Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gaara did not have an explanation for why he was so nervous right now, but as he stared at the familiar door, no light shining through the gaps in the dark green curtains of the adjacent window, he felt his entire body tense in unexplained apprehension. It made no sense; he visited Lee’s apartment nearly every time he came to Konoha. There was no reason for this discomfort.

What was going on?

He’d seen Lee sick before. On one of several visits to Konoha the previous year, his friend had come to the gates looking distinctly rumpled, his eyes red and his nose running, but he’d still hollered his usual greeting in a nasal voice and waved enthusiastically. Despite his obvious sickness, he had greeted Gaara with the same vivacity he always expressed, a spot of bright sunshine in the dark thundercloud skies of Konoha that morning. His teammates had tried to dissuade him, but Lee had vehemently refused to bow out of the assignment, insisting on performing his escort duty from a respectable distance, wearing a face mask to avoid infecting anyone else around and discreetly exiting meeting rooms to sneeze or cough. Gaara had seen Tenten giving him concerned glances when she thought no one was looking, her scent ever so slightly reminiscent of anxiety, while Hyūga Neji merely rolled his lilac eyes no less than a dozen times throughout the meetings.

“Why are you still working?” Gaara had asked him on the third day of this pattern, after exiting the room to find Lee bent double after a sneezing fit.

“I am fine, Gaara-kun!”

His eyes were streaming.

“No, you’re not.”

“Well,” Lee had acquiesced with a sheepish grin, “Perhaps not, but I did not want to miss an opportunity to see you! Besides, this is simply another challenge to overcome!”

Gaara did not touch people, but it took everything he had not to reach out and brush his fingers across Lee’s fevered, sweaty brow.

—the crunch of bones, the screams of agony as he clenched those same fingers—

He’d fisted his hands under his Kazekage robes and bit his tongue.

He had said, “You need to take better care of yourself,” but he had meant, I would have missed you, too.

This time around, he’d arrived to a gentle welcoming bow from Hyūga Hinata and her teammates. Kankurō had been just a little too pleased, Gaara had noted, observing his eyes track over the members of their unexpected escort, his scent happy and warm.

“My apologies, Kazekage-sama, your requested escort team is currently on a mission. They are expected to return tonight or tomorrow.”

Gaara had been unconcerned; his brother was happy about the arrangement and his attendance in Konoha was meant to last a week. There would be plenty of time to see Lee when his team returned.

But several days had passed with no word, sight, or scent of his preferred escort team, and that was unusual.

Walking out of a meeting to find Neji and Tenten waiting for him with Team 8 on the morning of the fourth day—sans Lee—had prodded Gaara’s nascent concerns into a low simmer.

“Kazekage-sama,” Neji had said by way of greeting in his polite monotone, “Please accept our apologies for being unavailable to escort you for the duration of your visit.”

“It is no trouble. How was your mission?” Where is Lee?

“Successful, thank you! We returned a few days ago. Lee asked us to tell you hello and that he’s sorry he’s not here to see you!”

“Is he alright?” Gaara had asked, his attention shifting to Tenten.

“Ah, well… he wouldn’t let us in, but he told us he was sick. We aren’t sure what’s wrong with him, but by the time we got back the other day he did not look well.”

“Do you think he caught a bug from your last mission?”

“It’s possible, but it’s weird. We spent all our time in Stone Country basically glued at the hips. Why aren’t we sick?” Tenten had directed this question to Neji, who looked away, muted concern on his features.

“Could he have been injured?”

Lavender eyes blinked under furrowed brows. “It’s possible. He’s hidden injuries from us before.”

Gaara had bid them a soft farewell as he returned to his meetings and then spent the entire day battling rising anxiety. He’d left the meetings at dusk via the window to Kankurō’s loud complaints, darting across the rooftops in the fading light until he found himself at Lee’s doorstep, facing the knob that seemed strangely ominous now.

How sick, how hurt, could he be now, to be unable to see him?

What if he was alone and incapacitated by this illness or injury? What if he was helpless?

—unable to escape, sand wending its way up bandaged limbs—

Panic seized him, and he forced sand into the lock, the tumblers clanking into place. The doorknob twisted with a creak and Gaara elbowed it open, stumbling over the threshold.

The door closed behind him with a weighty thunk, locking automatically, but Gaara did not register it, all senses consumed the instant the door swung open.

Lee’s apartment reeked of heat.

The smell assaulted him, petrichor and spice, salt, something savoury and fragrant that he couldn’t name. The scent filled his nose, his lungs, it flooded into his veins in a fiery tide that laid waste to his faculties, leaving behind wild, feral instincts he normally suppressed sizzling through his body. His jaw tensed, gums pricking strangely, and he bit down to prevent his fangs dropping into place. Heat coiled, violent and tumultuous, through his nervous system. This scent… it made him hungry, in a way that had nothing to do with food.

He clapped a hand over his mouth, and sand covered his nostrils in a desperate attempt  to halt the automatic biological reaction. How was this happening?

Lee was a beta.

Lee did not have heats. And while Lee’s scent had always been deeply appealing to him, a fact he routinely denied to himself whenever his traitorous body made its appreciation of the beta’s scent known, this was like having a chain in his body, dragging him towards—

Where was Lee?

Wait.

How could he smell heat-scent if Lee was a beta?

The horror rose in him, sick and cold.

Was Lee with someone?

His mind furnished sickening images: Lee curled atop some nameless person, touching them, kissing them, pressed bodily against them, inside of them or them inside of him, becoming one with another without fear in a way Gaara would never have the chance to know, because his hands were only weapons, his body a vessel of destruction—  

Jealousy and rage followed the horror, hot as the blood he left in his footsteps everywhere he went. His pupils slitted, throwing the dim room into painfully sharp relief, hands clawing under an instinctual need to fight, to maim; Lee belonged to him—

Wait.

What?

The shock of the startling, inappropriately possessive thought knocked him back into sanity, and the sharp moment of clarity gave him a second to assess the situation rationally. Lee wasn’t his. Gaara was an alpha, and while alpha-beta relationships were common, he and Lee were friends, and friends alone. Friends is all they could ever be. Lee deserved a mate who could touch him freely, love him without risking his life, and Gaara?

Sand coffin sand coffin sand coffin—

Gaara could never be that for anyone.

Gaara had almost never touched anyone without causing harm. He could count the number of harmless touches he’d experienced in his life on his fingers.

His limp arm slung across Kankurō’s shoulder, his body weight supported by his sibling after Naruto had bashed his head on straight.

“I’m sorry.”

Lee, draped over his arm as they walked back to Konoha together, battered and exhausted.

“I wonder if Naruto was able to catch up to Sasuke?”

Then later, Lee supporting him when his waterlogged sand had dragged him down to Earth.

“To think he could press you this far!?”

Leaning on Naruto, then shaking his hand after he’d been saved from the Akatsuki.

These were the memories that sustained him in his loneliest hours.

But for each gentle, brief moment of contact, each kiss of human touch, there echoed a scream in his ears that lingered still.

Temari, ten years old, crying in the doorway, blood dripping from her torn hands, her palms sliced open as punishment for the crime of coming too close without her presence being known.

Kankurō, nearly scalped on a full moon, a night when Shukaku had been so close to the surface Gaara could see the purple pattern of tanuki stripes shifting under the delicate tissue of his skin. The puppeteer hood covered the scars. Hair didn’t grow at the base of his skull anymore.

Naruto, crawling across the dirt by his chin, all of his limbs battered and bloody, tears dripping off a broken nose.

Lee, screaming, his blood spilling, iron spiced with petrichor steaming on the cold stone floor of the arena, dozens of his bones rent to fragments and his tissues flayed apart all in the space of a single heartbeat. It was a testament to Lee’s willpower that he’d not died on the spot from the sheer magnitude of the pain he’d withstood, all at once.

