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Shinobi were expected to maintain decorum at all times, of course; battlefield outpost showers were communal for efficiency and speed of construction in wartime, not for ogling one’s fellows.
This did not mean that Gaara did not deliberately avoid common times for showers. Most shinobi regarded the young Kazekage with a healthy dose of fear wound through their respect and admiration, and while no one would question his presence among his allies in their communal daily ablutions, his reputation did precede him, and he preferred not to be ogled while scrubbing sweat out of his hair. It was not the fear of being seen in a vulnerable position, he’d been exposed to many of his direct subordinates on missions and vice versa (one could not conduct medical care or wound cleansing with clothing in the way, after all, and for a while he lacked Shukaku’s enhanced healing factor) and nudity did not prevent one from dispatching opponents. However, not all villages were as comfortable with him (or casual nudity, for that matter) as his own ANBU, and he was not interested in causing a diplomatic incident by spooking foreign shinobi unintentionally.
One benefit of eternal insomnia; however, was the abundance of available quiet time during which all his comrades slept. Standard military hours outside of a planned operation saw quiet hours between 10pm and 6am, and it was during those times that near-silence blanketed the outpost, punctuated only by the gentle rumble of snores, insects trilling calls, and the gentle scratch of Gaara’s pen across scrolls as he planned out stratagems by low candlelight in his tent.
Thus, Gaara tended to enjoy his habitually short showers somewhere between 3 and 4 in the morning. Privately.
The day had been a long one: to consistently outwit possible subterfuge, the Allied Shinobi Forces routinely swapped assignments and relocated shinobi. Random exchange of ninja prevented their enemy from identifying and exploiting possible weaknesses in each division, an idea provided by Gaara himself during the earliest stages of planning at Alliance HQ and immediately endorsed by Shikaku (and subsequently Tsunade, despite her clear frustration that the idea has been brought forth by the youngest leader in the entire Shinobi Alliance.) Unfortunately, the drawback of such frequent shifts was the amount of necessary coded paperwork, and that task fell to Gaara.
Today had been a significant swap in shinobi, and the extensive admittance paperwork and arrival correspondence for HQ had taken Gaara far longer than he anticipated, meaning the Kazekage found himself pacing to the outpost showers far closer to 4:30am.
The newest rotation of Division Four ninja included several familiar names, and Gaara ruminated on them as he padded across the dew-damp grass. His proxy commander, Shikamaru Nara, had been returned to his rotation from assisting Division 5, bringing with him two samurai Gaara was unfamiliar with, but intake documents had noted both were exceptional in physical defence. He had immediately relegated them to serve as guards for the battlefield medics that Shizune had swapped for some of his long-range defenders. Kankurō had sent him Hoheto Hyūga and his Byakugan to add to his rotation of outpost guards, and there were another handful of unfamiliar chūnin he had yet to process. The name that had brought the first smile to his face in a month; however, was the arrival to Division Four of one Rock Lee.
It had been quite some time since he’d felt the sunshine warmth of any of the few people he considered companions; Naruto sequestered away with the Gyūki jinchūriki meant no contact was possible, his siblings were separated into various command positions and only spoke with him via hawk or ninja dispatch, and despite their victory in rescuing and re-sealing Shukaku to him several months ago, the tanuki was still recuperating, and Gaara had only managed short conversations while Shukaku regained strength. Shikamaru was the closest compatriot he had in this camp, and even that small friendship was carefully limited by military status (and the fact he knew the Konoha shinobi spent every spare moment writing to Temari – Gaara was not interested in preventing the small joy Temari got from those letters, even at the expense of his own isolation.) His student, Matsuri, was also here and as his student she had jounin security access as a low-mid level chūnin, but she wasn’t permitted to have security clearance for war intel, and so was rarely in his presence.
Gaara hadn’t seen Lee in person since his own death (would it be more prudent to say reincarnation?) when the Akatsuki had extracted Shukaku shortly before the war had truly begun. Lee had been there, and he had been crying, and it had torn at Gaara’s soul to know that Lee had fought for him and been witness to his corpse. Gaara knew that if it had been the other way around, he would have never been alright again. But he had lived, and Lee’s tears were stopped, and he was able to give his friend a maybe-too-long-to-be-friendly embrace before his team had returned to Konoha.
Since then, he’d received (and replied) to increasingly sporadic letters from his friend, mostly (to his frustration), Lee writing from a hospital bed where he’d managed to land himself after various missions. Gaara often responded with a lecture on safety and a packet of a new succulent he’d been cultivating in Suna. Lee, in turn, had sent him pictures of the ones he’d been able to grow. He’d been surprisingly successful with them.
Gaara imagined they were dead now. The war, two and a half years of it now, had kept the militarised shinobi alliance away from their homes for so long Gaara was not sure he remembered what Suna looked like anymore, let alone Konoha…let alone Lee. The last letter he’d received had been nearly a year ago.
Dearest Gaara-kun,
You will be glad to know that I am not writing this letter from a hospital bed! In fact, I am writing to you from Kankūro-san’s current outpost, which I am not allowed to specify the location of in case this missive is intercepted. He has asked me to say hello, as well as some other rather crass things I simply cannot write down. He laughed at me when I asked him for a polite message instead, so “Hello” is all he is getting from me!
I wished most profoundly to respond to you sooner, but unfortunately, I have spent much time training and conducting missions, as I am sure you have been as well! have been given the honour of leading a mission team multiple times now! I have finally mastered the Seventh Gate, the Gate of Shock. I have not used it in combat, it is very dangerous, but I have also learned some excellent new Taijutsu forms that would be very fun to test against your sand! Perhaps that is an idea for another time.
More importantly I wish to tell you, Hokage-sama has field-promoted me to Jounin! It has long been a plan of mine to take the Jounin exams, but under the circumstances we find ourselves in, I am glad that my abilities are beneficial to the greater purpose we are serving.
Gaara had tried to read the next few lines, but Lee had scratched them out and scribbled in the margins.
I wanted to tell this to you in person, of course, but I did not want to wait in case someone who knows got a chance to see you before I do. Even if I were dispatched to the same area as you, you must be so busy! I hope this letter does not keep you from your duties. Please do not worry about replying if you are busy!
You mentioned in your previous letter that you were working very hard. Please do not forget to take care of yourself, too. You are important, not only to your fellow shinobi and your village, but to me. You have lectured me on the importance of my safety and well-being, so it is only fair I remind you at least once, right? I only wi
sh
This paragraph also had several chunks scratched out. Gaara could imagine Lee panicking over the perceived impertinence of his requests. The thought made him want to smile. Always too formal.
It is late, so I will end my letter here. With you as Regiment Commander and everyone in the Allied Forces putting the full spirit of youth into this fight, I am sure we will see progress soon, and perhaps even win the war! I am looking forward to seeing you again. I miss you, my friend. Please be safe!
Yours,
Lee
Gaara kept the letter on his person at all times, had read it so many times he’d worn the parchment and smudged the ink. It was only in the privacy of his thoughts, alone at night, that he would imagine how Lee might sound saying the words to him, the timbre of his voice, how he’d wave his hands in excitement, a study in motion.
You are important to me.
I miss you, my friend.
Yours.
Gaara would never admit to anyone that his heart slammed out of rhythm every time he read Lee’s words. He would never ever admit to anyone that friend wasn’t enough to encompass his feelings anymore, and it had not been for a long time. The middle of a war for their very existence was not the time to focus on such things.
Gaara had replied to the letter with his congratulations, but received only a missive from Kankurō that had read:
Sorry Gaara, Bowl Cut got scooped to help Intelligence and now even I don’t know where he is. I’ll hold the letter in case he gets transitioned back to my division.
He asked about you all the time. I wish I could see your face when you see him next. He’s a far cry from the little twerp who kicked your ass in the exams, haha. You’re so fucked.
Gaara had most certainly not blushed. It’s not that Temari and Kankurō knew, per say, but they were well aware of the hawks Gaara was always using for “personal communication” and Lee had always used Konoha’s leaf-embellished scroll stationary. Gaara didn’t write personal letters to hardly anyone and his list of friends was remarkably short, so both his siblings had figured out the identity of his pen pal and taken to teasing him about Lee with gusto.
It did tear at him, though, the news. Intelligence members were classified to everyone under Leadership, and while he was grateful he at least knew where Lee was stationed, that position meant the end of letters and news until just now. Gaara thought about Lee every day, wondering where he was, what he was doing, if he was alright. Every major meeting he waited with feared and bated breath for casualty reports, praying he’d never hear Lee’s name on the list. The universe had given him this one plea; Lee’s name never appeared. He was alive, somewhere.
So he’d been grateful, that Lee had sent the letter. Several weeks after he’d tried to reply, Gaara had attended a summit at HQ and Kakashi had informed the Alliance leadership of Rock Lee’s exemplary leadership for multiple S-class emergency missions and the subsequent field promotion. Of course, Lee had massively understated his contributions, he expected nothing less of the most humble person he knew. The entire leadership table had spent several minutes discussing his friend.
“Multiple S-class missions? Is that not the Konoha-nin with no ninjutsu or genjutsu? That was a risky move—”
“—Of course, but in war times such as these, we must work within our capacities, and Rock Lee is exceptionally talented in Taijutsu—”
“Lee is easily the fastest and physically strongest shinobi in the entire Allied forces; no one else compares even without ninjutsu abilities—” That one had come from Gaara himself. Lee deserved nothing but praise for his efforts, and if Kakashi gave him a very loaded stare in response to his informal use of Lee’s name, at least everyone knew his stance.
“A fine shinobi indeed. The boy deserves the honour, Hokage-san, Captain Kakashi. He is a blessing to your village and this alliance.”
Gaara had committed everything positive he’d heard to heart, determined to prove to Lee when they next spoke that he was truly the shinobi he’d always told Gaara he wanted to be.
He had not seen any of the new transitions that day, he’d been directing repairs and fortifications beyond the outpost until darkness fell. Just the previous week they’d suffered a rather severe assault, losing several shinobi to a series of stealth attacks designed to catch the Kazekage off guard. Alliance HQ had reached out to Intelligence after the attack report, who’d determined the attack was most likely a preliminary attempt to capture Gaara and once again remove Shukaku from him. It had brought the safety of the remaining Jinchūriki into high-status, given the only living members were Killer B, Naruto, and now Gaara. The other two, still hidden, remained safe, but that left Gaara as possibly the biggest target of the warfront. He could not simply vanish from the front lines; however, most of the stratagems at work belonged to him. They’d been debating protective measures since he’d recovered his tanuki, and Gaara had refused them all. Protection should not become a hindrance, and every proposition offered thus far required him sacrifice mobility and forward effort. He had conceded to suspend taking any missions beyond his camp for the time being, which meant unless his friends came to him, they were quite out of reach. But now, Lee was here! Somewhere.
The next day his tasks were mostly camp internal matters, so it was his priority to greet Lee tomorrow and congratulate him on his status. He wasn’t completely sure where to place him in the outpost if Lee hadn’t come with an assignment; most of their fighters were ranged, and Lee was exclusively close combat. He wouldn’t suit medical defence, and most of his frontline missions required a ranged squad…
Gaara continued musing on the tactical placement of Lee in Division 4 as he walked into the shower facilities and shucked his clothing into a cubicle, placing the strategically compact hip-gourd atop his shoes and stepping past the curtain into the stone-tiled communal shower.
It was not until this precise moment that Gaara realised that the shower room wasn’t empty.
Facing away from him three fixtures down, soaking wet, covered in shampoo suds, and stark naked, stood the very person occupying all his thoughts.
Gaara inhaled sharply in surprise.
Lee was much taller at 19 than he’d been at 16. He’d grown like a weed; Gaara would be lucky to reach his chin at full height. He was still lithe, but the willowy frame of his adolescence had filled out some as a near-adult, prominent muscles shifting under skin as he scrubbed shampoo through his hair. His hair was much longer in the back (as was Gaara’s, no one had time for proper haircuts in a war), and it shimmered, oil black, as Lee shook it out under the water.
Looking down past his hair, Lee was absolutely covered in scars.
Now, scars were not an uncommon feature in shinobi due to the nature of their careers, nor were they absent amongst Suna’s civilian population; the desert was an impartial god. Gaara had seen the marks of kunai on his siblings, the damage wrought on a civilian caught in a sandstorm unprotected, the marks he himself had left on the few people who survived his younger days. Kankurō’s hair and hood hid a startling slash across the back of his head, and Kakashi Hatake, the next-in-line Hokage, was not shy about the vertical slice across his Sharingan eye. He himself had a silvery line on his right cheek from the first wound someone else had ever inflicted on him (Lee, of course. Gaara still considered himself to have lost both that fight and every battle during that invasion), a jagged Chidori scar from Sasuke Uchiha, and his own notable forehead kanji, self-inflicted. Lee, though… as one of the shinobi world’s most renowned taijutsu masters, specialising in bloody close combat, Lee’s violent history was tattooed into every inch of his body.
