Archive of Our Own

There wasn’t an ounce of guile in Lee. There was no way he was doing this on purpose. Somehow, that made things worse.

The summer sun was beating down on the grass of Training Field Five on the periphery of Konoha, the surrounding trees’ leaves recently blown away by the windstorm of Lee’s punches. His hair shone, flecks of sweat flying from the tips of those glimmering strands at the height of each kick, spattering the stone training posts that were creaking in their moorings with every blow. His thigh muscles bulged; his shirt clung skin-tight to hard abs; his biceps strained at the fabric struggling to contain them.

Gaara shifted minutely on the branch where he’d perched himself, discreetly activating the pathways around his root chakra point in an effort to control himself.

While Lee’s typical jumpsuit was somewhat form-fitting, the fabric was also rather thick, and it bagged loosely in certain areas of … interest. His flak jacket covered up the rest.

What he was wearing today, on the other hand …

For starters, it was cotton. Soft and stretchy and clinging. Worn thin at the seams, clearly old, with dingy white racing stripes up the side of each thigh that were threatening to split right open.

Secondly, it was a short set: the hems of the bottoms ended well above the knees, and the sleeves barely capped his biceps.

And finally, the whole ensemble was far too small for him. And that meant it fit like a glove to every. Last. Muscle.

“It’s been so unusually hot that I went digging for this in my closet!” Lee’d explained as he re-wrapped his arms at what was meant to be the beginning of their training session. “I don’t think I’ve worn this uniform since I was a genin. Lucky for me, it still fits!”

No it doesn’t, Gaara had wanted to say, but then Lee had done a little pirouette to show the outfit off, laughing, and Gaara swallowed so hard that even the thought of moisture vacated his mouth.

He’d lasted one—extremely distracted—round before giving up. Lee had nearly clobbered him straight between the eyes, not even pulling the punch because he’d expected Gaara to dodge easily, and Gaara had just stood there, slack-jawed, as the hem of Lee’s shirt rose up to expose golden, glistening abs.

If it weren’t for the ultimate defense, Gaara probably would have sustained a traumatic brain injury. That or had his head knocked clean off his body.

“Are you all right, Gaara-kun?” Lee had asked then, a concerned furrow between his thick brows. He’d lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead before it trickled down into his eyes. “You’re very red. Is the heat too much for you?”

“Yes,” Gaara had seized the offered excuse, shutting his eyes so they wouldn’t be tempted to stray. “It must be the heat.”

“Although …” A pensive look crossed Lee’s face. “It’s always been hotter than this in Suna every time I’ve been.”

“The humidity.” Gaara couldn’t even make the effort of a full sentence. Lee had begun doing gentle torso twists to stretch as they spoke, and Gaara had just noticed a dark spot of damp at the small of his back where his sweat had pooled.

“Oh!” Lee nodded, tapping his chin as if Gaara had said something very intelligent and profound rather than a few garbled, half-intelligible syllables. “That makes sense.”

“I’ll be … over there.” Gaara gestured vaguely in the direction of the treeline. “You carry on.”

And that was how Gaara had ended up spending the last hour of his life in an increasingly denuded tree, drying out his eyes from staring unblinkingly as Lee whirled and twisted and bounded through the air, exhibiting his flexibility and strength in equal measure.

He was a marvel.

Of course, Gaara’d always known that Lee was attractive. He’d picked up on that the moment that Lee had stopped posturing as chivalrous: turned on him with fire in his eyes, kicked him down the side of the face, and then grabbed him so hard around the waist that Gaara’s ribs turned black and blue. It was just that Lee didn’t tend to … exhibit himself in this way. When it came to his looks, he was self-conscious—if not downright self-deprecating—owing, Gaara suspected, to Konoha’s completely wrong-headed beauty standards, which valued delicacy over strength.

Gaara didn’t mind this, except out of a minute sense of indignation at people’s constant underestimation of Lee. It meant that he most likely had limited competition.

If only he had the willpower to make a move.

He’d been circling this particular drain—his attraction, affection, enamorment, whatever one might call it—for years at this point. He’d made, from time to time, subtle gestures to hint at his interest: a gift of a certain Sunan delicacy Lee had mentioned enjoying in passing, the occasional smile or joke or murmured word of praise, (rarely) the initiation of proximity or touch.

Lee had not picked up the hints. That, or he had noticed them and had chosen to reject them in his own kind way: by simply treating Gaara as a friend, just as he always had. The latter certainly felt more likely. Lee was hot-headed and impulsive, certainly, but he was by no means stupid. And while his social skills occasionally left something to be desired, he could read Gaara almost as well as his siblings could.

This lack of certainty made it difficult for Gaara to muster up the confidence to take a bolder approach. Generally, he was straightforward and blunt to a point. But Lee was one of his oldest friends, and with no impression of reciprocity, the risk of damaging that relationship by expressing himself so forthrightly …

To be frank, it terrified him.

“Yoo-hoo, Gaara-kun!” Lee shouted from the base of the tree, startling Gaara from his daydreaming. He was waving one half-bared arm, the trailing end of one bandage fluttering. “I’m getting ready to do my cooldown stretches! Would you like to join me?”

There was no reason for Gaara to decline, save for the unfortunate state of his trousers.

Saying, ”I’d like to, but your excessively tight clothing has given me an erection,” seemed too clumsy a confession for Gaara to even consider it.

So, summoning up a little bit of sand and subtly arranging the armor over himself in a way that he hoped was not too obvious, he nodded his acceptance and descended from the tree.