—murderer—

No, he could never touch anyone in the way Lee deserved. He was no human. He was merely an instrument, a weapon, and his lot was to protect and watch over his village, to use his powers and his body as a shield over Sunagakure as penitence for his crimes.

Focus!

Gaara shook himself out of his thoughts and concentrated on his surroundings. He had interrupted something here, he did not know what exactly, but he had.

He closed his eyes.

Where was Lee?

He expanded his heat-scent-clogged senses, expecting—fearing—two signatures twined together, but he found the bright, unrefined, poorly contained chakra that characterised his friend alone. In that case, he would wait here, and Lee would come out, startle and blush spectacularly as he always did when something surprised him, and Gaara would get some answers, even if he knew that they would probably break him. Perhaps this miasma was left over from a recent encounter? Perhaps it had been a civilian Lee had… he couldn’t think the words. It would explain the lack of unique chakra though, civilians rarely had refined signatures, and if their scent was similar to Lee’s in base notes, that would explain why he couldn’t really discern a second scent aside from the awareness of heat.

Gaara took a deep, centring breath through his mouth. Even with his nose blocked by sand, the pheromones in the air were thick enough to taste, and warmth coiled down his spine and settled low in his pelvis. Gaara shifted, willing his body to calm down, concentrating on the gentle sound of rain pattering outside.

A minute that stretched forever swam by, Gaara engrossed in the difficult task of forcing his body to settle in the presence of such an addictive scent before he realised one embarrassingly obvious fact. He’d just come in from outside a few minutes before, where he’d leapt across the rooftops of Konoha under a beautiful, clear dusk. It wasn’t raining. It was the shower.

It was as he came to this conclusion that he heard a low thud and a whimper from the bathroom.

“Ah, well… he wouldn’t let us in, but he told us he was sick. We aren’t sure what’s wrong with him, but by the time we got back he other day he did not look well.”  

“Do you think he caught a bug from your last mission?”  

“It’s possible, but it’s weird. We spent all our time in Stone Country basically glued at the hips. Why aren’t we sick?”

“Could he have been injured?”  

“It’s possible. He’s hidden injuries from us before.”

What if Lee was in trouble? Becoming unwell or injured on a mission and then harmed, even incapacitated during… an interaction… with someone in heat? What if he needed help?

—the dull thud of bone on sand, scant inches from the vulnerable neck of an injured young ninja already bleeding—

“He is Gaara… of the Desert…”

“Digital shrapnel!”

Gaara darted across the room in the next second, his gourd unceremoniously dropped on the floor next to Lee’s couch with a dull thunk, and he shoved the door open.

“Lee?”

The shower was running, but behind the glass panels he saw no one for one sickened heartbeat. Then he made out the pale figure, curled in a ball on the tiled floor, his features indistinguishable behind the frosted glass.

Gaara had never had much compunction for modesty. He jerked the door open.

In the space of a breath, Gaara received so much information he could scarcely process it.

He took in Lee, sickly pale and deeply scarred and totally naked, wrapped up in a ball under the shower spray so tight it was a wonder such a long and muscled frame could compact into that size. Sprays of hematomas decorated his visible shins, new ones forming underneath the sharp dig of his fingers into his legs. In some places, his blunted fingernails had punched through the surface tissues, leaving red half-moons pressed into those oval bruises. His head lay down between his knees, soaked black hair obscuring his profile, and his whole body lolled off to the side, half-slouched against the wall in a way that he knew the taijutsu specialist would never carry himself.

“It is paramount that we constantly ensure we have good posture, Gaara-kun! If you do not take care of your physical body, you will lose your Youth!”

This close to Lee, he could smell a myriad of subtler emotive scents; the shower air curled with anguish discomfort fear pain and heat.

This wasn’t the scent of beta Lee mixed with a partner, no.

Lee was an omega.

Gaara dropped to his knees.

“Lee?”

Shiny black eyes lifted from their position behind his limbs. They were hazy, unfocused in a way Gaara had never seen before, lids heavy above, deep purple circles dug in below. This close, and with Gaara’s lingering jinchūriki enhanced senses, he could see the blown pupils, void on depthless black. Fangs peeked from behind slightly parted lips, shallow breaths passing through them in short, sharp bursts. His whole body shivered, one unceasing, frightening convulsion.

He looked awful.

“G-gaara?”

He sounded worse.

“Lee, what has happened to you?” Gaara tried to keep his voice neutral as his body reacted to the presence of miserable omega by feeding him instinctual desires to touch provide ma—

He bit his tongue, sharp points of retracted canines digging in just enough to distract him from the scent.

Focus.

“I… I thought I was a beta, but”—Lee smiled, a feeble imitation of his usual blinding beam, teeth sharp and shiny in the dim light—“apparently, I am not.”

Gaara had presented as an alpha at fifteen, and he’d been on the late side of standard presentation age. Temari and Kankurō had presented their secondary genders at twelve and thirteen, respectively. The latest he’d ever heard of anyone presenting was seventeen.

“You are nineteen.”

“I am,” Lee mumbled into his arms, his eyes wheeling as he struggled to keep his head still. “It is… unexpected. I suppose that is why I did not recognise the symptoms.”

Gaara automatically reviewed the passage of the Sunan academy medical standard on omega presentation in his head.

The month leading up to an initial heat will typically be accompanied by cramping and lower body aches, particularly for omega with a male primary gender as the body connects and activates dormant reproductive organs. Regardless of primary gender, other symptoms include headache, nausea, hot flashes, vertigo, and changes in appetite and sleeping patterns. In the final days before first presentation, an omega will often exhibit nesting behaviours; unwillingness to leave their home, increased aggression, and an inability to concentrate on their surroundings.

“You told your teammates you were ill.” His voice was quiet, hoarse as he fought back his body’s instinctual desires to reach out and touch—

“I thought I was, I—my pain tolerance is rather high, and I was hit in the lower spine during an ambush last month, so I assumed”—Lee cut himself off abruptly, his eyes honing in like lasers on the hand Gaara did not realise he’d extended towards his suffering friend in a desperate, fruitless attempt to comfort—

Even through the sand armour, the shower water was freezing!

Gaara jerked his hand back, cursing his instincts for getting the better of him. Damp sand sloughed off his fingers, landing with a soft splat onto the tile, while the remainder shuffled around to once more cover the patches. Lee’s eyes stayed on his fingers, although they had lost their startling, razor-sharp attention. Gaara watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple rocking in his throat. His fingers clenched on his legs.

Gaara reminded himself that Lee was very dangerous right now, even to him. Lee didn’t frighten him, although he knew well the power, the raw strength, the roiling chakra that lay under that scarred skin almost as well as he knew his own. Lee was one of the few shinobi in the world Gaara would consider a genuine threat in a no-holds-barred fight. But this was not a battle, and if he did something to provoke Lee, and Lee lashed out under the urging of his body, it would be Lee who would get hurt, and it would be Gaara’s fault.

And if there was anything in the world he wanted to protect, it was this important person, dark eyed and dark haired, but with a spirit as blinding as the sun.

He needed to tread very carefully here.

“When did you realise what was going on?”

Lee shuddered, a whimper similar to the one that had sent Gaara flying into the bathroom moments ago slipping past his lips. “Two nights ago. I blacked out… I was in my room. But I woke up in the kitchen the next morning in a puddle of…” Lee trailed off and blushed furiously, his ingrained decorum halting the sentence just before its terminus.

Gaara, who was neither uneducated nor had such qualms about modest language, commented dryly, “Slick?”

Lee hid his face in his knees, but the muffled agreement was still audible.

“And blood,” he whispered.