Gaara had never seen the damage he’d wrought on Lee during the chūnin exams, and Lee had never brought it up after exuberantly forgiving him the afternoon Gaara had half-carried him back to Konohagakure once they’d defeated Kimimaro. Pink, pitted sand burn scars scattered his entire left leg from the knee down, with matching textures on the corresponding arm from where the Sand Coffin had torn through his clothing and bandages. Some of the skin looked as though it had been grafted, strange margins fringed with surgical lines covered broad swaths of his shin, a pattern akin to mesh visible on the delicate under-forearm. The rest of his body was covered in fine white slash marks from kunai and senbon. Gaara watched soap slide down the full length of Lee’s back, where a thick vertical surgical scar stretched from between his shoulder blades down to his tailbone. The soap he’d been watching curved under a divot just above his rear, slid over one firm glute before landing with a soft splat on the stone tile. A wide scar Gaara didn’t recognise bisected the lower half of the surgical scar and twisted down across his hip. A smattering of bruises in various stages of healing, from dark bluish-purple to nearly vanishing yellow, decorated his entire body.
Gaara’s mouth went dry. Lee was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
It was as Gaara drew these conclusions that Lee half-turned to the source of the noise, his head tilting enough to make eye contact.
They both froze.
“G-Gaara-kun!” echoed, pitched high and loud, across the shower room.
“Lee.” Gaara responded in a tone that sounded far calmer than he felt. He watched as Lee’s eyes tracked over his body, his face colouring a lovely shade of red. A small part of Gaara’s brain reminded him he was full-frontal nude.
He wondered what Lee thought of him. If his own body appealed to Lee the way the lines of Lee’s body sent the air gusting from his lungs.
He wanted so desperately to touch him…
He could see some of Lee’s front now, scarred skin tight over honed muscles. One side of his clavicle was slightly bent, as though it had broken and been set just off mark. A set of black sutures crossed a rounded deltoid, two more parallel lines staggered lower across his brachialis and bicep. Claw marks? More white kunai lines, a yellowing bruise over his lower ribs. Black hair lay wet against his chest, bisected by lines of scar tissue where hair no longer grew. Gaara couldn’t have guessed his body fat level, but it must have been low to have the chiselled abdominals Lee was unintentionally flaunting. Sharply visible Adonis belt lines and a trail of black hair starting at his navel led downward into a place Gaara was desperately trying not to look at.
Gaara swallowed. Hard.
“I-I am so sorry! I assumed that no one would be using the showers this early, I did not mean to intrude on you!” Lee cried, his whole posture caving in on itself, a strange expression crossing his face. Gaara had never seen his friend react in a manner such as this.
Gaara’s eyes had drifted, magnetic, back to the sand scarring on the left half of Lee’s body. A hot stab of guilt slid down his spine.
Lee crossed his good arm over the left, fingers clenched over the elbow, blocking his focus. His fingers were long and callused, pressing white divots into the sand-scarred skin. His nails, blunted, bit into his skin, tan lines above the battered knuckles marking the end of where his bandages usually lay.
When had he gotten close enough to see?
“No—” Gaara half-whispered, struggling to tear his eyes away from Lee’s arm. “No… you shouldn’t apologise, I interrupted you.”
Gaara, close enough to touch him, to feel the spray of the shower, finally tore his eyes away from the damage he inflicted, looking up into the eyes of his friend. Lee had grown into his features somewhat, much of the roundness of his face hollowed by time and hardship, the stronger jaw and sharpened cheekbones offsetting some of the overwhelming heaviness of his browbone. Features that Gaara, all too aware of the same result in his own face, were hardened by war. But it was the same jarringly round, oil black eyes staring back into his own, long lashes brushing the lower occipital bone, the same delicate nose. The same lips he wanted to press to his own, a strong cupid’s bow and downturned pout with sharply uplifted corners. Gaara was absolutely captivated by Lee’s reddened face, until he realised Lee’s eyes weren’t shiny from the shower, but from tears. The strange expression had a name, Gaara realised. Lee was horrified.
“Lee, what’s wr— are you alright?”
Lee started to speak, but his voice cracked, and he covered his mouth with his good hand, tears slipping down his face and bad leg half-stepping backwards. Gaara watched the other hand disappear behind Lee’s back and tried to guess what had caused this sort of reaction. Did he feel guilty about using the showers outside of normal hours? That seemed silly, but he’d known Lee to get worked up about less before…
Lee choked another breath and tried again, but Gaara interrupted him.
“Lee, I am so happy you’re here.”
Horror shifted into confusion.
“W-what?”
“Lee, did you ever get my response to your last letter?” Gaara inquired, remembering the letter he’d tucked back into his coat pocket before entering the shower.
“N-no, I have been – are you not disgusted?” Lee cried, unable to keep his voice level.
Gaara’s brain stuttered to a halt.
“Why would I be?” He asked, stunned. Lee sniffled; good arm drawn across his chest and fingers so tight on his scarred upper arm that Gaara was worried he would bruise himself. Gaara noticed a nearly invisible silvery line across his cheek as a tear shimmered across it. It was a familiar line; one he’d seen before. Kimimaro had delivered it right before Gaara had interfered with their fight and pulled him back. He had a matching one on the other cheek. Gaara had seen the attack which had left Lee laid out in the grass, but he had never noticed the lingering scars before.
“B-because I am disfigured! I have never been upset that I was not conventionally attractive, b-but –”
“Disfigured? Not conventionally attractive?! Lee, this is a poor attempt at humour.”
“It is not meant to be a joke!” Lee snapped, lips dropping into a frown. Gaara watched fresh tears well, and he reached out and seized Lee by both biceps, propriety bedamned.
“Lee, you are neither disfigured nor unattractive.” Gaara stated firmly, gaze boring into Lee’s teary eyes, willing him to listen. “You are a dear friend, and I haven’t been this happy to see someone in a very long time.”
To his relief, Lee relaxed the death grip he held on to his own arm, scarred left arm reappearing, hands fluttering around Gaara’s arms like he was afraid to touch. Gaara released Lee’s arms and gripped Lee’s scarred hand in his own smaller, paler ones instead, staring down at the contrast. Although textured with raised suture lines and pocks, the skin on the back of his hand was soft, but the knuckles hard and callused. Gaara brushed his thumbs over the delicate opisthenar skin, marvelling in its softness.
Gaara, unlike Lee, could count his scars on one hand, having been protected by the sand from any harm he had not self-inflicted. Aside from the kanji on his forehead and the marks from Lee and Sasuke in the chūnin exams so long ago, his skin was unmarked by violence, hands uncalloused by hard work. Short in stature and slim from a lifetime of little sleep, pale in skin and eyes, Gaara knew nothing about his features spoke to his heritage. Holding Lee’s hand was a study in contrast.
Lee, his story was written into his skin, in every scar and tan line, every rope of steely muscle. Paths of pain, of loss and victory, of learning carved into the topography of his body. And Gaara? He wanted to learn every inch.
“Does…” Gaara murmured, running his fingers up Lee’s wrist and forearm, over the texture of the scarring he had inflicted on his friend, the guilt still churning behind his ribs. “…it still hurt?”
“N-no…?”
Lee’s hands trembled in his own, and Gaara, unknowing if the action was borne of sheer insanity or a sense of surrealism for the lateness of the hour (he wasn’t sure), acted on his hidden yearnings, lifting Lee’s scarred hand and pressing his lips across a patch of sand-pinkened scar tissue. Lee sucked in a breath so sharp it caused Gaara to jerk his head back to meet Lee’s eyes, bigger than he’d ever seen them. Gaara realised that perhaps he’d pushed Lee too far. Considering he was fully standing in Lee’s shower spray with him now…
“I… apologise.” Gaara murmured, loosening his grip and preparing to step away. To his surprise, Lee held on tighter and shuffled a half step back into the spray, so close that Gaara’s eye-level view was on the cords of Lee’s neck, the vaguest of 5’o clock shadows on his chin (Lee could grow facial hair?). Gaara could see the pulse jumping in Lee’s jaw. Half formed apology forgotten, Gaara breathed in the scent of soap, of sweat salt, of Lee, and a dull thunder roared behind his ears.
“Gaara-kun, did you – was that—” Lee’s voice was nearly in his ear now, free hand lifted to hover near Gaara’s face.
Gaara didn’t respond, utterly consumed once again by the sheer presence of Lee. Tilting his face up to the taller man, he pressed Lee’s awkwardly hovering hand into his jaw, relishing the warmth and texture of Lee’s palm, in the way Lee’s pupils, only recognisable for their lack of subtle texture unlike his irises, blew out under his gaze. They were very close now, close enough to Gaara to feel Lee’s breath fan across his face. Against his control, Gaara’s other hand reached for Lee’s cheek, fingertips sliding under sheets of silky wet hair.
“You – you do not find me unattractive, like this?” Lee whispered.
I have never once thought you anything but beautiful, Gaara thought to himself.
For a moment, they remained, suspended in time, the world blurring to nothing around them. Gaara brushed his lips over Lee’s, once. Twice. Chakra crackled, electric in the space between them.
“Gaara…?”
And Lee, the paragon of formality, breathed his name with no honorific, so low Gaara wondered if he’d imagined it on an exhale, and the moment was so intimate it bordered on painful, tipping them both over a precipice across which there would never be any return.
Lee’s lips, softer even than the delicate skin on the back of his damaged hand, slotted fully against his own; they were kissing, drinking each other in like water after years in the desert. An arm swept behind Gaara’s waist, muscles like iron pressing him into Lee’s bare chest. Lee’s other hand slid from his cheek into his hair, snagging in the saturated red strands and drawing Gaara close, closer perhaps than Gaara had ever been to anyone in his life. Gaara clung to Lee with equal fervour, almost dizzy, rising onto his toes to curl his arms around Lee's neck. Lee ran his tongue across Gaara’s lower lip, and Gaara opened to him automatically, his tongue pressing into Gaara’s mouth. Gaara dug his nails into Lee’s shoulders, blood roaring in his ears, fire spiralling down into his belly. His cock sprung to life between them. Without thinking, he pressed his hips in closer to Lee, the sensation on his length so overwhelming that he whimpered into Lee’s mouth.
Before he had the chance to draw back in shock at his own brazen actions, Lee responded for him, pressing him bodily into the wall. Strong, callused hands dropped to his ass and hauled him into the air like he weighed nothing (which was probably true in proportion to Lee’s legendary strength), and oh, if that didn't provoke a visceral need. Lee was just about the only person who could throw him around, and there was something about that realisation that made Gaara lightheaded with a desperate sort of want. Gaara clamped his thighs around Lee’s waist, nailed to the shower wall by his weight, warm water cascading across their twined bodies, and they were kissing each other so deeply that Gaara forgot where he ended and Lee began.
Breaking the kiss, Gaara trailed his lips across Lee’s jaw, listening as Lee’s breath hitched, tilting to give Gaara more access to his throat. Gaara took what Lee gave him, sucking marks all the way down his neck and revelling in each choked sigh and half-gasped, unintelligible word. Gaara grabbed frantically for what he could reach, clamping one hand at the back of Lee’s neck and the other clawing into his shoulder blade, scraping across the scar on his spine in the process. Lee grunted and jerked forward, flattening Gaara into the wall, knocking the wind from him.
“Sorry—”
“Do not apolo—guhh!”
Gaara lunged forward into the join of Lee’s neck and shoulder, pressing an imprint of his teeth into the muscle, and Lee’s hips twitched forward, the tip of his cock skidding hot across the seam of Gaara’s ass. Lee’s hands flexed on Gaara’s hips, rolling their hips together and pressing Gaara’s cock into Lee’s abdomen.
“Lee, shit—”
Gaara was sure Lee had forgotten his own strength in his enthusiasm, as the pressure of his fingertips on the meat of Gaara’s ass and thighs would certainly leave bruises, but oh, it was such a pleasurable ache. Gaara burned under Lee’s unrestrained attentions, his actions so at odds with his typical well-mannered deference that it made Gaara's head spin, his cock weeping pre-come and smearing across Lee’s lower abdominals with every roll of their bodies before being washed away in the cascade of water.
“You are so fucking attractive to me—” Gaara hissed into Lee’s ear, and the Leaf-nin bodily shuddered, a half-sob cracking out of his lungs. Gaara felt his body go weightless for a brief second as Lee hauled him higher, one strong limb slamming home under his tailbone and the other a steel bar behind his waist, pressing him even closer to Lee and the full length of Lee’s erection pressing up into his rear. He felt Lee’s teeth, sharp on the lobe of his ear and shivered his pleasure. He could never have dreamed of Lee being so carnal, yet here he was, raw and wild and just a little bit savage in his concupiscience, and Gaara found himself consumed by his fervour.
Gaara wound a hand into Lee’s hair and pulled, and Lee groaned loud into Gaara’s ear, the timbre of his voice lower and rougher than Gaara had ever heard it. The head of Lee’s cock pressed dangerously close to the tight ring of muscles of Gaara’s ass, and he gasped in surprise, his thighs clenching around Lee’s hips. Oh, he could not see it, but he could feel the size of it pressed up against his ass, and a rolling heat seized him by the balls, a fevered heat starting to build at the base of his spine. Could he come just from this? He wondered vaguely if military grade soap would work as lubricant.