Lee beamed at him, sunnier than Konoha’s cloudless skies.

“I was thinking just a few chu’an, and then stretches, and then I’ll be done,” Lee said. “Do you remember the Yang-style short form? We did it at the end of our last taijutsu practice in Suna.”

Gaara racked his mind. His taijutsu practices with Lee tended to be far less productive than the ones he had with Shira. Largely because Lee was a very hands-on instructor, and Gaara was easily distracted by Lee’s hands.

“I think so.” Gaara nodded. “It starts with … Cloud Hands?”

“Exactly!” Lee clapped in excitement. “Let’s just go over …”

His voice drifted off as he surveyed the training field, its terrain veritably mauled by his enthusiasm.

“I think I see some level ground over there,” Gaara said, pointing to a patch just behind where Lee had been working that was barely large enough for two bodies to strand abreast.

Lee’s expression twisted into something indecipherable before he plastered his typical grin back on.

“That will work!”

Arriving at the little island of unmarred ground, Gaara realized that it was smaller than he’d thought from afar. Lee’s shoulder—barely covered—brushed against his as they both squared off their feet and took steadying breaths (Gaara’s more tremulous than grounding). Gaara raised and lowered his hands in time with Lee’s, trying to center himself, trying to focus on the ground beneath his feet, the mineral composition of it, the density, the aeration, the structure of the composite stones that lay beneath the soil.

He reached the end of Cloud Hands … and froze.

It appeared that, with Lee in such close proximity, his mind had completely emptied itself of both memory and thought. He was certain that at one point he had known what came after Cloud Hands, but at this moment his mind was nothing but a blank canvas, aware only of the heat of Lee’s body and the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

“Ah, Gaara-kun?” Lee paused in his motions. “Are you all right?”

Gaara nodded mutely, hesitant to turn his head when Lee’s face was so close.

“You haven’t been practicing your forms, have you?”

Gaara thinned his lips and admitted nothing.

“Not to worry! I’ll walk you through it.” Lee gave him a thumbs up.

Gaara mimicked the gesture.

“Ah, wait, no, sorry! That wasn’t part of it.”

Gaara finally dared to look at Lee out of the corner of his eye, his lip unable to resist curling into a half-smirk.

“... You were joking,” Lee realized. He cleared his throat. “All right. Well. The next form is Single Whip.”

He loosened his shoulders and began to sway his arms back and forth. Gaara observed him for a moment, then copied him.

After a few seconds of this, Lee paused and raised a hand, stilling both of their movements. “That’s close, but not quite!” Casting his eyes down at his feet, he swallowed heavily. “May I … show you?”

Gaara nodded, the jerking of his neck just as stiff as the rest of his muscles as Lee stepped behind him. He laid one hand on Gaara’s shoulder and pushed it down.

“Relax into the movement,” Lee coached him, one hand sliding down the length of Gaara’s arm to wrap around his wrist. “Loosen your joints, but control your motions.”

Nothing about Gaara felt either relaxed, loose, or controlled in the moment. His body was fraught with energy, his nerves twanging like someone had pressed lightning-style chakra straight into his spine.

Lee aligned their bodies more firmly, the muscles of his chest flexing palpably between Gaara’s shoulder blades. “That’s … better. Try not to be so tense, though!”

How can I not be tense when you’re breathing on the nape of my neck? Gaara wanted to mutter, but he held his tongue.

The situation only grew more dire when they transitioned to stretches.

Standing with his back against Gaara’s, Lee linked their elbows.

“You first!”

Gaara bent forward slowly, unsure whether or not to be grateful for the difference between their heights, which had left Lee’s ass planted firmly in the small of Gaara’s back.

His vertebrae crackled, and Lee made a tutting sound.

“Gaara-kun …” he began.

With a scowl, Gaara bent even further forward, forcing Lee into a punishing backbend.

Lee moaned. “Ohh, that is good.”

Gaara stared, panicked, at his toes. In his haste, he’d forgotten how flexible Lee was, and now he was trapped underneath the weight of Lee’s scantily clad, groaning body, his breath quickening as the stretch deepened.

Don’t think about it, he tried to coach himself. Don’t think about the surprising gentleness of Lee’s calloused hands, his touch so at odds with his bombastic personality. Don’t think of the smell of his sweat, salt-crisp and musky, or the shifting lines of his muscles along your back.

Gaara was so distracted by his silent mantra that he failed to realize that Lee’s weight had shifted forward until his feet left the ground.

His back crackled again, like tinder falling into a campfire, and Lee made another scolding noise.

One that was quickly drowned out by the rrrrrrrrrrrrip of fabric tearing.

Any tension that had been worked out of Gaara’s body returned immediately as Lee dropped him like a lead weight.

“Oh, no! Oh my …” Lee began scrambling before Gaara even managed to turn around, but his motions weren’t quite quick or thorough enough for Gaara not to realize what had happened.

Lee had bent so far forward that the seat of his too-tight shorts had ripped. And now he was standing mere inches away from Gaara, his mouth gaping wordlessly, his hands clasped firmly behind him.

“I …” Gaara’s throat worked, but nothing of any consequence came out. “I … “ Tearing his eyes away, he focused on a distant tree, forcing all his attention into a single spot on its bark. “I have a meeting. I just remembered. And I’m late. Please excuse me.”

