Work Text:
There is a lonely peace here above the joy.
Gaara stands atop the curved dome of Suna’s epicentre, wind brushing frigid against his sand-free skin. The stucco creaks, stone and mortar cooling after a shining, sweltering day, what feels like the first in many without tears and blood spattering the earth.
Below him, Suna glows. Windows reflect the shimmer of lanterns, innumerable enough to echo the limitless stars that brighten the moonless sky. Voices ululate, strings pluck and thrum, and lungs breathe life into song. Drums pound in a steady tempo and feet stamp against the paving stones, their rhythm the heartbeat of a city no longer chained by war. Here, now, the memorials have all been held, the taken laid to rest, the lost remembered for word and deed. Alliances and friendships have begun to grow from the wreckage, and all the world, for a moment, knows peace.
After so much turbulence, after the long dark the world has suffered, Gaara thinks, his people deserve a moment that darkness does not touch. And right now, Suna shines so bright it is dazzling, the city a blaze of life in defiance of the silent expanse of the desert night.
Conversations and songs drift up to swirl around him like tidal waves, surge, crest, retreat. Even here, far removed from the thronging of the crowds, Gaara can hear the accented sounds of foreigners joining in to sing along to Suna’s traditional melodies. The words curl heavy on distant tongues, but it is their presence here that proves the world is on the cusp of something new. Hands are clasped together around cups of tea, feet tangle in the dusty streets, and teeth flash in smiles. Laughter echoes amongst the music. People dance, sharing with their bodies words in a tongue that Gaara has never learned to speak. No one ever wanted to reach out to the monster that once haunted the streets, and wasting time on frivolities seemed injudicious when the world fell to war. Even now, as the mourning period draws to a close and peacetime celebrations begin, his people do not approach him with open arms and kind eyes, though he has earned their respect, and they follow him without question.
It is a poignant thing, he thinks, to lead in turbulent times.
The night is beautiful, and people celebrate the promise of peace.
But so many are gone.
And what right has he now, to learn the language of joy?
Each misstep he’s made in his life has resulted in another snuffed out. How many more voices would there be tonight, how many more hands joined and spinning in the streets, if not for his failures? Many, he knows. He knows every loss Suna suffered in the war to his lack of foresight, to his inability to be a shield for his people the way they’d needed him to be. He carved each vanished name into the cliffs himself. Who at the festival below would want to see his face now, to be reminded of the battlefield, the screams and blood and death of thousands under his command?
So here, shrouded in the night’s long shadow, he stays. It’s better this way. He is not like the souls below, shimmering and lucent. His presence is not a welcome one in moments of celebration, his lot is and always has been to the sand that whirls through the desert and blots out the sun, savage and tempestuous. Necessary, but not wanted.
Not wanted.
There is no escaping the darkness for him. Not fully.
“Kazekage-sama, I was wondering if you might be up here!”
Gaara looks over his shoulder, and electricity shivers up his spine. In a vibrant juxtaposition to the subfusc haze blanketing the dome roof and his own intrinsic melancholy, behind him stands the brightest, most sanguine soul he’s ever had the blessing to meet.
“Rock Lee,” he says by way of greeting. It’s more somber a welcome than perhaps the occasion is meant to deserve, but the physical distance from the revelry also invites a distance from his peers, even from those whose company he values most.
Rock Lee pauses, and the thick brows that characterise his face draw into a single line. “Am I interrupting something?” He blinks, and his long eyelashes reflect the firelight below. “I do not mean to bother you.”
Although Lee has been in Suna at least two weeks, part of a skills exchange to assist the rebuilding of Sunagakure which took heavy damage during the war, Gaara hasn’t seen him since they parted ways after the first dawn of the new world; Rock Lee remaining with his teacher at the medical tent when they’d delivered him into Tsunade’s care, Gaara drawn away by his obligations. Before that, when Gaara had first dragged himself gasping from his wonderful terrible dream nightmare back to the cold wasteland of their broken reality, tears pouring from his eyes and his gourd dissolving into a frenzy of sand, it had been Rock Lee who had fought through the maelstrom to reach him. He’d forgone any formalities and swept Gaara into a tight embrace there in the dirt, whispering, “It is okay, it is okay, it is over now,” into his hair, whispering soothing, grounding words until he’d shuddered into silence. He’d not been okay himself; Gaara had felt tears in his hair and the hitching breath of sobs against his chest, but Rock Lee has always been deeply altruistic in a way Gaara can only aspire to be. He’d shown Gaara no judgement for his weakness and no fear of his uncontrolled sand, only offering him a compassion he didn’t know he desperately needed, and for that—and for the myriad of other selfless ways he’s shown Gaara kindness over the years—Gaara will always make time for him.
“You aren’t. You’re always welcome here.”
He’s dressed like most of the festival-goers, loose linen trousers and an embroidered tunic, both dark olive green with gold stitching, leather shoes. He’s a little bit sweaty, and the edging of his tunic dips down a deep split in the front, displaying the glowing skin of an exertion-flushed, hair-spattered chest. As Gaara stares, magnetised, at that exposed sliver of skin, he wonders where he managed to find Sunan clothing in Konohan colours, because green isn’t common here. He looks… different, unfamiliar in loose, Sunan civilian clothing. The wind buffets them in the quiet, and Gaara notices the outline of his classic weights strapped to his legs underneath. In a strange way, the sight of the quintessential accessory softens some of Gaara’s reticence, like he is candle wax melting under the blaze that is Rock Lee’s soul. He’s been avoiding the brilliance of the celebrations, but paradoxically, Gaara wants this light closer, like perhaps the exposure to someone so bright will illuminate all the dark parts of himself.
It won’t, of course, but Rock Lee’s smile is suddenly the only point of warmth in the whole world, and Gaara gravitates to it helplessly as that green-clad figure pads closer and closer until he is suddenly there, shoulder to shoulder with Gaara, peering down at the festival below. He smells different, too, smoky sandalwood and bergamot over the linen on his clothing and his natural earth and salt smell. The scent is stronger near his ears and throat. He’s wearing a fragrance; Gaara wonders if it’s a Sunan oud. The thought—him wearing something culturally unique to Suna—is oddly pleasing, and Gaara breathes slower, deeper, absorbing his scent and presence. It’s comforting in a way no other person compares to.
“I have told you before,” Rock Lee says slowly, as though he is testing his own words, “that all my friends call me ‘Lee.’ I wish that you would as well.”
Gaara says nothing for a moment, then responds, a long-held question borne of a morbid curiosity he’s never before indulged. “Why do you consider someone who nearly murdered you a friend?”
A large hand, unbandaged, snakes around his own. Despite reminiscing on that unexpected embrace on the battlefield, Gaara has forgotten how tangibly physical Rock Lee is, and for a moment, he startles. Sand swirls threateningly in the gourd, but his hand stays firmly ensconced in those calloused fingers. He says, pointed, “I do not hold grudges! And I would consider anyone who saved my life a friend.”
Gaara takes a moment as the words spark a flickering within him. It’s not the first time Rock Lee has called him this, but in their isolation, in the pressure of his hand while they stand suspended above a world at peace, Gaara feels secure enough to open his hands and reach back.
“Would you also use my given name?”
The warmth of his hand withdraws suddenly to flail around, and Gaara immediately finds himself mourning its absence. “I c-could not! That would be most inappropriate; you are a village leader!”
Gaara looks at him curiously. Rock Lee—no, Lee—has always been a strange and enigmatic creature to Gaara. They have known each other for something like six years, meeting on sporadic missions or while in each other’s villages and frequently sending letters, and while Lee has always encouraged Gaara to address him with confidence, since Gaara’s ascension to Kazekage he has never reciprocated, always using Gaara’s appellation in full. The best he has ever received from Lee has been his given name with a Konohan honourific, before he took on his position and on the rare occasion he appears in Konoha outside of his political duties.
