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ONE
“I can’t figure out how to do this.”
The voice came from behind Lee, in one of the round, open doorways that composed the Kazekage’s residence. It was soft, and raspy, and familiarly frustrated enough that Lee could tell there was no real urgency.
“Hmm?” Lee said, finishing drying the last dish in his hand before he turned around. And promptly nearly dropped it to the floor. “Gaara-kun, you are not fully dressed!”
Gaara could certainly parade around however he liked in his own home—especially since he’d so generously offered to house Lee during his deployment—but it was just …
It was just …
Gaara’s slender legs protruded so blatantly from the hem of his shirt, which was barely long enough to cover the things that Lee had most definitely not been invited to see.
… No matter how tempting the shadow cast by the fabric made it seem.
Lee shut his eyes tight, fumbling behind him until he found the drying rack and slid the dish into it with a clatter.
“What is it you can’t figure out, exactly?”
There was a silent pause. Prolonged enough that Lee peeked out from under his lashes to find Gaara staring at him intently.
“I was trying to masturbate.”
“You were—I’m sorry, what?!” Lee’s eyes bugged out of their sockets. He almost wished he had the plate back in his hands, so he could have properly expressed his alarm by shattering it.
Gaara’s expression was unmoved. “I know you heard me.”
“I heard you, I just …” Lee flapped his hands as if he might catch the right words from the air. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re the only one here,” replied Gaara in that same dull monotone.
Lee’s mouth gaped. “So if—if Kankuro or—or one of your ANBU or a council member were here, you would have gone to them with this dilemma?”
Gaara’s lips thinned. It was a very subtle movement; his mouth was small to begin with. Lee only noticed because he’d spent what was probably an inappropriate amount of time watching those lips move.
“... No,” Gaara said finally. “But I know you know how to do it.”
“Gaara-kun, that is extremely private—”
“You don’t have to lie,” Gaara cut him off. “Your room’s not that far away from mine; I can hear you.”
Lee’s face burned like an exploding tag had been set off on it. Was he really that loud?
“Shukaku lent me his senses when I was his vessel,” Gaara explained, as though he could read the words written on Lee’s face. “He never took them back.”
Well, that was a relief. Except for the part where Gaara was using his enhanced hearing to spy on Lee during his most intimate moments!
“So?” Gaara prompted.
“So …?”
“So, are you going to teach me how or not?”
There was no physical reaction left for Lee to have. His body was already as full to the brim with bewilderment and embarrassment as it could possibly be. Which was probably why his mouth stupidly opened and choked out: “... Okay.”
Gaara blinked twice, his lips opening just enough for Lee to see the black shadow between them before the pink tip of his tongue darted out and swiped across them.
“My bedroom,” said Gaara, in the way he often delivered questions that weren’t really questions at all, but rather predetermined facts.
Lee wiped the lingering suds and towel lint from his hands onto the legs of his jumpsuit. The small, often ignored, rational part of his brain was telling him he was making a mistake. But he rarely listened to reason when it came to Gaara. And the faint shimmers of hair on the pale skin of Gaara’s legs had drawn all of his attention. He swallowed.
“That seems like the most appropriate place.”
Up in Gaara’s sparsely furnished room, the curtains were thrown wide. The last dredges of an egg-yolk orange Sunan sunset left blue shadows in the wrinkles of the sheets that had been kicked off the bed by agitated feet. A faint curl of dusk-cool wind drifted across Lee’s skin, shifting eddies of sand on the floor.
“You left the windows open?” he gawped.
“The upper level of the house takes longer to cool down at night,” said Gaara, already making his way to the bed and sitting expectantly upon it. “Heat rises.”
“You don’t need to lecture me on thermodynamics!” Lee squawked. “What if someone had looked in and seen you?”
A little wrinkle formed between Gaara’s bare brows. “If someone were trying to look into my windows, the ANBU would have already taken care of them.”
Oh no. Lee hadn’t even thought about the ANBU. He crossed the room in three quick strides and slammed the window shut, yanking the curtains over the glass so the room was purple and dim.
“It’s going to get hot in here,” said Gaara.
It’s already hot in here, Lee’s mind retorted, his eyes finding the exposed span of thigh revealed by Gaara’s rucked-up shirt hem. He didn’t say this, just walked over to the bed and stood awkwardly at the footboard, fidgeting.
“So …” he began, stalled. “You were …”
“Trying to masturbate.”
With your windows wide open. While I was downstairs cleaning up from dinner.
Lee gulped. “Yes, that.”
Gaara folded his legs up onto the bed and crossed them, creating a triangle of shadow at the apex of his thighs that Lee could have gotten lost in for days. “I’ve never done it before.”
“Never?!” Surely they were both too old for that to be the case.
“Not successfully.” In the swelling dark, Gaara’s pupils were flinty pinpricks of green, flashing as they darted across Lee’s face. “I’ve read books. The troops joke about it.”
Neither of which would have given him a remotely accurate perception of the actual act.
“But my body just doesn’t …” Gaara huffed out a frustrated noise. “At first I thought it was some sort of damage. Something related to being a jinchuuriki. Or not being one anymore. But …”
Lee waited patiently, trying his hardest to keep his gaze above Gaara’s shoulders, because with every shift of Gaara’s legs, his shirt rode higher and higher.
“... I heard. You. And my body responded, in a way I didn’t realize it could.”
Lee’s fingers clenched on the footboard. The wood cracked. “Sorry!” he blurted.
Gaara waved it off. “So, I thought you might be able to help me. You would make it easier.”
It wasn’t exactly a plea, but it was the closest Gaara would likely ever come to one. And Lee had always been very, very bad at telling Gaara no.
“Right.” He tossed Gaara a thumbs-up and a wink. “I will assist you to successfully bring yourself to orgasm, or—!”
Gaara cleared his throat. The sand in his gourd, hung on a hook by the bedroom door, rustled impatiently.
“Ah, that …” Lee wilted. “That probably ruined the mood, didn’t it?”
“Not really.” Gaara shrugged. “It’s you, after all. Come here.”
So Lee sat on the end of the bed, close enough that his thigh grazed the edge of the indents left in the sheets by Gaara’s curled-up little toes. He tried with utmost desperation not to trail his gaze up Gaara’s spread inner thighs, not to explore the coppery hair that shimmered in the low light. True to Gaara’s word, the room had already grown hot, and Lee could smell him, something faintly musky and mineral and unmistakably masculine.
“Well?” Gaara prodded.
Lee tore his eyes up to Gaara’s face. Right. This was a physical act just like any other. He could think of it as—as a taijutsu lesson! Simple body mechanics. Position and angle and speed.
Setting his jaw, he said, “Perhaps you could show me what you were doing to start?”
Without the slightest compunction or hint of embarrassment, Gaara pulled up the hem of his shirt, exposing himself fully below the waist. Nestled against his inner thigh, the soft shape of his cock was pink and thick. A good handful, Lee thought, before casting the words from his mind. It would be Gaara’s hands on himself, not Lee’s.
Lee clenched his hands on his knees, keeping his feet planted on the floor. An upright, meditative posture which he could hold for hours and from which he would not be tempted to move.
But he could not stop his eyes from following the path of Gaara’s hand, perfunctory and practical, to the base of his cock. His hands were fine-boned, uncalloused things, better suited to a dignitary than a battle-hardened shinobi, even if Gaara was mostly a paper-nin these days. The rosy crescents beneath his neatly trimmed fingernails reminded Lee of seashells, and it was this thought he clung to as his body rode the wave of watching Gaara stroke himself to hardness.
It was slow, and it was clumsy. Unlike the finely honed control Gaara exhibited with his sand, this motion was clearly far from practiced. He fumbled roughly with himself when he pulled the foreskin back from the head of his cock, a grimace of irritation warping his mouth. He gave himself a further few dry and awkward strokes, glaring down at his lap as though his hard-on were an enemy to be bested, before it began to flag and he looked up at Lee with an expression that said See?
“Okay,” said Lee, rolling and settling his shoulders. “I can see where your … technique … might leave something to be desired. Um.”
He patted the side of his own thigh absently, seeking the pouch strapped to it. Snapping open the catch with numb fingers, he rooted around inside, sending senbon and kunai and spare rolls of bandages thudding to Gaara’s floor. At last his fingers seized upon what he was looking for: a little pot of lotion, thick and unscented, used to keep the skin of the hands from cracking in Suna’s dry heat.
“Here!” he exclaimed, holding the thing up like a prize. “Lubrication! It will be easier if your hand is able to move more smoothly.”
