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I.
Once they left the forest, the path to Konoha’s gates was smooth and hard-packed. It had been tamped flat by generations of shinobi’s sandals, disrupted by little more than the occasional jut of stones small enough to be gravel.
“I think I can take it from here,” said Lee, trying to tug his aching arm from around Gaara’s shoulder. It wasn’t even the injured one; he was just that exhausted. Everything hurt, from the small of his back to the skin behind his eyebrows. Even Gate training had not been so painful.
Gaara’s fingers dug into his flesh. He was being surprisingly gentle; most of the pressure was exerted on the soft middle of Lee’s waist, through the belt where he wore his hitai-ate.
“No.”
“What do you mean no? It’s not even half a mile to the village; I’m more than capable of getting there under my own power!”
“No.” Gaara’s grip tightened. Lee winced as his shoulder stretched down over Gaara’s smaller frame. “You’re injured and weak. This is what you do with people who have been hurt.”
“You were thrown around quite a bit back there yourself!”
“The sand caught me.” Gaara nudged Lee’s foot with his toe to get him moving again; he’d planted himself in the middle of the road in stubborn impulse.
Lee could have resisted. In a purely physical contest, Gaara was no match for him, even during his recovery. He couldn’t say why he let Gaara push him forward, why his body wouldn’t agree with the words his mouth was saying.
“The sand caught me as well, you know,” he added, more for the sake of argument than anything. He wasn’t going to—to wrestle Gaara off of him or something crazy like that.
Admittedly, it wouldn’t have been the craziest thing he’d ever done.
Barrelling off after Sasuke Uchiha and fighting one of Orochimaru’s experiments when he was still supposed to be using his crutches part-time probably ranked pretty high up there.
So did forgiving Gaara when he hadn’t even apologized.
“Yes.” The gourd of sand strapped to Gaara made a strange noise. Almost a gurgle. It sounded like a living thing back there. “It’s never done that before.”
“Caught someone?”
“Other than me.”
“I assumed that you told it to do that.” Of course, Lee didn’t have that much understanding of Gaara’s unique jutsu. He didn’t seem to use many hand seals or make verbal commands outside of his big, showstopper moves. There had been plenty of rumors flying after their match, haunted stories that Tenten whispered with raised eyebrows, perched in her back brace on a chair next to his hospital bed. Lee didn’t know which of them to believe.
“I did. It just usually doesn’t let me use it to touch someone without …” Gaara's toe collided with a rock. It went skittering down the path. He cast his eyes downwards, towards Lee’s left leg that was dragging behind them. “He doesn’t usually let me.”
“He?”
“The demon.” Gaara’s hands stopped clutching him quite so tight. He seemed suddenly very conscious of his grip. He smoothed the bandages on Lee’s arm with cautious gestures. “Naruto would have told you.”
“Er, Naruto-kun … hasn’t been in the village very often,” Lee said carefully. It was difficult to know how much of the detail of their new Hokage’s return to Konoha was confidential information. Suna and Konoha were supposed to be allies now, but the allyship was still quite tentative. “And we weren’t particularly close even before he left. We had only just met at the beginning of the chuunin exams, though I’ve known his teacher for some time.”
Gaara might have listened to all of what Lee said or none of it. His red hair obscured his face, which was looking down and away. There was sand caked between the strands, punctuated with flecks of white that Lee could only assume were bits of bone.
“I have better control now,” Gaara whispered. “I’ve been training.”
Lee laughed. “I can see that! Your jutsu were most impressive!”
“Not the jutsu.” Gaara’s head turned, a jerk so sudden that Lee had to pull back to avoid his chin being struck by Gaara’s forehead. His green eyes were so pale, and they had no pupil at all, just a sort of hollow in the center that flashed a slightly different green like an animal’s. But Lee had plenty of experience determining the way a Byakugan user’s gaze was pointing, so he could tell that Gaara’s eyes were searching his face, darting across it with an intensity that was breathtaking.
“Lee! Lee, my boy!”
Whatever spell had been brewing between them broke. Lee looked up to see a familiar green silhouette at the gates, a smaller pink one behind it.
“Gai-sensei! Gai-sensei!”
Gaara’s grip tightened once more. He did not let Lee out of his grasp or permit him to speed his pace, carefully setting one pair of feet in front of the other until they were mere meters from Gai-sensei.
Sensei swooped forward to grab Lee in a crushing embrace.
That was all it took for the tears to come.
“Gai-sensei,” Lee sobbed, “we failed!”
“Our failures are our strengths,” Gai-sensei said with typical wisdom. “I am still so proud of how much you’ve learned. The next time you encounter such an obstacle, you won’t make the same mistakes.”
His hand rested on the back of Lee’s head. Lee should have been listening to the impassioned speech that followed, but all he could think of was how different it felt, the juxtaposition between sensei’s comforting hand and the pinch of Gaara’s fingers around his wrist.
Once he’d stood back up, his arm around sensei’s shoulder now and his cheeks soaking wet, he discovered Gaara was still standing there. He didn’t seem to have moved at all; his hands were still positioned awkwardly, outstretched as though he were hugging someone who wasn’t there.
Lee bowed—or tried to bow. With how severely all his limbs were trembling, it was more an awkward curtsy than anything. His bad leg could barely support him at this point. His injured arm burned with the electricity of nerve pain. He could feel something damp on his back, sticking his suit to his skin. Blood. He hoped it meant he’d only torn his stitches and not done any worse internal damage. Fifty percent had not been good odds once; they would only be worse a second time, and Tsunade was a legendarily unlucky gambler.
“Thank you very much for taking such good care of my precious student, Gaara-kun,” Gai-sensei was saying.
Lee nodded, trying not to grimace at the crick in his neck where he’d adjusted from stooping over Gaara to stretching up over sensei’s broad shoulders.
“Yes, thank you very much, my friend!”
Gaara’s pale eyes went so wide that the white could be seen all around that milky, pupilless iris. His lips worked soundlessly for a moment, a croaking hiss escaping his throat.
Finally, he spoke.
“... Friend?”
II.
“Oh, Gaara-kun! What brings you to Konoha?”
Gaara was standing in the middle of one of the emptier side streets, looking rather lost. There was something bulky in his hands that Lee couldn’t see with his back turned as it was.
His head swiveled around very smoothly. He didn’t really move normally, Gaara. His posture, his gestures were persistently uncanny, like some sort of doll that had been brought to life, or a creature that had taken human form too late to learn to inhabit it properly.
If Lee couldn’t smell him, he would have assumed he was a henge, maybe one of Kankuro’s puppets. But he’d noticed during their last battle that Gaara’s scent was distinct even from that of his own sand clones, a slight musk of unwashed-ness laced with the clotted iron smell of old blood.
It was probably wrong to learn other people by their scent like that, Lee thought. Something better left to the Inuzuka. But he didn’t smell anyone else the way he’d smelled Gaara; even if pressed he wouldn’t have been able to think of a descriptor for Neji or Tenten’s scents other than ’probably sweaty’.
