Archive of Our Own

Like any love story, Gaara meets Lee during a very strange time in his life.

At twenty-five, he finished his Ag-sci degree, moved home, and immediately found that his rural, backwater town had absolutely fuck all in his realm of expertise. He also found the only place hiring was -

"Kia ora, welcome to Burger King. Please place your order when you’re ready.” Temari is a ghost in Gaara’s headset, present in their skody little restaurant long after she’d gone to run her own store in big bad Tāmaki Makaurau. Overachiever, he thinks, with just a touch of bitterness.

Her voice is a reprimand, enough to have Gaara craning away from the wall and sliding his vape into his pocket, a lurid green flash beside the horrendous black polyester of his uniform trousers. Vapour, lovingly coined ‘sour apple kiwi’ is batted away from his eyes as he shoulders open the door beside the dumpster. ‘Sour apple kiwi,’ supposedly, but it tastes more like piss and vinegar than anything even closely resembling a fruit.

Gaara coughs smog from his throat, presses the button on the side of his headset and speaks, “You can place your order now.”

“Oh, sorry!” The customer yelps, “I thought you were a robot.”

“Automated message.” Then, he repeats himself, “You can place your order now.”

Customers like this have Gaara’s teeth itching. His fingers claw by his sides with effort not to shriek ‘fucking hurry up!’

Patience is not a virtue easily afforded to someone whose entire life is balanced on a needlepoint of run, fry, pack, serve, run, fry, pack, serve, rinse, fucking repeat. It’s a goddamn mantra some days, a nightmare at worst. Some mornings he wakes to the beep of his alarm and is terrified he’s letting chips burn.

“Sorry, sorry, um, may I please have… hm… ten creamy mayo cheeseburgers? And, I am so sorry to be a pain, but I would like the cheese taken out, thank you!”

Gaara’s still lingering by the lockers, drink bottle in hand, but he mouths an expletive now, glances over to where Kiba’s leaning listlessly against the burger line counter. “Anything else?”

He makes his way into the drive thru booth. Naruto’s loitering by the window, looking out into the endless ocean of dark around them, even though Kakashi’s told him time and time again he can’t leave it open when there aren’t customers.

Summer nights bring an insufferable heat to their booth that can only be eased by leaving it open. Though this is leagues better than winter, which clouds the windows with dripping condensation and has Gaara’s hands mottled blue-white-purple. The only way to ease this is by wearing the hideous, hand-me-down jackets with Burger King emblazoned on the breast. With a smell so foul from literal years without a wash, it’s preferable to freeze.

“A bottle of water, please!”

He swipes his keycard in the till, keys in ten creamy mayos, one bottle of water, as requested. It’d be cheaper to make one of them a combo. Gaara can’t be arsed upselling when it’s ten hours into his double and his back aches like a toddler is jumping up and down on it.

“Ten creamy mayos, no cheese, and a water. Anything else?”

“No, thank you so much!”

Gaara sighs, sends the order through to Naruto’s till for payment then heads out to help Kiba with the burgers. Already, Kiba is diving around with such frantic energy that any hair not in his godawful rattail has frizzed up in a brown halo. “Drive up when you’re ready.”

It began with a Tuesday night double shift, when Gaara was running on so little sleep his eye bags felt more like scars than skin and he was no longer sure he was actually a real person. It began with Naruto coming down from the drive thru booth with his hands behind his head and his perpetually pink-glazed eyes creased in amusement.

“You,” He says, “are tu meke.”

Naruto’s the kind of Pākehā that likes to piss off other Pākehā by sliding te reo into every sentence. Usually, when he comes back like this, it means he’s succeeded. Gaara never pities the ute-driving farmers who drive off in a plume of diesel smoke because they can’t handle a simple ‘ ka kite.’

“What have I done now?” Plastic gloves like soggy paper flutter wetly into the bin, weighed down by the sheer amount of sweat Gaara’s hands have produced during his race to sauce ten burgers. The smell of mayo is an assault made only more offensive when Gaara realises it’s coming from his own shirt. Oil will ensure this is no easy removal. Luckily for Gaara, he keeps industrial sized containers of Vanish Napisan Oxi Action on hand for exactly this.

“Bro!” Naruto’s snapback comes off, eternally backwards despite Kakashi’s best attempts to keep it facing frontways. If he weren’t a nepotism hire, Naruto wouldn’t have made it a week. “Bro, that customer wanted me to tell you your voice is nice.”

Beside Gaara, Kiba hastens to swallow the pilfered meat patty he’d shoved into his mouth whilst ducked down to toss his gloves. Gaara can’t be arsed to tell him he’s got the CCTV’s blindspot wrong, especially less arsed when Kiba chokes, “He didn’t! Mr Robot McGee over here? Surely you’re stitching him up!”

“He fuckin’ did and I’ll tell you what else, he wasn’t ugly! A bit weird looking, but, like, not ugly. Like - like neither of them would be punching if they banged. Y’know, ‘cause Gaara - well - Gaara’s - he’s, y’know.”

“Are you calling me weird looking? You, with the -“ Gaara drags three fingers down his cheeks in imitation of the triplicate scars on either side of Naruto’s nose.

“Oi, I’ll scrap you out, dickhead.”

Gaara ignores him.

“So you’ve never even seen his face,” Kankurō chews on an old fry, so soggy it’s bent neatly in half between his fingers, “But the mere mention of him has you this embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” Arguing with Kankurō is futile, especially when Kankurō’s learned to read Gaara as well as he has through years of trial and error. The dumpster beside them smells especially vile whenever Gaara catches sight of the food mashed between Kankurō’s teeth.

“Oh, sure, cunt. You’re blushing hard out - and I haven’t seen you blush since Tem and I caught you and Naruto-“

“Fuck off. I thought I told you not to talk about that.”

