Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Naruto and Hinata’s wedding is the first time Lee gets to see all of his friends in one place in about three months. It seems that the older he gets, the more friends just become an appointment. And Lee wholly understands that his friends are fully functional people with lives, with jobs, with relationships now, but that makes reunions like this all the more sweet.

Although, with all the talk and long-time-no-see hugs, there’s still one person that he’s barely gotten the chance to speak to all evening. 

Gaara has been in the company of the five Kage most of the evening, and Lee’s formality prevents him from interrupting just about anything. He’d been hoping all along that Gaara would finally drift to his friends as the reception went on, but Lee should know better. Even with a drink in his hand, Gaara is still ever the businessman. 

Even Kankuro and Temari, workaholics in their own right, have disappeared into the throng of people celebrating. Lee can see the top of Kankuro’s hat over the crowd, watching as his hands wave frantically (probably drunkenly) to congratulate Hinata as she stands with Shino and Kiba. 

Temari is hanging on Shikamaru’s arm, both of them laughing at a joke that Lee bets only they understand. 

And Gaara’s working. 

“Gyaaahhh, c’mon,” giggles a high voice behind Lee, the source of the arm that grabs at his shoulder, “go talk to him!” 

Lee jolts from his intense contemplation, eyebrows raised when he turns to look at Tenten. Her cheeks are pink, more than pink, probably a shade of red by now. The loose braid her hair is in has started to fall out. The champagne flute in her hand speaks a thousand words.  She pats at his chest because her hand can’t reach any higher (Lee grows taller and taller still) and nods at him. “Y’heard me.” 

“Tenten, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about,” Lee splutters. Out of instinct, he puts an arm around her to steady her while she wobbles, craning his neck to search for Neji. 

“Go talk to Gaara,” she encourages, leaning into Lee’s steady frame. He really never does fall over for anything, does he? She holds up the champagne flute, smushing it against the side of his face. “Go. Go.” She says, each syllable accompanied by a resounding jab of the flute. 

“He is busy. And stop doing th--”

“There you are,” Neji all but pants exasperatedly, as he appears from behind a few more guests to meet Tenten and Lee. “I’ve been looking for you for twenty minutes,” he says to Tenten, plucking the flute from her hand. She barely notices it’s gone, is more enamored with seeing him. 

“Neji,” she coos, tapping his chest the same way she did Lee’s, “don’t you think Lee should talk to Gaara?” 

Neji sips at her half-finished champagne, resting an arm around her waist. “Mm. He should.”

“He is busy,” Lee says hotly, feels red rising to his cheeks when his eyes flicker over to the Kage, joined by Naruto now. 

“Don’t you think he would make time for you?” Asks Neji. 

Lee’s cheeks grow hotter. What’s the answer to that?

Would Gaara make time for him, after on shaking legs he’d clambered over what remained of the Fifth Shinobi War battlefield in front of the entire company to find Lee and given him a hug so tight Lee could feel his ribs through his shirt?

Would Gaara make time for him, after he had murmured I’m so glad you’re safe against Lee’s chest when it was still soaked with shinobi blood?

Would Gaara make time for him, if in that same hug he looked up at Lee with beautiful sunken eyes and parted lips that pierced Lee’s sore lungs right in his chest, and nearly kissed him before someone yelled for the Kazekage?

“He would, he wouldhewouldhewould,” drawls Tenten. Neji muffles a laugh when he kisses the top of her head. 

Lee’s cheeks are properly red now after he’s lost himself in that memory, and he shakes his head. “When he is not busy, perhaps I will talk to him,” he offers, and nods in a motion of goodbye as he keeps moving through the crowd. 

For someone who’s ever-positive, Lee is feeling a little bit defeated as he walks through this wedding in search of another distracting activity, but all he sees are couples. 

There is a rival for you too, Lee! Guy’s voice echoes in his head. The universe gives us all that we need to be happy!

Lee wishes the universe didn’t make him dream about the color red so much. 

Waiters are coming around again, now, making sure everyone’s plates are full and their glasses even fuller. Marrying into the Hyuuga family clearly hadn’t been a hindrance in the financial department. Lee politely declines the liquor offered to him- he’d like to make it home in one piece- and decides that maybe he should go back to that nice little table with the cute appetizers. 

With this thought in mind, he turns swiftly on his heel and is met with a tiny wall of beige and red and wine that splatters between them. 

Lee has never been this frozen in his life, gawking in horror at what he’s just done, the red stain blooming across the front of Gaara’s coat and dripping down the buttons and wait a minute, wait a minute--!