He held out the pot, and Gaara unscrewed the top, dipped his fingers in, and immediately applied the lotion to his cock with a shiver.
“It's cold.”
“Well you aren’t supposed to—You’re meant to warm—Here!” Lee grabbed Gaara’s wrist and swiped the lotion off of Gaara’s fingers and back onto his own. He unknotted the bandages from his palms with his thumb and shook them off onto the floor, then set to rubbing his hands vigorously together to warm the lotion up.
He had nearly finished when he looked up and found Gaara staring at his knuckles.
“You … don’t have to watch this part,” Lee stumbled out, feeling the sudden impulse to hide his bare hands—with their scars and split knuckles and set-crooked bones—from Gaara’s view.
“I want to,” said Gaara simply, and continued to stare as Lee wiped the warmed lotion from his fingers and back onto Gaara’s palm.
“There!” he said triumphantly. “Try now.”
Gaara’s gaze dropped back to his own lap, and Lee only realized he had forgotten to breathe once that pinpoint focus was no longer honed on him. He tried his best to gulp in air in a way that would not be distracting.
The path of Gaara’s hand was not quite so rugged this time, and in a few strokes he had found the glide of it, though his face remained screwed up in concentration.
“How does that feel?” Lee prompted him gently.
“Better.” Gaara continued to stare daggers at his own crotch. “But not satisfying.”
“Hmm.” Lee studied Gaara’s figure, his form, trying with all his might to remain as clinical as he would coaching a student to correct their kata. Gaara’s shoulders were hunched, and the strain that conveyed across his chest and down his arms was obvious even through his shirt. “Lie back,” he decided. “You’ll be more comfortable that way.”
Gaara looked up at him again, leaving Lee feeling as stunned as though he’d been struck in the head, but ultimately he obeyed. He leaned back until his head was resting on the lone, thin pillow, his knees up and cocked open to give himself space to maneuver.
And … oh, wow. That was—that was a sight to behold.
Gaara’s spread thighs framed his face: two slender columns of sandstone flanking the uptilted, rounded jaw; the architectural process of his throat and its jutting Adam’s apple; the disheveled expanse of red fabric hinting now at collarbones, now hipbones. Below, the ample cheeks of his ass squished against the mattress obscenely, half-covered by the heavy hang of his balls. Lee could see the full length of his cock from this vantage, standing proud and slick and pink, worked over in tentative passes by the delicate construction of Gaara’s hand.
Lee’s mouth was so dry it was a wonder that he managed to whisper, “How’s that?”
That bird-boned jaw tipped down, and Gaara caught Lee staring. His eyes seemed illuminated from within, a feverish, iridescent green that they never were in daytime.
They narrowed, and Gaara husked, “Still not enough.”
A taijutsu lesson, Lee forced himself to think, ignoring the steady throbbing of his own cock. This is just like a taijutsu lesson.
And just like a taijutsu lesson, sometimes a pupil needed a guiding hand, didn’t they?
Lee pulled his legs up onto the bed, turning so that his whole body faced Gaara and sitting seiza in the blind hope that the punishing numbness of his calves might do something to calm the heat between his thighs.
“You may need to adjust your—” He gulped. “—technique. It’s subtle, but …” One hand moved of its own volition and made the vaguest grasping motion in midair. “May I?”
Gaara’s fist released his cock. “Go ahead.” His voice was raw and throaty and it made Lee’s mind go terrible directions.
Fixated on the shape of Gaara’s lips, Lee leaned forward and wrapped his hand around Gaara’s. “You’ll need to do it, too,” he murmured. “Or you won’t learn.”
Gaara’s eyes were massive on their joined hands. He nodded, once, short and sharp, and let Lee guide his fingers back down to wrap around his cock once more.
“You aren’t using enough pressure,” Lee said, in that strange voice that sounded nothing at all like his own. His hand tightened around Gaara’s knuckles until he was aware of the slightest give of the flesh beneath. He drew Gaara up for one firm, slow tug. “Like this.”
Gaara gasped. His hips twitched.
“See?”
“Uh—” Gaara’s breath stuttered. “Uh-huh.”
Lee had never heard him so inarticulate. It sent the blood racing through his veins, throbbing in his temples. Oh, he needed—
“And—hah—your pace … you have to find one that works for you.” With the sharp angles of Gaara’s knuckles jutting into the meat of his palm, he slowly sped the movements of their joint hands. “Tell me when.”
Gaara didn’t say a word, but Lee could tell when he’d found the right pace by the way Gaara’s eyelids fluttered, green rolling back halfway into white, hips bucking into the height of every thrust.
Lee leaned forward, climbed over him. Told himself that it was just so he could hear Gaara’s whispered voice if it came and knowing that was a blatant lie. His clothed thighs now nearly touched Gaara’s skin. His hand was planted beside Gaara’s face, the dent in the mattress making it tip to the side so that Gaara would scarcely have needed to move to kiss Lee’s wrist.
Not that he would have wanted to, Lee reminded himself. This was purely physical. A mechanical release of frustration. A friend helping a friend and nothing more.
“L—Lee,” Gaara groaned, sotto voce.
“I’m here.” How badly he wanted to lower his body, to press his chest against Gaara’s and feel those staccato breaths echoing through his ribs. How badly he wanted to rut against the firm, perfect line of Gaara’s cock and find his release alongside him. Gaara was untouched. Lee was the first one to see him like this, to touch him like this, to have him like this.
He wanted to be the only one. Forever and always.
He squeezed his eyes shut until he saw phosphenes.
“Rhythm!” he blurted out, far too loud and close to Gaara’s ear, sending him wincing. “The last—” Why was it so hard to draw breath? Why was there sweat beading on the back of his neck? He was barely exerting himself. “The last thing is—ah—is rhythm. You have to … to find one you like. For example—” He tugged Gaara fast on the upstroke, one finger slipping off of Gaara’s fist and feeling, for the first time, the hot-slick throb of his skin. His hips jerked, and it was more selfishness than anything that had him moving slowly back downward, his mind completely fixated on that one point of skin-on-skin.
“Ha—ah!” Gaara’s hips kicked. His knees snapped shut and caught around Lee’s thighs, and Lee wanted to cry out in response. “It’s—I’m …”
His chest heaved. His screwed-shut eyes were nothing but slashes of charcoal beneath his brow ridge. The hollow of his throat glistened with damp. His hair had fallen away from his face all in a tangle and on his forehead Lee could see written stark as blood on white sheets: Love.
“Are you close?” Lee whispered.
“I—I don’t—” Gaara’s fine features twisted in an expression of dismay. “Almost. No. Maybe.”
Lee’s mind slingshotted back to those nights just down the hall from this very room. His own spit-slick palm working fast and furious on himself to the memory of Gaara sweat-wracked after a training session; of Gaara with his palms extended and the entire desert at his whim; of Gaara with his shoulders squared and hands planted on the table in the war room, commanding the room with nothing more than the low intensity of his voice; of Gaara sleep-rumpled and stumbly in the mornings, making his way to the coffee pot and smiling in soft pleasure to find Lee had already brewed it.
“Fantasies,” Lee managed, strangled. “You should think of something that—” The word was a struggle despite their indecorous positions. “—arouses you. You can … you can visualize it. That. May help.”
Anything, anything at all to pull Gaara from the awkward situation of his friend atop him, fumbling his way through masturbatory instruction and into a world where the object of his actual desires was the one touching him.
Lee didn’t know who that might be, but even the vague shape of some other man touching Gaara in this way made him burn with rage hot enough to pop open a Gate.
He controlled himself. Barely.
Just in time to catch Gaara’s eyes snapping open and fixing on his, wide and piercing and intense.
Lee couldn’t help but stare back, to let himself, for just a moment, drown in the depths of that mint-and-animal-eyeshine green so impossibly close to his own, to go breathless inhaling the carbon dioxide of Gaara’s exhales.
He didn’t let himself dream; that would have been too much to bear. He reminded himself with as much staunch determination as he could muster that Gaara often slept with his eyes open, and why should fantasizing be any different?
His eyes were hazed over anyway, distant now. A muscle in his jaw worked. The rhythm of his fist went off-kilter, and it fell to Lee to steady it with a squeeze.
“Oh,” Gaara said, very softly, and then his breath hitched and he was spilling, hot and filthy and impossibly gorgeous over their joined fists.
His eyes darted all across Lee’s face like it was a map he intended to memorize, and it took everything in Lee’s significant stores of self-control to stop himself from falling on Gaara just then, from kissing him hot and open-mouthed and making Gaara’s slackened body his own.
