Archive of Our Own

The door slams open.

Lee looks up from his cooldown stretches to see Gaara in the doorway. His expression is crumpled with fury, all his small features drawn tight towards the center of his face.

“Rrgh!” He makes a muffled noise of frustration, kicking his shoes hard against the wall of the genkan and throwing down his gourd.

Lee sits upright and straightens his legwarmers. The gourd rattles to stillness, the Sand within quiet. At least this means Gaara isn’t in any physical danger. Whatever is bothering him must be a more emotional hurt.

“Are you okay?” Lee asks gently.

“I’m fine,” Gaara snaps. He rips his hat off and drops it to the ground, too, completely foregoing the hook Lee had installed just for such an occasion. There’s a bloom of sweat inside the hat, a damp grey circle like a flower’s blossom. His hair is matted to his forehead where the hat’s band was. The ends are sticking out every which way, as if he’s been pulling on them.

Lee looks down at Gaara’s suspiciously empty hands. “Did you pick up dinner?”

Gaara freezes. His face falls.

“No.” His voice is tight, as if his own vocal cords are choking him. “I forgot. I’ll go back out and—”

“Please don’t worry about it!” Lee jumps to his feet. “I can cook. You look like you’ve had a long day.”

Gaara’s posture collapses in a defeated slump.

“Thank you,” he says, very quietly. “I’m going to take a shower.”

He leaves a trail of shed white robes behind him as he goes. Lee hears him kick the bathroom door shut behind him, then, muffled behind the wood, “That old fucking—” followed by several very creative swears in Sunan.

Lee looks at the gourd and gestures as if to say, What’s gotten into him?

The Sand, predictably, does not reply.

The water runs in the bathroom for a very long time. It took Gaara several years’ worth of visits to Lee’s Konoha apartment before he was willing to accept the ‘decadence’ of time-unlimited showers, but now that he has, he soaks them up like a cactus does the wet season’s rain.

He’s in there long enough that Lee has time to burn one fish and cook a new one through. They’re the little briny mackerel that Gaara likes the most, and Lee finds himself feeling glad Gaara hasn’t caught him wasting one as he sets the charred one on the windowsill for the neighborhood cats. Lee doesn’t dislike saba, exactly, but there are other fish he likes more. He really only buys them when Gaara is going to be in town. And while he may not love eating around their tiny, brittle bones, he does love seeing the expression on Gaara’s face when he bites into one. (He even chews the wooden skewers afterwards. If anyone else did it, Lee would find it weird and slightly uncivilized, but from Gaara the behavior is adorable.)

When Gaara finally emerges from the bathroom, Lee is sitting at the table with the dinner dishes already laid out. He’s pretending to read a book, though he’s really just been watching the bathroom door for any sign of life.

Gaara’s holding a damp towel in his hand. One of the huge, fluffy things that Lee only bought because he couldn’t get the image of Gaara all swaddled up in them out of his mind. He’s wearing one of Lee’s old t-shirts—some ancient, faded green-striped thing—from his chuunin or maybe even genin days. It fits him terribly, far too tight across the chest and shoulders. He’s not at all properly dressed to eat dinner; he hasn’t got any pants on, just briefs and a pair of Lee’s thick woolen socks.

Lee frowns. Gaara only ever wears Lee’s clothes when he’s seeking comfort.

He catches Gaara’s eye and pats the seat of the chair next to him, setting his book down and gesturing, Come here.

The towel joins Gaara’s Kage robes on the floor.

There are four chairs at Lee’s square little table, just enough space for him to have dinner with his team and sensei. It would be proper, Lee supposes, for Gaara to take the seat across the table from him. Instead Gaara picks up one of the chairs and sets it down right next to Lee on the same side of the table, close enough that the wooden seats are touching. He squeezes himself in beside Lee and pulls the tidy place settings into disarray to his liking. They’re pressed shoulder to thigh in the small space, trapped by table legs.

