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Early winter in Konoha is more rain than snow. After New Year’s, the village transforms into a picturesque postcard, all soft, warmly lit rooms with snow-capped roofs like frosted cookies. But in December, the village is overrun with sleet and hail, piles of slush that sink into mud puddles cold enough to knock your breath out.
Gaara hates coming to Konoha early in the winter. Between the wet, which weakens his ultimate defense, and the cold, which doesn’t suit his desert-dwelling nature, he finds the whole season miserable. Gaara thought he was decently adjusted to the cold, between his forays to Iron to establish trade routes with the samurai and the bitter cold of Suna's desert nights, but there's a quality to the cold in Konoha that is somehow different. Probably mostly just moisture, and the fact that snow here takes on the form of frozen rain rather than fat, fluffy flakes.
He attends the winter’s quarterly Five Kage meeting in Konoha only under considerable duress, after his proposal to host it in Suna fails, and his pleas to have it relocated to any other hidden village are shot down. He finds himself shivering miserably in the Konoha council chambers, swaddled in too many layers of wool and sniffling in between Naruto’s laughs and elbows to the ribs.
The one bright spot in the whole affair is that Lee shows up outside the Hokage Tower after the meeting with an umbrella. It's not a date, technically, because that would be improprietous, but it's not not a date, either.
Gaara and Lee’s relationship is one of those unspoken, unofficial, blink-and-you-won’t-notice-you’ve-missed-it sort of affairs. Both of them have settled happily into the status of ‘confirmed bachelor’ in their adulthood, and most of the shinobi forces know better than to question it too closely. Gaara is insulated from the scrutiny by his position and his ostensible status as an almost-widower (something he pretends brought him much more grief than it actually did), and Lee by his status as the only shinobi in five villages to literally kick a comet in half.
They’ve been ‘together’--officially speaking and by the red heart marked on the calendar in Lee’s kitchen--almost a year, but the whole thing is still very chaste, very cautious. Both of them are still feeling out their own and each other's limits. The relationship, too, is constrained by their duties and by the inconvenient foot travel distance between their two nations (a fact which Gaara is constantly warring with Suna's transportation board over, as they continually ignore proposals for a bullet train between Suna and its more prominent economic allies). As such, it's largely unfolded at a distance, over letters and snatches of time in between meetings and functions, rushed dinners at the very tail end of long missions. Between all the drama and politicking and threats of marriage that Gaara has come to associate with relationships, the careful, quiet exploration of Lee, who blushes when he so much as kisses the back of Gaara’s hand in greeting, has been a welcome change of pace. It makes him feel young, despite the stress lines sneaking into his undereye circles and the ever-increasing amount of hair he pulls from the teeth of his comb.
It's an unexpected luxury, in fact, to have the whole evening to himself with only Lee for company, particularly after the other four Kage suggested concluding the day’s meetings at the bar. Gaara was only able to slip out and make excuses because Naruto caused a tremendous scene arguing with Choujuuro over the quality of the sake served at a certain favorite ramen establishment. Gaara relishes his freedom with subdued verve as he shuffles closer to Lee under the auspices of shelter from the damp and cold.
Since Pein's assault and the post-war rebuilding, Konoha's commercial district has expanded substantially. Outside of trade talks, this affects Gaara very little, except that it means every visit to the village is no longer spent exclusively eating at Ichiraku Ramen.
Lee drags him into the front of a curry restaurant instead, which he insists has the best curry outside of River Country. Lee has a friend there, apparently, who owns a curry shop, and he spends several minutes extolling the lifesaving virtues of the man’s food. Gaara nods encouragingly at the pauses and pretends the story doesn't make him a little jealous.
As for the curry … well, it's curry, no better or worse than any other Gaara has ever had. Lee orders something absurdly spicy and spends most of the meal with his eyes and nose running. Gaara shouldn't find it endearing, but he does, even as Lee makes a pile of snotty napkins on the seat next to himself in the booth, trying to be discreet. He offers Gaara a spoonful and Gaara declines; he doesn’t care for spicy food outside of the one or two times he’s managed to taste it off Lee's lips.
Afterwards, Lee walks him through the park towards his hotel. It's begun sleeting as the sun has fallen, and Lee provides cover for them both with the umbrella. Lee's arm starts to shake, and Gaara grips his bicep between them.
“I can hold it if you’re tired,” Gaara suggests.