This is not about you, he reminded himself, every muscle in his body taut as tripwires and strong as tensioned steel. You’ve delivered your lesson and now it’s time to go.
It was agony to pull away.
“You may, uh—” Lee grimaced down at his soiled hand. “You may want to keep some sort of. Tissue on hand. For these sorts of … activities.”
Gaara just hummed, his hand turning in the air above his face, gaze drifting between Lee’s increasingly distant body and the pearlescent drips wending their way down his slender fingers.
Lee wanted to suck them clean. He folded his lips in and bit them.
“Does it always make you so tired?” Gaara asked, voice all dreamy wonder.
“Usually.” Lee ached to curl up around him, to cradle Gaara to his chest and stay the night and never let him go. “I find it helps me sleep, on nights when sleep is hard to find.”
“Oh.” Gaara turned onto his side, curling up like a soft-furred mammal preparing for hibernation. The loose collar of his shirt gapped open and exposed expanses of skin Lee hadn’t had the chance to appreciate. “Do you not want to …?”
Lee waited with bated breath for Gaara to finish his question.
He didn’t. He just yawned and rolled his neck and blinked at Lee with luminous, unreadable eyes.
Lee took it for the dismissal it was. He nodded, folded his dirty hand around itself, and made his way out of Gaara’s room.
He made it halfway down the hallway before he collapsed against the wall, staring in wonder at the rapidly drying mess on his palm.
Had that really just happened?
Fantasies. Lee coughed out a low laugh. Dream or reality, tonight would dominate his most personal thoughts for a long, long time.
TWO
The night was muggy with the dregs of Konoha summer, and the air was full of lantern light and laughter and the distant, tinnitus ring of just-finished fireworks.
Gaara had made his way through almost every skewered meat the festival stalls had to offer, from ikiyaki to a candle boy (which had made Lee blush so hard he had to feign heat stroke and excuse himself to buy a frozen choco banana), and now he was gnawing on a salt-grilled ayu skewer.
“Oral sex,” Gaara said abruptly.
Lee nearly bit his banana in half. “P—Pardon?” he choked.
“You can teach me how to do oral sex.”
“I—” Lee swallowed the now leaden, tasteless lump of ice in his throat and winced his way through the brainfreeze, “I can?”
“Mm.” Gaara’s eyes trailed from the popsicle stick in Lee’s hand to his mouth and back again. His odd, hollow pupils flashed green. “You were an excellent teacher when I wanted to learn how to masturbate. But there are other things you can teach me, too. Like fellatio.”
“Shh!” Lee grabbed Gaara’s shoulder and herded him into the alley behind the stalls. Once they were away from the crowd, he spun Gaara to face him. “You can’t just say such things where anyone might hear you!”
Gaara’s eyes had gone wide, his lips softly parted and his breath shallow. His shoulder flexed within Lee’s grip. “Why?”
“Because—because—” Because then someone might know you had lowered yourself to something as base as being intimate with me, of all people. Because then whoever you truly want to learn these acts for might think we’re an item. Because you’d be mocked, laughed at. Because I’m not good for anything but my body and often not even that. “—because it’s tremendously inappropriate!”
Gaara seized Lee’s wrist and removed the hand from his shoulder but didn’t release it, just swinging it between them like they were lovers on a festival night date and not just two friends stumbling through an absurd escalation of sexual tutelage.
“Nobody expects me to be appropriate,” he said, watching the sway of their joined hands. He looked up at Lee’s face, and the barest suggestion of a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You’re the only one with such high standards for my behavior. My siblings and the council have completely given up any hope of socializing me.”
“You’re more than capable of using your manners,” Lee scolded him, “you just choose not to because it suits your purposes.”
“It suited this one,” Gaara said, smile going a bit devious. He looked around at the dark and vacant space they’d found themselves in, far from any watching eyes or listening ears. “The festival’s far from over."
Toward the end of the row of stalls, the lanterns that had burned low were being replaced by a chuunin using katon. The smoke of scraps of char being scrubbed off stovetops and the hiss and spatter of freshly heated oil lingered in the air. Bells dinged and children clapped and cheered as the barkers summoned them for games.
“The inn should still be deserted for a while longer,” said Gaara. “Come on.”
He tugged on Lee’s wrist.
“I haven’t agreed to do anything, yet!” Lee protested, but even in his ears it rang false.
“But you will.”
He would. He did.
It was proof enough that Lee had been right about Gaara's capacity for decorum when he took the initiative to pull down the blinds over the papered windows.
Gaara’s room was elegant in its simplicity: little more than the tatami flooring, wide-paneled sliding screens, and an alcove for a few decorative scrolls and vases. The staff had already been through to prepare the room for the night, and the table had been pushed aside and the futon laid out, a thick stack of mattresses that frankly looked more plush and comfortable than Lee’s springed mattress on its wood frame at home.
Just as he had the last time, Gaara unbelted his yukata and sat without compunction on the bed, folding his legs, heedless of how his underclothes showed, the thin white cotton damp with sweat.
“How …” Lee paced, the tatami’s reeds crunching under his slippers. “How do you want to do this?”
Gaara’s bare brow furrowed, but he didn’t say anything. He watched Lee’s hands tangled behind himself, fumbling with the simple tie of his obi.
Then, a sudden curl of sand pushed Lee forward.
“Gaara-kun!” He stumbled into kneeling on the futon, hands planted on either side of Gaara’s hips, their faces entirely too close.
Silently, Gaara wrapped his arms around Lee, and with a few quick movements he had Lee's obi undone, the fabric of his yukata coming to drape around them like a curtain.
Lee swallowed. “How …” Gaara’s mouth was so close, his lips still slick with grease. If they were a proper couple instead of friends, Lee would have kissed him right then.
“How, what?” Gaara prompted him.
“Do you want, uhm.” Lee should have been sitting back, putting a less intimate distance between them for the deliberations, but he wasn’t. “Do you want … a demonstration, or?”
Gaara’s eyes had dropped from Lee’s face and were directed down into the shadows between their bodies, skittering back and forth, green pupils flashing.
Could he see in the dark, with those animal eyes? Lee had never thought to ask. If he could, he’d certainly know by now how badly Lee had already lost his composure.
“Or—” Lee cleared his throat, voice peaked with the strain. “Or do you want to learn the, uh. The technique.”
Gaara’s eyes snapped up, and Lee was trapped like he’d just stumbled over a tripwire and into a pit.
“I want to learn how to do it,” Gaara said, his voice such a low rasp that Lee wouldn’t have been able to hear it if they weren’t so close. “I want to practice.”
A mental image nearly bowed Lee over: Gaara knelt between his legs, that slick mouth wrapped around him, cheeks hollowed, eerie stare pinning him in place. His heart thundered like they were still in the middle of the taiko drum performance.
He blinked the image away and nodded. “Right, then. Let me just …”
He began to sit back so that he could remove his yukata from his shoulders, but Gaara followed him, curling upward until he was nearly in Lee’s lap.
“Let me,” he husked. “I haven’t practiced this either.”
Lee dropped his hands and let Gaara push and tug him wherever he wanted.
It was agonizing in its slowness: Gaara’s careful removal of each layer of fabric, folding and putting it aside before moving on to the next, his eyes mapping every new centimeter of exposed skin. He stared intently at Lee’s chest, his stomach, his gaze tracing the thickening trail of hair below his belly button like a touch, his breath gusting goosebumps over Lee’s skin.
When his hands moved to Lee’s bandages, Lee jerked away.
“You don’t need to take those off,” he said. “It’s a mess. You’ll be distracted.”
Gaara’s lips pursed; his eyes narrowed. But he didn’t argue, instead turning his attention to the waistband of Lee’s briefs and pulling them ever-so-slowly off.
His eyes went huge.
“I’m supposed to fit that in my mouth?” he asked, breathless. “Is that even possible?”
“Ye-es?” Lee managed. Or, at least, it had been possible once. Truth be told, he wasn’t that much more experienced than Gaara was.
Gaara opened his mouth, stretched his jaw with a pop. “All right.” His expression went serious, as though he was in the middle of a firefight, about to order his troops into formation. “Tell me what to do.”
“Um.” Lee shut his eyes for a moment. He was painfully hard just from Gaara undressing him, and the heat of Gaara’s body so close was nearly enough to undo him. “We should probably reposition. To make things more convenient.”
Not that Lee would have minded if his head hit the bare floor. Not really. Not for Gaara.