Gaara winds an ankle around Lee’s calf, pushes up against him hard enough that Lee can feel it through his weights and legwarmer.

“Smells good,” he says, terse as always. High praise. Lee burns with satisfaction all the way through his body.

Gaara doesn’t talk much as they eat with jostling wrists and elbows, bodies buffeting each others’. He responds with single words and affirmative grunts as Lee queries his day, then details his own training. His shoulders are still taut as stretched bowstrings. There’s a tension to his movements as he shuffles the bowls, drains his cup of tea.

That tightness, that agitation only grows throughout the meal, until Gaara is jittery with it, his hands and feet uncharacteristically fidgety.

Gaara sets his chopsticks down with a clatter. He hasn’t finished his meal, Lee notes. The bowl of rice is still full, but the skeletons of the little fish have been picked clean.

He stands, then pushes Lee’s chair back with one hand to sit in his lap, straddling him for a kiss.

It isn’t even a kiss, really. He just bites at Lee’s lip hard, his hips grinding in slow circles.

“Tie me up,” he growls.

Lee is suddenly glad to be sitting down, because his legs have gone weak. Blood quickly vacates his blushing face for destinations further south.

“Are—are you sure?” he stammers.

Gaara ruts his hips down once more as punctuation. He bites the lobe of Lee’s ear.

His teeth are sharp, voice low and dangerous as he says, “I’m sure.”

So Lee slides his hands beneath Gaara’s thighs and stands to carry him to the bedroom.

They make it as far as the doorway before Gaara’s teeth find Lee’s throat, before he starts rocking his erection against the plane of Lee’s abdomen.

The bed’s been turned down already, Lee notices as he throws his head back on a groan, Gaara sucking at his Adam’s apple. This was planned.

He struggles to set the writhing mass of Gaara down on the floor gently, only for Gaara to promptly box him in against the wall. He bites Lee’s lips, his chin, the crease of his jaw, his movements jerky with desperation.

“I thought you wanted me to tie you up,” Lee says. He takes Gaara by the hips and turns them so Gaara’s the one up against the paint and plaster.

Lee cups Gaara’s chin in one hand and kisses him, slow and deep, all tongue and lips and gentleness. Gaara slumps back against the wall, pliant. His eyes are fever-bright and locked on Lee’s like he’s spellbound, waiting.

“Yes,” he sighs.

Lee smiles. Kisses him again because he can’t help but do it. Slips his hands up the too-tight shirt to cup Gaara’s ribcage, wrestles the garment up and over his head.

He tugs the waistband of Gaara’s briefs as he backs away.

“Take these off, please,” he says. “And go lay on the bed.”

He’ll let Gaara keep the socks on. He always complains that Konoha makes his feet cold.

Gaara does as he’s told with a careful, quiet grace. There’s something brittle about him as he splays in the plush of Lee’s blankets, something this-close to shattering in the curves and shadows of his dark skin, in the still-damp shaggy red hair haloing his face like a bloodstain, in the sea-glass green of his eyes as they track Lee’s every movement. Something strong that’s desperate to be broken.

Lee is terrified of breaking him.

He makes a little show of getting undressed for Gaara’s benefit. His fingers are slow in the unwrapping of his bandages. His eyes linger on Gaara as Gaara stares at the white fabric spooling on the floor.

Lee finishes dispensing of them with a shake of his wrists.

Gaara licks his lips. His dick is hard and getting harder, arcing up towards his stomach.

Lee’s jumpsuit has many fine qualities, but it does nothing to conceal his own simultaneous interest.

Gaara’s eyes chase the shadow of Lee’s erection as he bends to shed his legwarmers, then his weights and finally his jumpsuit. He’s not moving, even though Lee didn’t tell him to be still. He’s just watching, wary. Waiting to see what Lee will do.

Lee hopes he doesn’t disappoint as he stands there for a moment in only his underwear, dampness spreading on the Y-front. His dick jumps at the sight of Gaara’s chest heaving with hard breaths.