“That is true, but you are also my… friend,” Gaara murmurs, and the way his tongue curls around the word friend is odd. It feels like it is too much to ask for. It feels, somehow, not enough, and that strange notion is so foreign Gaara doesn’t know what to do with it, so he leaves it where it lies. “I wish you would.”
Lee stares at him for a very long time, his eyes darker even than the wine-dark sky, glittering in the light of stars above and lanterns below. Then he smiles, a small curve of his bowed lips so very unlike his typical grin that it leaves Gaara nearly breathless. This smile is soft, delicate, so achingly tender that when Lee’s hand brushes his own once more, Gaara is the one to wind their fingers together if only to keep him close enough to memorise every single detail.
Those lips part to speak, and Lee’s voice dips lower than Gaara’s ever heard before, almost husky in its tone. “As you wish, Gaara.” Lee’s voice is typically a loud, high, cheerful tenor, prone to cracking with the progression of adolescence, but there’s something heavy in it now, weighty the way Konohan skies look before the clouds tear open and pour their lifeblood upon the earth.
“Thank you, Lee.”
For a while, they don’t speak, and though the wind blows cold in the night air, Gaara feels nothing but the heat off Lee’s body and the feel of a thumb brushing up and down the skin of his hand. It’s wonderful. It’s painful. The whole world vanishes save that subtle motion on his skin.
“You look nice,” Lee whispers, as though he is afraid of being overheard although they are alone up here. Gaara inspects himself briefly. Temari had been startlingly aggressive about his formalwear today, loudly demanding he forgo his classic military coat and gourd harness, insisting he instead don civilian clothing befitting of a leader. He’s dressed not dissimilarly to Lee, with loose pants and leather shoes, though his tailored kaftan is belted to hold a smaller gourd and brushes his ankles. The amount of gold woven through the garnet-red silk brocade is ridiculous, though the weight is comforting. Temari—and Matsuri, when he’d seen her before escaping the festivities after his obligatory welcoming address—had both told him much the same as Lee, though the hushed compliment holds more value here and now for reasons Gaara can’t explain.
“So do you,” Gaara whispers back, because it’s true, after the initial moment of bewilderment, he thinks Lee looks quite lovely. Green has always complemented his skin tone, this softer shade even more so, and the cut of his top emphasises the ever-broadening span of his shoulders. For all his incomparable physical strength, Lee has always been deceptively slim, but in recent years his muscle tone has increased significantly; he’s going to thoroughly dwarf Gaara by the time they both leave their teenage years behind. This errant thought also sparks a strange heat behind his ribs, and once again, for lack of knowledge of what to do, Gaara dismisses it.
Even in the orange glow of the braziers below, Gaara can see a blush cascade down from Lee’s hairline. His hand twitches in Gaara’s as he stutters out something that Gaara presumes is thanks, but Lee’s words are fragmented at best, and after a moment, he gives up on speaking and simply holds tighter to Gaara’s hand. Quiet descends again; Lee’s presence a relief against the desert chill. His mere proximity is warming, like how it feels to stand close to a fire in winter, or to wrap numb hands around a hot cup of tea.
But Lee breaks the silence with another innocent question, “What are you doing up here by yourself?” and the bubble of warmth around Gaara pops. In rushes cold reality, the reality that Gaara is avoiding the eyes of the families with empty beds because of his failings, that Gaara is a weapon in a world that only seeks peace, that Gaara is watching a celebration that does not need him. The reality that Gaara does not know how to share in the motions that make up the expressions of their joy, not that he would deserve to take part if he did.
He withdraws his hand and looks away. He doesn’t answer. Terms and phrases may come easy to him in politics and diplomacy, but he doesn’t have the words to convey feelings he hardly knows how to categorise in the first place.
Lee purses his lips and watches him, then makes a decisive fist. “Come dance with me!” he says, his voice ringing through the night. His clenched hand punches up, all vigour and enthusiasm. “It will be fun!”
That, at least, he can answer. “I don’t dance.”
Lee’s hand uncurls and falls back to his side. “Why not?”
Despite Gaara’s brusque response, Lee’s inquiry holds no petulance. A gentle concern permeates his tone, and Gaara finds himself regretting his curtness. Lee is only being kind, after all, and Gaara told him he was welcome here. Reneging on his words with specious behaviour is unbecoming of him. He deserves, at least, a modicum of honesty.
“I never have,” is what slips from his lips.
“You have never danced before?”
“No one ever taught me how.”
No one ever wanted me.
Lee looks at him, his eyes iridescent under the constellations arcing across the desert sky. He holds out one hand, unbandaged, scarred, unafraid. “I will teach you,” he says, “if you will let me.”
Without any control, Gaara’s eyes slide, magnetic, from his study of the festivities below to the sight of Lee’s palm, sturdy and unshakable, reaching out for him.
Gaara hesitates.
In Suna, things are like this. Culture is passed down through blood. Traditional hymns are sung to babes in the cradle, the ritual movements of dance taught to children the moment they learn to walk; mother to daughter, father to son. In the absence of conventional family structure, these mores are shared by siblings, cousins, and extended family. It is more than a sharing of knowledge; it is a sharing of trust and confidences, imparting your wisdom and your hearth upon another soul through unwritten language. It says to the recipient, I honour you. I trust you. Hold my tradition in your heart.
Temari learned these traditions from their mother, Kankurō through her. Their father spent no time on home and heritage when he had a village to run to ruin, and both his siblings feared him by the time he could have been taught. Yashamaru had begun to share the stories of their history, but then Gaara killed him, and with his loss went the one person who cared enough at the time to pass that cherished knowledge onto him. Of course, his siblings are his close and beloved companions now, but they don’t often speak about the time before those precious bonds were formed. He thinks Temari wonders about this; she always looks at him with a strange hesitance when Sunan festivals come and go and Gaara goes unseen during the celebrations. She hasn’t yet asked, but Gaara thinks that eventually she might offer to share their mother’s teachings.
Lee was not born of Suna; he doesn’t know the intimate significance of his offer. But Gaara knows, he knows, deep in the darkest reaches of his soul he knows he doesn’t deserve this. Of all living people, it is Lee who bears the worst of his violence; it’s written into Lee’s bones, decorated across his skin. For his entire life, Lee will see half his limbs and be forced to think of Gaara’s cruelty. Lee should resent him and spurn his apologies, not hold his hand, invite his friendship, and offer to teach him to dance.
Yet, in this moment, he is drawn, irresistibly so, to this hand, to this person, to this chance he’s never been given and may never receive again—
He reaches out and places his hand atop Lee’s upturned palm. The dichotomy is staggering; Lee’s hand dwarfs his own, now resting pale and unmarred and fine-boned in Lee’s robust, sand-battered, unevenly tanned one.
“Alright,” he says.
Lee’s face splits into a blinding smile, warmer than the afternoon desert, brighter than the sun. His fingers curl around Gaara’s hand, and their strong grip jars the steady rhythm of his heart. Lee’s hands are tough, but exceedingly gentle, the kind of hands both capable of punching through meteors and soothing the harshest of pains. Only the gods know how many times Gaara has been thankful for these hands, and now he once again owes them a debt for their kindness.
“Wonderful!” Lee cries, and he pulls Gaara towards the centre of the dome. His voice becomes thoughtful, and he says, “Since you have never danced before… would you prefer to learn the following side? Leading is more difficult”—his voice rises, speeds—“not that I do not think you would learn it quickly, y-you are a genius after all! I have seen you pick up katas faster than—than anyone!”