After a brief, awkward shuffle of limbs, they had turned the right way ‘round. Lee was propped up on his elbows on the pillow, knees spread wide enough that his heels were on the tatami, Gaara curled up between him and gripping his thighs fiercely.
Lee let himself pretend, just for a moment, that this was a real relationship. That Gaara wasn’t just here to practice for some future lover, out of the practicality of the nearest and most willing body.
He was beautiful. By the light of the single lamp left burning on the table, his body was half in color and half blue shadows. The copper of his hair faintly glowed. His yukata had clearly been custom made for him, not rented, because the seams were still perfectly pressed. The dark blue ripples of the seigaiha pattern made his backlit eyes look deeper, darker. Where the collar of his undershirt gaped, Lee could see his sharp collarbones and the shadows of his ribs.
Imagine having this every night, Lee thought, and tipped his head back to look at the ceiling’s exposed beams. Imagine not just being the practice round.
It was heady. His mind spun itself in candy-floss clouds around the fantasy, his breath hitching and speeding.
Nails dug into his thighs.
“Lee,” said a dark voice from below. “What’s next?”
"Right!" Lee yelped, far too loud for a space with such thin walls.
Gaara squeezed at him warningly.
"Right." Lee dropped his voice to a whisper. "The easiest way to start is to use … um. Your tongue?"
Between his legs, Gaara stuck his tongue out and looked at it with crossed eyes. It should have looked ridiculous, but somehow Lee still found it alluring.
"You can, ah." Lee's toes curled, uncomfortable. "You can lick or kiss pretty much anywhere and it will feel good. Some people like it when you start with their thighs or hips."
"Some people?" Gaara murmured, tongue back in his mouth, head cocked. "Do you?"
" … Yes," Lee admitted, mortified.
Gaara nodded once, mostly to himself, and then licked a stripe up Lee's inner thigh.
"Oh." Lee could not have stopped the sound from coming out of him for the pay of a hundred S-rank missions.
"Is that good?" Gaara's voice vibrated by his pubic bone.
"Uh-huh," Lee managed. "Very, very good."
Gaara’s lips twitched, pleased, before he pressed an inelegant kiss to Lee's hip. It was too much tooth, not enough lips or tongue. Lee couldn't bring himself to correct him. He'd always liked a little pain with his pleasure; hopefully Gaara's intended partner would too.
Gaara applied himself to thoroughly working over Lee's hips and thighs, glancing up at Lee’s face from time to time as if to confirm he was doing the right thing.
And oh was he ever. Lee's hips jerked when Gaara sucked too hard at the top of one thigh. He could have cried when Gaara’s fingers, spurred by some instinct, followed the trail of his mouth with hesitant strokes.
It seemed to stretch on forever, so prolonged that Lee was sure he'd lose himself the second Gaara got his mouth around him.
"How long do you do this for?" Gaara asked finally, pulling away from Lee's bruised hip.
"Oh, um." Lee fought to catch his breath. "Until your partner is. Aroused, usually."
"You've had an erection since before we started," Gaara pointed out drily.
"We-ell, yes, but …"
"Does this mean I can suck your dick now?"
"Gaara-kun!" Lee lurched forward and clapped his hand over Gaara's mouth. "You shouldn't say such crude things where anyone might hear!"
Gaara bit Lee's palm until Lee released him, then said, "It's no dirtier than what you've been saying."
"It—I—I've been trying to give you instructions!"
Gaara hummed thoughtfully. "And I've been trying to ask pertinent questions. Isn't that what a good student does?"
His eyes were sharp, his lips quirked. He was teasing, Lee realized with a shiver.
Then his expression went soft and contemplative. "Do you really not like it?"
"Huh?"
"When I speak plainly about sex." Gaara nodded to Lee's erection, which had flagged the slightest bit in his embarrassment. "It seems to panic you."
"I'm, uh, perhaps atypical in that way," said Lee. "I've heard there are many people who enjoy, ah, dirty talk."
"But you don't like it," Gaara posited.
"I …" Lee winced, the shape of Gaara's lips saying, suck your dick running on repeat through his memory. "I don't. Mind it. I'm just concerned. For you. That someone might find out that you're doing this with me. That would embarrass you, certainly!"
"No, it wouldn't," Gaara said simply. He shoved Lee back onto his elbows. "Okay. Tell me what's next. Do I need to kiss you again?"
Lee's lips ached. Oh, please kiss me.
"No, no," he denied himself. "I think you've gotten in plenty of practice doing that. Um, if something … distracting, like this—" Lee gestured between them. "—happens, you can use your hand. Like we did last time, you remember?"
Gaara adopted a thoughtful expression. After casting around for … well, Lee assumed it was for some kind of lubricant, and failing to find what he was looking for, he hocked his throat and spat onto his palm.
Lee's gut dropped. Heat raced down him. It was all so indecent.
Carefully, Gaara spread his damp fingers and wrapped them around Lee's cock.
It was bliss. It didn't even matter that Gaara's motions were patternless, graceless; that his hand was too small to quite close all the way around the base of Lee’s cock. Lee's head fell back, and he bit his lip to stifle a moan.
"That certainly works better on you than it did on me," Gaara muttered, stroking Lee slow and firm.
"Hmm?"
"Never mind." Gaara released him. "So you're hard again, what do I do now?"
Lee was desperately close to the edge from Gaara’s hand on him alone, but he was able to get his mouth to cooperate long enough to say, "You can go back on your knees. And use your tongue on my. On my…"
"Your dick," Gaara asserted.
Lee nodded weakly. "Just like you were doing before. But no teeth, please."
Gaara hummed his understanding. Then he knelt forward, opened his mouth, and licked Lee's cock from the root to the tip.
Oh, it was so much more than Lee'd expected. Gaara's tongue was hot, and wet, and slightly rough. Lee couldn't stop staring as Gaara worked his way up and down his shaft, first licking, then kissing wetly up the side before he pressed his lips just to the tip.
Gaara pulled back with an expression of confusion, raising his hand to his lips and frowning when his fingers came away sticky.
"Did you come?" he asked.
"No." He didn't even know what precum was? The thought made Lee's cock throb, another drop spilling down the head. "It … just means you're doing very well. I'm, uhm …"
"You're enjoying it," said Gaara, eyes bright with lantern light where they peered up from between Lee's legs. "I'm making you feel good."
And then he did something beyond Lee's wildest imaginings. He briefly studied his damp fingers, then stuck them in his mouth and sucked on them.
"It doesn't taste bad," he announced, when he'd removed his fingers from his mouth with a little pah of breath. "A little salty."
"Oh." Lee would have fallen if he weren't already lying down spread-eagled. "That's uh. That's good?"
"I heard it was supposed to taste bad. That's why women spit it out."
Who on earth had Gaara been talking about the taste of semen with?
A hot curl of jealousy twisted Lee's insides. He shoved it down. This wasn't exclusive. It wasn't even a relationship. Just because Gaara was giving the very first blowjob of his life to Lee didn't mean anything other than that Lee had been the one willing to help. Who knew how many other people Gaara had asked to do this with?
Lee shook his head; that was another fruitless train of thought.
"That's … milder than the real thing," he said, wrenching his thoughts back onto the track of their conversation. "And some people don't mind the taste. They swallow."
Gaara raised one bare brow. His Adam's apple bobbed with an obvious gulp.
"Huh," he said, licking his lips. "I'd like to try that."
"It might be a bit much for your first ti—hhh—ime!"
Gaara had ducked back down between Lee's legs and licked the rest of the wetness off the head of his cock. Then he trailed his tongue down with perfect pressure, lapping at the frenulum, until he'd descended to the very base and all Lee could see of him was his hair.
"You can go a bit lower, if you like." Lee hated how pitchy and strangled his voice sounded. "It can be quite pleasant for your partner if you lick or even suck, ah, down there."
Gaara's tongue rasped up the seam of his sack, and Lee's hips jerked.
"It's pleasant for you," he thought he heard Gaara murmur, before warm lips wrapped around one of his balls.
Lee tried not to buck up against Gaara, tried not to spoil the rhythm of the tongue rolling him around in wet heat. But it was a challenge. A harder one when Gaara switched his attention to the other side, and his hand—without any instruction from Lee at all—came up to play in the space his mouth had just left. He hummed as Lee's balls drew tight up to his body, and it took everything in Lee to halt the proceedings with a half-shouted:
"All right!"
Gaara paused. Nothing but his eyes moved, and those traveled up Lee's body to lock their gazes.