“It’s not that. It’s weighted,” Lee demurs. “For training.”
"So you're saying I'm weak," Gaara responds archly.
Lee blusters but ultimately relents, passing the umbrella to Gaara with an anticipatory grimace. Gaara takes the handle. The umbrella wobbles slightly, but it's not nearly as bad as he anticipated, despite what Lee claimed. He's always underestimating Gaara when it comes to the physical. Just because Gaara isn't a taijutsu expert doesn't mean he can't handle a little umbrella-
Then Lee releases his hold on Gaara's wrist.
Shit.
The umbrella rocks forward, Gaara dragging with it. He struggles, futilely, for a moment, staggering this way and that, the sand whipping out of the gourd at his hip. Looming in front of him is a snowbank, shoveled off the path, likely by a team of complaining genin on a C-rank mission. Gaara stumbles over his own feet--by god is the thing heavy; what was Lee thinking handing it to him?--and begins to plunge towards it. The sand arcs in front of him, touches the sleet, and retreats just as quickly, like a cat with water on its paws.
Gaara plunges face-first into to muddy pile of slush with a whiff.
Lee hauls him up by the back of his jacket, umbrella and all, lifting him all the way off the ground. He scans Gaara's face, brow furrowed in the very picture of concern, checking him over for injuries.
"Oh no, are you okay?” Lee’s babbling too quickly for Gaara to even respond. “Are you hurt? Oh, your clothes are soaked, you're going to catch cold …"
Before Gaara can speak, Lee turns and starts to hurry him in the opposite direction of the hotel.
"My apartment is closer," he explains.
Lee bustles Gaara into his tiny bathroom before he even has his shoes off, cranking the furnace high and calling through the door, "Just stay put, I'll get you something to wear".
Gaara peels off his wet clothes and sits, in nothing but his underthings, on the lid of Lee's toilet, studying the turtle pattern of his shower curtain. He has a rack of dumbbells next to the commode, god knows why.
"Are you decent?" Lee calls through the door.
Gaara looks down at himself.
"Yes."
Moments later, Lee's arm cracks the door, holding a soft bundle.
"Hand me your clothes and I'll- Gaara!" Lee throws an arm over his blushing face. "You said you were decent!"
Gaara crosses his arms over his bare chest, feeling suddenly exposed. "It's no more revealing than a swimsuit," he protests, defiant.
"I mean, yes, but- the implications- " Lee's face is now the steady red of a summer tomato. "Here," he shakes the bundle, "just put this on."
Gaara passes Lee the soggy lump that was previously his robes and outerwear, and accepts the offered clothing in return. Once the door is shut, he almost thinks he hears Lee give a little frustrated groan from the hallway.
The clothes Lee gave him must be Lee's own. If the color (forest green and neon orange) didn't give them away, the fact they're far too large on Gaara's wiry frame would. He rolls the hems of the orange sweatpants up to his ankles, hoisting them high on his waist so they won't fall, but he leaves the long sleeves of the green thermal shirt dangling over his hands, for reasons he can't quite articulate. He's a little startled, actually, to find Lee owns anything other than jumpsuits. He's never seen him wear anything else, outside of formal settings--mostly weddings and funerals. But the soft fabric is undeniably nightwear, based on the jumping sheep embroidered across the chest. So it seems Naruto's assertion that Lee "only sleeps when he passes out at the training grounds or running, like a horse," has exactly the same amount of credibility as the rumors about Gaara's own sleeping habits. He should have guessed as much, truthfully; Naruto is a moron, and Gaara has seen the door to Lee's bedroom, besides (though he keeps it scrupulously closed whenever Gaara visits).
Gaara feels cosy, swaddled in Lee's pajamas. The inside of the shirt is lined with some kind of fleece, and the fabric smells like tiger balm and fresh-linen-scented fabric softener when he tugs it to his nose, the same things he smells when he hugs Lee before he leaves for Suna and inhales at the neck of his jumpsuit.
The heater clicks overhead with a burst of hot air and stirs him to venture into the living room, where Lee is spreading a thick blanket over the kotatsu.