“Really? But it’s—”

Gaara clasped his hands together in the handsign for his Sand Transportation jutsu. As the sand wound around his ears, he heard the mumbled end of Lee’s sentence:

“—Sunday evening …”

Suna didn’t have a summer like Konoha did. In fact, they didn’t have a spring, or winter, or fall either. They had a dry season, which seemed to last most of the year, followed by sandstorm season, and then an all-too-brief wet season that lasted just long enough to replenish their aquifers and nourish the hardy desert scrub.

It was high noon smack in the middle of the dry season, and the sun bore down on Lee like a millstone laid on his chest. Beside him, Gaara looked like an apparition of himself: his entire face washed paper-white and featureless save for the penetrating green of his eyes. They were walking, side-by-side, along the length of a qanat, their ostensible purpose to perform some overdue maintenance surveys.

Thus far, Lee had surveyed very little aside from Gaara’s face.

Cast in profile, he looked carved from ivory: the gentle slope of his forehead, the smooth ridge of his broad nose, the line of his thin lips. His hair had been burnished to a copper shine, and the fine hairs of his eyebrows—typically invisible—had been lit into threads of gold.

“Are you overheated?” Gaara said, narrowing his eyes as he turned to Lee. “Your neck and ears have gone red.”

“I’m just fine, Gaara-kun! Thank you for asking.”

Gaara ignored this, instead stepping in front of Lee and rising up on his toes until their faces were perilously close. He pushed Lee’s bangs aside, gaze searching, and Lee’s heart welled up in his throat like a bubble of blood from a sucking chest wound. When Gaara pressed the back of his hand to Lee’s forehead, Lee felt the gentle rasp of sand armor shifting away. And then: the smooth, cool surface of Gaara’s skin.

He gasped. He couldn’t restrain himself.

“Your temperature is normal,” Gaara declared, though the expression on his face remained curious. “But still … Here, drink this.”

He unclipped the canteen dangling next to his gourd and, after taking a quick swig of it himself, held it out to Lee.

The mouthpiece of the bottle glistened. Mostly water, surely, but also … some small amount the residue of Gaara’s lips.

Lee swallowed, thick, and took the offered water with a mumbled Thank you.

He wished then that he had paid more attention during his Suna cultural briefings and less attention to his daydreams of walking arm-in-arm with Gaara through the village’s multileveled warren of streets, their bodies slipping in and out of shadow. His instructor had said something, he was sure, about the sharing of water in the desert.

But even now he could not force himself to dedicate too much brainspace to recollection. He was fixated on fitting his lips right into the groove of Gaara’s lip print on the canteen, searching out anything that might hint at the taste of Gaara’s mouth. But even after a thorough swallow, a swiping of his tongue around the inside of his mouth in pursuit of anything, all he tasted was the oddly mineral flavor of Suna’s water.

Gaara didn’t look at his hand when he passed the canteen back with a second, more enthusiastic Thank you very much! With the sun straight overhead his expression was nigh unreadable, but the path of his eyes was not. They were tracing, slow and thorough, from Lee’s lips down to his throat and back up again.

“You should take your vest off,” Gaara said abruptly. “And roll your sleeves.”

“Um,” said Lee, but before he could fully articulate his objection, sand was already wending its way around his fingers to the placket of his zip.

“Gaara-kun!” He tried to bat the sand away, but it was too fast, too clever, too persistent. “I can do it myse—”

His vest unzipped with a shriek of metal-on-metal and went airborne. Lee looked up to find it floating over his head, surrounded by a telltale, glittery halo of sand.

“I could jump up and get that, you know,” he told Gaara.

“Roll your sleeves,” Gaara said, ignoring him. “Or do you need me to do that for you, too?”

The sand lunged in his direction, threateningly. Lee leapt back.

“No! I’ve got it!” Untying his bandages, he rolled the sleeves of his jumpsuit up to his elbows. “There.” He held his bare arms up for inspection. “Happy, now?”

Gaara’s face had gone preternaturally still. Any mischief that he’d been carrying in his voice, any mirth that had been hidden in his eyes—it was all suddenly gone, replaced by a cautious, penetrating blankness. His eyes scanned over the expanse of Lee’s bared arms with the weight of a sandfall, lingered so long over his—not even bared, but slightly less clothed than usual—chest that Lee felt the pressure of it on his heart.

“Your face is quite red as well, Gaara-kun. Perhaps you should take your jacket off, too?”

Again those eyes, the dominating feature of Gaara’s expression with all the shadows of his face washed away, went wide.

“Mm.” He ducked his head away from Lee, fiddling with the straps on his gourd’s harness for a moment before the buckles clinked loose. The sand worked its magic, and in just a moment, Gaara’s coat was fluttering in the wind overhead right beside Lee’s.

“Actually, the shade is rather nice,” Lee mused, staring up at the red-and-green shapes casting shadows down over them, offering the slightest bit of respite from Suna’s blistering sun. “Don’t you think, Gaara … kun?”

Gaara wasn’t wearing a shirt under his jacket.

Gaara wasn’t wearing a shirt under his jacket.

Lee jerked his gaze back skyward, hoping to erase from his mind the single, thin layer of mesh armor that Gaara had pressed up against his skin, the outline of his navel and nipples obvious through the spidersilk-fine weave.

Casting around in his mind for a topic of conversation that didn’t start with, I’ll devote my entire life to your happiness! Lee mumbled, “So … um. Gaara-kun. Why do you need an armored shirt anyway?”

Anything but that! screamed Lee’s inner voice. It makes it sound like you’re asking him to disrobe even further!

But Lee was exceptionally practiced at ignoring his rational mind.

“Doesn’t the sand sort of … take care of that, for you? What more can the mesh do?”

