Work Text:
Lee is not fragile; no one who has seen him train or fight would ever say that. He is skin and flesh and bone and power that comes from being ignored and denied. A prodigy evens out, but hard work rules supreme. And Lee has always worked to earn his desires.
That is the matter between them—Lee’s confidence rises as Gaara hesitates.
Gaara cannot touch Lee without ruining him. He came so close once before (even though his siblings say ‘that was the one tail’, as if the miasma that crept around him absolved him).
It was the energy from his hands, the focused yet fractured nature of his thoughts.
Soulmates are not real, but Gaara returns to Lee time and again. He won’t touch Lee, even as he sees Lee advance, believe in his future.
Gaara aches to kiss him, to taste him, to see if his goodness extends that deep. To know if the tang of copper and iron turns sweet when blood is drawn as a byproduct of passion.
He wants to smooth the creases in Lee’s forehead, touch the patches of grey starting to appear in his hair.
Time is precious and finite and Gaara lets it slip like sand from his gourd.
Because having Lee means losing him eventually. Even this, the bare whisper of Lee he allows himself to have, threatens chaos when it spills.
Gaara has lost so much already, all of them have, and he doesn’t know what Lee expects to happen. How Lee can hope.
Redemption is not on offer to monsters.
*
Naruto comes to Suna, Lee accompanying on bodyguard duty, and Gaara can barely meet Lee’s gaze.
There are promises inherent in the smolder Lee casts on him, covenants Gaara wants to bind himself to. He bites his tongue and begs to imagine a simpler existence.
Lee’s hands clench into fists, and Gaara imagines tracing that line of muscle from his wrist up his arm and doing his worst.
His throat is dry and he sips his water, wondering if the heat subsuming him is all in his mind.
*
He calls himself a coward in the emptiness of his office at three am. It’s not a comment others would dare to make. Gaara has enough sharp edges left around his reputation that accusations of pusillanimousness are not something easily applied.
But in his head, where he so often imagines kissing Lee and Lee moves closer, it’s all he can think to call himself in the reality of the dry desert air and loneliness that creaks in his spine.
*
Lee doesn’t ask, he acts, and Gaara clings to the temerity of the kiss.
If Lee had sought permission, Gaara’s hesitation would have stretched between them.
Gaara follows the lead of Lee’s mouth as the kiss lengthens, a complex softness with each press of their lips.
He trembles: the sand cannot protect him when the defenses failing are emotional.
Lee’s hands are calloused and steady, parrying Gaara’s insecurities like they never existed at all.
He pulls Lee closer and lets nebulous thoughts of heartache dissipate with each touch.