At the final stage before first heat begins in male omega, changes in genitalia occur. Testes temporarily retract into the pelvic cavity, and a secondary, self-lubricating channel opens to now-active reproductive organs. It is common for omega to bleed during the initial change, although bleeding that lasts in excess of several hours should be assessed by a physician. Symptoms can be relieved using standard pain medication and application of heat.

It was no wonder the apartment smelled so overwhelming.

“You did not have any preventative medication on hand?”

“N-no, most of my friends are not… like this,” Lee mumbled. “I had no reason to keep inhibitors on hand.”

Gaara thought about this for a moment. Neji was an alpha and Tenten a beta. They had stood outside his door, and Lee had not asked for help.

“Why not ask your teammates to bring you some?”

Lee’s fingers twitched on his shins. His hazy eyes slid away from Gaara’s form, his gaze angling towards the floor.

“It was too late anyway.”

There was… something, here.

“They could have fetched a medi-nin for you? Or helped you directly.”

Lee cringed again. “They are like my siblings! I could not—b-besides, I thought I c-could, um, handle it myself—”

Lee wouldn’t look at him still. There was a real answer, deeper than the surface concerns, here. Gaara waited.

Lee’s indefatigable honesty finally defeated his hesitance. “Y-you must know the… what some people think of people like…”

“Are you ashamed of your presentation?”

Lee stifled a miserable sound, the acrid scent of shame flaring through the small space, his face reddening. Gaara realised belatedly that his question had been exceptionally, and perhaps inappropriately, blunt.

“People… like this,” Lee mumbled, one hand gesturing vaguely at himself before returning to the death grip on his leg, “are considered w-weak and I—”

“Lee, you are one of the strongest shinobi alive. You could crush me with one hand, sand armour and all, and I’m a Kage. You are the opposite of weak. Anyone who makes that assumption based on your secondary gender is a fool.”

Lee only looked in his direction blearily in response, but under the foggy, pained expression, Gaara could see a tiny shaft of sunlight bleeding through.

Good.

Gaara pressed on. “Why not go to the hospital, then? They’re required to keep medical information like that private.”

Lee sighed, a low, distressed noise that stirred something painful under Gaara’s ribs. “I cannot, I realised what was happening too late—and I”—he stopped, and his nose scrunched. His voice took on a scratchy quality. “I am afraid.”

And then he was crying, and Gaara’s heart broke.

“I-I do not want to hurt anyone, a-and I have not—I do not want this type of—not with someone I do not love,” he choked out, and Gaara’s nails bit into his own palms hard enough to leave red impressions in the skin of his hand. “I wanted— hic— to mean something, b-but if I try to g-get out of the shower my head— it just goes foggy and I forget myself—hic—I do not think I would make it to”—Lee’s ability to speak cut off with the gurgle of a swallowed sob, tears gushing from his squinted eyes. The scent of shame fear anguish increased, so potent now it crept into Gaara’s nose through his sand and filled his lungs with a cold, cloying ache like breathing smoke in winter. A burning sensation curled behind his eyes, but Gaara blinked the sting away, because Lee needed help and Gaara could not afford to lose the rigid control he had over himself, not this close to this desperate, suffering omega that he already cared for so deeply.

Both heat and rut cycles can be dangerous without proper application of suppressant or contraceptive medications. After the primary stage of either cycle, actions for self-relief become generally ineffective as the body cannot produce the necessary hormones to downregulate the overproduction of lutrophin (omega) and vasopressin (alpha) which must be supplied by the opposite secondary gender, most effectively through bodily fluids. Betas are an exception to this rule; betas produce both hormones in low volumes and are thus capable of serving as a sexual partner to both alpha and omega, however, they may require synthetic assistance to completely relieve symptoms of a heat or rut cycle in an alpha or omega partner.  

Those who do not use inhibitors in the earliest stages of their cycle or fail to obtain either a partner or synthetic hormones for the latter duration of the cycle may experience a temporary loss of function in the frontal lobe of the brain due to overheating and intoxication on pheromones, leading to increased aggression, violent tendencies, and an inability to engage rational decision-making skills. Although not generally fatal, severe or repeated incidents of unsuppressed and failed mating cycles can cause long-term brain damage or other internal injury. Conversely, successful mating can improve general wellbeing and increase dopamine levels, enhance sensory capacities, and improve reaction time. In the context of evolution, this system of self-inflicted reward and punishment encouraged rapid mating and frequent diversification of genes. In modern society, it is carefully regulated for comfort and freedom.

Gaara understood the fear of losing oneself. He’d spent most of his childhood with the whispers of a tailed beast reaching claws into his brain, trying to ooze into the cracks in his psyche and erase everything that made him human.

He’d lost his mind before, and the aftermath walked forever in his shadow. People feared him, even after becoming Kazekage, even after sacrificing himself to protect his village and commanding armies in the war. No one deserved the anguish of living with sins they had not even consented to performing.

But here Lee was, a newly presented omega suffering his first heat alone, with no suppressants.

Gaara had heard the horror stories. Being Kazekage, he was well aware of the aspect of village management that involved carefully handling the incidence of unmanaged heat and rut cycles in a way that ensured no one was harmed. Omega in heat were dangerous. An unmated, unsuppressed omega in the throes of heat could, occasionally did, kill a bystander if they got too far into a cycle and lost all rationale without finding a partner or the necessary chemical assistance that kept the bodily urges in check. Alphas were equally dangerous in unmanaged ruts; Gaara had voluntarily exiled himself into the desert for his earliest ruts before Shukaku had been removed from him. The beast had enjoyed testing Gaara’s sanity, and in addition to ruining his ability to sleep by trying to take over Gaara’s body, he would also forcibly metabolise or reject rut suppressants, leaving Gaara a feral monster for several days out of the year. He’d wandered the desert, hundreds of kilometres from another human, killing anything in his path.

But Lee was already two days in, unmedicated, unassisted, long past the point where his own hands would be enough, in the middle of a crowded village, unable to escape to somewhere he would not be a threat, holding his most powerful instincts at bay with nothing but ice-cold water and sheer willpower.

Lee truly was the strongest person he would ever have the honour to know.

“Gaara you—I am grateful you came to check on me—huff—truly, I am, but you must—it is not safe for you—”

“I can help you.”

“—hurt you I would never forgive mys—what?”

Gaara hadn’t planned to say it. But looking at Lee, someone he cared for so much shivering under forced hypothermia, in obvious agony, too far in for regular medications to reverse the process, with a body fighting against the desires of his heart and destroying his faculties more with every passing minute… even without his instincts screaming to stay, he could not, could never leave Lee alone like this.

Gaara swallowed against the sudden dry of his throat.

“Let me help you,” he whispered.

Lee’s pupils dilated, just visible in the low light. Gaara tasted the shift on the air. He risked pulling back the sand from his nose, inhaling just slightly.

The scent hit him like a brick wall. Heat, the all-encompassing spice of Lee, undercut with the heavy musk of rain upon the earth. Beyond that, Gaara detected the lingering sick scent of discomfort, but also the bright tang of surpriseand the subtle, but distinct, sweet scent of interest.

Against his will, his body stirred with an excitement that bordered on violence. His fangs shot from his gums, nearly punching into his tongue. Oh, he—

“B-but Gaara,” Lee whispered, his blown pupils black and bottomless under those long, long lashes, “You do not like to be touched.”

It wasn’t that Gaara didn’t want to be touched. In a way, it was what he craved more than anything in the world. He envied those who could freely share in the warmth of another skin. Gaara could not, because his touch invited suffering to everyone he dared to care for. He kept himself in a prison of his own sand, because inside a shell, at a distance, those he loved were safe. Safe from him.

—the gentle warmth of Lee’s arm over his own, the shift of his lungs with each breath, alive and vital—  

—Sand coffin—

There was silence, for a long moment, punctuated only by the muted splash of frigid water on Lee’s scarred, shivering skin. Gaara went to war with himself. Gaara wanted him. Gaara had hurt him.

