Archive of Our Own

The morning after Halloween, Gaara wakes up to hammering.

He’s still working off the fading halo of a hangover, courtesy of a mulled wine that Kankuro insisted be referred to exclusively as Blood Potion. There’s a three-fourths full bowl of candy still sitting by his front door (mostly ancient Werther’s Originals--he sort of forgot that trick-or-treating was A Thing). He unwraps one and pops it in his mouth as he prowls the perimeter of his apartment like a particularly disgruntled, pajama-wrapped wraith, seeking the source of the disruption. He barks his shin against the coffee table and spends several precarious seconds hopping around on one foot, cradling the wounded limb and swearing, before he localizes the sound coming through his glass patio door.

He yanks the door open and staggers onto his balcony, still scowling. The cold late-fall air collides with him like a kick to the chest, knocking the wind out of him. The hammering doesn’t stop. He cranes his neck through a hanging curtain of Curio rowleyanus.

The first thing he notices is the bowlcut. On the porch to his right, his neighbor is hanging up Christmas lights. In his gym shorts. Barefoot and shirtless.

The guy notices Gaara glaring at him and jumps, smashing his thumb with the hammer.

“Ouch!” he yelps. His voice is high-pitched for a guy whose upper body is so cut he looks like he just strolled off the cover of Bodybuilders Monthly. He smiles around the tacks between his teeth and waves, hammer swinging. “Hello! Good morning! It’s nice to meet you!” It’s hard to tell in the split-second between when he spits the tacks into his cupped palm and when he jams his injured thumb in his mouth and sucks on it, but Gaara thinks he might have adult braces.

Gaara narrows his eyes in a way that he hopes conveys that it is not nice to meet him at all. He pulls his hoodie up over his head and tightens the strings so that only a tiny circle of his eyes and nose are left showing. It’s biting cold, and he can already feel his nose starting to run.

“I’m Lee, by the way,” the guy introduces himself, mumbled around his thumb. “I just moved in! What’s your name?”

“It’s ten o’clock in the morning.” Gaara spits the words like venom.

Lee just tilts his head and grins goofily, pulling his thumb from his mouth. Even at the distance between their two balconies Gaara can see the digit has darkened to red. He’ll be lucky to keep that nail.

“That’s an interesting name!”

Lee’s teeth flash when he laughs. Yeah, he definitely has braces, like some sort of combination nerd-jock that strolled right out of Gaara’s high school wet dreams and straight into the aching throb of the headache forming at his temples.

“Gaara,” Gaara grunts, and Lee blinks, long lashes fluttering on his face. “My name is Gaara.”

“Now that is an interesting name! What language is that?”

It is far, far too early in the morning to get into this with a babbling idiot who thinks the best way to spend his November first is by decorating his apartment balcony, like this is some sort of suburban Suzie Homemaker competition and he’s gunning for first prize at the holiday festival.

“I don’t know,” Gaara says flatly.

“You don’t … ?” Lee’s brows crumple as he studies Gaara’s face--or at least, what of it is left visible. His eyebrows are thick and immaculately groomed. He probably manscapes, based on the lack of body hair on his exposed chest and bare arms.

“Oh!” he cries suddenly, and Gaara grips his balcony railing so he doesn’t jump in surprise. His shoulders tense and add a delightful new facet of aching to his growing headache. The thin fabric of his hoodie doesn’t do much to protect his palms from the icy sting of the metal. “I’m sorry, that was probably intrusive. My friend Tenten is always telling me I get too familiar with people, too quickly. I’m trying to work on having better social boundaries- “

“You could start,” Gaara interrupts him, “by putting the hammer away until everyone’s awake.”

“I’m sorry!” Lee’s small mouth draws down into a pout. “It’s already ten, so I thought everyone would be up by now … “

“It’s the Saturday after Halloween,” Gaara reminds him.

“I didn’t see many Trick-or-Treaters last night,” Lee says, brows furrowing in confusion. “Everything seemed to wind down by seven or so.”

Gaara just stares at him, blinking in shock until he feels his nose threatening to drip and has to sniff. A secondary headache, one that has nothing to do with ethanol metabolism and everything to do with annoyance, starts prodding at the front of his forehead.

“Most adults,” he says, very slowly, just in case Lee’s muscles have digested all of his gray matter, “go to parties on Halloween.” He does not clarify that last night’s party was the first and only Halloween party of his life.

Lee’s wide, dark eyes grow impossibly wider. There’s something just slightly off about his appearance, like whoever made him took a handful of features that were all attractive in isolation, and assembled them into a pastiche that doesn’t quite work.

“Ohhh,” he breathes. Then he smiles again, eyes squinting closed in delight, and everything falls into place. The problem, Gaara realizes, is that he’s cute, in a way that shouldn’t be attractive on an adult man, but somehow is. Gaara’s heart lurches, like he just tumbled over his balcony railing and is staring up at Lee from three stories below.

“I’ll put this on hold until later today,” Lee says, extending his purple, swollen thumb in a thumbs-up. His braces catch the morning light, and Gaara winces.

He slams the patio door behind him.

At 12:30 PM, the hammering begins anew. Gaara rolls off his couch in alarm and straight into his living room floor. The inside of his hoodie is rank with sweat, and his mouth is so dry it feels like he just licked the carpet fibers now pressing a mottled pattern into his face. He pries his phone from where it’s become wedged between the couch cushions and glares at his lock screen--which Kankuro has changed, yet again, to a picture of a hairy butt. This one at least has been painted to look like a pumpkin, so it’s arguably festive. There are a few notifications on his screen, mostly frantic texts from Kankuro, who’s lost his keys yet again (Gaara thinks he last saw them floating in the punch bowl), and a single, terse Instagram DM from Temari’s boyfriend’s account: “Just checking to make sure you didn’t aspirate on your own vomit.”

He has to think about his response for a moment, because between the crust around his eyes and the incessant fucking banging coming from next door, it’s actually quite plausible that he’s died and gone to Hell.

Eventually, he staggers to his feet with only a minimum of groaning. His knees creak like a geriatric patient’s when he stands. Overhead, the heater clicks on, and a hot puff of dry air hits him right between the eyes. Which reminds him of the whole reason he even got up this morning in the first place. The temperatures plummeted overnight, and he needs to winterize his outdoor succulents before they freeze and burst.

He takes a moment to splash a handful of water on his face and starts a pot of coffee. He dry-swallows two Advil while the pot percolates, and by the time he has a mug of black coffee the consistency of old mud cupped in his hands and a clean sweater draped over his shoulders, he feels borderline human.

The hammering is still happening as he unfastens the multiple locks on his glass door and eases it open one-handed. He drags a kitchen chair out onto the balcony and sets his coffee mug on the railing, then climbs up on his makeshift ladder to pull down his Ceropegia linearis.

“Hello again!” The hammering stops suddenly, and Gaara looks over to see Lee standing on a stepstool, a coil of lights the size of a small child draped around his neck and shoulders. It hasn’t gotten any warmer out, but he still hasn’t put on a shirt or shoes, and now his muscles are gleaming with a faint sheen of sweat in the afternoon sun, like some sort of golden, slippery Adonis. Gaara almost bashes himself in the face with the hanging basket when he goes to rub the bridge of his nose in irritation. “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon!”

“This is my porch.” Gaara gestures blankly.

The lights on Lee’s porch must have been busy while he was passed out, because they seem to have multiplied like rabbits, now covering every surface (and some surfaces that Gaara swears weren’t there before). Lee has an honest-to-god boombox on his patio table, and it’s piping tinny Christmas music.

“Ah- I know that!” Lee starts waving his hands wildly in protest. If he keeps that up, his hammer’s going to fly right through his patio door. “I just meant, you seemed sort of … grumpy, earlier.”

Gaara doesn’t dignify that with a response, just retreats inside with his string-of-hearts and hangs it on the hook he’s arranged for it just inside the glass door, where it will get the best light. He has a whole series of such hooks, dangling in sequence along his curtain rod, in the place of blinds or any more traditional window coverings. He designed them himself, and Kankuro had them 3D printed for him for this last birthday. They rotate in the sunlight, so the plants get even light on all sides and don’t become etiolated.

“I’m not grumpy,” he says, eventually, once he’s back outside and spreading a clear tarpaulin over his hardier plants, the ones that can’t come inside until the pesticide he sprayed on them last week has time to settle. “I’m hungover.”

Lee, who’s been humming a carol around a mouthful of ornament wires, looks up with a, “Hmm?” He blinks a few times, absently, then grins again. “You should drink a glass of water between each serving of alcohol!” he chirps.

Gaara looks pointedly down at Lee’s bare shins. He is not going to take health advice from a guy who apparently can’t sense temperature, no matter how sculpted his pecs might be.

“Thanks for the tip,” he says, deadpan. Then, “Your reindeer’s falling over.”

His coffee goes cold as he watches Lee wrestle an inflatable Santa’s sleigh back over his balcony railing.

Gaara passes the afternoon assembling his indoor shelves and grow lights in preparation for the first frost, then settles in for the night with a mug of tea and a documentary about Venus fly traps.

