Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Lee, don’t.”

Tenten unsheathed a kunai so silently that it was only once it was on the picnic table that Gaara realized it had been drawn.

It was not exactly the peaceful start to lunch that Gaara had expected.

Nothing in Konoha ever seemed to go the way Gaara expected it to, though. He certainly hadn’t anticipated that he and his siblings would be invited to share a meal with Team Gai at the conclusion of their most recent mission. It had been less than a month since the failed retrieval of Uchiha Sasuke, and the village seemed to bear his absence like a hastily cauterized wound. Orochimaru’s machinations had only escalated in the weeks since, and the Sand shinobi were being summoned more and more often to the rural territory between Wind and Fire that nominally belonged to the Land of Rivers, either to smoke out additional spies or to stamp out the rumblings of discontent that had arisen among the locals.

They had just finished delivering their latest quarry to the Hokage when a loud voice had flagged them down.

Rock Lee was back on his crutches—just minor muscle tearing from their fight with Kimimaro, he had assured Gaara, though Gaara hadn’t asked—but he was just as boisterous and energetic as Gaara remembered. He still had the flaky scab of a sand abrasion over one thick eyebrow, from where Gaara’s defense had thrown him face-down in an effort to protect him. It had crinkled when he’d grinned and said he and his team were just meeting for lunch, and would love it if Gaara and his siblings would join them.

Gaara had accepted on behalf of the three of them, ignoring the prickling tension of his siblings’ chakra at Lee’s yelling. Lee had beamed, so hard that the scab on his forehead cracked, and had reached out to clap Gaara’s shoulder.

The sand had pushed his hand away before Gaara had been able to stop it. Lee, already unbalanced on his single crutch, had stumbled.

A sharp noise of distress in the back of Gaara’s throat hadn’t quite made it to his lips.

Lee had recovered gamely enough, though. And he’d spun so quickly on his heel to lead the way to their lunch spot that he’d missed the way Gaara’s hand reached for him in turn.

Temari hadn’t, though. Her keen eyes never missed a thing. And she’d been shooting Gaara looks ever since, looks that he didn’t have the translation guide for. The expression on her face wasn’t fear, nor was it horror or disgust.

Gaara didn’t have a name for the pinched shape her mouth made as she kept prodding him to join the conversation, while he sat silently picking at their shared meal. The food laid out on the table was scant for three, and divided into six portions it could hardly even be called a meal—just a handful of rice, two thin skewers of chicken, and a half-portion of sad, limp stir-fried carrots and squash apiece.

Gaara suspected that the offered hand of friendship had very little to do with the kunoichi who was splitting her time between glowering across the table at Gaara and staring daggers at Rock Lee. Nor did he miss the look of startlement on Hyuuga Neji’s face at the siblings’ arrival at the picnic area beside Konoha’s Training Field Six, which he’d quickly covered up with a mask of haughty indifference.

No, it seemed it was only Rock Lee who wanted any of them there, or who had any desire for the continuation of the friendship he’d endlessly babbled about a scant few weeks ago, his arm warm and heavy over Gaara’s shoulder as Gaara had carried him back through the forests of Konoha.

And right now, even Rock Lee was paying no attention at all to Gaara and his siblings. Rather, he was ignoring his teammate’s death glare utterly in favor of holding his hand out towards the ground and making small clucking noises with his teeth.

“Lee,” Hyuuga spoke up, leaning around Tenten on the bench to snap at him. “It’s not hygienic.”

“Hush, it’s fine,” Lee whispered back, without turning his attention from the treeline of the nearby forest. “I’ll wash my hands after.”

“I’m sure our guests don’t want—”

“Uh,” Kankuro blurted, interrupting their bickering. “What is Bowl Cut doing? You good, Bowl Cut?” He craned his neck towards Gaara to mutter out of the corner of his mouth, “He didn’t take a blow to the head when you guys were fighting that bone dude, right?”

“I am just fine!” Lee chirped. “I’m just waiting for—”

Something small and furry charged up the leg of Lee’s crutch in a blur of legs.

“Is that a rat?” Temari shrieked and leapt up onto the bench, her fan snapped out in warning.

Gaara held out a hand to still her.

“It’s a squirrel,” he said, the first words he’d spoken since they’d arrived.

Lee flashed a grin at him, white teeth in a smile so wide Gaara thought his cheeks must have hurt.

“Exactly!”

The creature was sitting on Lee’s shoulder now, craning its nose down to sniff the food he had cupped in his hands.

Temari narrowed her eyes and descended from the bench, though she did not sit. She took several cautious steps back, her fingers still white-knuckled on her fan’s rivet.

“Rodents carry diseases.” Gaara recited the words as if from a textbook, without any real experience to back his supposition. This was, perhaps, the closest he’d ever been to an animal of this size; prey animals tended to regard him as a predator.

But the animal seemed utterly unconcerned with anyone else as it prodded Lee’s closed fist with its twitching nose, its bead-black eyes bright and curious. It must have felt secure with Lee, safe as its claws left stretching holes in the thin fabric of Lee’s jumpsuit.