—Sand coffin—

But Lee needed him.

“It’s… okay. If it’s you. It’s okay,” he breathed in response. I won’t hurt you.

Lee tilted his head, a low whine sliding past his gritted teeth. His hands were twitching now, flexing as if he wanted to reach out, but was holding himself back.

“Gaara,” he whispered, the words looking like they were being dragged out of an unwilling mouth, “you do not have to—you should not offer such a gift as your body to me simply because of my own lack of foresight—”

“I want to.”

“Gaara—”

“I know I’m not an ideal choice—”

For the first time since Gaara walked into the bathroom Lee moved. He lunged forward as though to grab Gaara, one hand outstretched to touch, his voice an uncharacteristic snarl. “That is not the reason!”

A floor tile shattered under Lee’s other palm.

Gaara jerked back, feeling the cork pop from the gourd out in the living room, the armour on his skin erupt into shallow spikes. He furiously willed his sand to stay down. This was Lee. His friend. Someone who needed him. Someone he would not, could not hurt again—

Both men froze in mid-motion; Lee, teeth bared, fangs glinting, his hand a claw inches from Gaara’s arm, muscles tensed and so very, very lethal; Gaara, both hands up to parry, spikes vibrating razor sharp across his skin. He did not look away from Lee’s face, even though his body wanted to look touch take every inch of skin—

Focus.

Lee shivered, blinked, his face shifting into an expression of horror. Drops of water hit the tiles at Gaara’s feet with nearly inaudible splashes. The sand armour settled. For a long moment, they stared at each other in silence, and Gaara noted this was the first time Lee had looked fully at him since he’d run into the bathroom. His eyes were now slits of black void in a starry midnight sky.

“It’s not?” Gaara whispered.

Lee’s hand withdrew and he curled back into himself, leaving a tile on the floor at Gaara’s feet with a shattered handprint. The scent of anguish rose again, a cold and bitter burn in his nose.

“You…” Lee murmured, his voice muted and pained, “deserve so much more than this. Not an ideal choice,” he scoffed, a low, derisive sound so very unlike his usual polite manner, “Gaara, anyone would be—it would be a privilege. You are the Kazekage. You are a living legend. To me—” He cut himself off with a furious head shake and another blush.

“To me—”

What had Lee been about to say, with a blush like that?

Did Gaara mean something to Lee in the same way Lee meant everything to him?

Lee tried again. “Gaara, you should only share these things with your most precious person, not just… with me… because I am losing control of my own body. You are… so kind, to offer, but it would be wrong of me to ask this of you.”

Lee thought so little of himself. He did not realise that he was a legend in his own right and under his own power, did not realise that he had earned many a moniker across the five Great Nations during the war. Did not realise that it was not Gaara drawing stares when Lee joined him for outings while on missions in Suna.

Did not realise that he was Gaara’s most precious person.

His fingers found purchase at the neckline of his coat. With quick, deft movements, he undid all the buttons, shrugging the garment off and tossing it to the side. His undershirt and mesh armour followed quickly. His eyes never left Lee.

“You are not asking this of me,” Gaara said, his voice a calm that belied the thunderstorm in his body. “I am the one offering this to someone important to me.”

Lee’s hazy eyes went huge. His eyebrows shot up into his hair. His mouth fell open.

Gaara forced the sand armour to slough off, directing it back into the gourd outside. He felt entirely naked, vulnerable, his skin felt flayed open without his armour—

“You were never loved—”  

“Sand Tsunami!!”

But he knew without it, Lee would know what he wanted, the truth of his traitorous heart, by the scent alone.

“I never knew you could do something like this!”

“I can’t let you suffer alone like this. Let me help you.”

Gaara watched Lee warily sniff the air. His whole face flushed red, rosy in the dim of the room, and his breathing grew sharper.

“Y-you—”

“These powers of yours, they are truly amazing!”  

“Please.” It was the barest of whispers.

You are the only one who believes that.

“I do not want to hurt you.”

And if I believe in anyone, I believe in you.

“You won’t.” I won’t.

—a bandaged arm slung warm over his shoulders, his sand silent and peaceful behind them—

Gaara reached out, slow, tentative, and shut off the shower tap. His hand trembled in the empty space between their bodies, palm up, a mirror of the first time he’d ever reached for another person.

“We need to return to Konoha. You need a hospital.”  

“You are right! Although, I am not sure I can walk just yet.”  

…

“Gaara-kun?”

“You can… lean on me. If you like.”

—he waited for the inevitable rejection—

“Thank you, Gaara-kun! You have been my saviour several times today, and I am most grateful!”

Ever so slowly, that same hand, battered, scarred, six years older and so very, very beautiful, reached back. His palm felt strange, the surface skin calloused, uneven, wet and bitterly cold, but underneath the surface chill his body radiated heat, nearly as hot as when those same fists had beaten him nearly to death.

“Fifth Gate, Gate of Closing!”  

Gaara twitched but did not let go. Instead, he pulled gently, and Lee uncurled once more, his limbs shivering from chill, but still graceful, almost beguiling, a flower unfolding in the rain. Gaara reached behind him with his free hand, pulled Lee’s towel off its rack, and set to patting him dry. Each dab was tentative, the pressure as light as that which he applied to the most delicate of greenery in Suna’s gardens. His instincts hummed, a strange, warm contentment stealing over him as Lee’s violent shivering first slowed to a slow rattle, then stopped altogether. The sand in the living room remained quiescent, calm. This was okay. This was… safe.

He continued his gentle dabbing, and all the while, Lee crept nearer, his furrowed brow the only sign of the extensive control he held over himself, until he was so close that Gaara could feel the soft exhalations of his breath fanning over his face.

Gaara tilted his neck. An offering.

Lee shuddered, his eyes fixating on Gaara’s throat with a ferocity behind those slitted pupils that screamed danger, but his hand splayed out an inch away from Gaara’s bared chest. Waiting for him.

Even on the verge of insanity, Lee still tried to put Gaara first.

Gaara let himself lean forward.

Lee’s hands felt like the sun. They burned like fire and ice and his nerves sang and Gaara realised that he’d been longing for this touch for what felt like a lifetime. Air guttered past his lips. Heat ripped through his groin. Lee’s hands slid slowly, so slowly that Gaara could feel his skin turning to charcoal underneath those rough palms, up his arm and across his chest to his shoulders, settling there, his fingers pressing ever so slightly into Gaara’s skin. Lee leaned in further, and the smooth tip of his nose touched Gaara’s pulse point. Black hair shuffed damp against his jaw.

He heard a long, slow inhale. Lee shuddered. The hands on his shoulders flexed once.

In an instant, Lee was in his lap, crushing their bodies together with a force that knocked the wind from him with a startled, “Guh!”

Lee’s whole body pressed flush against him, naked and blazing and so close too close—

Sand blasted from the gourd, tearing towards the bathroom door.

Panic seized Gaara by the lungs—

Don’t hurt him don’t hurt him don’t—

It slammed against the door, but fell, landing on the floor in a shower of grains.

Lee was fine, Lee was—

Oh.

Gaara, so caught up in controlling the sand, had missed the initial realisation that Lee was very, very hard in his lap, rocking frantically against him as his hands slid across Gaara’s back, up his neck, into his hair. And Lee was kissing him, kissing him all up and down the column of his throat, his ear, his clavicle. Lee’s tongue swept across the join of his neck and shoulder, a breath away from where he knew mating bites belonged on normal people who could have those connections, and Gaara jerked his hips forward, an involuntary thrust at the lightning bolt that struck into his groin. Lee groaned into his skin and the noise made Gaara’s eyes roll quite against his will, his entire body shuddering to match Lee’s aroused tremors.

