control.”
“Not for this.”
“What is ‘this’?”
Gaara gives him a sideways glance and a subtle smile, one he knows will drive Lee completely insane until Gaara finally tells him what it means. The amused exasperation on Lee’s face tells him that Lee knows exactly what he’s doing. “Maybe I’ll tell you one day.”
Lee rolls his eyes, then stands up, offering Gaara a hand. Gaara takes it, and Lee draws him up and into a sweaty hug. His arms wrap Gaara’s waist, and Gaara breathes in the scent of rain and salt.
“Thank you for training with me today,” Lee whispers. Gaara responds by rising onto his toes to touch Lee’s lips to his own.
Pressed between their bodies in Gaara’s coat pocket, a pale jade ring, inlaid with a delicate, winding ribbon of Gaara’s chakra-infused sand, burns like a star.