Guilt and Sand: Part Two (Naruto)
Title: Guilt and Sand, Part Two
Author: Dreaming of Everything dreams_of_all
Series: Naruto
Characters/Pairings: Gaara/Lee or Lee/Gaara.
Rating/Warnings: T for sexual-type stuff. Slash.
Summary: Guilt is a hard thing to deal with, and ninja have more than their fair share. A sequel/prequel to Guilt and Sand.
Gaara knows that Lee doesn’t like to touch him.
Some days he wonders why. Why me? Why doesn’t he touch me? because they’ve spoken of precious people, and of love, and he knows how much he has changed when that word doesn’t hurt the way it used to-
But Lee does not touch him. He sits close to him, when they are alone, so close that Gaara can feel the force of Lee, his presence, the force of his life, even though he can’t emit chakra at all, certainly not the way Gaara does. So close that he can feel his presence tingling, shivering along his skin, disturbing and intimate (like a fight but still, motionless, closer than anyone has ever gotten to him by their own free will, and peaceful, at rest, trusting, and the sand that filled the air around him was close enough to kill, his guard down and his reflexes slowed and so close-) but not touching.
Lee doesn’t shy away from touching his teachers, his teammates, his friends-Naruto, Sakura, Neji, Tenten, Maito Gai, whoever he is training with, even Gaara’s siblings. Casual touches, the natural, relaxed movements: greetings, reassurances, blocks, blows and steadying hands that Gaara doesn’t give, isn’t offered. They come so naturally to Lee, who is a physical person by nature, and human in a way that Gaara isn’t, that Gaara can’t be, and he gives away those little touches and reassurances to everyone he knows, except to Gaara.
Because Gaara is a monster, and nobody has wanted to touch him, nobody has tried touched him except for assassins since, since Yashamaru, and nobody has touched him since then. At least, until the Chuunin exam when Lee inflicted the first (physical) pain he could ever remember feeling, when the Uchiha heir kept him from a full transformation, when he was carried by Temari and Kankurou, when he nearly killed Sakura and was defeated by Naruto. Now, people avoid him, he always has an empty space surrounding him, no matter how packed a crowd, and only Naruto will fling an arm around him as if they are friends, as if he is human, as if he is worth it, and sometimes Temari and Kankurou will cautiously hold a hand against his shoulder, his arm, ready to spring away, to let go, to run if he reacts badly, and they are willing to do it anyways, despite that, but nobody else will touch him.
Not Sakura, Naruto’s precious Sakura-chan, Lee’s respected Sakura-san, whom he nearly killed, years back. Not the people of the village, who fear him and respect him and nearly worship him. Not the Uchiha that Naruto and Sakura had refused to give up on. Not any teacher he’s ever had. Not- Not Lee, who says he loves him, who says that Gaara is his most precious person, that he matters more than anyone, anything else.
It makes him want to kill him, sometimes.
Sometimes, Gaara hates him for it. Could tear him limb from limb, or tear away layers of skin and then muscle and then bones until only sand is left, or crush him into a gory rain of now-unrecognizable pulp that doesn’t hurt him, can’t hurt him, the way the alive Lee does, on accident. But he hasn’t, and he won’t, and he’s not sure he can, because he almost killed Lee once, nearly crushed him to death, caught his leg and his spine instead of all of him, and he will never forget what it felt like, the night after he killed Kimimaro, after he had seen Lee again, for the first time since he had taken so much, so much, away from him: the relief and the pain, knowing that it might not have worked and I might have killed him, that trust and belief in me, in me, no matter who I am and what I’ve done-
And Lee kept on doing that, believing in him, enough to love him but not enough to touch. Trust, but still the quiet, subtle, unspoken disgust that showed in his actions, a refusal to accept his pale, unblemished skin, unmarked with the scars a shinobi should have, always had, except for him, and for Naruto, but Naruto had never killed like he had.
And Gaara didn’t want to force Lee to pollute himself by touching him, as if his sins, the blood on his sand, the sand itself, would rub off on Lee, make him the same as himself. He might wish for that touch, but knows that he’s not worth it, that he’ll only hurt him more in the end, contaminate him, and he won’t do that to Lee.
He doesn’t even know if this is normal. He suspects it isn’t, from what he’s observed, but he doesn’t know. He can’t be sure. He knows he’s not normal, not normal when it comes to anything, but especially interacting with people.
Gaara can’t bring himself to talk to Lee about it, because it’ll just make Lee feel like he’s hurting him, make him feel he’s forced to touch him.