“You smell… so good,” Lee murmured into his skin. He sounded more like his normal self now, and the scent of pain had drastically reduced in the short minutes of contact and scent. The initial jerky movement of his hips had slowed to a gentle, continuous roll, the smooth motion allowing for the heat and pressure of Lee to slip through his thin slacks and melt into his skin.

He did?

“What do I smell like?” he breathed, succumbing to his body’s urges and turning his head enough to press his nose into Lee’s hair. This was okay. He was okay. Lee was doing better. And it felt… good, warm, right, but also like he was turning to cinders. His fingers were shaking. Was this normal? Lee’s fingers trailed down his spine and he shivered again. There was a damp patch near the waistband of his pants, but he wasn’t sure if it was his fault or Lee’s.

“Hmm,” Lee sighed, the echo of a moan just audible under the sound of an exhale. His nose rubbed against Gaara’s throat. “Like sunlight. Sand, of course. It is an earthy—ah— dusty sort of smell, and also…” he trailed off as Gaara finally allowed his hands to trace, feather-light, up the bump and curve of muscle along Lee’s ribs. Lee’s hips had not stopped their motion against him; Gaara could feel the swell of Lee’s erection stiff against his belly, could taste his pleasure on the air, could hear it with every hitch of his breath and see it in every tremble of his fingers. It was himdoing this for Lee, to Lee, and it had been almost five whole minutes of sustained contact and Lee was still okay.

Gaara could do this. He wanted to do this.

“Also?” Gaara prompted. His voice sounded odd to his own ears, his normal low rasp a hoarse rumble from somewhere deeper in his chest. He couldn’t get enough air.

“Ha-ahh— um, something slightly… floral? Hmmm— it is so…” Lee trailed off. His fingers flexed from their placement in Gaara’s hair, and his hips twitched forward harder, the pressure of Lee’s erection sliding against his own, now at full mast, tearing what little breath he had from him. Gaara dared to settle his hands on Lee’s hips, his fingers just touching the outer muscle of Lee’s ass. He dared to press his lips to Lee’s pulse point.

Lee’s reaction was beautiful. Gaara felt his lips drop open against his neck, the rush of his breath tickle his skin and a loud, sultry moan vibrate across his eardrums. Lee’s head tipped to the side, baring his throat, his jugular, the unmarked mating gland at the junction of his neck and shoulder. Gaara watched in stunned arousal before slowly, carefully, leaning forward once more, some foreign instinct guiding him to suck gently on the thin, blush-red skin.

“Ahhhh—Gaara…I—hahh—please,” Lee guttered out through gasps that, to Gaara, resembled his come-down after an intense bout of training. Under his lips, Lee’s pulse thundered, his skin flushed and fever-hot and alive and exquisite. The alpha in Gaara thrilled in his success, but the man in him still wavered, fiercely aroused and nauseatingly terrified. Like this, Gaara could kill him with a twitch of his fingers, one poorly aimed slash of teeth, a heartbeat of panic with the sand scattered chaotic across the floor outside—

Concentrate.

He could do this.

“What do you need?” he whispered into Lee’s neck. There was a significant damp to his slacks now, the scent of heat intensifying. Lee’s hips grew steadily twitchier, his hands clenching tighter, not painful but no longer gentle. He was starting to lose the fine control he had, and Gaara needed to do something now.

“P-p-please—nghhh—t-t—” Lee’s coherency was disappearing, and now that he was dry, he was steaming hot. Gaara was no longer surprised that heat cycles could cause fatal heatstroke if left unchecked. “T-touch m-me?”

“Okay,” Gaara mumbled into Lee’s skin, “it’s okay.”

Who was he reassuring, Lee or himself?

Did it matter?

“Lean back,” he whispered, and brought one hand to his own mouth, spitting a palmful of pheromone-laden saliva into his fingers. The medical standard had discussed the chemical benefits of body fluids in great detail; he knew his own would help in this way, even outside of rut. He reached downwards, brushing his wet hand over Lee’s erection with shaking fingers. Lee gasped and bucked, the sound rushing down Gaara’s spine and into his own arousal.

He willed his fingers to stop trembling. Lee was okay. Gaara wouldn’t hurt him.

He looked down to watch his hand close around Lee’s shaft. His fingers wrapped into a loose fist—

—a closed fist, a hiss of sand, screams—

No.

“Ohh, Gaara.”  

A closed fist and a low sigh of pleasure, brought from his hands.

He pumped once, slow and tentative. Lee’s entire body sagged backwards. His rear slid to the floor, his legs flung wide across Gaara’s spread knees, his hands braced on the tile, his spine arching into Gaara’s tentative touch. His whole body trembled, on display, hot and flushed and his eyes closed in bliss, in full, resplendent bloom. Gaara had never seen anything more stunning in his entire life.

And it was all because of him. Novel. Exhilarating.

He pulled again, ever so slightly harder this time. Lee twitched, his lips parting around a wordless euphoria.

He was doing this, he was making Lee feel like this—

Gaara let himself settle into a rhythmic motion, a gentle call of tides, back and forth and back again. His eyes roamed across the body offered so willingly to his eyes, drinking him in, the exotic newness of Lee naked before him. He’d seen Lee shirtless before, stripped to the waist and sweating profusely as he trained or sparred with his teammates. He’d withstood Lee innocently running over to greet Gaara without concern for his state of dishevelment, the tantalising scent—one that had Gaara savaging the skin of his own wrist later in the bathroom with a hand shoved unceremoniously into his slacks—pouring off him into the grass of the training field.

This was different. Raw. His eyes roamed the expanse of skin splayed out across his thighs, all muscle and scars and tan lines, trembling under the slow movement of his hand. Lee’s hands flexed against the tile, pushing him forward into Gaara’s grasp, his head lolling off to the side, his lips parting, his eyes drifting shut. He’d been out of a freezing shower for only a few minutes, but Gaara could already see the gleam of sweat building on his forehead, a bead sliding down his throat to pool at his collar like dewdrops sliding off the plants of Suna’s greenhouses in the desert dawn.

Gaara’s eyes moved downward to the cock in his hand, flushed red and throbbing as if Lee were already about to come from something so simple as this nervous, slow touch. He looked further, below to the space where his testes had retracted for a heat cycle, and beyond that, the strangeness of the opening that made Lee distinctly omega, flushed and swollen and shiny with slick that shone wet on black hair and dripped onto the tile below him.

Gaara’s hand drifted too far downward unconsciously, wanting to feel the wet heat of Lee on his fingertips, his other hand reaching to push down harshly on his own arousal pulsing painfully in his slacks, because this wasn’t about his needs—

“Oh yes!”

Oh. Lee liked that. He moved his other hand to trace up and down the seam, his spit-damp fingers encountering soft wet hair and delicate folds of tissue, and Lee sighed, a rapturous noise that took Gaara’s breath away.

It was… odd, to consider the anatomical dichotomies that separated them. This blazing hot, slick space between Lee’s trembling thighs that he did not share, the lack of thicker, looser skin at the base of the shaft in Gaara’s hand, it made them distinctly unique from each other, but also made them two halves of a whole. His body… it was made to fit into that space, to push forward into that fire and join them together in such a way that they became one in the most powerful expression of love, a connection so profound it brought forth life—

The alpha makeup of his hindbrain whispered yes, take him, make him yours.

No.

Gaara stopped that thought in its tracks, cursing his biology for getting the better of him even in the privacy of his own thoughts, because this wasn’t Gaara mating Lee, this was solely him helping his friend who was suffering. It had to be nothing more than that; Lee deserved better than this, better than someone who had to contend with the ever-present fear of accidentally murdering everyone around them with the slightest loss of control.

His hand twitched at the self-flagellating thought, clamping a little too hard on Lee’s erection and he immediately jerked both hands off, afraid he’d hurt Lee. He opened his mouth to ask the question but he was instantly stopped by a snarl.