The sun has just finished setting when he hears the first strains of Carol of the Bells through his patio door. Then, a mechanical wheezing starts up, followed by a robotic Ho-Ho-Ho.

He creaks open the glass door only to be half-blinded by flashes of green and red light.

Hark how the holy shit.

Gaara thought Lee’s Christmas decorations were overdoing it by daylight, but the whole display lit up at night is absolutely batshit insane. It belongs on one of those driving tours that bored soccer moms drag their screaming kids to, it’s that outrageous. The whole thing must be on timers, because the lights flash in perfect synchrony with the beats of the music. An entire blowup Nativity, right down to the sheep, moves in slow motion with the hiss of hydraulics. A Frosty the Snowman flaps its inflatable stick arms with buffets of air, like one of those wiggly blow-up tube men that are only ever seen outside the most unsavory of used car dealerships.

And there, in the middle of it all, stands Lee himself, grinning and clapping, like if Kris Kringle were an idiot who also taught P90X. His eyes are sparkling, and he’s wearing nothing but red boxers with white furry trim. He looks over and sees Gaara and waves, beaming.

Gaara’s mouth drops open.

He’s put green and red bands on his braces.

Gaara wakes up early on a crisp, beautiful Sunday morning in mid-November, prepared to finally bring the last of his succulents indoors.

When he walks into the living room, he finds Shukaku arched like a Halloween decoration, all her fur on end, hissing and spitting at the patio door. Shukaku is his five-pound tortoiseshell tabby, but she has the bad attitude and confidence of a feral tomcat. He’s never seen her quite so worked up before.

He parts his curtain of hanging vines to peer onto the porch and gasps.

His balcony is absolutely thronging with chipmunks, dozens of them, gamboling about like his porch is a rodent Disneyland. On instinct, he grabs a broom and the spray bottle he uses to mist his plants and keep Shukaku out of the kitchen while he’s cooking. Oh, it is on.

The sound of the glass door opening sends the chipmunks scattering every which way, and Gaara gives a little groan of frustration. They better not have pooped anywhere.

Lee is outside on his porch, too, surrounded by the deflated husks of his many Santas, strands of unlit Christmas lights tangled all over like kudzu. He’s midway through some sort of absurd calisthenics routine, peppy Christmas music blaring. Gaara says a brief prayer of thanks for small mercies: at least he’s wearing a shirt today ... though he might as well not be, because the arm holes in his tank top are so wide that Gaara can see every last defined rib muscle.

“Gaara!” Lee cries, not sounding the least bit out of breath. It’s infuriating to Gaara, as a person whose back cracks when he so much as tries to touch his toes. Lee stretches his legs, which are improbably positioned over his head, his long limbs craning towards his porch ceiling as he un-pretzels himself. He’s replaced his standard gym shorts with some sort of … athletic tights, which leave so little to the imagination that he might as well be working out naked. And that thought doesn’t affect Gaara at all, no sir. “Good morning!”

“Lee,” Gaara says tightly, fingers in a death grip around his broom handle. “Do you know where all these chipmunks came from?”

Lee uncoils and gains his feet in a single, sinuous movement.

“I’ve been feeding them!” he chirps, and gestures to his porch.

It’s then that Gaara notices the many pairs of beady, blinking eyes staring back at him from in between Lee’s Jesuses (Jesi?) and shepherds. As Lee stands there, arms outstretched, one of the chipmunks scales his tights and nestles into his palm.

Gaara just stares at the tableau, his mind boiling at the absurdity of Lee, the world’s buffest Snow White, and his crew of animal helpers. He blinks, several times, and shakes his head for good measure. This has to be a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation. If Lee bursts into song, he swears to all three of Lee’s bedazzled Wisemen that he’ll drive himself to the hospital. Or throw himself off the balcony, whichever takes less effort.

“... Why?” he finally creaks out, after watching Lee gently pet the chipmunk’s furry head for several beats too long. There’s a strand of tinsel wrapped around the balustrade that could probably serve as a passable noose, if he could get to it before Lee stopped him.

“I found one on my porch last week, and he looked so cold and hungry, it just broke my heart. So I went online, and … did you know chipmunks eat basically the same things people do? They’re really easy to feed, so I just strung up some little snacks for them.”

And indeed, Lee has turned even the act of feeding the local fauna into a decorating contest. Squinting, Gaara realizes he’s taken nuts and dried fruit and tiny chunks of stale bread and woven them into little garlands. And then he’s strung them all along his balcony railing, like popcorn strings crafted by a demented Cinderella.

“I didn’t realize they’d come over and visit you, too!” Lee says, his eyes wide and glimmering with innocence. “Aren’t they cute?”

Something is certainly cute, and it’s not the teeming scurry of rodents.

“I need to check my plants,” Gaara grunts, because his heart is clenching painfully around his voicebox.

He crosses his porch on his tiptoes, because there are tiny piles of dark-colored droppings scattered about, and he’s still in his stocking feet.

“Nice socks,” Lee calls, and Gaara looks down at his en-pointe stance to realize he’s wearing Temari’s gag gift socks from last year. They’re knee high and decorated with tiny cactuses. Across the toes they read, Don’t Be A Prick.

He snorts to acknowledge Lee’s compliment, then turns to inspect the covering over his plants. Everything appears kosher at first glance, until his eyes scan over his Blue Elf Echeveria. There’s a hole in the plastic tarpaulin, suspiciously ragged. When he yanks the sheeting off, he sees the indented marks of tiny teeth all along the plant’s leaves.

“Lee,” he grates out, in a voice as icy and warning as he can muster, the same voice that sends his TAs scurrying from the horticulture lab.

Lee looks up at him, as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as the rodents still clustering on his porch. “Yes?”

“They ate. My plants.”

He barely hears Lee’s apology over the realization that he’s standing in a pile of chipmunk shit.

A few days later, Gaara arrives home from work early in the evening. The weather is mild and his neighbor suspiciously quiet, so he cracks the patio door and lets the fresh air waft through the screen door and cool the apartment. He’s laying in bed, halfway into a fascinating journal article about pollinator-prey differentiation in pitcher plants when he hears a clatter, then a yowl. He jumps to his feet and moves possibly faster than he ever has in his life. His screen door has been pushed out, and there’s a telltale, cat-sized tear in the mesh. One of his aloe plants has been knocked to the ground, and sand and soil cover his living room floor. Shukaku herself is crouched under a kitchen chair, growling at the ripped screen door.

Through it, on the porch, he can see no fewer than ten chipmunks. They’ve dragged one of Lee’s garlands onto his balcony and are squabbling over it, chittering and snapping.

Gaara charges onto the porch with his spray bottle brandished like a weapon, but it’s probably his yell of frustration that scares them away more than the little spritzes of water. Going after his plants is one thing, but now they’ve frightened his baby.

He snatches up the remnants of the garland in one hand and wraps it around his arm like a bike chain in a fist fight, then slams the door so hard the glass vibrates. He foregoes vacuuming up the sandy mess on his carpet to storm across the walkway to hammer on Lee’s front door.

Lee’s door opens far too soon for him to properly have checked the peep hole, but his disregard for personal security is irrelevant right now. Because Gaara is literally going to murder him in cold blood, regardless of how shiny and built Lee’s shirtless chest is as he stands there in the doorway. Until this moment, Gaara has never been close enough to notice the surgical scars spanning each pectoral, or the sparse pattern of fine hair at his breastbone. He’s faintly sweating, and the enthusiastic cries of a video aerobics instructor come muted over his shoulder.

Lee glances up and down the hallway momentarily, looking confused, before he finally looks down and sees Gaara. His long eyelashes flutter against his cheeks when he blinks in confusion.

“Oh!” he says, and a smile blossoms on his face like a crocus through a snowbank. “Gaara! I didn’t see you there.”

Gaara doesn’t take it as a dig against his height (because he doubts Lee has a genuinely malicious bone in his entire body), but he does straighten his shoulders a bit to give the illusion of tallness before he brandishes the garland in his fist.

“They scared my cat,” he growls, feeling less like a ferocious lion protecting its pride and more like a disgruntled kitten, dwarfed as he is by Lee’s height.

Rather than being the least bit intimidated, Lee’s eyes brighten up. He fists his hands in front of him like an eager child.

“You have a kitty cat? Do you have pictures?”

Of course Gaara has pictures. Half his camera roll is pictures of Shukaku doing various adorable things.

Somehow he finds himself sitting on Lee’s sagging couch cushions, a cup of cider in one hand and his phone in the other.

“And this is her last Halloween. She was meant to be a bumblebee, but she chewed the wings off her costume, so she ended up looking more like a wasp.”

“Wasps also have wings,” Lee points out, perhaps sagely. “She’s precious.”

“She is,” Gaara agrees.

Lee’s thigh buzzes, and they both leap apart. Gaara glances at his phone’s clock: he’s been here almost two hours. Lee’s bare knee bumps against the wrinkled khaki of Gaara’s casual at-home slacks when he turns to retrieve his ringing phone from his pocket. When did he get so close?

Gaara pretends to check his nonexistent notifications and decidedly does not eavesdrop on the hushed conversation Lee is having.