“And I thought you could handle your crushes better.”

“It isn’t a crush.” Gaara takes a deep drag on his vape, blows it directly into Kankurō’s face as punishment. Kankurō, the nasty stain that he is, inhales just as deeply and blows wisps of vapour right back.

At least weekly, Kankurō insists on the two of them catching up. Apparently he worries that without Temari there to corral Gaara’s less social tendencies into social tendencies, Gaara’s going to hermit himself away to die like a lonely old man. It just so happens that these visits coincide with Gaara’s shift and usually involve him slipping behind the counter with a holler for whoever’s on the line to make him a Whopper.

Today, it was Kiba.

Kiba hates Kankurō.

Kiba also insists on making Kankurō’s burgers purely to spit in them, and even knowing this, Kankurō eats every bite with an oily smile. It’s a nausea inducing thought, made especially nauseating when Kiba totters up beside Kankurō and jerks his head towards the bathroom.

“Okay, sure, sure. What if this guy’s a creeper? Also, gizza chooch on your vape?”

“You’re sleeping with a guy I’ve seen pick food off the floor and serve it to customers, I don’t think your opinion counts. And, no, get your fucking own.”

If anything, Kankurō’s grin becomes all the more smarmy - “At least I’m sleeping with him. I assume your loser ass is just whacking it to the voice of a customer who may or may not be old as shit. Like saggy balls, wrinkled ass, the works.”

“Naruto said-“

“Naruto is stitching you up, Gaara. Think about it, making you fall in love with some old man would be crack up. I actually wish I’d thought of it myself.” To add insult to injury, Kankurō leans over and snatches Gaara’s vape from his hand before he has the chance to fend him off.

Disgusting. Gaara’ll have to wipe it off before he dares put it to his own lips again. “Just because you didn’t realise the guy you were sleeping with was in retirement, doesn’t mean I would.”

The dumpster area is walled off from the car park by flimsy corrugated iron walls. It’s almost enough to make it feel as if they’re in their own isolated bubble out here, only a little - until the purr of an engine sidles up beside them, until headlights slide under the gaps between iron and concrete. Gaara sighs and waits for the beep of the drive thru to pierce his eardrums.

“Kia ora, welcome to-“

“I’ll deal with you later.” Though Kankurō’s eyes may be hidden behind the most enormous pair of reflective purple sunnies Gaara’s ever seen, his eyes are undoubtedly narrowed. Bullshit. What is far more likely is that Kankurō will go home, drown his sorrows in a V bottle bong, then fall asleep planning the rap album he’s never going to make. By the time he wakes up, he’ll have forgotten about this conversation entirely.

“Whatever.” The concrete beside the dumpster is always suspiciously wet and a little sticky, a layer of grime sticking to the rear of Gaara’s pants. As Gaara stands, he feels it plastering his boxers to his skin. You would think the smell would be intolerable, but it’s barely a ripple in the cesspool of cloying, inescapable grease-stink.

But Kankurō’s right. It’s been three months of this customer coming through, every Tuesday night without fail. Every Tuesday night he orders ten creamy mayos, no cheese, and a bottle of water, and Gaara’s never even seen his face. Only briefly has he even heard his unfiltered voice as the ‘thank you ever so much’ that he throws Kiba’s way when Kiba delivers the bulging bag through the second window.

It’s not that Gaara couldn’t be the one to hand him his food - he just… has a little difficulty with face to face interaction sometimes. Usually, only one person is needed to handle drive thru unless there’s a rush but because Kakashi’s so oddly accomodating, Naruto’s been unofficially sidled in to handle the payment window.

(“So you can experience some enrichment beyond burger line and fryers.” Kakashi had said, phone held to its familiar spot before his face. Nobody knows what he spends so much time on there for, though Choji swears up and down he once saw a series of graphic sexts from Kakashi’s boyfriend, Gai.

“I swear to Harold the fuckin’ Giraffe that I saw Gai’s asshole, call me crazy all you like.”)

“Can I get uh…” The customer finally manages. In Gaara’s stomach, something nasty curdles. It’s Tuesday night, and he could’ve sworn it’s Creamy Mayo Guy’s usual time. He wedges himself in beside Naruto, folds his arms in wait.

“Can I get uhhhhh. Um. Can I…”

“Can I get uhhhh…”Naruto mimics, letting his face fall completely lax. His eyes roll, tongue lolling from his mouth, head tilted all the way back on his neck like a broken hinge. “Ugh. Fucking hell.”

“What was that?” The customer adds a little incredulously, and Naruto snaps to attention. Immediately turns his microphone off.

“Nothing.” Gaara steps on Naruto’s foot, “Place your order, please.”

“Can I get -“

In this pause, Naruto mouths idiot. Gaara stifles a snort and turns back to his till.

Being this far back in the store, this cut off, Gaara might as well be a robot. Beyond fucking around with Naruto between cars, his interactions are so automatic he could get through them in his sleep. It should be completely and utterly dehumanising - instead it feels like reprieve from the sweat-bustle of the rest of the store. Almost. Until they get dumbasses like this.

“Can I get a… large Whopper combo with Lift…?”

“Yep, large Whopper combo with Lift. Drive up to the next-“

“I’m not done, mate. Another Whopper on its own.”

“Okay, yep. Anything else?”

It’s silent for far too long.

“Okay, drive on up when you’re-“

“Woah, I also want a creamy mayo. Jesus. Rush me, why don’t you?”

“So, you’ve got a large Whopper combo, another Whopper, and a creamy mayo.”

“…The combo’s with Lift, did you get that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Did you want anything else?”

“Aww, yeah, nah, mate. Don’t tempt me, eh. Wife’s gonna be pissed if she finds out as it is.”

“Drive on up when you’re ready.”