He deserves no one.
Not Lee, Lee least of all, who needs someone who will help raise him higher. Someone who will make him happy. Someone who doesn’t disgust him. Someone he can touch.
oOo
Lee’s nearly unconscious, barely in touch with reality from the heavy painkiller he’s been given (against his will) to combat the pain the huge gash that’s been ripped into his side when he touches Gaara.
Gaara is the last one to leave the room he’s in, standing to leave and looking down at him. He thinks Lee’s asleep, unconscious, but his eyes flutter open and hand moves deceptively fast to brush against his cheek and stay there, the back of his hand brushing against it, gaze bleary.
“Hello, Gaara.”
He doesn’t respond, too shocked.
“I-I wanted to-
“Thank you for letting me touch you. I know you don’t like it.”
He’s blatantly matter-of-fact about the bit of misinformation. Gaara absorbs it, has to think for a second longer than he should have to before the meaning penetrates his mind.
“But I don’t mind,” he says.
Lee blinks. “Oh. I must be dreaming-No one ever touches you. You don’t like it.” He treats it like a fact, regardless of Gaara’s disagreement.
Before Gaara can say anything else, Lee is gone.
oOo
Gaara doesn’t leave the hospital room until Lee’s regained consciousness. Nobody says a word about it-except for Naruto, who teases him about it until Gaara is ready to kill him, though he won’t.
oOo
Gaara doesn’t mention anything once Lee regains consciousness, and after he’s discharged from the hospital, and afterwards. Lee has no memory of the event.
oOo
Lee hates himself. Not all the time, because he has teachers and friends who love him, who know differently, and because he’s a sensible person, when all’s said and done, but he still hates himself, some days.
He’s never assigned to the worst missions, because personality is a factor when duties are assigned, but he is still a high-level, effective ninja with a specialized fighting style particularly effective in many of the missions the village is hired out for, and they are shinobi. There is nothing inherently noble about their jobs. They forge a living out of death, and his own values have very little to do with it. Even if what they do is usually done to keep some measure of control over the country, there are innocent lives lost: passers-by caught in a battle between ninja, someone in the way of an objective, or some innocent who, by some series of accidents and coincidences, became important in the wrong ways to the wrong people.
And Lee hates himself, when he’s just killed someone who walked in at the wrong time, or he’s been assigned to assassinate someone or, worse, someone and their family, or when he doesn’t incapacitate a ninja gone rogue fast enough, and more people are killed, more people are killed.
Lee knows that Gaara hates himself, if not how much or to what extent or how often. Every ninja does, sometimes, except for the sociopaths, the crazy ones, the ones who relish every crime they commit under the protection of their hidden village-even in Leaf, known for being the most kind-hearted-and sometimes even then, Lee doesn’t know. The most indulgent of humanity.
But he knows enough to know that Gaara hates himself differently.
The killings, the assassinations-they don’t bother him the way they bother most other people. And that scares Lee, sometimes, because he remembers Gaara when he didn’t reign himself in, when he really didn’t care at all, except for the proof of existence it offered him.
Lee knows enough to know that Gaara hates himself because he thinks he isn’t human. Because, in a way, he isn’t. The killing is secondary, maybe even tertiary, because he hates himself for what he was before, too, and that is the most overwhelming fear, the most overwhelming hate, but not the main reason he hates himself, now, because he’s too focused on the present.
And it’s funny, Lee knows, that Gaara differentiates between the killings he did before, and the killings he does now. Because a death’s a death, right? But the before ones are also everything that he was then, which is mostly all alone. Before, he was all alone. So he killed to prove who he was. Now, he protects, and he chooses who he protects, and he kills to protect them, whether what he’s killing is a threat, or for money, or merely to keep his village in favor with the lords of the Fire Country. And so Gaara hates himself first and foremost for what he is and what he was, and then he hates himself for the killings he had done, the past ones, and only then he hates himself for the now-killings.
Lee knows a lot, but he doesn’t know it all. He can’t, really, because he can’t understand what it was like to be Gaara before he had something to care for. Before he had people who cared for him. Because before, he was all alone.
Mostly, Lee can only guess. Informed guesses, sure, but it’s hard to tell what questions can set Gaara off-which makes the direct approach pretty impossible, and Lee knows that Gaara couldn’t deal with himself if he lost control enough to attack someone he loved-which mostly leaves Lee with the reactions of everyone else to base his interactions with him around.