“That’s fine with me,” Gaara says, swallowing the warmth that blooms behind his ribs at Lee’s hasty words. Lee is not the first person to call him a genius, but like his hushed compliment earlier, it holds more meaning here than it has from anyone else. He can’t seem to keep all his emotions in check; a tiny spark of excitement stings in his chest and rushes in his blood.
It’s unlikely anyone—but, apparently, Lee—would want to dance with him, so whatever Lee is willing to teach him is acceptable. He may not deserve it, but he is selfish, and he will take anything he is offered.
Lee takes both his hands and faces him, then pauses, a look of contemplation on his face. “How much do you know about dancing?” he asks. Without any apparent awareness of his actions, he strokes the backs of Gaara’s hands with his thumbs. Gaara watches the smooth motion, back and forth and back again, and quietly delights in the sensation of friction against his skin, at the idea that Lee is so comfortable around him that unconsciously tender actions like this come freely.
Of course, this could be how Lee acts with everyone, he doesn’t know for certain. It’s this thought, a surprisingly discouraging notion, he contemplates as he murmurs, “Nothing,” in reply to Lee’s question.
“Well!” Lee declares. “I suppose we will start at the beginning, but please let me know if I am saying anything you already know.”
Gaara nods, knowing full well that even if he does know something, he won’t interrupt. Lee’s voice is a warm balm against the cool night, and he settles into a sort of meditative peace listening to Lee cheerfully launch into an explanation of what he describes as the foundations of music and dancing.
“…Most songs follow a pattern of beats divided into groups of four, called a bar or a measure, but four counts can be rather quick, so instead dances are mostly counted in groups of eight, called an eight-count! Not all songs and dances follow this, of course, but that is the most common rule…”
Lee, being fundamentally unable to remain still, gesticulates vigorously as he explains the various concepts he deems important for Gaara to know. In anyone else, the motions would have been distracting, but the easy grace in which he shapes his hands and arms into visuals is unexpectedly beneficial, and Gaara takes in the knowledge with interest. He’s heard of the terms: tempo, count, rhythm, but he’s never properly applied them. Theory lays out neatly in his mind as most cerebral actions do, and Lee is both passionate and clear in his descriptions.
“Does that all make sense?” Lee asks, tilting his head. “I know that is quite a bit all at once.”
Gaara nods at him, having had no trouble following. Lee is a good teacher.
“Excellent!” Lee claps his hands together, the noise loud and sharp; it’s a little jarring after the smooth flow of verbiage. “Would you like to learn the actual steps now?”
Holding back his heart in his throat, Gaara says, quietly. “Yes.”
An hour later, Gaara’s opinion on Lee’s teaching ability has surpassed merely good directly into phenomenal. He’s concise without skimping on detail; he adjusts Gaara until he masters each step perfectly before continuing, and he demonstrates with an ease that speaks to a lifetime of taijutsu, all grace and fluidity in his long limbs. Gaara is not incompetent in taijutsu the way he was in his pre-adolescence, but he’s awkward and ungainly compared to Lee, who moves like liquid. Each step flows into the next as he moves through eight-count after eight-count, instructing as he goes without the slightest sign of effort in his voice.
In the back of his mind, where village management occupies a permanent section of his brain, Gaara is already planning a proposal for Tsunade in order to requisition Lee as a taijutsu instructor for the academy. If he teaches taijutsu half as well as he teaches dancing, he easily outperforms his current instructors save possibly Shira, who has confessed to wanting to be sent out on missions. Provided there’s an alcoholic bribe involved, or a game of dice, she will likely agree.
“…And this is the final step, here,” Lee murmurs, drawing Gaara in close, moving his hand to a green-clad shoulder, the other firmly clasped out to their sides. They’re very nearly pressed bodily against each other, a simultaneous deep breath would brush Gaara’s chest against Lee’s ribcage. They’re a little misaligned; Lee’s not quite a full head taller than he is now, so Gaara’s eyes rest at the hollow of his throat. They are moving slowly, so the cold wind has wicked away the sweat from Lee’s skin, but the wood musk fragrance and subtle salt scent remain. Even dry, his skin glows faintly in the moonlight. His neck and face, in contrast to what Gaara knows of the rest of Lee’s body, are smooth, only the faint white lines of long-healed cuts to interrupt the expanse of skin. Further down in the deep split neckline of his tunic are hints of more noticeable scars; the yellowing of fading bruises, the subtle pockmarks where stitches once lay. Gaara wants to peel back the tunic and reveal the topography of his body, to see the evidence of everything Lee has fought against and survived, but he knows this line of thinking is inappropriate, so he does nothing. His fingers twitch, something behind his teeth aches with a feeling he doesn’t understand, yet he does not touch.
But Lee is touching him.
The big hands on his body are meant to be instructive only, but each time they settle warm on his waist and hips, they elicit a swooping feeling in his stomach, foreign and not-entirely-welcome. More than anything, their feeling is distracting, and Gaara chastises himself for once again allowing his concentration to waver from Lee’s instruction.
It doesn’t matter that he’s unfocused, though, because Lee’s gentle tones melt away to be replaced with a cheery, loud, “That is the whole dance!”
Gaara breathes out longing, breathes in salt. He doesn’t want to move, not when Lee feels like sunlight and Gaara ice, fluid only when Lee is close enough to thaw.
“The best way to ensure you remember everything is to repeat it over and over until it becomes as easy as breathing,” Lee announces, “so we should start again from the beginning.”
Gaara nods and steps away, mourning the distance, jealous of the cold air that curls beneath the edges of Lee’s tunic the way Gaara wants his fingers to. Chastising his own unwieldy emotions, he shakes away the thought and assumes the starting position once more.
“Okay,” Lee says, and he takes Gaara’s hands. His fingertips slide, textured, down Gaara’s fingers, they tickle over his palms and close loosely over the ball joint of his thumb. Gaara mimics the action, and Lee’s index finger taps a beat against Gaara’s wrist, where his veins glow blue through his skin. Like this, Lee could break his wrist, fragile and exposed without his sand armour, faster than an eyeblink, but he knows that Lee won’t. Strangely enough, he feels comfortable in this impuissance. “Shall we?”
“Yes,” Gaara says, and they begin again, Lee murmuring instructions in his soft tenor when Gaara hesitates, over and over until Gaara retains the knowledge himself.
“Where did you learn this?” Gaara asks, as they repeat the steps and muscle memory begins to organise each shift into a pattern in his mind. He’s seen these steps before, it’s one of Suna’s most well-loved dances, although he’s never actually tried to move this way himself.
“First by watching, then by doing!” Lee says brightly. “Although Shira-kun did teach me some of the different types.”
“That was kind of him,” Gaara murmurs. Shira has been his primary resource for Taijutsu instruction in Suna, and whenever Lee is mentioned, he goes starry-eyed with obvious idolatry. It’s a logical way to repay what Lee has indirectly done for him.
Lee smiles. “It was. I showed him how to dance some of Konoha’s in return!”
Gaara frowns at his feet, watching his steps to make sure he does not miss a count. “I did not realise you were such an avid dancer,” he says absently.
Their hands swap on count. “Turn here!” Lee instructs, when Gaara falters. He does, their arms swinging overhead, then they are back facing each other, and the series of footwork begins anew.
“Excellent,” Lee cheers quietly, then returns to their conversation. “Gai-sensei had us all learn dancing as a foundation to our Taijutsu lessons. He said it is a ‘most invigorating expression of Youth!’ and I am inclined to agree. Tenten did not like that part of training at all, but we all know a great number of different dances. Neji did not like it either, but he is actually much better than I am; he had to learn a number of dances for his clan as a child!”