After the customer has paid and shuffled forward to the second window, Gaara turns to Naruto and pinches his arm as hard as he can. Naruto yelps and falls against the counter. “The fuck was that for, bro?”

“Tell me Creamy Mayo Guy isn’t old. Tell me you aren’t trying to stitch me up.”

It isn’t, honest to God, belief in Kankurō’s ribbing that has Gaara asking… Definitely not. He hasn’t even been wondering for hours whether he’s right and that Creamy Mayo Guy is in actuality some pensioner who spends his meagre retirement funds on burgers and tells drive thru operators their voices are nice and - He hasn’t. Not even once.

As if sensing Gaara’s panic, Naruto claps Gaara on the shoulder heartily, chortling, “Of course not! He’s, like, mid-twenties tops. I saw him take a Snapchat while he was waiting and that phone was held at shoulder-level, my boy. Dude’s youthful as fuck.”

Speaker is easy. It’s a set script, essentially. No meaningless conversation about someone’s day or the weather, none of that usual shit that sets Gaara’s teeth on edge. Barely any trauma dumping from customers who decide the middle of a rush is the best time to tell an unwilling stranger about how their husband got hit by a car. Usually not.

But when Creamy Mayo Guy comes through, Gaara finds himself wishing he would.

“Anything else?” He asks, wondering if this might be the day that Creamy Mayo Guy emotionally unloads on him for an hour. He’d even take hearing about his husband getting hit by a car - because at least then he’d know he might be newly single.

“Ah, no, thank you so much! I’ll drive up now!”

He’s so damn polite, Gaara doesn’t even have to ask him. For the first time, Gaara thinks maybe he’ll stick around to catch a glimpse of Creamy Mayo Guy’s face over Naruto’s shoulder.

“Gaara!” Kiba shouts, “Chip freezer’s empty as, bro!”

Gaara pokes his head around the door to glare with all the fury he can muster, “Get Choji to do it.”

“Choji’s busy. Pleeeease!”

By the time Gaara’s emerged from the walk-in, simultaneously iced over and dripping wet, Creamy Mayo Guy’s headlights are fading. Gaara has the urge to grip Kiba’s rattail and yank so hard it tears right off his head. Then burn it. And force him to eat it.

“He said your voice is nice again.” Naruto, in the middle of punching out a hole in one of the cardboard syrup boxes, grins a little nefariously. “He asked me what you look like. That’s, like, hard out gay if I ever saw it.”

If he ever saw it, coming from a guy who gets blackout and sucks his loser best friend off every other weekend. Ah, such is the nature of good old-fashioned, deeply engrained, and harmful Kiwi binge drinking culture.

An urge wrestles with Gaara’s better judgement. It even manages to force his mouth open before he hastily snaps it shut, takes his cap off to shake out his icy hair, and studiously ignores whatever nonsense Naruto is about to spout.

“And I said - since I know you want to know, don’t even bother lying - that you were kinda short, kinda sometimes look like ya needa shit real bad, but also kinda hot. Thank me later.” He turns and screws the nozzle into the new box then tosses the old one at Gaara’s head. “Can you break this down? Hands are fuckin’ sore as.”

The box misses Gaara’s head only to hit his wrist, knocking his hat from it. It then splashes into a sink full of warm, soapy, filthy water. Gaara watches a lone lettuce shred float in the wake of it, then sighs. The syrup bag inside the box leaks remnants of cola syrup, tinting the water brown. And the box itself - Gaara can’t help but sigh again - already darkening into a soggy mess. And, of course, Naruto is long gone.

“May I please have…”

Gaara’s a little obsessed with Creamy Mayo Guy, if he’s honest. He’s woken in the night more than once with a stiffy like a tree trunk and the words ‘thank you ever so much’ echoing in his ears as if it’s far filthier than graphic depictions of actual sex. God forbid he end up with some kind of Pavlovian response to the word ‘creamy.’

“Ten creamy mayos, no cheese, bottle of water. Anything else?”

Please want something else.

Worse still, out of the corner of his eye he can see Kiba waiting. Likely to dump some miserable job on Gaara that he can’t be bothered doing himself. Wanker.

“I will be fine, thank you! I will drive up now!”

“Wait!” Gaara rushes, then curses himself in the same breath. “Um - uhhh…“ He sounds exactly like the cooked customers he so despises.

“Oh, sorry for assuming! Is there something the matter? I can order something else if-“

“Not at all, just… Have a nice night.”

After a pause, during which Naruto waggles his eyebrows like the asshole he is, Creamy Mayo Guy sounds as if he’s smiling when he replies, “I hope you have a wonderful night too. I look forward to talking with you next time.”

Gaara doesn’t know if he’s still at the speaker box, but he says “me too” and hopes Creamy Mayo Guy can hear it. Right before, of course, he’s whisked off to do yet another shit job.

“Can I get, uhhh…”

The drive thru is so backed up there are headlights reaching from the road outside, and even then, it won’t ease up potentially for the rest of the night. Gaara’s feet ache in his boots, his back aches from the slight lean even he needs to get into to reach the till, and his underarms reek. Must be nearing hour eleven.

“What does Creamy Mayo Guy look like?”

With a smile that could only be described as devious, Naruto folds his arms, leans right into Gaara’s personal space (despite Gaara insisting time and time again he not do that). “Why d’ya wanna know?”

“Just curious.”

“Oh, shit!” Naruto leans in still closer, wafting grease and unbrushed teeth. His uniform shirt is saturated when it brushes against Gaara’s folded arms, leaving damp smears and stickiness in its wake. “Oh, shit, dude, you wanna bang him, don’t you?”

Behind them, where the frying vats beep and sizzle, a clatter comes. Quickly followed by a nose thrusting itself into the archway, then the tousled hair of Gaara’s least favourite coworker. “Is this Creamy Mayo Guy?”