Lee could have drowned in that look. Would have, given half the chance. If this were anything real, he would be cupping Gaara's face and tracing the corners of his spread lips with his thumbs and whispering words of devotion to those seaglass eyes.
"Are you ready to try …?" Lee trailed off. He couldn't even say it. How absurd, that Gaara was the inexperienced one but Lee couldn't even bring himself to verbalize what they were doing.
Gaara withdrew; a string of saliva trailed from Lee's skin to his lips and snapped.
"I'm ready to suck your cock," he said, voice rough, "if that's what you mean."
Lee's blood blazed through him, set to throbbing at the join of his thighs.
"Right." He flexed his biceps, braced his elbows. Best if he didn't fall flat the moment Gaara’s lips were around him. "It's. Not so different from what you were just doing. Just … go slow, and don't push your limits beyond what you can handle."
Gaara moved upward. Half his face caught the light. He could have been a vision spun from Lee's guilty, late night fantasies, all slick chin and swollen lips.
He opened his mouth, rounded it. Braced his hands on Lee's thighs and sucked the head of Lee's cock into his mouth.
Lee nearly swore. Nearly thrust up into that slick-tight heat. It took an exertion of all his considerable willpower not to fuck Gaara's mouth until he choked on it.
Instead he held himself perfectly, precipitously still.
Gaara’s eyes were still on his face, questioning and hopeful and strangely … soft. If Lee weren’t in his right mind he might even think of it as affection.
"That's. That's very good. You can move up and down, now. Gently. Just like you did with your hand."
Gaara's jaw fell to full slack as his head sank to take more of Lee in his mouth. He made it not quite halfway down before he stopped, a shadow of consternation crossing his face.
"That's okay," Lee reassured him. It was probably too much to try to teach Gaara to use his hand on the rest of his length; he struggled enough with rhythm as it was. Better to save that for next time.
If there was a next time. If Gaara didn't decide this was sufficient practice and that he was ready for the real thing with someone he truly cared about.
Gaara moved back upwards, releasing the head of Lee's cock from his mouth and then angling awkwardly to find it again for another pass downward. His motions were jerky, first too fast, then too slow. On one bob of his head, he dove too deep and drew back coughing.
"May I …?" Lee reached out his hands, gesturing to Gaara’s head.
Gaara wiped his spit-splattered mouth with the back of his hand, then acquiesced. He lay his head trustingly between Lee's palms, let Lee's fingers tangle in his hair without complaint.
"I'm just going to help you keep it steady," Lee whispered. "Is that okay?"
Gaara shut his eyes. Dropped his mouth open.
Lee did not think about yanking him down and using his throat, about thrusting up into him with wild abandon until he gagged and choked on it.
He eased Gaara back down onto his cock, in awe at his placidity. How could a man who'd killed dozens, who'd led armies, seem so utterly innocent?
"Close your lips, now," Lee coached him, hardly even sounding like himself. "There you go. Suck gently. That's it."
Gaara was slack and willing in his hands, humming pleasure as he let Lee guide him up and down on his cock.
That trust would be dangerous in the wrong hands, Lee thought, and his breast flared with the urge to protect Gaara. To keep him safely within his arms, to preserve him just like this and hoard all his firsts selfishly.
"Hollow your cheeks," Lee murmured on an upstroke. "That feels—oh, that feels …"
Gaara shifted on his knees. The batting in the mattresses rustled.
Then he opened his eyes, and Lee was struck dumb. He couldn't speak. Couldn't think. Could only stare gormlessly at Gaara’s face, pinned by those piercing eyes like the points of a thousand senbon, trying desperately to read a language he'd never been taught.
His hands made unwilling fists in Gaara's hair, and Gaara groaned loud around him just in time for every muscle in Lee's body to lock in desperation before he came in Gaara’s mouth, harder than he ever had in his life.
Lee gasped for air, hands falling boneless to the mattress.
Gaara sat back with a cough, licking splatters of white from his lips before he swallowed, loud.
"How …" Lee strove to catch his breath. "How was it?"
"I like the taste," said Gaara, lips twisting. "I liked your hands in my hair. I don't know how much I liked the coughing."
"That will happen less with time," Lee replied. "You'll learn your physical limits as you learn your partner's body, once you find someone you care—Oh!"
Lee sat up suddenly, nearly tossing Gaara to the floor.
"I'm sorry! I've been terribly rude. You haven't even gotten to—it's only polite that I return the favor!"
Gaara exhaled sharply through his nose. "As much as I would like that, I don't think it's possible tonight."
"Oh?"
Gaara spread his knees, exposing to the light the wet stain on the front of his white underclothes. "The technique you taught me seems to work much better when you're with me."
"Oh." Lee didn't quite know what to make of that. Other than to think he wished the room had been brighter, so he could have watched Gaara fisting his own cock while he had Lee's in his mouth. "Well, that's. Normal, I suppose. Most of these things are more pleasurable with a partner."
"Mm." Gaara crawled up beside Lee and settled down next to him on the narrow mattress with a sigh. "Last time I slept better than I have in years. I think tonight might be the best yet."
He folded his elbow under his head and nestled down into it. His cheeks were pink from exertion, his hair mussed. He smelled like smoke and sweat and sex. The most beautiful curve of a smile—a true smile—graced his features. "Maybe I'll even dream."
Oh, Lee thought with a sinking ache in his gut. Oh no.
He scrambled off the futon and began gathering his clothes. This was becoming much too dangerous. His heart teetered like a glass vase on the edge of a table in an earthquake, ready to smash to bits.
Gaara looked up at him with a muzzy, disappointed frown. "You don't want to stay the night? I thought that was usually what happened after—"
"I can't!" Lee cut him off. "Training in the morning. You know how it is. Besides, that sort of thing is only for—"
People in love. People who plan to commit themselves to one another. People who are equally emotionally invested in the relationship.
… People who aren't afraid that if they wake up with you in their arms, they'll never be able to let you go.
Lee darted from the room and slammed the door behind him without ever finishing his sentence.
THREE
“Do you … know which position you want to be in?” asked Lee from his crouch in the back room of Gaara’s greenhouse. When Gaara had invited him to attend a wedding in Suna, Lee hadn’t expected he’d end up here the night before the ceremony, on a pile of pillows in the dust, flanked on either side by trestle tables and half-filled pots of sand and sod. But somehow, every time he and Gaara got together, they always seemed to end up in increasingly compromising positions.
“There are positions?” Gaara was already in the process of shucking his gardening gloves and apron; his floppy-brimmed straw hat had fallen from its hook by the door.
“I mean—yes, just as much as there are different forms your body can adopt in battle—” Lee pictured Gaara standing with his feet planted wide, his arms crossed. Perhaps that was not the best comparison point. “Never mind. I meant whether you wanted to be on the, um. The giving or the receiving end of things.”
Gaara gave a brief, sharp nod of understanding, then knelt before Lee and asked: “Which one is better?”
“It’s uh … um.” Lee fidgeted. No matter how far they went, he simply couldn’t match Gaara’s bluntness when it came to discussions of sex. “I’m … impartial. Both have their positives!”
“Such as …?”
“Well …” Lee reached out and traced idle, meaningless shapes in the dirt, avoiding Gaara’s eyes. “If you’re acting as the inserting partner—”
“Topping,” Gaara supplied.
Lee swallowed the lump in his throat. “Sure. If you’re … doing that … then it generally requires a bit more physical exertion—Not always, of course! People are as varied as their bodies, and that’s not to say that the, er, receptive partner can’t … can’t …”
Gaara’s hand had come to rest on his knee. His fingers squeezed Lee’s flesh. “You don’t need to be embarrassed,” he said, so quiet that Lee could hear the click and hiss of the misters coming on beyond the closed door. “It’s only me.”
That’s exactly the problem, Lee didn’t say.
Instead he nodded, and barrelled out all in a single breath: “It may be more familiar and may feel better to be the one on top, depending on your physicality. It’s like a more intense version of or—oral sex or masturbation. If you’re the receptive partner, it’s less work, but the stretch may be strange and uncomfortable or even painful. But if your partner is skilled, there are places inside you that can make things—” He drew in a huge gulp of air. “—very pleasurable.”
He looked up to find Gaara staring, lips parted, cheeks pink. He sat there silent and unblinking for a painfully long period of time.
“Gaara-kun, say something,” Lee begged him. “Please.”
Gaara licked his lips, drew himself upright, and announced, “I want to try bottoming.” He paused, uncharacteristically hesitant. “Is that all right?”