“You don’t have to worry about Mr. Nutkins!” Lee enthused. “He’s perfectly healthy! Isn’t that right, Mr. Nutkins?”

He turned his head and squinted his eyes shut, and the squirrel on his shoulder raised up on its hindquarters to touch noses with him.

Kankuro’s lips widened into a grimace.

“Is this … normal in Konoha?”

“Nothing Lee does is normal,” Tenten replied with a matching expression.

Neji turned his nose up. “I assure you that the majority of Konoha shinobi do not make it their habit to comport with vermin.”

Lee’s teammates continued to upbraid him, but Lee seemed to have no regard for their critique. The squirrel crept down his arm to curl on his wrist, and from his vantage he fed it little bites of food from his fingers, scraps of vegetable that the animal picked up in its tiny hands and gnawed at with blunt teeth.

Gaara couldn’t tear his eyes away. The animal had a scar on its back, he noticed, a patch where the fur had been cut or burned away, the skin there thick and silvery with shine. It matched the scars on Lee’s knuckles almost perfectly in color, the friction burns of his curled left hand bestowed by Gaara’s sand.

In the end, it was Tenten who shooed the creature away, insistent that both Lee and Temari needed to eat. When Lee bounded after the squirrel in its departure, forgetting his crutch entirely, it was she who dragged him back to their group. She slung her arm casually around his shoulder—the shoulder that Gaara now knew to be warm and broad and strong—half-supporting him to deposit him back in front of his untouched food.

Gaara did not allow his face to betray a reaction, but something behind his carefully constructed facade ached to bare fangs he no longer had, gnashing its teeth at the sight.

“Rock Lee.”

Lee was crouched down between two scrubby bushes on the outskirts of Suna when Gaara approached him. It had been only a few days since Lady Chiyo’s funeral, and the closest of the mourners had yet to shed their black clothes.

Gaara suspected he would wear his for many weeks more. It was the smallest pittance he could offer in exchange for his life.

“Oh, Gaara-kun!” Lee turned to look over his shoulder. His face brightened. “Hullo!”

“What are you doing here?”

Coming closer, Gaara could see the fistful of greens Lee was clutching, their broad leaves speckled with water. They were not of Sunan provenance, and Gaara hadn’t the faintest idea where Lee might have found them. He saw, too, the tortoise kneeling by Lee’s outstretched hand, its leathery mouth chewing rhythmically.

“This is one of Gai-sensei’s summons!” Lee chirped, pointing like he expected Gaara to squat down beside him. “His name is Kametaro. Gai-sensei lets me help with feeding the turtles before they travel.”

There was a Konoha symbol painted on the tortoise’s shell, the pigment the same shade as Lee’s bright green suit. The two of them—Lee and the creature—were the most colorful things on the desert landscape at this hour, saturated by the slowly setting sun.

“How are you feeling?” Lee asked, his voice dropping low. A soft frown crossed his face. “You must be tired.”

Gaara did not stoop down at Lee’s welcoming gesture. He remained standing at Lee’s back, his arms crossed tight over his stomach.

“I’m always tired.”

“You’re welcome to rest here with me for a moment!” Lee’s teeth caught the sun when he smiled. “I’m no expert, but I suspect reincarnation really takes it out of a person.”

Gaara’s eyes drifted to Lee’s bandaged hand, the beckon of his scarred fingers in their white wraps.

He took a step forward. His feet crunched in the sand.

The tortoise lifted its wizened head and scented the air.

“The hell?”

It lumbered backwards at a surprisingly quick pace for such a stocky animal. Its voice was higher than Gaara would have expected.

“Language!” Lee scolded it.

The tortoise gave Lee a scathing look as he scurried after it, putting distance between Gaara and the two of them.

“That kid don’t smell right,” Kametaro intoned.

Lee glanced desperately over his shoulder.

“I’m certain that Gaara-kun smells just fine!” He said it more to Gaara than to the turtle.

Kametaro’s head snaked back and forth on his neck.

“Nah, he reeks of blood.” The turtle pawed at the sandy earth, churning up a dust cloud. “Get me outta here, kid.”

Gaara froze like a mouse in a hawk’s sightline. Lee’s head was whipping rapidly back and forth between Gaara behind him and Kametaro in front, his lips pursed in dismay.

“Now, if you would just—”

“Now!” The turtle snapped his jaws, snaring a mouthful of Lee’s jumpsuit where it pouched by his knee.

“I am so sorry, Gaara-kun!” Lee gathered the turtle into his arms and stood hastily. “Let me just … I’ll be right back, all right?”

With a spray of loose sand, he dashed away. Gaara was left standing there on the dry earth, fist clenched over his chest.

If Lee returned later, Gaara wouldn’t have known. He was long gone by then.

His sand transported him farther away than was likely wise with the recent security breach, but he no longer had the tailed beast within him to make him a target.

