Chapter 1: Those Who Can't Do
Notes:
fun fact I made a playlist for this fic. it's bad enough that spotify is the cheap replacement for 8tracks; i refuse to pay for it, so I listen to it shuffled and recommend doing the same. if it doesn't feel slightly like a bad leegaa amv from 2008, then I've failed: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6rDKwD55csVRajob24ZE8H?si=49b48220a1864579
Chapter Text
“Yes, you are faced with a great uphill battle and it is in no way fair that you have had to work hard at things that other parents take for granted. I promise that I will do everything in my power to level the playing field!” Rock Lee pumped a determined fist, eyes practically aflame with passion at the dinner table of a single mother and daughter he was entrusted to assess that day, the kid long nudged gently to her room so that the adults could speak. “And I believe wholeheartedly that your love for each other will triumph over the obstacles you have had to navigate alone until now.”
“And I appreciate that, Mr. Lee.” Ms. Matsuno stretched the corners of her mouth, nothing more. She looked like she had not been sleeping, dark circles around her eyes and a sickly washed-out color in her face. Her pyjamas and jacket reeked of neglect. The condition her young daughter went to school in, when she went to school at all, was so clearly the very best of someone struggling to take care of herself, let alone someone else.
She did not ask for her mental health to take a turn that saw little Akira temporarily staying with a foster family while she needed time in inpatient care to get her wits about her enough not to hurt herself or Akira. Lee had no doubt in his mind that she would never want the latter to happen. The two of then adored each other and though she did confide in him that her mother was 'scary when she fights with invisible people' the main thing Akira had wanted to know was if they could stay together now that she was feeling better.
“It is also a reality of you and Akira's situation that a child her age will get hurt or sick fending for herself for days on end, not to mention the youth she will miss out on.” His hope was that the truth would spur her on. “Her removal from your home is on the table, as it stands. It is important that I am upfront with you about that regardless of what I think will happen.” He could not bring himself to lie to them about the stakes of the challenge they faced, and anything short of frank honesty felt too much like a lie.
If Ms. Matsuno was spiraling to the depths of despair, she kept it inside. From there, they spent the rest of Lee's initial visit discussing community programs and government assistance she may be eligible for to make it easier to provide for Akira and get herself the ongoing psychiatry and counseling she had been struggling to access consistently. Until proven otherwise, he came away believing in her. Hopefully she believed in herself just as much, and could make something work to be the mother she wanted to be.
It was easy to forget in his department that every child came with at least one adult attached. Not for Lee. He never seemed to have that problem, but his coworkers sometimes made it sound like he was the odd man out in that. Maybe this was because Lee knew what it was like for one's very best to still not be good enough. Knowing that pain and frustration, watching his dreams slip through his fingers no matter how hard he worked for them or how good a person he strived to be, his heart almost always broke for the parents as much as the children.
The heartbreak was all worth it, though, when his shift ended and he rocketed on his rollerblades, outpacing cars when he truly lost himself the youthful freedom of skating, to his one love in life apart from his old foster family. See, Rock Lee was not only a case worker for the Konoha Department of Human Services who felt bad for neglectful parents and had no desire to become anything higher up in rank than a splendid case worker. He was also Rock Lee, skate school instructor for at-risk youth! At least, that was what he was for the two hours once a week that he could take over the local skatepark.
He ran a program, teaching the physical and mental skills of aggressive inline skating-- though if the roller rink donated a bunch of old quads to give to kids who didn't have anything to skate on, then he could make that work as well. He refused to leave anyone with the youthful drive to learn and grow behind! Bushy Brow's Underdogs, his friends called it. He just called it The Skate Program, for now.
It was only for now, though. At least that was what he told himself, though he did not have the heart to raise the kids' expectations until he had it in black and white that his program would be more. Unbeknownst to anyone but himself, his foster fathers who helped him write his application, and maybe his foster brother, he had applied for a huge grant. With that money, he could buy the run-down pit of a defunct roller rink in Suna he had been eyeing, make a functioning skating facility out of it, and offer his program throughout the week instead of just one day. It would change his skate program into a full, independent skate school. No one turned away, no one left behind.
He hoped with all his heart to get the grant. His foster father and beloved coach Gai had helped him write the most beautiful statement letter and fill out the form to apply. All he had left was an in-person evaluation to make sure his program was worth that kind of money. He had no idea when it would happen, though. For now, all he could do was teach every session so well; the committee would just have to award the grant to him. That in mind, he rolled up to meet his young charges.
“Good evening, my beloved students!” he exclaimed, leaping over the grind box with a fast, square 360, and then stopping in front of the waiting group with a soul slide. “How is everyone?” Some older kids gave him a chorus of “what's up, Mr. Lee?” while the younger ones just shouted his name. His youngest skater was six and already better than himself at her age. At the other end of the spectrum, he had a handful of 17-year-olds with nothing in common but their age in terms of skill or living situation, and he taught every age in-between as well. “Finish putting your skates on, and then we will get into some warmups! Does anyone know why it is important to warm up before exercise?”
“Ooh! I know! I know!” Sayuri raised her hand, hopping up and down on her toestops to keep herself from blurting out the answer. To think she had been so anxious, to the point that Lee figured she was nonverbal and didn't press her for spoken words, when she started the program last year. Lee called on her. “So you don't get hurt!”
“Yes! Cold muscles are stiff and brittle! And what happens when you pull something brittle like this?” Sometimes he had props for a visual, like a stick and a handful of putty, to pull and bend as if trying to break it. Today, though, he just acted it out as best as he could while he talked. The younger children giggled at his little pulling dance while Kou, a 14-year-old with heavy eyeliner and hair across half their face, raised their hand.
“It snaps?”
“Yes! It snaps! But what if you do the same thing with something springy and supple?”
“What's supple?” Sayuri asked again.
“It stretches. Supple basically means stretchy.” Kou's patience had come a long way too, considering no snide remarks came out of their mouth after answering again, just crossed arms and a puff of air blowing their hair from their face. And they managed to refrain from rolling their eyes until Sayuri wasn't looking. In their defense, this was their dad's day off, making the skate program their main escape from watching three younger siblings from after school to bedtime.
“Exactly! You are very smart, Kou! And that is what warming up does to our muscles. It makes them stretchy instead of stiff so that instead of pulling or tearing when we work them hard, they stretch! So let us all get stretchy together!”
With that, Lee led them through a fun, feel-good on-skate warmup routine. Then, they got to skating. He taught a group of 10 to 12-year-olds who had skated with him for a while and gotten a strong handle on their skating fundamentals how to step and jump onto the grind box.
Most of them were learning on some of those donated skates he kept in his closet at home, no grind block of any kind between the wheels. One, he caught looking wistfully at the 16-year-old finally landing his makio on the rail nearby. “Hey, do not despair! There are still multitudinous ways you can have fun at the skate park without dedicated aggressive skates!” In case they didn't believe him, he demonstrated a favorite combination of his from when he forgot to bring his to the park, hopping into a fakie shoot-the-duck with a 180 back onto flat ground.
“Whoa!” a small chorus erupted as he landed. “Cool!” His skaters were so sweet. Really, they found a new way to light up his heart each session, even if they also found a new place discarded gum was not supposed to go on an equally prolific basis. “I wanna be an awesome skater with no grinds!” warmed his heart the most. He walked them through the shoot-the-duck going forward, first, then zipped over to another little group while they worked on it.
After the first hour, Lee skated around the park, gathering everyone back to the bench they met at for snacks. The first one there, he opened his duffel bag on the empty bench and passed around prepackaged fruit leather and string cheese, explaining how starch gave them energy, protein built muscles, and colorful foods had all kinds of vitamins and minerals to help them do things like see in the dark and heal cuts and scrapes. “Sometimes it can be hard to color your plate, but a little bit of color sometimes will still give you more youthful vim and vigor than none ever! The most important food of all, however, is the food that you eat!”
Most of his charges were on programs to help them access enough food to begin with, had special needs that affected what foods they could stomach, or both. Eating at all was more important than eating right. There was no sense in making them feel bad over a snack, especially the best he himself could swing without a food license. If he gave them his version of the information and they still had something they didn't want, he thanked them for letting him take it back for next session and offered whatever else he had on hand with no questions asked.
The guilt of not being able to swing more options that week ate at him, though. Next week, he would throw together three different snack combinations. It was a challenge for him and the best kind of apology for not having something for everyone and leaving some children with a suboptimal balance of macronutrients to fuel their skating!
Once he had everyone contentedly tucking into their snacks, he took the time he needed to be watching them anyway as a breather from all that skating. Not just the easy stuff for the program, but the skate there, the skate to work, and the skate he was going to do home after this. Right about that time was when an unfamiliar adult came up to their group.
“Good evening!” He rolled over to meet the stranger. “The skatepark is reserved for another hour.” But now that he was getting close to them, they had no skating paraphernalia on them. And they weren't really dressed for physical activity in a dress shirt and slacks. Perhaps they were a parent or guardian of one of his newer kids. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yes, actually.” The stranger's eyes went, well, not big, but still a little wider for a split second. Lee tended to have that effect on people even when he really tried to tone himself down. “Are you... Rock Lee?”
“Yes! At your service! What can I do for you?”
“Gaara Okaze, from the Department of Human Services.” They shook hands, Lee letting go very abruptly when it looked like Gaara might have winced. “I'll be evaluating your program on behalf of the Ninkai Community Grant committee.” Lee could have done a cartwheel right that very second. He was one step closer to the grant!
“That is wonderful! I am so glad to meet you!” he exclaimed. “As I mentioned, we have the park for another hour. If you have any questions for me about any aspect of the program, do not hesitate to ask! Otherwise, I will check in again at the end of our session!”
No questions at that second to answer, Lee then barreled back to his young charges. He kept checking on Gaara over his shoulder while he fixed helmets, walked kids through different tricks and obstacles in the park, and refreshed the newer ones on the basics of a good forward stride. For some reason, right when he showed a few of the older teens who were interested in the halfpipe his signature 540 Liu Kang grab, Gaara just... walked away as soon as he landed.
How was he supposed to evaluate his program if he wasn't there? It wasn't a good sign, if he had seen all he needed to see already. Or maybe there was an unrelated call or emergency he had to deal with while Lee was spinning in the air like a hurricane with wheels. Gaara had said he worked for human services as well and that certainly could happen. Lee took a deep breath and willed himself to assume the latter.
“Moving on,” the teens already knew how to pump through transitions at the park, so he didn't need to start there. “Everything you do forward on the halfpipe, you must be prepared to do backward, so learn to skate up the pipe before you skate down it.” He demonstrated simple pumping up and down the pipe, forward going up, backward going down.
Gradually, with more strength and acceleration, he moved higher and higher up the walls of the pipe, demonstrating how high and steep they had to be comfortable gliding backwards before it was safe to drop in and attempt tricks. Gaara had returned to circling around the park and watching them by the time he had them independently skating up and down the pipe, cheering each other on and seeing how high up they could get.
As promised, Lee returned to the bench to check in on his evaluator as soon as their session ended and older kids headed home, various guardians coming for the ones too young to just leave. He raced over and slid to a stop before taking a seat by him. “So, what information do you need from me at this time?” he asked. “Ask away! I am very proud of my group and cannot talk about it enough!” Gaara cleared his throat.
“It is... impressive what you're able to do on your own with such a large group. Are you short-staffed today?” Lee laughed nervously. He really hoped he didn't get dinged for the teacher to student ratio of the program.
“No. It is always just me! But I am very fast and keep on top of everyone quite well!”
“I can see that.” He had no idea if Gaara meant that as a good thing or a bad thing, but he really hoped it was a good thing. “Is the staffing situation part of why you're applying for the Community Grant?”
“Well, yes and no. My immediate goal with the funding is to get us our own facility. I am close to a down payment on a building, but the grant would cut years off the time it would take me to save from my own pocket. The remainder would go towards renovating the skating area to meet the needs of the program. But with more independence and the ability to charge more well-off skating enthusiasts for regular lessons and use of the building, I would hope to offer paid positions in the long run, and that would perhaps remedy the lack of interested volunteers!” He was very proud of his plan for the skate school. Tenten and Neji helped him understand the business concepts, and they were both very smart and capable people who he admired very much.