Gaara still hadn’t answered him, so Lee added, “Of course, you’re not under any obligation to tell me if it’s confidential!”
“It’s not confidential.” Gaara turned fully around then, and Lee could see that the bulk in his hands was a thick clay teapot, skillfully engraved. “I’m running errands.”
“In Konoha?”
“Baki wants me to practice running B- and C-ranks. On account of my ego.”
“That … seems like a tremendous waste of manpower,” said Lee.
“I agree.”
Gaara looked down at the teapot. His fingers were dusky against the dark clay, curiously unmarked for a shinobi’s. Of course, that made sense. Either his sand would have protected him or that armor of his could be covering up any fresh bruises or old scars. Though the armor didn’t hide the scar on his forehead. (Lee assumed it was a scar. It certainly wasn’t the paint that so many Sunan shinobi wore. It might have been a tattoo, but anything other than a clan tattoo would be unusual on someone so young. And neither his brother nor his sister bore the same mark.)
(It was a strange shape for a scar regardless. Love … It was one of Lee’s favorite words. He wondered what might have caused it.)
“Are your siblings here with you?” he asked, shaking himself.
“No.” Gaara’s expression was unchanging, but his words were surly. “They’re on proper missions.”
“Well, it’s serendipitous timing anyway!”
Gaara narrowed his eyes at him. Those strange, animal eyes, skating up and down Lee’s face as tactile as a touch from those unmarked hands.
“Serendipitous?”
“Ah, it means something like a wonderful coincidence! Very good fortune.”
“I know what serendipitous means.” The green of Gaara’s irises was nearly swallowed up by the dark circles on his lids as his eyes turned to slits. “Why is it serendipitous?”
“Well … are you busy tonight?”
Gaara hefted the teapot upwards in illustration. “I have what I came for. I’m leaving for Suna in the morning.”
“Perfect!” Lee almost reached out to clap him on the shoulder but at the last moment thought better of it. “My birthday party is tonight. At my apartment. I would love if you could attend.”
“A birthday … party.”
Lee nodded eagerly. “Yes! Well, my actual birthday is on the twenty-seventh, but it’s much more convenient for everyone to get together on a weeknight, in case they have missions over the weekend.”
“Your birthday party.”
Lee frowned. “Do you not have them in Suna?”
Gaara’s expression was hard and unreadable.
“It’s no matter,” Lee demurred. “I haven’t had one in a very long time myself. Truthfully, I often didn’t have anyone to invite! But I have forged so many new relationships these past few years. And I want all of my friends to be there!”
“All of your friends.”
“Yes indeed! Neji and Tenten, my teammates, and Sakura-san, and Ino-san and Chouji-kun and Shikamaru-kun … and you of course! I would have invited you earlier, only I didn’t know you were going to be in the village.”
Gaara’s fingers clenched around the teapot. His knuckles went paler on the joints. “You want me to be there. In your apartment. With your friends.”
His tone was so intense that it was difficult for Lee to even force a laugh, but he still tried for one gamely, attempting to break the tension. “Certainly! I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t want you to be there.”
“Does Konoha have a library?” Gaara asked abruptly.
Lee cocked his head. “Um, yes, of course we do. It’s just a few blocks west of the Hokage Tower. I could show you there if you like.”
“I can find it myself.” Gaara clutched the teapot up against his chest and turned to leave. The sash draped around his waist dangled a little bit in the dust, leaving a trail behind him like a snake’s.
Lee was left just standing there. He hadn’t had a party invitation go so badly since he was in his first year of Academy and Daisuke-kun in his class had spat at his shoes and said, “Who wants to go to a party at a nasty old orphanage anyway?”
Then, halfway up the street, Gaara looked over his shoulder.
“What time is the party?”
Lee blinked several times rapidly. He’d assumed the abrupt self-dismissal was as good as a brush off, but apparently he’d been wrong.
“We’re meeting at six!” He jogged a few steps up the street to where Gaara had stopped, rooting around in his waist pouch. “Here, I’ll write down my address for you.”
It was seven o’clock, and Gaara had yet to arrive.
Lee’s little genin apartment was poorly insulated and didn’t hold the heat well, but with so many bodies crammed into the tight space, it was as warm as if the furnace were on full blast. Sakura had been kind enough to bring a stack of paper party hats with elastic bands, though Kiba had quickly been banned from using them after he tried to fit one around his waist. Chouji had filled and emptied several bowls of chips, and Shikamaru and Neji were setting up a game of hanafuda on Lee’s low table. The girls had by and large spilled out onto Lee’s narrow balcony, and Ino was dangling over the railing, fanning her shirt rather obviously.
Lee shouldn’t have felt as upset as he did. This was the most fun he’d had outside of a victorious spar in years. And never in his life would he have expected his lonely apartment to be full of so many well-wishers on his special day.
It was just that, despite his odd behavior, it had seemed like Gaara really planned to be there! Even if he hadn’t explicitly said so, he had basically implied it. At least … Lee thought he had. Gaara was very hard to read.
Perhaps something had come up with his mission. Maybe he had cracked the teapot somehow, or been beset by bandits. Should Lee go out looking for him? What if he was in danger and needed help? Gaara had come to his rescue last time; it was only right that Lee—
“Hey, is that who I think it is?” came Ino’s voice from outside.
“Oh, hey! The party’s up here!”
There was a sound like a bucket of dirt being upturned. A sound Lee knew all too well.
Suddenly, Gaara was standing on his little balcony, wedged between Hinata and Sakura.
“Whoa, little close for comfort there!” Tenten shouted.
Gaara didn’t say anything. He just stared at Lee through the screen door.
He was still holding the teapot under one arm. And in the other he had a lumpy, brown-paper-wrapped package.
Lee practically sprinted across the apartment to greet him, ushering him in through the door.
“Gaara-kun! You made it! I was worried you had gotten lost or were in trouble somehow. Is your mission still going all right?”
Gaara didn’t blink. He lifted the teapot as if to show it was undamaged. “The mission status hasn’t changed. I lost track of time at the market.”
“Oh, haha, well I know how that can be!”
Gaara held out the package wrapped in paper. “This is for you.”
“Pardon?” Lee let Gaara place it in his hands, but only because he was too startled to do anything else.
“The books said this is what you do at a birthday party. You bring your friend a gift.”
“Oh, this is really just a casual get-together! Nothing so formal as—”
“You should open it.”
Gaara’s smooth-skinned fingers started pulling at the string even as the package still rested in Lee’s hands. Tenten’s head popped over his shoulder, though she gave the two of them a wide berth.
“Whatcha got there, Lee?”
“Ah, Gaara-kun has brought me a birthday present!”
Tenten turned her attention to Gaara’s hands on the package, her expression skeptical. “Oh. That’s … surprisingly thoughtful of him.”
Gaara’s nail cut through the string, and the package came unwrapped between them. Sitting in Lee’s palms now were a very fine pair of nunchaku, varnished glossy black. It was a pair he’d admired for a long time at one of the weapons’ stalls, but had never been able to justify spending his hard-earned ryo on.