He knelt down in a particularly perilous patch of cacti near Suna’s south wall. Digging his hands into the sand there, he scrubbed at them until they were raw. He wondered when he would ever be free of the blood on them.

From a nearby bush, a nest of lizards roused, sighted him, and scattered.

“Kazekage-sama, welcome!” Hassan smiled warmly as he slid open the glass door of the Suna Reptile Rehabilitation Facility. “And you’ve brought a friend!”

Without having to look, Gaara could sense the way Lee at his shoulder straightened at the recognition, the way his hands snapped to at-attention.

“Rock Lee is serving as my temporary bodyguard while my brother is out of the village,” Gaara relayed, crossing the threshold. The Reptile Rehabilitation Facility was one of the few buildings in Suna that was not built out of cooling mud brick. It was designed instead to keep the heat and moisture in, and entering it reminded Gaara of nothing so much as stepping into one of Konoha’s many bathhouses.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gaara spied Lee’s eyebrows crumpled in a strange expression, just as quickly whisked from his face.

He adjusted the brim of his hat and pretended not to have noticed it.

Hassan clasped Gaara’s hand in both of his to shake, his skin warm with more than the ambient heat, then turned to Lee. It took a moment before Lee seemed to realize that he, too, was being offered a handshake.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Rock Lee.” Hassan smiled with all of his straight, white teeth. “My name is Hassan.”

Lee’s returning smile was laced with a strange tension.

“Please,” he said, “all of my friends call me Lee.”

The comment was dripping with formality even for Lee, who was not exactly known for his rudeness.

“Any friend of the Kazekage’s is a friend of mine.” Hassan turned and gestured around the small lobby, the hem of his white coat fluttering. The long, dark hair at his collar curled from the humidity. “Shall I give you all the grand tour, since Lee-san has never been here before?”

Gaara inclined his head just slightly, aware of the weight of Lee’s eyes on him.

“That would be fine.”

“Right this way!”

Hassan fiddled with a ring of keys on his belt, and then he was ushering them through another door and into the long, winding hall that led to the terraria.

“This first block is our administrative offices,” he explained, nodding to a cluster of plain wooden doors. “Just through there is my office.”

“Senior Researcher?” Gaara commented, “The last time I was here, you were an intern.”

A flush darkened the brown skin on the back of Hassan’s neck.

“I’ve … um, received a few promotions, largely due to the success of my outreach efforts to your office, Kazekage-sama.”

His steps quickened as he led them both down the hall.

“And this is the piece de resistance,” he enthused, before Gaara could get a word in edgewise, spreading his arms with a flourish. “The new reptile room!”

It had been like pulling teeth to get the council to agree to the additional funding allocation, but Gaara was very pleased with the results. The new terraria that lined the walls were modestly but adequately outfitted for each animal’s enrichment needs, each labeled with a silver placard and individually climate-controlled—one wall of tanks misty with humidity and the other dusty with sand. The room was noisy with the hiss of circulating air from the large pipes that ran overhead, siphoning the excess moisture from the dry tanks into a reservoir to moisten the wet tanks. It was a clever feat of engineering, the efficiency of which would pay for the renovations in water cost-savings within five years. It had been the brainchild of the now-Senior Researcher beaming at them from the center of the room and a friend of Kankuro’s from Suna’s engineering corps. The meeting of their two minds had been an act of serendipity, crossing paths in the hallway outside Gaara’s office nearly a year ago and sparking off the whole project whose outcome Gaara was now here to survey.

“Very good.” Gaara nodded his satisfaction.

“You like it?” Hassan clapped with childlike glee, his broad smile only widening. “We really cannot thank you enough for your investment in our project, Kazekage-sama!”

“My office was merely the coinpurse,” Gaara shrugged off the thanks. “The work your team does here is excellent.”

“I could bring out some of our animal educators, if you like,” Hassan offered. “Since Lee-san here hasn’t met them?”

Gaara glanced at Lee for confirmation. Lee gave him a long look back, his face drawn and serious as if he were preparing for battle, before he nodded.

Gaara refrained from shifting his expression, but deep down, he was rather disappointed. He’d postponed his tour of the new facilities specifically until Lee was scheduled to be in Suna. He’d assumed—clearly incorrectly—that Lee would enjoy such a diversion from the boring routine of guard duties, knowing his affinity for animals. Perhaps Lee didn’t like snakes; Gaara knew they were controversial animals, mostly from Temari’s complaints about the ones Gaara had tried to bring home with him. Though he’d also once heard Lee refer to a nest of killer wasps as ‘cuddly’.

Overhead, a tinny bell began to sound.

“Oh!” Hassan jumped. “That’s the temperature alert. I’ll just be a moment—I need to adjust the thermostat.”

He was gone in an instant, and in the whoosh of the hydraulic doors that heralded his departure, Gaara sidled closer to Lee.

“You seem tense,” he murmured out of the corner of his mouth. “Do you sense a threat?”

Lee’s eyes widened. He drew a sharp breath.

“No,” he said, “not at all! I just—” The pinched frown on his face only deepened. “Your friend, Hassan … he isn’t what I expected.”