He leans over the bed to kiss Gaara once more, wetly and thoroughly. He slips a hand down to cup Gaara’s dick, gives him one slow stroke to hear him hiss and see the way his back arches.

Touching Gaara is the easy part. It’s the telling that’s hard.

“Give me just a moment,” he says into Gaara’s mouth. “You can touch yourself if you like, or you can wait.”

Gaara’s dick throbs in Lee’s hand.

“I’ll wait,” he says throatily.

Lee crosses to his nightstand and dithers over the bandages in his drawer. He has all sorts: soft lengths for day-to-day wear, waterproofed canvas wraps for specialty missions or bad-weather days, bandages with sticky ends for medical use. He sees them as part of his arsenal, the same as his weights or his nunchaku or his bo staff, just another tool, designed to cushion the microtears of his skin, to ensure his wounds are clean during conditioning, and to keep his joints aligned.

Gaara seems to like them, though.

Lee caught him smelling them, once, nose deep in a pile of dirty linen slated for the laundry hamper.

“They smell like your sweat,” was what he said. “And blood.”

These ones are all clean, though. They smell like nothing but cotton thread and laundry soap.

Lee selects a couple lengths of the softest ones, double-thick and cushiony for occasional days off. He holds them up for Gaara’s approval.

Gaara gives him a look that manages to be indifferent and challenging all at once. He just lifts his chin, a hint of fight in his eyes.

But Lee can see right through him after so many years. There’s a faint darkening to his cheeks if you know where to look, a subtle hitch in his breath if you’re listening for it. Interest. His tongue darts out to wet his lips again. You’d think he hadn’t had a drop of water in days.

Lee lets him wait a beat longer.

“Are these all right?” he prompts. Body language is all well and good, but he wants to hear Gaara say this. The permission of the thing is important. The checking in, every step of the way. This is how he keeps Gaara safe.

“Yes,” Gaara says. It’s almost a whine. He rubs his thighs together.

Lee kneels at the edge of the bed, and Gaara turns towards the indentation of his weight like a planet falling into the orbit of a star.

Lee takes both of Gaara’s wrists in one hand, tugs and positions him where he wants him. Gaara lets him.

“Would you be more comfortable with your arms up or down?” He stretches Gaara’s arms in illustration, admiring the way the shape of his chest changes, the shadows in the joins of his deltoids.

Gaara repeats the movement. Arms up, then down. Lee doesn’t loosen his grip on Gaara’s wrists. His eye contact is almost uncomfortably direct. Piercing.

“Up,” he says finally, and Lee moves to comply.

He straddles Gaara’s chest and eases his arms up over his head. The drag of his clothed dick against the swell of Gaara’s chest when he breathes is almost too much to bear. Lee’s keyed up beyond belief, but he’s also incredibly nervous.

They’ve only done this a few times before, always at Gaara’s behest. Tenderly weaving the white cloth between and around Gaara’s wrists, Lee thinks he might be more comfortable if he were the one tied up, if Gaara were the one in control. At least then he wouldn’t be so worried about hurting him.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Control.

Gaara spends his whole life in a state of tight self-regulation. He’s hypervigilant, checking and re-checking his actions against others’ reactions, his emotions reined in, scared that the slightest show of upset will terrify others. With good reason, of course; Gaara’s history is no secret to any of the Five Villages, least of all his own.

But that leaves him craving freedom, a time to release his responsibilities and just … live within his own skin. A need for just a few moments where he doesn’t have to make the decisions or worry about his responses.

Lee can give that to him. He might be the only one who can.

He ties off the bindings with a square knot, tucking the ends in neatly. His fingers slip beneath each turn of the fabric, checking for two fingers’ breadth of breathing room in the stretch of the weave. There’s a good amount of slack cloth between Gaara’s bound wrists and the headboard, plenty of space to maneuver.

He looks down.

He reminds himself to breathe.