Tenten sucked air against her teeth. “Dang, those are really nice.”
“Oh, Gaara-kun, I cannot possibly accept these—” Lee stammered.
“Don’t be an idiot!” Tenten cuffed him on the back of the head. She turned to Gaara. “Listen, if he won’t accept them, I’ll gladly take ‘em off your hands for you.”
“No.” Gaara clutched the nunchaku as tightly as if they were the second element of his mission, then pushed them urgently at Lee’s chest, hard enough to wind him. “They’re for Lee. A birthday gift for my friend.”
Tenten whistled low and elbowed Lee in the small of the back. “I have got to get some friends like that.”
III.
Lee wiped shaking hands down the front of his vest and half-expected there to be streaks of blood left behind. His skin felt blistered all over, but it would pass. It would pass, and they had all survived. Somehow, despite the spears of root wood that didn’t kill Neji only because his cousin jumped to protect him, missing her heart and lungs by a hairsbreadth. Despite Gai-sensei’s brush with the Gate of Death and the fact that he couldn’t lift his leg even after an infusion of Naruto’s impossible chakra. Despite Lee having kept his Gates open for longer than he ever had before, to the point that the root of his tongue and the webbing of his fingers felt fused from the heat. Despite Tenten’s chakra exhaustion and the way she kept throwing up bile.
They were here. They were alive.
All around them were people who had not been so lucky. Teams conspicuously missing their third member. Lone shinobi wandering, lost, with hollow eyes and searching mouths, stopping at every little camp to ask, “Have you seen—?”
“What did you dream about?” Lee asked, leaning against Neji and Tenten like three pieces of kindling arranged for a campfire. His voice sounded strange in his own ears, tongue-tied. “In the Infinite Tsukuyomi?”
Gai-sensei’s breathing was slow and steady beside them. He grumbled in his sleep. They’d all chipped in their stash of painkillers for his moment’s rest.
Neji turned his head away with a grunt. The seal glowed green on his forehead as if it were producing light of its own.
“Tenten?” Lee pressed. “I can tell you mine! I—”
“Really, Lee?” Tenten flicked a largeish piece of grime off her injured shoulder. Her arm was cradled across her chest in a makeshift sling, muscles and joint sacrificed to a wild swing of her feathered tessen. It would be a long time before a medic came to attend to her. She might even have to trek back to Konoha with it in that state; the medi-nin had too many casualties to triage, and only so much chakra even with soldier pills and the siphons off the Tailed Beasts.
“I only thought it might be a welcome distraction,” said Lee. “Until we’re given permission to leave.”
Her eyes flicked up towards her forehead protector. Not quite a roll, but close. The whites of them were red all around. “It was just legendary ninja tool stuff.” She looked down at Gai-sensei and then turned her head away, suppressing a dry heave. There were cracks in his skin that you could see beneath. Trying for a smile with dry lips, she added, “And that you guys weren’t so damn weird.”
“Oh.” Lee was in too much physical pain to be emotionally wounded by that comment. It wasn’t as though Tenten had ever kept her opinions to herself. “Well, in mine, I defeated Neji and Naruto-kun in battle! And Sakura-san—”
“Of course you did.” There was a splotch of blood like a red flower on the back of Neji’s white uniform. The wood had punctured his spine there. He was slowly going numb from the wound on down, but he’d refused medical attention until Hinata was tended to. They’d carried him off the battlefield slung over their shoulders.
“You’ve always had impossible aspirations,” Neji added. “It’s nice that you could feel that sense of success one time, even if you’ll only ever be able to dream it.”
“It’s only by believing in the impossible that we can make it a reality!” Lee retorted. “No matter how long it takes, I’ll keep training until I have the power to exceed the skill of you and Naruto-kun combined!”
“Did you see him out there?” Neji scoffed. “He’s practically a god now. Normal shinobi have no chance of rising to his level. Especially one that doesn’t have any capacity for ninjutsu.”
“If you’re going to criticize his dream, you might as well share yours,” Tenten snapped.
Neji looked away again. Out over the field covered in will-o-wisps of green healing chakra and the smell of rotting wood.
Lee was about to continue on with the argument when he heard a whispering sound too close for comfort. He spun around so quickly that the blisters on his neck stretched and popped. Cold liquid trickled down the collar of his vest.
“Gaara-kun!”
There was so much dirt smeared across his face that Lee couldn’t make out the scar on his forehead. His hair had been slicked back by sweat and wind. He wasn’t carrying his gourd.
“Lee.”
“Aren’t you supposed to—I thought you would have been with the rest of the Kage!”
“I’m a clone.” That explained the lack of the gourd—it would have taken extra chakra to maintain it. And as he drew closer, Lee could smell him—it, all sand and nothing else at all. “I needed to come see you. To make sure you were all right.”
“Oh! Are you checking on all the teams, or—?”
“No.”
Tenten’s eyebrows crawled towards her hairline, but she turned conspicuously away. She prodded Neji’s toe with hers, and then—when that elicited no response—poked his shoulder instead, so that he, too, took the hint and looked away with a sigh.
It was as much privacy as could be asked for in the middle of a crowded encampment.
Gaara’s clone bent down on one knee. He reached out, and Lee let the clone take his hand without thinking.
He’d never noticed before how small Gaara’s hands were. The clone couldn’t close its fingers around the span of Lee’s knuckles.
“Your teacher?” Its eyes flicked to Gai-sensei and back. It was incredible how perfectly Gaara had replicated himself despite the substantial chakra he’d just exerted. Right down to the texture of his skin and the color of his eyes.
“Naruto-kun said he’ll—he’ll live.” It was still hard to say, to even think about. How very close they’d come to losing their mentor. The words choked up in Lee’s throat. “We don’t know about his leg. We might need to wait until he can get to a real hospital.”
Lee had been trying not to look at the crushed and bloodied thing dangling from Gai-sensei’s knee. It no longer had the form of a human leg at all, just a vague shape held together by his jumpsuit fabric and sandal.
“And—?” The clone looked now at Neji.
That wasn’t Lee’s story to tell. He shook his head. “We’re all alive. That’s really all that matters.” He tried to smile and found that the corners of his lips, too, felt stiff and strangely joined from the heat of his skin. “I have you to thank for part of that!”
He remembered that hand reaching out for him, down from a platform of sand. How large it had seemed in his vision compared to its size in front of him now. How the fingers had stretched and barely brushed the tips of his own as Gaara pulled them upwards into the sky with a strained, “Come on!”
Of course, the hand holding his now wasn’t the same hand. Not really. It was merely a perfect replica.
“Thank you,” Lee murmured, “for rescuing me.”
“I don’t need your thanks.” And the clone did something very odd then. It took Lee’s knuckles and pressed them to its forehead, right atop that mud-caked scar. “As your friend, I have a duty to protect you.”
Lee huffed, pulling their joined hands down to hang between them. “Well, as your friend, I have a duty to thank you for saving my life. For the second time.”