“You've put a lot of thought into this.” Surely anyone would, if they were applying for a big grant through human services. But it was promising, to hear Gaara say as much aloud. “What would you say are the goals of your program?” Lee lit up inside.
“I am so glad you asked! Besides constantly striving to skate better and learn new things, this program is designed around giving these wonderful youth a support system, a sense of belonging, and a safe place to become stronger as people!” It felt wrong not to give credit where credit was due, but while Neji had helped him turn the rambling details of his copious composition books full of notes on his skaters and alumni into a single folder of objective information, Tenten had drilled the necessity of getting his point across fast when talking to a potential sponsor. She would know, as a professional skater in the process of launching her own line of skates and gear.
Knowing all that, as much as he wanted to gush for an hour about how smart and helpful his own skating family was, he simply grabbed his duffel bag from under the bench and handed over said folder. “Borrow this for as long as you need, if it is helpful! As you can see, we achieve this mission by giving them access to outdoor mentorship and opportunities to build character that they otherwise would not have access to!”
“Hm.” It just had to be a good thing that Gaara leafed through the pages and, after skimming them all, tucked the folder into his messenger bag. “And what makes you so sure that rollerblading is the way to accomplish that mission?” Maybe Lee was imagining things. Reading people was never a strength of his and Gaara just had a serious, monotone way of expressing himself. But his eyes narrowed a little bit and it almost felt like there was an edge to his words. Lee was not sure how to respond for a moment.
“Well, from my education as a social worker and my own experience in the adoption system, I know that resilience is an important part of overcoming adversity. It is also important to have an outlet for nervous energy. Many of these children, with adverse situations actively going on in their lives, have more of that than a child their age who has not experienced that kind of stress.
Inline skating provided that for me. It made me a person who could handle pressure, navigate obstacles, and get up each time I fall, physically and mentally. I strive to pass the same important survival skills onto these wonderful youth! It is also a lot of fun in a positive, growth-oriented environment, and can simultaneously be a place where one can not be resilient for a while and just skate!” There was a pause. Did he make his point well enough? Gosh, he really wished Tenten and Neji were here. It took all he had not to start biting his nails right in front of Gaara.
“Ah. I see.” Gaara closed his own notes, tucked the small book into his pocket, and started to rise from the bench. “Thank you, Mr. Lee--”
“Please, just Lee is fine!”
“Lee. Thank you for your time. We'll be in touch regarding the grant via the email on your application, so keep an eye on it for any follow-up from the committee.”
“I will watch for your response like a hawk, Gaara!” He shot Gaara a 'thumbs up' and a toothy grin. “Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with me!” With that, they shook hands and parted ways, Lee very careful not to squeeze as hard as he did the first time.
Lee watched Gaara disappear to the adjacent parking lot, then hurried home as well on his blades. He really hoped that he was overcompensating for his struggles with social cues and reading into something that wasn't there, but he wondered why Gaara was so doubtful about skating. More than that, he hoped it would not stop him from having a fair chance at getting the grant.
Chapter Text
“Why?!” Gaara pressed his head against his steering wheel in the skatepark parking lot, hands pulling him into it even harder. “Why?! Why?! Why?! Why?!” His voice broke a little bit. He knew that 540 Liu Kang grab anywhere. Not many people could get that much rotation out of it, even today. Lee used to be able to get even more. It was all Gaara's fault it wasn't a 720 anymore.
For so long, he told himself that Rock Lee overcame the events of the Konoha Invitational and was out there being a successful pro inline skater. Even Gaara's therapist, who was not afraid of therapeutic confrontation in the slightest, advised him that if he could live without the professional skating world, maybe he should tell himself that and just stop following the sport for his own sanity. And it wasn't like it was an un-believable story to live in. If anyone could recover from injuries like his and jump back into competition, it would be Lee. That grit and tenacity of his, never staying down no matter what happened to him, was what Gaara's younger self had to squash so badly to begin with.
He couldn't tell himself anything anymore. Now he knew it wasn't true. Gaara shattered another person's dream. And now, 12 years later, by some cruel joke he held the hard-won replacement in his hands, just a less direct power to crush it this time. What he wanted right then was to recommend Lee for the grant now, even though his previous evaluation ran late and he missed a lot, if for no other reason than to set things right.
But what if the committee dug up his past and considered Gaara biased for recommending him, regardless of how above the board the process actually was? Then again, that argument could just as easily be made if he recommended its rejection for the grant. And what would the voters say if he became a person who played favorites? Or one with a vendetta against some guy who just, despite everything, loved to skate? So many possibilities with so many potential bad outcomes... all he could think was why?!
Gaara almost ran late to pick up Kankurou, time seeming to freeze as he asked himself why, of hundreds of applicants throughout the county of Ninkai, it had to be Rock Lee whose funding and fate he had to decide. Why it had to be now. For one unhinged moment, he asked why Lee was even skating, thereby making it possible for Gaara to end up in this position, at all. But really, the more he thought about it, the more he truly wondered.
Why wasn't Lee mad? Livid. Furious. Full of some slow-simmering grudge that, if such a thing lived in Gaara, would have exploded by now. How was he at the local skatepark herding children after the same day job Gaara had long burned out on and still smiling? He should be so, so mad. At Gaara. At rollerblading. At life. Somehow, just like it did 12 years ago, that optimistic grin made Gaara feel so much worse and more undeserving than a simple punch in the face would have.
Once he had composed himself enough to drive, however, Gaara seemed to make better time than he expected to. The lights were still on as he pulled into the skate shop his brother worked at. True, Kankurou was perfectly capable of skateboarding between bus stops, but he liked to get the lay of a new place before skating around it at night. Gaara parked in the empty lot and headed inside to see why Kankurou wasn't waiting for him at the door.
“I'm telling you. You have got to come to a Gathering with me sometime.” Gaara stepped into the shop, trying not to even look at the extensive inline skating section, and watched Kankurou lean against the counter, chatting it up with the person counting the drawer. “You'd look good with those dark locks all wet and sticky--”
“Get. Back. To work. Or you're fired.” The other skate shop employee spoke through gritted teeth, their face placid and unreadable save for the vein popping up over their temple and fingernails blanching where they held the pile of cash they had been trying to count.
“From all the raining Faygo! Geez, let me finish my sentence, Neji.” Kankurou rolled his eyes, but he grabbed Karasu --was it the skateboard he named Karasu, and his longboard was Kuroari? Gaara couldn't keep all the custom boards and nicknames straight-- from behind the counter and slinked onto the sales floor.
“You are so lucky you can build a mean skateboard,” only Gaara seemed to hear Neji sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose as Kankurou started pushing himself back and forth with a vacuum cleaner. Neji looked up and trained his glare onto Gaara once Kankurou was no longer distracting him. “Are you here to pick that cretin up?” he asked, nodding his head in Kankurou's direction. “He's been working my last nerve all day.”
“Like the strings of a puppet, boss man!” Kankurou came rolling back into view, this time with a mop and bucket in tow. “You know, I bet those aren't the only strings of yours I can work, if you'd let me.” That settled it. Gaara couldn't listen to this. He turned around and started towards the door again. “Oh, hey squirt! Didn't see ya there-- hey!”
“Skateboard home.” Gaara ignored Kankurou's offended squawk and pretended not to hear skateboard wheels and a sloshing mop bucket quickly catching up to him.
“Wait! Gaara! Stop it! Come back!” Gaara stopped with his hand on the door. “I have a wet mop and I will use it!” He huffed a sigh.
“Fine. But hurry up. It's Shukaku's dinnertime already.” And theirs. Gaara and Shukaku went through their day on the same schedule, if the cat equivalent to a job was napping and batting toys around the floor. Because of this, it was almost like when Shukaku got hangry, Gaara got hangry. Or the other way around. Regardless, moments like these reminded Gaara that he was very much the type of person whose fuse shortened as their blood sugar grew low.
“Okay, okay,” Kankurou raised his hands in defense and sauntered off to finish mopping. “Geez, it's like you love that cat more than little old me.” Gaara rolled his eyes, but allowed Kankurou finish closing the store with crossed arms and no more attempts to abandon him. It helped that Kankurou stopped hitting on Neji where his long-suffering younger brother could hear.
Once the doors were locked and Neji disappeared into the night on his blades, he and Kankurou loaded up into Gaara's car, Karasu and Kuroari taking up the backseat, and pulled out of the parking lot. “So...” Kankurou fidgeted in the passenger seat, looking out the windshield and clearly trying not to backseat drive out loud. “Anything interesting happen at work?” Gaara didn't want to talk about it. He definitely didn't want to talk about it. This was his debacle to stew in for as long as it--
“I have to evaluate a community program run by Rock Lee.” Okay, maybe some part of him didn't want to silently stew. That part took over and made him spill his guts to Kankurou of all people. This was why Gaara preferred to stew. But he couldn't take it back once it was spoken into the front seat of his car while they waited for their drive-thru food.
“Oh shit.” The car went quiet, heavy silence only broken by the fry cook handing them their dinner through the window. It actually made Gaara feel a hundred times worse than he already did. Like driving the rest of the way home in a smothering coffin of quiet.
It wasn't until Gaara busied himself opening up a can of wet cat food and slicing it up just the way Shukaku liked while, speak of the devil, Shukaku came to paw at his legs and meow loudly for sustenance, that Kankurou had anything else to say. “Rock Lee, huh?” he all but materialized from thin air and asked, leaning against the open threshold between their living room and kitchen with crossed arms. “Haven't heard you say that name in a while.”
That was on purpose. Gaara wasn't that monster anymore. He quit skating, actually tried in counseling and took his meds as prescribed, found something else to do with himself where he could actually help others instead of hurt, hurt, hurt. Or so he thought. Would a man, not a monster, even have the ethical dilemma Gaara found himself in?
For a man, it should be easy. Just a man would have no reservations, no fear, no dilemma. This test was only a problem for someone who called himself a man but was still, deep down, a monster. Why would he even worry about crushing Rock Lee a second time if he wasn't secretly in danger of doing so? There he went with that internal barrage of 'whys' again.
“Uh... you good?” Kankurou's voice tore him out of his downward spiral. “I ever tell you you how worried I get when you do that quiet, brooding thing? Big serial killer vibes.”
“I'm sorry that processing my thoughts is such an affront to you.” Gaara laid Shukaku's food saucer on the kitchen floor, narrowly getting his hand away from it fast enough to still have all his fingers, and let the Sunan Stripey-Tailed Land Shark begin his feeding frenzy. He shot Kankurou a dirty look as he handed him the blackberry melonade Faygo he had grabbed him from the refrigerator. They plopped beside each other on the couch to begin their start-to-the-weekend movie. Finally, Gaara could tuck into his chicken nuggets and fries that likely had the nutritional value of sand and not talk about this anymore.
Kankurou, tricky bastard he was, followed along for a while. Almost like he meant to lull Gaara into a false sense of security. He really could pull strings around him like fucking puppets, sometimes. “Some of my juggalo friends have kids in his program,” was the bomb he dropped about 20 minutes into their shitty kaiju movie.
“So you know about him.” Gaara meant to keep the focus on the program, but he could only think of the person behind it and his words came out wrong. Kankurou knew for however long that Lee never became a professional skater. That Gaara had been lying to himself all this time. “You never told me.”
“I didn't say anything 'cause your whole denial thing actually seemed to be helping you. But now you know too, so... yeah.” Denial. That was really how Kankurou saw it. Like Lee giving up his dream was the obvious outcome and humoring the possibility that his future didn't go down that way was denial. “It's a pretty awesome program, though. Fuck, if someone like him was out there doing what he does when we were kids, I probably would have wanted to skate with you instead of watching our shitty old man push you around and thinking about what a huge fucking bullet I dodged.”
That said a lot, coming from Kankurou. He discovered skateboarding and became the person who built his own boards with such tender care that he named all of them like his children in adulthood. Their father had no particular affinity with competitive rollerblading. According to Gaara's older siblings, though, he had always lived and breathed the 'tiger parent' stereotype, emotionally absent and constantly demanding high achievement from Kankurou and Temari. It was when their mother died bringing Gaara into the world that he went off the deep end with it.
