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“Gaara,” a quiet voice calls, with an unusual tranquillity.
The head of a pawn saves a crescent moon of light, still crimson with the fading day. It is under the label ‘hidden’, shortened from ‘hidden jutsu’.
Gaara shifts his head. He heard him, as he always does.
Naruto has never really learned to care if someone listens or not, so long as the words get out. But when Gaara looks at him, he’s staring outside of the window, the curve of his whiskered cheek outlined by the remaining shimmer of sun.
“Did you know…” he blinks away from the window, burrowing his chin into the collar of his sweater. There was no waver in the boy’s voice. He seems… distant somehow.
“...that my mother had red hair?” When he looks into Gaara’s eyes, that is when he sees it. The round, delicate shape of his eyelid, an opening.
Gaara doesn’t know if he is prepared to enter. If Naruto is really sure about this.
He sets down the slip of paper he had held between his fingers, and notes the dryness of them. He doesn’t move his hands from where they lay against the ink map.
“Your mother?” Gaara asks, keeping his voice steady. He doesn’t know what this path will lead him to. Naruto’s face is gentle. Younger.
Gaara thinks he can understand the feeling. When his mind is transported along a train of memories, coming and going between the past and the present. A pilgrimage to the familiar nightmares of his childhood.
It is an intimate meeting. And often he still finds himself frequenting those corners, but the pictures have aged in sepia, the feelings webbed in amber.
He will never forget, no. But it was the boy sitting across from him that made it change.
Naruto is still, his only movement being in his eyebrows, where they contort and pinch together occasionally. But his focus is on Gaara now, the strands of hair brushing his forehead, the turn of his helix.
“Her hair was kind of like yours, y’know.” Naruto says absently, and he moves- arm reaching out.
Before he could react, Naruto is inches away from Gaara’s face, palm hovering beside his left eye, to take hold of a tress of red. Gaara does not move.
Naruto holds it against his fingers because the hair is short. Very bare fingertips brush his temple, and Gaara notes that his hands are dry, too. But they are warm, and they are soft, and Gaara wonders if his feel the same way. Maybe they are weak from sand shields; cold from being alone.
He wonders if Naruto is thinking of the same thing.
But he comes back and he knows that he is not. Naruto is looking past Gaara, past this world and into the plane where a woman with hair like Gaara’s stands. But that’s fine. He will help his friend.
Naruto pets his hair now. Slow, simple swipes with his thumb. Gaara can feel the slight pull on his scalp with every downward stroke.
Nobody, from as far as his mind or body can remember, has ever touched him like this. With tenderness, as if it means something. As if he is worth something other than the protection he provides, or the decisions he makes.
Gaara cannot tell if he likes the feeling. He is tense, and he can’t seem to unstiffen himself or even blink normally. He is aware of every muscle in his body, as well as Naruto’s.
It almost reminds him of the few times his sand has been beaten in battle, when his guard was down, and he could not bring it back up. Yes, this is very like that. He knows where this feeling of exposure comes from now, why he is a fly pinned by the wings, as if Naruto had made him bare with nothing more than four fingers and a thumb.
It’s not fine. It doesn’t feel that way, but he’ll put up with it for Naruto’s sake. He can sacrifice the notion of safety inside him for Naruto’s comfort.
Only, Naruto doesn’t stop. He shifts closer in his chair, leaning too far onto the worked wooden table. There’s a moment where nothing else happens. Gaara’s next breath is far too loud in the silence.
Naruto’s hand slips further into the silky waves of his hair, caressing the side of his head with long, adoring fingers. The slide of Naruto’s skin against his rings clearly in his ear and Gaara belatedly realises that Naruto, just like him, has probably never done this with anyone either.
Never had anyone to do it with.
The boy’s palm is only just above his cheek, giving off warmth without touch. The sensation is foreign. Like dust was brushing across him, but dust does not feel this way. He is able to flinch or blow that feeling away. He cannot move now.
Dust does not bring blood to his head, or make his stomach dance.
There is a puff of breath across his cheek and Gaara shivers involuntarily.
Naruto is snapped out of his reverie with the sudden movement. His hand freezes in Gaara’s hair, blinking up to the other’s face with wide, abashed eyes. He smiles guiltily.
“Sorry.” Naruto says and retracts his hand.
Gaara looks away.
“It’s fine.”
The night is cold. They should retire.
He hears Naruto swallow and sees him, from the corner of his eye, look away too.
Though the moon and stars have taken over the sky, Gaara feels no lethargy.
His finger twitches and finally he moves. He must be going insane. “Tomorrow will be long. You especially should rest.” he says, rising. Naruto’s judgement follows him without a word.
Gaara kicks out his chair and keeps his gaze firmly on the map beneath his hands as he removes himself. His skirts flow behind quick feet as he gathers his gourd and straps it once more around his torso. This pottery, as he does with all else, is treated with great care.
He supposes that the gourd is his friend too. It had to be; if it came before Naruto.
The vest is tied. His fingers shake only a little.
As he reaches the door the other boy calls out.
“It was long and straight.”
There is a pause where nothing but the sound of sand in the wind carries. Gaara thinks, for the first time, he might hear it cry.
“It was beautiful.” he says like it is fact. As if there is nothing else to say, because there is no other way to describe it.
The way it feels is ridiculous, because sand cannot cry, nor can it be fond.
He hears Naruto as he wishes he couldn’t.
“Goodnight, Naruto.” He turns his head and disappears through the door.
—
Naruto finds him, which he does often. Arriving at his side, Gaara does not know if he is grateful.
”You didn’t go to sleep,” he states. The light of all Sunagakure shines below them. From where they stand on the balcony, every building is visible. Every home, every store, every school, where the dreams of children form, where the convoluted lives of villagers continue on.
Gaara had only realised three years ago that he loves it very dearly.
“I did not.”
Naruto leans onto the lattice panel fence. His face is calm. Gaara thinks he is listening to the bugs whirr and chirp some distance away from them.
“She wasn’t like you at all.” the voice almost startles him.
“She was confident, kinda brash- just like me really,” he laughs quietly. It dissipates like clouds after rain. “But she was gentle.”
He looks at Gaara and when he does, the other boy sees all the stars of the sky in his eyes.
“My mom was a force of nature. She could do anything, be any way she wanted to be, but she chose to be kind.” he nods self-assuredly, bumps their shoulders together as a friend would do.
”You remind me a lot of her, Gaara. Your heart is so strong, so tender, I wish we could share it.” his giggle holds a childlike air to it.
He’s smiling so brightly, with so much affection dripping from his voice, Gaara thinks he may die.
“I love to think about you,” he grins wholeheartedly. “When I’m alone, I remember how your heart changed, and the happy song my soul sang when we first talked to each other as friends. I’m glad to have met you, Gaara. I really am.”
Gaara flushes. He is scratching at the skin of his palm, for some reason unbeknownst to him. The sound of wooden flutes and calfskin drums flows out from the open door of a bar. It is a tune Gaara has never heard before.
His heart’s tears sweeten at the notes.
“…So am I.” he says finally. And his hand is on the fence, laying there in front of him when Naruto takes it in his own.
When his face is held, so gently as to not break it, Naruto meets him where their spirits soar, together alone.