The clone watched the parabola of their swinging hands. “It’s only fair. You tried to kill me once, and you saved me from certain death once. I tried to kill you twice, so.” It made a gesture as if the conclusion of the rest of the sentence were obvious.
“I’m not keeping score like that. If you were in danger, I would throw my life down for yours any time.” Lee gave a half-smile. Even that was painful. His lip split, and a cool trickle of blood followed. “I wouldn’t even try to kill you first. And I know you’d do the same for me.”
The facsimile Gaara frowned, then nodded. It stood and looked about to leave, but Lee held fast to its hand. He could feel all the bones beneath its skin, thin as a bird’s.
“Gaara-kun, wait, please.”
The clone shifted its weight as though it meant to cross its arms.
“What—what did you dream about?”
There was a slight flaring of the clone’s nostrils. A breath that it didn’t need to take and was only mimicking.
Slowly, it said, “My whole life. … Back to the day I was born. Every day since and every day yet to come.”
“Did you—?” Lee started, and then realized he didn’t know what it was he wanted to ask. “Were you … happy?”
“I have a theory,” said the clone, “that the dreams of the Infinite Tsukuyomi are constrained by each person’s experience of reality. How could my dream self feel happy when I’m not certain whether that’s something I’ve ever been?”
“That’s heartbreaking.” Lee would have cried if his tear ducts didn’t feel seared shut, every molecule of water in his body evaporated.
“And you?”
“Was I happy?”
“Your dream, what was it?”
“I—” Lee balked. He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his filthy sleeve and grimaced, embarrassed, at the taste of dirt. “It was … it was nothing. Not nearly as elaborate as yours. Pretty immature, really.”
He did not mention Sakura-san. Nor what had changed after she’d placed that chaste kiss on his cheek.
If Gaara’s dream was a single winding filament within him, long and slow burning, Lee’s had been a forest fire, punctuated by explosions, radically transformative. Their souls were much the same.
The clone dropped his hand. Lee almost wanted to apologize.
“I have to go,” it said. “I’m running out of chakra.”
“Of course, I didn’t mean to keep you!”
The clone’s face cracked, and the sand spilled out. It dissolved from the face down with a sound like an hourglass turned on its end. The grains were whisked, pale and golden, away into the wind.
Lee was left holding nothing but a small pile of sand.
IV.
It was warm in Gaara’s private greenhouse, the way it always was in Suna. But though the temperature was the same, the quality of the heat was an entirely different beast. Within the glass walls, the air was humid, tacky and so thick that it was hard to breathe.
Lee had been sweating plenty from his light jog through Suna’s streets, but that drizzle turned into a torrent once he closed the door behind him. His sunblock made oil slicks as it sloughed off the back of his neck.
He craned up on his tiptoes to look around. There were rows upon rows of low tables in Suna’s stoneware style, dense enough with greenery that he could barely see through one cluster of plants to the next. Vines trailed across the sand-swept floor, heavy with fruit and flowers. The air was soaking with the smell of sap and aloe.
He didn’t see Gaara anywhere.
“Lee.”
The voice came from behind him, along with a hand on the back of his flak vest. Lee reeled around in surprise.
“Gaara-kun! I didn’t notice you there!”
“I was cloaking my chakra. My advisors like to interrupt my personal time.”
You know that I cannot sense chakra. — I meant that I couldn’t smell you. — You move more silently than any shinobi I’ve ever trained with. Several thoughts flashed across Lee’s mind, but the one he voiced was, “Does no one know you’re here?”
“How I choose to conduct my personal matters is none of my advisors’ concern.” Gaara crossed his arms. In the flash of them across his chest, Lee saw his hands were dirt-splattered up to the wrist. “Or my ANBU’s.”
“Surely they need to know where you are in order to guard you.”
“You think I can’t defend myself?” Gaara’s eyebrows were so sparse they were nearly hairless, but Lee could tell he’d arched one by the twitch of his skin and the shadow beneath it. “They can guard the sand clone working in my office.”
“That is tremendously dishonest!” Lee protested.
Gaara leaned in close. His nostrils flared. “Lee. We’re shinobi.”
“That doesn’t mean you should lie without conscience to your treasured comrades—!”
“They’re used to it.” Gaara brushed past him, and Lee felt again a hand on the small of his back. “Come this way.”
Lee hurried to follow, caught on the back foot as he so often was with Gaara.
“I’m sorry we haven’t been able to spend as much time together on my visit as we hoped!” Lee added, ducking under a curtain of trailing vines in Gaara’s wake.
“Your first duty is to your village, as is mine.” Gaara’s shoulders went tense. “But yes. It’s regrettable.”
Lee had been in Suna on this solo mission for nearly two weeks, and so far all they’d managed was a brief chat passing in the halls between meetings and a single lunch that was cut short when a prominent merchant stormed into the cafe where they were eating and insisted on bending Gaara’s ear about some trade agreement or other.
So when Gaara had appeared at midnight in Lee’s rented room in the guest quarters—after Lee’s swallowed shout and the instinctive defensive kick that ended swallowed in a puff of sand—it had been a pleasant shock. A terrifying, heart-stopping shock, to be awoken by the rush of sand grains at the foot of one’s futon and the blanket yanked from one’s sleeping body. But still a pleasant one.
And what was Lee to do? Refuse a direct order from the Kazekage to meet him in his private greenhouse an hour before his departure?
Presently they arrived at a table packed stem-to-stern with low little plants, all waxy leaves and entrancing fractals. Gaara made a brief gesture towards them with his filthy hands. His eyes rested heavily on Lee, all the greener with the reflection of the leaves in them. He seemed to be expecting Lee to say something.
“How impressive they are!” Lee enthused. “It’s amazing, how you’re able to make so many incredibly beautiful things grow in the middle of the desert.”
Gaara dipped his head in acknowledgement.
Then, “They’re for you.”
“P—Pardon?”
Green eyes narrowed. Gaara did not like to repeat himself. “They’re for you. A gift.”
“All of them?”
There had to be at least sixty of the small plants arranged on the table before them in thin plastic planters, a bewildering array of colors and shapes. There was a white label jutting from the soil of each miniature pot, a name scrawled in Gaara’s crabbed handwriting. Common name and scientific. It must have taken hours. Lee tried to draw breath and found his lungs unaccommodating of the damp air.
Gaara’s lips, already bloodless, thinned. His fingers clenched and unclenched. There were dark crescent moons under each of his long fingernails.
“I wanted you to have the best ones. To take back to Konoha.” His tongue licked out quickly and disappeared behind his chapped lips.
Gaara has a tongue, Lee thought deliriously.
Of course he has a tongue, retorted the judgmental voice in the back of Lee’s mind that sounded so much like Neji. Who doesn’t have a tongue?
That was true. It was just that Lee had never thought about Gaara, specifically, having one before. Now that he had seen the evidence of it, he couldn’t stop watching Gaara’s mouth, waiting for it to reemerge.
It stayed stubbornly behind Gaara’s teeth as he added, “I … struggled to decide.”
“Well, I—That’s very thoughtful of you,” Lee floundered, “but … you know we have plants in Konoha, right?”