“No, I didn’t forget, I just … got caught up in something…. No, Tenten, not someone, something!” Lee’s face has gone florid with blush, which clashes abominably with the dark, glossy green of the basketball shorts--the only thing he’s wearing. The color combination is admittedly festive, though, and it matches the flash of his braces when he laughs before saying, “No! It’s not like that! Don’t be crass. Put Neji on; I’m done with your shenanigans!”

A deeper voice tumbles through the speaker, smooth but muffled by Lee’s phone pressed to his ear. Gaara has abandoned all pretense of not listening in.

“Not you too!” Lee is grinning so hard his eyes have squinted shut. “Neji, stop, I don’t like him like that … I’m not- no!”

Oh.

Gaara’s heart does a sloppy bellyflop into his stomach. What is he doing here? And why is he wasting his time with a guy who thinks tinsel is a part of a balanced breakfast? He stands while Lee is still giggling into his phone’s mouthpiece.

“I have to go feed Shukaku,” he mouths.

“Oh, I- hang on- “ Lee covers the phone’s mic with his hand. “You don’t have to leave!” he whisper-shouts. “Or, well, I have to leave; I’m running late, but … you could come back? Later?”

Gaara shrugs, taking it for the dismissal it is.

“Don’t let that- “ He points sharply to the garland crumpled on Lee’s coffee table. “- happen again.”

“I won’t!” Lee raises his hands defensively. “Gaara, wait- “

Whatever he has to say, Gaara doesn’t hear it over the sound of Lee’s door shutting behind him.

It’s nearly five in the morning when Gaara finally starts drifting to sleep. Exhaustion curls around him like a well-worn favorite scarf. Years of unremitting, remedy-proof insomnia have run him ragged, and the past week of preparing for final exam season has nearly brought him to his breaking point. Every attempt at relief has failed him, from cups of warm milk that only give him indigestion, to the tiny white sleeping pills Temari lent him that make him feel disoriented but no more tired than usual. He’s spent the last four hours tossing in his bed, physically worn out but mind roiling at a hundred miles a minute. He feels as brittle as spun sugar when his eyes finally, blessedly sink closed among the cloudscape of his pillows, Shukaku purring like a freshly oiled motor on his chest.

Someone shrieks. It pierces through the wall like a bullet.

Gaara flies up from the bed, knocking his head against the headboard. Shukaku digs her claws in to scramble off his chest, and almost takes his right nipple with her.

Gaara stumbles into the living room, phone clenched in one hand and the charger cord trailing behind him where he wrenched it from the wall, fingers hovering over the numbers 9-1-1. He’s about to run to the peephole to check the hallway for evidence of a murder when he glances through his patio door.

There’s an upper body dangling over the railing of the neighboring balcony, arms and tongue outstretched. A heavy quilt in mottled, hideous camouflage is draped over the figure, and it takes Gaara a moment to recognize it as Lee.

The glass door screeches as Gaara forces it open, the metal half-frozen to itself in the chill. As he shuffles on his house slippers and steps onto the frosty porch, he realizes fat, puffy flakes are slowly spiraling down from the sky, already sticking to the parking lot below: the first snowfall of the season.

Lee’s head turns to face Gaara the moment the door groans in protest, and Christmas lights flicker in the fathomless dark pool of his eyes when he grins. After the chipmunk incident, Lee crafted a makeshift chicken wire fence between his and Gaara’s balconies, so he could continue to single-handedly sustain the local rodent population without causing further offense to Gaara’s flora or fauna. But now, between the blinking of the lights and the soft refraction of the snow, the barrier between them seems to shimmer like glitter, as ephemeral as candy floss and fairy lights.

Every ounce of panic and irritation in Gaara drains away at the sight of the genuine, innocent joy written all over Lee’s face.

“Gaara!” he says, all in a hush - or at least, what passes for a hush in Lee’s still-too-loud voice. “It’s snowing!”

“I see that,” Gaara whispers back. The snow flakes hiss as they hit the bulbs of Lee’s Christmas lights and trail little curls of steam into the early morning air. To the east, the sun is just starting to crest the horizon, the light muted and gray behind a bank of heavy clouds.

Lee leans even further over his balcony, tongue extended to catch a snowflake. Several stick in his long lashes, and he crosses his eyes with effort before one finally lands on his tongue.

He looks so ridiculous that Gaara has to stifle a laugh that confuses itself with a shiver. He should have brought his bathrobe; even Lee is better dressed for the weather than he is. In fact, it might be the first time he’s seen Lee with his entire chest covered.

“I’m sorry if I woke you.” Lee grimaces in contrition. “I just got so excited! Just look at it!”

“It’s fine,” Gaara lies. “I wasn’t asleep.” That much, at least, is true.

Behind him, a bell tinkles, and Shukaku slips onto the porch to wend herself around his legs, her tiny body rattling with her purr.

“Hello, little one!” Lee crouches and wiggles his fingers at Shukaku through the holes in the chicken wire. She slinks from between Gaara’s legs to buff her head against his fingertips. Gaara watches them for a moment, feeling a gaping sense of distance he can’t quite place.

“She doesn’t normally like people,” Gaara offers.

“Most animals like me.” Lee chucks the purring tortie under her chin.

“She doesn’t even like my brother, and he used to live with us.” Gaara stoops to run his fingers through Shukaku’s fur as well, cautious to avoid the brush of his fingers against Lee’s.

“Oh.” Lee’s mouth drops open into a little O of surprise. “Well, m’lady, I am very honored.” He dips his head towards Shukaku deferentially, and she purrs all the louder, chest puffed and preening at the attention.

For a moment, it’s just quiet, the air crystallizing around their exhalations, everything muted and soft and dove-wing gray. Even Lee’s awful Christmas music is muted under Shukaku’s rumbling purr and the hush of flakes hitting the ground.

“It really looks like it’s sticking,” Lee breathes, gazing out over the parking lot. “Everything will be closed tomorrow, I bet.”

Gaara, who has already read the emails from the university avowing that classes will proceed despite any adverse weather, just snorts.

“They don’t even close campus when the city buses aren’t running.” He stares out over the parking lot to the bus stop at the entrance to the complex. The bench he waits on each morning is already collecting a layer of fine white mist. The pale blue glitter of it in the halo of the streetlight is deceptive; he’ll either have a freezing butt or a wet one tomorrow.

“You’re a student?”

“A professor.”

Lee claps a hand over his mouth, and even the ringing slap of skin-against-skin is muffled by the soft, growing blanket of snow.

“I’m sorry, you just- “

“It’s fine. I’ve got a baby face.” Gaara pinches at his own cheek fat. “Except for the eye bags. Babies don’t have those.”

Lee barks a laugh, and Shukaku turns to glower at him, affronted.

“Sorry, baby.”

Gaara head whips around.

Lee’s talking to the cat. Clearly, of course he would be talking to the cat, who is now purring up a storm and leaning hard against the chicken wire to get a better angle on Lee’s fingers scratching between her shoulders. Who else would he possibly be calling ‘baby’?

Gaara gives a slightly pitchy, borderline hysterical titter in return.

“I’m surprised,” Lee continues, splitting his attention between the purring bundle at his feet and the thickening snow over the balcony railing. “They close the public schools for freezing rain. It’s nice to have the day off work, but sometimes it feels a little silly.”

Gaara studies Lee’s profile, lit up in alternating reds and golds and greens as the lights on the balustrade blink in slow motion, the dark shine of his eyes against the hazy grey of the snowscape.

“You’re a teacher, too?”

Lee nods, tugging his comforter closer around him. A shiver trails its cold fingers down Gaara’s spine through his thin sleep shirt. His teeth start to chatter, and he clenches his jaw so Lee won’t hear it.

“I am!”

Gaara’s nose is starting to run. He should really get back inside, try to get some sleep before the sun comes all the way up.

“Well,” he says, bending to pick up Shukaku, who gives a little discontented mrrp as he hoists her body, “enjoy your day off tomorrow.”

Lee chuckles. “Oh, I would, but … I already had the day off. I’m on leave right now, actually.”

“What for?” It’s a rude question, and one Gaara should know better than to ask, but social graces have never been his strong suit.

Lucky for him, Lee doesn’t seem the slightest bit put-off by Gaara’s lack of social aptitude. Instead he grins, a faraway expression crossing his face. He doesn’t meet Gaara’s eyes.

“Surgery.”

“Oh, your, uh- “ Gaara nods awkwardly towards Lee’s chest. “- top? Surgery.”

Lee nods, beaming.

“Yes! I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time.”

“That’s- “ Gaara stalls. How best to convey that he’s totally cool and accepting and not about to say something horrible? How to strike the right balance between laid-back and supportive, without plummeting into the pit of social awkwardness? And how to avoid sounding like Kankuro did when Gaara came out to him? (“Cool,” he had said. “Cool, cool, cool.” His only other acknowledgement of his brother’s sexuality was that he started adding a “not that there’s anything wrong with that” after his no homo jokes.) The last thing he wants to do is upset Lee (or ruin his chances of maybe, possibly, kissing him a little in the future). “- that’s. Good. That you were able to, uh. Do. That.”

Smooth.