“You could mind your own business, Kiba.” Gaara adds after Naruto nods furiously.

“Hmm… Can I get a, uh, uhhhh.”

“Creamy Mayo Guy’s - I dunno. Like I said, kinda weird looking. Kinda reminds me of a turtle? But, oh, he’s super buff. His arms are like, phwoar, y’know?” Naruto hums thoughtfully, “I’d maybe bang him.”

“Ooh, ‘maybe’ - a strong endorsement coming from you.” Kiba adds, “Would I bang him?”

“Kiba, you regularly root a guy who eats Milo like it’s cereal. I don’t think you’re legally allowed to have standards.”

Gaara’s on the line nearly a week later. Underneath his cap, his hair is plastered to his forehead and he knows without looking that sweat is tracking scarlet rivulets down his temples. Red hair dye doesn’t take particularly well to getting wet. The white plastic of his shower floor is stained a light pink from it and continues to stain right until it’s time to refresh his roots.

The cycle repeats.

The line is always overheated to disgusting extremes. Crushed between chip fryers and burger fryers, the heat seems to waft inwards to where Gaara is already working himself to exhaustion. This is the third pair of plastic gloves he’s gone through in half an hour, the heat causing them to soften and rip under movements even slightly too eager. His break feels years away.

Above his head, the screen flicks up another order. Gaara wastes three minutes wrangling another pair of gloves onto his damp, pruny hands and gets to work. In another three minutes, he’s sliding two Rebel Whoppers and four creamy mayos, no cheese, to the packing bench. He’s a fast worker, he’ll pat himself on the back for that. It’s his saving grace when anyone grows a little too fixated on the fact that he’s near incapable of making conversation with someone he hasn’t already stared ominously at for a few days beforehand.

He waits for Shino to finish packing the chips into the bag. Then, as Shino turns to scoop another oil-dark cardboard box full, his hand slips directly onto the hot metal of the warmer. He hisses, an angry red welt already raising on the meat of his palm.

“Fuck’s sake. Can you take that to the car?”

Oh, God.

“I-“

Shino’s already sweeping past to thrust his hand underneath the cold tap.

It has to be done. In situations like these, Temari would put her hands on her hips and tell him that ignoring the shitty thing doesn’t make the thing less shitty, nor does it make it go away. Gaara steels himself, peels his sopping gloves from his hands then grabs the bag. His fingers leave wet marks all over the brown paper.

Gaara should have known this would be a shitty day when he woke before the sun to the haunting coo of a ruru directly outside his window. At the time he’d wondered who’d died. Now he wonders if it was foreshadowing of his own demise.

It’s just to the window. It’s less than ten steps. Ten steps. One, his standard-issue, non-slip, greasy black boots eat hideous brown-painted concrete far too quickly. He’s already on five, fearing the parallelogram of light that beams through the window and onto the ground.

He slides the window open with a heavy thunk of not-nearly-reinforced-enough-for-this-shithole glass against metal, ready to thrust his fist out of it without even looking to see if there’s someone waiting.

“Thank you, that was so quick!” A voice says, and Gaara whips up to see big, shiny eyes, button nose, dark hair so glossy it looks wet in the afternoon sun. Even if this guy has the dorkiest haircut Gaara’s ever seen, slashed blunt above dominating eyebrows, curving over his ears and around his nape. Definitely created with guidance of a bowl. But he’s fucking cute regardless. He could be bald and Gaara would still think he’s cute.

Oh, he thinks, with no small amount of derision at the cliche of it all. Cute Customer flicks his wrist out to catch the bag before it falls.

“Woah, that was close!” His voice is painfully familiar. Gaara wonders if maybe he’s an old uni classmate, with the way he looks to Gaara as if trying to gauge a reaction.

“Y-yeah. Sorry, uh, clumsy me.” Clumsy me? Who the fuck says that?

Cute Customer scratches his neck with his other hand, Gaara zeroing in on his thumb poking from a slit in tight, dark green activewear. A nylon zip-up hugs his shoulders, zipped right to the throat. Gaara looks, drinks him in, finds it so difficult to escape the electric fence-wire snapping their pupils together.

A snicker sounds from behind Cute Customer’s head. Gaara instinctively turns to it, where a girl leans right up the back of the driver’s seat.

“Tenten!” Cute Customer hisses, “Sorry, she - Well, er. You are still, um, holding the-“

Gaara lets go of the bag in a rush. Only, Cute Customer’s gripping it by just the corner. As if toppled by cringy romcom tropes, the bag sags like melted ice cream in Cute Customer’s hand, then promptly rips all down the middle. Neatly packaged burgers and fries plop into the shrubbery beneath the window in an explosion of white, yellow, and red sauce.

“S-sorry, I’ll. I’ll replace-“

“No, it is fine! I can just-“

“No, I’ll make it again. I’m so sorry. Let me just-“

Gaara runs away from the window at a velocity so terminal it nearly becomes terminal as his feet slide out from him. His arms windmill, flailing for purchase. The world shifts into a greasy blur right before he smacks his head on the floor. Hard. His last thought before the spots in his vision spread to complete black is - ‘nonslip my ass.’

“Ka pai, bro, ka pai.” Naruto does a slow-clap when Gaara trudges into the booth on Tuesday evening. “I’m impressed you made it back. Y’know, considering - y’know, head injury an’ all.”

“If you mention it again, I’m bottling you.” He and Naruto have something of an easy camaraderie. Mostly signed off with insults and threats of grievous bodily harm, but easy nonetheless. Naruto is probably the closest to a real friend Gaara’s had in years.

Even if he’s a prick.

Underneath Gaara’s cap, bandages cradle the back of his head where it had so helpfully split open when he hit it. He’d had two days off, guilt souring every torturous second spent in bed with a bag of frozen peas pressed to his head, leaking ice-water and slush onto his pillow.