Gaara hummed, looking down at himself. He tugged idly on the hem of his shirt, pulling it just far enough away from his stomach to flash a tempting hint of skin that had Lee’s mouth going drier than it had been before Gaara had offered him his canteen.

“Force of habit, I suppose,” Gaara murmured, studying the shirt as if it was his first time noting its existence. “I’ve been wearing it since I was a genin. And I don’t really have any other shirts.”

“You don’t have any other shirts?” Lee was one to talk, really, given that 95% of his wardrobe was made up of Maito suits and the other 5% was split between ill-fitting workout tees and a single Tang suit for formal occasions. “You must be joking.”

Gaara seemed to think for a moment, then shook his head. “No. I suppose I should buy some, shouldn’t I? I prefer a jacket for the sun protection, but I’ve been spending more time in Konoha lately, and it does get oppressive with the humidity …” Sand kicked up and eddied around his feet as he crossed his arms, tucking his hands away. “You should come shopping with me.”

“Me?!” Lee gawped, his mouth wide enough to catch an entire circus’ worth of sand fleas as visions of Gaara stepping out from behind a changing room curtain to show off his new clothes—clothes that Lee might even have picked out for him!—floated around his mind like soap bubbles.

With a shake of his head, he popped them. “No, no, no, I couldn’t possibly—I mean, surely you have people who do that sort of thing, don’t you? You’re the Kazekage, after all!”

“It would be unnecessarily onerous to send someone out to buy clothing for me, only for me to try it on at home and decide I don’t like it,” Gaara replied with devastating practicality. “It’s better if I do it myself. And I trust your judgment; you’re unfailingly honest, so you’ll tell me if I look ridiculous.”

Why would you trust the judgment of a man who only has three outfits? Lee wanted to whine, but instead he just shot Gaara a grin and a thumbs-up. “You can count on me, Gaara-kun!”

“Kazekage-sama? What—” The owner of the nondescript clothing store in Suna’s main square forced a smile onto his face. The effect was reduced to a grimace by the plethora of sewing pins held between his lips. “What a surprise to see you grace our humble shop! What occasion has warranted such …” He seemed to search for sufficiently obsequious words. “... such illustrious patronage as yours?”

“I need shirts.”

The man’s mouth fell open. A smattering of pins fell to the floor at his feet. “You need … shirts.”

Gaara just nodded. He’d put his jacket back on, but his arms remained crossed over his chest. Behind him, similarly redressed, Lee hovered anxiously. He could tell the poor man was withering under Gaara’s unblinking stare, but he wasn’t sure how to assist. After all, he’d never been able to stop Gaara from doing these things; he’d just gotten used to his friend’s … eccentricities.

“But of course!” The proprietor seemed to recover his wits. “And for which occasion will you be needing your garments?”

Gaara blinked at him. Once, twice. “To … wear them.”

“Ah.” The man faltered. Sweat beaded on his hairline. “And what might your destination be while wearing them? A gala? A ball? A gathering of dignitaries?”

“No,” Gaara said, and then failed to elaborate.

“Gaara-kun is just looking for something for casual daily wear!” Lee chimed in, before the man could succumb to panic.

“Oh.” The man sounded almost disappointed. “I … see. Well, then, I suppose you won’t be interested in exploring our custom options?”

“No.” For the first time since they’d entered the shop, Gaara’s gaze flicked away from the proprietor and around at the racks of clothing. “Those will do.”

He inclined his head toward a stack of utilitarian linen shirts. “Do you have them in red?”

“Of course, sir!” The man hurried over to the display and began sorting through the garments. “And your size?”

Gaara’s face went blank once more. The grip of his arms around his chest tightened ever-so-subtly.

He was anxious.

“This is Gaara-kun’s first real experience going clothes shopping!” Lee interjected.

Gaara shot him a look.

“Ah … he’s usually very busy with his Kage duties, of course, so he hasn’t really had time to …”

But before Lee could fumble up a good ending to his lie, the proprietor was clasping Lee by the upper arms, beaming so wide that the few remaining pins fell from his lips. The shop floor was now nearly as hazardous as that of Tenten’s workspace. Lee resolved to tread carefully.

“I will ensure the Kazekage has nothing but the utmost enjoyable shopping experience Suna has to offer!” the man said. His grip was surprisingly firm, and if Lee weren’t, well, himself, the man probably would have succeeded in shaking him a little in his enthusiasm.

What seemed like mere moments later, Lee’s arms were laden with garments in various sizes as though he was the man’s personal clotheshorse. One at a time, the proprietor picked them up and held them up to Gaara’s hunched form, frowning, humming, and then casting them aside.

Eventually, though, he seemed to settle on a small selection. Bowing, he held the shirts out for Gaara’s inspection.

Gaara took them and, without even glancing through the stack, vanished wordlessly into the changing room.

He seemed to be in there for an inordinately long time. Lee tried very hard to ignore the faint sounds of shifting fabric, of buttons done and undone, of zippers moving up and down. He tried even harder to avoid picturing Gaara—no more than a meter or two away—in a state of partial undress.

By the feeling of heat rising to his cheeks, it seemed he had failed on both counts.

But at long last, the rings on the dressing room curtain rattled, and the fabric moved aside to reveal Gaara standing in the aperture.

He was wearing a smock shirt, rather plain, held closed by small ties down the side of it. The form of it was loose, concealing his figure.

“Well,” he said, “what do you think?”

“It looks fine!” said Lee.

“Just fine?” One of Gaara’s pale eyebrows rose.

“Uhm.” Gaara had said he wanted Lee there for his honesty. Lee cringed. “Yes, just fine.”