Lee thinks he’s going to throw up. “I am so, so sorry, my apologies, I--” he’s frantically looking around for a waiter, a napkin, something, anything--

“If you wanted a sip, you could have just said so,” says Gaara, and Lee is too anxious to notice he’s joking until he watches the way Gaara’s lips curl up around his half-empty glass for another sip. 

“I-- that was not my intention, and--” Lee just keeps spluttering . 

“I’ve been looking for you all night, you know. Every time I looked over, you just looked busy,” Gaara hums, as cool as can be for a man with wine all over his chest. “How many friends do you possibly have?”

“Me? Busy?” Lee is suddenly reflecting on tonight’s actions. He had said hello to everyone, yes. And then said congratulations. Twice. And then he had some more hellos, and then he had to find Guy-sensei. He hasn’t been busy at all. “But--”

“So then I just decided I would come find you myself,” Gaara interrupts as he continues. As always, he says whatever comes to his mind whether it’s the right time or not. “So,” he looks up at Lee, almost expectantly, “hello.”

“I-- hello,” Lee says dumbfoundedly, and then laughs. “It- it is very nice to see you, but I spilled wine all over your coat.”

“There’s a funny thing about coats,” Gaara says. He stops after,  staring as if prompting Lee to ask ‘what’.

“What?”

“You can take them off,” Gaara says, and holds out the wine glass. “Hold this.”

If Lee were the kind of person to roll his eyes, now would be the time. Leave it to Gaara to gloss over such a moment with a deadpan comment. Lee takes the glass from nimble fingers, holding it while Gaara unbuttons his meticulous wedding attire of choice and slides it off of those bony shoulders of his. 

Underneath he’s wearing long sleeves as well, a dark red button-up that looks much more his style. He carefully folds his coat and then tucks it under his arm. 

“Oh, but now you have to carry it around all evening,” Lee protests. 

“Don’t be silly.”

“But I would not want you to be burdened when you are supposed to be celebrating!”

“How are you?” Gaara changes the tide of the conversation so abruptly that it may as well have smacked Lee in the face. I don’t care about the coat.

“I am well,” Lee answers honestly. “All my injuries are starting to heal up. I can get back to normal training again,” he adds with a grin. “How are you?” I missed you.  

“That’s good to hear,” Gaara muses. Awkward silence hangs between them, and they both speak at the same time after a beat. 

“About that--”

“So when--”

Both of them stop speaking again.  Lee is still holding Gaara’s glass of wine, and he’s nervously tapping the outside of it with his thumb.

“You first,” Lee says. 

“You talked first.”

“Oh, but Gaara, I couldn’t.”

“ Oh, but Lee, you could.”

Something about his name on Gaara’s lips makes his chest tighten. 

Lee takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he decides to start over. “Would you like to take a walk?”

Gaara blinks at him. Without a hitch, he responds, “Yes.”

“The evening has gotten a bit longer,” Lee says, as they begin to walk where there’s less people, a calm pace between them. Both of Gaara’s arms are tucked under the coat he’s holding, and Lee still has that goddamn wine glass. 

“Why do you say that?”

“How do I say this?” Lee muses, as the groups of people get thinner. They’re nearly outside of the entire wedding at this point, an empty walkway with streetlights and scattered wedding decorations. A bench stands at the side of the path. “All of my friends are… together.”

“As in having relations?”

Lee cringes. “Not like that. Well- yes, like that- but…”

“So having relations.”

“Please stop saying that!”

“Is it wrong?”

“No, but I do not want to think about that!”

“Does the omission of the truth erase the realism of the truth itself?” Gaara says, squinting his eyes thoughtfully at a falling cherry blossom. He takes a seat on the bench next to Lee, crossing one leg over the other.  “Mm. What were you talking about?”

“I was saying,” Lee wipes one free palm on his pants, takes another deep breath to shake off the thought of relations, “all my friends are together. And I have been wondering for a very long time…”

“About what?”

“If you might think of me that way.” Lee’s voice is softer than its usual confident ring. He distracts himself with hunching over to set the wine glass on the ground in front of them. 

Gaara sets his coat to one side, not between. “You?”

Lee’s heart pounds in his ears. He’s made a grave mistake, hasn’t he? Oh, he’ll have to take off his ankle weights to run away from this one. 

“Undeniably so, yes.”

In his hunched over pose, Lee awkwardly cocks his head to look up at Gaara. “What?”