It’s a lovely sight, Gaara’s torso stretched out, the contrast of dark skin and white fabric. Gaara’s eyes are heavy on him, blinking slow, his hollow pupils blown-out and glassy. In the dim light, the sleep-deprived bruises around his eyes could be just another of the room’s warm shadows.

Lee’s sitting practically on Gaara’s chest, the cloth covering his neglected dick mere inches from Gaara’s mouth. Gaara wets his lips again. He drops his eyes from Lee’s face to stare at it.

Lee cups his face, strokes the corner of his mouth with his thumb, considering.

The temptation is strong, but there are other things he’d rather be doing right now. More important things. Maybe some other time, when his blood isn’t singing in his veins that what Gaara really needs right now is to be cared for.

He slides down off Gaara’s chest, letting the whole of his chest and stomach drag across Gaara’s hardness, and settles himself between Gaara’s spread legs. Gaara’s head is thrown back from just that slight friction, the muscles of his arms straining already against the wraps.

He strokes his thumbs down Gaara’s hips, eyeing him consideringly. Usually at this point in the proceedings, he would ask Gaara what he wants. Lee is happy to do pretty much whatever makes Gaara happy, because any time spent touching Gaara is a good time in his book. But that’s not part of the set-up here. Gaara has relinquished the role of decision-maker, and now Lee flounders.

It’s been a few too many seconds of Lee not touching, his thumbs just idling in circles on Gaara’s hips, every other part of their bodies distant.

Gaara looks down at him, eyes slitted, and spreads his legs a little further. “Lee …”

Right. Well, there is something he’s always wanted to try. What better time than the present? (And Gaara makes a lovely present indeed, all wrapped up for him and tied with a bow, and … Lee is letting his mind distract him from the task at hand, again.)

He squeezes Gaara’s hips once, gently.

“Can you turn over for me, please?”

Gaara starts to flip over immediately. It takes a bit of maneuvering to turn him, to make sure the bandages don’t pull at the skin too tightly. Lee triple-checks, just to make sure. Gaara’s knees end up tucked under himself, his hands up over his head. Lee ducks down to push the pillows away from his face, peeking under Gaara’s arm.

“Are you sure you can breathe okay?”

Gaara purses his lips and puffs a breath on Lee’s face that blows his bangs astray. He raises both sparse eyebrows.

Lee almost swats at him for it, but that wouldn’t be fair, since Gaara has no way to strike back. Instead he quickly kisses the scar on Gaara’s forehead and climbs back down the bed, until he’s sitting behind Gaara.

Just as Lee’s body has elongated over the years, Gaara’s has grown stockier, compact. He never quite escaped the trajectory of his premature birth and childhood neglect, so he’s no taller now than he was at sixteen, but he’s grown into his strength. He has a body that can move mountains, that can lift the whole of the desert above his head and bring it crashing back down. Lee has seen him do it.

Gai-sensei told Lee once that when someone experiences starvation in childhood, their body holds onto food, as if making up for the calories they once lacked. Even when the mind is sure where the next meal is coming from, the body doesn’t forget that scarcity. Lee doesn’t know if Gaara starved as a child, but he does know that he was without a caregiver or guardian from age six to age twelve. Lee can’t imagine what that must have been like. Even Konoha’s orphanage, which Gaara finds barbaric, made sure each child had three square meals a day.

Gaara doesn’t talk about his childhood much at all. Lee only knows snatches of his story from the bland remarks Gaara drops tonelessly into conversation, moving on as if the thing he’s just said isn’t the saddest or most horrific thing Lee’s ever heard. (While cutting a slice of pork: “I didn’t know you were supposed to use knives to cut meat until I was almost thirteen. I used to just tear it apart with my teeth.” At a dango stand at a festival: “This is the first time I’ve ever had a dessert.” While Lee’s scrubbing the kitchen floor: “A gentle abrasive is the best way to get a bloodstain out of wood.”)