Gaara waited silently for Lee to elaborate.

“He’s—um. Not exactly your typical scientist, is he?” Lee seemed to search for his words before continuing. “I … would have guessed he was a model, not a reptile researcher.”

A feeling Gaara had not acknowledged in some time surged within him. His fingers tensed as if they could form claws.

“You … find him attractive,” he said, keeping his voice carefully level.

“It’s not that—”

The doors hissed open behind them, bringing with them quick footsteps and the squeaking of cart wheels.

Lee practically leapt away from Gaara’s side.

“I went ahead and grabbed some of our more interesting specimens!” Hassan announced cheerfully. As a civilian, he was incapable of detecting chakra, and therefore was blithely ignorant of the roil of discomfort souring Lee’s.

“Our learning ambassadors are the animals that, while they’re back to full health, can’t be released into the wild,” Hassan began to explain, popping the lids of the various tanks on the cart. “For example, Cerastes here had her venom glands removed, so she’d never be able to survive in the desert.”

He took Gaara’s hand, and the horned viper slithered from Hassan’s arm and up Gaara’s own. Gaara nudged her chin gently with a finger, and she flickered her tongue at him in response. Gaara did not make a habit of picking favorites, but if pressed he would admit that the sidewinder now curling up his bicep and nosing along his shoulder was among them. She had been one of the first animals not to express fear of him, and had been a large part of the impetus for Gaara’s interest in the facility in the first place.

“Cerastes never forgets her favorite visitors.” Hassan smiled, watching the snake make itself at home around Gaara’s neck.

Lee had approached the cart, and now he was watching the exchange with that same strained expression.

“Do you want to hold her?” Gaara offered.

“No, no.” Lee held up his hands. “I’ll just …” He glanced at the cart. “Are they all as friendly as this one?”

“Hmm?” Hassan barely looked at Lee’s prodding at the various plastic tanks. “Oh, no, Cerastes is probably the most acclimated to human touch. Pyrrha, there, for example, can’t be handled by strangers.”

“Why’s that?” Lee lowered his fingertips towards the tank in which the desert death adder lay curled.

“She’s a biter.”

“But she seems so sweet!”

“What—” Hassan’s gaze snapped from Gaara to the cart, and his eyes went very wide. “You shouldn’t—!”

But Pyrrha was already winding up the length of Lee’s bandages.

Lee giggled, “Ooh, she tickles!”

Gaara should have anticipated such a turn of events, he thought to himself, watching the most dangerous and temperamental of the rehabilitated snakes wending through Lee’s fingers and raising up to exchange slow, swaying movements of their heads. It was if the two of them were caught in their own strange trance, ignorant of Hassan’s panicked gestures or his attempts to coax the snake back to her tank.

“She’s very finicky.” The bridge of Hassan’s nose colored, and he was staring at Lee with frank awe. “She doesn’t like to be touched by anyone she doesn’t know. Have you worked with snakes before, or—?”

“No, not at all.” The snake bobbed her head, and Lee nodded back at her, as if they were exchanging bows. “Animals have just always liked me.”

“That’s incredible!” Hassan’s smile was glowing. “You have to come back sometime. Do you mind if I take down your contact information?”

“Certainly,” Lee said with an absent sort of cheer.

Gaara had never pried into the specifics of Lee’s chakra detection abilities, but he assumed now that they must have been rather weak, because Lee did not respond at all to the bitter, jealous coil of Gaara’s chakra, more fanged and venomous than any specimen in the room’s terraria.

The worst part was that Hassan wasn’t doing it to be cruel. There was no sinister intent, no maliciousness in his bright eyes as he laid his hand upon Lee’s arm—the arm that Gaara still, even now, remembered the warmth of. He was doing it to be kind. Because Hassan was kind. And Lee, too, was kind, which was why he grinned brightly over at Hassan and jotted something down on paper.

Gaara was the only one with a problem, here.

Cerastes slithered down Gaara’s arm with a whisper of scales, but he hardly registered her descent to his fingers.

It had been over a year since he’d last heard Shukaku’s voice, but in the back of his mind, Gaara swore he heard the beast’s laughter.

“Takamaru’s gained weight,” Shijima announced, apropos of nothing.

The hawk was perched on her shoulder as she entered Gaara’s office with a stack of mission reports that nearly reached her nose.

“Okay,” Gaara replied absently, shuffling the papers she deposited on his desk into his inbox.

It had been a staggeringly busy week, and Gaara could hear the squeak of his desk chair’s seat cover separating from the sweat under his trousers as he shifted in it for the first time in hours. The small of his back twinged in protest at the movement.

“The head falconer told me to tell you,” Shijima continued. “Another ounce or two and it’s going to start affecting his flight speed, he said.”

“Noted.” Gaara lifted the cover of the first folder, registered the scrawl of the chuunin who’d filled out the report, and moved it to the bottom of the pile in search of something slightly more legible.