“Gaara, please—”
If Lee didn’t fuck him in this shower, Gaara was probably going to die.
If the shower hadn’t clicked off, the water timer finally run dry, Gaara was fairly sure Lee would have.
Cold air swept over the two so suddenly that both startled and jerked their heads up, Gaara bouncing off the shower wall with a crack. Shaking it off with a muffled expletive, Gaara refocused on Lee’s face, centimetres away and flushed a dark red, still pressed wholly against Gaara so tight Gaara could feel the rapid beat of his heart. Gaara was suddenly aware that faint streaks of predawn were visible in the porthole skylights. It was almost sunrise, and that meant other outpost shinobi would be waking soon. It would not do to have a shinobi walk in to find the Regimental Commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces naked, pressed up against the wall by an unfamiliar shinobi and looking thoroughly wrecked. It might start a diplomatic incident, consensual or not.
Lee looked like he was about to combust, his face aflame.
“Gaara-kun, I am so so—” Lee started, but Gaara interrupted him with another searing kiss.
“Don’t you dare apologise, Lee. I won’t accept it!” Gaara whispered with as much command as he could put behind it. The effect was slightly ruined by the breathlessness, but Lee seemed to register the meaning all the same.
They stared at each other, still at eye level because Lee had locked up with Gaara still pressed up against the wall, hard and aching against his abdomen. Against his will, Gaara’s arousal twitched, unsatisfied. Lee’s eyes unfocused, trailing across Gaara’s jaw and neck. Gaara felt Lee’s erection jump in response. God, did he want to continue… but now was not the time or place. Perhaps later…
“Lee.”
Lee snapped back to attention.
“Let me down.”
“O-oh, of course!”
Lee relaxed and Gaara’s legs dropped, feet settling onto the floor. Lee made a move as though to step back and Gaara grabbed his sand-scarred hand, stalling the taller man. Lee stared at their joined hands, expression not one of horror this time, but disbelief. Gaara focused very hard on not investigating the very obvious, very appealing shape of Lee’s erection in his line of sight beyond their hands. He swallowed and looked up into Lee’s still very pink face.
“Lee, listen to me.” Gaara stated.
“Yes?”
“Your scars are not ugly. They are not disfigurements. They showcase your strength and your story, and they are as much of an integral part of you as my sand is a part of me. I will not accept any apologies for what just happened, and I will expect you in my tent, tonight, at 11pm after lights out. Understood?”
Lee’s face split into the brightest smile Gaara had seen since before the war. Gaara’s heart jumped into his throat once again, and he relaxed into a soft smile of his own.
“Now. Go get dressed. I am supposed to come welcome you to Division Four soon.” Gaara ordered, a hint of teasing present underneath the flat tenor of his voice.
Lee laughed, and the sound melted into Gaara’s skin, warmer than any shower spray, more restorative than any medical jutsu.
“This greeting was much better!”
“Lee, I haven’t actually greeted you at all, I just attacked you in the shower.” Gaara deadpanned.
“That… is a good point.” Lee acquiesced, then he stepped back and bowed formally, the effect entirely ruined by the fact he was naked, still mostly hard, and dripping water everywhere. “Good morning, Kazekage-sama!”
Gaara pulled him up by the chin and kissed him again. Lee responded immediately, lips warm and pliant under him. Breaking the kiss with no small amount of willpower, Gaara crossed the room and tossed Lee a towel, scrubbing himself dry and pulling his clothing on. Lee did the same, Gaara lamenting every inch of skin disappearing under the standard issue Alliance uniform.
Dressed and (mostly) calm, Gaara watched Lee smear a balm into his knuckles and wrists. He wandered over and picked up a spool of Lee’s bandages.
“What happened to the jumpsuit?” Gaara asked before he could stop himself. Lee looked up at him, and Gaara held up the bandages, gesturing for his arm. Lee blushed and held out his battered left arm.
“My last one got destroyed some time ago! I did not have the means to acquire a new one on the battlefield. During my last rotation I was required to wear stealth gear. They did let me wear leg warmers to hide my weights!” Lee punctuated this statement by lifting his right fist. “I must say, it is warmer than my regular suit, and I am far less recognisable now with a different hairstyle and clothing.” Lee shook his loose hair for emphasis. “I do not feel like myself wearing mostly black, but I am used to it now.”
Gaara listened to Lee’s speech with a soft smile, content to bask in his presence. He wrapped Lee’s arm with careful movements, smoothing out each loop of cloth and admiring the steel cables of Lee’s forearms as the skin vanished under bandages. Upon tying off the final knot on his left arm, he brought Lee’s hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to each battered knuckle. Lee’s breath hitched. Gaara allowed himself a faint smile before snagging the unwrapped arm and repeating the process all over for the other hand. Cracks of sunlight leaked through the windows, burnishing the room in copper light.
“Your hair looks like flames right now.” Lee said quietly from above his head, and Gaara looked up from his task to find Lee twining some of Gaara’s damp red strands in his fingers. Awash in a patch of the rising dawn, Lee’s eyes reflected gold light, shining with an emotion Gaara was not sure he could name.
I wish you could see yourself as I do now, Gaara thought. I wish you could see yourself as I do, always.
He ducked, tied off the last of Lee’s bandages, voice blocked by the heart in his throat. He cleared his throat, swallowed, forced himself back into the discipline required of his military status. He nodded to Lee.
“I will see you shortly for outpost placement and admittance paperwork.” Gaara said, valiantly attempting eye contact and failing as his gaze swept across Lee’s unbound hair, still damp and shiny in the dawn light.
“Of course! I have a scroll for you from Headquarters.” Lee chirped.
“Good.” Gaara nodded and prepared to leave the room. Just as he made his first step towards the door, he was stopped by a soft noise.
“Gaara-kun?” Lee made his name a question, quiet again.
“Yes, Lee?”
“I missed you.” Lee whispered, earnest, the words akin to a confession, face flushing once again. Gaara might have melted under the sound. Gaara turned, stepped forward once more, abandoning pretence for another chance to embrace the man in front of him. Lee responded with such enthusiasm he lifted Gaara off his feet for the second time that morning, crushing Gaara to his chest with such force it knocked the wind out of him. For a single moment more, the war did not exist. Only Lee did, his strong arms, his clean salt-and-soap smell, the heat he always radiated, as warm as his smile.
And then the moment was gone. Gaara was back on his feet, and Lee was bowing formally, giving him one last smile. Then he was gone from the room, leaving only a fluttering door hanging and a faint crack in the stone tile where he’d been standing. Gaara shook his head ruefully; he’d forgotten that Lee’s presence tended to increase construction and repair bills.
With a twitch of his fingers, his sand swirled around him, and he, too, vanished.
Lee was not convinced he was even going to live to see Gaara’s tent at 11pm, not at the rate his heart had been going since Gaara had walked – naked – into the showers. Hours of a completely erratic pulse and random hot flashes every time he thought of Gaara’s quiet, low groans, the throbbing of his dick against Lee’s abdomen, the way he had kissed the scars on his hands after bandaging them. And his body, Lee’s imagination had never even come close to it.
Gaara was beautiful.
He had always known that Gaara was a deceptively strong shinobi compared to first glance. He had not gotten much taller or bulkier, but all the residual childhood fat had melted off, leaving a leanly muscled, perfectly proportioned body. Lee’s eyes had flashed across him, memorising every feature that he had never seen through the sand armour, from the pink undertones to his pale, almost flawless skin, the faint body hair the same shade of red as his head and his kanji, the light freckling on his cheeks and shoulders. The silvery line on his cheek from where Lee had kicked him, and the startling web of lines marking out the damage from Sasuke’s Chidori. And lower, strong thighs and calves from years of carrying the giant gourd. Lee was too scared to even think about the details he had seen of Gaara’s complete nudity because he did not believe his body would not respond in the middle of the day to the very thought! But oh, Gaara’s skin had been so incredibly soft to the touch. Lee wanted to kiss every inch of him.
And then the hot flash would freeze into ice, because Gaara had seen the scars he had hidden from the world, gruesome and unsightly as they were. His stomach had been coiling in pleasure and horror off and on the entire day.
He had not even been able to muster up the focus for morning training!!
As he walked into the Headquarters Tent for Division Four, he saw Gaara, facing away and speaking to Shikamaru (ah, another friend from home!), and immediately felt an unexplained ease steal over him. As he stepped into line, Gaara turned to face the assembled shinobi (around a dozen, including himself) and Gaara’s eyes caught his.
“Good morning to all of you. Welcome to Division Four. I am Sabaku no Gaara, Godaime Kazekage of Sunagakure and Regimental Commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces. Behind me is Lieutenant Nara Shikamaru. This division’s primary focus…” Gaara said in his calm, no-nonsense tenor.
Although his posture did not change– he was so beautiful, Lee thought, positively radiating power and confidence as he laid out the outpost regulations, a prime example of youth – his eyes had softened, for him. Lee nearly beamed in response, until Shikamaru caught his eye from his place adjacent to Gaara and gave him a raised brow.
Oops.
Lee spent the entire lecture listening intently and hearing nothing, entirely consumed with the shape of Gaara’s lips as he formed each word. He knew what those lips were capable of now; the marks under the collar of his flak jacket were testament to that. He fought the blush attempting to colour his neck and spent a significant amount of time walking himself through the steps of Daytime Tiger in order to calm back down.
“Ito Ayame, Fujiwara Kenji, you have both been assigned to battlefield medical defence. Please report to medical tent two for further assignment. Dismissed.” Lee checked back into his awareness just as Gaara nodded towards two samurai, and they bowed and left the tent.
Wait.
Where had everyone gone?? It was only himself, Shikamaru, and Gaara left in the room.
“Awake again, Lee?” Shikamaru snickered, abandoning his formality for his trademark laziness, and dropping into a nearby chair. He stared at Lee; a probing sort of stare that made Lee feel distinctly the same as when Neji used his Byakugan.
“Y-yes! My apologies.”
The probing stare turned teasing.
“Have a nice morning?”
Oh god, his lack thereof of chakra control. After over a decade of hard work, he was no longer so totally incompetent at chakra that he could not suppress his own for stealth, but it was shaky at best and required most of his concentration. That morning, he had given it no thought at all. Lee flushed red to the roots of his hair. Gaara regarded Shikamaru for a moment, then turned to Lee, padding quietly closer until he was just close enough for Lee to reach out and –
No! He had more restraint than that!!
“Welcome to Division Four, Lee.” Gaara said then, the barest undercurrent of teasing in his tone. “I understand you have a missive for me?”
Lee whipped the scroll out from his jacket and handed it over with a nod, feeling simply too many feelings to speak, for if he opened his mouth now, he was sure to say something entirely mortifying! Gaara took the scroll from him with a nod, one finger caressing the back of his hand as he lifted the scroll off Lee’s outstretched palm. If Lee did not know better from the glint in Gaara’s unwavering eye contact, he would have brushed it off.
Was Gaara…flirting with him? In public? In front of Shikamaru?
A bubble of warmth burst in his chest, and Lee wished more than anything that he had a single bone of subtlety in his whole body, because if he so much as breathed too close to Gaara someone was sure to pick up on the feelings he carried, buried under his ribs, for years now. Even more obvious now that Gaara washed away so much of his carefully constructed restraint that morning in the showers.
Gaara unrolled the scroll, eyes flickering as he flashed through lines of text, then his relaxed posture tensed, the temperature in the room dropping. Although the smaller gourd was placed in a stand on his desk, everyone could hear the agitated hiss of movement from within. Shikamaru rocketed back to his feet, standing as far as he could from the ominously rattling vessel. Lee, to his visual merit (although he was not sure it was bravery or simply from being too distracted by Gaara’s myriad of facial expressions) did not show any sign of concern.
“Lee, were you aware of the contents of this scroll?”
“No sir. I was given this directly before my assignment here, with no further instructions. It was handed to me directly by the Raikage, sir.”
Gaara growled under his breath, a quiet gust of air laced with what Lee thought might have been an expletive. “Shikamaru, did Shikaku give you any indication they were going to force my hand like this?”
Lee did not understand at all what that meant. Apparently Shikamaru did, though, because he said, “Oh no, did they seriously…?” Then he shook his head. “What a drag.”
Gaara’s free hand crunched into a fist for a moment, but then relaxed and turned his attention back to Lee, whose confusion must have been written on his face, because Gaara sighed this time.
“Shikamaru, dismissed. I will brief Lee on the situation. Please ensure the other arrivals are being looked after appropriately.” Gaara said, quiet and severe. Shikamaru, looking more relieved than anything, departed immediately, leaving Lee and Gaara along in the tent. Lee maintained his formal subordinate composure for all of one second, before cracking at the exhausted look in Gaara’s eyes.
“Kazekage-sama…is everything alright?” Lee inquired, keeping his voice low and address formal in case anyone was nearby and listening. It probably would not do for anyone to hear him address the Regiment Commander with friendly informality. Gaara looked at him a little oddly for it.