Gaara’s hands are comfortably clasped in his lap, while his fingers are restlessly playing with the fabric of his shirt. “I said I would think about you in that way,”  he says. 

Gaara, who will never show fear in his face, has some color in his cheeks. His hands are awkward in his lap and maybe even a little sweaty, all while his eyes continuously flicker over to Lee’s. 

“What about you?” Gaara asks. His fingers twitch once, twice, and then he gets the courage to set his hand on the wood of the bench between them. Two more inches, and it rests on top of Lee’s.

Even in this light brush Gaara can feel the rough elastic bandages that cover Lee’s hands, the scars and bumps that litter his knuckles, the knobbly bones of his fingers that have been broken twenty times over.

Lee finally comes up to sit upright and he slips his hand out from under Gaara’s only to grab it again, properly this time. “I think about you in that way. I think about you all the time.”

His body is turned toward’s Gaara’s. Next to Gaara, Lee looks taller and lankier than usual, with shoulders that take up too much space and large hands that hold Gaara’s smaller ones gently. 

“I like it when we spend time together,” Gaara says simply, quietly as they grow closer. He drops down the leg that was crossed so he can face Lee, too. 

He’s always found Lee’s eyes to be incredibly safe. They’re big and kind, warm and inviting, with crinkles at the corners because Lee is always smiling. Gaara thinks he might like Lee’s eyes the best because they see him so clearly. And now, they’re hooded just slightly, gazing into Gaara’s own icy green, sleepless eyes. 

“Me too,” Lee says. Above them, a streetlamp flickers and a cool summer breeze blows through the air. 

Gaara feels Lee’s heart beating under his fingertips when he moves his hand up his chest in search of the back of his neck. Lee’s hair is freshly cut for the wedding, the back shorn close, and it’s soft under Gaara’s hand. His thumb brushes the underside of Lee’s ear gently, carefully. 

With each breath they grow closer, both of them staring back at each other with eyes that are growing more and more closed. When their lips press together it’s hesitant, innocent. 

But shinobi culture dictates that when something is not done right, it must be done again, and this is what drives Lee to take hold of the side of Gaara’s face with one large hand, leaning in to kiss him once more.

It takes Gaara by surprise, heat flooding to his cheeks and his own hand falling to lay comfortably on Lee’s chest. How is it that Lee’s hand feels so confident on his skin when he was so nervous a minute ago? Lee is the best performer he knows. 

This kiss is deeper than the first, a clumsy mix of lips. Gaara tastes like wine, and Lee can’t help but want more of it when he feels Gaara’s fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt.

When they pull away, Lee’s hand is still cupping Gaara’s face, stroking the smooth skin underneath. He has a bit of a Konoha sunburn across his nose and cheeks. 

“Would you… like to spend the night?” He asks. 

Chapter Text

Besides the moths hounding the streetlamps and the abandoned wine glass on Konoha’s dirt road, no one sees the way Gaara kisses Lee again with a soft “yes,” or the way he sighs into Lee’s mouth after. 

“We have to say goodbye to everyone first,” Lee says, laughing lightly as he pulls away. “They are probably wondering where we went.”

“I think they know where we went,” Gaara says plainly. 

“Hush!” 

Lee stands and before Gaara can move, Lee makes an awkward swoop around him to grab his coat. 

“Lee,” Gaara rolls his eyes, “you don’t have to--”

“Just let me,” Lee chirps, tucking the coat under his arm. He extends his other arm towards Gaara. 

Being so… forward is not so much Gaara’s concern after the stunt he had pulled a few months ago. Everyone had been talking about it. But now they'll be giving everyone some more to talk about, Gaara thinks, as he takes Lee’s hand. The two of them walk slowly.

There are a variety of turned heads that accompany them as they find Hinata and Naruto, extending their utmost congratulations. Naruto and Hinata are both very red in the face, and Naruto wishes them a “good night, a real fuckin’ good night, Gaara and Bushy Brows!” while Hinata giggles into his shoulder. 

Tenten and Neji are nowhere to be found, are elusive enough to probably have left by themselves. The same goes for Shikamaru and Temari. It’s already dark, after all. Distantly, Gaara can see Kankuro draped over Kiba Inuzuka’s shoulder and figures that’s a conversation neither of them want to have, so he directs himself and Lee to the exit. 

Lee lives relatively close to where they are. Gaara doesn’t mind the walk either way. The stars are incredibly bright here, and the evenings are never as freezing as Suna’s. He’ll complain about the humidity tomorrow, but for now, he can enjoy it. 