Anything his children took an interest or showed promise in, it needed to be made valuable. He was on them like a constant dark cloud, pushing them to prove their worth to the family, especially Gaara with his skating. He would have never been in the competitive sphere if not for his father, but they had to be the best at anything they set out to do and show it often. The consequences for any lapse or mistake were brutal enough to get the three of them removed from his home when Gaara was in junior high, not an easy thing to convince a court to do even with a mountain of noise complaints and emergency room visits if the family was of higher socioeconomic status, like theirs.
Close as they were now, Gaara and his siblings had merely tolerated each other for so much of their lives. Kankurou would never admit it now, but with the gift of hindsight, Gaara was a terror growing up. He not only suspected a long phase where his brother went as far as hating him; he didn't blame him for it. Hearing Kankurou say there was even a chance that they would have bonded over something sooner had the environment been different made Gaara wonder if anyone Lee's program did serve felt the same way. That the very activity that amplified everything foul and monstrous about an adolescent Gaara could just as easily bring families together.
“You know, he asked me about you, when I started working at The Birdcage. He's in there all the time.” So Lee remembered Kankurou. It was probably hard not to recognize the greasepaint-wearing juggalo who sewed himself bigger and bigger versions of the same black cat-ear hoodie from the ages of 14 to 31 with no intent to change beyond occasionally mixing up the greasepaint design. Even so, Gaara wondered if Lee had recognized him too.
“What did you tell him?” slipped from his mouth, his eyes on the gigantic reptile leveling a city block and his hands blindly finding his carton of french fries. He wanted to know. But he didn't want to know. But he did. But he didn't. But he needed to know, no matter what that reasonable part of him kept whispering in the back of his mind. Did he know that Gaara didn't skate anymore? Was he relieved? Was he angry at him, knowing Gaara ruined his life over something he ultimately quit himself?
“That you were doing good. What else would I say?” said Kankurou, taking another bite of his burger. “And if it's what you're really wondering, I didn't get the vibe that he hates you.” Gaara brought his chicken nuggets up to his chest in a gesture that definitely wasn't closing off his body posture more than it protected his food, and tried to zero in on the movie. Kankurou, shrugged, dipped a fry in his milkshake, and popped it in his mouth.
“You're both weird, for whatever that's worth,” he muttered through his mouthful of food. “If you ask me, which you never do even though, between Tem and me, we've got a lot of older sibling wisdom to impart on your little mind--” Gaara cut him off with a light elbow to his ribs. Kankurou flicked his forehead in retaliation. “You're a turd, you know that? Anyway, he's obviously moved on from what happened and maybe you should too. I mean, you help people for a living now. And you're running for mayor at 29, for fuck's sake. You can't really think you're still that guy.”
They finished the movie in silence, and Gaara only remembered about half of it. His memories, instead, were brimming with buried traces of 2003. The Konoha Invitational. Broken bones. More than anything, he agonized over Rock Lee. He still couldn't decide whether it hurt worse or gave him the tiniest glimmer in his heart that to an outsider, Lee still didn't seem to hate him.
Shukaku did little to soothe Gaara's attempt at slumber that night, curled up on the empty pillow next to Gaara's head like it was his tiny throne. Kankurou's words, as patently absurd as most of them were... tonight a handful haunted him. You can't really think you're still that guy.
Oh, but he could. He didn't just think it. He knew it. It was cosmically wrong that Lee couldn't just be rid of Gaara forever. He deserved so much more even than that, but it was the barest of bare minimums. Why was that too much for the universe? Or Buddha. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Who-Fucking-Ever was out there, they screwed up on a mortal level.
But as much as he hated having to think about such superficial noise, Gaara wouldn't be perceived as someone with so little trust in his decisions as to try and run from this assignment. This committee was a big chunk of his leadership experience to tout when the current mayor's term finally ended and he had the chance to replace the bastard. Suna might not have been a small town, but it wasn't large to the point of anonymity either. Things like his performance evaluating grant applicants the year before meant something. As much as he wanted to take himself out of Lee's life as quickly as he reentered it, that wasn't an option if he wanted a fighting chance next year.
He wouldn't give that up over any personal qualm. He couldn't do that. In Suna, the mayor had actual power to enforce policy and veto the absolutely unhinged bills the dinosaur-adjacent city council came up with. Lives, like his and distinctly not like his, could be changed. None of that was worth any debt, even the massive one he owed to Lee for making mayor a distant possibility for him to begin with.
Notes:
writing gaara is so fun bc I really don't give a shit how ~feral~ or whatever he is i just think he can still be gaara regardless but it is a fundamental part of his personality to me that he is emo and intensely private about it so his thoughts are a dramatic monologue and then what he actually translates it to when he speaks is just... "no."
writing from his pov reminds me of this acting exercise where one person plays an interviewer, another plays the interviewee who only speaks another (improvised) language, and another is the translator who turns the improvised gibberish into whatever the hell they want except he is all three at all times and even has the comedic timing down
Chapter 3: Failure Layer
Notes:
welp, I was going to update this weekly, but I have no self control and the sooner it's all posted, the sooner I can also read it when I'm away from my computer
Chapter Text
Social work really was the best job out there. Everything was such a thrilling challenge all the time. For example, Lee managed to talk Ms. Matsuno off a ledge during a progress meeting earlier that week. She had been so sad and desperate and scared that if she told her real feelings to her mental health team, it would be used against her case to keep Akira. He stayed as long as he had to to calm her down and help her trust that even when he left, she was not alone... so he gave her his direct line.
Her worst-case scenario did not end up happening. In fact, when she called him that afternoon, he encouraged her to revisit their conversation about the despair she was feeling at how slow things were improving even with government assistance and rides to her appointments with an actual counselor. True, he had other cases. Really, what he had was an endless rotation of new and old ones at all times, and she called his office at least every other day to run what felt like every bad thought by him, but she came to him with no support system. Just her and her daughter. She needed someone to lean on as much as Akira needed her.
He and the families he worked with were a team. It was his job to lead his team to victory, and he could not let his teammate flounder. Of course he put down whatever he had been doing at work or, today, his lunch to actively listen and reinvigorate her fighting spirit with a rousing speech that would make Coach Gai proud. She was always so kind, thanking him profusely for his time in her shaky, tear-thickened voice. Most of the families who had that phone number were kind and grateful and hard to say 'no' to like that.
In his hurry to get to the office and check his voicemail that morning, unable to calm himself down until he made sure there wasn't an unaddressed message left only for him in an after hours crisis, he didn't take the time to make himself breakfast. Today, just as his iron discipline slipped and he started to get a little sad that he was missing the curry truck that stopped near the building for a couple of hours, she told him that his patience and kindness gave her hope. Who wouldn't shed happy tears at that? Moreover, who wouldn't be spurred on to keep doing their best?
Every time he wasn't doing something, though, his mind swam with horrible images of what could be going on at the Matsuno home. What if that day's pep talk wasn't good enough and Ms. Matsuno was locked in her bathroom crying while Akira wondered what was wrong? What if she could tell he had a moment where he couldn't stop thinking about his lunch, felt like her problems weren't worth listening to, and wasn't going to go to her counseling appointments? What if she gave up?
Naturally, he just needed to not stop doing things and always have his work phone on him until his shift ended. No big deal. He made himself a challenge to clear his email in under an hour and squeeze two more in-person visits into the spare time. At least having one of his newer 'teammates,' a mother and father initially on his list for tomorrow morning, scream profanities at him upon his first step in the door got his mind off the Matsunos for a little while.
He tried not to let the straight half hour of yelling and heartbreaking accusations make him cry, after his visit. Once he was back at his desk, though, only the buzz of fluorescent lights and his notes about the visit did little to distract him. A few tears fell on his notebook while he laboriously looked everything over for Lee-typical mistakes. He loved his job, even the parts that brought tears to his eyes, with his whole youthful heart. Today, though, he found himself all but running away from his desk and throwing on his skates before he could think about anything else.
Wearing aggressive skates everywhere, unlike Tenten with her ability to put together the perfect skate for every event at every competition and give herself just that much more of an edge, made his legs very strong and his body accustomed to the extra work of going long distances and picking up great speed in heavy skates with small wheels. Compensating for the equipment he used rather than being helped by it was his normal at this point. He just got to feel extra light and free when he did put on proper gear for anything else.
Today, though, on his way to the skatepark, he felt every extra gram of weight on his feet. Every extra step he had to take when he relied fully on the cadence of his stride to keep up speed made his heart hammer against his chest. Nonetheless, he challenged himself to make it without removing his weighted vest, wrist guards, or legwarmers, let alone walking or hopping on the bus. At least his skating program kids never failed to rekindle the boundless flames of youth in his heart, no matter how stressed or woozy he felt!
His legs wobbled a little bit, as he rolled up to the park early because he was just so excited to see them all. Definitely not because he had reached the 'must get away from his work phone before it rings again' step of the cycle that would eventually give way to guilt and panic again. He couldn't tune out how shaky his hands had gotten and his head felt really tight when he crouched to set his duffel bag down. As he rifled around for his knee and elbow pads, his eyes became fixated on a single-serve bag of chips, mouth filling with water like it usually did over the perfect bowl of curry rice. Should he eat one? He had just stocked up, so it wouldn't be missed. It was just one tiny bag...
Absolutely not. He screeched to a stop just as he was about to tear it open. Those snacks were simply not his to take. He brought them for the kids! To pass the time in some way other than staring at the snacks he already decided he wasn't going to eat himself, he gave himself a challenge: 100 runs up and down the halfpipe before they got here! Taking his position to drop in, though, his head did that squeezing thing again. Maybe just 50, today. His stomach growled in protest. 20 seemed reasonable-- sometimes taking it easy was disheartening but necessary. If he completed this challenge, they would have a great session today!
With that wonderful goal to reach to, he dropped in and started with a simple frontside stall on the other side of the pipe. Jumping out of it, he pumped with all his strength to gather power for a small mute grab. One. Safety grab. Two. Acid grind. Three. Royale. Four. It wasn't a proper vert challenge if he didn't build up to more advanced airs and grinds. He put it off, twice more up one side, then the other, but he knew he had to try harder.
His legs trembled underneath him, unsteady, but he went for a Kung Lao grab anyway. The landing was shaky and for a moment he thought he was going to fall from the air and break something all alone in the empty park. But he landed it. Seven. That meant he had no excuse to stop. He had been obsessed with landing a thousand fishbrain grinds ever since he was 17 and fell out of one at the Konoha Invitational. Currently, he was at 889 perfect ones. Today, he would make it to 890. Spirit and determination coursing through his entire being, he pumped back up the halfpipe.
He landed topside on his frames and slid for a solid, splendid four seconds. Feeling strong, he started to extend his free leg, trying so hard to grab it. That was when he fell, tumbling the whole way from the coping to the very bottom of the halfpipe. His wrist guards wrapped around his face for protection. When he stopped rolling, he was on his knees, and he knew he had to get up. He couldn't stay like this and let the kids down. He had to bounce back. He would bounce back. He--
Tears were never unfamiliar or unwelcome to Lee, but the ones racking his chest as he curled smaller and smaller into a ball on the cold concrete were unlike the cathartic waterworks that went as easily as they came. He couldn't make these ones stop. Every time he thought about wiping them off and getting back up to valiantly complete his challenge, he only bawled harder.
“You're very talented on the-- oh.” Lee barely heard the soft voice from the top of the pipe over the loud, ugly sobbing from his own chest, let alone processed the actual words. Before he knew it, though, there was a sliding of clothes on smooth concrete and Gaara was right next to him. “May I?” The sensation of a hand ghosting over his shoulder made Lee jump, a little. He nodded.
He worked hard from a young age to respect boundaries and keep his hands to himself unless explicitly told otherwise. Intuiting those rules just did not work for him. Today, clearly, was an off day, though. As soon as Gaara's hand came to rest on his shoulder, he lost it even more, turning around to squeeze the nearest thing with all his might, bawling his eyes out with snot dripping down his face. Of course this had to happen when nearest thing to him was his evaluator.