“It is!” Gaara lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding at Lee’s unperturbed reaction. “I’m starting to go a little stir-crazy though. I want to get back to work.” Lee clenches his fists, now gently bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I only wanted to be out for two weeks, but my surgeon said I had to take a full six because my classes are so physically demanding. Luckily I’m never sick, so I had plenty of time off saved up!”

Gaara raises an eyebrow, recalling Lee’s contortionist poses and the cleary recently-used weight rack in his living room. “I’m surprised they let you do all that exercise so soon after surgery.”

“Uh- “ A blush rises to Lee’s cheek, and he rubs at the back of his neck. “- well. I’m not technically supposed to … but I need to stay in shape! I’m in recovery, but I’m not an invalid!”

Gaara just blinks at him for a second. He looks meaningfully at the muscular flex of Lee’s forearm, then back at his face.

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about. How demanding can, uh- elementary ... ? Middle … ?”

“High school,” Lee corrects him.

That’s surprising. Gaara expects high school teachers to be burnt out on their kids’ brattiness, at least judging by his own high school experience. But Lee is nothing but a ball of sunshine, burning brightly even in the wee hours of the morning, swaddled in a comforter and surrounded by the plasticine corpses of a half dozen tacky snowmen.

“- high school,” Gaara amends, “classes be?”

“You would be surprised!” Lee’s eyes crinkle when he grins. “I teach six periods of P.E., plus I coach the wrestling and track teams.”

Of course he does.

“And I do some personal training on the weekends, too,” Lee continues. “Teaching doesn’t pay all the bills.” He sighs. “I love it, though. My kids are the best.”

“Do they, uh- “ Gaara adjusts uncomfortably, and Shukaku bumps her head against his chin in irritation. At least her furry body is nice and warm, even as goosebumps prickle up on his bare arms. “- your students. Do they know why you’re out?”

“Of course!” Lee gives a thumbs up. “I would never lie to them! It would be a disservice for them not to know. It’s important for them to have a full diversity of experiences with all the different types of people this world has to offer!”

“And they were … okay?” Gaara remembers his own childhood, the life science teacher at his high school that there were rumors about, how his father pulled him out of that class because he didn’t want Gaara being influenced. The sour taste of that memory in his mouth has played no small part in Gaara’s decision not to be out at work.

“They were wonderful! I was worried about a few of them, but they have been nothing but accepting. The track team made me a banner, and the girls’ wrestling team made me cards filled with glitter. It’s called glitter bombing?” Lee laughs. “I was cleaning the stuff out of my desk for a week! I’ll show you them the next time you come over.”

Gaara feels a tiny grin creeping up at the side of his mouth at Lee’s unerring optimism. There’s something contagious about the smile on Lee’s face, a precarious feeling halfway between pride and jealousy unfurling in his belly. His heart is trembling in his chest, and he can’t blame all of it on the cold.

“Some of the parents weren’t as accepting, but … well.” Lee blinks, and there’s a faint shine in the corner of his eyes that could be tears. He shakes his head, wiping at his face with the corner of his comforter. “The administration was amazing about it, really supportive. Everyone’s been fantastic, really.”

The space between them softens. Gaara finds himself taking a step forward before he can think about it, his fingers reaching for the chicken wire between them.

“Thank you,” Lee pauses, biting his lower lip, “by the way, for not being weird about it.”

Gaara stares at him blankly, processing for a moment. He feels he’s been exceptionally weird about it, not at all as suave as he hoped.

“Sure,” he says finally, feeling a little choked by the strength of the emotions strangling his heart in his chest.

Lee sticks his hand out over the porch railing and catches a snowflake on his fingertip. He studies it for a few seconds, watching it melt. When the water has started to trail its way past his knuckle, he extends his finger again. This time, he passes it through the chicken wire grate to Gaara’s balcony.

“Did you know every snowflake is unique?” he asks, as Gaara stares at the fluffy, crystalline structure turning to liquid on Lee’s outstretched finger. Shukaku, from her position in Gaara’s arms, cranes her neck towards Lee’s hand. “No two have the same pattern. Just like fingerprints … or- or cat noses!”

Of course, Gaara’s heard that old wives’ tale before. Probably as early as second grade science lessons. Also, he’s pretty sure it’s a myth. He opens his mouth to say as much, but then he looks up, and the words still between his teeth. Lee is staring straight at him, a smile spread across his face. His eyes are soft, his eyebrows canted upwards. He looks nothing so much as hopeful.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Lee murmurs, his words full of wonder and his eyes shining with awe.

“Yeah.” Gaara’s voice comes out rough. He can’t tear his eyes away from the snowflakes melting in the shine of Lee’s hair, the crackle of Christmas carols muted in the air between them. “Yeah, it’s pretty beautiful.”

Gaara shouldn’t be surprised that Lee took it upon himself to shovel not just his own walkway, but the walkways for the entire building--so he isn’t. He is, however, impressed when he spies Lee up by the bus stop, shoveling the remainder of the sidewalks for the whole damn complex. There are tidy piles of snow forming knee-high retaining walls to the sides of the walks around him. They curve around the complex like a patchwork of arteries in slick grey cement, with Lee as their beating heart.

Lee notices Gaara as he disembarks the bus and waves enthusiastically. He’s wearing a shirt today, at least, but no coat. Gaara checks his phone just to be sure, and … yes, it’s still below freezing. The sweatband pushing back Lee’s bowl cut from his forehead is damp, and he’s wearing those damned green athletic tights again. He bends to scoop another shovelful of snow, and Gaara has to pound on his chest to restart his heart.

“Gaara!” Lee calls, as if Gaara could have missed his knee-high bright orange Wellington boots. His voice is clear in the crispness of the bright, cold air. “Hello!”

Gaara raises a hand in greeting. He must not be watching where he’s going, captivated by the shine of Lee’s smile, because one moment he’s walking past the bench and the next moment his foot is slip-sliding out from underneath him and he’s sprawling to the ground.

He just lays there for a moment, quietly stunned, staring at the underside of the bus stop bench. There’s really an impressive amount of old dried gum under here; there’s probably a grad student in the sociology department who would love to do a study on people’s gum-abandoning habits. He gropes at his messenger bag, lifting the flap to be sure his laptop hasn’t cracked. Priorities. Fortunately, all seems to be in order.

He can’t help but be furious with himself, frustrated with his own clumsiness and irate that Lee of all people saw him bust his ass. For a moment he’s even angry with Lee, partly for leaving ice on the sidewalk but mostly for being there to watch him fall, as irrational as it is.

He’s still lying there fuming when footsteps squelch and flap to a stop by his head.

“Are you okay?” Lee stoops down and Gaara realizes, dimly, that he’s patting at Gaara’s hair. “Did you hit your head? Can you stand? What day is it today?”

“Yes, no, yes- “ Gaara lets Lee pull him up to sitting. His pants are soaked through with melted, muddy slush. “- and December fifth.”

Lee starts gently brushing Gaara’s shoulders. Without asking permission, he jams his hands into Gaara’s armpits and stands, hoisting Gaara with him. He sets Gaara back on the ground without so much as a grunt of effort. He goes to dust some of the snow off Gaara’s trouser legs, but then seems to think better of it, stepping back with his hands raised apologetically.

“I am so sorry,” Lee keeps repeating.

Gaara just stares at the hems of his khakis, which are darkly stained with the snow-mud combination splattered up to his knees. Snud, he mentally dubs it. A shame, he really liked this pair. They’re his favorite semi-formal Thursday slacks, the ones with the double creases, perfect for weekly staff meetings.

“You missed a spot,” he says drily, gesturing with his chin to the icy patch where he slipped. “Did you forget to salt?”

Lee’s eyes widen, and tears start forming at the corners of his dark eyes. Gaara’s heart immediately withers.

“I didn’t salt the walks because I heard it can burn dogs’ feet,” Lee explains. His fists are clenched at his sides and he’s staring at a distant point far up the walkway. A tear breaks loose and trails down his cheek. Gaara wants to vomit from shame. Of course Lee--the most big-hearted person Gaara has maybe ever met--would be thinking about protecting animals from the caustic sidewalk salt.

“I am so, so sorry.” Lee sniffs audibly. “I didn’t think anyone would get hurt! I’m so stupid, sometimes!” He rubs violently at his eyes with the sides of his fists. “And now you’re injured and I’m- I- it’s all my fault. I’m sorry, I’m sorry- “

“Hey, no, don’t- “ Gaara lays a hand on Lee’s shoulder and squeezes. It’s the wrong thing to think when the man is having a full blown emotional breakdown right in front of him, but his shoulder muscles are ripped. “- I’m okay, really.”

Gaara has never considered himself particularly good at comforting other people. In fact, most of his attempts to coddle Temari or Kankuro when they were upset as children ended up with him getting screamed at or a door slammed in his face.

He presses gently at his own tailbone--tender and achy, but probably not broken. “The only thing that’s bruised worse than my ass is my pride,” he attempts at levity.

Lee gives a wet little chuckle, but he seems to relax minutely under the awkward rubbing of Gaara’s hand. The fabric of his t-shirt is terrifically thin, and Gaara can feel every bump and divot of his too-warm skin.