It isn’t until Lee lets go of Gaara’s hand to unlock his apartment that Gaara realizes he’s never seen it. In fact, he’s surprised Lee lives by himself at all, and not in some strange joint apartment with his entire team. 

That, and Lee’s apartment is so cozy and tidy it’s almost infuriating. Gaara is the kind of person to only clean for guests, Kazekage or not, so he’s never prepared for a nightcap (not that he ever really has any.) Sometimes, Lee appears to him like someone so perfect that it’s annoying. 

“My apologies for the mess,” Lee says when they step inside, and Gaara nearly smacks him.

“There is no mess,” Gaara says flatly. 

“You do not have to be so overly polite with me. I am aware of my own shortcomings.” Lee shakes his head. The first place he goes is the sink, setting Gaara’s coat over it and then reaching up to his kitchen cupboards. 

“What in the world are you doing?” 

“What does it look like? The wine will stain.”

“You care about the--?” Gaara realizes that this argument is futile, and it’s easier to just watch Lee putter around the kitchen, finding peroxide and soap to mix out the stain. He supposes it’s a guilt thing, anyway. Lee always ruminates. 

Gaara busies himself by setting his shoes next to Lee’s. Both pairs are heavily worn, but Lee’s are bigger than his. All of Lee is big. 

Up on Lee’s refrigerator are pictures of him and his team, his sensei, his friends, a turtle that Gaara recalls him prattling on about. Gaara breaks his gaze from the pictures to look at Lee, still haughtily scrubbing at the wine. 

“Your apartment is nice,” Gaara says, bare feet padding across the tile of Lee’s kitchen. Wordlessly, he comes up behind Lee to wrap skinny arms around his middle, his head to the side, right near the crook of Lee’s arm. 

“Thank you!” It’s so sweet that it makes Lee pause while his heart jumps into his throat, and he sets down the coat. “I will be done in a minute,” he says fondly, as he scrubs out the last of the wine. He resolves to leave the coat spread across the sink to dry, and then turns back to Gaara. 

He finds that Gaara is always much more forward when nobody’s watching. That’s to be expected from him. “I meant to tell you earlier that you look very handsome,” Lee says, resting his hands on Gaara’s waist. 

“So handsome that you forgot to tell me?”

“Would you cut that out?!” 

Lightly, Gaara snickers at Lee’s reaction, instead winding his arms around Lee’s neck. He has to push up on his toes just barely, and then Lee tilts down to make it easier on him, pressing his lips to Gaara’s. 

They don’t move as slow as they had on the bench. Now, there’s this air of no one watching that clouds around them, that bends the fingers in Gaara’s hand as they grab at the hair on the back of Lee’s head, that tips his head back while Lee’s lips find his neck. 

Gaara’s breath catches audibly when Lee finds the spot between his neck and his shoulder, and Lee pulls away entirely. “Do you want me to stop?” 

Gaara blinks, his eyes wide, lips apart. He’s bewildered. “Not at all.”

“Oh,” Lee laughs with what looks like relief, “so that was a… good sound.”

The tips of Gaara’s ears burn crimson. “Keep going,” he says instead.

Lee moves to oblige, but then looks down the hallway. “We could move to my bedroom. My bed is not made, though, so I understand if you--”

Gaara’s answer lies in him turning, tugging Lee behind him as they go down the small hallway to his bedroom. It’s as irritatingly clean as his kitchen, save for the rumpled green comforter on his bed and a pair of sweatpants strewn over a chair.

He’s internally grateful that Lee has not seen his bedroom, and makes a mental note to clean it from top to bottom if he ever comes to visit. 

Gaara has thought about this moment quite a few times, but now that it’s actually happening, he doesn’t know where to start. 

While Gaara is lost in his head, Lee takes a seat on the bed, reaching a hand out for him. And God, with a face like that, who is Gaara to refuse? 

Creative as he is, Gaara has never imagined himself on Lee’s lap the way he is now, straddling him as their lips come together again. The reality of it is just so much better than what he could have dreamed up, as he feels the weight of Lee’s hands on his narrow hips, of Lee’s breath so close to his skin as he kisses up Gaara’s jaw.

And the spread of Gaara’s legs has him feeling something else entirely new under him, the hard outline of something that he couldn’t have imagined, either. 

A surge of confidence moves through him at that. He clearly has Lee’s attention, whether Lee wants him to know it or not, and Gaara responds by moving to crash his lips against Lee’s again. 