“It’s just us, Lee. Call me Gaara. We are well past the point of honorifics, are we not?” Gaara said, and although there were no inflections in his calm monotone, Lee felt the meaning of the words settle onto him as though spoken by a lover (which, judging by the dreamlike events of that predawn encounter and the implications of a clandestine after-hours rendezvous, might be true, and Lee’s heart rated exploded yet again that morning.)
“I—well—if you—yes?” Lee stammered through the slamming of his pulse. Gaara hummed, for all the world looking entirely unaffected, and Lee admired his discipline all over again.
“Good.” Gaara replied, then turned and paced towards his desk, beckoning Lee to follow with one slender finger. Lee followed, entranced, neglecting in his distraction to place himself across the desk as was professionally appropriate and instead gravitating to Gaara’s side. If Gaara took issue with that, he had not commented, and instead rolled out the scroll flat for Lee’s perusal, shifting sideways into Lee’s orbit, his shoulder blade just touching Lee’s chest and hands braced on the table. Gaara’s scent was reminiscent of sun-bleached sand and something musky. Lee thought it was the best thing he ever smelled. He wondered if Gaara could feel his pulse jumping.
“There’s no confidential information. Read it and tell me what you think.” Gaara ordered in his low voice. Lee obeyed, leaning forward slightly to focus and (completely innocuously, of course, he would never have an ulterior motive, he vigorously told himself) pressing his entire front into Gaara’s back and side, eyes on the paper and reading nothing, entire concentration on the body cool against his own. Gaara breathed deeply, sagging just a fraction of his weight into Lee, and Lee could not resist curving his right arm around Gaara, bracketing the smaller man to the table. He was slow, careful, giving Gaara the option to pull back at any moment in case he was too forward, but to his relief and surprise, Gaara responded with a soft noise of comfort and tilted his head back to lean on Lee’s shoulder, exposing his neck to the taller man. Lee abandoned any pretence of reading to instead nose at the column of Gaara’s throat, inhaling deeply. Gaara huffed a quiet laugh.
“Lee, that is not reading. Focus.” And oh, that was the tone of voice from the shower. Gaara was flirting with him. With a reckless bravery he did not expect of himself, Lee pressed a kiss to Gaara’s pulse point, relishing in the sharp inhale from his commanding officer.
“Forgive me. I am easily distracted today.” He whispered lowly, directly into Gaara’s ear, and was rewarded with more of Gaara’s breathy laughter.
Gaara turned his face to meet Lee’s eyes, and Lee could see the heavy-lidded hazy gaze he had associated that morning with arousal on Gaara’s face. A flare of heat crackled down his spine.
“You can be distracted later in my tent. For now,” Gaara’s breath swept warm across his face, “Read it.”
Lee, with considerable effort borne of a lifetime of discipline, shook himself out of his state of half-prurience and focused on the document at hand.
Attn: Rg. Comd. Sabaku no Gaara
Per previous discussions, this missive is to inform you of actions taken in response to increased aggression in the Division Four militant area aimed at yourself and the One-Tail Beast Shukaku. As you rejected prior defence concepts for your person and your division, we have elected to proceed with Chief Strategist Nara Shikaku’s suggestion to appoint a bodyguard. 3rd Div. Capt. Kakashi Hatake and Capt. SA. Spt. Kankurō have both nominated for this position Intelligence Asset Rock Lee of Konoha.
The Rokudaime Hokage has informed Alliance leadership that Rock Lee is not only a notable shinobi with a complementary skillset to your own but is also a close personal friend of yours. This was confirmed by 3rd Div. Capt. Kakashi and 3rd Div. Sgt. Maito Gai. As such, I am designating him to your division to serve directly under yourself as direct subordinate and close-combat defence of your person. You are to accept this appointment or divest leadership of Division Four to Lt. Shikamaru Nara and report for onsite operations at Alliance HQ.
May I remind you; this move is approved under the terms of the Alliance requiring approval of no less than seven of the nine Division Leaders and four of the five Kage prior to any action overriding the individual decisions of a single leader. Your safety is a high priority, and I will not continue to permit refusal of safety precautions.
Dis: Sup. Ld. ASF. A
At the bottom were nine signatures, one for each Division head (Division Four was blank) and signatures of the other four Kage. Underneath that, handwriting that was distinctly Kakashi’s scribble, read:
P.S. You’re welcome, Gaara. Be nice to my Jounin. – K
It was a lot to take in.
Gaara was a jinchūriki again? How was that possible? He was being established here as a direct subordinate to Gaara. What rank would that be? Is there a team involved? Was Gaara in danger? Why was he refusing safety precautions?
Wait.
Did that mean he gets to stay here? With Gaara? Lee’s heart rate spiked all over again.
A hand brushed over his, and he startled. He had completely forgotten where he was, how unprofessional! Well…he was already draped over his commanding officer like a lichen, so at this point there would be no saving him should someone sneak in.
Gaara’s monotone was calm in his ear. “I am sure you have some questions.”
Lee nodded.
“You are a jinchūriki again?” He inquired, index finger brushing the implication in the missive. Gaara hummed in confirmation.
“We were able to infiltrate the site where the Tailed Beasts were hidden and extract him. Unfortunately for the Tails, extraction from the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path leaves each individual weak and vulnerable for an extended period, so to protect Shukaku, he was resealed to me. Unfortunately, we were only able to extract one Tailed Beast before being discovered and needing to escape. We no longer know where they are being held.” Gaara closed his eyes, and Lee felt his chakra waver, before he sighed and reopened them. “Even now, four months later, he is only able to be awake for short periods, although recently I can utilise his chakra and base powers again. Based on his recovery path, I may not be a fully realised jinchūriki for another six to eight months. He’s asleep now. Last time he was awake was nearly a week ago.”
This brought Lee even more questions. “You told me once that he was the reason you do not sleep. Is that still the case?”
Gaara allowed a faint smile to cross his face, an expression Lee was not expecting. “Our relationship is a bit better after we rescued him from the Statue. He described the experience as deeply unpleasant and told me he’d stop harassing me for now as a gesture of goodwill. So yes, I can sleep, although I do not sleep much anyway.” The faint smile widened into a smirk, teeth flashing. “It leaves my nights open for other matters.”
Lee felt that statement go directly to his dick. “G-gaara-kun!”
“Just Gaara, Lee. Any other questions?” Gaara replied, somehow still dead calm. It was amazing, the way Gaara could simply drop in an innuendo like that into his conversation with absolutely no reaction. Lee’s concentration was shot!
“Y-you cannot just—I—Gaara!”
Gaara teeth, centimetres from Lee’s own, were startlingly white against his face in the half-shade of the tent. “You are easily distracted today. Focus.”
“Y-you are doing this on purpose!” Lee cried.
“Yes I am.” Gaara said, not ashamed in the slightest. Lee was so flustered he growled furiously at Gaara in response. This had an entirely unexpected reaction (at least, it did in Lee’s pathetically limited flirting experience.) Gaara’s eyes went a little glassy, and the smirk slid from his face, replaced instead by an expression that Lee could now identify as lust. It was not so different from that morning – Gaara had reacted so strongly to being shoved up against the shower wall that it had shocked Lee (or at least, shocked him when he started thinking with his head afterwards.) It made Lee think. Gaara was notoriously private, Lee had never known of him taking a partner or lover. Lee did not know what he liked behind closed doors. But this?
This was interesting.
Lee was holding the cards now. A rush migrated up his spine, heady and exhilarating, ideas far more suggestive than he was wont to consider regularly circulating in his thoughts. It was almost like being drunk, the haze of it all, the lack of restraint, the need to act. He bent towards Gaara’s parted lips, stopping just a hair’s breadth from a kiss. Gaara’s breath was warm on his face. He steeled his nerves and decided to assuage his burning curiosity.
“Is that what you like, Gaara? A little bit of—” he leaned that final millimetre and spoke the words directly into Gaara’s lips, “—aggression?”
“Ghhh—yes—” came the hissed response. Gaara’s hand found his on the table and clenched it so hard Lee heard, rather than felt, his joints creak. He pushed further, using his free hand to spin Gaara at the hips to face him and bullying him back into the desk, pressing his entire body up against his now-superior officer, trapping him with his bulk. He licked a stripe up Gaara’s jaw, edging one strong leg between Gaara’s slightly spread ones.
“Since when?” Lee whispered. Pressed up against him like this, completely indecent in a semi-public space, he could feel Gaara twitch against his thigh.
“Since—huuhh—since you beat the shit out of me at the chūnin exams.” Gaara gasped into his ear.
Wait. What?
It was the utter shock of that revelation that broke Lee from the fog of arousal and dropped him headfirst back into reality. He grabbed Gaara by both biceps, stepped back and stared into the smaller man’s eyes as they refocused.
“I am sorry, but what? You shattered half of the bones in my left side and walked away from that fight. You were the clear winner!” Lee said. Gaara shook his head, expression returning to his normal, calm gaze after a few moments.
“Lee, at thirteen years old, you fought me, a fully realised demon vessel with a healing factor tens of times the capacities of a regular shinobi, who shouldn’t have even been allowed to compete because of my inhuman powers. Using exclusively taijutsu and nothing else, you broke through my Ultimate Defence and beat me black and blue under my sand armour, something no shinobi had ever done and quite frankly, almost no one has done since. I did not fully recover for days even with enhanced healing. If I were a regular shinobi I would have died for certain under the force of your attacks. Although I did not recognise it at the time, your fists were the first that started to change my heart. Regardless of the outcome on paper, I consider that fight to have been your victory.” Gaara recited, as though he had given this a lot of thought. Lee’s face pinkened from the candour of Gaara’s praise.
“I did not know you felt that way.” Lee observed, tilting his head in thought. He watched Gaara’s eyes follow the sweep of his short braid across his shoulder. “It is…You saying this to me…I feel very validated. Is that strange?” A warm feeling stole over his chest and bubbled up to his face, pulling his lips into a smile.
Gaara’s voice was soft as he replied, “Your skill and determination deserve praise. They always have. I’m glad I can be the one to tell you these things.”
Lee squirmed under the attention, yet another blush rising to his cheeks with the resurgence of his galloping heart. But wait…there was a second part to this revelation! The far more…suggestive part. Lee almost choked on the words; all his previous bravado evaporated in the face of the question he needed to ask.
“Gaara. The—well—the outcome of the match does not explain the fact that you are—that you said—you are attracted to…me being violent?” Lee stammered the question, voice pitching into a squeak towards the end out of nerves. Even the legendary stare-down of the Godaime Kazekage faltered at that one. Gaara’s eyes slid to the fabric of the tent around them, front teeth worrying at his plush lower lip. Lee could not take his eyes off the tiny motion.
Gaara licked his lower lip. Lee could see the indentations of teeth. It made his stomach flip. “At the time,” Gaara spoke lowly, his mind obviously seeking the right words, “I didn’t understand what I was feeling. I was twelve and just on the cusp of adolescence, and I’m sure you understand what a strange time that is emotionally for any child.”
Lee nodded slowly, remembering the way his own body reacted in progressively strange ways around others; completely locking down around Sakura, unexpected bouts of nerves around Tenten and Neji, and most frightening, the strange and twisted dreams of fighting Gaara, where instead of his fists connecting with Gaara’s face as they would have in real life, his hands would land on Gaara’s neck and curl tight, forcing his breathless friend to the floor. He had thought himself going insane, until Gai-sensei had noticed him pulling punches and dragged him aside after training one day. That day had given him 10 pages of notes and a lot to think about. Gaara must have had nothing of the sort. How hard that time must have been for him!
Gaara continued his slow murmur, “Being the jinchūriki, I was both feared and revered by everyone around me, which meant I was in control of everything around me, always. Everyone was at my mercy. That is, until you.” His eyes shifted back to Lee’s, pools of the shallow sea emptying into him. Gaara’s gaze left Lee burning. “You were the first person to fight back and overpower me. It was the first time in my life I felt completely at another’s mercy. I didn’t understand attraction, and the thrall you had on me at that time…I found it overwhelming. I was… irresistibly drawn to you.” Gaara’s voice shook briefly, and Lee forgot how to breathe. “The reason I tried to kill you a second time in the hospital was because at the time, I only understood murder as an outlet for emotions. I thought if I killed you, this fixation would go away. It wasn’t until Naruto defeated me soundly and I had a similar reaction that I started to understand there was something about being beaten that was causing me this strange excitement.”
This might have been the most Lee had ever heard Gaara speak about himself. He was loathe to stop him, so he held his tongue and locked himself down lest he break Gaara’s focus.
“Naruto’s victory was less physical fighting, and didn’t last as long in my fixations, though, my mind went back to you frequently. And then, when you fought Kimimaro, I’d seen much of your fight with my Third Eye Jutsu on my way there. Your moves, although rather strange, were so…hmmm…unpredictable for a while. It was that same pull from the chūnin exams. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
Lee’s ability to bite his tongue failed. “I was drunk for that fight.”
That caught Gaara’s attention. “You were what?”
Lee laughed quietly. “I was drunk. I had broken directly out of the hospital with what I had thought was my prescription, but Tsunade-sama had left a bottle of sake in the drawer. I react very poorly to alcohol! According to Gai-sensei, my greatest natural talent is the Drunken Fist! I do not remember much of it though. Did I never tell you this?”