“Did you learn Sunan ones as well?” Gaara asks dryly as he narrowly avoids stepping on Lee’s foot, unbalancing himself as he dodges last-second. Lee breathes a low laugh and a hand darts to Gaara’s hip to steady him. The shock of contact to his clothed hipbone leaves Gaara unexpectedly breathless.
“No, mostly Konohan ones, and some from Gai-sensei’s ancestral home,” Lee answers, then interrupts the conversation to walk Gaara through a spot in the dance where a lift occurs. Lee doesn’t actually lift him; Gaara’s feet remain secure on the roof, but he envisions the movement in full and his heartbeat roars in his ears, a feeling he doesn’t understand buzzing in his spine. Lee, oblivious to his racing pulse, continues his reply. “Anyway, once you know the foundations, it is very easy to learn new dances! The specifics may be different, but much of the basic steps are often the same anywhere you go!”
Gaara hums an acknowledgment, focusing on his footwork. Lee’s index finger taps a steady beat against his wrist.
Lee’s hand lifts his own, and Gaara steps under the arch formed by their arms, spinning as he’d been instructed previously. He catches a brief glimpse of Suna’s lights before he once more turns to Lee, and his free elbow is caught and gently pushed in. He turns back to Suna once more and he’s drawn back against Lee’s chest for a brief moment, his free hand gathered up and softly squeezed. A quick tug spins him away in the opposite direction and he sails away before the solid grip within his halts his progress and twirls him back in, finishing chest to chest. Lee is warm despite the chill air, his cheeks are a soft rosy colour, and he smiles with his dark eyes on Gaara like there’s no one else he’d rather be dancing with. Gaara melts into it a little more each time he looks up to that gentle gaze.
They continue moving through each step slow and smooth, rotating around each other like celestial bodies pulled into orbit by gravity. After a few cycles, Gaara finds himself relaxing, feeling the cadence of Lee’s finger marking the tempo the same way he can feel his sand, or his heart. There is something simultaneously heavy and freeing about it; the rhythm settles onto his skin like a thick blanket but also fills his lungs with a wind that makes him weightless.
“You know,” Lee murmurs, “I am not so oblivious to not see that you are brooding up here.”
Gaara huffs, reality crawling in like a water stain on sand, a darkening spreading itself across his bones. He slows to a stop and releases Lee’s hands, turning to look at Suna’s festivities instead. “Nonsense,” he murmurs, though he knows his reaction is a dead giveaway.
Lee pokes him in the cheek and Gaara shrugs away, giving him a withering look that has sent his senior jōnin cowering. Lee, stalwart man that he is, doesn’t even blink. He only holds Gaara’s eye contact unflinchingly and says in a teasing voice, “You have met Neji, Gaara. I know when someone is sulking.”
Lee then raises a thick eyebrow in a knowing quirk, and Gaara is seized by an inexplicable urge to laugh. He swallows the feeling, but relaxes anyway, his shoulders untensing from a defensive hunch he hadn’t realised he’d curled into. He folded his arms when he turned, so Lee has no hands to grab, but that doesn’t appear to faze him at all, instead, he settles for Gaara’s shoulders.
“What is wrong?” Lee inquires. Gaara wants to tell him. Gaara doesn’t want to tell him.
“It’s nothing,” he says.
“It is not. You are unhappy.” Lee’s palm settles on his jaw and tilts his face up. His hand is warm, surprisingly soft for all its texture and callus, and fits against the side of his face as though it were meant to be there. A thumb brushes over his cheekbone with exquisite gentleness. Lee could kill him like this, could snap his neck faster than the sand could catch his fingers, but Gaara, to his own surprise, feels no urge to step away or armour himself; rather, he leans into that delicate touch. It’s far more intimate a gesture than Gaara would usually allow to his person, but Lee’s talent has always been breaking through his defences, uncovering all the fragile parts of himself and then holding them with tender care. Gaara trusts Lee with his body, but he has never before trusted anyone with his heart.
“I am fine.”
“Then why are you up here alone?” Lee inquires.
“My people do not need a reminder of the war on the night of a festival,” Gaara murmurs in his most diplomatic monotone. No emotion wavers his voice to reveal his personal feelings about his statement, but Lee’s face falls nonetheless.
“That is not… is that all you think of yourself?”
It’s not so much what Gaara thinks of himself, but rather, it’s how Suna regards its leader. Gaara’s view of himself is based around the perceptions of his people. A village is only as strong as its leader’s reputation, after all, and Suna’s greatest power is that both inside his village and out, his legend is a terrifying one. Born to be a cage for a monster, most people think him more demon than man.
“People have been asking about you,” Lee murmurs, not waiting for Gaara’s response. “I heard some of your jōnin speaking to Kankurō-san. Temari-san asked me if I knew where you were, as did Matsuri-san. I think your people are worried about you.”
Lee is misled about how Suna views its leader. The opinions of the people he likely speaks to: his siblings, friends like Naruto and Matsuri, the upper echelon of his ranks, are not the norm in Suna.
He knows his monikers. Gaara of the Desert. Gaara of the Sand Waterfall. Demon of the Sand. Jinchūriki or no, he is the greatest weapon in Suna’s war machine. Few shinobi—Lee among them—are unafraid to be in his presence, fewer still intrepid enough to do something like question or contradict him as Lee has just done.
Lee’s words are a beautiful delusion.
He can’t bring himself to speak.
Lee is also quiet for a long time, then tentatively nudges his arm, electing to change the subject. “Will you come dance with me, now that you know how?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dancing on the roof with Lee alone was one thing. Lee is unique among many for his apparent delight in time spent with Gaara; and Gaara craves that feeling of being wanted far more than he cares to admit. The mere thought of descending to the streets, of catching the eyes of his citizens and watching the cold anxious flash of their eyes paints his heart with the icy dark of loneliness. Rejection. He doesn’t want to feel like he doesn’t belong anymore. He doesn’t want to be feared, anymore. Remaining out of sight above the city protects his city and his heart from experiencing that bitter truth. Lee, of course won’t understand this, and he’s less than eager to explain, so he remains silent once more.
Lee looks at him, an expression of confused contemplation furrowing the war-sharpened features of his face. Even with the omnipresent rumble of sound filling the streets below, the silence feels deafening. Finally, he takes a small breath. “Only for a short while?” he asks, and his voice is serious, negotiatory like a visiting diplomat fighting for a legal concession and not a friend asking for a dance. “If you do not like it, we can come back up here and I will not ask you again.”
Gaara only gives him a basilisk stare.
Lee’s expression shifts from contemplative to pleading. “Please?” he whispers. His voice now is so open, so earnest it twists something deep in Gaara’s ribs. “Just once?”
Blunt fingers trail up his arm and, absent the opportunity to take his hand, delicately squeeze his bicep. He sucks in a breath, lets it out slowly. He doesn’t want to do this. But to deny Lee this one request would be cruel, especially given all the kindness Lee has shown him over the years that he has never once deserved.
Feeling as though he has just stepped off a cliff, Gaara says, “Fine.” His tone is brusque, and his entire being screams reluctance, but that doesn’t seem to faze Lee, who lights up brighter than the entire festival.
“Yosh!” Lee shouts, and he moves to unearth Gaara’s hand, already bouncing in his excitement to drag them from the roof.
Utterly defeated by Lee’s indefatigable optimism, Gaara lets him take it.