The seedlings seemed enough to start a crop that would sustain a small army of shinobi, much less Lee alone. Even if they never got any larger than they were now, they would overcrowd Lee’s tiny balcony beyond footspace.
“Not these ones.” Gaara’s chin lifted just slightly. The motion would have been a haughty pointing of the nose on anyone else. “I checked that flower shop of your friend’s the last time I was there.”
His fingers were tracing little patterns on the swollen leaves of the nearest plant. The sand around their feet trembled almost imperceptibly. Gaara had never been one to fidget.
Lee exhaled.
He laid a hand atop Gaara’s. Not to still it, simply to remind Gaara he was there. That he hadn’t left.
Gaara’s hand fell motionless all the same. Lee had moved nearer to him by the necessity of the motion, and now Gaara’s face was so close that Lee could see all the speckles in his luminous eyes, the little dots of darker and lighter green. The greenery on the table was refracted back yellow in the flat mirror of Gaara’s pupils.
“This gesture means more to me than I can say,” Lee began falteringly, “but I doubt I can carry quite so many of them back to Konoha at once. I mean, I love a challenge! But I don’t even have my team along with me to help. To transport so many of them across the desert by myself would likely be impossible.”
Lee wasn’t sure why his voice was so strained, or why tears were urging at the corners of his eyes. He’d always been quick to cry, but there was no achievement of being better than the previous day here, no glorious sunset or exhausted collapse face-down in the dirt. As far as Lee’s failures went, this was a relatively minor one, mostly the fault of physics.
And yet … he was crushed by the thought of disappointing Gaara. Of making him feel even the tiniest sting of rejection.
Gaara looked to be about to argue, but then he crossed his arms and jammed his hands back under them. He left streaks of pale dirt on the side panels of his jacket.
“Fine. Then you’ll take as many as you can carry, and I’ll keep some here.”
“I don’t mean you to feel as though I’m rejecting your gift. That isn’t my intention—”
“They’ll still be yours. I’ll simply be taking care of them. And you’ll have to come back to monitor them.” Gaara’s eyes flicked up, searching, staring into Lee’s. “Do you understand? You’ll have to come back.”
Lee was frozen with his hand still hovering, empty, over the space where Gaara’s had been. This close, the scent of Gaara drowned out the scent of the plants. It had changed over the years, become earthier, less copper-tinged.
“Of course. I would come back regardless.”
Gaara shook his head stiffly. “I don’t mean for a mission.”
“Even if I never had another mission to Suna again, I would find some way to visit you.”
Gaara’s lips folded in. That pink tongue wetted them, then vanished once more.
“Why?” he breathed.
“Why?” Lee hardly understood what he was being asked. He wanted, inexplicably, to tug Gaara’s hands from beneath his arms. The sand was right there in its gourd on Gaara’s waist, but somehow he didn’t think it would stop him. “Because you’re one of my dearest friends.”
Gaara seemed to withdraw into himself, hunched in small. His eyes scanned something sightless and internal. “One of your dearest friends,” he echoed. “Dearest. Dearest.” He looked up, back at Lee. “Yes. You’re one of my dearest friends as well.”
Lee smiled. It was a wide, watery thing. “So I will be back to see you as soon as possible.”
“Agreed.” Gaara nodded so formally that Lee almost thought he would next pass him a treaty to sign.
Instead, Gaara stooped and retrieved a novel-thick binder from beneath the table. He dropped it into Lee’s hands with a thud.
“I wrote you care sheets for each of the plants as well.”
And with that, Lee truly did begin to cry.
V.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Tenten asked, following Lee doggedly down the crooked path to the dojo. Neji swung along behind them on his forearm crutches. From his expression one would think he was being dragged against his will rather than accompanying them because he couldn’t resist an opportunity to give Lee a piece of his mind.
“What do you mean?” asked Lee. “I’m not doing anything I wouldn’t do for any other comrade.”
“Well, he’s the Kazekage for one, and for two—” Tenten had adopted a concerning strategy of counting out her points on the senbon between her knuckles rather than her fingers, making every list seem like that much more of a threat.
“What Tenten means to say is that she’s concerned about you …” Neji took a deep, pained breath. Lee wasn’t sure if that was because giving gentler translations of Tenten’s upbraids was a chore, or if his upper back was in spasm again. “... not coming to harm. Gaara has hurt you before.”
The assertion made Lee beyond frustrated.
“He’s not like that any longer! He and I have been very close friends for many years now!”
“Very close friends,” Tenten repeated. “Uh huh. Listen, maybe he doesn’t go around murdering civilians at random anymore, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hurt you. Especially if you’re gonna be—”
“So you think I don’t stand a chance of besting him in a fight of pure taijutsu? That I’m a fool to test my mettle against a shinobi of his caliber? Is that what you’re saying?”
“First of all, you have no guarantee that he’s going to stick to the rules—”
“Gaara-kun is an honorable shinobi! He would no sooner flout the rules than he would—!”
“Physically injuring you isn’t the only thing that we’re—that Tenten is worried about,” Neji cut in. “There’s more than one way to wound a person.”
There was a gust of wind, a rustle on it that sounded nothing like leaves.
“Is something the matter?” Gaara stood between Lee and his teammates with his arms crossed. He was dressed for their match as instructed, in a loose linen tunic and trousers for maximum range of motion. His gourd was nowhere to be seen. “I heard shouting.”
“Ack! Er, well—” Tenten gulped, rubbing the back of her neck. “Uh, we were just … Ahaha, it’s funny, but …”
“Kazekage-sama.” Neji inclined his head, gently flicking Tenten in the back of hers to stop her choked stammering. “It’s been a while.”
Lee puffed his cheeks. “It was merely a heated discussion between teammates. Nothing is the least bit wrong!”
Gaara’s eyes flicked over the lot of them, then settled on Tenten. “You can go,” he said. “Lee and I are going to spar now.”
“Hey! Just because you’re the Kazekage doesn’t mean you can—!”
“We’ve been dismissed, Tenten.” Neji batted at the back of her ankle with the tip of one crutch. “Lee, you have a flare scroll in your hip pouch. Ignite it if there’s a problem. We won’t be far.”
“This is quite a lot of theatrics for a simple match!” Lee sputtered, but Neji was already hurrying a furiously muttering Tenten down the pathway.
Gaara tugged at a loose bit of Lee’s jumpsuit sleeve. “Come on. I’ve been waiting.”
“For how long?” Lee followed the shuffle of his slip-on shoes to the dojo’s door. “You’re never early for anything!”
The air inside the dojo smelled like fresh floor wax and the honest sweat of bodies, and their bare feet squeaked across the floor as they took their places in the center.
“How are your plants?” asked Gaara, like anyone else would ask after someone’s child or parent. “Have there been any problems?”
“No, no, not at all! Well, Kiku-san gave me a bit of a fright the other week when it looked like she was wilting, but I just took her inside to dry out a bit by the heater like you said, and she perked right back up!”
“You named your Desert Gem opuntia Chrysanthemum,” said Gaara.