“I’m just expressing concern for my,” Naruto bats his eyelashes, “Darling work hubby.”

Naruto only speaks like this when he wants something.

“What do you want?”

“Well…” Naruto busies himself pretending to check the receipt printer’s paper, clicking it open and pushing it shut several times over. “Sasuke’s - like, he said he has this dumb, fancy family dinner thing and he wanted me to…”

They must be finally dating. From what Gaara knows, meeting the family is the big ste-

“He wants me to pick him up after, so, um, I’m gonna bounce at eight. As far as Kakashi’s gonna know, I forgot to clock out, y’know? Please, Gaara, please cover for me.”

Gaara’s on until ten, which means, two hours of talking to customers. Two hours of asking ‘cash or card?’, of managing awkward smalltalk, of telling them to have a nice night, of wanting to bash his goddamn head against his till until the screen shatters. Two. Hours.

Creamy Mayo Guy. Gaara’s going to have to talk to him in person. He’s going to see what Gaara looks like and he’ll undoubtedly be disappointed with what he finds.

But Naruto looks to him with such uncharacteristic delicacy glossing his lashline, a wobble in the plump of his lower lip. Like a bastard kea right before it tears the rubber out of your windscreen. “Please?”

Temari would say that the first step to getting better at things it being shitty at them. Funny, how a majority of her advice usually involves the words ‘shitty things’ and ‘not shitty things.’ In another, less Burger-King-ed life, she’d make a killing as a motivational speaker.

“Fine.” Gaara rolls his eyes as Naruto sinks dramatically to his knees, feigning kissing his boots but keeping a fair distance due to the very appealing oily film slicking the tops of them.

“Chur, I love you.” Naruto says and drags himself upright, slugging an arm around Gaara’s shoulders, “I love you so much, my bro.”

At six-thirty, Naruto’s supposedly contraband phone (banned after he was caught filming TikToks mid-shift) vibrates. The sound comes from somewhere around the floor, exposed when he ducks down to fish it from his sock. “Aw, fuck, gotta boost. Sasuke’s, like, completely fuckin’ munted and his Aunty’s boyfriend’s being an egg. Fulla’s on the turps.”

Please refer to: Kiwi binge drinking culture.

With no wait for a response, Naruto slaps the window open where a car has been stalled in wait for the line to move forward and hoists himself out.

“Say hi to Lee for me!”

“Oi, dickhead. Who’s Lee?” Gaara reaches for his ankle to no avail. Naruto’s long since ducked around the rich-white-mum-style SUV and disappeared. “Dickhead! Who the fuck is Lee? Ah, sorry, ma’am.”

Rich White Mum seems none too impressed.

“Your, um, your total comes to-“ Gaara’s lungs decide this is an appropriate time to forget how to use oxygen, “Th-thirty-four thir-huh-teen, is that -“ He coughs “- cash or card…?”

“Huh? I can’t hear you, sorry.” The customer waiting so patiently in her car cups her hand around her ear and leans in. If only she weren’t being so polite about it, because then Gaara could tell her to get the fuck out of his drive thru. Maybe burn off a little steam. Instead, he stands here with his hair definitely sweating crimson down his jaw and a car waiting behind her to pay. There’s also someone at the speaker waiting to place their order. And a line behind them.

The cameras would probably see if he took a hit of his vape to calm down. And nark to Kakashi, who would begrudgingly take him aside for a performance review neither of them are happy to be at.

“Your total - it’s-“ Gaara’s throat frogs, his voice dying, dead, fuckfuckfuck, but he clears it into some semblance of clarity, “Thirty-four thirteen. Is that cash or card?”

“Bub, I’m gonna need you to speak up, you’re too quiet.”

“Thirty-four thirteen, cash or card?”

“I’m really sorry-“

“Thirty-four thirteen! Cash? Card?” Gaara near-shouts, clapping a hand over his mouth too late, “Sorry, it’s just. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, bub, cash please.” Then, just as Gaara was growing to maybe sort-of like her, she hands over a hundred dollar note when he’s already short on small change.

“I already fuckin’ told you, I gave you a fifty.”

This, Gaara handles a little worse - “No, you didn’t. You clearly handed me a twenty.”

The man - Ute driver (go figure) - glares at Gaara with so much blood pouring into his already red, sweaty, piggish face, that Gaara’s briefly concerned he’ll end up covered in gore when the cunt inevitably bursts. Every furious arm wave wafts sticky-stale Tui beer and body odour. “D’ you think I’m stupid?” Yes. “I run my own damn construction company, I think I’d know how to handle money, you cheeky little bugger!”

“The till says you gave me a twenty. If I go to the trouble of looking through the CCTV in this booth, you know what I’ll find? You handing me a twenty. You know what I’ll find if I open up my till? No. Fifties.” This is undoubtedly the wrong way to handle this interaction. As far as Gaara’s seen, Naruto’s never had anyone get this angry. But… What would Naruto do? “If you want to argue that badly, say ka kite to eating in the next half hour.”

“Excuse-“

“Your whānau are hungry, right? Uhh... I know you, ah, put in mahi to... get kai on the... table, but-“

“Excuse me? We farkin’ speak English here.”

Bingo. And with that, the Ute speeds off to the next window. Gaara tips his head out the still open window to see the man wildly gesticulating. Drunk asshole’ll be working hard if he wants to get past Kiba with that bullshit.

Cameras be damned, Gaara takes a hefty drag of sour apple kiwi and spits vapour.

It’s been A Night. The booth’s in shambles. Gaara’s sat underneath the window with his forehead on his knees in a brief moment of respite. The back of his head throbs. At quarter to ten, Creamy Mayo Guy hasn’t made a whiff of an appearance and maybe that’s got Gaara close to packing a sad. Maybe.