“Not this one, then.” With a swish, Gaara disappeared back behind the curtain.

A series of other shirts followed: a long-sleeved button-down, a plain cotton t-shirt, a cross-body v-neck, a turtleneck tanktop. All of which—after Gaara had scrutinized Lee’s expression—apparently failed to meet his standards.

“I only have one left,” he said, face grim, before vanishing into the dressing room once more.

There was yet more shuffling, the click of nails against buttons, a faint curse.

Then the curtain opened, and Lee’s hand rose to cover his lips.

“That’s the one,” he murmured between his barely spread fingers. “It’s perfect.”

Gaara’s final option was made of a fine red fabric, just thin enough to be lightweight but heavy enough that the lines of it were crisp, tapering with Gaara’s slim waist. It shone, ever so faintly, with a golden hue that matched the buttons that ran down the right side of its breast. The collar was just high enough that it would peek out from the collar of Gaara’s jacket.

“Just … here, allow me?” Lee took a tentative step forward.

Gaara let his lean, pale arms swing loose so that Lee could tug the hem down until all the buttons were aligned, then raised his chin so that Lee could straighten the collar. His breath hitched when Lee’s fingers grazed the underside of his chin, and Lee stepped back with a murmured apology.

Gaara’s breathing had gone quick and shallow, and his eyes were huge and wild-looking. His lips parted; his pink tongue darted out and swept across his lower lip, leaving it shiny.

Lee thought about the shape of that lip on the rim of Gaara’s canteen. The taste of it that he hadn’t been able to find.

“Excellent choice, Kazekage-sama!” cried a voice from behind Lee, startling him when the proprietor’s hand clapped down on his shoulder. Abruptly, Lee was reminded that they were in a place of business and not in one of his more lurid daydreams.

The man was beaming around another mouthful of pins.

“I’ll take this one,” Gaara said, and as he turned back to the dressing room to change back into the clothes he’d worn in, the man called:

“Oh, but of course if you are buying a top, you should consider trousers to go with it!”

Gaara stalled, hand on the curtain. When he looked back at Lee, his bottom lip was caught between his teeth.

He didn’t turn his eyes to the proprietor before he murmured, “Do you happen to sell … shorts?”

Konoha came into view as a series of green blurs on the horizon, all smears of verdancy like greasepaint daubed on glass and smudged by a careless hand.

It was this that Gaara blamed for his failure to realize that one of those green blurs was speeding towards him, right until the moment strong arms wrapped around his waist and lifted him off the ground in a spin.

“Gaara-kun!”

Gaara bit back a smile, placing his hands on Lee’s shoulders to steady himself, though he knew Lee wouldn’t let him fall.

“Hello, Lee.”

“Don’t hoist the Kazekage so casually!” Somewhere in the dizzy spiral of Lee’s laughter and warmth and closeness, Gaara heard the voice of one of his ANBU.

“Ah, sorry!” Lee straightened like he’d been struck by a chidori, but Gaara clung tight before Lee could set him down.

“It's fine,” he said, his arms draped around Lee's neck, delight humming, unrestrained, in his voice. “I've missed you, too.”

Lee's eyes—already so large—widened. His small mouth opened just enough for a breath. He batted his long lashes.

Gaara did not think that the seductive effect was intentional, but it worked all the same. He could feel his face heating, and he half-expected another comment from Lee about the weather or difficult travels, but instead …

“I … have missed you, Gaara-kun,” Lee murmured.

Gaara wasn't sure how to respond. I know, that's why I said ‘too’, seemed unnecessarily sarcastic. Any other options fled his brain in the wake of Lee's intense sincerity.

Someone cleared their throat. Lee jerked a little, and then, with utmost care, set Gaara back on the ground.

This time, Gaara let him.

And once his feet were once more anchored to the solidity of the earth, he felt a pressure quite different from that of gravity: the sensation of Lee's eyes scanning him head-to-toe.

Gaara was unsure what could possibly be so remarkable about his appearance. He was sweaty and certainly road-worn, with dirt on his sandals and streaks of moss-green on his palms from a clumsy handhold on one of Konoha’s slick trees. In anticipation of the Leaf Village's sweltering, swampy temperatures, he'd worn the outfit Lee had helped him pick out, which should have been no surprise given that Lee had both already seen him in it and was aware of the purpose behind the purchase.

“You look very nice!” Lee said, after a few moments of near-oppressive study, his eyes lingering on Gaara's bare knees before he diverted his gaze back to Gaara's face. “The outfit suits you even better against the backdrop of Konoha.”

Then his eyes bugged, and he tucked his lips between his teeth. He was clearly embarrassed, though Gaara couldn't figure out why. In fact, the compliment had his chest light and glowy, even more buoyant than he'd felt when Lee’d been holding him in the air.

Lee's stock-still posture, though, did have the advantage of allowing Gaara to look him over to his satisfaction.

Lee was wearing an outfit not dissimilar to the summer uniform he'd inadvertently shredded, although this one was clearly sized for his adult body and quite comfortably fitted. The fabric looked impossibly soft for something that had to be rather new, and when a rare breeze ruffled across the road where they stood, the cotton pressed close enough to Lee's body to reveal a tempting hint of the shape of Lee's muscles

“Have I … got something on my shirt?” Lee's voice faltered, and he looked down at himself.

“No, not at all.” With immense regret but tremendous reward, Gaara raised his eyes to meet the brilliant dark sparkle of Lee's. “It suits you very well. I think we make quite the set.”