This time, Gaara’s hands are working at the front of Lee’s dress shirt (or is it a jumpsuit? He wouldn’t be surprised). After popping a button open, he realizes it needs to go over Lee’s head, and pulls away from him to do just that. 

Lee is one step ahead of him, arms crossing in front of him as he pulls his shirt up and over his head and oh.

Gaara has seen Lee without a shirt on a handful of times throughout the years, but none have been quite like this. None have been as handsome as Lee under the blue light of the moonlight that pours through the window, with the added sparkle of Konoha streetlights. His shirt is tossed haphazardly to the side and all Gaara can do is stare, while Lee’s fingers nervously fumble with the bandages on one of his wrists. 

It dawns on Gaara then that he’s never seen Lee under them. When the fibers fall to the ground next to Lee’s shirt, Gaara wonders if Lee expects him to reel and turn away. Lee’s hands are as scarred as Gaara should have predicted them to be, with scar tissue and nerve damage and angry lifted skin running up his arms and down his hands. 

He doesn’t, because he’s still only focused on the curve of Lee’s forearms, or the handsome frame of his hands. He doesn’t because he has scars of his own, too, and he hopes that Lee will find them just as normal. The haunting can come later, can’t it? Because underneath all of the tan and the red, Gaara sees Lee. 

Before Gaara can get a chance to touch, Lee’s hands are at the button of his shirt. He looks at Gaara questioningly, and Gaara nods before Lee continues. His shirt joins Lee’s on the ground.

They’re polar opposites, Gaara and Lee. If Lee’s hand were slightly bigger, he thinks he would be able to wrap it around Gaara’s bicep. No matter how hard he’s been trying to put on extra muscle and weight as he gets older, it’s never really worked. Gaara’s collarbones still jut out the same way that his shoulders do. The muscles that stretch across his chest are minimal, moving down to abs that are only really there because he’s skinny. 

Gaara only has two scars. One is the blistering pink starburst across his left side from when Sasuke had driven through him with lightning. The other is splayed across his stomach, the cursed remnants of what would’ve normally been a Jinchuuriki seal. Parts are stained black from the seal markings and some are an angry red that ripples across his skin.

Lee’s eyes linger on it for only a moment longer. It seems like it’ll glow in the dark. 

“You are so beautiful that I do not know what else to say,” Lee breathes. 

Lee’s hands run up Gaara’s waist and make him shiver, splaying out over his back and his shoulders. 

Gaara responds by taking Lee’s face in both his hands and kissing him soundly, the kind that slots their lips together and makes a noise in the otherwise quiet of Lee’s bedroom. 

Lee’s hands make themselves comfortable on Gaara’s sides, smoothing down to his thighs. They’re just as slim as the rest of him, but tight with muscle.

Gaara’s breath is hot in his mouth, both of their lips sticky, and Lee lets himself lean back. It’s only a little bit at first, until he decides to fall back against the comforter, arms outstretched for Gaara to join. 

Instead of hovering right over him like Lee thought he would, Gaara moves much slower from where he’s sat on Lee’s hips. He presses a few haphazard and inexperienced kisses to Lee’s chest, steadying himself as he places a hand on either side of Lee’s head. But when he looks down, he can’t ignore the way that Lee is tenting his dress pants. 

So when Gaara leans down to kiss Lee’s collarbone, he grinds his hips down so they can feel the same friction between them. 

Lee lets out a resounding breath, mouth tipped open while Gaara sucks on his neck and presses their hips together again, with more pressure this time. 

“Gaara,” he breathes, enough to make Gaara pull up and stop. But the split second interruption is only so Lee can nudge him to the side and swing his leg over him, effectively switching their positions. 

“I just want to--” Lee is blushing from embarrassment, now, embarrassment because he’s never really been good at things like this. Lee is polite and pressed and neat and now Gaara is making his head spin in all the right ways. He’s not used to it. 

“You want to what?” Gaara asks breathlessly. 

“I would like to give you a blow- oh, I don’t like to be crude, forgive me- a blow job.”

Gaara tries to hold it in. He really does, but instead he has to bury his face in the comforter next to him while his shoulders shake with laughter. 

“What? What?!” Lee panics, suddenly redder than before. “Is that not what it is?!”

“No, no, I just--” Gaara has to compose himself, rubbing a hand over his face. “You’re so polite. ”

“Do good manners not belong in the bedroom?!” 