“He wants your boyfriend to lay off the extra treats when he makes deliveries to Konoha.”

“My … who?” Gaara lifted his eyes from the paperwork to scowl at his assistant.

“Rock Lee.” Shijima raised her eyebrows over the rims of her thick glasses.

“Rock Lee is not my boyfriend.”

“No?” Takamaru ruffled his feathers at Shijima’s arch tone. “So you insist on rush hand-delivery on correspondence from all of your … not-boyfriends?”

Gaara finally registered that Shijima was dangling a scroll satchel in her long fingers, freshly untied from Takamaru’s ankle.

“Give me that.” Gaara stood to snatch it from her hand, but she merely raised her arm to sally it out of his reach.

“Ah-ah-ah.” Shijima was much too tall for her own good, and she lorded her height advantage over Gaara at every opportunity, including this one. “I need a promise out of you first.” She paused at Gaara’s defiant stare, jiggling the little satchel high overhead. “Or did you not want Lee’s letter?”

“I could just take it from you with the sand,” Gaara warned her.

“And I could immobilize you before you could move your fingers,” she replied with a crescent smile, adjusting the lenses of her glasses. “Shall we race?”

Takamaru chuffed and chittered at the sudden movement of Shijima’s shoulders.

“Let’s not forget who had to stand in the aviary being lectured on raptor dietary practices for fifteen minutes, Kazekage-sama.”

“Fine,” Gaara relented. “I’ll include a reminder to Lee in my next letter.”

He settled back into his seat, and Shijima’s smile waxed into a half-moon.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” she chimed.

She tossed Gaara the scroll underhand, and he just barely caught it without the help of the sand.

“When I agreed to bring you on as my assistant, I wasn’t expecting to be extorted,” he muttered.

“Negotiation and coercion are all part of a kunoichi’s arsenal of tactics,” Shijima replied. “Would you really have employed me if it weren’t for my skills?”

Gaara merely grunted in response, turning his attention to untying the drawstring of the small bag and retrieving his letter.

Takamaru fluttered down from Shijima’s shoulder and began pecking around Gaara’s desk, looking for the jar of treats Gaara kept in his top drawer.

“None of that, now,” Shijima chided the bird, as Gaara licked his thumb and broke the seal on the scroll. “I know you just heard me say you’re getting tubby.”

Rows upon rows of Lee’s tidy, block-angled script unrolled in front of Gaara, and he barely stifled his smile. A long letter, then. Perhaps several pages, by the looks of it.

“C’mon, up you go, big boy.” A gesture of Shijima’s fingers guided Takamaru back to her shoulder. “I’m assuming I can expect your return correspondence this evening at the latest?”

Gaara glanced at his overflowing inbox, then back to the scroll on his desk, the promise of Lee’s latest anecdotes, his jokes and his stories and his inquiries about Gaara’s wellbeing.

Outside his office window, the high sun promised many more hours of the workday.

Perhaps the mission reports could wait for just a few moments. Long enough to read and compose a reply. And to remind Lee of the need to be slightly discerning, even in his sweetness.

If only for Takamaru’s sake.

Gaara had never interacted with a cat up close, though he had heard much about them. Cats were meant to be sly, scheming, intelligent but cruel. More than once, in Suna’s less-savory gossip rags, Gaara had seen his own behavior or appearance referred to as ‘catlike’.

But the kitten lounging in a patch of sunlight on Lee’s apartment floor was nothing like that at all, grey as a dust bunny and just as fluffy. She was letting out little chirps and purrs as she dozed, rolling back and forth on the tatami mats and stretching her small body like she was in the height of luxury. Her pouchy tummy was exposed to the world, her short limbs splayed lazily.

“You got a kitten,” Gaara whispered from the doorway, wary of entering the room proper and spooking the creature.

“I did!” Lee finished locking the door behind them and crossed the floor to kneel next to her. He placed a broad hand on the animal’s belly; her purr pitched loud as he gently shook her back and forth. “I had to go out and rescue Madam Shijimi’s little Tora again.”

Gaara remained by the door, slowly shedding his hat and travel cloak.

“They have jounin rescuing cats, now?” he asked. “Peacetime truly is miraculous.”

Lee laughed, the sound bright and musical in the little sunwarmed apartment.

“She’d been missing for weeks, and none of the genin or chuunin teams could track her down!” Lee reached out and cut on the kotatsu, and Gaara’s chill fingers, numbed by Konoha’s spring, ached to curl beneath its blanketed surface. “Even Akamaru lost her trail.”

“I see.” Gaara bent to remove his boots, his motions still slow and cautious. He would never quite understand Lee’s affinity for animals, but he knew well enough that his intrusion into Lee’s little idyll had the potential to ruin it utterly.

“Turns out she ran off this time to have kittens!” Lee practically squealed the words. “I found mama and her five babies in a farmer’s loft. And Madam Shijimi let me keep the runt!”

He looked up at Gaara, his eyes creased close with joy, expression beatific.