“It was- “ Gaara clears his throat. “It was really nice of you to shovel everyone’s sidewalks. You didn’t have to do that. Actually … “ His eyes narrow. “Are you supposed to be doing that? It’s pretty strenuous.” Gaara should know: he would rather climb through two feet of snow than shovel his own walk because he doesn’t like getting sweaty.

Lee’s cheeks go very pink. He lifts the collar of his t-shirt to rub at his nose, sniffing.

“No,” he admits. “Technically not. But almost everyone else who lives here works, or has kids, or- “

He glances up and must register Gaara’s judgmental expression, because his wet eyes go wide, a cowed look overtaking his face.

“You should be resting,” Gaara reminds him. Without meaning to, his voice has gone pointed and insistent, the same tone he uses to scold students who miss their assignments.

“I’ve just got one more sidewalk to do,” Lee insists. “Mrs. Utatane in building seven has a walker and her son won’t come by to help with her groceries until Wednesday. And she likes to check her mail every day for her exercise.”

Gaara barely knows the name of his landlord, much less anything about any of his neighbors who haven’t assaulted his eyes and ears with Christmas decor. He can’t say he’s not a little impressed.

“Fine,” he agrees, as if he has any real say in the matter. “But then you’ll go rest.”

“Then I’ll go rest,” Lee promises with a thumbs-up and a grin. He gives a little shiver as he turns to retrieve his shovel. Tiny pinpricks of goosebumps are starting to break out on his arms.

Gaara shrugs off his coat before he can think too much of it. He briefly compares the size of the sleeves to the width of Lee’s biceps and decides that’s a losing proposal, so he settles for draping the coat over Lee’s shoulders with a firm pat.

“Put this on. You’ll freeze to death. How do you survive never wearing a coat?”

Lee looks over his shoulder, eyes wide in surprise. “I’m hot blooded.” He absently tugs Gaara’s coat more closely around him, searching Gaara’s face.

“You’re hot something,” Gaara mutters, and then, realizing what he’s just said, attempts to cover it with a cough. “I have to go.”

“Wait,” Lee calls at his retreating back, “how will you get your coat back?”

“Just bring it by,” Gaara replies.

He watches his footsteps carefully the entire walk across the complex, and doesn’t slip even once.

Gaara spends the morning in a funk, glowering at the tiny glowing rectangle of his phone screen with the lights off. Even the cheery green of the early sun caught in the leaves of his hanging vines, patterning his living room floor, doesn’t do anything for his mood--nor when Shukaku chases her shadow between the legs of the coffee table, yowling.

She climbs up into his lap after a handful of minutes of him sitting, unmoving, on the couch in complete silence, and clambers over the screen in his hand to rub her face against his.

Her tiny body interrupts him staring at a picture that Temari posted on her Instagram for #ThrowbackThursday. It haunts his screen before Shukaku’s distraction makes it go dark: Gaara and his siblings in identical red turtlenecks, a conservative ankle-length black skirt for Temari and dark slacks for both boys, with belts and loafers to match. They’re standing in front of the Christmas tree at the governor’s mansion, the darks of their eyes hollowed by the backlight from the string of bulbs wrapping the tree. It overpowers the frame, drenched in tinsel and branches dripping with ornaments, looming over them just like the wraith of their father. He stands behind them with his hands clenched vise-like on their shoulders, a corpse in a three piece suit and red tie to match his perfect, cookie-cutter set of gingerbread children.

Season’s Greetings it says across the top in a white, looping script. Then in tiny print at the bottom right: Paid for by the Rasa for State House of Representatives Campaign.

Gaara remembers the moment that picture was taken, remembers how closely the grip of his father’s fingers on his shoulders mimicked the grip of anxiety in his stomach. That same morning, a magazine had been discovered in his room, one he had stolen from the back of the convenience store on the walk between their home and school. He hadn’t even had the chance to look at it properly before he’d stashed it under his pillow, just seen the smile of the man on the cover and knew he had to have it, driven on by some impulse he was too ashamed to name. He hadn’t thought about the maid tidying up his room until his father had laid the incriminating evidence on the breakfast table with a slap that had sent Gaara’s heart skittering away in a panic.

The following week, he would be sent away to boarding school.

Of course, Temari hadn’t known anything about that sequence of events--couldn’t have known, because his father had sworn him to secrecy with a coldness in his tone that sent shivers down Gaara’s spine to remember even now.

Someone raps at his door, and he jolts so hard that his phone and Shukaku both go flying from his lap. He throws the lock without looking and finds himself staring at Lee’s surprisingly clothed chest.

Lee fully and appropriately dressed is somehow worse than the alternative, because now that Gaara knows what he looks like under the hideous clashing blue-and-orange of the Konoha High hoodie drowning his torso, all he can think about is divesting him of those clothes and-

“Gaara?” The shiny flap of bangs sticking through the hole in Lee’s backwards baseball cap flutters when he talks. “I brought your coat back?” He lifts the garment into Gaara’s field of view.

“Thanks,” Gaara grunts, snatching it rudely from Lee’s hand. Then, thinking better of himself: “Do you, uh. Do you want to come in?”

Lee’s eyes get very wide all at once.

“Sure, if you’re not busy. I wouldn’t want to impose- “

“Trust me,” Gaara deadpans. “I’m the opposite of busy.” Then he tugs Lee inside with a firm hand on his forearm.

Lee spends a long time wiping and scuffing his boots on Gaara’s cactus-print welcome mat. Well, ostensibly it’s a welcome mat; in actuality it says NO PRICKS ALLOWED. It had been a housewarming gift from Kankuro, after Gaara had refused to throw a party to celebrate his new apartment. Lee is maybe the fifth person to ever set foot on it.

“I found a good substitute for the salt,” Lee explains, as he shucks his boots, “to keep the walks from being too slippery.”

“Oh?” Gaara is more interested in the cut of Lee’s jeans than his solutions for the sidewalks, especially now that it’s winter break and he only plans to set foot outside his apartment if the building catches fire, but he feigns interest.

“Yeah, sand! It’s good for the soil, too. The only problem is it gets absolutely everywhere. I’ve been picking it out of my socks for a week.”

“Uh-huh,” Gaara replies, stepping aside to let Lee into the apartment proper. He knows all about the mysteriously adhesive properties of sand; half the plant beds at work seem to come home with him after field days, and he’s forever buying new vacuum cleaner bags.

“Wow.” Lee’s pupils are a little bit blown as he stares around the living room, taking it all in. It’s all faded to background to Gaara, after years of living here, but he can see the surprise in Lee’s face. He rarely has company, but with the perspective of fresh eyes he can imagine how it looks: more greenhouse than living quarters, every surface dotted with plantlife.

“I’m surprised your cat doesn’t go for them,” is the first thing Lee says after finding his voice.

“Shukaku isn’t stupid enough to eat a cactus.” Gaara is only a little miffed.

“Where is the baby, anyway?” Lee stoops down, as if the cat might trot out from behind Gaara’s legs.

“Probably sulking. You interrupted her cuddle.”

“I’m sorry!” Lee seems to always be apologizing for things that couldn’t even conceivably be his fault, and Gaara isn’t sure whether he finds it charming or annoying. “You said you weren’t busy.”

“That doesn’t count as busy. She’s a cat; it’s not important.”

“Time with cherished loved ones is always important!” Lee insists, crossing his arms.

Gaara rolls his eyes.

“Whatever. Can I get you something to drink?”

Lee laughs. “Water would be great.” Then he folds his legs to sit right in the middle of Gaara’s floor and starts making kissy noises.

“All these plants,” Lee says, an hour and several drinks later, “and you don’t have a tree?”

“The focus of my work is desert plants,” Gaara explains. “There are only a few trees that grow in the desert, and none of them flourish in indoor growth settings. And I prefer cacti over them anyway.”

“No, I meant- “ Lee draws a clumsy triangle in the air with his spread palms. “- a Christmas tree? You know, lights, tinsel … ?” When Gaara doesn’t respond after a beat, he adds, “Ornaments?”

“I don’t really- “ Gaara thinks to the picture on his phone, struggles for the right words to say. “Celebrate. Like that.”

“Ooh.” Lee’s mouth funnels into a little moue of contrition. “I’m sorry, I just assumed- I didn’t mean to be offensive, or- !“

“No, I- “ Gaara exhales sharply through his nose. “I celebrate Christmas; you didn’t offend me. I just don’t … go for the whole- “ He makes a gesture towards the porch door, through which the lights of Lee’s display are already starting to reflect as the sun goes down. “On Christmas Eve my siblings and I go to the Chinese buffet and exchange gifts. That’s the extent of our celebration.”

Lee’s lower lip juts out in a pout. “That sounds … kind of sad. Not that I’m judging,” he corrects, palms spread in the air, “I just- You don’t even decorate?”

It sounds pretty judgmental if you ask Gaara … which clearly nobody is, so he sits back and crosses his arms over his chest.

“It’s perfectly functional. I get all the socks I need for the year, and my brother gets whatever stupid piece of plastic he’s been salivating over, and my sister gets the fancy kitchen equipment she’s been too cheap to buy for herself. And we eat our weight in shu mai. Besides, I don’t really like Christmas.”