“Your good manners belong anywhere,” Gaara says fondly, leaning up on his elbows. 

“You made me nervous. All I do is embarrass myself in front of you, you know,” Lee whines, completely casual as he fiddles with the button of Gaara’s pants. 

“I like you when you’re doing all sorts of things. There’s no such thing as embarrassing yourself,” Gaara says. 

“I do not believe that,” Lee says as he unzips Gaara’s pants, “but I am busy right now, so we will get back to this conversation another time.”

Gaara’s mind has already left it. He’s busy lifting his hips up so that Lee can slip his pants off, both of them laughing when they get caught on Gaara’s feet and Lee has to stand up to get them off. 

As far as Gaara can remember, a lot of things make him nervous. Lee makes him nervous, even. But the laughter that they’re sharing right now makes it much easier to be confident in spite of that. 

When Lee climbs back onto the bed, Gaara feels the air leave his lungs again, because instead of right above him Lee is between his legs. 

Lee can see the outline of Gaara through his boxers now, and he finally slips the waistband down to let Gaara’s length spring free from them. 

Experimentally, Lee wraps a hand around him. “Let me know what you like. Or do not like.”

Gaara nods breathlessly, mouth ajar while he watches Lee’s lips wrap around the head of his cock. Red hair meets the green comforter when Lee takes more of Gaara into his mouth. Gaara’s hand finds a place in Lee’s hair, resting there while he starts to bob his head up and down. 

“I like that,” Gaara says hoarsely, his fingers curling in Lee’s hair. “Keep- ah, keep going.”

Lee continues, though pulls up for a break to focus on the head of Gaara’s length, watching as Gaara breathes in sharply, as his eyelids hood with pleasure. 

Through drooping eyelids, Gaara has never seen Lee look so sinful. It’s a part of him that only Gaara gets to see, and rightfully so, they’re romantically involved, Lee is Gaara’s, Lee is Gaara’s. 

Lee’s hand joins, wrapping around the base of Gaara’s length and making him whine out in pleasure.

Gaara finds that whenever Lee is involved he gets the opportunity to relax , and so he does, letting his arms rest above his head while Lee sends pleasure shooting up his spine, the kind that reaches right through his fingertips. Gaara is comfortable, pliant against green sheets, arms lax over him and eyes fallen closed. 

Lee’s other hand comes up to curl over his hip, rubbing a caring circle into the sharp bone that nearly juts out there. His hand comes up further onto Gaara’s abdomen, smoothing over pale scar-mottled skin. 

“Lee,” breathes Gaara, when Lee pulls up just slightly, “come here.” 

Lee’s lips are pink and shiny with spit when he pulls all the way up, his bangs messy from Gaara’s hand earlier. “Is everything okay?”

Gaara smiles lazily, reaching his hand out for nothing in particular. “I just want to kiss you again.”

It must be something like love, Gaara thinks, to be so comfortable with someone, to be sighing into Lee’s mouth like this when Lee’s on top of him again. Lee is hard against him when he leans down, and he’s breathing heavier than he had been before. What an experience to get Lee so wound up by something other than one-legged squats. 

“We should have sex,” Gaara breathes against his lips. 

Lee is not the only one that can’t find a sexy term for things. He’s just thankful Gaara hadn’t asked about relations. Gaara’s voice is hoarse and unapologetic. He’s not scared to mess up in front of Lee, like he knows that Lee will be here whether he does or not. It’s a powerful cushion to have. 

“Do you want to?” Lee asks against his jaw. He supposes he’s not offering any convincing opposing arguments, with the way he’s heavy and warm over Gaara right now. 

“Do you want to? Because I just asked.”

Lee squeaks in protest, suddenly pulling away so he can look at Gaara with a playful grin. “I want to.”

“It might help if you take your pants off.”

“Could you wait just a minute, Gaara-kun?” 

Gaara gives him one of those gremlin grins, the kind that spreads across his face. He loves when he gets a rise out of Lee, something beyond “hush” or “stop that!”

Long legs awkwardly clamber over Gaara as Lee pushes himself to stand up, going over to the small nightstand by his bed to dig in one of its drawers. He finds what he’s looking for quickly (presumably because he’s so organized), a small bottle of lube and a condom. 

Gaara could ask why he’s been keeping them- but he figures that would turn Lee embarrassed and red enough to cry or earn him a lecture on safe sex. Either one is not what he wants right now, so instead he chooses to watch Lee undoing the button of his pants. 