“Get off me!” Just as fast, Gaara grabbed him and shoved him to the concrete with a strained sound like it took all his might. “Shit. Sorry. I didn't mean to-- fuck.” Gaara's hand went to his forehead like he had a headache, fingernails blanched white on his scalp and palm heel digging into his temple. On the bright side, smacking his helmeted head against the concrete jarred Lee right out of his own meltdown.
“No, no!” he exclaimed, springing to his knees and raising his hands, though he deliberately kept his distance, this time. “It is me who should apologize! That was inappropriate and invasive of your personal space, and I should not have reacted that way! I am very sorry, Gaara!”
“It's okay. That was... I... I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry too.”
“It is okay.” Lee splayed his skates out in front of him, hunched over and ever more ashamed of himself. Gaara didn't leave. Instead, he took a seat next to Lee at the bottom of the halfpipe with his knees tucked close to his chest, a safe arm's length between them now. Lee was just too beside himself with shame and overwhelm and wondering how in the world he was going to get through a two-hour skating session to make his voice work.
“Take this.” Gaara broke the silence, pulling a bottle of water out of his messenger bag, along with a bag of tiny salami sticks. Lee accepted both with profuse thanks. “You never... well, what I mean is... you don't... seem like the kind of person to break down over not landing one trick. What's wrong?”
“It, ah... has been a challenging week. There is a lot I must keep confidential for my clients. And besides, you do not need to bother yourself with my feelings. I will get over it, and I know that you are here to work, which I respect very much!” Silence fell over them again, Gaara looking over at him without so much as blinking for a few full seconds.
“Don't fault yourself for being exhausted, working against a system that sets you up to fail,” he said, still staring over his shoulder at Lee as the latter sniffled and wiped an eyeful of tears. “Or else there will come a day when you're telling your clients to get over it just to get their case off the pile on your desk. It can happen to anyone.”
“When the odds are stacked against you, you must move faster and work harder.” That was what he had done, what he had to do, in everything he had ever aspired towards. “And besides, I have only been doing this for six years.” Most case workers, statistically, left the field after seven. “My career is still fresh and youthful!” But not so much so that he was naive to what Gaara was talking about. He just fought tooth and nail to stay ahead of it.
“Tell me you haven't seen a horror story at your office start out the same way.” Lee couldn't, because that would be a lie. He had seen multiple in his six years. But the love he had for his kids was different. That kind of love would conquer anything. Who could burn out on them, or the kind, grateful parents who kept calling his direct line, or the ones he had yet to show that they were his teammates, or his skating family, or--
“Case work, to me, very quickly came to feel like an insurmountable avalanche of others' suffering. You clearly don't see it that way, which makes you...” a deep sigh, “nothing like me.” Lee couldn't help but be touched that Gaara would share that with him. “But because you're nothing like me, maybe you don't have to run for the first pencil-pushing job that will hire you, if you look out for yourself once in awhile.”
“You must have been a very accomplished case worker, to have been awarded your position so quickly.” Lee couldn't help but be impressed. Gaara was the youngest administrator decorated enough to be entrusted with something like the community grant Lee had ever met.
“Yeah. I was. But we're talking about you.” Lee flinched a little, at the intense gaze Gaara zeroed in on him. He didn't say anything else, leaving Lee to fill or not fill the silence.
“I... I might not completely be in disagreement with you, about it feeling like an avalanche, sometimes,” slipped from his mouth. “But I cannot let them down. I will not let them down.” Even he wasn't exactly sure who 'them' was right now. His mind went to the families he served at work, but also his skaters, and Neji and Tenten and Coach Gai and Kakashi. Choosing one to be talking about felt like caring about the others less, and the very idea got him all choked up again. Gaara didn't press him to clarify, though. “I would not be able to live with myself, if I did.”
“You've sat through the same hollow wellness seminars I have. They're a band-aid when the system needs surgery, but there are parts of them that aren't exactly wrong. Something has to give at some point and if you don't build layers of self-care that you actually use, the thing that gives will be you.”
It meant a lot to hear from someone who clearly was not without great fortitude himself. Gaara might not have been on the front line anymore, but he was still doing his best to stay barely ahead of, as they agreed to call it, the avalanche of human suffering. He stayed the course long enough to become an administrator and if he was doing his job right, then it was unlikely any easier than Lee's. Just a different kind of difficult. If someone so strong had really burned out at some point, then maybe it could happen to Lee.
But now was not the time to unpack that. His young charges would be at the park soon and it was no start to the skating program if he did not welcome them with the least-unhealthy of prepackaged nonperishable snacks and a winning smile. That was the truth and absolutely not an excuse to put off weighing impossible choices like compassion fatigue and burnout versus boundaries and telling people 'no.'
“Thank you, Gaara. For talking to me. And... and for the water, and the snack. You are very kind! But I cannot be late to greet the kids!” He scrambled up to his feet and Gaara did the same. Once he could see over the coping, though... there was still no one there but the two of them. “Or maybe not.” He checked the time on his phone. They still had a few more minutes. “Come to think of it,” he looked over at Gaara and said. “You are here very early today. Why?”
“I was on my previous assignment later than I was supposed to be and missed half of your session, when I was scheduled to visit. It's not right to pass judgment based on half an evaluation, so I wanted to make sure I caught the entire thing before I finished my report. Although I might have given myself too much of a buffer.”
“That is very thoughtful of you.” Lee sniffed. “I am sorry again, for... this. Even though I am in no position to be requesting favors, and I understand if the answer is 'no,' I must at least ask that you do not include my meltdown in your evaluation.”
“Don't worry about it,” Gaara said. “Your program hasn't started yet. As far as I'm concerned, I saw someone fall going down a halfpipe and went to investigate on my own time.” So generous. Lee shed a few more tears of gratitude. “Have a good session.”
“I will!” Lee flashed his most radiant Nice Guy Smile, trying his best to tamp down the exhaustion that bawling his eyes out into Gaara's dress shirt did nothing to improve. However, it couldn't be anything his young charges' smiling faces today and an intense skating session with Neji tomorrow would not fix! He just had to hang in there.
Chapter 4: Good Day for Bad Choices
Chapter Text
Gaara hadn't meant to return to the skatepark. The day of his unplanned session, he spent his last half hour or so at work finishing up his report for the grant committee, combining his observations with the data from Lee's folder and his interviews with Lee, some of the kids and guardians he had been able to steal for a moment between frontside stalls, even a handful of alumni he managed to get in touch with after doing some more digging. But whether it was a lapse in his conviction that he was doing the right thing or he just couldn't stop thinking about Lee that week, he realized it was Friday while he drove home and took an unexpected detour.
The events that transpired before the skating session did nothing to help the latter. If anything, he thought about Lee all the time instead of just most of the time now. He thought about trying to comfort him at the bottom of the halfpipe. Lee latched onto him and Gaara could have put a dent in the manicured concrete with his head; he was so crushed that he got startled and his fight-or-flight response chose 'fight.' Lee very openly felt terrible and there was no chance in hell he would make the same wonderful mistake twice. Gaara would just have to think of what it could have been like if Lee held onto him longer, and occasionally do so instead of sleeping.
It sent Gaara's thoughts and emotions into a tailspin, seeing him bounce back from that encounter and still manage to put on a smile for the skating program kids. Gaara felt something, watching Lee comfort fallen children and cheer them on when they landed a new trick. Among other things was the periodic, fantastical idea of Lee placing a band-aid on his scraped knee. That would require getting back into something he could scrape a knee doing, but it seemed worth it during those sleepless nights, and often turned into Lee supporting him by his hands as he re-taught him how to rollerblade. Lee so happy to see him land a trick that he picked him up and spun him around.
This strange, intense crush coupled with remembering what a horrible person he was every time he looked at the guy seemed to create the perfect storm for obsession. He could be drafting a new protocol or in a high-pressure meeting with his division's lawyer and still be thinking about him. Now that his revised evaluation, still recommending him to receive the community grant but a little more substantial than it had been after actually observing the entire session, was sent off, he had a hard time convincing himself not to lean into the obsession. How much further did he really think he could take the avoidance route, at this point?
“Gaara!” and a concussive boom! against the bathroom door ripped him out of his inner monologue. “My bus leaves in 20 minutes and there is no way I'm gonna let Neji see me like this! Hurry up!” Kankurou gave the door one last barrage of pounding --and did he just kick it?!-- before it was just Gaara and the running shower again. Gaara heaved a deep sigh, rolled his eyes, and stopped spacing out in favor of rinsing the soap off his head.
“THANK YOU!” Kankurou exclaimed, already starting to take off his black pyjamas as he shoved past him and into the steam-filled bathroom. “Fucking shithead used all the hot water,” Gaara heard him mutter as he headed to the living room. Neji's skate shop was open seven days per week now. The main thing that surprised Gaara was how not surprised he was that Kankurou had been entrusted with covering the back of the week so the two of them both got a weekend.
Gaara could run a corner of human services and believed in his ability to run a small city, but running their household was practically a competition between him and his brother for who could leave the apartment a bigger mess. Despite his ability to keep up a certain personal appearance for a conservative office environment, it was more often than not that Gaara won the contest. The pile of wrappers that he pushed off the coffee table to make room for a bowl of deathly-salted popcorn was a point for him. Unless each wrapper was an individual point.
Kankurou might have kept his bedroom in a constant state of chaos only he could navigate, but whenever he and Gaara made some effort to clean their apartment, he could usually be found grumbling and re-doing chores that Gaara had done poorly. He built skateboards, experimented with makeup, and carried every play Gaara had seen him in, moonlighting as a stagehand at the amateur theatre that still put on shows downtown. Their father and, before he learned better, even Gaara made it clear that his passions were an embarrassment. Kankurou still cracked the occasional joke about making Rasa Okaze, Esq. turn over in his grave.
Growing up and becoming less of a conceited shithead, though, Gaara came to realize by the time they moved out together that Kankurou also the only one in their blood family with an eye for detailed work. Gaara and their sister Temari, on the other hand... all the credit went to Baki that they knew how to do anything for themselves other than get the highest grades and win every sports meet. Neji obviously saw some of what Gaara saw every day past Kankurou's obnoxious personality.
Unlike Kankurou, Gaara worked normal business hours and had the next two days off. His morning plans consisted of his large bowl of popcorn, a marathon of his and Kankurou's collection of exclusively terrible movies with Shukaku in his lap, and seeing where the weekend took him. As he browsed the shelf under the television for something he wanted to watch, though, he discovered a new way his every waking moment could be derailed by Rock Lee.
Would Lee think less of him for letting his apartment look like... this? Not that he had actually seen Lee anywhere not-a-skatepark, but he was so quick and on top of things at the skatepark. Surely, he cared for wherever he was living these days with the same fiery determination to simply outrun the avalanche threatening to bury him. True, they had no such relationship or plans, but Gaara would be embarrassed to have Lee over.
“Are you... picking up the living room?” Kankurou asked, raising one freshly greasepainted eyebrow, arms crossed as he stood over him. Gaara had taken a knee on the floor, a garbage bag in one hand and a fistful of garbage in the other. What started as actually throwing his wrapper pile all the way away turned into going around the whole room and gathering all the trash he could find. “Oh shit, it actually looks kinda nice in here for once. I'd help you, but, you know, gotta go to work--” he started taking some quick steps toward the door and some temporary state of vehemence that made no sense at all came over Gaara.
“Do you want a ride?” he asked. Kankurou didn't hesitate, cheering a little as they stepped out the door together. Truth be told, Gaara had no idea why he wanted to go. He told himself he was just doing something nice for his brother as he tossed his garbage bag in the communal dumpster on their way to the car.
That theory didn't really hold up when he parked outside the shop and followed his feet inside with Kankurou. While the latter opened the store and did his job, Gaara found himself pacing the solid half of the store dedicated to rollerblades. His eyes raked over the rows of boots and complete skates. Along the wall were shelves of frames, wheels, and other hardware.