Lee gasps and claps his hands over his mouth like Gaara just told him, “Also, I love to drown puppies in my spare time.”

“Why not?”

Gaara’s phone is still sitting in the middle of his living room floor where it landed when he jumped to his feet. The dark square of its screen draws his eye like a black hole.

“I just … “ He sighs. “I don’t have a lot of good memories of the holiday. From when I was a kid.” Before Lee can respond, he switches tracks: “Do you want me to get Shukaku? I think she’d love to see you.”

“Of course!” Lee either takes the bait of the distraction or plays along in the face of Gaara’s discomfort. He claps his hands, a silly, enthusiastic gesture that Gaara can’t help but find attractive. “Let’s see the kitty!”

“You know,” Lee says, once they’re sitting at Gaara’s kitchen table, Shukaku warming Lee’s lap. “Just because you don’t have good memories from Christmas doesn’t mean you can’t make new, better memories.”

Gaara fiddles with the string of his tea bag. Two cups sit between them on the dark wood of the table--Earl Grey for Gaara and peach blossom for Lee--and the distance between them seems as interminable as the gap between their lives. (“I’ve never had hot tea before!” Lee cried, when Gaara offered him a cup, and Gaara had almost pinched himself to be sure he wasn’t dreaming.)

Gaara hasn’t said a word--or really even given any indication that he’s listening--but Lee continues on regardless.

“I never had great Christmases as a kid, either. And I don’t really have any family around. But I still love to put my all into it … I do a celebration with my friends the week before, and then on Christmas day I go down to the shelter with my old karate teacher and we serve a meal. It’s not a traditional Christmas either, but it’s … happy. It’s all just … giving, and being with the people you care about.” Lee looks up from the shreds he’s torn the tag of his tea bag into. “I’m not trying to change your mind. Just ... that’s why I love it, I guess.”

“I get it,” Gaara says, watching the blush of excitement high on Lee’s cheeks. He doesn’t, yet, but he wants to try.

“So, I can bring you a couple bags of tinsel?”

There’s a wet thwap as Gaara’s tea bag hits Lee square in the chest. Shukaku yowls as she’s splattered with cast-off tea.

“Absolutely not.”

It’s late evening, and Gaara has just finished washing his single dinner dish. He tucks it onto the drying rack, behind the lone pot he used to prepare his meal. His copy of Comfort Food for Single Dudes is returned to its home on the countertop bookshelf, right between Single-Serving Baking for Dummies and Microwave Cooking for One.

There’s a clatter in the hallway. A door slams, followed by the clamor of raised voices. Someone must be having a holiday party, and it must have just ended.

Then someone starts banging on his door.

Through the peephole, there’s a sizeable group of strangers crowding the hall. They’re all wearing tacky Christmas sweaters and … are those antlers?

They burst into song the moment he opens the door. It is, quite possibly, the worst rendition of Silent Night he’s ever heard. And that’s saying something, because Gaara sang in the youth choir at his father’s church during the exact same six month period his voice was cracking.

There’s a half-beat before he recognizes Lee, standing towards the back of the group, red-cheeked and grinning. It doesn’t seem like he necessarily knows all the words, even, but he’s certainly belting out his best approximation of them in a throaty tenor. Gaara doesn’t know much about music theory, but he’s pretty sure that among the whole group they’re out of key in every way it’s possible to be out of key: simultaneously sharp and flat all at once.

Eventually the song winds down, and the gaggle of carolers stand there expectantly, dopey smiles on their faces. Gaara isn’t sure what they want from him: applause? Congratulations? A door slammed in their face? (This last one, he has to admit, is tempting.)

“Are you drunk?” he asks, finally. And indeed, he can smell the honeyed scent of the mead that Tsunade in 3B brews in her kitchen on their breaths.

“Gaara!” Lee waves from the back of the crowd, apparently thinking Gaara hasn’t noticed him. It would be almost impossible not to: not only is he the tallest of the group, but his antlers are strung with fairy lights and he’s wearing a light-up sweater with a blinking Rudolph nose in the center of his chest. “I’m not drunk!”

“Lee doesn’t drink,” adds a dark-haired man from the front of the group. He’s wearing a dry expression that’s at odds with the fact he just provided the basso profundo for the world’s worst holiday mix.

“Yeah!” hollers a woman towards the back of the group. Her bright pink hair is strung with red tinsel clip-ins. “When we went and saw that lady with the big boobs and all the liquor, he asked her for a glass of milk!”

The whole group bursts into howling laughter. Even Lee, the butt of the joke, is chuckling and wiping his eyes, though his ears have gone very pink.

Well. That’s good to know. It’s good to know that Lee is just like this, naturally. That his natural state is giggly and flushed. That, when he’s around people he really likes, he radiates joy like he’s on a full-body high from it.

“Waaait,” drawls another woman, leaning over the shoulders of the two men in front of her. She has to go up on her tiptoes to do it. The buns on either side of her head are sprayed red and green and dotted with baubles to look like ornaments. “Are you Gaara?”

Lee just said his name moments ago, but Gaara supposes he can forgive the forgetfulness given the absolutely staggering waves of booze breath puffing out of this woman’s mouth.

“Yes,” Gaara admits.

She claps like he just told her she won the lottery and throws her head back to exclaim, “Oh my god! I can’t believe I finally get to meet the Grinch!” She puts her fingers in front of her chest, curled into the shape of a heart, and then crumples them together. His heart was two sizes too small.

“Tenten!” Lee lunges forward from the back of the group and locks a hand over her mouth.

He can’t pretend it doesn’t sting, a little, to hear what Lee actually thinks of him. The nickname he must use for Gaara behind his back, when he’s talking with his real friends. Because, yes, Lee’s holiday enthusiasm can be annoying, but he’s also terrifyingly genuine and sweet and earnest, and Gaara … Gaara thought Lee knew that he doesn’t mean half of the sarcastic comments that fall out of his mouth. He thought that Lee understood, at least on some level, that the banter between them was mostly flirting and little real irritation. Gaara had the audacity to actually hope, maybe a bit foolishly, that the sentiment was mutual.

But of course that’s just his socially maladroit perceptions coloring things with wishful thinking and rose-colored glasses.

Lee and his friend are still tussling in the doorway, and Gaara is pretty sure she must be aggressively licking Lee’s palm, based on the disgusted faces he’s making. She’s clawing at his hand over his mouth, but Lee clearly overpowers her, dragging her backwards even as she kicks and struggles. The entire group of Lee’s friends are laughing, drunk and boisterous and clearly having the time of their life at Gaara’s expense. Gaara’s heart clenches in his chest. Maybe it really is two sizes too small.

Well, if it is, that’s fine by Gaara. If Lee thinks he’s a Grinch, he can be a Grinch.

Without another word, Gaara shuts the door in the carolers’ faces. As the door closes, he can hear Lee starting to shout, “Gaara, wait- !” … but he blocks the rest of it out.

He finds Shukaku hiding from the noise in the bathroom, and he takes off the little jingle bell collar he bought her. It’s a tasteful red and green plaid, and he thought Lee would find it charming.

He throws it in the trash.

It’s the week before Christmas, and classes are out for winter break. The students have returned home to celebrate with their families, and the whole town is winding down for its winter’s nap. Gaara has long since run out of grading to keep his hands occupied, and one of his TAs pocketed the office keys when they locked up on the day after exams, so he can’t even take the bus up to campus to brood in his office or rearrange his desk plants. His lesson plans for the spring semester have already been submitted, and he’s checked and re-checked the moisture levels in all forty-eight of his potted cacti. Shukaku has been fed, and brushed, and played with to the point of irritation, and now she’s abandoned him by retreating under the bed. It’s too early to start dinner and too late to start a load of laundry and have it dry before bed. He has nothing left to drown out the noise in his head but the narrative stylings of David Attenborough and his fifth watch-through of the Planet Earth documentaries.

Sir Attenborough has just introduced a familiar pride of Namibian lions when Gaara hears someone knocking softly on his door.

He approaches the door cautiously. He’s already driven away a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses and a Salvation Army bellringer who seemed to have gotten lost on the way to the Wal-Mart, and he’s in no mood for further Christmas cheer of any description. He goes up on his tiptoes to look through the peephole.

Santa Claus is standing on his stoop.

Or, not the real Santa Claus. It’s pretty clearly Lee in a fake beard with a pillow shoved under his coat. He looks up at the peephole and smiles, as if he can sense Gaara on the other side of the door. As Gaara stands there in quiet shock, Lee starts to wave.

Gaara throws the deadbolt and pulls the door open.

“Gaara!” Lee exclaims. “Thank goodness you’re home!”

“Lee,” Gaara says tersely. “Why are you dressed as Santa Claus.”

“That’s why I’m here actually. There’s a Christmas party today at the clubhouse … I put a flyer on your door; did you get it? I put your name on it and everything.” Gaara remembers the flyer. It was a nauseating neon green and had been wedged in the gap of his door frame when he came home from work the week prior. His name had been on it, though misspelled: Gara, so he had assumed it was just another promotional from the cable company and threw it away. “I wanted to invite you in person, but you never seem to be home recently … I never hear any noise from your apartment anyway.”

