Chapter Text
December 6th, morning
The school’s main hall is absolutely swarmed with people, packed thicker with bodies than Gaara has ever seen it. He bangs into an orange-clad shoulder and looks up from his sneakers to find it’s Naruto.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“Winter formal’s next Saturday,” says Naruto, indicating a table stacked high with papers, nearly hidden in the crowd. “Student council always sells those white roses. You’re supposed to send ‘em to your crush to let ‘em know you’re gonna ask them out. It’s like a secret Valentine thing, except it’s a secret … winter-tine?”
Gaara pats the front pocket of his re-repaired bag, feeling for the bulge of his wallet.
“Do you have to sign it?”
“I don’t think so?” Naruto scratches the back of his neck. “But you gotta move quick. They always sell out real fast.”
Using Naruto as his human shield, Gaara elbows his way to the front of the crowd, drawing disgruntled shouts and furious glares. He slaps both hands on the table.
“How much?”
Sakura pushes her hair back from her forehead. “There’s someone in front of you.” She nods at Naruto.
“Fine.” Gaara steps aside to let Naruto order first.
“You’re really lucky you got up here when you did,” Sakura says, while Naruto’s curled over his order form, shielding it from view with both arms. “I’ve only got two left.”
Naruto folds the paper into the tiniest square imaginable, then drops it into the box for completed forms.
Sakura sticks her hand out. “That’ll be five dollars.”
“What? C’mon!” Naruto shouts, indignant. “That’s highway robbery!”
“How do you think we pay for the DJ, Naruto?”
“Ugh.” Naruto roots around in his backpack and finally pulls out a bright green wallet with a frog’s face on it. He opens it, peers inside, and grimaces. “Listen, can I pay you back, like—?”
“I’ll cover it,” says Gaara, stepping in front of him. “As long as I get the last one.”
Sakura looks unimpressed. “You cut in line.”
“You gotta give it to him!” Naruto begs.
She crosses her arms and stares at Gaara. “It’ll be twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
“Eighteen.”
“Seventeen.”
“Deal.”
He hands her a few wadded bills, and once the cash box has clicked victoriously shut, she passes over the final blank order form with a flourish.
He crouches nearly to the floor to complete it, hiding his body behind Naruto and his scratching hand behind his body.
There isn’t enough time to think of a clever message, but at least he gets the name on there. That’s the important thing.
Just as he’s slid the form into the box, a familiar voice sounds behind him.
“Sakura! Am I too late?”
“Sorry, Lee,” she says, cocking her hip and rattling the cash box. “We’re all sold out.”
Lee’s shoulders slump. “Oh no …”
It’s only then that he notices Gaara.
“Oh! Gaara!” Lee’s eyes go wide, and his posture stiffens. Judging by the redness of his face, he must have been running all over the school. “You … have a special someone you bought a flower for?”
Gaara stands there silent for a moment, his heart all contracted as if pierced by a nail. Then he shrugs the shoulder unencumbered by his backpack. “They’re sold out.”
December 8th, morning
Four white roses arrive in chemistry class that morning, hand-delivered by an unobtrusive, simpering girl swaddled in a parka.
The first is handed to Ino, who holds it to her nose and sniffs it with smug relish, casting her eyes across every boy in the room until Sakura leans over to her and hisses, “Read the note.”
Ino skims it, and then her eyes go very wide, her cheeks tremendously pink.
The second is placed on Sasuke’s desk, where he looks at it like it’s a maggot, flicking open the little white card and grunting indifferently.
The third is laid in front of Naruto, who screws up his face and squints.
He looks at Sasuke. “Did you—?”
Sasuke scoffs. “Don’t be stupid.”
Blushing furiously, the girl carries the fourth rose over to Lee’s desk.
“Good morning, Hinata,” he says warmly, smiling with his teeth hidden. “Who are you looking for?”
Hinata looks down at the paper in her hand, then back up at him. “Um, it’s for you, Lee.”
“You’re probably mistaken. There’s another Lee in Mr. Sarutobi’s first period; people are always confusing us.”
“Um, no.” She turns the paper around to show it to him. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
“Y—yes.” The lobes of Lee’s ears go pink. Gaara can see the beating of his perfect heart from clear across the classroom, how it pounds out of his chest.
It’s beautiful. It fills the room with its radiance.
… And it’s all happening because Lee thinks the note is from anyone but Gaara.
Lee looks up, across the room, and meets Gaara’s eyes.
Just as quickly he looks away.
Gaara’s lucky then that iron doesn’t—can’t—break.
“Um, thank you very much,” he says, taking the rose from Hinata’s trembling fingers with his jacket wrapped down around his knuckles.
“Good luck,” Hinata says to him.
The thick padding of her coat passes between them just as Lee unfolds the card, so that Gaara can’t watch his expression as he reads. All he catches is the tail end of Lee sounding out the unsigned words, the hasty way he folds the card and places it in his pocket.
“If all the dramatics are over,” Mr. Hatake says, standing with a cracking of his back. “Why don’t we actually try and learn something today?”
Mr. Hatake’s dream is a fool’s errand. Over their shared sheet of mole conversions, Gaara watches Lee’s hand stray to the card in his pocket, watches his eyes linger on the rose on his desk. His mouth is pinched so small his lips are nearly invisible, and Gaara wonders if he’s thinking of the person he wanted to send a rose to.
On the fifth time Lee pulls out the card and runs his finger along the edge, Gaara notes, “You didn’t mark it.”
“What?”
“Your important things.” He points at the back of the note. “You didn’t mark this one.”