Gaara made an impressed noise. “That would explain the erratic fighting style. You didn’t, but I didn’t ask either. I was still too afraid at the time to speak too openly. It took me another two years and an awkward conversation with Kankurō to really understand that I was experiencing attraction, and that was not something I wanted to admit to anyone. By that point we had become friends, and I valued your friendship too much to complicate it in that way.”
Lee processed all this information in a bit of a haze. How old was he? Nearly twenty. Gaara was just eighteen. They had fought when Lee was thirteen-almost-fourteen, and Gaara just recently twelve. Gaara had been attracted to him since their first meeting? That was…
“You have been— attracted for me for six years and you never said anything?!” Lee cried in a stage whisper, realising partway through that perhaps that was not an ideal thing to yell in a war camp. Gaara clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Lee, be quiet! What would that have accomplished?” Gaara hissed, looking rather embarrassed now.
Lee pried Gaara’s hand from his face, burdened with feelings that he could not, would not hide any longer.
“Because at least then I could have told you I felt the same about you the whole time!” He exclaimed in the most animated whisper he possessed.
In Lee’s six years of knowing Gaara, he had never seen the man completely stall out. Gaara gaped at him like a fish, mouth moving and nothing but silence coming out.
Lee had been about to take advantage of his shock to deliver the full scope of his feelings to Gaara, but it was at that exact moment that both men registered a chakra signature approaching the entrance to the tent. Lee recovered first, vaulting Gaara’s desk to the side a regular subordinate would have been standing on. Gaara spun to face him, the missive from HQ disappearing off the desk just in time for a tiny brunette kunoichi Lee vaguely recognised to appear at the entrance, looking exceedingly flustered.
“Kazekage-sama, you summoned me?” The kunoichi stated (slightly breathless, Lee thought.)
“Matsuri.” Gaara inclined his head to her, no emotion left on his face, all business. Lee watched with some surprise as her face pinkened. “I have a task for you.”
“A-anything, sir, of course!” She cried. Lee wondered if her obvious blush and enthusiasm was her general manner.
“Matsuri, this is Rock Lee—”
“I remember you from the chūnin exams in Suna!!” Matsuri interrupted, then blanched. She dropped into a half-bow. “I’m so sorry Kazekage-sama!”
Ah, Lee did remember her. She had been the one who’d begged them for help rescuing Gaara from that strange priest with the lute, offering her scroll in exchange. He nodded to her. “Hello Matsuri-san!”
“Matsuri, Lee here has been appointed to the Division recently, but requires the full tour to begin his duties. He will have Division Leadership level security clearance.” Gaara stated, with an inclination of his head at the word full. Lee wondered what that meant. That was a very high security clearance! He had only been at Tier 3 clearance in Intelligence, and there were 5 levels there.
Matsuri nodded, expression bright and open. “Understood, Sir.”
Gaara returned his gaze to Lee and once again, Lee was blessed with the heavy eyes and a tiny, gentle smile that Gaara seemed to only turn on him. Lee felt his own lips curl gently, mirroring his… what was Gaara to him now? A friend? A lover?
“We will continue this discussion… later.” Gaara murmured, unspoken meaning loaded in his words. “Please spend today familiarising yourself with the facility. We will establish further structures tomorrow morning. Dismissed.”
Lee had never heard the word dismissed flirted like that before. He bowed in response, clamping his tongue between his teeth so he did not slip and say something indecent in front of Matsuri. Turning to the door, he almost staggered back at the positively furious expression on the kunoichi’s face. What had happened? Had he done something wrong? He shouldered the shock and walked up to her. She turned in time with him, saying nothing as they departed. She led them from the tent in silence, a sharp contrast from only a moment ago.
“Matsuri-san is everything—” Lee began awkwardly. He didn’t finish the sentence.
“What is your relationship to the Lord Kazekage?” Matsuri demanded, looking into his face with shiny eyes. What?
“Ah—uh, what do you mean? He is a friend of mine!” Lee squawked. Did she know what Shikamaru apparently did?
Apparently, she did not, because her countenance relaxed a fraction. She mumbled something that Lee did not catch. He sent her an inquiring look.
“I’m sorry.” She said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Lord Kazekage smile at anyone before, not even me, and I’m his student.”
Was she…jealous of him?
Lee decided immediately that his first thought, which was “Gaara smiles at me all the time though?” was probably not going to do him any favours, so he changed the topic with all the subtlety he could manage.
“You are G—the Kazekage’s student? That must be an honour!” Lee said, just a little too forced to be natural. Luckily, Matsuri preened at the compliment.
“I’m his first and only student! He taught me the jōhyō and how to fight to protect instead of cause pain. He is an incredible instructor and an amazing man. There is no one else like him! Some people still think he is a monster, but I think he is brave and powerful and handsome, and Suna is better off with him as a leader!” She gushed, cheeks going pink and fists coming up to press against her face. “You said you are friends! What do you think of him?” What could he say that would be completely innocuous?
“The Kazekage saved my life when I was thirteen when I went to fight for my friends immediately after a major surgery!” He did not mention the fact that Gaara was the reason he had needed surgery in the first place. “If he had not interfered, I would not be here today. Since then, we have built a beautiful friendship!” He hoped that would be enough for her.
Matsuri smiled, all animosity gone. “I am glad someone else recognises that he is a good and kind person!” She turned wistful, then. “No man will ever compare to him for me.”
Oh sages, Matsuri was in love with Gaara.
Lee was absolutely never ever ever going to tell her what he truly thought of Gaara in that moment (which was along the lines of, “He is my most precious person, I am desperately in love with him, and I am going to give him my virginity tonight if he but asks for it!”). Matsuri would probably attack him if she knew that Lee had been about to have sex with her love interest just that morning and would possibly be doing the same that right (and there went his heart rate again). That would certainly put a wrench in making friends. Would Gaara want their… whatever this might be… to be a secret? Would he want something at all? It would probably be the smart choice. It ached, though, to think of concealing his feelings, but war was not a time for love, not even if the universe had just dropped him right in its path.
Luckily, Matsuri decided that it was time to begin the tour, and all talk of Gaara was put aside. Lee shouldered his thoughts and focused, knowing that to best protect Gaara, he needed to know everything there was to know about Division Four. Better start now…
Gaara was not regretting his decision to invite Lee to his quarters after hours, not at all, but he was suffering from a bout of unexplained anxiety. What if he didn’t come? What if this morning was a fluke? Of course, it wasn’t a fluke, Lee had directly said he felt the same way. So why was he so nervous? Gaara paced around the room, absently adjusting random objects in his path, the sand in his gourd swishing from the stand on the table.
Sages, it had taken all his effort not to restart their shower activities in his tent that morning. Lee had shown up and that alone had been an exercise in restraint. Lee’s hair was in a short braid now, kunai-chopped bangs framing the front of his face. Gaara had wanted to pull on that braid, run his fingers through the silky soft hair and—stop!
What is your issue, Gaara? Your chakra is so erratic it woke me up!
Oh. Shukaku was awake. Gaara dropped into a meditative lotus posture and closed his eyes, drawing himself into his inner soul to find the tanuki looking sluggish and put out.
“My apologies, Shukaku. How are you feeling?” Gaara inquired.
The one-tailed beast gave him a deadpan stare with one eye. Awake, and I don’t want to be. What’s got your chakra in a knot?
Gaara sighed. “I invited a friend over after hours and I am…anxious about it.”
The tanuki laughed, a double-timbred cackle that Gaara knew was genuine, if a mote condescending.
You have friends? Came the sarcastic response.
Gaara turned, insulted pride twinging his voice. “I do have friends. I might even have a lover. You’ve missed a lot.”
Shukaku laughed again and nodded once in acknowledgement. That’s fair enough. You need to calm down though, if your chakra is enough to wake me up, others can probably feel it. Also, there’s someone here. The tanuki commented, turning his head as though to scent the air. It’s very faint. Feels like that little kid that beat you up a while back.
Lee was here? How did he not know? Lee was not stealthy. He reached out, probing, and after a few seconds, he did catch the register of Lee’s chakra. He’d never felt it so contained before. He’d almost missed it.
“Ah. I have to go, Shukaku. That’s Lee now.”
Is he here to fight you again? I’m not much up for fighting and you need help facing that one.
“No. He’s the friend I spoke of.”
Shukaku slumped back down on the floor of his cage, appearing to have run out of what little energy he had left. Okay kid. I’m going back to sleep. Talk later.
Gaara nodded and opened his eyes. A moment later, he was startling back, eyes bugged out, because Lee was directly in front of him. Was he so distracted that he had missed Lee walking into his tent and kneeling in front of him? For Sages sake, Lee was holding his hand and Gaara had missed it. Either Lee was a non-threat to his instincts, or he’d gotten a lot better at stealth. Possibly both.
Gaara cleared his throat, the sound too loud in the silent tent. Lee was looking at him with some concern.
“Lee, sorry, I was speaking to Shukaku.” He offered in a low voice, body warming under Lee’s intense gaze.
“Ah, is he awake?” Lee inquired quietly. Gaara nodded. “Also, I am sorry for coming in without permission, but I did not want anyone to see me waiting out there!”
Gaara squeezed his hand. “You’ve gotten better at stealth.” He murmured. “Shukaku noticed you before I did.”
Lee blushed and stammered, “O-oh, well, I have had a lot of practice while working in Intelligence, a—and some very good practical advice from all my comrades. I cannot maintain chakra suppression without a lot of concentration, though. It is like,” Lee frowned, pout of his lips curving down, “like trying to stop a river with my bare hands.” He brightened again after a moment. “I am better than I once was! It used to feel like trying to stop an ocean! I am still limited though. I cannot channel it into ninjutsu or genjutsu.”
Gaara hummed in understanding at Lee’s quiet rambling. Gaara had never struggled with chakra control, but suppression had been a challenge to master with Shukaku’s immense chakra prone to leaking and flaring with his mood.
“If you had been able to use ninjutsu or genjutsu, you would not have focused yourself into becoming the taijutsu master you are today. What you see as limitations, I see as your greatest strengths.” Gaara commented quietly, tracing his hands up the steel cables of Lee’s arms. Lee nodded slowly, eyes following the motion of Gaara’s hands on his body.
“We never did finish our conversation from this morning.” Gaara said under his breath. He looked around, then flicked a finger up from its place on Lee’s biceps. The cork popped off his gourd and sand flowed up the walls of the tent, boxing them in. Two large symbols glowed on the floor near his desk, a sound barrier and a chakra suppression seal. The candles on his desk flickered briefly before stilling. Gaara blinked in satisfaction. “We can speak freely now.” Good. Now Gaara could get what Lee meant by ‘felt the same way’ explained, and then possibly act on it.
Lee nodded vigorously; his face was oddly serious. “Gaara-kun, if I am to be assigned as your bodyguard for my rotation here, I will need to know your daily schedule and the outpost security rotation as well, in order to most efficiently place myself throughout the day. I also know you are often up late at night, but I do need sleep, how nearby should I be located in the camp to best be available during those hours? Most of the Jounin are in the barracks and that is entirely too far away to be an ideal choice, although I could absolutely get here within a few seconds without my weights on.”
Gaara didn’t respond for a moment, so entirely caught off guard by Lee’s words. What was he talking about?
Oh.
Lee was talking about his assignment. While Gaara admired the professionalism, that was not what he called Lee for at this time of night.
“Lee, we will discuss your assignment in the morning. What I meant by ‘speak freely’ was continuing the conversation we were having before Matsuri arrived. I think you know the one I am referring to.” Gaara said, eyes fixed on Lee’s face. He watched a flush climb up the Leaf-nin’s throat, pink and tempting.
Lee stammered, “O-oh, you meant—I mean—well—”
Gaara decided he was taking too long and pounced, bowling the taller shinobi over and settling in his lap, hands settling at Lee’s hips. “You should start,” Gaara whispered, “with ‘Because at least then I could have told you I felt the same about you the whole time.’”
Lee’s hands fluttered around his back, unsure of where to touch, and Gaara made the decision for him, snagging one flailing hand and placing it firmly on his ass. Lee mirrored the motion with his other hand and settled, gentle pressure from his hands pushing their hips into each other. Gaara let his eyelids slide to half-mast, frissions of pleasure sparking in his spine with each soft squeeze of Lee’s hands. He pressed kisses to Lee’s jaw, his throat. He kneaded his thumbs into Lee’s hip flexors, admiring every solid muscle in his body.
Lee’s breathing was unsteady in his ears. Gaara heard him swallow, then Lee spoke in a nervous, hitching sort of way. “Gaara-kun, I have—have had feelings for you since the time you came to my rescue against Kimimaro—or rather, I found myself attracted to you at that point. You—I have seen impressive feats of ninjutsu before, b—but the power you had, even then, was so amazing to me.” His voice strengthened. “And then when you were thrown back and I stepped in to try and help, I was not strong enough and very well might have been seriously injured again if you had not defended me with your sand. It was a strange feeling, being totally in awe of your skills and knowing that you were on my side this time. Like you said about me, I could not stop looking at you! A-and after, when we were talking and you made a very good point about loyalty to evil, I remember thinking that you were both incredibly strong and brilliant, and I think from that point on I was lost.” Lee laughed a little. “I did not want to step away from you after you walked me back to Konoha that day. When I was recovering and regaining my strength and skills, I would look at my left limbs and instead of being frustrated, I would remember your strength and be completely breathless over it. It was a very odd feeling. And once—once I was fully recovered…” Lee trailed off, shifting his hips slightly. Gaara could feel his arousal now, warm against him through their clothes.