Lee still bladed. It clearly didn't make a monster out of him. Enough pacing and staring, and it was almost like Gaara could feel the wind in his hair again, his stomach lurching from the sheer speed, the satisfying glide across smooth, cool skatepark cement as he lowered into his favorite trick. Would it be hard to learn it again?
No. He couldn't think like that. He couldn't risk being that person again. If even a tiny piece of that person still existed in him, just waiting for a crack to seep through, it would raze everything he had worked so hard for in the name of doing something to heal the hurt he caused as a selfish little monster on wheels. The only coffin he had any business with anymore was the one his old skating life belonged in. Where it would stay. He was in the middle of an attempt to slip out before Kankurou could try selling him something when, looking back to make sure his brother didn't see him, he stepped right into another person.
“Gaara!” He wasn't just thinking about Lee now. Lee was actually here, eyes big and sparkling like he was somehow happy to see him. “What a pleasant surprise! I did not know you shopped here!” Brief but devastating came the thought that all but shattered Gaara's heart. Lee didn't remember him. That much was clear. But Gaara had to wonder if there was some element of actively blocking out painful memories, there. Not that he would blame him for that. “Do you skate?”
“Yeah.” No he didn't. “Uh, trying to get into it, anyway.” More like actively avoiding it. But something about Lee's smile and the way he bounced a little as he asked that question made it too easy to lie through his teeth. What else was he going to do, disappoint him?
“That is wonderful! When you are finished with your evaluation, I would be happy to show you a few things! Skating as an adult beginner is an amazing undertaking and I am always happy to help a friend start their journey off strong!” Lee smiled even bigger and Gaara's head came further unscrewed from his body.
“My evaluation is submitted.” Such a good sport even now, Lee didn't pry for more information. “I-- I guess... what I mean to say, is, uh... that's a kind offer.” He coughed into a white-knuckled fist. “I'll... have to take you up on it.” Despite himself, Lee's grin was clearly infectious. Gaara felt the corners of his own mouth twitch, arms coming to cross protectively over his chest. Kankurou and Temari were quite direct about telling him his smile usually looked more like an unsettling grimace, so that was probably a bad thing. If it was, though, Lee hid it well.
“Really?!” his voice went half a step higher, two fingerless-gloved fists shaking a little in front of his chest. Lee seemed to take the term 'vibrating with excitement' somewhat literally. “Oh, I cannot be late to my plans with Neji today. We have quite an advanced day of skating planned and I do not want you to feel left behind! But would you like to meet me at the skatepark tomorrow?”
“Sounds good.” They exchanged phone numbers so they could find each other if anything happened the day of. Lee was there for a reason, though. He couldn't just stay there and let Gaara stare at him. The side Gaara came to accept as violently crushing on the guy was disappointed about that. As he hurried away, Gaara pretended to be very interested in the wheels so as to not look like he was watching, but he watched Lee buy a few packs of bearings, sidewalk chalk, and some slalom cones before leaving the shop.
What did he just do?! The thought came slamming into Gaara the second the floating sense of Rock Lee's phone number is in my phone! and Rock Lee called me his friend! faded and Gaara was thrust back into the real world. Shit, what did he just do?! He could just text Lee now and cancel. That was probably the more sensible thing to do.
When he took his phone from his pocket and stared at the empty space to send a message, though, his fingers quivered, hovering over the screen, but he couldn't do it. What if Lee asked to go skating again and again until he either took Gaara's avoidance as disinterest or Gaara had to admit the reason he wouldn't skate with him and he, understandably, didn't want to hang out with a liar? What if he only bothered asking the one time and he immediately ruined his chance to spend time with him? It hurt to think about not spending time with him, at this point. The alternative was also abjectly horrible, but Gaara steeled his nerves and headed for the counter.
“What are you still doing here, squirt?” Kankurou smirked. “Thought you would've gone home to spend your day off with the land shark, by now.” One moment of silence, Gaara reconsidering whether his quality time with the handsome rollerblader who wanted to hang out with him for some reason was really worth it, was enough. “This doesn't have anything to do with Rock Lee comin' in for some bearings, does it?”
Gaara could only glare at him, knowing his voice would crack and his face would turn red if he tried to speak. “Seems a little stalker-ish if you ask me...” he jeered. Gaara wanted to fold in on himself like a black hole.
“I need a pair of blades.” And he didn't recognize a single brand or boot in the shop, so he needed help from someone who had gone shopping for skating paraphernalia in the last 15 years. “Please.” Maybe if he didn't provoke him, Kankurou would keep up his customer service persona and just help him. Or maybe not.
“Oh damn. Oh damn!” He looked like something out of a nightmare, the way his eyes went big and a shit-eating grin stretched across his face. “This can only mean one thing. You've got a hot skate date!” he singsonged s few times. “Shit, you're really into him, huh? You're gonna make such a cute couple!” He snickered.
“Shut up.”
“Then pick 'em for yourself, shithead. Good luck.” Gaara took a deep breath.
“Fine. Make fun of me to your heart's content. Now, will you help me or not?”
“Okay.” Kankurou whipped out his phone and made a call, the line ringing while he held it to his ear. “What? Only the best for my own flesh and blood.” Someone picked up. “Hey, Neji! How's it going-- no, I did not set the shop on fire. Listen, Gaara's on the hunt for some blades and he's in a hurry. Him being my baby brother and me being more of a skateboard guy, I was kiiinda hoping I could consult your x-ray vision.” Gaara could hear a very deep sigh crackling on the other end of the line.
“Put me on video.” Another beat and Neji was looking at them from Kankurou's screen, clearly at the gym and likely mid-bench press when his phone rang. His hair was visibly damp even with a sweatband around his brow and, if one looked at the background for a second, he was adjusting himself into a less awkward seated position on a weightlifting bench. That was a heavy-looking barbell behind his head. “Gaara.”
“Neji. Thank you for taking the time.”
“My on-call fee that I never needed until today is coming out of Bozo there's paycheck, so thank him. I have 20 minutes before I have somewhere to be, so Gaara, take your shoes off. Kankurou, get on the ground and show me his feet.”
“Okay. Freaky. But anything for you, lovebird.” If Neji rolled his eyes at Kankurou any harder, they would have gone back into his skull a la The Exorcist. They both complied with the instructions given to them over the phone.
“Kankurou, tell me you at least measured his mondo point before calling me,” Neji said while Gaara and Kankurou worked together to show him all around Gaara's foot. “Bend your knees, shins over your feet, Gaara. Now stand up straight. And point a foot. Flex.”
“Pfft, yeah, of course I did. Gaara, buddy, tell the nice man your mondo point!” Neither of them knew what that was. At least that was probably what Kankurou was saying with his wide eyes, exaggerated shrug, and manically mouthing something incomprehensible to Gaara from the other side of the camera.
“Why do I even bother?” and another sigh from Neji as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Gaara, what's your street size?”
“Seven. Narrow, if that matters.” The briefest anxiety about outing himself with something as small, as in trivial and as in literally small, as his shoe size crossed his mind, but it wasn't like he could take that information back. Neji didn't seem to pay it any mind, though.
“And I take it you're interested in aggressive skating?” Gaara made an affirmative noise. “Do you know if you prefer flat or anti-rocker?” Gaara shrugged. He used anti-rocker an eternity ago, but after so many years his guess was as good as Neji's. “Alright, and have you been skating between now and almost crippling my friend?”
The store got really quiet. Kankurou bared his teeth and his eyes went wide, staring at Gaara, and Neji grumbled. “I need some idea where your skating experience is currently at in order to recommend a setup.”
“It's been over a decade,” Gaara said calmly despite the storm raging in his inner world. “My experience is at square one.” He didn't like the person it made him and Lee was the turning point where selfish satisfaction in the earth he scorched to win gave way to remorse, but he didn't feel the need to tell Neji of all people that.
“Noted. Kankurou, grab the Aeon, Throne, and 909 completes, size six. Try on the Aeons first, and show me his feet once they're on.” They did what they were told once again. “How do those feel, Gaara?” That thing Kankurou said earlier, about consulting his superior's 'x-ray vision,' finally made sense.
They felt better than Gaara had any idea skates could feel, even when they were unbroken-in and tight. And Neji figured this all out over a video call. “Kankurou, point me to his toes so I can see his stance. Gaara, get on your left edges. Now the right. Center again. Hm. Try the 909s.”
They repeated the process with a different skate. “Do those feel better than the Aeons?” Still good, but no, and Gaara told Neji as much. “Alright. Get your feet out of my skates. Kankurou, ring him up for the Aeons and a pair of flat arch insoles. Gaara, wear those with medium-weight socks, nothing excessively thick or you might find yourself losing feeling in your feet while you skate. You're welcome. Don't call me again.” He hung up without the word 'goodbye.'
“So, you really wanna get back into this?” Kankurou asked with a raised eyebrow while he did exactly as Neji instructed. “Not that I don't think you can. I just... am kinda surprised, I guess. You did a whole dramatic monologue like a junkie flushing their dope down the shitter when you told Tem and me you were quitting. I just hope you're not gonna spend 300 bucks on these just to see this whole thing as falling off the wagon in a few weeks.”
Gaara paused one more time, mid-rifling through his wallet for his credit card. Kankurou wasn't spouting complete and utter bullshit, for once. Even Gaara still half-expected exactly that to happen. But his mind was made up. “I can make my own bad choices,” he said. “Sell me the skates.”
Chapter 5: Exhumation
Notes:
I make one reference to one of gaara's canonical jutsus and from then on I can't let it go but I like to think the repetition is neat
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Lee practically jumped out of bed like a chipper teenage boy from a bad 2000s movie, the day he and Gaara were going to skate together. He had been excited enough to spend more time with the kind, sincere colleague as dedicated to his job as Lee was to his. But then at his skate session with Neji, the same morning he ran into Gaara again, Neji connected some dots that blew Lee's faceblind mind and multiplied any excitement he felt by a thousand.
Gaara had been holding out on him when they talked at the skate shop, and Lee was finally getting his long-coveted rematch with Gaara, the ex-competitor who had never wiped out at a competition or, allegedly, ever. Had he recognized him without Neji telling him after the fact, he would have certainly invited him along to skate with the two of them. He sure hoped Gaara didn't feel hurt or patronized by the whole interaction.
He took extra care in foam-rolling everything that morning, giving any joint or muscle that was still stiff after his long warmup regimen a generous slathering of zheng gu shui. Nothing was going to stop him from skating his best, as he was sure Gaara would do as well. His head was still reeling at how long they couldn't have been that far apart and still managed to miss each other. Gaara was such a formidable and talented skater in the springtime of their youth. Whatever happened, their skating session today would be truly invigorating!
It had been a challenge to suffer through, brutal by design, the last time he and Gaara met at the halfpipe. When Lee got to the skatepark for their session a few minutes early, though, he made big lines full of even bigger air through the park out of pure youthful joy and excitement. He would, of course, be taking his weighted layers off once Gaara arrived. No way the Scorpion of Suna would be outskated with them on. Although, it did come as a surprise that Gaara had not gone professional. Maybe he had already lived that dream and retired. As long as they both skated with all they had, though, they would surely not even notice the difference.
When he saw Gaara, out of his office attire and instead dressed in jeans and a black tee, a mint-condition pair of brown and black blades strapped to the same tan Rollerblade backpack adorned with pins and patches he carried everywhere in their youth, he got all warm and light inside. Gaara had really grown into the backpack and Lee cared less about why that was adorable, more about the fact that it was inexplicably adorable.
His legs moved before his brain and he caught a little bit of air racing out of the main bowl and towards Gaara with outstretched arms. “Gaara! Hello! I hope that you had a good start to your day!” he exclaimed. “Are you ready to skate?” Gaara drew back from him, just slightly. Not a morning person. That was completely natural and okay and something Lee could adapt to just fine. He would be both a good friend and a good eternal skating rival! “That is okay! Take your time.”
He kept Gaara company, asking him about his morning on the bench near the park while Gaara shoved his feet into his skates, really leaning his body weight against each boot, and laced them up. “Ah, you have new skates! They are very cool!” Gaara finished adjusting his ankle straps and stood up. “I know! We should do a few minutes on the miniramp to warm up and help break them in more!” He wanted to outskate Gaara because of his hard work and determination, not because the latter's feet were cramping.