If he had to be brutally honest, he might’ve said he thought what they had was special. If you could call only speaking with a human/robot buffer special. Without even realising it, Gaara had started to look forward to his Tuesday shifts - even if his Tuesday shifts are usually fourteen hours of uninterrupted idiocy. Or, were.

“Hey, Gaara?” Kiba pokes his head in, “Y’alright?”

“‘m fine.”

“Oh, great! Great. Um.” A shoe nudges into his line of sight, attached to a leg, attached to Kiba, who is looking down at him with barely concealed pity. “The, uh. Chip freezer’s low.”

If Gaara could lean over and bite Kiba’s ankle right now without consequences, he would in a heartbeat. “On it.”

“Chur.”

If this night had a face, Gaara would grip it by the cheeks and ask it why it so desperately needed to make him miserable. Instead, he makes his way over to the walk-in and heaves the door open. Inside, in frosty air that should smell of just that, something rancid lingers.

“Hey, Kiba?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you stop coming into the walk-in just to drop your guts?”

“That’s crack up! Yeah, nah, not gonna happen.”

It was worth a shot.

As Gaara’s hefting a ten kilo box of frozen chips on his forearms, the drive thru beeps. He balances the box between the wall, his arm, and his hip to press the speaker button on his headset before continuing his slog towards the open freezer.

“Kia ora, welcome to Burger King. Please place your order when you’re ready.”

“Hi, um, are you still open?”

It can’t be. Gaara schools his face into nonchalance while simultaneously biffing the box into the freezer with strength he didn’t know he possessed. The freezer shudders, wobbles, but stays miraculously upright. Not that Gaara sticks around to see it. “Ah, ye-es, place your order.”

Oh, Kankurō would piss himself at the voice crack.

“Wonderful! May I please get ten-“

“Ten creamy mayos, no cheese, and a bottle of water, right?”

Just as Gaara’s worried he has overstepped, that Creamy Mayo Guy is calling the cops to report he has a creepy, creepy stalker or has driven off in disgust, he receives a bashful reply, “I am that predictable, huh?”

“A little. Drive up when you’re ready.”

On his way back to the booth, Gaara’s palms stick to his pants when he goes to wipe them dry. His boot slips, a panicked flutter lighting in his chest when he remembers cracking his head the other day. He manages to grab the wall before he can do it again. At the end of the store, the only answer Gaara could ever want waits.

If this was a cheesy (no pun intended) romcom, this is where dramatic music would fade in and his walk would be filmed in slow-mo by rosy, vaseline smeared lenses. He’d turn the corner, clean and fresh, hair blowing away from his face, and he’d find the man of his dreams waiting. He might climb out of the window even, might fall into Faceless Dream Man’s arms and have the life pashed out of him.

Instead, Gaara skulks into the booth as if possessed by a rogue gremlin spirit and decisively looks at the floor as he slides the window open. What if Creamy Mayo Guy was just a fantasy? What if he put him on a pedestal and this is the moment where he finally falls off?

“Hi, your total is-“ Because Gaara knows it by heart. He hasn’t even keyed the order in yet.

“Oh.” Creamy Mayo Guy says, italicised, and audibly lets out held breath. Gaara’s head snaps up, only to make eye contact with Cute Customer. The Cute Customer who had seen Gaara run away then immediately knock himself out.

“You-“ Gaara says, “I’m sorry about your food.”

“I am sorry about your head! Are you okay? I saw you being carried away by your coworkers.”

Even better. Humiliation makes a festering home in Gaara’s ribs, his head wound throbbing all the more for the blood pounding through his body.

“It’s fine now. Just a little noggin bump.” That’s something Kankurō would say, god. “Your total is-“

Creamy Mayo Guy jumps in, “I just - I am so sorry to interrupt but I wanted to say, erm, I apologise if I made you uncomfortable. Naruto said he has been passing on my compliments but - I know I can sometimes - I get a little - well, I take things too far. You are so much cuter than I was anticipating so I understand if - ohmygoddidisaythatoutloud?”

Gaara stalls. Tries to process that stream of raw, unfiltered thought before his mind can formulate a response. “Are you Lee? Naruto said to say hi to Lee and I assumed - if you aren’t Lee, ignore that.” This is exactly why Gaara stays behind the comforting, warm embrace of the speaker box. No good can ever come of face-to-face interaction.

“I am! Rock Lee in full, but just Lee is okay… eh-” Rock Lee dangles from his car to inspect Gaara’s name badge, pinned innocuously to his breast amid stripes of green, red, brown, and beige. For the first time, perhaps ever, Gaara is glad to be wearing it. “Gaara!”

(It’s far less nice to wear your name in the open when people leer at it before attempting to hand their number over on torn pieces of their receipt. Gaara wishes he could say that was a one-time occurrence)

“Nice to meet you, Rock Lee. Now I don’t have to call you Creamy Mayo Guy any-“ Fuck, you’re creepy, “-more.”

“Creamy Mayo Guy?” A little amused, Lee leans both elbows on the window frame, looks across at Gaara as if Gaara has riddles to solve, layers to peel. Gaara’s a little frightened he’ll figure out he’s just a weirdo.

But, to quote Naruto, phwoar. The wanker was right: Lee’s arms are enormous. Gaara feels his mouth drop open, his eyes bulge before he blinks rapidly and tears his gaze back to Lee’s face. Which might be even worse - because Lee’s the kind of handsome that makes Gaara feel clumsy and stupid.

“Well - you know, you order a lot of them. A lot. All of us call you that.” That’s worse! That’s borderline bullying.

Lee tucks his chin atop his knuckles, grinning so wide and for seemingly no reason at all. “I do not order thatmany! Ten is a perfectly acceptable number!”