“Come on, they are going to start another one soon and we do not want to miss it!” Lee shouts, dragging Gaara through the crowded streets so quickly he hardly has time to place his feet on the ground. After what feels like no time at all, the crowd fans out as they reach one of Suna’s few open squares, one that typically holds a night market. Tonight, lanterns are strung on repurposed tripwires two levels up, criss-crossing the square in great arcs of twinkling yellow-orange light. Beyond them, the sky looks dark as pitch, the gleam of stars barely visible beyond the firelight. The streets smell of sand, stone, and incense smoke, and the volume is thunderous. Lee seems at home amidst the mayhem, his firm grip the only thing keeping Gaara upright as he navigates the shifting hordes of festival-goers with an ease that Gaara envies. He’s never had to avoid others; typically space forms around him unless he deliberately hides his chakra. He’s not trying to hide his presence—much—tonight, but Lee moves so quickly that people don’t seem to realise he’s there until they’re already passing by.
“We are here!” Lee cheers, and something in Gaara tightens, anxious.
Lee tugs him out into the sea of bodies, effortlessly finding an open space, and turns to face him, adjusting their hands into the same starting position held by the many pairs of hands surrounding them. The moment they arrived in Suna’s streets, Gaara had heard low indistinct murmurs erupt under the general hum of noise as they passed, and he had felt the weight of eyes on his back; now still in the quiet while musicians tune their instruments, those hushed sounds resolve into words. He catches his title, spoken with the curious, reverential fear he’s come to expect of the citizenry, but also the word Konohan and, from someone in an obvious tone of bewilderment, green?
He knows Lee hears it too because he doesn’t quite stifle his snicker.
Gaara has never been prone to embarrassment; the weight of the world’s harshest judgement has been upon him since before he knew how to walk. It is not discomfiture he feels now, but a strange sense of not belonging, like he does not deserve to be here, like he should not be enjoying the festivities. He stiffens by degrees as the quiet ticks by and murmurs ripple through the crowd.
“Relax,” Lee says with a smile, apparently unconcerned with the way they’re being surreptitiously observed. Gaara glares at him. The whispering immediately around them stops, and the tension in the air ramps up noticeably. Lee’s smile doesn’t waver, in fact, it grows sharper, something mischievous building in his eyes. Then he does something unexpected.
His hand withdraws from Gaara’s, and with a shuff of calluses and a click of fingernails, he flicks Gaara in the forehead.
Gaara starts. A flick in the head is relatively uncommon for him already, but Lee is, well, Lee, and the strength behind it knocks his head back. It doesn’t hurt, per say, but the shock adds to an impressive sting.
“Lee, what the hell?” he hisses, rubbing the spot, but Lee only laughs and recaptures Gaara’s hand, tugging him closer with enough force to cause Gaara to stumble just slightly.
Somewhere in the background, someone hides a laugh, and the tension around them melts.
“That is better,” Lee declares, apparently satisfied.
Gaara wonders briefly if Lee orchestrated that entire interaction specifically, although this seems unrealistic given Lee’s open, honest personality. It’s more likely he wanted to distract Gaara from his obvious discomposure, and in that, he has succeeded. Gaara obliges him a hint of a wry smile for his efforts, and Lee’s cheeks pinken.
Then a swell of strings echo across the square, more instruments joining shortly after to test their pitch. An excited rumble rolls through the crowd before the din resolves into one more moment of hushed calm.
“Are you ready?” Lee whispers.
No, Gaara thinks.
But he holds Lee’s hands tighter, nods. The first note plays, and Lee steps forward, and Gaara steps back, and the dance begins.
When Gaara was young, before he could walk or speak or in any way fend for himself, when all he’d known were the screams of a poorly shackled demon clawing at his psyche and the openly scared faces of the people who acted as his caretakers, the only comfort he’d had was his sand. It had been his arms and legs, a warm embrace, and most of all, a deadly weapon. His caretakers were justified in their fears; Gaara injured many people accidentally in those early years. Many of them died.
But these first murders were before he’d been able to control sand consciously.
He was five years old when he first moved his sand under his own volition. The desire had itched under his skin for a while before he tried, like a strand of hair stuck to his then-bare forehead, prickling at him in a way he had no sensation to relate to. Years later, he remembers it like the feeling of an unfiled fingernail scraping over tender skin, or the feeling of touching something hot for the barest microsecond, enough to register an uncomfortable sensation, but not quite enough to burn. Finally, when that ache became too much and he’d been alone one night, he’d escaped the posted guards to Yashamaru’s secluded home and wandered out into the open desert. There, he’d stood atop a bare outcropping, observing the great expanse of empty dunes spread out below. Shukaku had been loud that entire evening, but abruptly went silent when he’d stretched out his hand, tiny and insubstantial in the face of the unending desert.
He’d not known what to do, and the world had seemed so vast, and he had felt so very, very small.
This is how he feels now. Untested, unsure. Counting out shaky steps.
His palms sweat, his heart races. Everything in his head flees and he searches, wildly, within himself, for some thread of guidance.
It shouldn’t be, it’s just a dance, but it’s terrifying.
Gaara has always had a fraught relationship with his own strength. For most of his childhood, it was both the source of his alienation and his only solace. As an adult, it is his greatest asset, a boon to his village, and a haunting shrine to his greatest crimes. Tapping a rhythm against his wrist at this very moment is a finger he once shattered with this power; he still remembers feeling the snap of each tiny bone. There may yet still be fragments of Lee in the ossified minerals forming his gourd, even now. The desert imbibes only that which makes it stronger.
But this subtle beat brings with it a reminder.
Terror wasn’t the only thing he’d felt when he first cast out a trembling hand and felt the desert rise to his call.
Energy had risen in him, all the tenketsu in his chakra pathways igniting at once, an unbridled torrent of power flooding his body and out past his fingertips. With it had swirled all the sand of the desert, up into the sky like a great surging tide, the very foundations of the earth trembling under his command.
One sweep of a palm and the quiet dunes had become a tempest, whirling through the air around him violent and chaotic, forming a maelstrom that ripped boulders from their moorings and tore them to shreds like paper, even hard rock insubstantial against his will. In the distance, he’d heard Suna’s storm sirens scream to life under the roar of flying sand, but he’d been too swept up to stop, no longer afraid of being caught or punished. Who would have been able to stop him, like this?
He’d felt like lightning, the electric surge of his chakra blazing through him unhindered and intemperate until he finally exhausted his reserves and the thundering quake of the earth settled into a sudden, breathless silence. He’d smiled, and buried in him, in a rare show of camaraderie that Gaara cannot remember ever being repeated, his demon had smiled, too.
That single moment of joy may have been the only one he had ever experienced. A few weeks after that night, he’d murdered Yashamaru and descended into the darkness of insanity, and his life had become a black hole of loneliness and violence and hate.
Even after Lee had beaten him black and blue and Naruto had resoundingly defeated him, even when he’d clawed his way free of Shukaku’s clutches and then had the beast stripped from his soul, even after finding friendship and purpose and happiness, he’d never felt the same raw, uncontrolled, all-consuming exhilaration he’d felt when he’d first stretched out his hands and discovered his own strength.
That is, until now.
He catches Lee’s eyes for the briefest moment, and in the flood of adrenalin, time slows to nothing. Lee’s eyes are dark, his brows furrowed, and his lips pursed, serious and intent. He’s watching neither his own feet nor Gaara’s, focused entirely on his face, but Gaara can see the exact instant Lee registers his gaze returned because something utterly mesmerising happens. Like watercolour paint placed lovingly onto a blank page, delight blooms warm on his face. His eyes glitter, his lips curl into a soft, reassuring smile. It’s tentative, but it’s real, and it’s beautiful.
Gaara stops looking for guidance within himself. He never needed to. He needed only look up and remember that he’s not alone right now, that he’s not alone anymore. He smiles back.
Lee’s gentle smile ignites, splitting wide into a blinding beam, his eyes squinting under the force of his excitement. It crackles through Gaara the way his own lightning chakra does, electrifying, intoxicating, all-consuming. In that heartbeat, Lee is raw, unfiltered, undiluted joy, his elation buoying Gaara’s spirit until he’s weightless.