“Sure.” Lee moved to lead the way and they took off. Even a splendid vert skater could benefit from spending time on the miniramp, essentially a halfpipe with a solid half of its height cut off. Slowing down and removing the need to simply get all the way up from the equation, it would be a wonderful time to focus on hitting every grind position and grab perfectly! He vowed to complete 100 flawless tricks before they moved onto larger obstacles in the park.
“Would you like to go first?” he offered, but Gaara shook his head, so he jumped in, making the most of the limited speed he could catch without the vertical walls of a halfpipe from which the 'vert' in competition got its name with the most powerful pumping he could muster, and holding the deepest royale grind he had in him for as long as he could. “I cannot wait to see what you have up your sleeve!” he said, smiling brightly at Gaara, as he popped back up the other side of the ramp to stand at his side.
Gaara took a deep breath, slowly dropping in and pumping just to the end of the transition before doing a small carve and skating back with a little sprint to make up the speed he lost. He stepped back onto their side of the ramp more than he jumped. “Splendid warmup strategy!” said Lee. He meant it. Gaara had driven here and his skates were new. It wasn't healthy to jump right into skating their hardest, tempting as it could be when the eternal flames of youth burned in their hearts. “I hope that you find this one cool! It took me a lot of time to be able to do it again!”
He showed Gaara his Liu Kang grab, just with fewer rotations so that he could focus on bringing his bent knee to his chest and lifting his free leg a little higher than 90 degrees. Not quite, but a judge at a competition would not be mad at the textbook grab he did manage. Gaara practically stomped into his starting position before executing a little 180, a bit closer to the coping but still not getting over it.
They did this back and forth for several minutes. Lee kept trying to pick Gaara's brain for the method to skating so small and even make conversation about unrelated things like what he liked to do outside work and skating. Gaara was too focused to answer, which Lee could understand and even admire. As their time at the miniramp went on, though, he only rotated between his carve and his 180 in a way that almost struck Lee as... inhibited. Not exactly the rematch he had in mind.
He really wished he had Coach Gai or at least his composition book full of wisdom his beloved foster father had imparted on him from the day he found a 10-year-old Lee crying in his room over the football team, the basketball team, and the baseball team all laughing him out of tryouts to the day he passed his licensing exam to become a social worker. At the same time, though, it wasn't like he didn't strive to inspire others on his own after so many years of absorbing and applying all that wisdom. Maybe he didn't need his notes right now.
“Are you feeling alright, Gaara?” he asked, careful not to place an unwanted hand on Gaara's shoulder. “There can be a lot of pressure in this sport to keep skating no matter what happens, but it can actually be counterproductive to try and push through illness and injury!” He had learned that the hard way after the Sound Cup. “Please do not feel pressured to keep skating if you are not feeling well! It is okay to rest when you need to.”
“I'm fine,” came out through gritted teeth. Gaara glared up at him with such focus; it called back to the moment at the Invitational when Lee tried to tell him what an amazing job he had done after scoring two points less than him on the vert. “You can do another run.” He crossed his arms and redirected that glare to the ramp itself.
“If you say so. But please know that whatever is going on, I am happy to listen if you would like to talk about it.” Gaara just kept shrinking back into his own shoulders and glaring, not even acknowledging that Lee had said anything. He just had to hope that he would take him up on his offer if he needed to, as he finally landed technically flawless fishbrain number 1000. “Yes! I did it!” he couldn't help shouting at full volume, two fists raised high above his head. “I did it! I did it! I-- Gaara?”
Rather than join him, even quietly, in celebration, Gaara ripped his own skates off and threw them down the ramp with a force that made a concussive twack! on impact, the kind that had to indicate something cracked or broken. “Gaara, what is wrong?” He dropped into the miniramp and gathered Gaara's skates with the care of picking up a fallen child, practically cradling them in both arms as he exited the ramp after him. “Please come back!” Gaara just kept stomping across the skatepark, away from the miniramp and also away from their belongings, in his socks.
“This is a waste of my time. A waste! Worthless! I hate skating. I hate it!” Somewhere in the grass between the skatepark and the rest of the park it was part of, Gaara stopped and doubled over, muttering to himself with his head in his hands. Lee took his own skates off at the edge of the skatepark and bolted to his side.
“Gaara?” he asked in a small voice. “Do you want to talk about it?” Something about feeling the first tear trickle down his own cheek at how much Gaara was hurting gave him an idea. “Do you need to cry?”
“Leave me alone.” The way he scrunched his face as he spoke, flashing his gritted teeth, could only be described as a snarl. “Go back to playing 'pro skater' and pretending it doesn't kill you inside. You're good at that.”
“That is very hurtful.” Actually, it brought more tears running down Lee's face, but he gave it everything he could to keep his voice even through them. “Do you need a hug? Or to take a walk? I will keep you company or give you space, if you do!” Gaara just crossed his arms and faced away from him. Lee was at a loss. He had no idea what to say, but he cared about Gaara. He wanted to cheer him up so badly. He could not just stand idle and do nothing.
“Whenever I had a bad practice session or lost a competition, Coach Gai would make popcorn and we would watch old tapes of me skating so that I could see how even my worst that day was better than my best a year, or five years, or ten years ago. We all have bad days. They do not make you a bad skater. We celebrated them, because our bad days actually make us--”
“You don't get it, do you?” said Gaara. “There's nothing to compare to. I haven't done this in 12 years.” Oh. So Gaara gave up skating, during their time apart.Something about that made Lee feel an ugly emotion he had no desire to make Gaara's problem. He must have had his reasons. Even if he didn't have his reasons, everyone had the right to change. Lee had changed too. He found new dreams too. After what Gaara did to him, he had to.
But now was not the time to think about that. Lee had his whole life after today to feel that gross emotion he knew he shouldn't feel. Gaara was hurting and needed someone to comfort him right now. “Then of course it is not fair to hold yourself to such a high standard,” said Lee, coming a little closer to Gaara as he thought warm, positive thoughts and hoped they came through in his smile. “How long have you been skating again, then? You are probably off to an amazing start!”
“I chose to stop because I didn't like the person I was in those competitions.” Gaara looked over his shoulder at Lee, only for a second. “You had to learn how to walkagain because I was a selfish little shit who hated seeing another skater so much as step to me. Don't try to make me feel better by pretending we're the same. Better yet, just stop being nice to me. It makes me feel sick.”
“I know that.” Lee set his own skates down and ghosted the hand that wasn't holding Gaara's skates over Gaara's shoulder. Gaara didn't react at all, so after a beat, he took his hand back. “Your hair is longer,” he said. “You have grown up a lot, also. Oh, and you dress differently than you did in 2003, and I have experienced face-blindness my whole life, so I did not recognize you right away, but at this point I know who you are.”
They both got very quiet for what felt like a long time. “Gaara?” Lee asked once he got too worried to just let him try boring a hole in the ground with his eyes. “If you do not want me to make you feel better, then how can I help you?” Several seconds seemed to crawl by where they just stared at reach other. Lee made a promise to himself that he would do anything Gaara asked, if it helped him even a little.
“Tell me how I ruined your life.”
“Gaara, you did not--”
“Yes. I did. It's done. And I need to hear the hurt I caused from you, so let me have it.” His voice broke, just a little. It was such a sad, tiny sound. Lee wanted to hold him and tell him it was okay to cry and definitely not make it smaller and sadder. But even if he didn't speak it aloud, he had promised.
“Alright. If you insist. I still do not see my life as ruined, but you did cause me a great deal of trouble.” Gaara wanted Lee to 'let him have it,' so Lee spared no detail, starting from the first time they met, at the 2003 Konoha Aggressive Inline Invitational. Lee was 17 years old and it was his first time competing in the pro division. Competitions were broken up into heats, smaller groups within each division who competed against each other until everyone's scores were totaled for the final event. By chance, he ended up in the same heat as 16-year-old prodigy Gaara Okaze.
“You were a formidable opponent on the street course. At the time, I did not doubt for a second that with your reflexes, you had truly never wiped out in your life. Your run was amazing, and you made it all look so easy!” Lee, on the other hand, poured his whole heart into every line and embraced his youthful passion for skating with reckless abandon. “I have spent many years training my own muscle recruitment to be able to sneak tricks such as coffins into my lines because it was so cool when you did it back then!”
“I used only tricks and lines I knew I could glide through effortlessly enough to do things like that. And that worked in local competitions, but you would have beaten me if you landed your fishbrain.” Maybe that was true. But Lee fell coming out of it and tumbled the whole way down one of the taller ramps on the course. While the judges might have respected him for getting up and finishing strong, Gaara still had the higher score when the buzzer sounded and Lee's run was over.
“I remember going before you on the vert.” It was also the first competition where he had ever taken his weights off. His current setup of a weighted vest, weighted skating pads, and leg weights was a much more sleek version of what he started with. Back then, he used to sew weights into most of his skating clothes by himself.
“I still remember the way the ramp creaked when you set your extra layers down. You made me doubt that I was as good as I thought I was with them, but without them...” Lee could skate very fast and catch a lot of air, his muscles so used to working harder to do the same tricks. “I had to skate with all I had, for the first time in my life, just to tie with you.” Their total scores. Lee won the event. “You were out there skating with weights all over your body, and I hated you so much for making me try. Does that not make you livid?”
“It does not.” Lee should have left it at that, but whether he needed to fill the silence or was just not doing a good enough job at pushing past those noxious emotions reserved for later, he found his mouth running after he said what he wanted to say. “Although, I suppose I would not have reacted the way that you did during the downhill.” It wasn't a common event to have at aggressive inline competitions, more of a speed skating thing, but the Konoha Invitational chose it as their final event, and the two skaters chosen for it were Lee and Gaara.
“That's putting it softly. Tell me what it was like from your perspective. Hurt me with it.” This made Lee uncomfortable. He didn't see the point of hurting Gaara over something neither of them could ever take back. But Gaara had tears in his eyes, now. Even if he didn't need to hear this, maybe he did need to cry, and this talk was nudging him in that direction, so Lee pressed on.
It was just the two of them racing down a tall, steep downhill course. Lee did not put his weights back on, knowing that even with his movement completely unencumbered, he still might come in second to the talented skater beside him at the starting line. He did not even look at Gaara when the race started, sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him and tucking himself into as aerodynamic a ball as possible.
They were neck and neck for the first leg of the race. Lee remembered feeling all his blood rush to his face, sweat pouring down his brow and wind blowing through his hair faster than it ever had before. Despite how lightheaded he felt, though, it came with this strange sense of focus, like he was in a tunnel with just him and the finish line at the end. He was just barely ahead of Gaara when the latter's hand grabbed the speed skating suit he wore under his weights, nails digging into his skin. Oh, no you don't! he remembered leaving his mouth in the heat of the race. He shoved Gaara off him. Gaara shoved him back. “As you know, there was a blind turn further down the course.” No cameras, no spectators, the two of them completely alone.
When they came up on the turn, they both lost control. Lee caught several feet of air going over the boundary of hay bales and sandbags. He had broken his left arm and leg, compound fractures to both limbs, and he still remembered the ringing in his ears. His helmet cracked up one side. He had to swallow bile and semi-digested remnants of Coach Gai's homemade sports drink. It scared him, being in so much pain and, for several long minutes, not being able to remember how he got there and what he was doing. Oh, and there were two Gaaras coming towards him as he struggled to get up.
Stay down, was what Lee somehow remembered him saying even though the medic team did indeed diagnose him with a concussion. He tried to scramble to his feet despite the pain and instability in his broken limbs, but even one sandbag holding the hay bales around the track in place was too heavy. Gaara dragged a few of them over and buried him, starting with the bones sticking out of his arm and leg. It must have hurt too much to bear, because Lee still only remembered bits and pieces between watching Gaara disappear and taking a ride in an ambulance. “I... guess a part of me does want to know. Did you skate away to get help?”