“Oh!” He seemed to suddenly notice Gaara’s hesitance. “I’m being rude. I’m sorry, come sit down, please!” He patted the floor beside him. “I know how you hate the cold.”

Gaara looked from Lee to the kitten under his hand, now pawing idly at the loose end of his bandages.

“And you’ve been traveling so long,” Lee added. “You must be exhausted.”

It had been only three days’ travel. Lee knew the distance between Konoha and Suna as well as anyone.

But Gaara was still weary. And the warmth of Lee’s home (Lee’s smile) was so terribly inviting.

He took one slow, cautious step towards Lee and the cat. Then another. Then—

The kitten reared up onto all fours, her back arching and her fur standing on end. She spat and hissed and growled.

Gaara hurried backwards until he was pressed flat against the door.

“Oops, careful little one! Be nice.” Lee lifted her daintily by the scruff, shooting Gaara an apologetic look. “She’s still basically a barn cat at this point. She’s got to get used to humans.”

Lee hefted the cat in his palm, cupping her close to his chest, and she went boneless almost as quickly as she’d gone rigid, purring up a storm with her face pressed over Lee’s heart.

“It’s almost time for her dinner,” Lee explained, climbing to his feet and walking to his kitchenette. “Do you want to learn how to feed her? She loves anyone who brings her food.”

Gaara’s fingers tensed on the wooden door behind him.

“Animals don’t like me,” he said.

“Now, you know that’s nonsense!” Lee bent to rattle around in his fridge, the rumbling kitten still clutched to his body. “You do very well with Takamaru! And your favorite snake—”

“Cerastes is trained to be docile towards humans,” Gaara interrupted. “That’s literally her job.”

“That’s as the case may be, but I still think she likes you.”

Lee turned and stood, holding a bottle that looked very much like a human infant’s.

“Go on, have a seat.” He gestured towards the kotatsu in the middle of his floor. “Just let me get her situated, and then I’ll start cooking for us.”

Gaara took his seat very cautiously, waiting with bated breath for Lee and the kitten to join him.

“She’s young,” Gaara commented, as Lee sat down beside him, the kitten in his far hand and the warmed milk and a towel in the other. “Shouldn’t she still be with her mother?”

Lee hummed. “That’s the unfortunate thing. She was too little to latch, so her mother rejected her. The other kittens were being too rough with her, too. So it was better that she was removed and hand-reared.”

“Oh.”

Lee twisted the top of the bottle, and the kitten raised her nose to sniff the air, her tiny pink mouth already opening at the scent of her dinner.

“Here, I’ll show you how.” Lee scooted closer on the floor, until his leg was pressed hip-to-knee against Gaara’s. He was as warm as Gaara remembered him being the last time they’d touched, years ago.

Lee was still talking, babbling about the milk’s temperature and consistency and the ratio of protein versus fat, dipping the towel in the open bottle and explaining … something, but all Gaara could hear was the racing of his blood in his ears.

Then Lee reached out and took Gaara’s hand in his, placing the damp towel between his fingers, and everything went very quiet. Sunlight cut through the window, leaving bright squares of light across their laps. The walls of the room felt very close, the air warm and smelling of bodies both human and animal. Lee’s strong hand squeezed around Gaara’s, just the gentlest of pressure when Gaara knew he could crush bones with those fingers. Their joined hands, guided by Lee’s, brought the corner of the towel to the kitten’s mouth.

“There you go,” Lee said softly, looking down at the furry body almost swallowed by his large, bandaged hand.

The kitten’s curled lips fastened around the towel immediately, slurping up the milk that beaded on its end.

“Not too fast.” The pressure of Lee’s hand eased. “Just enough so she can eat … there. Perfect.”

The tips of Gaara’s ears went hot at the praise. His fingertips buzzed as if stung, envenomated.

The kitten’s eyes slipped closed. Her blunt, damp nose bumped Gaara’s fingers as she ate greedily.

It was all Gaara could do to stare, captivated.

“Does she have a name?” he whispered.

“I’ve been calling her Renko.”

“Little lotus,” Gaara echoed. “It fits.”

“That’s enough now.” Lee eased the kitten back, dabbing the droplets of milk she’d spilled from the fur of her chin as she mewled in squeaky protest. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

He set her down on the surface of the kotatsu, and she tottered for a minute, her stubby little legs stumbling and the short triangle of her tail perked upright for balance. Then she looked up, blinked once, and locked eyes with Gaara.

She opened her mouth as if to meow again, but no sound emerged. Instead, the soft thrum of a purr started up once more in her chest, and she trundled a few steps forward until she was peering over the edge at Gaara.

“I think she wants you to pick her up,” Lee murmured.

Gaara reached out infinitesimally slowly with one faltering hand. His fingers trembled above Renko’s pink nose. She craned her head and sniffed tentatively at his fingers. Then, after a moment, she buffed her wet nose against his hand.

It was like instinct to move his hand down her tiny, fragile skull and along the tufted fur that lay along her spine. Renko edged closer, her purring gathering steam as she nosed at the lapel of Gaara’s jacket. He lifted her and cradled her to his chest just as he’d seen Lee do.