“Ten is heaps.”

“Well, I need to eat a lot! I come here right after class, of course, I need to refuel my body.” His shirt is very tight, moulded as if wet to biceps like tree trunks. It’s a body that could only have been forged of hard work. “It may not be healthy but hearing - I mean, eating here is a guilty pleasure of mine.”

Smalltalk time. Gaara sends a silent prayer somewhere, in case anyone is listening and interested in helping. “What… class do you attend?” The words come out oddly formal, as if Gaara is in front of a classroom with a speech clutched in his trembling hands. Like the worst presentation Gaara ever suffered through.

Picture this: Gaara’s a second year in uni - so hungover every word is punctuated with a dry-heave - trying to explain climate change combative soil cultivation when all he wants is to curl up in his shower with a pillow and a blanket.

Yes, he did chunder on the first row. Yes, he dropped the class immediately afterwards.

He begs himself to retain his stomach contents now.

“Attend? No, I teach! Muay Thai - it is my lifelong passion.”

This conversation can only be clogging up their drive thru times. Their store is never one to be in even the top twenty but - Lee is so charming he doesn’t know how he could look away. Gaara never knew a crush could feel like this - like nervousness singing in his veins but a deep calm keeping him from trembling; like finding himself with words to return where he otherwise would have had none. He wants Lee to like him, yes, but more than anything else, he just wants Lee to know him.

And he wants to know everything there is to know about Lee in return.

“Listen, Gaara, I know you are working so - and I do not mean to presume but - would you like to, um, go on a date? With me, I mean. Um.” The tips of Lee’s ears and his cheeks go a delightful shade of pink, the same kind of tinge you’d get at Himatangi Beach if you forgot to slip, slop, slap and wrap. Like Pohutukawa blossoms on Christmas Day.

Gaara whacks his headset off, chucks it on the countertop. “One sec.” He tells Lee before wandering into the back to stare Kiba down. Kiba freezes, mid-chew and gloved hands held guiltily aloft. “I’m finishing now. You’re going to close drive thru or I’m telling Kakashi that you’ve gone entire shifts with your dog in your shirt.”

“That’s fuckin’ stink as, cuz, you can’t tell him that!”

“I can and I will.”

“Stop taking the piss, ratchet cunt.”

“Stop fucking my brother.” Gaara leans over to where Kiba’s packing Lee’s still-unpaid-for order, yanks the bag toward himself. “Or fuck him quieter. Please. I don’t need to know that you howl when you come, fucking hell.”

While Kiba makes quiet choking noises, desperately formulating a response, Gaara takes the bag and goes back to the booth.

When you work what feels like nonstop, the outside world ceases to exist. The cool summer air is almost biting in how it stings your exposed, oily skin. The chirp of cicadas is too close to beeping fryers and every second is underpinned with the fear that you’re late to a shift you didn’t know you had.

Gaara sometimes wonders if he’s forgotten how to live a life outside of work. If he’s simply choosing his escapism in the form of seventy hour workweeks.

“Here’s your food.” He hands the bag out the window, ignoring Lee’s protests that he hasn’t yet paid in favour of attempting to wiggle himself out the small gap the window makes. It’s not big enough that he can easily get his leg up on the sill, bringing into question just how Naruto got it done. “Hang on.”

“Gaara, what are you-“

Gaara bangs his forehead into the windowsill on his way, shoulders wedged tightly and one leg caught underneath himself. It smarts, undoubtedly having hit hard enough that come a few hours there’ll be an egg shaped lump to match the one on the back of his head.

He’ll be dragging in the fast food smell when he manages to get his shoulders through Lee’s window, sticking grease to his seats, but Gaara only wants to be closer. He lands in Lee’s lap with such force that they both ‘oof’ in shock. His boots scrabble on the window, still caught around the metal ledge but, as if on autopilot, Lee gently helps him unhook his feet with the hand that isn’t cradling his food.

“I did not - er - necessarily mean… now.” Lee gapes as Gaara wrangles himself into the passenger seat.

“I’d finished anyway.” When Gaara raises his arm to pull his cap off his head, he gets a delightful whiff of stale sweat. In his lap, the black inner rim of his hat is red from hair dye layered like chalk dust.

Maybe Gaara should’ve waited until he’d had a shower first. His balls are sticking to his thigh. All he knows is that if Lee had left without him, he would’ve been taking a part of their small interaction that Gaara desperately wants to hoard. He’s not sure he could’ve gone home and not fixated on how Lee’s eyelashes are so dark they look tinted, or how one of his front teeth has the smallest chip in it. He could not have kept himself from wondering if Lee’s hair is as soft as it looks.

Gaara’s also not sure he could have avoided thinking about how Lee had said ‘hearing - I mean, eating here is a guilty pleasure of mine’ and he couldn’t have avoided wondering exactly what had nearly been said instead.

Though, maybe he should have chosen to wait; he looks over and finds Lee staring at him as if struck dumb. “I mean, I can just go if you-“

“No!” Lee jolts forward, foot slipping on the accelerator enough that the car jumps forward before jerking to a stop once more. They’re still in the drive thru. Still by the open window Gaara had only just forced himself through, like an octopus out of a jam jar. “No, Gaara, it is just a little funny. Ever since I first heard your voice, I imagined exactly this scenario. My friend, Tenten, she said I was crazy for it, but… All I could picture was taking not just my food home with me.” Lee’s precious, chipped smile drags Gaara’s heart to its knees.

“You’ve only ever heard me say, like, two things.”

“Yeah. But your coworker told me enough. Every week, Naruto told me about you and, well, he helped me get to know you.”