"Ah," Lee says, when Gaara makes his presence known in the doorway. All the flush that drained from his face between the time he left Gaara in the bathroom and now returns with interest. The only light in the room is the orange pilot light of the furnace, but Lee's ears go visibly pink. He stares at Gaara--who is suddenly acutely aware of how oversized the shirt is, how it hangs too loose off his shoulders--for an inordinate amount of time before he speaks. "I hung your things up to dry." He gestures unnecessarily to the dripping garments slumped like so many soggy ghosts over a washing line in the kitchen, which have already drawn Gaara's attention by the hissing of steam when their water hits the radiator below.
"I was going to make some hot cocoa, if you like," Lee offers, indicating the saucepan already heating on the single burner of his stove. "It's perfect for this kind of weather."
Gaara has never had hot cocoa before--chocolate, generally speaking, doesn't keep well in the desert, tending to sweat and then melt, which ruins it--but he nods before settling to Lee's living room floor with his feet curled under the kotatsu.
"Sorry," Lee chatters, turning to the stove, "I should have gotten you some socks. Your feet are probably freezing. You're welcome to go back there and grab some; they're in the top drawer of my dresser. Or I can get them for you in a minute. I just need to keep an eye on the milk so it doesn't burn."
The temptation to slip into Lee's room to poke around unobserved is almost too much to resist, but Gaara declines with an, "It's fine," preferring to watch Lee at work.
Lee is charmingly unselfconscious like this, humming to himself under his breath as he babies the pot on the stove and clatters through his cabinets for spices and mugs. The dim of the close quarters, the patter of sleet on Lee's windowpane, and the smell of cinnamon all conspire to make Gaara suddenly very sleepy. He stands in order to keep himself awake, deciding to slip into the kitchen for a closer look at what Lee is doing, half curiosity and half simple desire for proximity. The pant hems have unrolled themselves and cover his feet, so he pads whisper-silent across the apartment’s floor.
“Say, Gaara,” Lee starts, calling over his shoulder, “do you want- augh!”
He jumps back from the stove, one hand clenched over his heart.
“Y-you startled me,” he pants. “I didn’t realize you got up.”
“What are you doing?” Gaara asks, sidling closer and peering over Lee’s shoulder onto the stovetop. This close, he can smell Lee’s cologne, a sort of woodsy, evergreen scent that reminds him of the Christmas wreaths Konoha shinobi hang on their doors in winter. Little curls of steam wind up from the gently simmering pot, and the air smells like chocolate and cloves.
“I’m just finishing heating up the- oh,” Lee turns his head, and Gaara feels the intensity of his stare on the side of his face. The gust of Lee’s warm breath rushes against his cheek. “Your hair’s still wet,” Lee whispers, and his hand comes up to wend between the damp curls at Gaara’s neck. “I’ve got a towel, hang on … “
Gaara finds himself settled onto Lee’s couch, his legs crossed and a blanket draped across his lap. There’s a heavy ceramic mug clutched in both his hands, tendrils of steam stroking the underside of his chin. Behind him, Lee stands, gently toweling his hair dry.
Most of the water has been wicked away, Gaara’s quite sure, but Lee still has his fingers scrubbing at Gaara’s scalp, warm points of pressure that travel down his skin to relax every muscle in his body. It’s not long before Gaara finds himself slumped backward, free of tension. His cocoa has gone cool in his hands, untouched.
At some point, Lee dropped the pretense of the tea towel, and now his bare hands card through Gaara’s hair and rub at the pressure points behind his ears. Gaara’s heart purrs like a jungle cat, even as Lee climbs nimbly over the back of the couch and comes to settle at Gaara’s side. Gaara shifts to share the blanket without a word. Lee gives an exaggerated yawn, an affectation of exhaustion (Gaara is certain, because he could feel Lee’s pulse drumming through his thumbs just moments ago, can feel the buzz of his chakra all riled up and ticklish on the edges of his awareness), and stretches his long legs over Gaara’s lap with a sigh.
“Are you going to try your hot cocoa?” Lee asks.
Gaara shakes his head. He’s too comfortable to move more than the distance it takes to slump sideways, inches further into Lee’s space.
“Your clothes should be dry soon,” Lee murmurs, barely audible over the ticking of the radiator and the sleet against the glass. Gaara hums, and his throat stings at the back just a little. The last thing he sees before he closes his eyes is the curve of Lee’s smile, softer than snowfall.
“Gaara?”
He wakes to Lee gently shaking his shoulder.