She was nothing like Gaara had thought to anticipate, soft-edged and friendly and utterly docile, making herself comfortable in Gaara’s palm and the crook of his elbow. Her eyes were beetle dark and doelike as she squinted them sleepily. Even these were not as Gaara expected—wide and round, not narrow and slitted.

“See?” Lee said, very quietly. Gaara had almost forgotten he was there. “She trusts you.”

That trust came all too quick, unearned. Everything Gaara had ever heard about cats had been wrong. He had nothing in common with the kitten at all, no matter what the more salacious rumors said. If there was anyone catlike in this equation, it could only be Lee. Lee with his dark eyes fixed on Gaara now, with the corners of his lips curling just like the kitten’s, with his body warm and close, his expression tranquil and trusting.

Renko nuzzled down into Gaara’s arms, her fluffy body going slack with sleep, belly rumbling her contentment. Gaara stroked the soft fur behind her ears, and Lee stayed beside him, their legs touching, long after he should have stood to begin meal preparations.

Gaara felt terribly warm, inside and out, like he had just eaten a bit of the sunlight turning orange on the kotatsu top. Like its glowing heating element was inside his chest, now. Like someone had opened his mouth and poured molten gold down his throat, and it had sealed up all the cracks in him.

“What are these?” Gaara asked, stepping out onto Lee’s balcony with Renko cradled in his arms. For the runt of the litter, she had certainly grown long and fat in just a few years, and now it took both of Gaara’s hands to hold her comfortably.

In the corner of Lee’s small balcony, in between the ceramic pots of years’ worth of gifted cacti from Gaara, was a black plastic basin attached to a whirring mechanical filter. Water trickled down from the filter and into the bowl, only to be piped back up to be cleaned again, giving the whole device the appearance of a pond with a small waterfall.

“Ahh, that’s for the pollywogs!” Lee explained in a brittle voice, following Gaara out into the cramped space. Nearly every inch of Lee’s tiny balcony was covered in projects and equipment—a toddler-sized weight training set for Metal, bags of litter for Renko, a teetering wooden perch for Takamaru and a caged cube of suet as a snack for Mr. Nutkins’ whole family of children and grandchildren when they visited, all interspersed with gardening gloves and potting soil and watering cans for the cacti. “Metal got very fascinated with frogs after he saw Naruto-kun summon Gamakichi a few weeks ago, so I thought this might be a nice learning experience for him!”

Gaara doubted that a child Metal’s age would have much to contribute to the care and keeping of a bunch of amphibians. But it had not been so long ago that children Metal’s age could enter Konoha’s Academy, so perhaps he was underestimating the boy’s maturity.

There was hardly enough space for the two of them out here, Lee edging so close to Gaara that they were nearly touching. Lee smelled of stress-sweat and baby powder, and the ends of his bowlcut were slightly grown out, as if he’d been too many weeks between haircuts. His chakra curled around him in a disorderly tangle, jarring against Gaara’s.

“When was the last time you slept?” Gaara asked, turning to get a proper look at him. There were bags beneath Lee’s eyes to rival Gaara’s own. Something terrified and protective lunged up in Gaara’s belly, grasping with blunted claws.

“I’ve just been so busy!” Lee dodged the question. In his hands he clutched a mud-dark cup of black tea, and it clattered on its saucer as his hand jittered.

“Lee,” Gaara said warningly.

Lee tossed back another mouthful of his drink, avoiding Gaara’s gaze.

“Um … I think it was Tuesday?” Even Lee’s considering nod looked frazzled. “Yes, Tuesday night.”

“Lee,” Gaara repeated, insistent. “It’s Saturday. I’m surprised you haven’t started hallucinating.”

“Um.” Lee’s eyes darted to the space past Gaara’s shoulder and back to his face. “They aren’t especially bad.” His smile was as weak and fractured as a hatched egg. “I can almost always tell them apart from what I’m actually seeing.”

Gaara drew a sharp breath.

“You’re lucky you haven’t gotten yourself or someone else killed.” He shifted Renko onto one of his shoulders, ignoring her quiet mrrp of annoyance so he could take Lee by the upper arm and steer him back into the apartment. “You need to go rest. Now.”

“Now, Gaara-kun—” Lee dug his heels into the balcony floor.

It was a wasted effort. Sand coiled out from Gaara’s gourd, seized Lee around the waist, and began dragging him across the living room.

“But it’s the middle of the afternoon!”

“Don’t argue with me.”

“I don’t have time to sleep right now!” Lee cried.

Gaara deposited Renko on the floor and focused his chakra on making sure Lee’s head didn’t bump the ceiling as he piloted him down the hall to his bedroom like one of Kankuro’s marionettes. Renko followed him a few steps, yowling her protest, but gave up as soon as it was clear Gaara’s attention was elsewhere.

“Gaara-kun!” Lee thrashed in the sand wrapping his body, his legs kicking fruitlessly. “I have to change the pollywogs’ water at five!”