It’s remarks like those that make Lee wary of handling Gaara’s broad body even the slightest bit roughly. Gaara deserves to be treated gently, with all the kindness his childhood denied him.

Lee presses a line of kisses across the span of Gaara’s wide shoulders, dips his tongue into the little divots and ridges of skin. Gaara’s breath hitches as Lee starts to kiss down the line of his spine. Lee’s kisses grow more heated as he works his way down, Gaara’s responsive breathing pitching louder, his back arcing up towards Lee’s mouth.

At the base, he pauses and rearranges Gaara’s knees, giving him a wider stance, a lower center of gravity.

Then he spreads Gaara’s cheeks to lick down the seam of him and back up again.

Gaara freezes.

Lee pulls back immediately.

“Is that okay?” he asks.

Gaara’s bowed head nods. His voice comes out small when he says, “Yes.”

“Can I keep going?”

There’s a sharp intake of breath, then, “Please.”

Lee repeats the action, down and then up. Gaara shifts his knees wider of his own accord, raising up higher. He tastes like sweat and smells like the soap from Lee’s shower. Something about it sends a hot spike of possessiveness spearing through Lee’s gut.

Lee licks at him again and again, long and slow and thorough, until Gaara’s knees are shaking under him and his ragged breath is louder even than the wet noises Lee’s mouth is making against his hole. Gaara’s dick hangs between his legs, heavy and swollen, the head leaving little wet marks of precum on the sheets when his hips jerk.

Lee could do this for hours, just taking Gaara apart with his mouth, his fingers digging into the firm, thick muscle of Gaara’s ass. But Gaara apparently has a much shorter tolerance, because after one particularly slow stroke of Lee’s tongue, he shudders and whines out another, “Please.”

Lee pauses, but he doesn’t pull away this time, just gusting warm, panting breath over Gaara.

“Lee, stop teasing.”

Lee didn’t think he’d been teasing at all; in fact, he thought it was quite clear what he was working up to, but a request is a request, so he sits back to shed his underwear and reaches for the lube. Gaara must have removed it from the bedside drawer earlier and set it on the nightstand.

He slicks his fingers and rubs them quickly to warm them, then drags them across Gaara’s hole. He’s wet and loose already, twitchy and sensitive when Lee strokes across it, just barely dipping his fingers inside.

“I don’t think I need it,” Gaara hisses. He pushes back against Lee’s hand, urgent. “Come on.”

“Gaara—” Lee spreads his fingers inside him, twists and stretches. “I don’t think—”

“Please.” It’s almost a sob. Three ‘please’s in one night is almost unheard of. The notion is heady, the desperation of it. Gaara’s arms above his head strain, wrapped like he’s in a partial Reverse Lotus. That echo of battle is thrilling to Lee, that recollection of the first time he saw Gaara restrained—before he even knew what lust was—and recognized there a power he could crash against his own. The sweet and bitter taste of accomplishment mixed with failure.

Lee relents. He rubs another fingerful of lube around Gaara’s entrance—Gaara squirms—and then he quickly slicks his dick and presses forward.

There’s more resistance than he’d like. Even moving slowly, he can feel the blunt head stretching the places Gaara wasn’t already stretched. Gaara’s making high-pitched noises with every centimeter of give, the tight muscles of his back in shadowy, stark relief.

“Are you sure I’m not hurting you?” Lee asks, after Gaara makes a particularly loud noise. “Maybe I should pull out and—”

Gaara bucks back on him all at once, taking Lee to the hilt. He clenches around Lee so tight it’s almost painful, his toes curled in his thick socks. His fingers grip the bandages so hard they warp.

“Don’t you dare,” he hisses. His face moves roughly against the bedspread, like he’s trying to rub the thought right out of his mind. He jerks his hips forward, then slams them back again with a friction that sends Lee’s heart careening against his sternum. Lee has to pause to catch his breath as Gaara begins to work his hips harder, fucking himself on Lee in earnest.