Lee's face went so florid Gaara thought he might see steam coming out of his ears before he stammered:

“We—we do, don't we!”

“I’m fairly good at carnival games!” Lee boasted, as they strolled through Konoha’s main street, the air thick and breezeless, made only warmer by the press of bodies and the heat of the lit grills and fryers of the food stalls. Overhead, lanterns had been strung criss-cross from awning to awning, a halo of their light fluorescing on the crown of Lee's shiny hair. Neither of them had changed for the festival, and Gaara—having foregone even the sand armor in the oppressive heat—was achingly aware of how close Lee's bare arm was to his. “I hold several village records, in almost everything except target shooting—that's Tenten's domain.”

Gaara caught a booth operator glaring at them as they passed, and the back of Lee’s neck went blistering red.

“Er, that is—” Lee rubbed at his blush like friction might will it away. “—I’m quite good at the ones I haven’t been banned from. My … enthusiasm can be a bit much for some of the more, er, civilian-oriented activities.” Dodging the booth operator's glower, his eyes searched through the bustling lights and sounds of the street until he seemed to land at last on a destination. “There!” He gestured with the half-eaten core of his third candy apple of the night. “Let’s go do that one.”

Gaara narrowed his eyes at the banner hanging from the booth’s front. “Goldfish scooping?”

“Yes!” Lee punched the air. “I have been undefeated for the past ten years for most goldfish scooped in a single poi!”

He reached as though to grab Gaara by the sleeve to lead the way—a common, familiar gesture between the two of them.

His hand, instead, landed on Gaara’s bare wrist.

A shiver ran through Gaara at the touch, one that seemed to echo through Lee, who had suddenly gone quite stiff. His broad, unbandaged palm was rough and calloused; his long fingers wrapped all the way around Gaara’s wrist and met easily on the other side.

(A mental image arose of his wrists crossed and pinned under just one of Lee’s strong hands, being pressed down into … Gaara blinked the thought away.)

“S—sorry,” Lee stammered, though he didn’t let go.

“It’s fine,” Gaara muttered to his own knobbly knees, goosebumped and skin-prickly in the humid air. With all the forthrightness he dared to summon, he turned his hand over, slid his wrist from Lee’s grasp, and slotted their palms together. “Lead the way.”

Gaara only half-listened as Lee withdrew a few coins from his wallet, exchanged them for two paper nets, and explained the rules of the game. He was too busy watching the artificial current of the water swirling in the basin, the flashing golden scales of the little fish swarming over and around one another.

In the course of his lifetime, Gaara had had very little occasion to observe live fish. Generally, he preferred his fish grilled and skewered. But these tiny creatures were curious. They moved lithely, quickly, their motions unhesitating and unerringly smooth. Where the filter caused the water to rumble, they tumbled through its invisible rapids almost effortlessly. Their forms were comfortingly anonymous—none particularly different from the others.

Except for one. As he stared down into the cheap blue plastic and its fake painted waves, he noticed a fish caught in a spiral near the filter. It was a little larger than the others, somewhat ungainly, and—upon closer inspection, missing a fin on one side. And yet these circumstances didn’t seem to deter it; it swam doggedly against the current, relentless in its fight.

Just as Lee slid the handle of the poi into Gaara’s hand, the fish burst free, swimming in awkward loops.

Within seconds, Gaara had decided that was the fish he wanted to catch.

Within a few more seconds, Gaara had made a single failed swipe through the water and torn the paper of his net straight through.

“Ah, Gaara-kun, do you want another try?” Lee asked, hardly even looking as he scooped fish after tiny, golden fish into the bowl on the edge of the basin. “The key to success in this game is care and precision.”

Gaara shook his head mutely, watching the sweeping of Lee’s hand through the water. It moved as smoothly and as quickly as a fish itself, his maneuvering both delicate and accurate. Gentle, as he eased each fish out of the water and transferred it into the bowl.

Lee was not someone who tended to be described as gentle. Even Gaara, with all the intensity of his hopeless affections, rarely thought of him this way. But as he watched Lee spirit the goldfish out of the tank, his hand cupped beneath the poi in case the paper net broke halfway to the bowl, he recalled the graze of Lee’s hands across his back in taijutsu training, the minute adjustments he’d made to the buttons and collar of Gaara’s new shirt.

The soft curve of the smile that was glowing in Gaara’s direction.

“My poi is almost done for,” Lee said, the dark of his eyes reflecting orange-gold from the festival lanterns like the shimmering scales of a fish. “Is there any particular one you want?”

Immediately, Gaara pointed at the bumbling creature with the missing fin, which had gotten caught in the filter current once more.

“That one.”

“Are you sure, sir?” asked the man running the booth. “I actually meant to take that one out before we opened … here, let me—”

“No.” Gaara kept his voice low, but the sharp authority honed by years under the Kazekage hat must have carried through even to this civilian, because the man’s back went straight, his hands snapping behind his back.

“Leave it to me!” Lee exclaimed, eyes narrowing with focus.

He eased his net into the water once, using the rim of it to nudge the fish free of the miniature rapids; then a second time to guide it into the main body of the tank. And then finally, he swept the sagging paper of the poi beneath the creature’s clumsy body, scooping just so—

The fish thrashed its tail, and the paper broke free from its frame, drifting uselessly to the bottom of the tank as the fish fumbled its way back into the school of its fellows.

“Bad luck,” the booth-runner said, hands still clasped behind his back as he rocked on his heels. “But look at how many of them you got, Lee-san! Let me bag those up for you.”