Gaara glances past Lee’s shadowed face to peer at the window. It’s frosted over in the time they’ve been sitting here, the glass foggy and striated, opaque and feather-printed with ice crystals. His face feels hot where it’s pressed against Lee’s shoulder. The room has grown cold and, despite the long sleeves of Lee’s pajamas and the blanket draped over him, he shivers.
“Your clothes are dry,” Lee whispers, and Gaara realizes he’s cupping the back of Gaara’s head in one broad palm. “I should walk you back to the hotel, before Kankuro starts to worry.”
Changing back into his own clothes in the confines of Lee’s bathroom is an exercise in misery. Churlishly, he keeps the shirt on even as he replaces his jacket and robes. Lee probably won’t miss it, and if he does, Gaara will make an excuse that he forgot, muzzy-headed in the wee hours of the morning.
Lee digs a regular weight umbrella out of the depths of his closet to shepherd Gaara back to his hotel. The sleet has lessened but the streets are still slick with ice, all shining and black under the moon like the whole village has been paved in obsidian. Lee steers Gaara around the snow banks with a warm hand in the small of his back, but Gaara still finds himself scowling despite the proximity, grumpy at having been disturbed from his sleep and from Lee’s company.
Lee doesn’t even kiss him at the doorstep to the hotel, just gives him a quick hug and promises to see him tomorrow.
“Late night?” Kankuro asks, once Gaara has slumped irritably into their shared room.
Gaara just grunts before collapsing into the bed, cottony-eyed and simmering with the heat of a frustration he can’t place.
Gaara wakes to the bite of a sore throat and an upper lip crusted with snot.
He groans. He’s rarely ill, a legacy of the bijuu chakra that once flooded his veins and accelerated the work of his immune system. While this is largely advantageous, it also means that he’s not acclimated to the feelings currently flooding his body. When he does fall sick, it hits him like a tree being felled.
Kankuro is less than sympathetic. He spends the better part of the morning teasing Gaara about his “man-cold” and making several less-than-charitable remarks about Lee’s germs, which earns him a petulant swat of the sand. He does run out, at least, to the hotel’s ice machine, and passes Gaara a cup of ice chips to suck on in the hopes it will soothe his throat. He also offers to beg Gaara off work to the other Kage, which, while thoughtful of him, is unlikely to go over particularly well.
Instead Gaara lurches his way, half-feverish, through the day’s meetings. A sleeveful of tissues is run through more quickly than a bottle of sake in Tsunade’s desk. He’s fortunate that Kankuro takes diligent notes, however abominable his handwriting, because he remembers almost nothing that was discussed.
At the close of the day, he stumbles into the hotel room half-conscious. He kicks over a small trashcan full of tissues towards Kankuro when he tries to make him drink a cup of tea. Gaara scowls at the roll of his brother’s eyes as he plunks a roll of toilet paper on the nightstand next to him, since the tissues have run out. The paper is scratchy and makes Gaara’s already irritated nose even redder, but it’s better than blowing his nose straight into the hotel sheets.
He yanks off his robes and tosses them in a heap before he shudders into Lee’s nightshirt. Then he collapses, disoriented, into the hotel bed and pulls the covers up over his face.
Hours later, someone knocks at the door. Gaara peeks one wary, sweaty eye over the rim of the comforter to glare balefully at it.
“Who the- ?” Kankuro mutters, but he goes to the door to answer it nonetheless.
“Hullo Kankuro-kun!” Even through the haze of fever, Gaara recognizes Lee’s voice. “Is Gaara here? Naruto-kun said he was feeling under the weather.”
Kankuro glances back over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. Should I tell him?
Gaara shrugs, which forces a cough out of his chest.
“Gaara?!” Lee shoulders past Kankuro and into the room in a hurry. He’s lucky it was actually Kankuro who opened the door and not Karasu, because that maneuver could have ended lethally for him. As it is, Kankuro just stands there in the doorway rubbing his upper arm, staring at the space where Lee just was in bewilderment.
“Oh, you look terrible. Not that I- um.” Lee inhales deeply, then coughs himself. “What is that smell?”
Gaara’s hardly noticed through the stuffiness of his nose, but the room smells like blown-out candles and wormwood. A comforting haze drifts up from an incense burner on the low table against the far wall.
“Sheh smoke.” Kankuro crosses his arms over his chest, looking disgruntled. The room is filled with it, and Gaara realizes that Kankuro must have deactivated the smoke detector, because it’s hanging by loose wires from the wall near the bathroom. “Who knows if it’ll do any good, though, Konoha doesn’t really have the proper stuff for- say, what’s in the bag?”