“Yes, isn’t it fitting?” Lee grinned. “Because she has the most beautiful orange flowers!”
“She.”
“Because of the flowers.”
“A flower can grow on any plant. The flowers themselves have both of the plant’s sex organs in them.”
“There’s no need to use such language!”
“Sex organs? That’s the scientific term.”
“I see you’re trying to get me flustered before our match in hopes of winning an advantage. Well, it won’t work!” Lee pulled his posture straight. “In fact, that’s quite enough chatter.” He tugged one arm tight behind his back and extended his other hand before him. “Let’s begin!”
He leapt forward, and Gaara fell instantly into a wide blocking stance.
“Lee, wh—” Gaara caught the first few feinted jabs on his forearms. “You didn’t establish the terms of the match.”
“How brash of me!” Lee ignored the narrowing of Gaara’s eyes that might as well have been a verbalized, Typical …, and instead dropped onto his palms for a spin-kick that, while it wouldn’t make contact with Gaara’s legs, would force him closer to the edge of the ring. “A points match at half-power, taijutsu only, best of three wins.”
“And the winner?” Gaara blocked another punch and used his hand to swing himself beneath Lee’s arm to stand behind him. “What does he get?”
“The winner … “ Lee bobbed left, then right as Gaara jabbed at his head from behind. It was a delightful challenge to try to successfully evade Gaara’s punches without turning around. Surprisingly difficult; he really had improved. “... will decide where we go for dinner!”
Gaara wound up for a strike with a backswing so obvious Lee could see it in the motions of his feet.
“You’re just going to pick curry.” He lunged out hard.
Lee caught his hand without so much as a backwards glance.
“And you will just pick Ichiraku Ramen!” In a second, he’d spun around and had Gaara dangling a half-inch off the floor, his arm wrenched behind his back. “There’s more than one restaurant in Konoha, you know.”
Gaara snorted. “I concede. First point to you.”
Lee let him down.
“You were going easy on me,” Gaara said accusingly, rolling his wrist in the circle of his other hand with a wince.
“I said the match would only be half-power!”
“I doubt that was truly half your power.”
“Perhaps you’ve just improved more than you think.”
Gaara cracked his neck. “Unlikely. I’ve been out of practice. That’s why I agreed to spar with you in the first place.”
“Shira-kun would be very disappointed to hear that,” said Lee, fiddling with the wraps of his bandages to tighten them. “He put quite a lot of effort into your training!”
“I’m aware.” Gaara interlocked his fingers and stretched his hands out in front of him. From the sound each knuckle joint made as it popped, it was obvious he was telling the truth. “So I’m brushing up with you, and he’ll never be any the wiser.”
“Your dishonesty troubles me sometimes.”
“As does your honesty.” Gaara’s brow creased, just slightly. There was a bead of sweat on his hairline. “If you can’t lie to an enemy’s face, what might happen to you?”
Lee shot him a thumbs-up and a wink. “Why, I would simply out-fight him! Or her.”
“Of course you would.” A twitch of the lip. Not quite a smile. Gaara dusted off his hands. “Are you ready for the next match?”
“I was born ready!” Lee settled back into stance, beaming. “Let’s go!”
Now that they had warmed up, their second fight was fast-paced. They traded blows that started as open-handed taps and quickly escalated to closed fists and whirling kicks. Lee was truly in his element now, spinning, twisting, bobbing and weaving. Seeing how much skill Gaara had gained, there was no real need to hold back. He fell back from a strike to get enough running room for a flying kick.
It was nothing like fighting Neji or Tenten at all, where the motions were known and familiar, even with all of Neji’s changes since the war, his scarred forehead free of its mark, his sealed Byakugan and his single leg that could only partway support him. Fighting Gaara hand-to-hand was just as fresh and new as it had been the first time they’d done battle. Just as invigorating, just as exhilarating.
Air whistled through his ears like the scintillation of blood through his veins as he jumped. He was closing in fast on Gaara’s head, which was turned to catch the blow on the cheek, and was about to pull the kick when Gaara dropped to his knees. He slid under Lee’s outstretched legs and popped up behind him with a crackle of joints that nearly made Lee wince.
He grabbed one of Lee’s wrists and started to twist it back, but Lee wasn’t about to be caught by his own trick. He jerked his head back, intending to catch Gaara’s forehead. Instead, he was met with the firmness of a palm. Gaara’s fingers clenched in his hair, stopping him from moving in any direction. His grip was painfully tight, wrenching a gasp from Lee.
Lee moved to strike with his free hand at the same moment Gaara leaned in and whispered in his ear:
“Sex organs.”
“Huh?”
The momentary distraction was all that was needed for one of Gaara’s quick feet to sweep Lee’s out from under him, tumbling him to the floor. He ended up splayed face-down, one arm twisted behind his back and the other caught in a punishing arm-bar, Gaara’s knee in the small of his back pinning him down.
Despite his protests of lack of practice, Gaara seemed quite at home here. Lee was seeing a completely new side of his friend that he’d known so long.
It thrilled him.
He flopped forward. “You win.”
“So now we’re tied.” Gaara loosened his grip, but not by much. His hands were still tight around both of Lee’s wrists. The pressure with which he bore down on Lee’s spine was surprising. The strength of his grip even moreso.
“That was quite an unsportsmanlike trick you played on me just now,” Lee groused, wriggling. Gaara’s breath was hot on the nape of his neck, alighting all his protesting follicles in the memory of that tug. He could still feel Gaara’s fingers, phantom, on his scalp.
“A shinobi uses all the tools at his disposal to execute a mission.” Gaara rolled off him with a sigh. He was panting, sweat sticking the thin linen of his shirt to his back and turning it transparent. “Knowledge of a target’s weak points isn’t always necessary, but it can be beneficial.”
“Well, it won’t work on me twice!” Lee righted himself, bending to pull Gaara to his feet as soon as he himself was standing. Gaara took his hand easily, and again Lee noticed just how hard he pulled on him for stability. Had Gaara’s hands always held him so tightly? “I’m all fired up now!”
Gaara wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. “Fine. Begin.”
They fell back into it like it was a dance between partners, ones who had just met but who had an undeniable chemistry. Lee was just starting to hit his stride, though Gaara was clearly flagging. His breathing was heavy now, his face dripping. His moves were becoming inelegant, sloppy.
A dodged punch turned into a caught elbow turned into a grapple, close hands and Gaara’s damp forehead pressed to Lee’s shoulder. Lee braced himself; he didn’t want to be taken to the ground this time. In a floor match, he had the weight and height advantage, but Gaara was all bones and clearly not above fighting dirty.
Gaara knocked a knee between Lee’s legs, an attempt to throw him off balance. Lee stepped backwards as a counterweight, trying to get a foot beneath Gaara’s to throw him. It would have been easier with a free hand, but Gaara’s fingers were locked between Lee’s, not giving so much as an inch as they spun across the floor to outstep each other.