“That’s great!” Lee shouted, far too enthusiastic and hurried. Gaara stared blankly at his extended thumb and winking eye. Lee faltered. “That’s … that’s fine, I mean. I can take on either role. So, if that’s what you want …”
“It is.”
“Then we can begin.”
Lee let Gaara undress him without protest this time, in awe of the fastidious way he rolled Lee’s legwarmers and arranged his flak jacket on the tabletop, away from the dirt. He unwound Lee’s bandages without the slightest flinch at the ugliness of his old wounds.Then he sat back and—to Lee’s unending wonder—invited Lee to undress him in return.
Lee fell into Gaara’s space like he was plunging into the sea with his weights still on his ankles. He’d never been permitted to do this before; Gaara had always been the one to decide how bare he made his body. But now he lay back in the pile of cushions and let Lee take him apart.
Lee was not religious, but he thought this must be the way people felt when they visited shrines, his heart swollen with devotion, his hands reverent in their worship. Each gold button slipped from crimson linen felt like nenju rolling between his fingers, each of Gaara’s shivers and sighs like a sutra.
He couldn’t keep his hands to himself, could no longer pretend that this wasn’t an act of love on his part. Couldn’t stop himself from stroking every exposed span of Gaara’s bare skin, from his goosepimpled collarbones to his peaked nipples, from the bony juts of his ankles to the supple flesh of his thighs. Because even if Gaara would soon move on, Lee was sure he never would. He would keep every memory of them together like a treasure, locked away in his mind, even if he had to watch Gaara happy with someone else.
When he finally had Gaara spread out beneath him, he couldn’t bring himself to go any farther. All he could do was run his fingers over every centimeter of Gaara’s body, memorizing every last reaction: a gasp here, a twitch there, a groan when Lee’s nails scratched up his inner thighs. Gaara was so hard that he was leaking, and still Lee could not bring himself to do anything but crowd into his space, kissing his throat, his shoulders, his wrists, his hips as though they were each a substitute for the pink, parted lips he didn’t dare to stray to.
Gaara responded to him beautifully, blooming beneath him like the bud of a morning glory at the sunrise. A blush spread down his neck and chest in patchy rose, his hands clutched Lee’s biceps like letting go would mean death, his hips rocked up in desperation when Lee bit down behind his ear and sucked.
“L—Lee,” Gaara said, the word lazy and slurred off his tongue, hanging in the air between them like fog. “What are you—? When are you—?”
Lee forced himself still. How easily he’d forgotten his purpose. He wasn’t here to relish in Gaara’s body; he had a task to complete.
“Right.” He sat back and had to turn away from the expression on Gaara’s face, flushed and wrecked and eager all at once. He dusted his hands off on his thighs as if to rid them of the specter of Gaara’s skin. He had to focus. “Do you have any, uhm, lubricant? I have lotion in my vest, but that’s not ideal for internal use …”
“A good shinobi is always prepared,” Gaara said wryly, and with a twist of his wrist the dust motes of the heated air coalesced into a hand, which opened a cabinet on the far wall and returned with a bottle of something clear and scentless.
“You … here, really?” Lee gawked at the bottle the sand had placed in his palm.
“Mm.” Gaara rolled his shoulders, and Lee watched the motion ripple all the way down his bare skin. “I’m not so naive that I can’t do my own research. And this was the only place I knew we’d be completely alone.”
“Oh,” said Lee, rather stupidly.
Gaara leaned forward and wrapped a hand around his, clicking the top of the bottle open.
“I know what comes next,” he said with a half-smile. “In the academic sense, at least.”
“Have you … ?” Lee squirted a blob of viscous liquid onto his fingers and rubbed them together to warm it. “Have you tried this, before? By yourself, I mean.”
“No,” said Gaara, leaning back once more and making himself comfortable, knees spread and cock hard against his stomach. “I knew it wouldn’t feel as good if it wasn’t you.” He nudged Lee’s thigh with his toe. “That’s how everything else has been, at least.”
How was Lee meant to attend to his task when Gaara was saying things like that? Surely he knew—But of course, he didn’t. Lee had never said anything, had just gone along with each of Gaara’s invitations like a willing, if eager, friend.
He cleared his throat. “This next bit may be more comfortable for you if you’re on your knees.”
At this, Gaara frowned. “Is that required? In the illustrations I saw, men often—”
“It’s not required, no,” Lee interrupted him, before he could hear Gaara’s descriptions of whatever licentious images—pornography, really—he had consumed in preparation for this act. “But your hips will have to stretch farther if you stay on your back, and that will make you even more sore tomorrow.”
“I’ll bear it.” Gaara shrugged. “I don’t want to not be able to see you.”
By that, of course, he meant he wanted to be able to watch what Lee was doing. That made sense; how was he supposed to learn by feel alone? Unless he got his third eye involved, which would be … Well, Lee didn’t like to think about that thing staring at him from behind while he—
While you fuck his ass, said a low voice in the back of Lee’s mind that sounded disturbingly like Gaara.
“Okay. Okay.” Lee breathed in deep and checked to make sure the lube was warm enough. It had been for a while now. “Can you put another pillow under your hips? It will make it easier to reach … things.”
Gaara smirked, but he didn’t say the filthy word he was no doubt thinking. All haughty compliance, he rearranged the cushions beneath himself until his hips were tilted up, his legs spread and the entirety of himself on display.
He was all gorgeous curves and sharp angles, shaded roughly like the sand that swirled in the air around them. His eyes glowed the green of the freshly sprouted buds he cultivated under glass, and he didn’t move them from Lee’s, staring like he could see straight through him and into his lying, traitorous heart.
Lee felt his way between Gaara’s thighs by touch alone, enraptured by his gaze. His fingers slid slickly, clumsily over one ass cheek before they finally found their way to parting them, skimming down to circle Gaara’s hole.
Gaara bucked up into him with a gasp.
“Is that all right?” Lee asked, stilling.
“Don’t stop,” Gaara rasped, shifting himself down and against Lee’s fingertips.
Lee took his time warming Gaara up, acutely aware of Gaara’s inexperience with each stroke of his fingers, each firm and warning press against the pucker of his asshole. Gaara responded to every touch like he was being prodded with a live wire, hissing and thrashing and twisting his neck to groan into the pillows.
He waited until the hair beneath Gaara’s navel was shiny with the precum that had spilled from his overeager cock before he asked, “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Gaara panted, his eyelids fluttering like he was fighting against pleasure to open them. “Please.”
He begged so prettily. Lee eased one finger inside him, just to the second knuckle.
“Oh.” Gaara’s eyes flew wide, snapped from Lee’s face to the hand between his legs. “Oh.”
Lee went to withdraw, but Gaara snapped his thighs closed around his arm like a bear trap. “Don’t move. Just—hah—just …”
Lee waited in stock stillness until Gaara’s breathing steadied, and he huffed, “More.”
Lee pushed all the way inside him this time, worked his finger back and forth to the pace of Gaara’s gusting exhales. To be the first—the only—person to touch Gaara on the inside like this … there was nothing on earth that compared. The image of Gaara with his knees cocked, his body opening under Lee’s fingers, begging for more of them would never leave Lee’s mind.
Even if Gaara took a thousand lovers after Lee, he would always be the first. It was a sweet sort of poison, the inevitability of their parting sinking into his veins.
He added another finger when Gaara asked for it, shifting them farther upward on each pass until he skated across that swollen, sensitive patch of nerves that had Gaara’s body spasming.
“What the—?” Gaara rocked down into the pressure of Lee’s fingers as doggedly as if he were tracking down a fleeing opponent, face a mask of agonized pleasure. “What did you just do?”
“I did mention,” said Lee, trying very hard to keep his voice steady and not rut his aching cock against Gaara’s calf, “that there were places inside you that would feel good.”
“If my p—partner was skilled,” Gaara gasped. “Of course you’re—I should have known …”
Heat flared inside Lee’s ribcage and wound its way down to his groin. That was very nearly a compliment.
He couldn’t let Gaara’s sweet words get to his head.
“Are you—?” he stumbled over the words. “Do you think you’re ready for the, uhm, the real thing?”
Gaara propped himself up halfway, wrenching his eyes open and looking down between Lee’s legs. “I almost forgot you’re going to put that inside me.”
It stung; Lee tried not to let it show. He ducked his head aside and murmured, “We don’t have to do that if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” Gaara snapped, the moment the words had left Lee’s mouth.
All right, then. Lee withdrew his fingers slowly—Gaara gritted his teeth—and added more lube to his palm, slicking up his cock.