It’s thrilling.
He feels like he’s flying away.
Lee’s hand is the only solid point in the whole wide whirling world, and Gaara clings to it with his sweaty fingers as light flies around him, as music surges and voices swell and drums thunder straight through his ribs and for a moment here under the starry skies of the great open universe, everything is so beautiful and wild and free that it nearly hurts and it’s everything he didn’t know he so desperately wanted. He’s not even counting steps anymore, he doesn’t have to, hundreds of pairs of stomping boots mark out the tempo and he rides the frantic current as Lee leads him through the dance, his dazzling smile flashing white even amidst the brightly fire-lit streets. Big hands grip his waist and Gaara goes sailing through the air for a moment, and when his feet slam back into the earth, he’s stunned to find he’s laughing.
He’s pulled against a strong chest and above him, he hears Lee laughing too. They spin, and as Lee swings him out again, he shouts over the din of the music and clamour of thronging voices, “You should laugh more! It is wonderful!”
And Lee is in luck, because Gaara can’t stop laughing now, his whole body thrumming with it, joy sweeping every dark thought away like a sandstorm, leaving behind clean air to usher in a burgeoning dawn.
“Now, dip!” Lee cries, and Gaara twirls into Lee’s arms and pitches over backwards with a gasp, one arm flying up to seize the back of Lee’s neck. Lee’s hand catches his waist, the sturdy arm across his back supports his weight and Gaara goes pliant as he’d been taught to not an hour ago, leaning into a support he knows will never let him fall. His chest and head fly backwards, all of Suna tilting upside down and he’s vulnerable like this, his throat sand-free and bare in the open, but against all logic, in this moment he feels safer than perhaps he’s ever felt before and he’s still laughing—
“Perfect!” Lee cheers, and sweeps him back upright like he weighs nothing, which may be the case given Lee’s prodigious strength. His head swings up and narrowly misses clocking Lee in the chin, and he certainly steps on Lee’s foot, but Lee either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, because he simply changes the grip of their hands and pushes Gaara out for the next part of the dance. His hair is fluffed up and curling just slightly with sweat-salt, his skin is flushed, and he’s grinning so hard his eyes are squinted behind his cheekbones, and Gaara can’t help but grin back.
The music pounds and voices sing and firelight flashes and Gaara spirals away into the great open sky, and through all of it, Lee is there, holding his hand, guiding him through the language of movement he’s finally, finally learning to speak. The world splits into fractals, diamond bright and geometric, a thousand lights becoming a million. Gaara’s eyes sting with salt and light and beauty, and he wonders if he’s got sweat in his eyes or if he’s laughed himself straight into tears with the incandescent joy of this brief, exhilarating moment.
But of course, nothing is eternal, and with a final crescendo, Gaara crashes hard into Lee’s chest and the music dies, leaving a breathless silence punctuated by heaving lungs as they fight for air. His face has landed right in the deep neckline of Lee’s tunic, and under his sweaty skin and the rock of his diaphragm, Gaara can feel the rapid beat of his heart. Gaara goes limp against him, letting all his weight rest in anchoring arms that tighten around his waist, stable and secure. He breathes in Lee’s scent, salt and musk and linen filling his lungs as his rapid gasping slows to a comfortable rhythm. When air comes easily again, he peels himself off Lee’s chest to look up at his face, and the expression there floors him. Lee’s smile is soft, but rapturous, his cheeks rosy against the bronze of his skin, and his dark eyes shimmer gold, mirroring the firelight. Lost in their inky depths, the foreign sentiments he couldn’t name this whole night, snarled thoughts and sensations he’s never been able to untangle suddenly align, puzzle pieces slotting neatly into place to form a whole new emotion that blooms to life with startling, frightening clarity.
He is too afraid to name the feeling cresting that distant horizon, though the letters to form it echo like the drumbeat of his heart.
But irrationally, wildly, Gaara wants to kiss him.
He doesn’t.
He looks away.
“You are a great dancer!” Lee enthuses, loud even over the tumultuous applause in the background. There’s not a trace of tension remaining in the air, and when Gaara casts his eyes about at random, no one seems to avoid his glance. In fact, several people smile at him.
Perhaps Lee was right.
“That was all you,” Gaara murmurs, still drawing in great lungfuls of salty, rainy, linen-fragranced air. His cheeks hurt from smiling. And it’s true, somewhere in the scrum of noise and light and laughter Gaara utterly lost track of what he was doing, letting Lee take charge of Gaara’s body as well as his own.
Lee leans in, his voice dropping to match Gaara’s volume. “It was certainly not. You are a wonderful dancer.” A warm hand brushes at his forehead, swiping hair Gaara did not realise is plastered to his sweat-sticky skin. A stringed instrument plucks in the background, and shuffling feet around them indicate another dance is about to begin. Lee’s voice pitches down further, barely a whisper, but the thunderstorm heaviness in it echoes like the promise of rain. “Would you like to go again?”
It takes Gaara hardly a second to find one of Lee’s hands and squeeze it tight. “I would,” he answers, and Lee’s responding smile is a brilliant one.
Before Gaara realises how much time had passed, he finds himself once more on the roof, his sweaty hand still ensconced in Lee’s, sticky from sweat and the dusting sugar off various street-cart snacks they’d shared in the rare moments Lee was not dragging him into yet another dance or engaging in conversations with quite possibly more of his citizenry and shinobi than Gaara knows himself. Lee has a talent for reaching out, for opening his hands and coaxing others to let down their guard with his honest, open personality, and it was mildly gratifying to watch others succumb just as easily as he himself does whenever Lee turns that bright smile and earnest gaze on him.
Lee tilts his head to either side with a clicking noise and yawns hugely, then shakes his head out and says brightly, “Did you have fun?” His hair settles neatly back into place when he stills, and Gaara wonders if it’s as silk-soft as it looks, shiny and smooth in the weak light left by the sinking moon.
“I did,” he murmurs.
His jaw aches slightly, not so much a genuine pain as an awareness of muscles exerted beyond their typical threshold, but even so, he can’t keep the smile bubbling in him from pulling those muscles into use. He can’t recall ever feeling this much innocent happiness.
After so much spinning through the square even his war-honed endurance had flagged, Lee had looked at his flushed face and asked, “Come with me?” like Gaara might still be entertaining the plans of returning to the roof he’d tossed out somewhere in their second dance. Still heaving for air, Gaara had nodded, and shortly after he’d found himself seated on a low wall with Lee pressed comfortably up to his side, steaming coffees cradled in their palms. Not long after, a beaming Temari appeared, a knowing look in her eye.
“You looked like you were having fun,” she’d murmured into his ear, something mischievous rolling under her soft words. Without waiting for a response, she’d turned her attentions to Lee, who’d bloomed a fetching shade of pink as she’d complimented his knowledge of Sunan customs. She’d been watching them, Gaara had realised, while he’d been otherwise preoccupied. She hadn’t stayed long, departing with a light squeeze to Gaara’s shoulder, a new tenderness softening the sharp angles of her face.
One coffee later, Lee had dragged him off again, and the cycle had repeated. They’d run into Kankurō and several members of the Puppeteer Corps, Matsuri and her teammate, Yukata—Lee had vanished only to reappear with water, declaring, “You are very red, have you been drinking enough?” which only made her flush brighter, Temari again with Shikamaru in tow, and a seemingly unending collection of Sunans, both shinobi and civilian, that Lee had managed to befriend in his few weeks in Suna. In between various conversations, they’d been dancing, or they’d been somewhere among the myriad of stalls, sharing snacks and tea. He’d seen more smiles directed his way than he’d ever seen before in his life. Over the night, the sensation of not belonging had melted, slowly, the feeling of acceptance warming him like spring thaw.