Gaara recalls Lee mentioning on multiple offhanded occasions that he’s mildly insecure about his legs. Playfully, he’s heard Lee say, they are too long! I trip over them!  Or I think I need a new suit… again! I have grown out of this one. But when Gaara looks at them, he sees what keeps Lee upright, the steady weight that never seems to fall over no matter what Gaara leans onto it. 

Lee’s briefs are tight and green and he almost looks shy as he steps out of them. Moments when Lee is quiet are hard to come by. Gaara pays attention to him indefinitely, but even more so now. 

The condom and lube don’t make a sound as Lee tosses them onto his bed and follows suit, finding his place on top of Gaara again. “Would you like me to prep you?” He asks, the same dust of rose across his cheeks, “Or would you feel more comfortable doing it yourself?”

“Who said I was going to be on the bottom?” Gaara huffs suddenly. 

Lee jolts. “I did not m--”

Gaara offers him another wry smile. Something about Lee pulls joke after joke out of him. “I’m teasing you,” he says, and then pulls Lee down to him by the back of his neck, murmuring, “I want you to do it.”

Lee doesn’t have time to be cross with him. He’s too focused on the tone of Gaara’s voice, the way it takes this catlike nature when he feels like he has the upper hand, how it sends a shiver over his skin. 

Lee places a kiss to the column of Gaara’s throat and says, “Okay.”

Moving back, his hand scrambling over the comforter to find the lube he’d tossed, Lee retrieves the bottle and covers his fingers in it. “You have to let me know if you are uncomfortable,” he says pointedly, to which Gaara rolls his eyes and responds, “I will.”

Despite awkward conversations with his siblings that didn’t go very far, a brief afternoon reading Icha Icha, quiet evenings alone, and a casual looksie through some of the magazines hidden under Kankuro’s mattress, Gaara isn’t prepared for the way it feels when Lee’s finger is pushing inside of him. 

Gaara lets out a gasp of a breath he didn’t know he was holding, his eyelids falling shut. “I’m fine,” he reassures, “you can keep going.” The stretch is foreign, even a slight bit painful, but nothing that he can’t bear. 

Lee’s hands are a kind of gentle that Gaara rarely sees. He normally sees them as sharp, as strong, not quite the kind to touch Gaara like he’s glass. And yet he does, with his hand moving slowly and carefully, waiting for Gaara to nod before he slips in a second finger. 

Gaara’s hand unconsciously grasps at the comforter above him, his breath coming in more shallow now. Lee watches him carefully, looking for a telltale sign to stop, but all he sees is Gaara spread out under him with his eyelids fluttering with pleasure. Gaara’s chest is blooming red, patches of skin lighting up all the way to his neck with heat and arousal. It matches the dust of pink on his cheeks. 

And when Lee’s fingers crook ever so slightly, Gaara gasps, “Lee, do that again,” and Lee thinks he’s died and gone to heaven all at once. Gaara could ask for anything he wanted, Lee thinks, as he curls his fingers again and watches as Gaara’s back rises off the bed. 

“Lee, I want you to--” Gaara breathes, stumbling over his words. “I want you. ”

The same Gaara that has had Lee swooning for years is asking for no one but him, and the ache between Lee’s thighs only grows as he pulls his fingers out, searching for the lube again to slick himself up after he puts on the condom.

Lee’s shoulders are bracketing Gaara, then, broad and stiff above him. Lee’s bangs tickle Gaara’s forehead as he momentarily looks down to align himself with Gaara and then pushes into him. It’s the first time Gaara gets to see his face screwed up with something like pleasure, with his lips parted and his eyes squeezed shut.

Lee’s dick is proportional to the rest of his body. It’s most certainly not small, and Gaara inhales sharply with it. His arms are around Lee’s neck, and his short nails dig into the back of Lee’s shoulders. 

“Are you--”

“I’m fine,” Gaara insists. 

When Lee bottoms out, going so slowly that Gaara could just die, Gaara’s lips are on his again, mumbling “move already” against them.

The feeling of Lee inside him suddenly makes Gaara feel like the most selfish man on Earth, to have someone like Lee. Lee’s hips start to move, while his lips are quick to land on Gaara’s neck, leaving a mark that Gaara hopes his Kazekage hat will cover. 

Gaara’s nails dig into the flesh of Lee’s back and Lee moans against the pale of Gaara’s neck, his breath hot as he picks up the pace, overwhelmed with Gaara’s hands and Gaara’s neck and Gaara around him. 