And nobody touches Gaara.
oOo
Nobody touches Gaara, but it’s hard for Lee to keep on remembering that. They sit by each other, some evenings, Gaara as quiet as he always is and Lee sometimes talking and sometimes quiet-it’s nice to just sit and be silent, sometimes-and he wants to lean into him, so he can feel rough-smooth compacted sand, or sometimes skin, on the days when Gaara is calm enough or needing enough or it’s been long enough. Lee wants to brush an arm against him in reassurance when he’s stumbling through interactions with the villagers, still acting as Kazekage but in no official way, and Gaara’s gotten so much better, but he still doesn’t know how to respond, sometimes, and he never quite trusts himself.
And sometimes, Lee just wants to hug Gaara, walk up to him and wrap his arms around him, because he’s sinned and Gaara’s sinned and because he needs it and Gaara needs it and because there’s nobody else willing to.
But he holds himself back, because he’s not sure he wants to touch Gaara with hands that have touched people in nearly the same ways, but to kill, and he can’t do that to Gaara, to him most of all, because nobody else has touched him before, not with kindness-with love. Not regularly, certainly. Not casually, or whole-heartedly, or without doubt. Without fear.
And he knows that Gaara probably doesn’t like to be touched; Lee would like it, certainly, dreams of and craves both sexual touches-kissing and sometimes more, when he’s asleep or half-asleep or, in a few specific cases, drunk or under a jutsu-but also just touching: arms brushing as they walk, a body pressing sideways against another as they sit, a hug. A hand held up to a cheek.
oOo
Life continues, and Lee comes home exhausted one day, after weeks out on missions, half way to starving because it’s so hard to get the kind of energy his body needs out on stealth missions without getting caught, and tired from almost no sleep and nearly delirious from the fever he caught while he was crouching in a swamp for weeks without proper food or rest.
Gaara had crept into the apartment Lee lived in when he was in Suna, knowing that he was due back from his assignment, routine patrol. It was slightly unusual but not alarming that he hadn’t checked in before returning home; the unspoken agreement was that Gaara would make sure that everything was alright when that happened. Lee obeyed Gaara’s silent need for aloneness, separateness, and only looked in the places Gaara commonly was, when he wanted him: his office and his favorite park, the government workers’ cafeteria he usually ate at, but not his home, the desert haunts he habituated, where he didn’t need to reign himself in, act as human as he was able, for the sake of the village.
So Gaara comes to check up on him, and finds Lee asleep on the floor, sprawled there with blankets he seemed to have dragged off of the bed.
Gaara doesn’t sleep, and he doesn’t understand people, doesn’t understand Lee, so he ignores why he’s there, but he knows that it isn’t comfortable, and that’s why people have beds; he had asked Yashamaru that, long ago. He trusts the answer, somewhat. It’s one of the ones that makes sense, has other evidence to back it up.
He stoops to gather up Lee, the sand assisting almost without his thought; he’s stronger enough to manage it on his own-he is a shinobi, even if he doesn’t specialize in taijutsu like Lee does-but it makes it easier, so he doesn’t will it away.
Lee clings to him, and it takes effort not to react-not to run, not to force him away, even not to attack, no matter how important Lee is. No matter how much he matters.
He lifts Lee to the bed and tries to set him down, but he’s still holding onto him, like a trusting child-it hurts Gaara, the same sharp pain in his chest he can remember from when he was a child. It has lessened, since then-because of Naruto, his siblings, his village, Lee.
He tries to lift his hands off of him, but Lee is strong. Gaara knows how strong. His grip isn’t quite hard enough to bruise, but close. Gaara can’t bring himself to hurt him-not ever, but especially not like this, unconscious and trusting, with only an instinct that clearly trusts Gaara, despite his monster, to guide and guard him.
He’s trying to convince him to let go when Lee wakes up.
“Wha-?”
Gaara runs.
oOo
Gaara runs, so Lee runs after him-not well, because he’s barely woken-up and still hungry and still fevered. When Gaara notices, he’s torn; eventually he stops, but Lee’s falling anyways.
Gaara barely manages to catch him, just before the ground breaks his fall.
“You’re… Touching me,” Lee says, a note of surprise in his voice.
“I-won’t. Again.”
“No, I don’t mind,” says Lee, honest surprise in his voice.
Gaara looks up to meet his eyes, the cramps of hurt, of loneliness, pain, slowly fading.
“Oh,” he says.