Gaara is always home when he isn’t at work. He doesn’t have any friends to speak of, and his siblings have their own busy lives. He’s just quiet because, unlike some holly-jolly annoyances he can think of, he actually respects his neighbors.

“I volunteered to play Santa and hand out gifts to the kids, but my elves bailed at the last minute … They got invited to a ‘real’ Christmas party, so they cancelled on me.”

Gaara raises an eyebrow. Some elves they are. Some friends they are, to abandon Lee when this tacky party is so clearly important to him.

“I only have an hour left to set up and you were the only person I could think of. Please say you’ll help! I even have Tenten’s spare elf costume; I’m pretty sure it will fit you?”

Tenten, as Gaara recalls, is Lee’s friend who called him a Grinch. She is also quite clearly a woman. He crosses his arms over his chest.

“Why would you want a Grinch at your holiday party,” he says, masking over the hurt he feels with an icy coldness.

Lee’s face falls. He ducks his head and rubs at his neck.

“I don’t think you’re a Grinch!” he says. Then he starts to sniffle. Gaara tightens his arms around himself as the waterworks arrive in full force. “It was a joke my friends came up with--a really rude, awful one! I told them to stop saying it, but they weren’t listening to me.” Lee looks up, and his eyes are glossy with tears. “I’m really sorry she said that about you. Everyone was so wasted, I don’t think they even remember meeting you. I gave Tenten a lecture about being respectful about other people’s holiday traditions the day after.”

Gaara can only imagine the penitence she must have felt, now that he’s been on the receiving end of more than one of Lee’s impassioned speeches on morals and values. He studies Lee’s pleading eyes for a moment. It’s awful, but the giant cotton-ball beard and the artificial paunch have done nothing to diminish the overwhelming attraction he feels when he looks at Lee. In fact, the dad bod look is … kind of working for him. He decides to, just this once, err on the side of forgiveness (and his libido).

He sighs and lets his arms fall to his sides.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll be the elf.”

“Thank you!” Lee throws his arms wide and tackles Gaara in a hug so powerful that it bowls him backwards a few steps. “I can’t even tell you how much it means to me!”

Lee’s sniffling tickles his ears and he hears a joint in his back pop as Lee squeezes him. He can’t even properly enjoy the strength of Lee’s arms around his body because a steady tide of anxiety is rising in his belly. There’s a dampness forming on his shoulder as he awkwardly pats Lee’s back.

“Come on, no more crying.” Gaara gives a few more disjointed pats to the span of Lee’s broad shoulders. “Let’s go get the elf ears.”

Gaara did not realize that it was possible for ears to sweat, but with the pointy foam caps attached to the headband pinching the base of his skull, he soon discovers his error.

“Thank you again so much,” Lee is saying, for at least the fourth time, as Gaara plods along behind him from their side of the complex up to the leasing office. Management refers to it as the ‘clubhouse’ under the mistaken impression that it makes the complex seem more posh. Gaara didn’t think anyone bought into that line of rank bullshit until he heard Lee referring to the ‘clubhouse doors’ and ‘clubhouse walls’ as he describes his decorating efforts.

“I wish I could pay you for your time,” Lee continues. Gaara is only half-listening, mostly fixated on tugging down the green felt hem of the shirt that barely covers his ass. Lee had been slightly underestimating when he said Tenten and Gaara were around the same size; Gaara’s afraid that if he bends forward too far the candy-cane striped elf tights will rip right up the seam. “But I spent the last of my Christmas money polishing off the wishlist. We didn’t get nearly as many gifts donated as I hoped we would.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gaara dismisses him. Then, without thinking, he adds, “Why did you need donated gifts for a party at the leasing office anyway? Don’t these kids have parents?”

Lee glances at Gaara, then looks away, dark eyes darting. “They do,” he clarifies, “but a lot of the units in the complex are for low income families…”

Gaara feels like a complete ass. Of course Lee, paragon of virtue that he is, spent all his Christmas savings on gifts for kids whose parents couldn’t afford them … while Gaara couldn’t even conceive of a world where such a thing was necessary.

“It worked out in the end, though!” Lee says cheerily, smacking his fist into his open palm in a very un-Santa-like gesture. “I managed to get almost everything on the list. The only thing I couldn’t get was this Kuraama figure … It was sold out everywhere. I looked and looked, but- “ Lee sighs. Gaara hates how heartbroken he looks. “No luck. I found a knock-off version, but I know it’s not really the same. Have you seen the commercials for it? It’s the big toy this season, apparently.”

Gaara doesn’t have cable, but he does know exactly the action figure Lee is talking about, because Kankuro asked for one. Gaara does all his holiday shopping months in advance, online (so he doesn’t have to interact with anyone or brave the holiday crowds), before anything has the chance to sell out. That means there’s a Kuraama figure, still in its plastic casing, sitting in his closet right this very second.

“Hold that thought,” he tells Lee, then turns and starts jogging away. The bells on his curled slipper toes ring with every step.

He returns a few moments later, sweaty under his pointed red collar and out of breath, to find Lee standing precisely where he left him. His phone is propped on his plush belly and he’s studying it with a frown on his face. His face relaxes into a grin the moment he looks up to the tinkling bells that herald Gaara’s arrival.

“You came back!” Lee cries. “I was starting to get worried.”

Not everyone runs a 5k before breakfast every morning, Gaara thinks, but is too winded to say.

“I got it,” he pants instead, thrusting the brightly colored box towards Lee. He hopes his sweaty palms haven’t ruined the packaging. “It’s not wrapped, but- “

“Where did you get this?” Lee breathes, turning the box over in his hands as if he can hardly believe his eyes.

“My brother never outgrew his action figure phase,” Gaara explains, watching the tears build up in Lee’s wide eyes. Maybe this was a mistake, if it means Lee is going to start crying again.

“I can’t accept this!” Lee tries to push it back towards Gaara, who steps back, hands raised defensively.

“Yes, you can. It’s not for you anyway. And besides, Kankuro doesn’t need another piece of plastic crap; he lives in a hoard as it is.”

“I really owe you.” Lee hugs the box to his stomach, which deflates slightly with a little whoosh of air, leaving a square indent in his paunch. “I can pay you back for it in January, or … well. I know it’s not much, but I make a mean hot chocolate?”

“Hot chocolate sounds great,” Gaara replies, and falls into step beside him, jingling all the way.

Lee must have spent hours decorating the leasing office already, because it’s already decked out in his special brand of holiday cheer when they arrive. What looks tacky and trite in the confines of his tiny apartment balcony looks … pretty amazing, actually, with a whole big room to spread out in. There are string lights and streamers hung from every wall, fake snow sprayed on the windowpanes, and Lee’s familiar boombox on a table in the corner playing a crackly version of Jingle Bell Rock. In the middle of it all stands a small, artificial tree. What it lacks in size it makes up for in a heaping helping of decorations: ornaments on every branch, strung tinsel shedding onto the practical beige carpeting, and what suspiciously resembles Lee’s chipmunk-feeding garlands draped around the whole ordeal. And of course, no child would ever notice the Charlie Brown droopiness of the little tree, bowed under the weight of its bounty, because beneath it is a tall pile of neatly-wrapped presents, stacked at tidy right angles and each crowned with a massive bow. It’s a veritable winter wonderland.

Lee quickly assigns Gaara to setting out refreshments, while he toes off his pleather Santa boots and climbs on the back of a chair to hang yet more string lights from the ceiling. There’s a whole long table of snacks: sprinkle cookies and crudite and a massive crock pot of Lee’s homemade hot chocolate, which he promises Gaara is ‘the bomb dot com’.

Gaara’s choking back a chuckle at Lee’s antics and a stolen sip of (surprisingly tasty) hot chocolate in a paper cup when the first party attendees start to arrive. He and Lee quickly fall into position: Lee in the high-backed chair he was just using as a ladder, and Gaara covering the distance between Santa’s seat and the Christmas tree.

It doesn’t take long before the party is in full swing. There are more people crammed into the clubhouse than Gaara actually knew lived in the apartment complex. Even the surly complex manager, Baki--who Gaara is pretty sure, based on the prayer mat in his office, doesn’t actually celebrate Christmas--is there with his grinning nephew on his knee, wearing the first smile Gaara has ever seen on him.

The room quickly grows loud and crowded and uncomfortable. Anxiety keeps spiking up the back of Gaara’s neck, only tamped down by the routine of hearing a child’s name and going to the tree to retrieve their gift. It doesn’t help matters that Gaara doesn’t know anyone but Lee, and that Lee seems to know everyone. He keeps introducing Gaara to people whose names he instantly forgets, glad for the white elf gloves absorbing the worst of his sweat as he shakes hand after hand after hand.

“Lee,” Gaara says warningly, in a brief lull in the parade of babbling children and their run-ragged, grateful parents. He desperately needs to use the bathroom, and hopefully splash some water on his sweat-drenched face.