Gaara rolled his hips against Lee, and it pitched the rest of Lee’s statement into a pleasured moan.
“…I wanted to fight you again so badly. I dreamt about it constantly.”
“Oh?” Gaara breathed, his own arousal flaring at the thought. Lee, dreaming of him. He started picking at the buttons on Lee’s shirt. “Why did you never ask me to?”
“I was afraid.”
Gaara didn’t understand that one. “Why?”
Lee’s eyes focused hazily on his own. “It was not—my dreams were—they were dark. And violent. And it frightened me, which is why I did not ask you to spar. I was afraid I would accidentally bring my dreams into the fight and disturb you.”
Gaara finished all the buttons on Lee’s shirt and pulled the offensive material away, Lee curling up from the floor to help him. In the low light, his scars pitted and slung shadows across his body. Dry this time, Lee’s chest was lightly patterned with straight dark hair. His abs could have been made of steel for all the give they had when Gaara touched them. “Tell me about them.”
Lee’s entire chest turned red to match his face. “Gaara-kun I could not possibly—”
“I want to know what you would do to me.” Gaara whispered, teeth now grazing Lee’s shoulder. Lee shuddered.
“W-well. Most of the time we would fight but instead of sand, it would be taijutsu. And in my dream—you would—would fight hard, but I would end up pinning you t-to the floor with my hands on your th—throat.” Lee followed this statement by sliding his palm up, up Gaara’s heaving chest and centring his large hand at the base of Gaara’s neck, fingers curling delicately around the column of Gaara’s throat. There was no pressure, Gaara could breathe just fine, but the action was so arousing that Gaara felt his entire body flush with heat. Gaara wondered if Lee could feel his pulse rattling in his throat. He untied the drawstring of Lee’s pants and made to pull them off. Lee planted his feet on the ground and lifted his hips—and Gaara’s entire weight—so Gaara could pull his pants down. The outline of Lee’s erection strained against the fitted fabric of the briefs he wore.
“What if I wanted that?” Gaara questioned on a breath, and he saw Lee’s cock jump in the confining underwear. Sages, he wanted Lee to lose his composure the way he did in the shower. He wanted Lee to pin him down and fuck him.
“You—you want me to—” Lee choked on a moan as Gaara dropped his head to that beautiful outline and mouthed at Lee through the fabric, “—oh no, Gaara please.”
Gaara cupped Lee’s balls and gently massaged at them, watching Lee jerk and twitch, half-formed moans spilling from his lips.
“Did you fuck me in these dreams, Lee?” He whispered.
Lee groaned, a full-throated thing, before he ripped himself off the ground and hauled Gaara into his lap, smashing his lips against Gaara’s with an intensity that made his head spin. There it was, the aggression he craved like a drug, so wholly unlike the Lee everyone knew. Lee’s teeth sank into his lip, and Gaara hissed out a pleasured noise in response.
Gaara felt a hand grip the back of his neck, strong and warm, pull him back just enough to focus on Lee, his oil-black eyes lidded and intense.
“Gaara,” he whispered darkly, “in my dreams, I fucked you until you cried.”
This was the best goddamn day of Gaara’s entire fucking life.
“Lee,” he hissed right back into the face of his now-lover, “make your dreams real. Take me to bed. Now.”
Lee obliged, and in half a heartbeat Lee was pushing him down onto the pile of fur and cushions he used for his napping, peeling his clothes off with a speed that left him breathless. Gaara yanked down Lee’s last article of clothing, damp from his saliva and Lee’s own pre-come, leaving him bare except his bandages.
“Take off the bandages.” Gaara ordered. Lee hesitated in his rampage of stripping Gaara naked, and Gaara knew he was still insecure about his scars. “Do it. I want to see them.”
Lee nodded, then tore the bandages off with his teeth. It might have been the most erotic displays of strength Gaara had ever seen. His own cock, ignored up until this point, had wept a damp spot in his clothing.
Lee was magnificent above him, all lean muscle and textured scars, strands of hair escaping his mussed braid, sharp jaw and wild black eyes, a monument to the physical that Gaara craved to worship. He freely took of Lee with his eyes, reading the scripture of Lee’s body, each scar homage to his power. Gaara wondered if Lee, occupied with the ritual of removing his ruined bandages, would see the reverence in his eyes, how it would make him feel.
Gaara, no longer imprisoned by fear of impropriety, allowed his gaze to slide down Lee’s body, to stare at the cock that had been tormenting his thoughts all day. Proportionally large like everything about Lee, prominently curved upward from a base of curling black hair and the tip flushed red, it was everything he could have fantasized about and more. Gaara thought he might faint from the heat coiling out from the core of his body.
“Lee,” Gaara said, “you have no idea how attractive you are.”
Lee froze, blushing a gorgeous red to match his erection. “Y-you think so?” He whispered.
Gaara held his eyes, insistent on making Lee know how he felt about him. “Considering I have never had or wanted anyone else…” He trailed off deliberately, letting Lee draw conclusions from his implication.
“You are—you have not—is this your first…?” Lee stammered. Gaara nodded at him. The Leaf-nin’s eyes shone bright against the dim candlelight. “Really?” Lee’s voice pitched high with emotion.
“Really.” Replied Gaara.
“I did not think—I do not know what I thought—” Lee brows knitted in confusion for a moment, eyes sliding off to the side in a pondering sort of way.
Gaara wasn’t going to ask, really, but the strike of curiosity overwhelmed him, and he spoke without thinking.
“Is it yours?”
Lee’s eyes came back to him in an instant. “Yes.” He breathed. “I have never—with anyone—I only wanted you." The confession tumbled from his lips, warming Gaara somewhere in his very soul.
Good. He was glad. He wanted this experience to be something they alone shared. “Now come here and change that.”
Lee tossed his ruined bandages out of the way and returned to his frantic stripping, tearing a seam in Gaara’s sleep shirt in the process. Gaara pulled him in for a kiss before he could apologise.
Lee pulled his underwear down and threw them over his head out of the way, immediately reaching for Gaara’s weeping erection. Gaara whimpered when Lee’s hand closed around the upper shaft, rough-textured thumb sweeping across the tip to collect the moisture there. His hands were everywhere, pressing too hard and not hard enough, sweeping over Gaara’s skin, kneading his hips, exploring the junction of his thighs. Gaara felt fire trail everywhere Lee touched. Fingers caressed his lips, and Gaara sucked the digits into his mouth, laving his tongue across the rough pads of Lee’s fingertips, his own hands sliding across the firm muscle of Lee’s ass and squeezing hard. Lee sighed a shaky sort of moan.
“My dreams did not do you justice.” Lee mumbled, for all the world looking at Gaara sucking on his fingers like he was water in the desert. His expression, one of reverent wonder, made Gaara ache. He was so empty…
Lee leaned over Gaara and kissed him, the action pressing Lee’s cock up against Gaara’s hip, and Gaara felt his muscles jump.
“Gaara, do you have…er, lubricant?” Lee asked softly, a bit awkwardly, but undercut by a raw need that left Gaara feeling high.
Gaara pointed at the aloe plant on his desk. “Snap a stalk off that plant and grab the bowl off my desk. Lee obliged, and before he finished a breath, Lee was back atop him. Gaara took the aloe leaf and ran a fingernail down the seam, splitting it open and scraping the gel into the bowl. He then wrapped one lubricated hand at the base of Lee’s shaft, the other directly above the first, twisting slightly and revelling in the groan of approval from his lover. The aloe made his hands slide, and Gaara watched a bead of pre-come gather at the tip of Lee’s cock. He swept his thumb across it and brought it to his mouth, tasting aloe and salt.
“Ohhhhhhh Gaara!” Lee knocked his hands away and hauled Gaara’s legs over his own, pressing their erections together. The sensation was already overwhelming to Gaara, but Lee wasn’t finished, shoving a free hand into the aloe gel and wrapped his long fingers around the both of them, gripping with a strength that made Gaara choke back a loud gasp. Lee pitched forward, elbow crashing into the space next to his neck and forearm falling across his throat hard, halfway cutting off his air supply. Lee slid out his foot to brace against the rug, the knee Gaara already had hooked over the leg dragging upward with the motion, curling his hips further up into Lee’s slick hand.
Then Lee began to rock the two of them into his hand, and Gaara lost his mind to blind pleasure. His eyes rolled backwards, chest heaving as he tried to gasp past the heavy weight of Lee’s arm, hips shuddering under the sheer sensation. Gaara was sure if he soared any higher, he would see God.
“Do you like this?” Lee whispered in his ear.
Gaara wasn’t sure if he was able to form a coherent thought, all sensory power concentrated in the slip-slick fire of Lee’s hand. It burned with a pleasure all over his body.
“Hhhhhh—Lee, pleaseplease—”
Lee huffed a laugh that turned into a moan when Gaara clawed down his shoulder blade. He reached up, tangling a free hand into Lee’s silky black hair and pulling, exposing Lee’s neck to his purview, and Lee gasped loud in the enclosed space, sending a spike of heat straight to his groin. Gaara, fuse short and hot after an entire day of unresolved sexual tension, started to feel the coil of impending orgasm in his lower belly.
“Ohhhh, Lee, I’m close---hgggh!” He managed to stutter before Lee wrenched his head back forward, sank his teeth into the thin skin of Gaara’s neck, and sucked. He shivered a full body convulsion, coiling hotter and hotter at the base of his spine, the sensation migrating down into his balls.
Lee lifted his arm off Gaara’s neck and pressed up on his now free hand, shifting his grip on their erections. Gaara was able to crane his neck enough to see the erotic sight of their cocks sliding through Lee’s fist for a brief moment. The heat behind his balls reached a fever pitch.
Then Lee’s hand descended on his neck.
His air supply abruptly cut off with a gasp. His hands automatically clung to Lee’s arm, eyes watering over and vision hazing.
“Come for me, Gaara.” Lee murmured, the filthy words enchanting from his overly polite lover. But it was the way that Lee was looking down at him that truly sent him over the edge, the stare unflinching and hungry, looking at Gaara as though he was an offering. Working Gaara’s body like a musician, pulling all his strings taut until they finally snapped. Gaara’s body crescendoed, cock seizing, before tumbling into a shaky freefall.
“Lee, I—c-coming—shihhhhhh!” Gaara sobbed out, his cock pulsing against Lee’s hand in waves, ribbons of white splattering across his belly. He might have wailed, he wasn’t sure. Lee rocked him through it, slowing as Gaara vibrated apart in his skilled hands.
Lee released his neck and their cocks with a final gentle stroke, moving instead to brush the sweat from Gaara’s brow and kiss his nose, cheeks, lips, wherever he could reach.
“We are not done yet.” Lee breathed onto his lips, his voice heavy with lust.
Gaara raised one deadened arm and flung it over Lee’s neck. “We’re not?” He replied, hoarse from asphyxiation and high off his orgasm.
“No, of course not,” Lee laughed, warm into his ear, “I have not fucked you yet!”
Gaara’s spent cock twitched weakly at that. Of all the times for Lee to have unending stamina…but the thought was so appealing.
Lee traced patterns into his skin, letting Gaara come down off his release for a moment. The lust in his face faded slightly watching Gaara’s lungs heave and body tremble through aftershocks.
“Was that…okay? Was it too much?” Lee questioned, voice rising once more, and Gaara knew his lover’s insecurities were roiling up again. That wouldn’t do. Gaara tugged him in for a gentle kiss.
“It was perfect.” Gaara whispered heavily into Lee’s parted lips. “You are perfect.” The shinobi above him sniffled slightly, breathing a quiet noise of affirmation before kissing him. This kiss was gentle, soft lips moving across each other like the tides. Gaara thought he could stay here in this room the rest of his natural life and he would be happy with the outcome. Gaara drew his hand down the vast surgical scar marring his lover’s spine, followed the connecting one over his hip. Lee was still hard against him, his hips shifting subtly in tune with their kisses. Gaara thought he might be unaware he was moving at all, trying to focus on letting Gaara come down before continuing—he never put his own needs first. Gaara wanted, no, he needed to do something for him. He slid a hand between their bodies, sweat allowing him to slide across Lee’s torso and down, down, hand once again palming the gorgeous length of his lover. Lee grunted into his mouth, then withdrew, looking down at Gaara’s hands on him.
“Sit back.” Gaara whispered to him. Lee’s eyes dilated.
“Y-you do not have to!” Lee stammered to him, but he was already moving to follow Gaara’s order, bracing himself on his hands. Gaara followed him in motion, unwilling to relinquish his hold on Lee. He settled on his knees in front of the taller man, briefly pausing to admire Lee, body on display for him, legs spread and wanting, Gaara’s own pale hand circling his obvious arousal.