Lee was not paying as close attention as he should have been. He was distracted by Gaara’s little grunts of exertion, the muttered, “Shit,” when one of Lee’s weights barked against the bone of his ankle. He could smell him so much better up close like this, that sandy earth smell tinged with a weird coppery mustiness that never quite faded, however long the sand had gone without killing. He smelled like salt, too—both of them did, sweat splattering the dojo floor as their bodies twined between and around one another’s. Gaara’s fingers, small but fierce, ground at his knuckles like thumbscrews. His skin was so hot, and it was only in that moment that Lee realized he wasn’t wearing his armor.
The sweat-misted skin pressing into his shoulder, his arms, right down to the very webbings of his fingers—was just Gaara. No sand in the way at all. Perhaps for the very first time.
Lee’s back hit something hard. The wall. Gaara’s hands twisted down and slammed his wrists against the wood.
He was crucified there, face-to-face with Gaara, both of their chests heaving. The dojo was lit by fluorescent bulbs in paper shades to mimic traditional lanterns, but Gaara’s eyes were so bright they nearly produced light of their own. The subtle green variation of his animal pupils shifted, opalescent, as his gaze dragged up Lee’s face.
His skin, Lee noticed, was not quite so flawless under the armor. He had a fine spray of red stubble patchy up one cheek. Speckles of acne on either side of his flared nostrils. The skin on his forehead was dry, the pores tight. His scar was an agitated red, raised and textured in uneven keloid forms. Lee read it as he did every time: Love.
Gaara’s grip was bruising. Lee could feel the marks growing on his skin under his bandages, could envision what they would look like the next day, like shackles around his wrists in the shape of Gaara’s fingers.
“We’re both out of the ring,” Gaara breathed.
Lee’s throat made a choked noise that barely masqueraded as a laugh. “Did you see which one of us stepped out first?”
“No.” Gaara didn’t seem to have blinked once since they’d locked eyes. His lips were parted. That pink tongue darted across them so they shone. “We’ll have to call it a draw.”
“Well.” Lee pushed slightly against Gaara’s weight and found it unrelenting. It would be no real challenge to struggle himself free, but he didn’t. “It wouldn’t be fair for me to impose on you, since I didn’t win honestly. Let’s go to Ichiraku, shall we?”
Gaara eased back.
You don’t have to, Lee thought. And then, Please don’t let go. He very nearly grabbed him and forced him to stay right where he was. It was an insane whim, and yet it overtook Lee so fully it was almost a physical impulse.
Gaara has hurt you before. Neji’s words whispered past his ears.
But maybe, just maybe … Lee wouldn’t mind if he did it again.
“Honest and chivalrous,” said Gaara, finally releasing Lee’s hands. Cold air flooded into the space between them like a slap across the face. “A dangerous combination in a shinobi. Let’s compromise and go somewhere else. I saw a stand selling saba when I was passing through the market. Why don’t we go there?”
He turned and began walking towards the small locker room area at the back of the building as if he knew the way by rote. Come to think of it, he probably could sense the mineral composition in the tile. Lee knew enough about his jutsu to understand that now.
“You may have caught me off guard once, but don’t think I don’t know your tricks!” Lee called after him, stooping down to shed his legwarmers and weights before he followed. The floor beneath the showers was hollow by necessity of drainage, and it didn’t hold up well against the full force of his training weights. He’d already had to replace quite a few cracked tiles. “You just suggested a different place that you also want to go!”
Gaara cast a look behind him, challenging Lee to deny him.
Of course Lee never could.
At the entrance to the locker area, Gaara paused. “You’ll be in Suna in a few weeks.”
“Yes!” Lee agreed, though Gaara had not posed it as a question. He’d saved up quite a bit of vacation time for that little excursion. Kakashi had not been happy to see it all cashed in at once.
“I have a private training area that was recently remodeled. We’ll meet there.”
Lee’s heart sang at the mere prospect of doing this again. And so soon! “For a rematch?!”
Gaara cocked his head, saying nothing. He took a few steps backwards onto the tile, fingertips at the hem of his now halfway see-through shirt as though he intended to begin disrobing before they were even behind closed doors.
Lee swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. “Tru—Truly, there’s no better show of friendship than a hot-blooded, passionate meeting of bodies!”
Gaara took a deep breath in. He licked his lips. “Yes. Truly.”
VI.
The nunchaku made comforting clacking sounds in Lee’s hands. He flicked one end in an arc, spun it around his elbow, passed the stick from hand-to-hand in front of him and then behind. They were still his favorite pair, though over time they’d become a bit small for his hands, the painted designs on them faded from overuse.
The training area Gaara had arranged for them to meet at was very nice, all ornately mosaiced alcoves and stately stone columns. A bit small, perhaps, for a shinobi to really stretch his legs, but Lee supposed that Gaara had the whole desert at his disposal if he wanted to practice his more intense moves. The tight confines would be a welcome challenge for their rematch.
Which had been scheduled to begin … about half-an-hour ago, by Lee’s estimation. It was hard to tell time in the enclosed space, but Lee had never been one to waste time idling. The opportunity to practice his hand-forms had been a welcome one.
The door slid open, casting a slit of bright midday light across the floor.
Gaara was carrying a large basket slung over one shoulder, stooped under its weight and panting.
“I apologize for my lateness,” he said. “It took more time than I expected for … what’s that?”
“Oh!” Lee spun to regard the boxes he’d set aside, neatly stacked in two tiers. “I brought you a gift. It’s your birthday next week, isn’t it?”
Gaara’s eyes narrowed. His lips parted. He took a half-step back.
It was quite possible he’d forgotten the date entirely. He didn’t celebrate, he’d told Lee after some years’ worth of party invitations, and neither did his siblings. The anniversary of Gaara’s birth was of course the anniversary of several other terrible things, things they’d rather not remember or dwell upon. Lee understood that.
But he also felt a gnawing sort of guilt at the memory of the gifts Gaara had bestowed upon him, sometimes by messenger hawk, other times pressed into his hands in the crowded booths of Lee’s favorite curry restaurant or the genkan of his apartment. Always thoughtful, always something Lee had pined for but would never have gone out and gotten for himself.
Selecting a present for Gaara had not been easy. Weapons were a common enough gift among shinobi, but Gaara had no need for them. As the Kazekage, he could purchase himself almost anything his heart desired, and his office was overflowing with trinkets and knick knacks from various politicians and dignitaries. He didn’t like sweets or fruit; in fact, the only foods he ever talked about craving were cheap, simple fare—salted meats and strips of jerky—and much easier to find in Suna than they were in Konoha.
A trip to Yamanaka Flower Shop had been Lee’s ultimate inspiration. He’d agonized for nearly an hour over bouquets of cockscomb and sprays of baby’s breath, until Ino had pulled him aside to scold him that he was scaring off her customers with his nervous warbling and occasional frantic references to the notepad he’d tucked in his vest pocket. When he explained what he was looking for, she’d winced and said, “Gardeners don’t usually want cut flowers, Lee. They just die.”
Gaara set the basket by the door with a thunk. He crossed the room in slow, tentative steps. His hand stretched out, fingers steady as he stooped down.