“Why did you stop?”

Oh, he’d never seen this kind of frustration on Lee’s face before. Not when Lee lost a spar against his teammates, not when he made a mistake while training, not even when Gaara started a verbal spar he could never win against.

“I—”

A wall of superheated muscle slammed him into the floor, his head bouncing painfully against the tile, winding him instantly. Teeth gouged the skin of his neck, sharp and deadly, although he smelled no blood to indicate any gashing. Lee ground against him so hard Gaara thought it might leave bruises, making wordless, urgent noises.

The sand drew up from the floor with a caustic scream, rocketing towards the door—

Nonononononono!

Gaara flung his hand out, panic ripping through him. The sand slammed into the door again, this time an ominous crack echoing from the wood as it noticeably bowed, but it fell once more, and the door remained shut. Lee didn’t appear to notice, his face buried in Gaara’s neck, now tonguing across Gaara’s mating gland with long swipes.

Gaara shivered, both in pleasure and fear. That was too close. At this rate, he’d still end up hurting Lee on accident, but there was no way he could get out of here to protect Lee, not with Lee pinning him to the floor like this. Lee wasn’t a large person by normal metrics, but he was bigger than Gaara in just about every conceivable way, and in a contest of physical strength, Gaara couldn’t hold a candle to Lee. Now his heat had allowed his body to run unchecked from his mind, and even what little grappling techniques he knew would be useless. And to be honest, did Gaara even want to leave?

No, he did not. Even if he knew it would be safer for Lee, the thought of leaving him now made his whole body hurt—

Lee’s frustrated noises got louder, his hips rocking more insistently against Gaara. “G-gaara, p-please!”

“Shh,” Gaara whispered, one hand reaching down to grip the tight muscles of Lee’s ass, the other sliding down past his erection to the searing wet heat of him. “Shh.”

Who was he trying to silence this time, Lee or the anxious voice in his own head?

Did it matter?

Gaara stroked his fingers through soaked black hair, brushing the pads of his fingertips against the soft, almost spongy skin, and Lee went calm and pliant against him, his hips still rolling his erection into Gaara’s, but softer now. His head ached and his lungs spasmed from the impact with the floor, and the sharp pressure of Lee’s body atop his left his cock throbbing near painfully.

Lee’s mouth sealed over his mating gland and he sucked, and Gaara nearly whited out, what little breath he had punching out of his lungs in a gasp. His hips jerked violently, causing his fingers to dip directly into Lee’s entrance and Lee almost sobbed in response, half-spoken words begged into Gaara’s neck.

Gaara repeated the motion, fingers sliding easily through dripping folds, and Lee planted his hands with a resounding crack into the tiles on either side of Gaara’s head. He pushed himself up to look down at Gaara’s body below his, fangs shining, eyes hungry as his gaze roamed over Gaara’s chest, like he wanted to eat Gaara alive.

And Gaara?

Gaara felt a fog creep into the back of his mind, tendrils of haze that felt like rut, but he wasn’t due for rut for months, so that should be bad, but Gaara couldn’t remember why, not with Lee looking at him like he was something to be devoured.

He pressed his soaked fingers up to the source of that addictive scent, nudged the folds apart.

“Hhhhhh, Lee, can I?”

Lee looked him full in the eyes and he was completely there in the moment, the void of his slit pupils completely focused on him and in them was nothing but want, for him—

“Yes, please, yes!”

And oh, Lee wanted, Gaara could hear it in his desperate pleas, he could see it in the way Lee’s thighs trembled, and Gaara wanted him, no, wanting wasn’t enough, it was never enough to describe how he felt, he needed Lee, needed to be inside of him so deep they would never be parted again.

He wants you.

Make him yours.

He shouldn’t be thinking like that, there was a reason that wasn’t okay, but he couldn’t resist the siren call of Lee’s body, not anymore—

He pressed up just slightly into that searing heat as Lee rocked downward onto his fingers and he was inside of Leeand Lee was moaning in bliss as his slick inner walls settled snug around Gaara’s hand and Gaara didn’t think he could handle it, he felt like his heart was going to beat straight out of his chest and he could feel his chakra control going wild in his distraction and what if he lost control of his sand again?

Then Lee started to move his hips with gentle twitches, back and forth and he was fucking himself on Gaara’s fingers and Gaara’s body was fizzing like static, he was aflame—

He could hear the hiss of the sand outside, his chakra control disintegrating because this was beyond just touching, he’d never even dreamed of touching like this but his entire mind was consumed by Lee, he was going to incinerate—

“Ohh please, please you feel so good!”

Oh Sages, the sound of his voice like this; wrecked, ruinous, needy, gone to the pleasure that Gaara brought him, it undid him completely.

Gaara forgot his fears, his sand, his own name, nothing mattered but the way Lee’s mouth curled around half-formed rapturous pleas, the way Lee’s long lashes fluttered and that muscled, scarred, deadly weapon of a body quivered and melted into his hands, how inside Lee felt like lava.

“You like this?” he guttered out, because he wanted to hear Lee’s enchanted voice again, needed to hear it—

Lee clenched around his fingers, slick sliding to pool in his palm.

“Ghhhh—gods, yes, yes, do not stop!”

He thought he might be able to come just from Lee’s voice begging him onwards, the way his own cock was throbbing untouched in his slacks. He planted his feet, ground upwards so that his own erection pressed against his forearm and pushed his fingers deeper into Lee, and Lee pressed downward onto his hand, and they were moving together and Lee was yelling in pleasure as he ground down to the knuckle and gods he was so tight—

He was causing this—

He was doing this—

He wanted to bury himself in Lee, press in and in and in until he could feel Lee pulse around him, he wanted Lee to clamp down on his knot and he wanted Lee to take his bite and cry out his name as he came—

What was his name?

Who cared? He didn’t, not when he had Lee spread above him, voice a hoarse yell of bliss with every bounce of his hips, lost to his own ecstasy. From this angle, he could see his fingers disappearing into Lee’s body, see the shine of slick dripping on his hand and sliding down those scarred, muscled thighs.

He could feel pheromone laden saliva pooling in his mouth, the urge to tear off his slacks and thrust in and bite down but some part of him knew that Lee deserved a nest for that, not a bathroom floor, and he wanted… he wanted to see Lee splayed out below him now, writhing underneath him—

Pin him down and take him.

He gripped Lee’s hip and rolled them over, arranging Lee’s legs to once again drape across his own. Lee’s hair spilled like ink across the tile, and he arched into the fingers still pressed inside of him, attempting fruitlessly to draw them further in, wanton and desperate and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen—

“Please, please!”

Carefully, slowly, he edged a third slick-soaked finger to bump against Lee’s entrance, and Lee half-sobbed and jerked forward, trying to take it in. He pressed in, all three at once with Lee’s chorus of pants and moans encouraging him, and when his fingers bottomed out, he curled them under some unknown instinct and dragged them down Lee’s walls. He spat on his other hand and gripped Lee’s cock once more, watching Lee’s expression for guidance. Lee was so hard now he could see the veins in him stand out against the smooth skin, tip glittering with precum.

Lee threw his head back, a choked shout of pleasure erupting from him. The tile under his head shattered. Behind him, one of Lee’s feet kicked out with a sound of cracking plaster. One of Lee’s hands whipped out and latched onto his shoulder.

“Do that again!”

He could never ignore an order like that, not from Lee, not in that voice, not when he knew he was bringing Lee so much bliss. He repeated the motions, over and over, Lee’s voice pitching into desperate gasps and whines, Lee’s hips rolling into his hand, trying to fuck himself on curling fingers. Lee bent forward, propping himself on one elbow for leverage, the other hand on his shoulder dragging him close, pressing their sweaty foreheads together. His skin burned.