He took the bowl that Lee had nearly filled to bursting with fish and began to strain them out with a proper net into water-filled plastic bags that he tied with string.

“I’m terribly sorry, Gaara-kun,” Lee murmured, hanging his head.

“It’s just a fish.” But Gaara’s attention kept being drawn away from the bagging of Lee’s dozens of fish to the clumsy little thing pawing its way in semicircles through the current.

“But it was a fish that you specifically requested, and I failed!” Lee sounded distraught. “How can I make it up to you?”

“There’s no need.”

“But I must—!”

Tying the many bags together with a single, thick cord, the man handed off Lee’s bounty. “There you go!”

“Ah, thank you, sir.” Lee bowed, accepting the fish in both hands, and he and Gaara turned from the booth to make their way back into the thronging crowd of the festival. “Would you like another saba skewer? Or … well, I don’t want to upset these little guys …” He hefted the agglomeration of bags up to his eyeline, frowning. “I would be honored to offer these goldfish to you as pets, though!”

“Where am I going to keep goldfish in the desert, Lee?”

“Sir!” came a voice from behind them.

They turned to find the man from the goldfish scooping booth approaching them with his hand thrust forward. Hanging from it was a bag containing a single fish, swimming in crooked circles due to its missing fin.

“A consolation prize,” he explained, pressing it into Gaara’s hands.

Gaara just stared mutely, his eyes darting from the fish back to the man’s grinning face.

“Thank you very much!” Lee shouted, bowing low enough for the both of them.

As the man returned to his booth, Gaara looked down at the bag cupped in his palms, the fish’s body distorted by the water.

“... What am I supposed to do with this,” he muttered.

Lee leaned over to him, near enough that his fringe brushed over Gaara’s ear, and whispered, “May I show you a little secret?”

The floor of Konoha’s westernmost woods was marshy from summer storms, the underbrush thick and slick with humidity so that Gaara had to watch his feet very closely, trying to follow precisely in Lee’s light-footed tracks.

“I always thought it was rather sad,” Lee was saying, as he turned to help Gaara over a particularly slippery root, the bag of fish swinging from his free hand, “that the fish get put into these little bags and then sent home with people who don’t know how to care for them or cannot keep them. So at my very first festival, I resolved to rescuing as many of them as I could manage!”

“I’ve never seen any fish in your apartment,” Gaara huffed, the sand darting out from his gourd to stop a bramble from scraping his thigh.

“Indeed!” Lee shot him a grin over his shoulder. “That is because I don’t keep them either!”

Gaara frowned at the ungainly fish in his own bag. “So when you say ‘rescue’, you mean …”

“I mean this!”

Lee pushed aside a curtain of brush to reveal a pond. It glowed silver under the moonlight, speckled here and there with lilypads that bobbed in its quiescent waters.

“Come, come.” Lee gestured urgently, and Gaara followed him to the bank.

Peering down into the water, his eyes caught on flashes of white and gold and orange.

“Are those …?”

“Yes! Eighteen years’ worth of scooped goldfish!”

There had to be over a hundred of them, Gaara thought, staring down through the glassy surface, enraptured by the lights that shimmered off the fishes’ scales. Some of them weren’t much larger than the ones he and Lee carried in tonight’s bags, but some of them were massive, easily bigger than his hand. Their tails fanned out behind them, diaphanous as veils, and their eyes seemed to look right back at him with a surprising intelligence.

“They grow quite well when they have ample space,” Lee said, crouching down and beginning to untie the cord around his many bags. As he did so, he nodded at the fish swimming by. “That one is Koi-koi. That’s Koiko, and right behind her is Koito. Those three swimming in a circle are Ichikoi, Nikoi, and Sankoi. Oh, and—Well, I try not to have favorites, but here she comes just now. See the one with the heart-shaped mark? That’s—” Lee cleared his throat before ducking his head, his cheeks gone oddly dark. “Uhm. Koibito.”

As if on cue, the fish bubbled up to the surface of the water, its mouth leaving little pockmarks in the pond’s surface where it gaped its mouth. Lee stuck a finger into the pond, and the fish swam beneath it, as if allowing him to pet her.

“She’s … rather affectionate,” Lee explained.

Surfacing again, the fish spat a small stream of water up Lee’s arm.

“Koibito!” he cried. He turned to Gaara. “She also has a mischievous streak.”

Gaara couldn’t contain his smile.

Lee returned it, the color high on his cheeks.

Then he twisted sharply away, staring back down into the pond. “Well. I suppose I should get to it.”

The word surfaced in Gaara’s mind again, watching Lee untie the tops of each bag and tip each fish into the water, whispering a name to each of them: Gentle. To think that the boy who once nearly killed him—who Gaara nearly killed—who fought until his knuckles were bloodstained and his skin was blistered, whose kick was strong enough to split stone, who could throw a bo staff hard enough to impale an enemy … to think he could be so gentle. So soft. So kind.

It did not feel like a revelation, although perhaps it should have.

“And now, we just have the one left.” Lee gestured for Gaara to approach, and Gaara knelt down beside him, his bare knees sinking down into the mud of the bank.

Cautiously, he untied the knot holding the bag closed. Then he began to lift it, the water sloshing back and forth inside until the fish looked dizzy from the rocking.

“How do I—?” he began.

“Here.” Suddenly, two larger hands were cupped under his, guiding them forward over the pond’s surface, tipping the bag slowly so that the water poured from the bag in a gentle fountain. “Nice and easy … There.”

