Chapter Text
"This is becoming a habit."
“What?”
“This.”
Lee stares across the distance, watching the sun melt into the horizon line like molten gold. The desert sky is streaked with red like blood and the yellow of spring flowers. Petals drip, heavy and weeping, as Gai stares up at Lee with empty eyes.
“It’ll be cold soon,” Gaara says, dragging Lee back to the present. The Kazekage has been watching him for months now, carefully monitoring the fragile way Lee has navigated his days since Gai’s death. Gaara doesn't always make his presence known with words, but Lee always knows he’s there. He can always feel Gaara, he can always feel his gaze against his back.
“I do not mind,” Lee says, voice quiet and fading on the breeze that promises a chill night. Nights in the desert are always cold, frigid and merciless. Lee likes them that way though, likes how the cold makes him feel, makes him hurt.
“You’ll catch a cold,” Gaara says.
Lee shrugs, unconcerned. He's always run hot, his body a stable furnace, and the desert cold is as refreshing as it is painful. “I will not be much longer.”
A warmth suffuses Lee’s right side, and he tears his gaze away from the setting sun and the memory of his dying teacher to meet Gaara’s gaze, sorrowful and searching. His eyes reflect the sunset, jade fractured with gold like a set of kintsukuroi ornaments.
Lee has two halves of a broken jade talisman hidden beneath his pillow in the room Gaara has graciously allowed him to stay in during his bereavement leave. The talisman was a gift from Gai, a promise that he would always be okay.
The moment it had broken, Lee had known he would lose his teacher.
He hadn’t been able to discard the pieces, nor had he been able to repair them. It had been almost a year now.
Lee tears his gaze away from Gaara’s, trying not to think of the green of his eyes. He tries not to think of the green of Gaara’s eyes every night; he fights to push aside the red of his hair and the sand covering his skin; he buries thoughts of what his skin feels like beneath the sand multiple times a day.
He hadn’t come to Suna to fall in love. He’d come to forget. Or maybe to heal. Tenten would tell him that forgetting wasn’t a healthy coping mechanism. Lee laughs at the memory, thinking of the scars on his hands and the unhealthy coping skills he’d practiced to get them.
“Come inside,” Gaara says as a chill slides through the thin cotton of Lee’s tunic. Gaara’s hand slips into his, tugging gently. His fingers are smooth, but there’s a subtle roughness to them where the sand can mold no further. Lee had always thought the sand was limitless, seamless in its ability to fuse with Gaara's body. Sometimes, against his better judgment, he imagines his own body against Gaara's, fused as one, skin to skin.
“It will be dark soon enough,” Lee says. The last rays of the sun’s light are finally fading, and the red and gold skyline has nearly been swallowed by deep blues and black. It takes the sun such a long time to set in the desert, especially in the summer months, and Lee likes to use it as an excuse to avoid the house.
“He would not want this for you,” Gaara whispers, the tenor of his voice a tremble.
Gaara never brings up Gai.
He had offered Lee condolences at the funeral, offered him a place to stay when he’d heard Lee would be taking a leave of absence, offered him silent comfort when words hadn’t been enough. But he hadn’t brought up Gai. Nor had he asked Lee when he would leave or for any sort of compensation for Lee's stay at the Kazekage’s estate. He hadn’t asked for anything in return except, on the rare occasions when he said, “Good night,” and it sounded like “I hope your heart is healing”.
Sometimes, when Lee's mind wanders away from his melancholy, in the dark of night as he tries to sleep, he thinks his heart is healing. When he wakes from dreams drenched in jade and blood red and sandstone, he smiles to himself until the weight of the world he is waking to crashes around him again.
But Suna has been a balm to his broken heart and Gaara the molten gold reconnecting the shattered pieces of it.
Lee knows he has fallen in love with Suna. And with the Kazekage.
But he fears that truth as much as he cannot avoid the truth of Gai’s death. Perhaps if things were different, perhaps if his heart didn’t ache he would be less scared.
“Don’t go falling in love with some pretty kunoichi,” Tenten had said to him before he’d left for Suna. She’d tried to smile at him, but her words had been a heavy warning and her eyes had been brimming with tears.
“I do not think that will happen,” he’d told her. He hadn’t thought he’d be able to love anyone with a broken heart.
“Oh, Lee,” she’d said, and pulled him into a hug. “You’re so stupid. Too soft and too sweet. Someone’s going to catch your eye, but just... be careful. With Gai-sensei... Just don’t jump into anything, okay?”
Tenten had jumped into many things after Neji’s death—she’d jumped into missions and weapon-forging and training and argument after argument. Anything to keep her mind off his death, anything to keep from noticing his absence day in and day out.
Lee worries, now that he knows it’s possible to love with a broken heart, that the only reason he loves Gaara is because the Kazekage is there. He is there when Lee is all alone, he is there when Lee hurts in unimaginable ways, he is there when Lee doesn’t think he can go on.
He doesn’t want to love Gaara simply for being there.
“What would he want for me?” Lee finally asks, tears cooling on his cheeks as he stares ahead at the dark desert. The moon’s silver light hangs low behind them, gently illuminating the flat expanse of sand surrounding them.
“To live.” Gaara’s voice is at his ear, quiet and warm. Lee turns his head until there is scarcely any space between them. He could lean forward and kiss Gaara, throw all his fears away and do as Gaara had said.
But he doesn’t.
He can’t.
He pulls back, he looks away from Gaara. “I am ready to go inside now.”