Lee smiles tiredly, then goes back to sleep in his arms.
-end-
Author: Dreaming of Everything dreams_of_all
Series: Naruto
Characters/Pairings: Gaara/Lee or Lee/Gaara.
Rating/Warnings: T for sexual-type stuff. Slash.
Summary: Guilt is a hard thing to deal with, and ninja have more than their fair share. A sequel/prequel to Guilt and Sand.
Gaara knows that Lee doesn’t like to touch him.
Some days he wonders why. Why me? Why doesn’t he touch me? because they’ve spoken of precious people, and of love, and he knows how much he has changed when that word doesn’t hurt the way it used to-
But Lee does not touch him. He sits close to him, when they are alone, so close that Gaara can feel the force of Lee, his presence, the force of his life, even though he can’t emit chakra at all, certainly not the way Gaara does. So close that he can feel his presence tingling, shivering along his skin, disturbing and intimate (like a fight but still, motionless, closer than anyone has ever gotten to him by their own free will, and peaceful, at rest, trusting, and the sand that filled the air around him was close enough to kill, his guard down and his reflexes slowed and so close-) but not touching.
Lee doesn’t shy away from touching his teachers, his teammates, his friends-Naruto, Sakura, Neji, Tenten, Maito Gai, whoever he is training with, even Gaara’s siblings. Casual touches, the natural, relaxed movements: greetings, reassurances, blocks, blows and steadying hands that Gaara doesn’t give, isn’t offered. They come so naturally to Lee, who is a physical person by nature, and human in a way that Gaara isn’t, that Gaara can’t be, and he gives away those little touches and reassurances to everyone he knows, except to Gaara.
Because Gaara is a monster, and nobody has wanted to touch him, nobody has tried touched him except for assassins since, since Yashamaru, and nobody has touched him since then. At least, until the Chuunin exam when Lee inflicted the first (physical) pain he could ever remember feeling, when the Uchiha heir kept him from a full transformation, when he was carried by Temari and Kankurou, when he nearly killed Sakura and was defeated by Naruto. Now, people avoid him, he always has an empty space surrounding him, no matter how packed a crowd, and only Naruto will fling an arm around him as if they are friends, as if he is human, as if he is worth it, and sometimes Temari and Kankurou will cautiously hold a hand against his shoulder, his arm, ready to spring away, to let go, to run if he reacts badly, and they are willing to do it anyways, despite that, but nobody else will touch him.
Not Sakura, Naruto’s precious Sakura-chan, Lee’s respected Sakura-san, whom he nearly killed, years back. Not the people of the village, who fear him and respect him and nearly worship him. Not the Uchiha that Naruto and Sakura had refused to give up on. Not any teacher he’s ever had. Not- Not Lee, who says he loves him, who says that Gaara is his most precious person, that he matters more than anyone, anything else.
It makes him want to kill him, sometimes.
Sometimes, Gaara hates him for it. Could tear him limb from limb, or tear away layers of skin and then muscle and then bones until only sand is left, or crush him into a gory rain of now-unrecognizable pulp that doesn’t hurt him, can’t hurt him, the way the alive Lee does, on accident. But he hasn’t, and he won’t, and he’s not sure he can, because he almost killed Lee once, nearly crushed him to death, caught his leg and his spine instead of all of him, and he will never forget what it felt like, the night after he killed Kimimaro, after he had seen Lee again, for the first time since he had taken so much, so much, away from him: the relief and the pain, knowing that it might not have worked and I might have killed him, that trust and belief in me, in me, no matter who I am and what I’ve done-
And Lee kept on doing that, believing in him, enough to love him but not enough to touch. Trust, but still the quiet, subtle, unspoken disgust that showed in his actions, a refusal to accept his pale, unblemished skin, unmarked with the scars a shinobi should have, always had, except for him, and for Naruto, but Naruto had never killed like he had.
And Gaara didn’t want to force Lee to pollute himself by touching him, as if his sins, the blood on his sand, the sand itself, would rub off on Lee, make him the same as himself. He might wish for that touch, but knows that he’s not worth it, that he’ll only hurt him more in the end, contaminate him, and he won’t do that to Lee.
He doesn’t even know if this is normal. He suspects it isn’t, from what he’s observed, but he doesn’t know. He can’t be sure. He knows he’s not normal, not normal when it comes to anything, but especially interacting with people.
Gaara can’t bring himself to talk to Lee about it, because it’ll just make Lee feel like he’s hurting him, make him feel he’s forced to touch him.