Lee jiggles the pillow stuffed under his shirt. “Ho-ho-ho! I don’t know who that Lee you’re talking about is, but I bet he’s been a very good boy this year!”

“Santa,” Gaara corrects. “Wait. Aren’t you supposed to know everyone. How do you not know who Lee is?”

“I know Lee,” someone drawls from behind Gaara’s shoulder. He spins to find Shikamaru standing there, hand-in-hand with a girl with a mop of tousled dark hair. His only concession to the season is his long-sleeve t-shirt, which simply reads Bah. Humbug. across the front in block print.

Shikamaru’s eyes alight on Gaara’s face and widen minutely in surprise before he schools his face to an expression of affected indifference.

“Gaara,” he says, with a tilt of his head. “I had no idea you worked at the North Pole during winter break. Tenure track not cutting it? Green is a good color on you.”

“That’s a bold comment to make to the guy who has full editorial control of the naughty list,” Gaara snipes back, a smirk cracking the corner of his mouth.

“That’s Santa’s job,” interjects the girl dangling from Shikamaru’s hand.

“Santa,” Gaara calls over his shoulder, “can I put Shikamaru on the naughty list?”

“Sure,” Lee replies, distracted by fiddling with a loose buckle on his boot.

Gaara looks at Shikamaru and raises his eyebrows, a tiny victorious grin on his face.

“Wait.” There are footsteps behind Gaara, and then a warm palm on his shoulder as Lee steps forward. “You two know each other?”

“He’s dating my sister.” Gaara turns his head to regard Lee and finds his face all too close. A little gust of peppermint breath crosses the bridge of his nose. “Wait, how do you two know each other?”

“Shikamaru and I went to high school together!” Lee is practically bouncing on his toes now, face a mask of glee. “It’s such a small world, isn’t it?”

The collar of Shikamaru’s shirt slides off his shoulder as an insistent, tiny hand tugs at the hem.

“Big Brother Shikamaru, you went to school with Santa?” the little girl asks.

“Uhh, yeah,” Shikamaru stammers. “Definitely. I- “

“And what’s your name, little one?” Lee bends with his hands on his knees to look the girl in the eye, putting his fake-deep Santa voice back on.

“Mirai!” she announces proudly.

“Of course!” Lee claps his hands, and the impact is only slightly muffled by his thick gloves. “Mister Elf, I believe we have a gift for Miss Mirai, don’t we?”

“I think we do,” Gaara agrees, and retreats to the shelter of the tree. The tag with Mirai’s name on it is attached to a sloppily stuffed gift bag--Gaara’s own handiwork, since Lee had run out of wrapping paper.

“I didn’t realize you had a sister,” Lee is saying conversationally, as Gaara returns with the bag in hand. Mirai is sitting in Lee’s lap, watching the exchange of words like she’s spectating a tennis match, head turning eagerly back and forth between Santa Claus and her brother.

“She’s not my biological sister,” Shikamaru explains, absently patting his shirt pocket for a cigarette that isn’t there. “It’s part of the Big Brother/Big Sister program … I started watching her for her mom after her dad- Hey, look at that!” Shikamaru distracts Mirai’s attention by pointing the gift bag clenched in Gaara’s fist.

“A present!” she shrieks.

Gaara refrains from dropping the bag to cover his ears, but it’s a near thing.

“Have you been a good girl this year?” Lee asks, bouncing her on his knee.

“Yes!”

“Hmm.” Lee tugs at his fake beard as if he’s deep in thought. “And what does your big brother have to say about that?”

Mirai turns to Shikamaru with her eyes wide, silently pleading.

“I don’t know …” he starts, tapping his chin thoughtfully.

“Please please please please,” Gaara can barely hear Mirai whispering over the clamor of the room around them, her tiny fists clenched in Lee’s jacket as she leans forward for Shikamaru’s verdict.

“Yeah, I guess she’s been pretty good,” he finally concludes, throwing his hands behind his head and leaning back.

“Yesssss!” Mirai punches the air and narrowly misses clocking Lee right in the chin, saved only by a quick jerk of his bearded face.

Gaara hands her the gift bag, and she tears it open with the enthusiasm that only a child opening a Christmas present can truly demonstrate.

“The Kuraama!” she gasps, holding the toy high above her head. “Santa, thank you!” She throws her arms around Lee’s neck and begins kicking her feet in joy.

“How did you- ?” Shikamaru mouths over her shoulder, eyebrows drawn in bewilderment.

“Ho-ho-ho!” Lee winks, and then nods at Gaara. “Our little elf here performed a Christmas miracle!”

Shikamaru regards Gaara for a minute, eyes narrowed skeptically.

“I don’t know how you managed that,” he whispers. “They’ve been sold out of that damn thing everywhere for weeks.”

“It was supposed to be for Kankuro,” Gaara mutters back. “I bought it back in October. Don’t tell him; I’ll lie and say it was sold out.”

Shikamaru cocks his head back, clearly impressed. “Huh,” he says, “turns out there is a beating heart in there somewhere.”

Mirai squeals and drops to the floor. There’s a tremendous ripping noise as she liberates the toy from its packaging and starts showing Lee all of its various features, explaining them in an excitable, unintelligible rush.

“I didn’t realize you lived here,” Shikamaru comments out of the corner of his mouth, watching Mirai play with a half-smile on his lips. “I’m over here at least once a week; never seen you around.”

“I don’t get out much.” Gaara scuffs the curled toe of his shoe against the carpet, uncomfortable with Shikamaru’s observation.

“That’s putting it lightly!” Lee booms, interrupting. “And he’s quiet as a church mouse! I don’t even notice half the time when he’s home, and we’re neighbors!”

“You’re neighbors,” Shikamaru says slowly, looking back and forth between them. His eyes narrow before a knowing expression dawns on his face. “Ohh,” he says. “Oh man. That explains everything. Hey Mirai- “ He claps her on the shoulder. “- say thank you to Santa and c’mon over here, Big Bro needs to get some more candy canes and send a message to Big Sis Temari.”

“Thank you, Santa! Thank you, Mister Elf!” she calls, waving frantically over her shoulder with her Kuraama doll dangling from her hand as she trots after Shikamaru to the snack table.

“That was odd!” Lee chirps, standing from his seat and approaching Gaara. “What do you think all that was about?”

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Gaara blurts in lieu of a response. Then he flees.

Gaara’s face is still dripping with cold water when he steps out of the bathroom and smack into Lee’s chest. The pillow makes a little poof sound as Gaara reels backward and collides with the bathroom door.

“Are you okay?” Lee’s hands are warm on Gaara’s shoulders when he steadies him. He’s much too close, and he looks as stupid in his giant beard as Gaara feels in his elf ears, but his cologne smells amazing, like woody pine, and Gaara finds himself blinking wordlessly as he stares up into Lee’s face.

“Um,” he stutters, a paragon of articulation.

“Santa has to kiss the elf!” a high-pitched voice calls from across the room. Gaara peeks over Lee’s shoulder to the source of the noise and sees Mirai pointing to a spot just above his head. Gaara follows the direction of her finger up to the door jamb.

There’s mistletoe hanging there, dangling just between his and Lee’s heads.

Gaara tilts his head back down and finds Lee tugging at his false beard. He licks his lips.

“Well,” Lee says, and god, that smile is dangerous, “it is tradition …”

Gaara’s heartbeat pounds in his ears. The room feels like it’s spinning as everything coalesces: the tinny Christmas music, the warm smile on Lee’s face, the chatter of the crowd of happy children, the smell of evergreen and spearmint. Gaara’s heart swells and strains against his ribs, as if it really were growing three sizes. If he didn’t know better, he’d say he’s feeling downright festive.

Lee’s waggling his eyebrows, but he looks more uncertain by the moment. The temptation to just do it--to lean forward and kiss him the way Gaara’s been thinking about for weeks now--is nearly unbearable. Gaara lists forward on unsteady knees, until his face is centimeters from Lee’s.

“Maybe Santa,” Gaara murmurs against Lee’s bearded cheek, before his body can betray him, “should ask the elf to dinner first. Because the elf doesn’t kiss on the first date.”

“First date?” Lee’s face has gone very red, dark enough to match his hat.

“If you want to think of it that way.”

Lee reaches out and takes Gaara’s hand. His palms are broad and warm, even through two pairs of gloves.

“So, dinner?” Lee asks, the grin on his face growing as he studies Gaara’s face. Gaara’s legs start to shake under the intensity of Lee’s focus, an iridescent shimmer of delight mixed with anxiety frissoning through him. “You could come over tomorrow night? I can cook.”

“If it’s as good as your hot chocolate, sure.”

“It will be,” Lee promises, and he squeezes Gaara’s hand in a firm grip.

“It’s a date, then.”

“A second date,” Lee reminds him.

Gaara hums in agreement, but then a thought occurs to him, slowly and then all at once, like the blinking of the Christmas lights reflecting in Lee’s eyes.

“Santa,” he says, stepping even closer to Lee, quiet as snowfall, “did you know there was mistletoe right here?”

Lee drops Gaara’s hand in favor of rubbing the back of his neck, chuckling nervously.

“Well,” he says, the shifting of his gaze giving him away, “Santa does see everything.”