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“You haven’t told him we’re Jewish?” Temari hisses. “He’s coming to visit over Chanukkah!”
“In Gaara’s defense,” Kankuro says, “he really shouldn’t have to tell Lee something so obvious.”
“Do they even take a single history course at their Academy?” Temari continues, ignoring Kankuro’s groan and Gaara’s sigh. “I’m going to write Shikamaru.”
“Chin up, Gaara. At least it’s not Pesach.” Kankuro winks at him in a way Gaara guesses is supposed to be reassuring, but makes the mass of potential rejection double in his stomach.
Gaara sighs again and drops his head to the table. “Chag sameach to me.”
*
Lee shows up three hours earlier than expected, even adjusting for Lee’s disregard for the laws of physics and motion.
Gaara’s not upset though, not when Lee is standing in front of him, suddenly shy. Kissing Lee like this, at moments of softness, measure among Gaara’s favorites.
“The guards at the gate gave me your message to come to the house,” Lee says. “Are you still working?”
Gaara glances at the stack of scrolls he’d been reading through and turns back to Lee. “I was making a start on projects for next month, so I’m all yours.”
The gleam in Lee’s eyes make Gaara very glad he spent the last two weeks working more overtime than usual.
*
“Kakashi-san told me to tell you something,” Lee murmurs, his flushed face pressed to Gaara’s chest. “But I didn’t understand it? Hog sandwich?” Lee’s brow furrows. “I know you don’t eat pork though.”
Gaara does his best not to laugh. It’s not Lee’s fault he doesn’t speak Hebrew, or that he doesn’t realize Kakashi is Jewish. Hog sandwich isn’t the worst butchering he’s heard of the phrase, either.
“Did it sound like chag sameach?” Gaara asks, letting himself press a kiss to Lee’s forehead.
“Yes! That’s it! He said you’d know what it meant.”
“It means happy holiday.”
Lee sits up, adjusting so he can look at Gaara. “Is it a holiday in Suna?” he asks. “Was that an official greeting I carried from the hokage?”
“Not a state holiday, no.”
Gaara has no idea how Lee’s hair can be so soft after travelling for two days.
“Kakashi’s mother was from Suna, and Suna has a much larger Jewish population.”
“Oh! Then Kakashi wanted me to tell you because…?” Lee goes quiet, face ponderous. “Because he’s Jewish?”
The pounding of Gaara’s heart, as Lee winds his steady way to the truth, feels like an admonition of Lee’s tenderness. He almost killed Lee once, and Lee is still here. Gaara explicitly laying out his Jewishness shouldn’t matter, either.
Except it has, before.
“We both are,” Gaara says, feeling tendrils of sand stir in the gourd in response to his nervousness. “And Chanukkah starts tonight.”
“Then I will get to celebrate with you?” Lee asks, excitement crackling in his chakra.
“We can start now, if you’d like.”
His smile must come off as appropriately lascivious, because Lee is on top of him by the time he finishes his sentence.
*
“You’re sure I’m not intruding on family time?” Lee whispers.
But a whisper for Lee is a normal volume for anyone else.
“Not one of those kinds of holidays, bro,” Kankuro says. “Besides, Gaara invited you.”
They have an heirloom menorah that belonged to their mother, something that they’ve only started using a few years ago, as the three of them started making shaky steps to reclaim the things Rasa had taken.
Temari is the only one of them with any real memories of her, but using her menorah feels like a connection surpassing space and time.
Lee is quiet beside Gaara as he, Temari, and Kankuro go through the three blessings and light the candles.
Gaara imagines the two pinpoints of light from the view of the desert landscape, and how Lee has become his own symbol of resilience.
*
“Wait, only two blessings?” Lee asks. “Last night there were three.”
Temari quirks an eyebrow at Gaara over Lee’s head.
“There’s a special blessing for the first night because it’s the first time we’re lighting.”
Lee has prompted many more sheheceyanus in Gaara’s life than he thought he’d ever have.
Second night is when they bring out their non-kosher menorahs, and when Kankuro starts using chakra strings to light candles.
Luckily, Gaara’s sand is always nearby to squelch any potential fires.
“Here,” Temari says, handing a Kankuro-original menorah, made of leftover puppet gear pieces, to Lee, “you can light this one.”
Gaara can’t quite will away the lump in his throat at her soft smile and Lee’s zeal in lighting.
*
“Mom would’ve liked him,” Temari tells Gaara on the fifth night. “He’s got chutzpah.”
A plate of sufganiyot is cooling in the center of the table.
There are loud echoes of Lee and Kankuro playing dreidel in another room with real money.
Gaara shoves a sticky sweet donut in his mouth in lieu of dealing with the emotions Temari has dumped onto him, like he’s a latke and she’s a jar of applesauce.
*
By eighth night, Lee is saying the blessings almost as fluently as the rest of them, only stumbling over a handful of gutturals.
(Which Kankuro never bothers to pronounce properly, even though Temari gives him a look every time the ch noises roll smoothly from his mouth, instead of coming up from his throat.)
Gaara loves him—this man who is the gentlest of whirlwinds, cupping his hand to protect the flame of each candle he lights—Lee, who opened Gaara’s heart and never quite let go of who he found buried there, beneath the punishing sandstorm of anger and trauma.