“That’s hours from now,” Gaara retorted flatly.

“But before that I have to feed Renko, or she gets antsy and goes after them. And before that, I have to get Metal up from his nap so he can eat before I drop him off at Tenten’s, so that I can meet my team for their evening training, and—”

“I’ll take care of it.” Gaara pushed Lee’s bedroom door open with his toe and dropped Lee onto the unmade bed. “I’ll send a clone to let them know training is canceled for today.”

“I cannot just cancel their training!” Lee shrieked, as the sand stripped the bed of its dirty sheets and retrieved fresh ones from the linen closet, Gaara blocking the door in case Lee got it in his head to try and escape. “What sort of example does that set for them, for their sensei to shirk his duties like that?”

“A good one.” The sand lifted Lee once more to make the bed beneath him. It took quite some finangling of chakra, and the result was rather untidy, but at least the bedding was clean and smelled a sight better than the ball of blankets Gaara hauled up to deposit in Lee’s hamper. “You would let them run on empty for so long?”

“Of course not!” Lee said hotly. “Rest is crucial for growing bodies.”

Gaara crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow. The sand closed Lee’s bedroom curtains with a shriek of wooden rings on the metal curtain rod.

“I am no longer growing,” Lee pointed out, but his expression was cowed.

Lee had several inches on Gaara, but Gaara did not put voice to the thought that the both of them might have ended up growing a good bit taller if they had not spent so many of their teenage years abusing their bodies. Already the latest crop of Academy students born in peacetime towered over their parents at exam time—Gaara had seen it in both Suna and Konoha, the lingering effects of years of war and scarcity. He hoped Lee’s genin and his son would never know such hardships. Speaking of which—

“And Metal, when he’s in the Academy?” Gaara prodded. “You’ll let him go four days without sleep?”

“Metal is too young to decide if he wants to go to the Academy or not,” Lee diverged once again.

Metal had begun teething on rubber kunai when he was still in diapers, and had been outfitted with custom training weights almost as soon as he could walk.

“What son doesn’t want to grow up to be just like his father?” Gaara asked, skeptical.

There was a beat of silence where he and Lee exchanged glances, admitting that such a generalization applied to neither of them.

One of Lee’s eyelids twitched, and he rubbed the motion away.

“Rest,” Gaara insisted. He summoned the sand back to his gourd, and then it was he who crossed the room to push Lee back to the pillows with his own two hands. “I’ll make sure Metal and the animals are taken care of.”

“Are you sure?” Lee struggled against the pressure bearing him to the mattress. He must have been weary indeed, because it wasn’t much effort for Gaara to force him to lie down. “You have your own duties. I can’t possibly keep you—”

“Kankuro can manage himself at the social functions this evening,” Gaara demurred. “The actual meetings don’t start until tomorrow. Nobody requires my presence to talk nonsense and get drunk.”

“I’m sorry it’s such a wreck in here …” Lee’s eyes were wandering, hazy. They alit on a pile of unfolded clothes heaped outside his armoire. “If you’re going to do all that, the least I can do is clean up a bit in the meantime … ”

“I’ll stay in here to make sure you sleep, if I have to.” Gaara sat on the edge of the bed, and Lee’s head lolled against his thigh. His hair fell in lank and greasy clumps, sticking to his forehead.

“Please don’t trouble yourself. You don’t need to—”

“I think I might.”

Gaara could not say what intuition it was that drove him to gather Lee up into his arms, then. Nor could he name the instinct that made him pillow Lee’s head in his lap and tangle his fingers in Lee’s long-unwashed hair. He only knew that it was the right thing to do when Lee’s body slumped into his, exhausted and febrile-hot.

There was a feeling that settled over Gaara then. Like something once-loud had gone suddenly, wonderfully quiet. A peace that blanketed him just as Lee’s warmth blanketed his legs. A stillness. A rightness.

“If you’re sure,” Lee mumbled, his lips smacking and his long eyelashes already fluttering against his cheeks. “Just a few moments to rest my eyes, and then—”

“Sleep.” Gaara stroked his palm over Lee’s face, urging his eyes shut. His skin sang from the touch of Lee’s, but the melody was soft. A lullaby. “I’ll be right here.”

It was sixteen hours later when Lee finally awoke, two hours into the meeting Gaara was running beyond even his usual inconsiderate lateness for. Metal was playing quietly with blocks on the bedroom floor, and Renko was napping curled into the warm hollow left by Lee’s body in the sheets. Outside on the balcony, the water burbled happily in the pollywogs’ pond, and in the refrigerator were three overflowing bento boxes packed by Lee’s genin team in a fit of competitive pique for Lee to eat and judge later.

Gaara was still sitting on the bed beside him, his fingernails scratching idle patterns on Lee’s scalp.

Lee stretched and yawned, blinking blearily in the mid-morning light.

“Good morning,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

A grey squirrel hopped up onto the windowsill and rapped its claws against the glass.

And it ended up being a very good morning indeed.