And for every single moment, Lee had been there, holding his hand, or his arm thrown over Gaara’s shoulder, or for one memorable moment, crushed flat to each other when they’d been caught in a surprise crowd of people. Lee had gripped his waist tight and Gaara had lost all the breath in his lungs when Lee had bent down, lips on the shell of his ear, to huff a laugh and whisper, “Sorry!”
The whole affair had been so much fun he’d completely neglected the passage of time, but now here they are, breathing in the cool air as the black velvet of night bleaches to a creamy lavender grey. Stars still twinkle faintly overhead, though their luminescence has mostly vanished against the onset of dawn breaking.
They lay sprawled out side-by-side on the roof of the dome, quietly watching the night melt away as Suna settles to sleep, sweat dried and skin salty, contented exhaustion settling over them like a warm blanket.
Just before sunrise, Lee stirs, shifting from his loose sprawl into a ramrod-straight seat, legs butterflied in front of him, his free hand fidgeting in his lap. “Gaara?”
“Yes?”
Lee chews on his lower lip for a moment, then says, “I have a confession to make.”
This, Gaara doesn’t expect. He sits up himself, mirrors Lee’s posture. “What is it?”
“When I asked about dances and Shira-kun offered to teach me some of the steps,” Lee begins slowly, “the first thing he did was sit me down and talk for a very long time about Sunan customs.”
Gaara feels a low, swooping sensation in his stomach, like he’s missed a step going down stairs and for half a heartbeat he’s unbalanced, falling through an absent floor he’d expected to find. “What did he tell you?”
“He said that teaching another person to dance is… significant. He said that you do not offer to share such things without meaning behind it."
Gaara watches him warily. “That’s true.”
“I just…” Lee begins, then jitters for a moment. “I did not want you to think I was being culturally insensitive or… or being oblivious!”
“I have never thought you oblivious. I find you very perceptive,” Gaara murmurs, turning away to watch as the streets clear of stragglers. A strange tension rises in his throat, not fear, not excitement, but something in between. There’s no risk in admitting his opinion, especially given it’s a positive affirmation Lee deserves to hear, yet the honesty of it leaves him feeling oddly precarious, teetering as he waits to hear how his statement is received.
Lee’s answer is a dry snort. “That makes you an exception to the rule,” he replies, “most people think me rather foolish.”
“Most people are wrong, then.”
Lee’s fingers twitch around his own, and out of the corner of his eye he can see a flush crawling up Lee’s neck. “You flatter me,” he whispers.
“I should do so more often,” Gaara says. He’s almost shivering, though he’s comfortably dressed for the temperature. He’s not entirely sure why.
Lee squeezes his hand and relaxes. Below them the streets are empty, the lanterns all gone dark, but the sky has lightened just enough to wash the world in grey. It’s a cold tone; the olive green of Lee’s criss-crossed legs is more black than colour now, and his sun-bronze tan fades to cool ash in the low light, but where their palms touch is warm.
“Shira-kun told me that he was happy to share Suna’s customs with me as a sign of respect and friendship,” Lee says after a long moment, returning to his original topic. “But he told me that I should not offer to share such things with anyone else without a very good reason.”
Gaara turns from Suna, back to Lee, falling into those dark, dark eyes like gravity. “Why did you offer to teach me, then?”
“Because I like you,” Lee says serenely, like this revelation doesn’t cast Gaara entirely adrift, like Gaara can’t hear the echo of a different arrangement of eight letters hidden in the deep well of his eyes.
Lee wears his heart on his sleeve; he’s unashamed to admit his emotional attachments to others. Gaara knows all about the declarations Lee made to Haruno Sakura in front of her whole team when he was thirteen. Naruto had told him the story—and Lee’s subsequent defeat of Sasuke—and chortled over Lee’s confession, until Gaara had asked why it was funny, and Naruto had stopped, then said, “I dunno. It was kinda brave actually, ya know?”
But Lee, for all his quirks and mannerisms and apparent concerns about his own perceptions, is neither oblivious, nor is he a fool. He’s figured out a great deal of things about Gaara without Gaara ever sharing, and he’s uncannily good at getting under Gaara’s defences, both physical and otherwise. He’s well aware of how Gaara struggles with the concept of love; he knows that an outright declaration like Lee would usually make would send Gaara disintegrating into sand in a panic, especially given Gaara knows that, to an extent he’s not yet tried to quantify, he feels the same. Instead, Lee has chosen his words on purpose to lessen the weight of his avowal, but Gaara is not unobservant, and Lee is not good at deception, even when they are hiding partial truths.
Rock Lee is in love with him.
Gaara is…
“You do?” he asks. It’s hardly a whisper. He can’t breathe.
Lee looks at him, confusion painted across his expressive features. “Yes? Was it not obvious?” He clears his throat, then offers a brittle chuckle. “I have been told I am rather awful at subtlety. I thought you already knew.”
Rock Lee is in love with him, and Gaara…
For some reason, that hint of nervousness, that subtle peek beneath the placid exterior that belies his true feelings calms Gaara enough to inhale, to ask the question burning on his tongue.
“Since when?”
“Ah…” Lee flounders at that, his eyes drifting away to flicker over the dark streets of Suna. “I do not know exactly when, but”—he worries at his lower lip—“it has been a long time.” His eyes slide back to Gaara. Gaara never looked away, magnetised to Lee with his dark hair and dark eyes and bright, impossibly bright soul.
Rock Lee is in love with him, and Gaara…
Lee blinks, and something in the bewilderment on Gaara’s face must say something he doesn’t intend to convey, because Lee’s expression shifts into a smile that is both tender and somewhat self-effacing. He says, quiet and soft with a tinge of longanimity, “I only said this to explain why I was happy to share such a valuable thing as a dance with you. Please do not feel obligated to respond in kind, I do not expect you to—”
Gaara’s the one to invade Lee’s personal space this time; his knees bracket Lee’s thighs, his fingers crush Lee’s lips before Lee can finish his sentence.
“It’s not that,” he whispers. “It’s not.”
Under his fingers, Lee’s lips are warm, ever so slightly damp, and trembling. His mouth is partially open; warm air gusts out between Gaara’s fingers with each exhale. He’s breathing short and shallow, startled by Gaara’s sudden movement, though he made no move to stop him. Lee is leagues faster than most anyone, he could have caught Gaara’s hands before they made contact, could have prevented Gaara from clambering into his lap, but he accepted Gaara’s touch. That tiny concession shows, achingly clear, just how much Lee trusts him.
He doesn’t deserve this.
He doesn’t deserve Lee’s touch, his trust, his love, any of it.
But again, he is selfish. He wants all of it. He may not know what love is meant to feel like, but he knows that the only place he wants Lee to be is next to him, fingers clasped.
Rock Lee is in love with him, and Gaara…
“I don’t know how to name what I feel for you,” Gaara says. It’s barely a rasp. He’s lying to himself. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Lee’s fingers curl overtop his own, pull them away from his lips but no further. He holds Gaara’s hands like treasures. Like secrets. Like Gaara is something so precious to him he cannot bear the thought of distance. He whispers, soft and breathless, “What does it feel like?”
What does it feel like?
He feels like Icarus, sailing through the open sky on wax and metal wings as the sun glows over the sea. He’s weightless, buoyant, he can touch heaven and he’s scared to death, because he knows if he dares to reach, if he dares to soar too high the sun will melt his wings and he will fall.
He feels like a stone in the ocean, sinking with no control, drowning in feelings he doesn’t understand and doesn’t know if he wants to. The pressure is immense, but somehow comforting.