He deserves no one.
Not Lee, Lee least of all, who needs someone who will help raise him higher. Someone who will make him happy. Someone who doesn’t disgust him. Someone he can touch.
oOo
Lee’s nearly unconscious, barely in touch with reality from the heavy painkiller he’s been given (against his will) to combat the pain the huge gash that’s been ripped into his side when he touches Gaara.
Gaara is the last one to leave the room he’s in, standing to leave and looking down at him. He thinks Lee’s asleep, unconscious, but his eyes flutter open and hand moves deceptively fast to brush against his cheek and stay there, the back of his hand brushing against it, gaze bleary.
“Hello, Gaara.”
He doesn’t respond, too shocked.
“I-I wanted to-
“Thank you for letting me touch you. I know you don’t like it.”
He’s blatantly matter-of-fact about the bit of misinformation. Gaara absorbs it, has to think for a second longer than he should have to before the meaning penetrates his mind.
“But I don’t mind,” he says.
Lee blinks. “Oh. I must be dreaming-No one ever touches you. You don’t like it.” He treats it like a fact, regardless of Gaara’s disagreement.
Before Gaara can say anything else, Lee is gone.
oOo
Gaara doesn’t leave the hospital room until Lee’s regained consciousness. Nobody says a word about it-except for Naruto, who teases him about it until Gaara is ready to kill him, though he won’t.
oOo
Gaara doesn’t mention anything once Lee regains consciousness, and after he’s discharged from the hospital, and afterwards. Lee has no memory of the event.
oOo
Lee hates himself. Not all the time, because he has teachers and friends who love him, who know differently, and because he’s a sensible person, when all’s said and done, but he still hates himself, some days.
He’s never assigned to the worst missions, because personality is a factor when duties are assigned, but he is still a high-level, effective ninja with a specialized fighting style particularly effective in many of the missions the village is hired out for, and they are shinobi. There is nothing inherently noble about their jobs. They forge a living out of death, and his own values have very little to do with it. Even if what they do is usually done to keep some measure of control over the country, there are innocent lives lost: passers-by caught in a battle between ninja, someone in the way of an objective, or some innocent who, by some series of accidents and coincidences, became important in the wrong ways to the wrong people.
And Lee hates himself, when he’s just killed someone who walked in at the wrong time, or he’s been assigned to assassinate someone or, worse, someone and their family, or when he doesn’t incapacitate a ninja gone rogue fast enough, and more people are killed, more people are killed.
Lee knows that Gaara hates himself, if not how much or to what extent or how often. Every ninja does, sometimes, except for the sociopaths, the crazy ones, the ones who relish every crime they commit under the protection of their hidden village-even in Leaf, known for being the most kind-hearted-and sometimes even then, Lee doesn’t know. The most indulgent of humanity.
But he knows enough to know that Gaara hates himself differently.
The killings, the assassinations-they don’t bother him the way they bother most other people. And that scares Lee, sometimes, because he remembers Gaara when he didn’t reign himself in, when he really didn’t care at all, except for the proof of existence it offered him.
Lee knows enough to know that Gaara hates himself because he thinks he isn’t human. Because, in a way, he isn’t. The killing is secondary, maybe even tertiary, because he hates himself for what he was before, too, and that is the most overwhelming fear, the most overwhelming hate, but not the main reason he hates himself, now, because he’s too focused on the present.
And it’s funny, Lee knows, that Gaara differentiates between the killings he did before, and the killings he does now. Because a death’s a death, right? But the before ones are also everything that he was then, which is mostly all alone. Before, he was all alone. So he killed to prove who he was. Now, he protects, and he chooses who he protects, and he kills to protect them, whether what he’s killing is a threat, or for money, or merely to keep his village in favor with the lords of the Fire Country. And so Gaara hates himself first and foremost for what he is and what he was, and then he hates himself for the killings he had done, the past ones, and only then he hates himself for the now-killings.
Lee knows a lot, but he doesn’t know it all. He can’t, really, because he can’t understand what it was like to be Gaara before he had something to care for. Before he had people who cared for him. Because before, he was all alone.
Mostly, Lee can only guess. Informed guesses, sure, but it’s hard to tell what questions can set Gaara off-which makes the direct approach pretty impossible, and Lee knows that Gaara couldn’t deal with himself if he lost control enough to attack someone he loved-which mostly leaves Lee with the reactions of everyone else to base his interactions with him around.