“Gaara, oh, please, I am close—“

Yes, that was his name, Gaara. He’d quite forgotten. Oh, but the shape of Lee’s lips was so beautiful around his whispered name…

Seized by another nameless, wordless instinct, he leaned forward, nuzzling into Lee’s sweat-slick neck, licking at the salt he found there. He then scraped his teeth gently across Lee’s mating gland, curling the fingers inside of him all the way over into a loose mockery of a fist.

Lee made a noise that sounded like he’d been punched in the gut, clenching on Gaara’s fingers so hard he felt his knuckles creak. Gaara rocked back to see what he’d done—

Lee’s legs drew up sharply, his back bowing, his fingers clamping down on Gaara’s shoulder, his lips dropping open around a euphoric wail—

“Gaara, Gaara, I—!!”

And as Gaara watched Lee unfold in his hands, heard his voice break off into a litany of gasps and moans shaped around his name, felt muscles coil tight around his fingers and slick gush across his wrist and come shoot up so powerfully under the force of Lee’s release that it splattered up the side of Gaara’s face, he realised he could never come back from this moment, he could never step back and pretend this was simply helping someone he cared for; he was irreversibly bound without marks, without words, without anything tangible, because he was in love with Lee and he would never be the same again.

Gaara found himself unmade, undone, the foundation of his very self taken apart and reforged by the revelation into something strange and warm and new.

He continued stroking Lee inside and out as he shuddered into a boneless heap splayed out on the tile, his expression one of bliss mixed with a sort of relieved exhaustion. After two days of agony, Gaara couldn’t even begin to imagine the scope of the relief.

He drifted to stillness, then slowly, so slowly, removed his hands from their places. He knew he needed to stop touching Lee, but his hands refused to obey, drifting across Lee’s skin, tracing scarred legs and thumbing across the textured skin. His erection still pounded a near painful tattoo of awareness, but he forced the thought away and watched quietly as Lee’s breathing deepened and slowed, his eyes sliding shut with a sigh gusting warm air across Gaara’s skin.

The hand on his shoulder lifted to caress his face, calloused fingers gentle across his cheek, curling into his hair, pulling him closer with languid strength. Gaara let him bring their faces in parallel, less than a breath apart, and Lee’s eyes cracked open. Although they were tired, they were Lee’s eyes, shimmery and aware, here in the moment with him, freed from the shackles of his biology for a brief time.

“Gaara—” Lee whispered.

Gaara did not let him finish.

Lee’s lips were warm and soft, and after a moment of surprise, pliant beneath his own. Gaara kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, the way Lee had rained his lips across Gaara’s neck earlier, soft and gentle presses to lips and cheeks and jaw. Gaara took Lee’s face in his hands and Lee slid his hands into Gaara’s hair, and for a few precious moments, nothing existed but their shared breath and the sweaty skin of their entwined bodies.

Gaara was the first to pull away, realising he’d smeared slick and semen on Lee’s face, and absently tried to wipe it off with the back of his hand. Lee just watched him, warm sunlight in his dark eyes, a tenderness to his gaze that made Gaara feel safe.

Then Lee’s eyes strayed to his neck, his bare shoulder, and his eyes widened in shock.

“Oh no Gaara I hurt you!” Lee shouted—or tried to, at least—but his voice cracked immediately, his volume muted and hoarse from exertion.

“What?” Gaara said, inspecting himself. He didn’t feel anything outside of the desperate ache of denied arousal until he shifted, then his shoulder twinged. He looked.

On his shoulder lay a perfect print of Lee’s hand in steadily darkening red and purple, bruised from Lee’s crushing grip as he’d come. Gaara touched it, hissing at the slight sting. He hadn’t even noticed. The sand hadn’t reacted.

Gaara’s mouth fell open.

The sand hadn’t reacted.

Lee had bruised him, and the sand had done nothing.

For the first time in his life, his sand hadn’t lashed out over an accident.

Lee was fine.

Gaara felt a wave of relief crash over him so intensely he swayed on the spot. His eyes watered.

“Gaara!? Gaara I am so sorry!” Lee, missing all the context of Gaara’s discovery, looked about to panic. “Are you al—mmph!” 

Gaara kissed him again, fierce and passionate. “You’re okay,” he breathed, “thank the gods.”

“W-what?”

He had done it, he had reached out to Lee, touched him without hurting him, brought him pleasure. Could he do more? Could he do enough to be a human who could form those kinds of bonds? Could he ever be worth someone as good as Lee? Was it possible? Those strange underlying instincts roared up, insisting that he take care of this person who mattered to him so much.

Gaara staggered out of Lee’s arms and to his feet, ignoring the fierce erection chafing against his slacks. He grabbed a washcloth, ran it under the sink, and noted in the mirror that his neck had long red welts from the scrape of Lee’s teeth. Dismissing the injury, he returned to Lee, who had pulled himself up to sit leaning against the wall. He settled to his knees between Lee’s thighs and set to gently cleaning off his face and wiping him down. Lee watched him, still obviously bewildered, but acquiescent to Gaara’s gentle attentions.

“Gaara, you do not have to, er, wash me, I can just get back in the shower,” Lee murmured, although he made no effort to move.

“Let me. I want to.”

“Okay,” he said, and there was that sunlight smile.

With Lee clean and freed from heat-fog, Gaara assessed his current state. He was relaxed, his breathing deep and even, but his voice was cracked and hoarse, his limbs shook, and the circles under his eyes rivalled the black rings permanently marring Gaara’s own features. He still wasn’t sitting entirely upright, slouching heavily against the wall with his head pitched off centre, and that was worrisome. He’d gone about half-soft, like his body wanted to continue the heat cycle but was physically unable to go on.

“When was the last time you slept?” He asked quietly.

“Uhm. Before this started,” Lee said, his brow furrowing. “A day? Two? I am not sure if I was asleep when I blacked out the first night.”

Care for him, those foreign feelings whispered to him.

“You need water, food, and sleep.”

“I will be fine—”

Gaara quieted him with his lips. Lee hummed into the kiss, and Gaara felt himself twitch, still hard, but he ignored it. He pulled Lee slowly to his feet, bracing his shaky legs, and toed the door open. Then they both froze.

There was sand everywhere.

The gourd had obliterated itself. Sand had torn through the room, a sandstorm in perfect miniature. Furniture lay tipped, books and weights scattered across the room, nothing left untouched. The external side of the bathroom door was a mess of shredded flakes of paint, and a massive crack arched across the wood.

It wasn’t that his sand hadn’t reacted to Lee’s bruising, no. It had just trashed his home instead.

Gaara felt his face flame in shock and horror.

“Shit.”

“Gaara—”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is not—”

“I’ll replace anything I broke,” Gaara whispered, cursing the sand, cursing himself. What a fool he’d been, to think for even a moment that he could be worthy of Lee, when his presence wrought only destruction. A hand on his jaw lifted his face, and he looked at Lee, expecting anger, judgement, fear—

Lee kissed him.

The sand did not move. Neither did Gaara, his eyes frozen open, because on Lee’s face had been tenderness. Understanding.

“Gaara,” Lee murmured, and although his voice rasped against a dry throat, his words were gentle. “Earlier, you said ‘You are okay.’ I did not know what you meant. You sounded relieved.” Lee’s thumb brushed his face, still trembling. “Did you think your sand would hurt me?”

Lee knew.

There it was, the fear and the shame and Lee’s apartment was ruined and it was all his fault and Lee knew, he knew how dangerous this was, he knew that Gaara had risked his life and—

“Gaara, look. I do not think anything is actually broken.”

He looked, eyes burning.

Lee was right. Upended, scattered, scuffed and dented in places from flying weights, but not one piece of furniture was truly broken, not one book torn. Damaged, yes but not ruined.