It’s then Gaara notices that Lee is carrying two overstuffed paper shopping bags, one in each arm, and has a third canvas bag thrown over his shoulder.
“Oh, just some home remedies,” Lee says, setting the bags on the zataku next to the incense burner. “I cannot do medical ninjutsu, so I have a number of treatments that I thought would help Gaara feel better…” He begins unpacking the bags in quick, precise movements, setting out a veritable melange of various tupperwares and thermoses and jars, most of them steaming. “I’ve got umeboshi, yuzu-cha, honey radish, ginger tea …”
Kankuro fixes Gaara with a panicked stare. Gaara sits up enough to let the blankets fall down his chest. If he had his druthers, he’d really just prefer to sink into his own private cave of snot and tissues and be left alone, but …
“... oh, and I made you some okayu, I’m not sure if you’d be up to eating … ?” Lee finishes, looking up at Gaara from his spot on the floor with wide, worried eyes. Gaara’s chilled, congested heart melts.
“Tea?” Gaara says, then winces, his throat stinging. Kankuro gives him a mock-offended glare, which he ignores.
“Of course!” Lee starts unscrewing a thermos one-handed, while the other roots around in one of his several bags. He’s even brought cups, a whole plastic sleeve of them, which Gaara is quite certain are among the hotel’s amenities.
Kankuro clears his throat, shifting from foot-to-foot by the door. “I’m gonna, uh, I’m gonna roll out for a little bit,” he says. “See if they sell figs around here, help your cough… “
He’s obviously uncomfortable, though Gaara is too hazy to piece together the puzzle of why. Meanwhile, Lee has come over to the bedside and is fluffing up Gaara’s pillows, propping him into sitting. He throws his jounin vest over the back of one of the low chairs and crawls into the bed half-behind Gaara, so Gaara can sit up against his chest.
“You got a handle on this, right, nurse?”
Lee beams and gives Kankuro a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry! Gaara is in very capable hands! I have cured more of my own illnesses than I- “
“Cool, cool.” Kankuro turns and cracks the door.
“Kankuro,” Gaara rasps, a bit desperately. “You’re coming back, right?”
Under the harsh lines of his face paint, Kankuro’s expression softens.
“‘Course I am, kiddo. Just wanted to give you some privacy for a couple hours.”
Gaara nods his understanding, and Kankuro vanishes into the hall.
With the distraction of his brother gone, Gaara is suddenly acutely aware of Lee’s proximity, the span of his broad chest against his shoulder blades and the heat of his body. He’s shoved a thin styrofoam cup of pungent tea into Gaara’s sweaty hands and now he unwraps his bandages with his teeth until both his hands are bare. Gaara is feeling too achey and prickly to really want to be touched, but the cool press of the back of Lee’s hand to his forehead makes him hiss in relief.
“Oh, you do have a fever,” Lee clucks. He starts tucking the blankets around Gaara’s legs until he’s swaddled like an infant. “Drink that. It will help with the cough.”
Gaara sniffs it cautiously. The steam curls up his nostrils, acerbic. His nose clears, and one of his sinuses pops painfully.
“What is this?”
“It’s ginger and honey tea. It will help with the congestion and sore throat, too.”
Lee’s hands come to wrap around Gaara’s middle, and Gaara leans back into the warmth of him. It’s different from the stifling oppression of the blankets or the boil of his fever, and he can feel Lee’s heartbeat against his shoulder blade. He brings the cup to his mouth and takes a slow, careful sip.
He barely registers the taste, because the liquid itself is piping hot, enough that it scalds his chapped lips. The taste is not what Gaara expects from a tea, stronger and spicier than he’s used to. He grimaces, but the liquid hits the back of his throat like a balm, honey trickling down and calming the blistering pain that’s settled around his tonsils.
“How is it?” Lee asks. His fingers push Gaara’s sweat-sticky hair behind his ears.
“Fine.” He corrects himself. “Good. Thank you.”
“I was worried,” Lee says softly. Outside the sleet has slackened off into freezing rain, and it leaves frosty snail-trails down the thin glass of the windows. The heater roars to life and the glass pops in its frame. “Naruto-kun said you were really out of it. I’m glad it’s just a cold.”