“I want to. Let me do this for you.” Gaara said, somewhere between a demand and a plea. He caressed the length of his lover, smoothing the delicate skin across the head of him. He ran his free hand across Lee’s leg, up over his bent knee and across his inner thigh. Lee twitched, a breathy sort of squeak leaving him, his toes curling against the soft rug.
Gaara leaned forward slowly, Lee’s eyes following his movements, until he reached Lee’s chest, and kissed a trail downward.
“Oh, Gaara do not—you do not have—Gaara!” The myriad of half formed phrases fell from Lee’s lips as Gaara’s own lips descended on Lee’s cock. Encircling the head with slow rolls of his tongue, he tasted salt, felt heat, and heard Lee choke above him, a strong hand winding into his hair. Wiry dark hair brushed across the hand curled around the base of Lee’s erection, which pulsed under his touch. Gaara wanted to know how much of it he could fit in his mouth. He pushed himself down, his hand pulling up to meet him, and sucked.
“Gaara!” Came a loud and guttural cry above him. Gaara braced his free hand on Lee’s leg, and he was gratified to feel Lee’s muscles locked to steel, trembling with exertion. He repeated his motions several times, pressing further down on Lee each time. He could see Lee’s legs start shaking in earnest, the fingers wound into his hair flexing with each pull. Lee’s hips twitched upward with each suction of his mouth, driving him just slightly further into Gaara’s mouth. Gaara was so close to the base now…
Then Lee shuddered a convulsive sort of shake and the hand on his head shoved downward, and Gaara’s nose smashed into Lee’s pelvis with a loud gagging noise, his throat working to seek air and finding itself completely blocked off. Gaara’s tear ducts flooded, both hands clamping down on Lee’s legs. His own cock thrummed to attention once again, but Gaara ignored it. The hot length of his lover in his mouth, his loud groans of pleasure, everything about this was burning Gaara alive.
“Gggaahhhh-hh—oh no, Gaara I am so sorry!” Lee cried, all but pulling Gaara off of him. Gaara frowned at him, but before Lee could take that as an expression of anger, he tore Lee’s hand from his hair and slammed himself back down on Lee’s cock, taking it into his mouth once again to the base. He heard the sound of skin slapping on skin and a muffled yell. Lee must have covered his mouth. He wanted to see his lover’s reaction, so he pulled off and sucked the side of the shaft, squinting sideways through watered eyes up at Lee’s face.
Lee looked absolutely wrecked, curled over atop him, eyes shut and leaking, a hand clapped over his mouth, shaking and red-faced. He was so beautiful Gaara’s heart stuttered in his chest.
“You taste good.” Gaara murmured, not taking his mouth off Lee. When his ruined partner opened his eyes, Gaara held his gaze licked a broad stripe up the shaft. Lee’s eyes visibly rolled back, and he sobbed another loud moan into his hand.
“Gaara, please, your mouth—I cannot—” Lee gagged out through his hand. Gaara rolled his head back over and sucked firmly on Lee’s head, and he gasped. Gaara wanted to hear more of his sighs and gasps, wanted to hear them for the rest of his life. The strongest shinobi he knew, his beloved friend, falling apart in his hands and mouth, it was a rush that left him dizzy. Gaara slid his hand under the base of Lee’s cock, gently touching his balls, and Lee’s hips tilted up to give him access.
“A-ahhh, ahh, Gaara—ghhhh—” Lee was incoherent now, fully rocking into Gaara’s mouth while Gaara worked at him, blindly seeking his own pleasure. Gaara revelled in Lee’s abandon, he wanted Lee to fall apart for him the way Lee had taken his own body to pieces with his scarred hands.
Lee, though, had other ideas.
Gaara felt the sudden clench of muscle in Lee’s hips and pelvic floor before a loud shout of “Gaara no no wait stop!” Assaulted his ears and he found himself yanked up and away from his fixation. Lee was trembling, eyes shiny and blacker than night, but the arm bracing Gaara was unyielding.
“I do not—I cannot—please—” Lee tried to speak, failing for a moment before swallowing and recovering some coherency. “Gaara I want—please let me be inside you.” He pleaded, eyes earnest and wanting.
Oh.
Yes.
Gaara smirked at him, a full-blown thing with teeth and sharp canines. It would have scared anyone else but Lee, fearless as he was. No one else in the world compared to him. “Hurry up then.” He urged.
Lee’s face split into his own smirk, a perfect mirror of his, darker and more lustful than the beatific grin the public was familiar with. This was a dangerous smile.
In a flash, Lee hauled Gaara into his lap, arranging him so Gaara straddled his hips. He scooped some of the aloe into his hand, slicking his fingers before reaching between their bodies and under Gaara, hand brushing the ring of muscles that Gaara had never breached before. He tensed automatically and Lee hesitated, eyes concentrated on Gaara’s face.
Gaara forced himself to relax, answering the question in Lee’s eyes. “Go ahead.” He said to his lover, who nodded enthusiastically. Lee’s vision slid, focus turned elsewhere, and Gaara felt fingers probing the furl of tight muscles. A long finger pressed forward, and the muscle gave, Lee’s middle finger sliding slowly into his body. The sensation was foreign and strange, Gaara could not describe it if he tried, but his whole lower body coiled in pleasure, muscles contracting.
Lee slid his finger back and forth slowly, allowing Gaara a moment to adjust, his gaze hazy and unfocused. He felt the curve of Lee’s erection twitching against his inner thigh when he clenched on Lee’s finger.
“Gaara,” Lee whispered, still sounding miles away even right next to his ear, “you are so tight. This is only one finger. How am I going to fit?”
Gaara snorted at him. “It’s muscle, Lee, it’ll stretch.”
“R-right.” Lee muttered, concentrating so hard he bit his lip. Gaara felt a second slick finger press against the ring, press into him, an ache building as he stretched to accommodate the intrusion. The strange sensation increased and Gaara gasped shallowly, shifting as Lee’s fingers bottomed out inside of him. His head fell forward onto Lee’s shoulder, feeling heavy and fogged.
Lee froze. “Are you alright?”
Gaara nodded into Lee’s shoulder, nibbling on the tensed muscles of Lee’s neck. “Keep going.” He half-begged.
Lee kissed his ear and continued working him open, scissoring his fingers and pressing on Gaara’s walls, the muscle gradually loosening. Lee curled his fingers forward and brushed across a spot that sent a spike of hot energy through Gaara’s body like lightning, sending his head flying up, spine ramrod straight, gasping in pleasure. Lee stopped again, looking at him in surprise.
“Lee, whatever you just did, do it again.” Gaara ordered, shifting to try and move Lee’s fingers to that spot inside of him. Lee curled his fingers and dragged inside of him and Gaara cried out, shivering with the strange and glorious new sensations Lee’s hands produced in him.
“Hah—your body is so hot on the inside.” Lee offered to him heatedly, “I am going to add another finger if that is okay.”
Gaara hummed an assertion which turned into a throaty groan when a third long finger joined the first two, the muscle ache becoming a rolling burn, spikes of pain and pleasure twisting his tongue. Lee murmured unintelligible words into Gaara’s hair as he fucked Gaara on his fingers, rough pads of Lee’s fingertips curling against his prostate, the arm wrapped around Gaara’s back the only thing keeping him upright. Gaara blindly sought Lee’s lips, kisses that turned into slow drags of tongue and sharp snaps of teeth. On one particularly hard brush of Lee’s fingers against his inner walls, he bit Lee’s lip hard enough that he tasted iron.
“Ghh, sorry—” He managed to gasp out before Lee’s lips smothered his own once more.
“No apologies,” Lee whispered to his hair, his voice low and sultry. “You are so beautiful, coming apart in my hands like this.”
Gaara shuddered at his words, simultaneously tender and oh so erotic. He clung to Lee, the world shrinking to the space between their bodies.
“Lee, please, fuck me now!” He pleaded, needing more than Lee’s fingers, wanting Lee to possess him in body the way he already possessed all of Gaara’s soul.
Lee, eyes closed, groaned a wordless assent, and he rolled them forward, Gaara’s back once again against the ground, Lee’s knees folding under his lower back to prop him in the air. Gaara, unsure of what to do with his legs, pressed his knees into Lee’s sides, feeling him breathing fast and irregular.
Lee pulled his fingers from Gaara’s ass, the sensation of emptiness making Gaara gasp in displeasure. There came a wet sound, one of Lee’s hands slid under his tailbone, and there it was, the bump of something heavy and hot against him. This was really happening, Lee was going to fuck him, belong to him in a way more visceral than words, and the thought made him so hot he couldn’t stand it, something in him fracturing into a million tiny grains of sand as Lee pressed forward.
Pressure shifted first into discomfort, then pain flared as the tip slipped into his body. Lee’s cock was bigger than his fingers, and the curve of it pressed into his walls hard. Gaara choked a gasp of pain, and Lee’s eyes flashed to his face, body stilling.
“Gaara I do not want to hurt you—”
“It’s fine, Lee, I want this, please—” Gaara begged. Lee hesitated before continuing his first press into Gaara’s body, fire dragging up Gaara’s insides with every centimetre Lee conquered. Gaara thought he must have reached his full length after a moment, but Lee’s hand under his rear lifted slightly, the motion tilting his loose legs back towards his own chest, and Lee slipped deeper into him, settling with his hips pressed firmly against Gaara’s ass.
Gaara had never felt full before, had rarely ever contemplated the available space in his body to accommodate a lover, but now? Lee was everywhere, atop him, below him, inside of him, surely nothing existed in the entire world but the fracturing feeling of Lee’s body joined to his own.
Lee was shuddering, holding himself still through what Gaara was sure was sheer willpower overriding the desperation to move Gaara could see in his lover’s eyes. He reached up and caught Lee’s cheek in his hand, brushing a thumb across his cheekbones. Lee’s long lashes fluttered, and he looked just as wrecked as he had when Gaara had swallowed him to the base.
“Does it…hurt?” Lee panted. It did, a little, but more of a deep ache than a full pain. Gaara rocked ever so slightly against him, and the discomfort flared and settled as Lee inhaled sharply. He could feel all of Lee inside him, hot and hard and pulsing, and it was so overwhelming he could feel a sting behind his eyes. If Lee’s dreams were to fuck him until he cried, it wasn’t going to take much effort if this was how it felt at the first moment.
“I can feel all of you,” He whispered, “It’s so much, Lee, is this real?”
Lee nodded dazedly above him, looking at Gaara like he wasn’t quite sure this was really happening. “I—I think so, yes?” He laughed and Gaara felt the slight motion of Lee’s laughter twitch into his body. “You are so hot around me, Gaara, I am afraid I will not last very long at this rate.” He confessed, and now Gaara wanted to laugh. Of course Lee would be concerned about his performance.
“That doesn’t matter, Lee, now move, please!” Gaara punctuated his request with a roll of his hips.
“Yes, okay!” Lee pulled back and snapped his hips forward with one smooth thrust, and Gaara’s mouth fell open as Lee stroked across his prostate, fire streaking up his spine. A few more strokes erased the lingering discomfort, but the burn that had Gaara struggling to breathe remained, hands clinging to Lee wherever he could reach. Gaara reached for his own erection, haphazardly pumping his hand in time with Lee’s precise thrusts.
“Oh, Lee, yes, fuck, you’re so good—” Gaara gasped in disjointed phrases, and Lee shuddered in response.
“I want—hold on—” Lee muttered, and he grasped Gaara’s calves, hauling them over his shoulders and crunching Gaara’s body in half below him, slipping an arm under Gaara’s neck and latching onto his shoulder. Gaara had a brief sensation of Lee’s cock shifting angles inside of him, then Lee began to really move, pile driving him into the floor and Gaara fell apart.
Lee’s incomparable speed came with him into the bedroom, and his hips pounded against Gaara’s at a speed that left him positively howling his pleasure into Lee’s skin. This angle, sharp and new, slammed into his prostate with every thrust, and Gaara’s skin buzzed, Lee’s honed skill over the body allowing him to dismantle Gaara into base instincts alone.
“Lee, fuck, your cock—you’re so much inside of me—ghh—I love it—fuck me please—” Gaara slurred out. Gaara locked his ankles behind Lee’s head, and Lee moaned something utterly nonsensical into Gaara’s ear. Gaara’s own hand couldn’t keep up with Lee’s blistering pace, and the disjointed pleasure of Lee carving himself pathways into Gaara’s body and his own frantic hand left him with one unending convulsion of pleasure. He felt his lower belly coil, sharp and violent, muscles tensing around Lee, and he knew he was going to shatter under Lee’s body a second time. He tried to tell Lee, but before he finished the sentence Lee struck his prostate hard and he was coming again, and he could do nothing but ride it out.
“Lee—I—again—fuck—ahhhhh!” It tore through him, a bodily convulsion and a throaty wail erupting from him along with his cock, spilling a second time onto his and Lee’s twined bodies.