Lee looks up from Gaara’s neck just to watch. Gaara’s jaw is agape, soft noises leaving him each time their hips collide. Lee shifts his angle slightly when he moves up to press a kiss to the corner of Gaara’s mouth, and Gaara’s back arches right off the bed. 

“Lee,” Gaara moans out. One of his heels digs into the small of Lee’s back. Another hand is tight in Lee’s hair, pulling again. Not that Lee minds in the slightest. “Lee, oh my god--”

Gone is the cocky, hoarse tone Gaara had used before. His voice is higher now, breathy, with a different sense of longing in the undertone.

A moan of his own spills from Lee’s lips that lands against Gaara’s mouth, and Gaara reaches up to cup his face in a kiss that’s so filthy Lee can still taste the wine from the wedding because it’s on Gaara’s tongue. 

They’re panting heavily into each other’s mouths, and Gaara breaks away from the kiss to whine out, “I’m close.”

In the back of his mind Lee thinks it’s a wonder either of them lasted this long, but he feels a familiar tug in his belly at Gaara’s words. The sight of Gaara so undone under him gives him another surge of want, the urge to make him cry out again. So Lee reaches one hand down to wrap around Gaara’s cock, pumping around him. 

Lee has heard Gaara swear maybe three times in their years of being… acquainted. He supposes this might be the fourth, when Gaara groans, “Shit, oh, shit,” and tilts his head back. 

Lee’s thrusts are growing sloppier, his hand moving in tandem with his hips. “Gaara--”

Gaara cries out, tilting his head to the side to muffle himself in the comforter as if anyone can hear them, tightening around Lee while he paints his own belly (and Lee’s hand) a creamy shade of white.

Gaara clenching around him sends Lee over the edge, and he pulls out breathlessly, adding to the crude painting that is Gaara’s stomach. 

Gaara’s eyes are closed and his chest is heaving, his hands relaxed over his head again, while Lee is leaned back on his knees, trying to catch his breath as well. 

When Gaara leans up on his elbows to peek over at him, Lee is all flushed in the face, his hair a mess that Gaara has never seen, his arms still flexed with the feat of keeping himself on top of Gaara for all that time. Gaara is thankful for the moonlight that illuminates Lee so beautifully, catching each sculpted edge of his body, the slope of his nose, the curve of his chest. It’s a picture he would like in his wallet. Or under his mattress. 

Lee’s body feels like lead, with warmth coursing through his veins. Gaara watches as he runs two hands through his hair, pushing it back off of his sweaty forehead for a moment. Lee doesn’t notice him looking until his own eyes flicker over, and then he lets out a shy sort of giggle. 

“That…”

“...makes me feel like I could sleep for a week,” Gaara sighs contentedly, a close-lipped smile forming across his mouth, his arms stretching above his head. 

“Could you?” Lee laughs lightly. He almost forgets about the mess they’ve made on Gaara, who doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. “Oh, dear,” he frets. “You stay right there.”

Gaara, who has no intentions of moving, simply grunts. 

Lee drags himself out of bed to disappear into his bathroom, returning with a towel. When he comes back Gaara hasn’t moved an inch, and Lee takes it upon himself to clean Gaara off. He’s not sure what to do with the towel after that, and he lets it fall to the floor as well.

“Would you like something to wear, or…?” Lee lets the other half of his sentence hang off. 

Gaara doesn’t say anything, only reaches for Lee. “I’m tired,” he sighs. A yawn accompanies him- a rare occurrence altogether. He supposes tonight has been full of surprises. 

There have been many nights when Lee wondered what it would be like to have the other half of the bed full. And now, as he reaches his arm out for Gaara, he knows. 

It’s him lying on his back with Gaara’s cheek pressed against his chest, still sticky with sweat. It’s red hair sticking up in every direction and tickling his collarbone. It’s thin cryptkeeper fingers spread out over his middle, while knobbly knees press between his. 

“I was always under the impression you did not sleep well,” Lee says, resting the arm that’s not around Gaara under his head. 

“I don’t.”

“But you said you were sleepy.”

“Those who do not sleep still must.”

“Okay.” Lee doesn’t understand Gaara a lot of the time, but what he’s getting now is that Gaara wants to sleep in his bed. Under his dumb green blankets. Together. 

“I would say we are like your friends,” Gaara pipes up after a moment. 

“Mm?” Lee tilts his head down slightly. “Why would that be?”

Gaara rumbles out a low laugh,  thick with sleep. His eyes are half closed. “We’re having relations.”