“No,” said Gaara. He sniffled, wiping a single tear from his own cheek. “People started to wonder where we were and sent a medic to look for both of us. I saw them heading up the hill and skated down faster. Part of me half-expected you to still find a way to get back on the track and pull ahead of me, even with bone sticking out of your leg.”
“Oh.” Dr. Senju said he had increased pressure in his head. She had to give him a diuretic so that he would not have a seizure. It could have been blood or his own brain herniating until they got more imaging. The additional stress on his broken limbs from the sand bags had made the fractures even worse than they already were and he could have had an infection spread into his bone or bloodstream if she had not been able to flush every little grain of leaking sand from the wounds. It did hurt, in some way, to know that he could have died and Gaara never told anyone he was up there. “I still do not regret telling everyone that it was an accident.”
“You don't still tell people that.”
“It is seldom that anyone asks anymore because it has been so long, but I do.” He was afraid that if he did tell anyone what really happened, even today, that it could take skating opportunities away from children with any behavioral issues who needed the outlet even more than he did. “You might have only thought about yourself back then, but not everyone is like that.” His hands immediately snapped over his mouth. Where did that come from?! He did not mean that! He didn't!
“No. It's the truth. I can take it.” Gaara was facing him now. His hands came up to his, slowly guiding them away from his mouth. He still glared up at him, but the rest of his face was crying. “Then what happened?”
“Well, we went to the same hospital afterward. Surely you--”
“I know what happened to me. I had two broken ribs, some scrapes, and some bruises. They did imaging and sent me home before my younger self could figure out where to find insulin to kill you with. What happened to you?” Lee took another deep breath and told him about the initial stabilization that he could remember, the surgeries to preserve as much function in his limbs as possible but none of them were a guarantee, the days spent laid up in a hospital bed before physical therapy was even an option.
“Gaara, I cannot keep talking about this,” he stopped somewhere around his first day of physical therapy where he did, as Gaara put it, essentially have to re-learn how to walk. “It is hurting you, not helping.” Gaara was still staring at him. Staring and crying, silent tears but a steady stream of them, now. “That Gaara is not all you are. You are this Gaara too. And you are the Gaara who veered off the track to help me up at the Sound Cup.” It had been a very new but very hyped-up event, back in the day. Nowadays, it was a legit competition that Tenten had entered and even won a few times. “Do you remember that boy in the head-to-toe Powell gear?” Lee remembered him as Bonesy, because of the aforementioned head-to-toe Powell.
“There's no way you were supposed to be there. He tripped you and you could barely get up.” That was true. When she found out, Dr. Senju fully made Lee cry; she had been so furious with him for stealing away from his hospital bed to compete. She actually had to remove herself from the room, at that moment, to cool down before making his hot-blooded 18-year-old self cry again with the reality that he had risked the integrity of the screws and skin grafts holding his left side together and put his long-term ability to skate at all in danger. He needed more rest and a longer return-to-play protocol because of the damage he did.
“You are right. But you risked losing to him just to help me to my feet! It was so kind and youthful how you threw my bad side over your shoulder and brought us both over the finish line! And we won! Well, I suppose you won. Again. But I--” Fell in love with him a little bit, when he did that. Realized he probably was not as in love with the smart, beautiful girl everyone in his class crushed on as he thought he was, if what he felt in that moment was how it actually felt to fall in love. “And I was not lonely because you stayed with me until Coach Gai picked me up.” They talked and talked, Gaara's feet dangling over the vert ramp while Lee elevated his bad leg on the same big tan backpack Gaara brought to the park today. Lee could have kissed him right then.
“I'm sorry.” Gaara sniffled one more time and wiped his tears. It was only then that Lee realized that he couldn't remember hearing those words from Gaara before today. But he said them now. And he let Lee cry in the general area of his shoulder and let him eat his snacks at the bottom of the halfpipe. And he served his community every day. And he was trusted enough in Suna to be put in charge of the grant that brought them back together to begin with.
“Your apology is accepted.” Lee smiled at Gaara. Gaara looked plaintively down at the grass. Despite everything, Lee still wanted to cheer him up. “Would you like to--?”
He was going to ask if Gaara wanted to try just rolling around the park. No pressure to do tricks, no competition however friendly. Only an exercise in remembering how wonderful it felt to just skate. But all those feelings from the Sound Cup came rushing back at once. Gaara leaned in. Lee leaned in too and instead, they crushed each other in a tearful, desperate kiss.
Lee couldn't find his words, when they eventually parted. Rather than stammer and eventually pass out trying to talk, he playfully pulled Gaara to the grass with him and kissed him again, softer and smiling into it the second time. Only then did he set Gaara's skates down, freeing both his hands to cradle Gaara's face before kissing him a third time. “I have wanted to do that since the Sound Cup,” he finally blurted out after a solid minute of just kissing each other in the grass.
“I've wanted to since you beat me on the vert.” Gaara pushed a hand into Lee's hair. “Sometimes I think about it at the expense of sleeping.” Lee felt his own smile flatten. He did not like the idea of Gaara losing sleep over him. He wanted to be the reason Gaara slept easier at night!
“Whatever may happen with the grant, and even if we never skate head-to-head for the rest of our lives, I do not want to lose touch with you again.”
“Good. Neither do I.” One more short, sweet kiss, and they got up from the ground. Their hands brushed against each other as they finally trudged back towards the skatepark. By the time they were back at the bench where they stowed their belongings, they were fully holding hands and they both took their time letting go in order to grab their stuff.
The skatepark was busier than it had been when they walked away, more people awake now that it wasn't early-early anymore. “Would you like to go to breakfast?” Gaara asked after about two seconds of staring at the busy miniramp. They spent the whole walk to Gaara's car disagreeing on whose treat it would be. Both of them wanted to pay for the other. Yet again, though, Gaara ultimately won. Could Lee really say no to the 'least I can do for putting you in the hospital' card?
Notes:
listen, gaara is great, gaara is cool, but it is imperative that he is also a high achiever who is somewhat useless at everyday things and throws a tantrum sometimes when he's not as naturally good at something as he is at other things. need I remind the naruto fandom that trying was a novel concept to him until he fought lee in canon?
Chapter Text
This was not how Gaara had imagined his next encounter with Lee to go, but here they were. Lee could be heard bustling in his kitchen to heat up a diluted can of soup while Gaara added another snot-soiled tissue to the pile falling off his nightstand. He had called Lee, sounding and feeling worse than the tissue pile, to cancel their actual plans. They were going to the roller rink that still ran, in Konoha, where they could hold hands on the skating floor, sit across from each other at the snack bar like it was 1998 again, and focus more on the love of skating than hard work and intensity.
But then Gaara had to break it to Lee that he got the flu, probably from that zygote Matsuri who was in and out of his office while hacking up a lung and clearly feeling miserable exactly two weeks ago. He hated her so much right now. He just knew it was her fault as he coughed himself dizzy for the hundredth time today. His anger boiled hotter the more sweat soaked through all his clothes and dripped down his brow. If she were here he would probably strangle her before his years of becoming a better person could catch up to him. Germs were definitely that simple and there was definitely a person he could blame who deserved to get sick again and die this time.
There was; he supposed, one singular silver lining. Lee insisted on coming over to help take care of him. Gaara had fallen into a deep fever sleep after their call and Lee had his address with the intention of picking him up, so there was no stopping him. At first Gaara thought it was a dream brought on by fever and misery that he had to face alone with Kankurou at work, when Lee showed up at his apartment with a mask on his face and a shopping bag full of sick people things in his arms. It was real, though, and now Lee was in his kitchen taking way too long to come back to his side.
“Where have you been?” he grumbled, weak and raspy, when Lee finally hurried into his bedroom.
“Your kitchen, where I promised I would be to make soup!” said Lee, taking a seat next to him. He had to be the only case worker Gaara knew who didn't flinch at his glare, an automatic reaction he didn't have the mental clarity to check before shooting at him today. “Coach Gai would make this whenever someone in the house came down with a cold or the flu. I am so glad he passed down the recipe when I moved out on my own!” Wait, recipe?
“You made me actual soup?” Another coughing fit into his elbow cut him off toward the end of that question, but he managed enough that Lee understood what he was asking and nodded. “That was nice of you.” That was the best he could do when his head hurt and the room had suddenly gotten very cold and he wanted to end someone. Lee set the bowl on the nightstand and a small 'my soup...' nipped at Gaara's mind. His stomach growled.
“Please sit up.” Lee helped him, one hand supporting Gaara in a seated position while the other rearranged his pillows. Shukaku hissed and swatted as his throne by Gaara's head was taken from under him, but Lee was undeterred and Shukaku ultimately ran away. That was brave. And unheard of. Gaara probably should have warned him about at least the top ten reasons Shukaku was called some variation of 'land shark' more than his actual name.
“Sorry,” Lee said after the cat. How someone could be such a dork, so cool, and so cute at the same time was beyond Gaara's fever-addled brain. But he wasn't sorry enough to give the pillow back. He stacked it against Gaara's current pillow and rolled up a discarded comforter to prop Gaara up into a sitting position. “Is this comfortable for you?” Gaara internally shook off the slightly delirious cloud of 'my boyfriend fought a land shark for me...' and found his words.
“Great.” Considering he would aspirate, burn himself, and die trying to eat soup while curled up in a shivering ball like he wanted to be. “Give me that soup.” Lee laid the bowl carefully in his lap with a potholder beneath it, laughing to himself with smiling eyes. “What are you--” he rasped, interrupted by a concussive sneeze and barely catching it with another tissue, “laughing at?”
“You are still very cranky when you do not feel your best.” Lee handed him a deep soup spoon that he must have brought from home. “Try some. The spice will clear your sinuses!” Clear sinuses did sound nice, right about now. All the decongestants he could take for the time being had done little for the stuffy nose and pressure behind his eyes. At this point, Gaara would try anything. And also, Lee made him soup!
The soup, made lovingly from scratch by his sickeningly sweet significant other, made Gaara's eyes water, his nose run, and his whole face burn. “Water!” he choked, moving to reach for his nightstand. “Now!” Lee came to his rescue once again, picking up his glass, newly refilled, and handed it to him, tutting something about not spilling his soup.
“Did your dad know you were making this for me when he gave you the recipe?” Gaara asked, only half joking. However, once he finished his water and blew the endless drip from his nose... he did feel less congested than he had in two days. Maybe Kankurou wasn't just being an older brother and insufferable prick, trying to get him to eat the whole pat of wasabi he brought home from trying a new sushi place with Neji, around the first time Gaara woke up with a stuffy nose.
“Coach Gai would never punish someone needlessly for their past mistakes!” Lee exclaimed. When Lee first explained that he called his former foster dad who he definitely saw as his family Coach, Gaara was skeptical about how loving their father-son relationship really was. No one gushed like Lee did about someone they didn't adore, though. It was truly just a quirk with no deeper meaning to read into. “But no. He gave it to me a long time ago and I made it from memory! Do you not like it?”
“It's not bad,” said Gaara, taking another bite that still burned the whole way down, but it didn't catch him off guard, this time. “Packs a punch, though.” As was probably the idea behind it. Once he did adjust to the spiciness, the light but meaty broth was bearable, even weirdly soothing to his 'sick person' palate. It had chunks of meat, mushroom, yam, and cooked grain that made it a filling meal, clearly for people who felt like shit and probably weren't eating, like Gaara. He ended up finishing the bowl, the first substantial meal he had managed since he got sick. “Thank you.”
“You are so welcome.” Lee smiled at him, warm and soothing like the soup. After a while just talking, and coughing and sneezing on Gaara's part, Gaara felt strong enough to get up. At that point, Lee threw one side of him over his shoulder and walked him to the living room. He threw open all the windows that were out of Shukaku's reach 'to get him some fresh air' and laid the controllers needed for Gaara to use the television and game console if desired on an empty couch cushion. Then, he zipped away to throw Gaara's sweaty, pestilence-riddled bedding in the wash so that it would be fresh when he went back to bed. One of the benefits to living with one's obnoxious brother was the ability to split a place with in-unit laundry.