He feels like the nameless man chained to the side of a cave, only knowing light from the shadows on the wall. Manacles unlocked, he faces an ascent he knows that once he begins, he can never return from, and he’ll never be the same again.
But at the same time, he feels like he’s finally free.
The feeling is indescribable. It’s like the first sip of hot coffee on a winter morning, like the crescendo of instruments heralding the chorus of a beloved song. It’s like falling down stairs, it’s like winning a battle, it’s like the bone-deep relief of crossing the threshold of a place that feels like home.
Gaara may be a skilled diplomat, but right now he feels like a cracked egg, spilling all the soft and breakable parts of himself out into the air between them with no finesse. Raw, formless emotions pour from him like liquid, torrential, until he’s emptied the mess of his heart out through his mouth and into Lee’s hands.
Lee’s eyes have grown impossibly wide, two dark whirlpools to draw Gaara in and drown him. He says, hardly enough air in his words to give them sound, “That sounds like love to me.”
Rock Lee is in love with him, and Gaara…
Those eight letters rattle around in his head; I love you. I love you. I love you. They sound strange. They sound right.
Gaara whispers, just as breathless, “It probably is.”
Rock Lee is in love with him, and Gaara… and Gaara loves him, too.
It feels paralysing to even think the words. It feels so freeing to know.
“Gaara?” Lee is so close now Gaara can smell mint tea on his breath.
“Yes?”
“F-forgive me if… if this is too forward, b-but,” he says, stuttering and breathless, “may I kiss you?”
Gaara pauses for a long time, staring into Lee’s eyes. There’s no fear in them, only fervent intensity, but Gaara can see the tension in the set of his shoulders coiling tighter while Gaara processes what’s been asked of him. Behind Lee in the distance, a margin of the skyline has brightened with the hallmark of an oncoming sunrise.
He wants this.
Say yes.
He doesn’t deserve this.
Say no.
“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” Gaara finally answers, because between the desperate howl of “Yes, please, yes,” and the terrified, “No, stay away, you deserve better,” warring in his head, that’s the only logical thought he can seem to voice.
Lee swallows. “It is… it is not so difficult.” His eyes are enormous. A pink tongue flickers across his lower lip, and the shine it leaves behind absorbs all of Gaara’s attention. “B-but, I can teach you this, too”—he takes a deep breath, and his lips twitch up at the corners—“if you will let me.”
“I will teach you, if you will let me.”
Lee has never led him wrong before, and he wants—
By the gods, he wants—
Orange burns over the vistas as the horizon flares gold.
Say yes!
“Alright.”
Warm palms skate up his neck to cup his face, and Lee draws him in close, the whole long line of his body pressing into Gaara’s the way he did when they were dancing.
“Tilt your head,” Lee murmurs, his voice soft and husky in a way that makes Gaara’s heart race. He lets those hands adjust the angle of his jaw to how Lee prefers, then Lee leans in, fanning the slight humid tea-scent of his breath across Gaara’s face. His eyes drop low as he draws closer still, long eyelashes fluttering down over pools of midnight. The tips of their noses brush.
Gaara lets his eyes drift shut just as Lee’s mouth carefully presses to his own.
Unexpectedly for someone made of steel and scars, Lee’s lips are softer than anything Gaara’s ever touched. He tastes of honey and mint. Gaara doesn’t like most sweets, but under the would-be cloying sweetness, there’s the bitter bite of coffee and the indescribably human taste of his skin. The combination should be strange, but it’s not, and when Lee retreats, Gaara chases, wrinkling the fabric of Lee’s tunic in his grasping fists. It’s wildly overwhelming and entirely addictive and he’s spinning, dizzy, swept away.
Lee’s just as good a teacher without words as he is with them, guiding Gaara with nothing but gentle hands. He slides their lips together with more pressure at Gaara’s fervent pull, one hand soft in Gaara’s hair while the other moves to grip his hip and tug him closer.
He mimics the action, and his hands steal around Lee’s waist. Without the bulk of his flak jacket, he feels… narrower, but more dense, hardly any give when he’s forged himself to be as solid as his namesake. There’s nothing but the thin linen of his shirt between Gaara’s hands and Lee’s body, so as his fingertips skate around, they catch the ridges of muscle and the texture of larger scars, following the map they make over Lee’s unseen skin. When they finally settle at his lower back, Gaara finds the edge of a massive scar he knows decorates the centreline of Lee’s entire torso, a laddered facsimile of his spine left from when Tsunade rebuilt all that Gaara had torn apart. Why Lee is so comfortable with this, why he’s content to allow Gaara such access to his body knowing what Gaara has done, what Gaara can do, to him still doesn’t begin to make sense, but Lee hums into his mouth when Gaara thumbs over the margins of it, and Gaara can’t spare the mental wherewithal to worry about that notion when he’s entirely occupied with the wonder that is Lee kissing him.
And Lee’s actions speak to every facet of his personality, his first motions tentative but unafraid, careful and considerate, gauging his intensity to Gaara’s interest. The moment Gaara reciprocates, all his diffidence melts away and the earnest intensity that characterises Lee shines through, tangible in the way his fingers tighten in Gaara’s hair and clothes, the way his tongue slips daringly across Gaara’s lower lip. Gaara jumps, but Lee holds him steady, and when Gaara copies him, he parts his lips so Gaara can steal cautiously into his mouth.
Gaara knows a number of different languages, a valuable skill in diplomacy and negotiating alliances and trade for his village, but there are no words in any language he knows to describe how it feels to slide his tongue along the ridged margins of Lee’s teeth, to catch on blunted canines and feel Lee’s entire body shiver against his. The closest comparison he can find in the moment is the feeling of mastering a new jutsu, the static charge of chakra surging through his body into his hands, but this sensation has no direction, it just crackles through him, filling his whole body until he feels like he could channel lightning out through his skin.
When his hands make it to Lee’s face, tangling in his hair, it’s exactly the texture he’d imagined, strands like silk that slip through his fingers with no purchase. He knows it’s impossible, but he wants Lee closer, so he pulls tighter, and this brings Lee’s teeth down unexpectedly on his lower lip, a tiny nip of sensation like a pinprick. Like dancing, each motion is somehow familiar, yet entirely novel, a whirlwind of sensation that lifts Gaara off the ground and sweeps him away. Lee circles his waist with an arm made of iron and holds him tight, holds him like he can’t get close enough, holds him like he wants to pull Gaara into himself so they could never be parted again.
Of course, like their dances earlier, like all good things, this kiss can’t last forever, though Gaara knows he’d happily spend the rest of his life here, wrapped in Lee’s arms, safe and warm and loved.
But when they finally part for air, Lee’s whole face is shining. He’s once more dusted pink across his cheeks and neck, and his lips are a little swollen and dark; in the faded light, they’re a soft red like Konohan roses. In his wide, dark eyes, Gaara can see reflected the rapidly paling sky; blues, pinks, and golds bleed across the horizon with the coming sunrise. He’s here, and he’s alive, and he’s beautiful, and he loves Gaara, and Gaara loves him.
“Was that… was that okay?” he whispers, and it is like his words are carried by a zephyr scented of mint tea and honey to settle on Gaara’s lips.
Gaara breathes for a moment, tasting the lingering sweetness, then answers, “I think you’ll have to teach me that again.”
“Oh,” Lee says on an exhale, and those red lips curve into a smile that Gaara mirrors, helpless, weak with his newly-realised love, enchanted by Lee’s obvious joy. “Gladly,” Lee adds, and as the first rays of sun burn across the desert, he closes the distance and Gaara closes his eyes, sharing with his body this unwritten language he’s ready and willing to learn.