‘Just a cold’ seems like a vast underestimate of the amount of grief that Gaara’s body is putting him through, but on the grand Lee Scale of Pain and Discomfort, he’s probably right to assume that a cold barely registers.
“I don’t get sick often,” Gaara mumbles.
“I know!” Lee lifts the collar of Gaara’s shirt to dab at the sweat on his neck. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you be sick in as long as I’ve known you. Even Naruto-kun said it was odd.”
“It’s the bijuu chakra,” Gaara explains. He turns his head to rub his sore nose against the fabric of Lee’s jumpsuit. He leaves behind a little trail of snot when he pulls back. “I didn’t get a cold for the first time until I was almost fourteen.”
“No wonder Kankuro-kun was so worried.” Lee doesn’t even mention the boogers, just rips off a piece of toilet tissue from the nightstand and wipes it off his shirt himself. He tosses the crumpled tissue in the waste basket without even looking, landing it perfectly.
“He was teasing me.”
Lee hums, considering. “I don’t know, he seemed pretty out of sorts. I think he cares about you a lot.”
Gaara knows this, deep down, but it’s something that is rarely articulated. Certainly never by Kankuro himself. The external confirmation is … nice. Reassuring. He presses closer to Lee’s chest, locks the beat of his heart beneath his ear. The radiator thrum thrum thrums in time with Lee’s steady breathing.
“Hey,” Lee says. Gaara stirs against his chest, groggily. “Are you falling asleep?”
Gaara just grumbles, nosing back into the warmth of Lee’s jumpsuit. So what if he is?
Lee gently plucks the cup of tea from his hand and sets it somewhere unseen.
“If you’re going to sleep, eat a spoonful of this first.” Lee scoops something from a jar at the bedside, a sticky glob of golden-colored jam with chunks of some unidentified fruit in it. “Honey radish. Otherwise you’ll wake up with your throat worse than before.”
Gaara’s hands have already crumpled down to clutch at the sheets, so Lee eases the spoon between Gaara’s lips himself. It feels a little patronizing, Gaara muses as he chews. The syrup is sticky-sweet, but the radish is surprisingly mild and crisp. He swallows it with some effort, his throat clenching with the intrusion.
“Good,” Lee murmurs, and Gaara’s heart rumbles at the praise, despite him not having done anything but fail to hold a spoon like an adult.
He falls asleep to the stroke of Lee’s fingers in his hair. Outside, the world is cold and still.
“What are you drinking?”
“Hmm?” Lee looks up from the book spread in his lap to meet Gaara’s foggy eyes. It’s one of those horrible physiology books he’s always poring over, the ones that make Gaara’s eyes cross with their diagrams of human musculature and nerves and chakra pathways. One of Lee’s little notepads is nestled in among the blankets, the page filled with his neat, square print, and he has a pen tucked behind his ear. Gaara doesn’t quite understand his shorthand, but it looks like he’s formulating a revision to a jutsu.
That’s one of the things that few people appreciate about Lee, Gaara thinks with no small amount of smugness. He’s smart, not because knowledge comes easily to him, but because he has to fight for it. He works and works and works at the material until he understands. And when he comes out on the other side, he has a deeper grasp of it than those to whom the topic comes naturally, because he knows every in and out, every pitfall. In another life, he probably could have been a medical ninja.
“Oh, it’s hot cocoa.” Lee gestures with the thermos in his free hand, the one that isn’t cupping Gaara’s shoulder. “I had some left over from yesterday.”
Gaara can smell it on Lee’s breath, the combination of warmth and spices. He squints.
“I want some.”
Lee frowns, then pushes him back by the shoulder until he’s sitting upright, studying his face. “Have you eaten yet today?”
Gaara considers lying, if it will get him what he wants, but he shakes his head. “My throat hurts too much.”
Lee hums sympathetically, but then starts moving to stand up. He rests Gaara’s head against the pillow and Gaara gives a little disgruntled groan.
“How about this,” Lee says, already across the room and fussing with his bags, “you eat half of this porridge, and then you can have some of my hot cocoa?”
Gaara glowers at him from under his pile of blankets. Under the right circumstances, Gaara’s glare can send council members running from the room in fear. Lee chuckles like he’s about as intimidating as a grumpy puppy. Gaara glances meaningfully at the night stand, where Lee’s thermos still stands, as if to say, I could just grab it myself and drink it right now.