“Sorry that I took so long! Your washing machine has different symbols on the buttons than mine and I was afraid to mess something up!” Lee exclaimed as he finally returned to his side. “I also stopped to brew some of Coach Gai's Cold-Relieving Decoction for you.” He grabbed an unused coaster from the stack on the coffee table and laid it with a steaming mug in front of Gaara.
“Will this burn my face off too?” Gaara paused the game he had started playing to kill time and tentatively picked up the cup. The brew within it was opaque, a little thick to be called tea indeed, but it smelled like an especially potent herbal tea with a hint of that medicinal smell that apparently Lee's entire arsenal of Coach Gai's recipes had. Still, he felt a little better after that healing soup, so even if it did, the drink in front of him could also be worth it. “Strong,” was all he ended up saying, because that was the only word he could think of. Lots of cinnamon and ginger root with a hint of sweetness, but not eye-wateringly hot.
“I hope so!” said Lee, shooting him a thumbs-up though his smile was hidden behind his mask. “Mortal Kombat?” Once Gaara was settled, he took the time to look at the screen. After a few more sips of medicinal tea, Gaara resumed the game, affirming that he was indeed playing Mortal Kombat. Gaara kept it between himself and Kankurou, but they deliberately carved out time to play against each other on a regular basis. It was second only to tending to his collection of cacti, among the best parts of Gaara's week. “Who are you playing as?” Lee's eyes were big and sparkling. But he hadn't laughed at him yet.
“Ermac.” It was like a battle of magic powers and very few melee combos, when he played against Kankurou, whose main character of choice was Noob. Sometimes Gaara won a round without even moving an actual step. “Do you... want to play?” he asked tentatively after finishing off his game-generated opponent. Lee nodded vigorously.
“I love Mortal Kombat!” he cheered. “May I?” Only at Gaara's go-ahead did he grab the second controller, sticker-bombed by Kankurou, and rejoin him on the couch. Of course, when presented with the game menu, he chose Liu Kang. The sweet fool. “While I do enjoy the teamwork and friendly bonds of a tag-team ladder, I am also open to battling against you!”
And that was what they did for a solid hour. Lee immediately made Gaara eat his words, though they never actually left his mind, about his character choice. He didn't know it was possible to hit buttons so fast, and Lee had clearly memorized some devastating combos in contrast to Gaara mashing buttons as a character with cool powers. “Shit,” Gaara muttered at the loss of their first round. But he won the next one. Lee won the next and healthy Gaara would be embarrassed of the unsportsmanlike way that sick, cranky Gaara demanded a rematch.
Sure enough, he won their next battle, though Lee still got in one victory. It felt good to inflict a gruesome, over-the-top Fatality on him the next round, though. But they kept playing and virtually alternating who won each match, neck and neck if Gaara hadn't taken way too much cold medicine to coherently keep score. Lee won the next battle. Gaara won the next after that one.
They were only interrupted by Shukaku screaming and pawing at Gaara's feet. Fuck. It was his dinnertime. Gaara was already at fault for one round of injuries; he couldn't possibly ask Lee to feed him and risk losing a fingertip. At the same time, he just knew that getting up would make the whole room spin and his head hurt again.
“Hello again, Shukaku!” Oh no. While Gaara ruminated on his options, Lee was already happily greeting the little monster. “Would you like to smell me?” Gaara finally found a functioning cell of his melted brain just as Lee started to lay facedown on the floor. Yes, it was a thing to get on a cat's level to greet them, but Shukaku was not a normal cat. Lee reached out a hand, very loosely closed, and offered his fingers up for Shukaku to sniff. This got Shukaku's attention.
“Wait, Lee, I would avoid his--” Shukaku sniffed Lee's hand for a moment, “level.” He gave Lee a gentle headbutt, rubbing his cheeks against Lee's knuckles. At first Gaara thought he was growling, but for the first time since he took home a mean shelter cat to restore his own will to live, Shukaku was actually purring at someone other than him. “Of course he likes a stranger more than the person who's been patiently making him less of a terrorist for 10 years,” Gaara crossed his arms and muttered.
“Do not worry! It is probably not personal, Gaara!” Lee shot up, to Shukaku's vocal dismay, and said. “Animals just seem to like me and I have no idea why. Tenten thinks it is very funny when we are outdoors and only I become overrun with squirrels or feral pigeons. Although it was quite scary when a bus stop rat became very interested in me-- but I did not know what else to do but let it scurry on me! It was a very big rat and I was afraid it would bite if I moved too suddenly!”
At the reminder, Gaara seemed to recall a warmup before the Invitational where Lee rescued a squirrel that had wandered onto the street course. Right. That was a thing that happened. Lee had scooped the creature up and managed to dodge the other skater who nearly ran it over. It might have been a mystery to Lee, but Gaara had some idea how he won such critters over without trying. Lee abandoned him to feed Shukaku, but he came back, and they resumed their Mortal Kombat tying streak. They still hadn't picked a winner when Lee's cell phone chimed. Lee reluctantly paused the game and turned on his screen, if only just to see who it was.
“It is an email about the grant,” he said, hushed and more tentative than he knew Lee could be. True, he never pried and still didn't have the hidden knowledge that Gaara had written him a glowing recommendation, so sure, he was nervous. Gaara still expected more cartwheels and less of Lee staring at the phone like he just read that the whole planet ran out of curry. “I cannot open it!” He handed the phone to Gaara, who handed it right back to him.
“Yes--” More inopportune coughing. “You can,” he strained through it, serious but soft. “You've overcome bigger setbacks than any email can do to you.” Lee held the phone to his chest, looking at Gaara with eyes that, for a moment, looked so hopeful but so, so tired. When Gaara stopped to think about it, trying to dig up something in his own heart that would help... he constantly strove to do better and heal as much hurt around him as he could, but he had no idea what it was like to work so hard for it to all be for nothing. “Do you want to hold my hand?” Lee immediately crushed his hand in a death grip that caused it to make a cracking noise.
“Dear Rock Lee,” he then murmured aloud, scrolling the email in his free hand and gradually speaking softer and softer until his lips were moving but Gaara couldn't actually hear him read. There was a pause once his eyes also stopped perusing the screen. For a second, Gaara squeezed his hand back in anticipation. “They have decided to pass on the skating program,” Lee said after what felt like an eternity.
Even though his mouth was turned up in something resembling his usual bright smile, Gaara could only describe the rest of his face as weary. Like the weight of continuing to do things as he currently did them indefinitely came crashing down on him before he could find his strength. For that fleeting second, Gaara was staring at the Lee lying utterly broken outside the downhill track, in agony and still struggling to get back up. “That is okay,” he said. “I am very happy for the necessary and deserving programs that were selected!” Gaara couldn't put a name to why his heart shattered into such tiny pieces, but it shattered then.
“No,” he said. “It's not okay.” He took Lee's other hand in his free one and leaned in close to him. “You're getting your skate center. There has to be a way. We'll find a way together.” Gaara mentally prepared himself to argue as coherently as he could in his condition. Lee surprised him, though. Maybe he could justify his program as something for the greater good that he could let someone help him with, or he was just so much wearier than he let on, but tears fell silently down his cheeks and he looked at Gaara like, behind the watery smile, he was one push away from bawling.
“Really?” His voice was tinier than Gaara ever would have thought him capable of.
“I promise.” He squeezed Lee's hands again with all his might, which wasn't a lot right now, but the effort was there. “We really need to talk about it when I haven't taken so much cold medicine, but I promise.”
Lee pulled him into a backbreaking embrace. “You're going to get the flu,” Gaara rasped. He hugged him back, though. It felt nice and he was too miserable to think that hard about the greater good. Not everybody could be Rock Lee.
“I am out in the field with children every single day,” said Lee, muffled by Gaara's shoulder in which he buried his face. “Whatever you have, I have probably gotten before and my immune system knows what to do.” Right. Maybe it was Lee's fault that Gaara got sick.
From there, they switched their game out for a movie and just laid on the couch together. Lee held Gaara close, like a life preserver in a turbulent sea, while the latter started to doze off. He had just fallen into a fever dream where Shukaku had Ermac's specters except they were black and came out of his stripes when the dryer beeped from the laundry area and Lee got up again.
“No.” Gaara tried to cling to Lee so he couldn't leave. Sadly for him, his grip was no match for Lee at the best of times. Lee lowered his mask to kiss Gaara's sticky hairline and promised he would be back before abandoning him to re-make his bed.
Gaara had to admit, after Lee carried him back and set him down in his bed like a sack of potatoes, that the fresh sheets and clean blankets felt really good. Like some of the pestilence truly had left his bedroom. Lee even went to the trouble of tucking him in and fuck, if that didn't ruin Gaara for any other guy. That could be bad if Lee ever got tired of his shit.
“Don't leave,” he murmured, taking a feeble hold of Lee's hand as Lee tried to 'let him rest' alone. “I thought you weren't scared of getting sick.” Maybe it was the line of thought about whether another man would ever measure up if Lee broke up with him, but he could hear what a jerk he sounded like, that time.
“If you really want me to,” said Lee. “But I was going to wipe down the living room before Kankurou gets home, so that he is less likely to catch what you have!”
“Let him catch it. He's annoying,” Gaara muttered. Lee did that tiny chuckle again and ever so gently fluffed Gaara's hair.
“I will wipe down the living room very fast and come back without stopping for anything. I promise.”
“Fine.” Gaara begrudgingly supposed that taking care of a bedridden Kankurou sucked. It wasn't until after Lee left him that he realized Kankurou could perhaps be Neji's problem now and changed his mind again.
Lee kept up his promise, gone and back again in a flash. Gaara hardly had time to feel alone. “Would you like me to join you?” he asked as he lifted a corner of the bedspread, upon his return. He really trusted those kids to train his immune system. Or, also a possibility, he secretly didn't mind having a reason to miss one day of working his ass off. Either way, who was Gaara to stop him?
“Yes. Stop letting my warm air out.” The chills were back with a vengeance and he was freezing. Lee crawled under the covers with him. Gaara rested his head against his chest and allowed Lee to hold him again. He still shivered because chills didn't care how cold or hot their victim really was, but Lee felt so nice and warm. Being cradled against him at least tricked Gaara's brain into feeling a little less uncomfortable.
“Oh, Gaara, you are burning up,” Lee fretted as soon as they got settled, full of concern. He had taken his temperature before he started making soup. The fever wasn't hot enough to cook Gaara's brain, even though it sometimes felt like it was. “Tell me if you feel worse, please. Should your fever get too high, I will carry you to a doctor if I have to!” Gaara kind of wanted to see that.
“Sure.”
“Alright. I trust you. Sleep well, Gaara.” He fluffed Gaara's hair again. That day, Gaara discovered that he liked having his hair fluffed. He fell asleep to Lee rubbing up and down his back, gentle and soothing. His heart beat in Gaara's ear at the same slow rhythm.
Things had to work out for him. That much bored into Gaara's mind with striking clarity before he was lost in another weird fever dream. He wanted to be someone who made damn sure that things worked out for him. Maybe, deep down, he was still that guy, still a monster, but he chose to keep acting like a man-- a good man, regardless. He made an unspoken promise to keep up the act for as long as Lee would let him.
Notes:
I make ZERO promises whatsoever as to when the other two will be written but I have a fun little trilogy of snack-sized chaptered fics in this universe that I'm sure I will have to get out of my system eventually
for now though, this is out of my system and I miss suzumutsu
acrea_tiveuser on Chapter 2 Sat 16 Aug 2025 03:46AM UTC
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juuheizou on Chapter 2 Sat 16 Aug 2025 08:48PM UTC
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Something5 on Chapter 6 Mon 18 Aug 2025 01:43PM UTC
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juuheizou on Chapter 6 Thu 21 Aug 2025 03:19AM UTC
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Astrotheology44 on Chapter 6 Mon 18 Aug 2025 06:13PM UTC
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juuheizou on Chapter 6 Thu 21 Aug 2025 03:13AM UTC
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Spitzgummiez on Chapter 6 Mon 01 Sep 2025 05:54AM UTC
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juuheizou on Chapter 6 Sat 06 Sep 2025 07:57PM UTC
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