“I’ll go slowly,” he said, kneeling forward and positioning himself at Gaara’s entrance. “But the stretch may be a little painful. I need you to tell me if it’s unbearable.”
“A little painful,” Gaara huffed sardonically. “You’re going to break me in half.”
“We really don’t have to—” Lee moved backwards.
“If you’re about to do anything but put your dick inside me, stop it.” Gaara’s hips rose; clumsily, he rubbed himself over the head of Lee’s cock.
Lee had to squeeze himself to stop from bucking into Gaara at those filthy words. If Gaara kept talking like that, this wasn’t going to last long at all.
“I’m not going anywhere.” He was sure he sounded more strangled than soothing. “Just breathe deeply and relax.”
Gaara did as he was told, and Lee pressed into him a slowly as he could bear.
“Fffffuck,” Gaara breathed, his hands clawing Lee’s shoulders fit to break skin.
Lee nearly echoed him. Gaara was so incredibly tight it was almost unreal. The moment Lee’s head made it past his rim, he clenched down like he was trying to strangle the life out of Lee’s cock.
The craziest part was that Lee didn’t even mind it. Gaara’s body was like a furnace, twice as hot as his mouth had been and infinitely slicker. He would have happily stayed there on his knees with Gaara clenched around just the tip of him until the God Tree sapped them of all their chakra.
It was perfect.
It would never happen again.
Lee clenched his eyes tight against the inevitable tears.
“Can—Can I move?” he asked weakly.
“Ah, uh-hmm, hah.” Gaara’s voice offered only short, inarticulate noises, nothing Lee could make any sense of until finally he moaned, “Plea-ease!”
Lee obeyed on sheer instinct, rocking forward until he was halfway inside.
“Fuck!” Gaara shouted, loud enough that the glass rang. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuck!”
“Relax, all right?” Lee pet blindly at whatever part of Gaara he could reach: his sweating throat, the corner of his tight-stretched lips, a few tangled strands of hair. “Am I hurting you?”
“Ye-esss,” Gaara hissed, his heels locking around the small of Lee’s back before Lee could retreat. “It’s good. It’s—oh, fuck, Lee—it’s really, really good.”
“I really don’t want to hurt you.” Lee held his body as still as a stone training post.
Gaara wrapped his arms around Lee’s neck, dug his heels into Lee’s ass, and pulled him all the way in before Lee could think to react.
“I like it,” he panted, when Lee was seated fully inside him. “I like the way it burns.”
“I—” Gaara was crushingly tight, body working around Lee in constant motion, like the tide lapping at the shore. “Are you sure?”
“I like how you make me hurt.”
Lee opened his eyes. Gaara’s head was tipped back into the pillows, hair spilled around him like blood, his face red, his throat exposed. He was holding Lee so closely that Lee could feel Gaara’s hard cock against his belly, could feel the twitches of his muscles as he adjusted to Lee inside him.
Lee kissed him on the underside of his chin. He didn’t mean to do it; it was purely instinctive. Gaara shuddered.
“Can you do the thing again?” he asked, still trembling.
“What thing?”
“With your fingers—How you made it feel good … Lee …”
“Yeah,” Lee husked, letting all the lingering traces of formality slip from his voice. “Yeah, Gaara, I can do that. I’m gonna have to move, okay?”
“Ah-huh.” Gaara nodded fast and frantic. “Whatever—whatever you want. Whatever you need.”
Oh, Gaara was going to be the death of him.
Lee rocked back, Gaara’s whine sweet in his ears, angled himself, and thrust back in slow. He knew his cock had dragged over just the right spot when Gaara’s back arched. A noise wrenched out of his throat, halfway between a sob and a laugh and a scream.
“Lee-ee,” he moaned, scraping his nails down Lee’s shoulderblades, rocking up against him. “Please, more, please.”
“Of course.” Lee pressed another thoughtless kiss to Gaara’s shoulder, then moved in him, setting a languorous, steady rhythm, grazing his prostate on every stroke. “Like that?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Gaara hardly sounded like himself, frantic and fervent and lust-wracked. “Just like that. Just like that.”
His body opened up to Lee with just a little pressure, wet and hot and tight and perfect. Lee wanted to bury himself here. He never needed to hear another voice, to speak another word. Gaara’s desperate cries would be more than enough. If all he did for the rest of his life was give Gaara pleasure, his life would be complete.
“Do you like that?” he husked, all compunction and manners forgotten in the face of the desire to hear Gaara’s voice. “Do you like my cock inside you?”
“I love it.” Gaara’s mouth was open against the pillows, a damp spot by his lips. “You’re so big. I’m—fuck—I’m—” A hysterical, high-pitched gasp of a laugh escaped him. “I’m never going to be the same. My body won’t—How can it—Lee!”
Lee peppered kisses along his jaw, following the commands of Gaara’s body: speeding when he clutched tight, slowing when he went slack and loose. Gaara’s cock left sticky trails where it bobbed against his stomach. The closeness, the intimacy were almost enough to make Lee think this was something more.
Of course it wasn’t, and when Gaara finally moved his hand from Lee’s hair to fumble around between them, Lee remembered what he was really here for.
“Let me,” he murmured, batting Gaara’s hand aside. “That’s my job.”
Gaara was hot as a brand when Lee’s fist closed around him. He was so slick with sweat and precum that Lee didn’t even need to think about adding anything else. He just jerked Gaara steadily in time with his thrusts, leaving Gaara’s body to move with him, arching up into his hand with every stroke and down onto his cock with every slow rut of Lee’s cock.
The sounds spilling from his mouth now were nothing more than mumbled, inchoate nonsense, a mix of vowels and consonants and curses and words in languages Lee didn’t understand. Gaara writhed on him like a feral thing; tears darkened the rings around his eyes. His chest heaved; his tongue slurred. Lee kept touching him, kept moving in him, watching every response keenly, rapidly escalating to his own high on the image of Gaara’s pleasure.
And then Gaara’s mouth stilled. He bit his lip until it turned white, and whatever sounds he had been making vibrated through his chest and throat and up into Lee’s body as he jerked and clenched tight and came so hard it splattered on his chin.
A few panted breaths had Lee slowing inside him, worried about overstimulation.
Gaara’s eyes opened, his bloodshot sclera and red-rimmed eyelids making his irises burn otherworldly.
“Don’t stop,” he mumbled, rocking slow and sweet against Lee’s cock, hissing at the height of every thrust. “I want you to—I want it in me. I want you in me.”
Lee couldn’t stop. The vision of Gaara beneath him, cum-dirtied and sweat-soaked and begging for Lee to come inside him was too much. His hips bucked and locked inside Gaara, fire and electricity racing through his blood until the pleasure peaked in white-out, until he spilled as deep inside Gaara as he could.
His arms were trembling when he pulled out. He felt as drained as he did after training the Gates, though without the pain.
No, every cell in his body hummed delight, his skin prickling as he struggled to catch his breath, Gaara’s eyes never moving from his own.
If Lee hadn’t been in love before, he would have been now. How could anyone look at Gaara in this state of gorgeous, precious vulnerability and not fall in love? It was a miracle that people didn’t fall at his feet in the streets.
“Lee,” Gaara mumbled, locking a calf around the back of his knee and pulling him down until Lee was splayed atop him. “Please don’t leave. Stay.”
Lee couldn’t say no. His heart had chained itself to Gaara’s words, and his body wasn’t going to stop obeying now.
He let Gaara nuzzle into him, and as he fell into drained, delirious sleep, he dreamed of the press of thin lips on the crown of his head.
ONCE MORE WITH FEELING
“You've had sexual intercourse with Rock Lee how many times?” Temari shrieked, slamming her teacup down so hard that the table rattled.
Gaara sat back and crossed his arms, unmoved by the dramatics. “Once.”
Kankuro guffawed. “But you just said three times.”
“We’ve had sex three times,” Gaara clarified. “Intercourse once.”
“So …” Temari rubbed her temples. “... Have you made it official?”
Gaara’s brow furrowed. “Official?”
Temari shot her middle brother a look of desperation.
“Like did you decide,” Kankuro gestured vaguely. “I’m your boyfriend, you’re my boyfriend’ sort of thing?”
“Why … would we need to do that?” Gaara said slowly.
“Well, ‘cause otherwise it’s just friends with benefits.”
“We are friends.”
“That’s not what—!” Temari began, before Kankuro cut her off:
“Friends with benefits means, like, this is just for fun. It’s not serious. Or exclusive.”
Gaara’s eyes slowly widened. “Exclusive …”
“Like it’s okay if either of you hook up with someone else,” Kankuro explained.