Lee’s thumb caught at moisture on his lash line.

“You did not hurt me. You did not destroy anything. It is okay,” Lee whispered into his hair.

Gaara swallowed, then lifted one hand, concentrating. The sand swirled slowly back into the shape of the gourd, sitting innocuously on the floor where he’d originally dropped it. Without it, the room looked far less catastrophic, only furniture thrown and tipped, a wide assortment of objects knocked from their places.

“It is okay,” Lee whispered again, and his body curved over Gaara in a soft embrace, pressing Gaara’s nose into Lee’s collarbone. He was still too hot, but more like a fever and less like an inferno for the moment. “I think, actually,” he said, looking back towards the bathroom, “I broke more things than you did. You only damaged my things and broke my door. I broke multiple tiles plus my wall and almost broke you!”

Dammit, now Gaara wanted to laugh. A tiny smile leaked onto his face. He knew Lee felt it when he heard Lee’s pitchy giggle.

“I’m supposed to take care of you right now, not the other way around,” he mumbled into Lee’s shoulder. He felt a smile pressed into his hair.

“Can I not return the favour, just a little?” Lee said back.

Gaara just turned them towards the bedroom.

Lee’s bedroom was the greenest room he’d ever encountered, with green drapes obscuring the window, a green rug covering the floor, and green clothing lying in the basket. The bed against the wall, however, drew his eye from the muted forest tones of the room. On it lay a nearly-built nest of fabric, and in amongst the green and white of spare linens were shocks of red and sandy beige, the clothes Lee brought for joint Wind Country missions in the desert. Those were Sunan colours. His colours.

“Oh,” Lee said, and his face flushed pink in the dim light. “I did not realise I had—um—done this—”

Gaara sat him down gently on the mattress and turned to brush a hand across a familiar soft mauve scarf. “Is this mine?”

“I—y-you left it here last winter and I kept it in my closet! I was g-going to give it back to you when I next saw y—” Lee stammered, his face as red as Gaara’s coat left unceremoniously on the bathroom floor. His head bowed. “It… smelled like you,” he confessed quietly.

Those strange instincts lurking in Gaara’s hindbrain thrilled at Lee’s words. He wants you, they whispered. Make him yours.

—sand coffin—  

“I’ll be right back,” he said, raspier even than Lee’s dehydrated voice, and all but tripped out of the room.

Care for him? He could do that; he could try his best to help Lee. Mating him, though? That was out of the question. Lee deserved better. Those instincts could never get the better of him, no matter what he wanted, and Lee didn’t… Lee didn’t love him anyway. He filled a bottle with water, dug through Lee’s mostly empty kitchen until he unearthed a post-workout recovery gel, then grabbed his robe of office off the couch and darted into the bathroom to fetch his undershirt off the bathroom floor. Laden with his finds, he returned to Lee’s room to find Lee shrouded in blankets, looking on the verge of tears. He smelled of fear and shame again, the burn of it stinging through the cloud of heat and peace in the room.

“Lee?” He was at Lee’s side in a heartbeat. “What’s wrong?”

Lee blinked at him, as though he were once more surprised to find Gaara in his apartment.

“I thought,” he croaked, “I had embarrassed you. I thought you were going to leave.”

Gaara cursed himself again. Just because Lee was in his own mind for the moment didn’t mean he wasn’t in pain, stressed, and terrified.

“No,” he said, trying to affect reassurance into his voice, “I just went to get things for you.” He pressed the bottle of water into Lee’s shaky hands.

“Oh,” Lee breathed. “Thank you.”

Lee drained the bottle in less time than it had taken Gaara to fill it in the first place, not stopping to breathe or possibly even swallow properly, although with the water loss from all that sweat and slick, that wasn’t particularly surprising. Gaara took the bottle and pushed the gel packet into his hands.

“You had no food,” Gaara said by way of explanation.

Lee nodded. “I clear my kitchen before long missions so I do not attract bugs or bad smells,” he said. “But this time I was not exactly able to go shopping when I got back.”

Gaara nodded, watching carefully as Lee ripped open the gel and inhaled it. He took the wrapper and dropped it in the bin by Lee’s desk before offering him the final pieces of his collection.

“What is—?” Lee asked as Gaara placed the fabrics into his hands.

“You said you like how I smell,” Gaara said quietly.

Lee took a long moment to process the items he’d been given.

“G-gaara! You cannot just hand me the Kazekage robe for—for—for this!” Lee finished in a cracked squawk, one arm leaving the bundle of blankets to gesture expansively at his bed. His face was pink again, but even as he sputtered, Gaara could see his fingers gripping the robe, thumbing at its soft texture. Gaara had been exacting in his original requirements for his official robes; he had refused anything heavy, uncomfortable, or stiff, in case he needed to fight in them. The result was a lightweight, soft robe that he knew smelled of him. It would be ideal nest material, and besides…

“If you like it, use it.”

Tired black eyes blinked owlishly at him.

He tried again. “I’d like you to.”

He wanted to see his clothes wrapped around Lee. He wanted to cover Lee in his scent and his alone—

Lee’s face morphed into the softest smile he’d ever seen, a tiny curve to his bow lips, his eyes low, and Gaara’s heart ached to reach out and touch him again. He watched as Lee shuffled things around, eyes flickering around his space until he was satisfied, then he turned back to Gaara, blushing, but still with that same small sleepy smile. The whole room smelled of Lee, of them, and it was a warm, safe, comforting scent that made even Gaara want to doze. He could see Lee’s eyelids drooping.

“Sleep, Lee.”

“Will you stay?”

“I’m not leaving. I don’t want to.”

“No, I mean, um. Stay here?” Lee’s voice dropped to an embarrassed whisper, but he tapped the bed next to him, then reached his arms out low, before aborting the gesture, instead clasping his hands and dropping them into his lap, fidgeting.

Was Lee inviting him into his nest?

He was already straddling the societal lines of acceptability by being in Lee’s bedroom in mere proximity to his nest; this was a space reserved for mates and family. It was not for friends, even friends in their strange circumstances, even with Gaara’s all-encompassing feelings for Lee occupying the entirety of his soul.

And he… wanted Gaara to touch him? Not just out of heated desperation, but as… comfort?

“Lee, that’s for mates, not—”

“I would like you to anyway,” Lee interrupted in a rapid, breathless whisper. “If you… if you are willing.”

Did Lee understand the significance of his request? Did he understand that Gaara’s instincts screamed to fold over him, press into him, and ensure no part of him remained free of Gaara’s mark? Lee was an unsuppressed omega in heat. He had no contraceptives or protection, and neither did Gaara. Although the choice would be Lee’s, it was increasingly likely they would end up doing more in a nest than they would have on a bathroom floor. This was a recipe for—

Take him, bite him, knot him, claim him so fully that he belongs to you, responds to you, swells with life because of you—

Gaara swore internally at himself. While Gaara’s more animal instinct hindbrain thrilled at the idea, rationally, knotting or biting Lee at all, let alone knocking Lee up by accident in his first heat would be an unforgivable violation and he would not put Lee through that—

But at the same time, he couldn’t say no, not to Lee’s earnest, warily hopeful face. He didn’t want to say no.

Maybe not now, but soon—

No!

He would ask Lee to sleep, and when he woke up they would really need to talk about this before they did anything else, even if that meant they both had to go sit in a freezing shower to have a rational conversation, they had to.

Gaara removed his shoes and his dual belt. He took a deep breath and dropped his slick-stained slacks, leaving him in standard boxers, then he climbed in next to Lee, pulling him down and letting him settle however he felt comfortable. Lee squirmed nervously for a moment before tangling their limbs together and tucking his head under Gaara’s jaw. Gaara kissed his hair, and Lee sighed.

“Sleep,” Gaara ordered him quietly.

Within moments, Lee slept.