“Don’t be like that,” Lee scolds him. He stands, and he’s holding a clear plastic container full of an unidentifiable white gloop. In his other hand, he brandishes a plastic spoon like a kunai. “Please?” he presses. “Try and eat something first? You need to keep your strength up.” His lower lip juts out in a pout, thick eyebrows crumpling.
The little prickles of spite in Gaara’s heart give way to an unfathomable softness. It’s unfair, is what it is, emotional manipulation at its finest. Forget medi-nin, Lee could have been an expert member of the interrogation division, with a face like that. All he would need to do is look at the enemy with those wide, pleading eyes, and even the most hardened of shinobi would crumble and give him whatever he wanted.
“Fine,” Gaara relents. “But only half.”
Lee gives a little cheer. He comes to sit on the edge of the bed this time, near Gaara’s legs, and Gaara immediately misses his nearness.
“Do you want to do it yourself this time?” Lee asks. He waggles the spoon and his eyes glimmer with mischief.
Gaara snatches the spoon from his hand and shovels a spoonful of porridge into his mouth with a scowl. It tastes like … nothing. It’s so inoffensively bland that Gaara is surprised that Lee is the one who made it. He might as well be eating wet paper.
“How is it?” Lee asks eagerly.
“It doesn’t taste like anything,” Gaara admits.
“Good! That’s the point.”
It is easy enough to eat, so Gaara supposes Lee must be right. It goes down smoothly, even against the soreness of his throat. It’s warm, and filling too, and soon enough Gaara finds himself scraping the bottom of the tupperware with his spoon. He didn’t realize how hungry he was, but as he sits himself up properly, sniffing, he finds a little bit of his energy restored.
He holds up the empty container and gives Lee a look. See? All gone.
Lee laughs, his smile bright enough to push back the dark and the rain outside as he takes the container and utensil from Gaara’s hands and sets them aside.
“Thank you.” He tousles Gaara’s hair, and Gaara’s scalp prickles. “Are you still up for hot cocoa?”
Gaara nods, and extends his hand to demand it. Lee presses the thermos into his hand with a chuckle and a kiss to his wrist, where the long sleeve of Lee’s sleep shirt has slumped down over his skin.
Gaara lifts the thermos to his mouth for a tentative sip. It’s delicious, like nothing he’s ever tasted before. He was expecting to taste chocolate, and hot milk, and little else, but whatever Lee has put into the drink makes his mouth tingle. There’s notes of cinnamon, and clove, and something vaguely spicy that has Gaara sniffing as his sinuses clear.
It doesn’t hurt his enjoyment of the drink either that Lee is watching him with stars in his eyes and a grin on his face.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s good.” Gaara takes another sip. “Really good.”
Lee beams as he takes the thermos back from Gaara’s hand. “I’ll make you your own batch the next time you visit,” he says, then he lifts the thermos to his own lips.
Gaara tries to snatch it away, but he’s too slow. As he watches, slack-jawed, Lee takes a long pull from the place Gaara’s germ-filled mouth just touched, without so much as wiping the rim of the thermos with his sleeve.
“You’re going to get sick,” Gaara chides him, grabbing Lee’s wrist and pulling the thermos away from his mouth.
Lee throws his head back with a laugh. “You don’t have to worry about me! I’m as healthy as a horse!”
Gaara thinks to the last horse he saw, a rail-thin, shivering thing in a paddock in Iron Country. It had looked too frail to even hold its own weight. He exhales through his nose in frustration. The comparison may be apt.
“You’re too far away,” he complains, rather than pushing the argument. He rarely (never) wins when it comes to Lee’s unerring optimism. He grabs Lee by the collar of his jumpsuit and hauls him up the bed. Lee goes willingly (Gaara couldn’t move him against his will if he tried), and lets Gaara arrange him as he likes, pliant as Gaara shoves him down and pillows his head against Lee’s chest.
Lee’s long fingers find the back of Gaara’s sweat-crusted hair, and tangle there as he falls asleep.
“Yo, Gaara.” The door creaks open and a shaft of light from the hallway falls into the room, Kankuro’s hooded face all in shadow. “I had to go to, like, five different stores but I found garlic-stuffed figs.”
Gaara sits up, scrubbing at his eyes with the sleeve of Lee’s night shirt. His face is warm on one side, sweaty and patterned with the weave of Lee’s jumpsuit.
Beneath him, Lee stirs, and then begins to cough.