Lee’s face burns. This is not how things are supposed to be going, Gaara having to do all the work for himself. Lee is so terrible at this. He’s used to being the one to take orders, not give them.

Given his druthers, Lee would be perfectly happy to have nothing but slow, romantic sex with Gaara for the rest of his life. Well—he mentally revises, as Gaara thrusts back on him hard and makes a noise that’s halfway to a mewl—maybe not the whole rest of his life. Variety is the spice in the curry of life, after all; that’s what Gai-sensei always says.

Lee needs to stop thinking about his sensei right this instant, or both he and Gaara are going to end the night very disappointed.

He grabs for Gaara’s hips. It takes only the slightest exertion of strength to slow his desperate motions, then to stop him entirely. Lee can still feel Gaara pulsing around him. It’s times like these he wishes he had the chakra control to regulate his desires, the way they teach in sex education class in the Academy, because he’s perilously close to coming.

“Let me do this for you,” he murmurs, leaning forward to kiss the back of Gaara’s neck. He pulls back slowly, then thrusts in again, all slow drag and angled downward so that he rubs right across Gaara’s prostate.

Gaara breathes a long, shuddery exhale. The tension in his muscles flags as Lee sets a slow, steady pace, peppering the back of his shoulders and neck with fluttering kisses. He grinds against Gaara’s prostate on every thrust, so deep inside him that he feels himself getting lost, until the border between their skin feels paper-thin and ephemeral, slick with sweat and spit.

Gaara’s breathing goes rather shallow. He’s not making much noise anymore, just soft grunts of air every time Lee sheathes himself fully inside. Lee looks up from kissing the space between his vertebrae to find Gaara’s face pressed against his own bicep, expressionless.

Sometimes Gaara does this, disappears somewhere deep inside himself. He could be doing anything—having a conversation, cooking dinner, having sex—and his face will go carefully blank, like a shield has risen up inside him. Lee doesn’t know what causes it; he only knows that Gaara looks exactly like he does when he’s filling out tax paperwork: a bored, slightly guarded neutral. And he knows that Gaara needs an external nudge to bring him back to himself.

Lee is mid-thrust when he says, a bit desperately, “I’m right here.”

He reaches out one hand and grabs Gaara’s jaw, turning his head just slightly to face him.

“Focus on me,” he breathes, “please.”

Gaara’s eyes snap to his, suddenly sharp. His pupils dilate. The way his eyes scrape Lee’s face is more tactile than any of the places their bodies are touching.

In that moment, Lee knows exactly what he needs. He hopes it’s what Gaara needs, too.

“I’m going to pull out for a second—” Gaara’s eyes narrow into a glare. “Just so you can turn over!” Lee presses another quick, wet kiss to the blade of Gaara’s shoulder. “I want to be able to look at you.”

The rotation is easier this time, though Gaara grumbles throughout, “You were looking at me the whole time.” Lee knows he understands what he meant, and after a quick repeat check of the tightness of the bandages, Lee is sliding home again.

He pulls out, experimental, and thrusts back in harder.

Gaara gasps. His knees lock up against Lee’s waist. Above the knot of the bandages, his hands tighten into fists.

“Is that okay?” Lee checks in. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me,” Gaara scoffs. “You have better control over your body than anyone I know.”

This much is true. Lee has had to learn the micro-flexions of each muscle to an unprecedented degree of precision, in order to be able to handle a carton of eggs with the same hands that he uses to crush stone.

Gaara rolls his eyes. “Besides, if I was in any physical danger, the sand would come in.”

Lee swallows hard. “I do not want that to happen, either.”

“It won’t,” Gaara says. “I can control it.”

And there’s that word again: control. The thing Gaara wants to abandon, to place all in Lee’s scarred and damaged hands.

Lee strokes a lock of sweat-sticky hair from Gaara’s forehead. He makes a decision.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Just let go. I can handle it.”