“Gaara your body is—guuhh—so fucking tight around me when you come—I cannot stop—” Lee was totally gone if he was swearing, Gaara knew it, he did not pause for even a heartbeat, slamming Gaara through his orgasm. He gave Gaara no quarter this time, pulses of orgasmic pleasure crossing into fiery, overstimulated strikes inside of him that brought tears of mingled pleasure and pain to his eyes.
“Lee, shit—”
Lee was chasing his release; Gaara could see it in his face, almost as bloodred as the Gates, eyes blown wider than he’d ever seen them, pouring sweat that made his black hair stick to his face and their limbs slide against one another. The muscles of his shoulders flexed as he pulled their bodies together over and over, each strike making Gaara cry out, boneless and overwhelmed.
“Gaara, I need—” he grunted, then pulled entirely out, leaving Gaara empty and agonised, muscles twitching around empty air. He sobbed his displeasure, but before he had a chance to beg for Lee to come back, he found himself flipped over and cheek pressed into the floor, his neck cushioned in the crook of Lee’s elbow and ass lifted into the air. Lee’s other hand guided himself back into Gaara, before he wrapped that same arm around his waist like an iron bar and rutted into Gaara furiously, his entirely body curled over Gaara's exposed back. Gaara could feel Lee’s abdominals shift as Lee railed into him at a dizzying pace. The sharp curve of Lee’s cock was blessedly away from Gaara’s battered prostate now, but the reversed angle and sensation of pressure as Lee pounded new trails into his body brought a new wave of destructive pleasure in it's place.
“Yes, Gaara, you are so perfect—” Lee gasped into his shoulder. Gaara sobbed in response, truly crying now as Lee had dreamed about, his body having no chance to recover from his last orgasm. How was he still hard? Tears slid sideways off his face and into the rug under him. He threw a hand behind his head, reaching for Lee and finding damp hair, grabbing it like it was the only stable thing in the world as his body trembled, adrift in a wash of pleasure.
Lee’s arm around his waist shifted, hand palming Gaara’s overstimulated length. Gaara thought he might die, the pleasure so sharp it hurt.
“No, no, Lee I can’t, not a third time—” he sobbed, knowing what Lee’s goal was and sorely sure he would die before he came again.
“You can. I know you can.” Lee insisted, his pace never flagging, and Gaara howled as Lee closed his hand, slick and scarred and burning around him, his cock the same heat dragging inside of Gaara’s body.
“Gaara, I need—I want you to come on my cock again, please—” Lee’s voice, his dirty words, both demanding and pleading at the same time, was the trigger that blew Gaara up from the inside.
“No nonoono Lee c-coming—"
He seized out of nowhere, balls tightening, his body grabbing onto Lee’s cock as he somehow slammed into Gaara harder than ever, and Gaara came nearly dry, Lee’s name a garbled scream falling from his tearstained lips. It burned like fire, but Lee was right, he did come a third time, and it was too sharp, too much, overdoing it, so very much like Lee himself.
“Yes, Gaara, with you—ghhhhh!” Lee slammed almost violently into him, once, twice, then his hips juddered to a stop, locking them together and vibrating so hard against Gaara that it rattled his whole frame as Gaara clenched around him. The hand on Gaara’s shoulder tightened convulsively as Lee came apart, Gaara’s joints creaking under the force. Gaara could feel Lee’s cock rhythmically pulsing inside of his body; Lee spilling himself into Gaara with an incomprehensible groan. They lingered there, shivering through their completion, Lee’s arms both wrapping around Gaara to keep him from collapsing bodily to the floor.
After a moment, he felt Lee shift slightly, even the tiny motion making him gasp. Lee kissed his shoulder.
“I am just—huff—going to pull out, okay?” Lee panted. Gaara shook his head.
“Don’t move just yet, I can’t—” Gaara couldn’t even finish his sentence before another full body tremor rippled across his body. He knew Lee felt it because his lover shuddered too. Lee held him still as he trembled, his thumbs rubbing gentle circles on Gaara’s skin. Gaara heard him speak soft, half-formed words into his shoulders, but the thrum of his pulse was too loud in his ears, and he could not make out a word.
Another minute passed, Gaara’s heartbeat slowing to something more akin to intense exertion and not borderline pounding straight out of his chest, and he squeezed Lee’s arm. Lee hummed in acknowledgement, then slowly, carefully, pulled himself from Gaara’s shivering body. He then turned Gaara onto his back, slipping an arm under his head. Gaara looked at him, taking in the red flush, the sweat, the faint tremors of Lee’s body, and wondered how he himself looked. He wasn’t even sure he could get up right now if he wanted to.
Lee curled himself around Gaara’s side, his skin boiling hot to the touch. Gaara leaned into it, shivering as he came down from the intensity of their coupling. He leaned into the heat, listening to the fast rhythm of Lee’s heart, strong and vibrant and alive.
“Are you alright?” Lee inquired gently, smoothing hair off his forehead.
Gaara looked at him, deadpan. “Three times, Lee? I’ll get you for that.” He tried to threaten, but he failed entirely to keep a lazy smile off his face. Lee had the courtesy to blush pink. His hand dropped from Gaara’s forehead to his eyes, brushing lingering tears from his face.
“So I did make you cry.” Lee murmured. “I succeeded then!” He cheered quietly.
Gaara, well-aware of Lee’s self-imposed challenges, raised a browbone at that. “What was your punishment going to be if I didn’t?”
“Um, do it again?”
Gaara laughed outright at that. Lee joined him, twining their hands together.
Lee sobered after a moment, observing their joined fingers. “Gaara,” he said, then paused.
“Yes?”
“That—being with you—I think that it is the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced, and I am just…I want you to know what this meant to me. Which, well, it—it means everything! I—oh, I just—” Lee’s speech trailed off, nerves halting his words.
“Lee, whatever it is you’re thinking, you can tell me.” Gaara prompted.
“A-ah, I just do not want to be impolite…?”
“Lee, you just fucked me into the floor until I cried and all but ordered me to come on your cock, which I then did. There is absolutely no reason to filter yourself to me anymore.”
Lee went bright red again, but he steeled himself and nodded at his lover. “Gaara, being able to give you my body as well as my heart is one thing, but knowing that you feel the same about me, and that you let me inside of you…that you gave your body to me, I do not have words to express how important that is to me. The fact I can be both your friend and a lover,” he paused, and Gaara rejoiced in hearing him use the word, “I am just,” his tone became strange and choked, “so happy!”
And then Lee was crying himself, overwrought by emotions, and Gaara sighed in fond amusement. It was very like Lee to rearrange his insides and then cry about his feelings on the matter. Kankurō would have absolutely bet on Lee crying if they ever slept together, and he would’ve been right, too. The thought made Gaara want to laugh.
Lee’s free hand was pressed over his face, but Gaara pulled himself atop his lover and pulled it away, kissing away the tears.
“I wanted to give you my body.” Gaara offered to him, words gentle, “There’s no one else I feel for like this, and there never will.”
Lee sniffled, opening watery eyes. He appeared to wrestle with something for a moment, then blurted, “I love you. I would be yours forever if you wanted.” The words poured from him, fast and heavy in their meaning, washing Gaara clear away from his thoughts, set adrift into the sea.
I love you.
I would be yours forever if you wanted.
Gaara wondered if he had enough tears in reserve to cry. A lifetime of pain, anguish, violence, war. Had the universe truly delivered him such a gift? He did not deserve this perfect creature in his arms, he was so good, so kind, and Gaara was a reformed monster with blood in his footsteps. Did Lee truly mean it? Was he saying this out of obligation?
“Is that…” Gaara whispered, afraid of his own question, “…what you want?”
Lee’s expression was unwavering, earnest, so filled with love that it overflowed from his very being. “More than anything.”
It turned out, Gaara did have enough tears left to cry. Lee sat them up, pulling Gaara into him, an anchor in the stormy sea. Gaara clung to his lover, their sticky skin chafing slightly. He knew what he wanted, and it was this beautiful, wonderful, damaged human who loved him, who knew him, and who wasn’t afraid to take him apart and put him back together. Lee, who would fight with him and for him to the bitter end. Lee, who brought daylight from darkness, ebullience incarnate, his perfect reflection. He could ask for nothing more in the world, and he would be happy.
“Stay.” He whispered, hoarse.
“Forever.” Lee swore to him, eyes shining.
Lee had never showered at 2am before, but given the privacy meant he could kiss and touch his lover (and oh, the wonder he felt to think the word!) as much as he wanted while operating under the pretence of helping him wash off (plus he had been walking funny since they got up to shower, and his unsteadiness was making Lee nervous in the slippery shower room) made it well worth it. They were cuddled into Gaara’s tent again, now clean and dry, still naked. Gaara had taken his clothes and thrown them clear across the room before pulling him down onto the cushions and curling atop him. It was so precious that Lee decided the strange feeling of sleeping naked in a very public war camp was worth it.
They laid together, Gaara tracing the patterns on his body. Gaara ran his fingers across the blistered skin of Lee’s left arm, scars Lee knew were familiar to him and scars he knew were foreign, an expression akin to admiration on his tired face.
“You are beautiful, you know.” He murmured. Lee, who had been floating in a warm, hazy contentment, stirred, curling closer around him.
“You are probably the only person to think that, Gaara.” Lee replied, soft in the pitch black of the tent.
“If I am, then everyone else is blind.” Came the slightly petulant reply. Lee laughed quietly and kissed him. Gaara sniffed haughtily in the dark.
“You use your body as a weapon, and it makes sense for that to be damaging. Everyone who fights with weapons must replace them constantly. You can’t just replace yourself, which is far more difficult. But you,” and Gaara found his face in the dark, brushing soft thumbs over Lee’s jaw, “you fight, and you take damage like any weapon, but you bounce back from everything, and the marks left behind are signs that you have overcome every single thing the universe has ever thrown at you. How can I not think that beautiful? Every scar is a victory. You inspire me every day, and…” Gaara paused here for a moment, “…and I have never loved anyone the way I love you.”
Lee was sure he died.
“You love me?” He exclaimed, seeking out Gaara’s face in the dark.
“Yes.” Came the warm whisper.
“Oh,” Lee’s eyes overflowed, “I am glad.”
Gaara kissed him calm, his body small and warm and pliant against Lee’s larger, battered frame. Lee knew he was getting tears on Gaara’s face, but Gaara did not seem to mind, brushing them away in gentle pecks across his face.
“Gaara,” Lee spoke again, a question from this morning still on his mind, “we will have to be quiet about this…us, will we not? I do not think it would make some people here happy with you.”
Gaara was quiet for a moment, the silence calm. Lee waited for him to finish putting his thoughts together while he wiped his eyes clear.
Gaara hummed in agreement. “I believe it would be best for now. I don’t know how Alliance HQ will react to what they perceive as me sleeping with my bodyguard, circumstances notwithstanding. It could be misconstrued as abuse of power.”
“Even though I freely consented to everything?” Lee inquired.
“Even then.” Gaara replied softly. “You are considered my direct subordinate now. It might also be considered personal interest and get you removed from placement in my Division. I will not have that happen.” Gaara’s voice hardened, and Lee knew he was thinking about the things the Alliance could do to them. “They will not take you away from me.”
“I would not leave you. I will not leave you.” Lee insisted, curling tighter around his lover. Gaara hummed a pleased sort of noise.
“What makes you say it will bother someone?” Gaara asked, an unexpected note of genuine curiosity in his voice. “Shikamaru seems to know already, and he doesn’t care.”
Oops. He could not just lie now.
“W-well.” Lee trailed off, horrified at himself. “I should not say.”
Gaara made a considering noise. “Was it Matsuri?”
Lee choked, the noise giving him away immediately. “How did you know?”
“She is only barely less subtle than you. I saw the expression on her face as you left with her this morning. It was the same expression I used to conceal when I would see you blushing at things other people said. Jealousy. I did not think she was jealous of me, so it must have been directed at you. I had been flirting. It made logical sense.”
Oh.
“Oh.” Lee muttered dumbly. Gaara swatted his fringe.
“It’s better for now to keep it quiet.” Gaara decided. “But, Lee, after the war. Would you stay in Konoha?” The question, posed to the dark, was neutral, but Lee could detect a wavering note of fear in his voice.
“Gaara,” Lee stated decisively, “I want to be wherever you are. That will most likely be Suna. I will be there.”
He felt a press of warm lips on his cheek. “I was thinking of speaking to Tsunade about an exchange program as a goodwill gesture after the war.”
Lee smiled. “I will be the first to apply.”
Gaara rubbed his nose into Lee’s cheek. “Lee.”
“Yes?”
“I’ll assign you a tent, but you’re sleeping here. I won’t take no for an answer.” Gaara ordered, the tone too light to be a real command. Lee laughed and nodded before realising Gaara could not see him.
“Can you put a futon in here then? I do like your rug, but it does not have very much spine support.” Lee asked. Gaara laughed quietly, the sound of his laughter a balm to his whole being.
“Sleep, Lee.” Gaara murmured, his words a caress on Lee’s exhausted ears.
“I love you.” Lee breathed.
“I love you too.” Gaara whispered back.
Lee smiled again. With a last kiss against his lover’s lips, he hauled a blanket over their shoulders and drifted into a peaceful sleep, the first of what he knew would be many to come.