“That can’t be good.” If he listened to anything Naruto said, it’s very likely Gaara’s lost any chance he had of getting in Lee’s pants. Naruto’s never been the best wingman. Only a year ago, Gaara made the mistake of letting Naruto drag him to the local Cossie Club. Instead of helping Gaara get laid, as he’d claimed, Naruto ended up pashing every single person he’d apparently tried to send in Gaara’s direction. “I’d ignore everything he said, if I were you.”

Lee finally sets off, his bag of burgers plopped unceremoniously atop his thighs. It must be uncomfortably warm underneath heat-soggy brown paper but he doesn’t so much as wince as his clunky old manual shifts into gear. He’s not particularly good at it, the car bunnyhopping with a jolt, but he’s so confident Gaara doesn’t have the guts to comment. “Believe me, Gaara, if I had not liked what I heard, I would not have come back every week just to hear your voice.”

Gaara warms. Ducks his head low. Fumbles his vape out of his pocket and sucks on it desperately to calm the jitter in his nerves. If Lee is bothered by it, he doesn’t say as much, though he cranks his window down when sour apple kiwi fogs the windshield.

“What do we do now?” Gaara asks when the silence grows too loud. Lee’s lips part in another lovely, soul-brightening smile. With every word Gaara says, he smiles as if it’s astounding, as if he’s waiting for more. As if he can’t get enough.

“I thought we could go to Himatangi beach and share these burgers, get to know each other a little better.”

Wind whistles through the gaps in Lee’s car doors, worms its way in with them. This late, constellations guide them along empty roads and glitter down upon their shoulders. Unlike the isolation of the drive thru booth, this kind of aloneness is intimate. Sweet. Gaara gestures at the bag. “Well, you said you needed to fuel your body after class with ten creamy mayos. I’m not gonna take your food.”

“I will be honest with you, ten creamy mayos is a little too much. I only got that many the first few times because I was bringing some home for my Dad but… I could not change my order.” Lee scrubs his neck, glances at Gaara out of the corner of his eye, “I needed you to know it was me.”

Then, he reaches out and takes Gaara’s hand in his own. Though Gaara’s vape is wedged in between and both their palms are clammy and sticky, it’s the best touch Gaara thinks he’s ever had.

Like any love story, Gaara thinks their first date is perfect. Even if it isn’t necessarily so.

Lee drives them down onto the beach in his beat-up car, gears groaning so noisily Gaara fears they may get stuck. But it doesn’t. They park upon tide-wet sand and sit with the doors open, listen to the whoosh of waves and eat cold burgers that Kiba may or may not have taken bites of.

Mozzies lurk to bite exposed skin found in the gap between Gaara’s boots and the hiked up bottom of his trousers, in Lee’s exposed knees where his shorts end. Their quiet chatter and laughter is interspersed with curses (from Gaara) and shot-quick slaps (from Lee) to catch the little buggers. Eventually they give up and simply close the doors.

“Ugh, sauce.” Lee sucks on his thumb where a smear of yellow-white-red spreads nearly to his wrist. “Excuse me while I rinse off.”

When he gets out, Gaara tugs his boots off and follows, cold sand worming in between his toes. It coats his feet up to the ankle.

They end up in the water, of course. Their first kiss is shared under moonlight, sunk into waterlogged sand up to the knee. Lee had challenged Gaara to see who could stand there the longest without falling, the tide burying them deeper as if spreading their skin as roots. Gaara lost - wobbling into Lee, who caught him with ease, and when Gaara looked into his eyes he couldn’t help but arch up to kiss him. They stay like that for a long moment.

It’s perfect, even if Gaara’s soaked up to the waist and itchy from the salt and sand. Even if they’re both covered in stinging, red mozzie bite welts. Even if Gaara’s breath is stale and his hair greasy. Even if Lee tries to be surreptitious about wiping his hand off on his shorts after running it through aforementioned greasy hair. Even if halfway through, Gaara realises he left all his belongings, including his phone, in his locker.

It doesn’t matter that Gaara has an open tomorrow. His thoughts all wander to staying with Lee out here forever. In an endless night, they could exist as lovers and nothing more. Would need nothing more.

Maybe he is a little obsessed with Creamy Mayo Guy.

But of course, in the early hours, Lee ducks through his open window to read the time on his dashboard. “Goodness, I really must get back!” Then he brackets Gaara against his car and slots their mouths together in a way that could only ever say he doesn’t want to.

On the way back, they stop at a 24hr dairy. Lee comes out with glossy cellophane wrappers - hands Gaara a Tip Top Lemonade Block, and though it’s nauseatingly tart-sweet, Gaara chases sticky, melted ice down his wrists the rest of the drive.

When Lee asks Gaara where he lives, the words come out half-trapped by the wooden stick stuffed in his cheek. He even drops Gaara to the door of his shitty flat; he parks too far away so the idling engine won’t wake his flatmates and walks him to the door. A true, proper gentleman - chivalrous down to how he holds onto Gaara’s waist when Gaara balances on one foot to peel his boot away from his still gritty, damp socks.

“When can I see you next?” Gaara whispers to Lee’s shadow, silhouetted against the rusted yellow glow of the streetlight outside. Lee’s shadow ducks down, breath warm in Gaara’s ear in a way that shouldn’t feel so intimate but has Gaara’s stomach flip-flopping regardless.

“As soon as you would have me.” Lee murmurs, presses a lingering kiss to Gaara’s temple on his way up. He’s so open with his affection. The second he knew he could, he’s been all warm touches to the small of Gaara’s back and words soothing like sunblock in their silly, little, ozone-less section of the world.

And, Gaara thinks, quickly becoming just as necessary for his own well-being.

For the first time in his life, Gaara considers pulling a sickie. Thinks better of it. “I finish at four tomorrow.”

“Then I will see you at four tomorrow.”

It’s only when Gaara’s had a shower and is crawling into his bed for what will likely be only an hour of sleep, that he remembers his car is still in the Burger King parking lot.