Gaara’s stomach felt as though he had just swallowed cold stone instead of hot tea. “And making it official would preclude this?”
“I mean, yeah, usually.” Kankuro shrugged. “Unless you’re, like, doing something way more complicated than I think you’re ready for.”
Gaara nodded, then stood with a screech of his chair and strapped on his gourd.
“Kankuro,” he said, “take care of things while I’m gone. Temari, stop him from doing anything stupid.”
“Hey, wait—!”
And then he flicked a hand sign and cast himself deep into the desert in a swirl of sand.
The hammering on Lee’s door in the middle of the night was so loud and frantic that, as he stumbled towards the genkan with a shirt halfway over his head, he worried that it was either an emergency or an attack.
Fortunately, it was neither. When he yanked the door open, he found himself face-to-face with a dirty mop of red hair and a dead serious expression.
“I’m your boyfriend,” Gaara declared flatly.
“Gaara-kun!” Lee hissed, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him inside before the sudden (not to mention noisy) arrival of the Kazekage could draw the neighbors’ attention. “What are you—?”
“You’re my boyfriend,” Gaara said, the moment the door had shut behind him. “I’m your boyfriend. It’s official now.”
“That is—not usually something just one person …” Suddenly, Lee’s brain was fully awake and on high alert. “Wait, what?” His heart thundered like a drumroll. “You want—that—with me?”
Surely it wasn’t true. Surely this was some henge or genjutsu, someone looking to exploit his weak points. Though … how could anyone know what he and Gaara had done? He certainly hadn’t told anyone, and Gaara …
“My siblings said we’re only friends with benefits.”
Well, that left at least two people who knew. Lee paled.
“But I hate the idea of you with anyone else,” Gaara went on. “This will make us exclusive.”
Removing his shoes in the doorway and tossing aside his gourd with a thud, Gaara stalked across the tiny front room of Lee’s apartment until he had Lee backed up against the wall.
“I had no intentions of doing those things with anyone else!” Lee protested.
“Good.” Gaara pressed his whole body up against Lee and whispered into his mouth, “And now you never will.”
Lee’s knees went weak, stars dancing behind his closed eyelids as he wound his fingers through Gaara’s hair and finally did what he’d been dreaming of for far, far too long.
When their lips met for the first time, it wasn’t perfect. Unlike the practiced movements of their bodies together, this was raw and new. Their noses bumped. Gaara bit the tip of Lee’s tongue. But in the end, any lack of finesse was made up for by sheer ferocity, sheer passion. Their breathing sped and synced; Gaara insinuated a knee between Lee’s thighs and ground up into him until he was gasping. Lee nibbled the lobe of Gaara’s ear and relished in the gutted sigh it elicited.
In what seemed like no time at all, they were both naked, tangled together, clothing tossed to the four corners of the room. The quiet, animal noises of Konoha at nighttime wound their way through Lee’s poorly sealed windows as Lee pushed back, steering Gaara through the door to his bedroom.
Gaara fell to the unmade sheets in a sprawl, and Lee climbed atop him immediately, kissing up his arms as he stretched them up over his head and pinned them there.
“I’m yours,” Gaara whispered, wriggling to bite the cap of Lee’s shoulder hard enough to bruise. “You know that now, don’t you? And you’re mine, too.”
“Mmph,” Lee agreed, kissing his way up Gaara’s palms to his fingers, sucking on them until Gaara bucked into him. He ran his tongue down the length of Gaara’s arm. “We’re each other’s.”
“Yes,” Gaara agreed, and Lee wasn’t sure if his assent was to the words or to the nips Lee was trailing down his chest to his nipples. “I like that.”
“I’m glad.” Lee couldn’t keep the smile off his face between the kisses he laid all over Gaara’s body. But something still chewed at the back of his mind. “Are you—Are you sure you want this? That you aren’t waiting for someone else? I thought—I was sure that—”
Gaara brought his foot between them and pushed Lee back, leveling him with a stare. “You thought I let you fuck me in preparation for someone else?”
“You said you wanted me to teach you!”
“And at what point did I say I intended to use your instructions on anyone who wasn’t you?”
“You—” Lee stilled. “It seemed … impossible. That someone like you could want someone like me.”
Gaara rolled his eyes. Actually rolled his eyes at Lee before he retrieved his hands, wrapped a leg around Lee’s hip, and flipped them so he was sitting astride Lee’s hips.
“I hated it when you wouldn’t take your bandages off around me,” he said, tracing the shapes of the scars on Lee’s arms. “I don’t want you to hide from me.”
“They’re horrible looking,” Lee argued, though he didn’t move away from Gaara’s tender touch. “They’re … depressing. Ugly.”
“No.” Gaara trailed the rough edge of one nail up a line that had once been sutured shut. “They’re part of you.”
“Exactly.”
Gaara’s eyes narrowed. He leaned in and bit Lee on the lip, hard enough that Lee gasped and giggled and yanked away.
“They’re perfect because they’re part of you,” Gaara whispered when he pulled back. “Because you’re perfect.”
The words alone made Lee shudder. The fervent honesty in Gaara’s voice made him want to shake out of his skin.
“That’s a heavy expectation to live up to.”
“You’ve surpassed expectations all your life,” said Gaara, sinking down to trail kisses down Lee’s chest, to lick his way across the curve of every muscle. “I don’t think this is any different.”
“Ha-ah.” Lee’s breath hitched as Gaara licked the trail of hair above his cock. “Gaara-kun, that’s—”
“That’s another thing,” Gaara cut him off, taking Lee’s cock in hand and stroking it, practiced now, to full hardness. “You can stop calling me that. I think we’re past the point of honorifics, don’t you?”
“I—”
Gaara licked a stripe up the bottom of Lee’s cock, swirled his tongue around the tip. “Don’t you?” he repeated.
“Hah, yes!”
Something rustled in the air. Lee’s half-open eyes registered a haze of shimmering gold overtop of the bed before he heard the familiar snick of a bottle top opening and realized the sand had brought Gaara the lube.
A moment later, Gaara’s hand was back on his cock, warm and slippery, the rhythm and angle sublimely imperfect, every faltering misstep singing, Gaara. Lee’s head fell back on the pillow. His eyes fell shut in bliss, at the sheer thought of Gaara turning all their lessons around on him, working him over just the way he knew Lee liked.
He didn’t notice the shift and shuffle of Gaara’s body, the hand that disappeared from its bracing point on his hip, the wet sounds that were coming not from the place they were joined but somewhere further back.
Until suddenly Gaara was lining Lee’s cock up against his ass, and all in a rush, Lee’s brain assembled the pieces just in time for him to choke out, “Gaara!” at the very moment Gaara sank down on him to the root.
Gaara’s sticky hands clenched on Lee’s shoulders. His eyes had gone hazy, his breathing uneven.
“You’re going to hurt yourself doing that!” Lee cried, though his body was strumming at the warm, wet heat around him, the feeling of Gaara’s weight braced on him. “That was almost certainly too fast.”
Gaara just shook his head, rocking up with a little hitch of breath and back down with a groan so deep it sounded like a purr.
“It’s good,” he mumbled, working himself on Lee’s cock. “You feel bigger like this.”
“Gaara—”
“I like when you say my name. Can you—?” Gaara rolled his hips, testing angles.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he was after. “Here.” Lee grabbed Gaara’s hips, thumbed the bones. Braced his heels in the sheets. “Let me.”
And with just a bit of adjustment, Lee was thrusting up against that spot that had Gaara clenching on him with a sob.
It didn’t take long after that. There was too much pent-up emotion between them, too much relief and joy and resolved tension. They moved like they were made for each other, like they’d had far more than three fumbling, so-called practice sessions. And after Lee lost himself inside Gaara, he bowled the two of them over and showed Gaara just how good a blow job felt from the other side.
After, they lay tangled together, sweaty and sated. They traded soft pecks and long, heated kisses. Gaara ran his hands through Lee’s hair over and over like it was an addiction. Lee pressed his fingers into the blood-bruised marks he’d left on Gaara’s body and reveled in Gaara’s soft moans.
And then suddenly Gaara was climbing up over Lee, thumbs on his cheeks.
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m just … happy.” Lee hiccuped, not quite a laugh of disbelief. “I never thought this could be more. I thought all I’d ever be able to do was teach you.”
“Hmm.” Gaara leaned down and licked a tear trail from his cheek. He sat back and smiled, gentle and sweet and sincere. “Well, I do look forward to you teaching me much more.”