The fish slipped free into the pond with the tiniest of splashes. For a moment, it windmilled its remaining fins, spinning in bewildered circles. Gaara’s hand twitched, as if to snatch it back, to tuck it back into the bag and protect it.

But quickly enough, the determined little fish found his bearings, and with a swish of his tail, he swam off to disappear under the edge of a lilypad.

“Since you’re the one who released him, you should be the one to name him,” Lee said.

“Mm.” Gaara eyed the water, watching the persistent creature dart in and out of the shadows. “Does the name have to include koi?”

Lee laughed, and the noise was so sweet that Gaara tasted it on the back of his tongue. “No, of course not! That’s just a silly idea I came up with when I was just a kid … and I guess I’ve hung onto it until now. But this one is yours, so you should name him whatever you like!”

“Hm.” The fish allowed the current to carry it for just a moment before it turned once more to swim against it. “Then … Konjou.”

“Gutsy!” Lee cheered. “I love it! What a perfect name.”

Gaara felt a smile begin to crease his cheeks again. His hands tightened to fists on his knees. He wished it was resting on Lee’s instead: bulky and tanned and scarred beside the pale, jagged knobs of his. He shifted, just a little, daring to see how much contact he could get away with, how much of his weight he could lean into Lee before Lee said something.

He wondered if the fireworks would start soon. They were the traditional conclusion to Konoha’s summer festival, and something in him very much wanted to see their colors reflected in Lee’s eyes.

In the distance, something rumbled.

“Did you hear that?” Lee cocked his head.

“It sounded like thunder.”

Scarcely had Gaara gotten the words out before the sky opened like a popped water balloon, a sudden deluge pounding down onto their heads and turning the once-placid surface of the pond into a raging ocean in miniature.

“Oh!” Lee grabbed Gaara by the wrist for the second time that night, hauling to his feet and dragging him through the forest that was quickly turning to marshland, mud sucking at the soles of Gaara’s sandals with every step.

Lightning lit the path ahead of them, the crack of thunder quick on its heels, and Lee shrieked a laugh, throwing an arm over his face like it would in any way shield his eyes. Gaara himself was half-blind, kept upright only by the sheer force of Lee’s body. His gourd dissolved at his waist, the wet sand sloughing up underneath his clothing to cling tight to his skin for ineffective shelter from the rain.

They were both panting, Lee breathless from laughter and Gaara breathless from exertion, when Lee pointed out a small stone outcropping tucked in among the trees. It looked as though it might have once served as an animal’s den, but in the thick of the storm, all Gaara saw was a refuge. He let Lee tug him forward, holding Lee’s wrist just as tightly as Lee held his. The undergrowth thinned, the ground underfoot deceptively flat until Gaara took one wrong step forward and found one of his legs sinking knee-deep into the muck.

He must have cried out loud enough to be heard over the storm, because without so much as a pause, Lee dropped Gaara’s wrist in favor of slinging his arms around his waist and hauled him over his shoulder as if he were nothing more than a sack of rice.

Lee sprinted the last few meters into their shelter, losing his footing at the last second and skidding across the slick stone in an ungainly enough fashion that Gaara tumbled off of him and came to rest, chest heaving, against the rock face.

“Are you all right?” Lee had to yell to be heard over the rolling thunder.

Gaara nodded. The sand, like a scolded child, slunk back out from under his clothing and piled limply on the ground in a shape that could only charitably be considered gourd-like.

“And you?”

Lee looked down at his legs and grimaced. “A couple of skinned knees, but nothing that a wash and a bandage won’t fix!”

Gaara frowned. Rolling up onto his knees, he ducked low to avoid bashing his head on the ceiling and crawled forward until he was hovering between Lee’s spread legs. The right knee was only a little scraped up, but the left was freely bleeding.

“Tsk.” Between the two of them, neither had any spare fabric to use to daub the blood, so Gaara simply tried to wipe it away with his fingers. It mixed with the rain and trickled, translucent-red, down his wet hand and dripped off his elbow.

“I’m fine, Gaara-kun,” Lee murmured, and Gaara looked up only to realize how terrifyingly close he was to Lee’s body, the scant few centimeters separating their faces.

He shivered, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the damp clothes cooling on his back or the sensation of Lee’s breath gusting over his face. His shins, unguarded, crunched in the dirt of the stone floor, his knees threatening to knock together.

“I—” Gaara started to say, then stalled. In some fit of what had to be insanity, he lapped the blood-water from his elbow, tracing his tongue up his forearm until he’d collected all of it in his mouth. He licked his lips, then swallowed.

“Oh.”

Between the night and the shadow of the rock, Lee’s face was near-invisible, lit only in the black-and-white afterimages of the lightning’s flashing. He had leaned back on one arm, but the other was moving, in stop-motion frames, up towards Gaara’s face.

Bare skin brushed against his wet cheek, Lee’s palm rough with calluses and his fingers long and crooked as they tucked a bit of Gaara’s dripping hair behind his ear. Despite the fact that they were both drenched, his skin was warm on Gaara’s face.

“May I …?” he whispered, and somehow Gaara managed to catch it between the rolls of thunder.

Gaara nodded, mute, untrusting of his voice, and hoped that the lightning illuminated him enough for Lee to see.

It must have, because in the next white flash, he saw Lee’s smile, and then cautious pressure guided him downwards, until his bloodstained lips brushed against Lee’s.

Lee’s mouth tasted like rainwater and candy apple. The cotton of his shirt squelched when Gaara’s hands fisted in it. And his touch, as it grazed over Gaara’s face, his neck, his back, was so, so gentle.