And nobody touches Gaara.
oOo
Nobody touches Gaara, but it’s hard for Lee to keep on remembering that. They sit by each other, some evenings, Gaara as quiet as he always is and Lee sometimes talking and sometimes quiet-it’s nice to just sit and be silent, sometimes-and he wants to lean into him, so he can feel rough-smooth compacted sand, or sometimes skin, on the days when Gaara is calm enough or needing enough or it’s been long enough. Lee wants to brush an arm against him in reassurance when he’s stumbling through interactions with the villagers, still acting as Kazekage but in no official way, and Gaara’s gotten so much better, but he still doesn’t know how to respond, sometimes, and he never quite trusts himself.
And sometimes, Lee just wants to hug Gaara, walk up to him and wrap his arms around him, because he’s sinned and Gaara’s sinned and because he needs it and Gaara needs it and because there’s nobody else willing to.
But he holds himself back, because he’s not sure he wants to touch Gaara with hands that have touched people in nearly the same ways, but to kill, and he can’t do that to Gaara, to him most of all, because nobody else has touched him before, not with kindness-with love. Not regularly, certainly. Not casually, or whole-heartedly, or without doubt. Without fear.
And he knows that Gaara probably doesn’t like to be touched; Lee would like it, certainly, dreams of and craves both sexual touches-kissing and sometimes more, when he’s asleep or half-asleep or, in a few specific cases, drunk or under a jutsu-but also just touching: arms brushing as they walk, a body pressing sideways against another as they sit, a hug. A hand held up to a cheek.
oOo
Life continues, and Lee comes home exhausted one day, after weeks out on missions, half way to starving because it’s so hard to get the kind of energy his body needs out on stealth missions without getting caught, and tired from almost no sleep and nearly delirious from the fever he caught while he was crouching in a swamp for weeks without proper food or rest.
Gaara had crept into the apartment Lee lived in when he was in Suna, knowing that he was due back from his assignment, routine patrol. It was slightly unusual but not alarming that he hadn’t checked in before returning home; the unspoken agreement was that Gaara would make sure that everything was alright when that happened. Lee obeyed Gaara’s silent need for aloneness, separateness, and only looked in the places Gaara commonly was, when he wanted him: his office and his favorite park, the government workers’ cafeteria he usually ate at, but not his home, the desert haunts he habituated, where he didn’t need to reign himself in, act as human as he was able, for the sake of the village.
So Gaara comes to check up on him, and finds Lee asleep on the floor, sprawled there with blankets he seemed to have dragged off of the bed.
Gaara doesn’t sleep, and he doesn’t understand people, doesn’t understand Lee, so he ignores why he’s there, but he knows that it isn’t comfortable, and that’s why people have beds; he had asked Yashamaru that, long ago. He trusts the answer, somewhat. It’s one of the ones that makes sense, has other evidence to back it up.
He stoops to gather up Lee, the sand assisting almost without his thought; he’s stronger enough to manage it on his own-he is a shinobi, even if he doesn’t specialize in taijutsu like Lee does-but it makes it easier, so he doesn’t will it away.
Lee clings to him, and it takes effort not to react-not to run, not to force him away, even not to attack, no matter how important Lee is. No matter how much he matters.
He lifts Lee to the bed and tries to set him down, but he’s still holding onto him, like a trusting child-it hurts Gaara, the same sharp pain in his chest he can remember from when he was a child. It has lessened, since then-because of Naruto, his siblings, his village, Lee.
He tries to lift his hands off of him, but Lee is strong. Gaara knows how strong. His grip isn’t quite hard enough to bruise, but close. Gaara can’t bring himself to hurt him-not ever, but especially not like this, unconscious and trusting, with only an instinct that clearly trusts Gaara, despite his monster, to guide and guard him.
He’s trying to convince him to let go when Lee wakes up.
“Wha-?”
Gaara runs.
oOo
Gaara runs, so Lee runs after him-not well, because he’s barely woken-up and still hungry and still fevered. When Gaara notices, he’s torn; eventually he stops, but Lee’s falling anyways.
Gaara barely manages to catch him, just before the ground breaks his fall.
“You’re… Touching me,” Lee says, a note of surprise in his voice.
“I-won’t. Again.”
“No, I don’t mind,” says Lee, honest surprise in his voice.
Gaara looks up to meet his eyes, the cramps of hurt, of loneliness, pain, slowly fading.
“Oh,” he says.
Lee smiles tiredly, then goes back to sleep in his arms.
-end-