“These are … plants.”
“They’re babies!” Lee squatted beside him to pull out one of the black plastic cubes. It was barely more than a pup, jutting green from the sandy soil, one of the seedlings he’d propagated off of Kiku. “From the ones you gave me.”
Gaara’s fingers trailed the shiny skin, cautiously skirting the nascent spines. “I didn’t show you how to do this.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise! Shino-kun and Ino-san were most helpful.” Mostly they’d hovered over him menacingly while he painstakingly transferred orange-flecked cotton swabs from stamen to pistil, but it was the thought that counted.
Gaara hummed. He held the little plant up to a guttering oil lamp and turned it to and fro. “I see you’ve gotten over your aversion to sex organs.”
Lee choked. “I—! Wh—we did—Shino-kun did not use those words.”
“He was being respectful of your sensibilities.”
“He was being accurate to biology, and not just trying to rile me up!”
“Sometimes you need a little riling.”
Lee just gaped at him, crouching there, running his hands carefully over the seedlings, selecting one here and there for closer inspection. Lee had been able to bring quite a lot of them, taking it as a personal challenge to haul as many of them as possible safely across the desert.
Finally Gaara reached the final plant in the lower tier. His lips pursed.
“This is the first time I’ve ever received a gift like this.”
“But your office is full of things people gave you!” Lee protested.
“Those were obligations,” said Gaara. “Not presents.”
“Surely your siblings …”
“Allow me to correct myself.” Gaara took a breath, his nostrils fanned wide. “This is the first gift I’ve ever received from …”
“From a friend?”
“If you want to put it that way.”
Lee’s heart would have shattered if it weren’t saturated with soft sentiment in that moment, a soul-deep ache that had him wanting to reach for Gaara, wanting to fold him in his arms and squeeze and tell him everything would be different from now on, that he’d never feel that way again. He’d given many gifts in his time, to Neji or to Tenten or to his teacher or any other of his various friends. None of them had ever made him feel quite like this. Like he needed to follow up the gesture with something grander, something more intimate. An embrace? No, not that. More than that. His arms were halfway reaching when:
“Have you been to the greenhouse?” Gaara asked suddenly. “To check on the rest of your … babies?”
Lee flushed. “I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to go without you! I didn’t want to overstep—”
“They’re yours. No one would stop you. Or if they tried to, I’d … ” Gaara sat back on his haunches. He was still holding the planter of Kiku’s little pup, cupped gently in his hands. “I’ve been keeping a close eye on them. They’re doing well.”
“I never thought they would do anything but flourish under your care.”
Gaara turned to look at him, his head swiveling with that preternatural smoothness. It was dim in the training area, and his pupils were massive. Lee could see his inverted reflection in their shine, green jumpsuit above dark hair.
Their positions were awkward, half-hunched and not especially balanced, but Gaara seemed to be leaning closer. He wasn’t saying anything, his wide eyes unblinking.
He came nearer, and he smelled like sweat. Like sand and darker soil and the sap of budding plants in the pads of his fingers. He smelled like growth, like life itself.
“Um,” said Lee. “Do you mind if I ask … what’s in the basket?”
Gaara drew back, blinking so hard it was nearly a flinch.
“You don’t have to tell me if it’s official business or anything!” Lee waved his hands, wobbling a little with the motion.
A furrow appeared between Gaara’s nearly bare eyebrows. “It’s lunch.”
“Oh, for after our rematch?”
“What rematch?”
“The—the rematch! From last time! When we tied? I thought we were going to—!”
“I never said anything about a rematch.” Gaara unfolded into a standing position, joints popping like stepped-on twigs.
“Well, perhaps you didn’t, but I assumed—” Lee floundered, scrambling to his feet after him.
“Is it my fault that you make assumptions?” Gaara crossed to the basket by the door and knelt down.
“You invited me to a training arena!”
A handful of sand spiraled out from the gourd and packed its way into the crease of sunlight where the door fit into its frame, locking them in.
“I invited you here because it’s private. We won’t be interrupted for several hours. My advisors are under the impression I’m developing a novel jutsu that requires the utmost concentration and secrecy.”
“You can be very frustrating sometimes,” Lee said with a snort.
“I know.” Gaara removed a blanket from the bag and began to unfold it, something beautiful and embroidered that looked more like it belonged hanging on a wall than spread on a dusty floor for them to sit on. “But you keep coming back.”
“Of course I do!” Lee said, as Gaara began laying out crimped metal takeout containers bowing under the weight of their contents. “Because I—”
His tongue skipped. A word that he had never thought before bubbled up from his throat and wedged itself between his tonsils, oozed its way up his soft palate to hang on tenterhooks above his teeth.
"Because I'm your … oh.” The word fell down. He swallowed it with a spasm of his voicebox. “Oh wait. No.”
“No?” Gaara’s hands paused over a plastic lid. Hovering with the same delicacy that he’d handled the tender bodies of the fledgling plants.
“I think I’ve just realized something.” The words came out all in a rush. A thousand interrupted moments, a million terminated impulses marched in unending sequence through his mind. “I … I cannot be your friend any longer.”
Gaara froze. Stock still like a clone just before it dissolved.
“You don’t want to be friends anymore.” The sand shook in his gourd. The walls, the floor trembled. He clenched a fist, but the vibration didn’t stop because he, too, had started shaking. Cracks formed in the armor on his face. “Why …?”
“No, no, wait!” Lee lunged forward. He grabbed both of Gaara’s hands in his. “I didn’t mean it like that!”
“Then what are you saying?” Gaara’s teeth, bared, rattled like scattered bones in his mouth. Little bits of sand broke loose from his arms, his throat, his back, and drifted down onto the blanket.
“I mean … I don’t think I can be just your friend any longer.”
Gaara raised his eyes to look at him. They were wide, wide all around, whites blowing out the dark circles that surrounded them. He drew a breath so thin it whistled. “Lee?”
Lee opened his hand so that Gaara’s knuckles draped over his fingers. He brought that hand—that small, strong, gentle, unmarked hand—to his lips.
And he kissed it.
The air went still. The ceiling, the support columns, the decorated archways, all of it. Even the wind outside died. The arena was as silent as a tomb aside from Gaara’s heavy breathing. He was looking at his hand, at Lee’s mouth. Sand dripped in rivulets off his body as the rest of his armor crumbled away.
He moved suddenly, gawkishly. There was a crumpling sound, a squish and a sudden flood of curried scent as he planted a knee in one of the containers of food. Both of them ignored it. Gaara’s hands clutched Lee’s so tight that his bones rubbed against one another. He pulled Lee’s hand up and pressed it, knuckles-first, against the scar on his forehead. Sand rushed over the backs of their joined hands, and Lee could feel the ropiness of it, skin-on-skin, the slight give of the raised flesh. He traced the shape with his thumb.
Love. He understood now.
Gaara’s tongue snuck out from behind his lips, pink, and damped away the cracks at the corners of his lips.
Mere inches away from Lee’s face, he breathed, “I don’t want to just be friends anymore, either.”