Gaara searches his eyes for a moment, that eerie light in the back of his reflective pupils flickering. Lee doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he hopes he finds it. He stares right back and tries to convey his intentions: determination, steadfastness, a willingness to protect.

Gaara falls boneless against the sheets. The restraints are the only thing holding his body up, arms stretched tight.

Lee licks his lips. Okay, then.

He rocks out, then in again, harder, faster. The pace he sets is something he’d liken to a light jog, but for any other human it would be punishing. Gaara’s body jars with the thrusts, and all throughout, his eyes stay locked on Lee, that stare piercing him. This could be its own form of gentleness, Lee thinks. There’s a kind of special care in giving Gaara exactly what his body’s been seeking, in learning what he wants and then granting it to him.

Gaara’s ankles lock around the small of Lee’s back, the imitation of an embrace his arms can’t give. The rest of his body is slack, moving with Lee’s hard motions like he’s surging with the tide. He’s whispering something that, when Lee bends closer to kiss his cheek, he realizes is, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” The syllables all run together as they spill from his lips.

There’s something almost magic to this, Lee realizes. Not just in the warm pleasure that licks like flames at the base of his spine, sparked by the tightness of Gaara’s body—although that, no doubt, is part of it—but there’s also an element to the hurried roughness of it that Lee didn’t realize he’d been missing. The same burn in his muscles that he feels at the end of a good training session, the hot simmer of tension that comes with pitched battle. The desires that Lee keeps neatly tucked away, ashamed, not for public consumption: they’re there, writ large in the harsh motions of their bodies joining, in the exertion of his body pounding into Gaara’s.

Gaara wanted to surrender control. Lee didn’t realize that, all along, he himself had been wanting to seize it.

And then of course there’s the real treat of it. The raw pleasure hazing Gaara’s bright eyes, the noises each thrust kicks to his parted lips. When Lee turns his head to claim Gaara’s mouth in a searing kiss, his hips never stopping in their motions, he feels Gaara’s dick twitch against his stomach. Gaara’s balls tighten against the skin above where Lee’s shaft works inside him.

He doesn’t even have to reach down and touch him. He just bends down closer, presses their bodies closer together, rolls his hips so their skin drags together and Gaara jerks, gasping. All it takes is a few more quick motions of his body, the head of his dick skating rough across Gaara’s prostate, his abs sliding over the underside of Gaara’s dick. Then Gaara’s body bows like he’s been gut-punched. Cum splatters up Lee’s stomach and chest.

He slows his pace then. He can feel Gaara tensing and releasing around him, and he drives in and out, no less force behind the motions but less speed, more caution. Gaara’s eyes finally flutter closed, his throat exposed when he tips his head back on a shivery groan. His body echoes the rippling sound of his voice, little pulses of pressure that send Lee right over the edge, spilling inside him.

He pulls out gently, wiping himself on the bedsheets. They’ll have to remake the bed anyway; it’s filthy. The covers have fallen to the floor, and the white sheet beneath Gaara’s back is damp with a sweat mark the same shape as his body.

Lee looks up at Gaara’s face. There’s still a little hint of fight in those green eyes. A challenge that whispers, I’m not done yet.

Gaara’s knee knocks against Lee’s side, and Lee looks down to where he’s just pulled out. Gaara’s hole is a wet mess, open wide, friction pink and dripping white. Lee rubs his fingers through the cum on the bedsheets, scooping it back up with two crooked fingers and pushing it back inside Gaara.

Gaara shudders, the muscles of his still-spread thighs twitching.

“What are you—?”

Lee drops to his elbows and bends down to lick over his entrance with long, flat presses of his tongue, mopping up the last of the mess.

Gaara exhales shakily.

Lee licks up and over Gaara’s slackening balls, his spent and softening shaft. Gaara twitches, and then he writhes.

“Ahh-aah.” His voice pitches high, practically keening. His heels in their stocking feet ruck the damp bedsheets. “Are you trying to make me come again?”

Lee hums right up against the base of his shaft. “Is it working?”

Gaara’s voice comes out mumbled, like he’s biting his own lip. “Yes. But—” His knees are trembling. “I can’t.”

“I think you can.” Lee sucks one ball into his mouth and rolls his tongue over it, just gently, mindful of Gaara’s overstimulated hyperventilation.

“Lee—” Gaara whines, as Lee licks another long stripe down his perineum and circles his tongue around his stretched, sensitive rim. “I’m—hhhh!”

It’s not even a moan, just a harsh exhale. Gaara’s knees lock around Lee’s ears as his cock jerks frantically, coming dry.

When the death grip of Gaara’s legs releases him and Lee is finally able to look up, Gaara’s gaze is foggy, his arms hanging limp in the bandages. He looks spent, wrecked, conquered, his unfocused eyes drifting in the empty space between Lee’s face and his own. Lee can’t resist bending down to kiss him, slow and deep and wet, as he unties him.

And then he’s hopping off the bed to start the clean-up, holding Gaara aloft in one arm so he can strip the sheets off the bed and replace them with a cozy blanket. He snatches the towel that Gaara left in the hall to wipe them both off, and returns with a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers. Whatever Gaara said about not hurting him, Lee knows his body isn’t used to being bent that way, and his back is sure to give him hell in the morning if it isn’t taken care of now. Lee enjoys this part almost as much as the sex, the bit where Gaara drifts, calm and slow, and Lee picks up the slack, makes sure he’s cared for.

Once they’re settled back in, tidied up the best Lee can get them without a second shower (which Gaara would never allow. One long shower a day is already pushing it. Two showers might as well be sacrilege), Gaara reaches for Lee’s hand and takes it.

Outside, the sky is pitch black. Lee’s sense of time has been abandoned completely, but he thinks it must be late.

Gaara holds Lee’s hand up to the light of the bedside lamp, playing with his fingers idly. His fingers trace the path of Lee’s scars, the way they sometimes do when he’s feeling pensive.

“I liked that,” he says, stroking his thumb across Lee’s knuckles. “I want you to do that again.”

Lee stifles an embarrassed giggle and refrains from asking Gaara which part of it he liked. Whatever it was, he’s sure he can muster up a repeat performance. After all, watching Gaara fall apart beneath him, completely at his mercy, wasn’t much of a hardship.

“I think that can be arranged,” he says. There’s a beat of considering silence, then Lee voices the question that’s been on his mind all evening.

“So, what was it that had you so wound up?”

Gaara tucks his head against Lee’s collarbone with a groan. “Do I have to talk about this?”

Lee rubs down his flank, pleased by the goosebumps that spring up in the wake of his hand, that remnant of Gaara’s lingering responsiveness. “If it’s going to lead to nights like this, yes.”

Gaara rolls his head back to stare at the ceiling as he begins to explain. The problem is Oonoki again, as it has been for at least the past few months. He’s getting close to his retirement, preparing to pass the mantle of Tsuchikage to his daughter—or is it his granddaughter? … Lee has never had much of a mind for politics. In any case, the pending closure of his reign seems to have made him stubborn and curmudgeonly beyond even the famous Stone Village temperament. He wants to leave things exactly as they are for the next generation to fix, which rankles Gaara, as a member of the next generation who has spent the past six years cleaning up after Oonoki’s contemporaries. And as day five of the seven-day summit has drawn to a close, it seems he’s reached the limits of even Gaara’s patience.

But by the time Gaara’s finished his story, he’s back to his familiar monotone, all the irritation drained out of him.

“I’m sorry he’s such a jerk,” Lee offers.

Gaara huffs a soft chuckle, turning his face into Lee’s neck as Lee tugs him closer. “He is a jerk.”

“You can tell him I said that, next time.” Lee smiles, and Gaara throws a warm arm across his midsection. “And if that doesn’t fix it, you can just come back here after and we’ll work all your frustration out again.”