“If it’s not from—” Lee bites his lip and turns his face away. The dark curtain of his hair swings down to hide his eyes as he shoves the note back into his pocket. “Um. This is mass, not volume.” He nudges Gaara’s pencil out of the way with his own. “So we have to use the element’s molar mass on the periodic table. See?”
December 8th, evening
It’s down below freezing as they sneak out through the fire door, Gaara wrestling his bag open to sling Lee’s jacket around his shoulders. With its too-long sleeves tucked tight around his fingers, he can almost pretend it’s Lee’s own warm hands holding his.
“I can’t believe it’s already the last practice of the season,” Lee says, his breath forming a cloud just as white as the petals that bob, now drooping, in his hand. “After this, it’s just the winter dance, and then—”
“Winter break,” says Gaara. Kankuro’s latest show is debuting, which means two weeks of plywood splinters tracked into the carpet and turpentine stinking up the dining room. Two weeks of Temari tying and untying her hair over law books, flipping through her planner with takeout-greasy fingers. Two weeks without chemistry class and the bird's eye view of a sweat-shiny body on the court and long, cold walks home.
Two whole weeks without Lee.
“Mhm.” Staring at it wistfully, Lee spins the rose between his fingers. The folded note peeks its corner from the pocket of his jacket. Still unmarked. Still unimportant, unless it’s from—
Gaara sucks in an icy breath. Nut up.
“Lee—”
“Um, Gaara—”
His chest clutches tight, wavering, his metal heart all surface tension. “You go first.”
“I was just going to say I won’t be able to call you this weekend,” Lee says. The streetlights halo his dark hair and make golden rings in his downcast eyes. “I’m getting my tooth fixed tomorrow, and they said I might have a hard time talking for a few days.”
“Oh,” says Gaara. “Finally.”
Lee shoots him half a little smile, a glance of that dark gap where a new tooth will soon be. “Well. They kept trying to claim it was cosmetic, and they don’t like to pay for cosmetic dentistry, so the dentist had to—” He flaps his hand. A white petal shakes loose from the rose and flutters to the ground. “Anyway, it’s all sorted out now. And when I see you Monday, I’ll have a brand new smile!”
He grins, then, and Gaara looks right into that dark gap and thinks he likes Lee’s secret smile just as it is.
December 11th, morning
The new tooth is just slightly too long, a half-shade whiter than the rest of the ones in Lee’s mouth. After hiding his smile for months, he keeps firing off grins at everyone who spares him a glance.
Gaara’s ribcage is weighed down by the iron inside it.
Over at the other lab bench, Sakura is saying something to Lee, and he beams so widely that it nearly touches the pink lobes of his ears. His dark eyes sparkle.
Was it her? The person Lee wanted to send a flower to?
Ino slinks up behind them and links her arm through Sakura’s, pulling her close.
Lee’s smile doesn’t dim one watt. His beautiful heart beats clear across the room, so vibrant that Gaara’s nearly pulses in sympathy.
Mr. Hatake clears his throat, and Lee rushes back to their bench.
“I know I don’t have practice today,” he stage-whispers while Mr. Hatake is explaining their assignment, “but can I walk you home anyway?”
Gaara’s metal heart softens, seizes.
“I’d like that.”
December 12th, night
“Gaara?” Temari asks him, the two of them twisting side-by-side in barstools, plastic take-out containers spread across the marble, dripping condensation onto her heaped paperwork.
“Yeah?” He looks up from his phone. It’s 8:15 PM, which means Lee, ever-punctual, will be calling in just five minutes.
“Are you … happy?”
Gaara looks around the kitchen, the chairs pulled out from the table at odd angles, the unused dining table heaped with drop cloths, and the scuffs from Kankuro’s workboots in the white tile hall. Temari’s lipstick from work smeared across the edge of a water glass, the corner of her purple planner sticking out from the bag she’s tossed onto the counter.
“Here, I mean,” Temari continues. “With us.”
Gaara pushes his toes into the dark wood that holds the bartop up, spinning himself harder. There’s a stain on the backsplash across from him, coffee grounds in the floor grout.
Things that father would never have allowed.
The house is quiet.
Kankuro’s car rumbles sedately up the driveway.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m happy.”
The garage door slams. Kankuro’s voice shouts, “You better not have eaten all the larb!”
Beneath Gaara’s fingers, his phone vibrates, the picture of him and Lee popping up on the screen.
Temari ducks her face into her hand, and for the first time in a long time, she laughs.
December 13th, night
“There’s a dance this weekend,” Gaara announces.
Temari looks up from her burrito, licking sour cream off her fingers. “Oh? What kind of dance?”
“The winter formal. I—” Gaara swallows around the liquid metal lump in his throat. “—might ask someone.”
“Oh!” Temari crumples the foil lid back onto her food. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to go.”
“Have you decided what you’re going to wear? Do you need a corsage? A boutonniere?”
“I don’t—boutonniere? I was just going to wear khakis.”
“It’s a formal!” Temari hops to her feet. “You can’t wear—Kankuro!”
“Yeah?” Heavy footsteps clod down the stairs.
“Gaara has a date to the formal this weekend.”
“I don’t have a date yet—”
Gaara’s protests are cut off by Kankuro’s low whistle. “No shit? Didn’t think ya had it in you.”
“I don’t—”
“He was going to wear khakis,” Temari hisses.
“Khakis? Shit, no, dude.”
“Do you know where your nice camera is?” Temari begins digging through her purse. “I don’t want to ruin the pictures by taking them on my phone.”
“I didn’t agree to pictures.” Gaara slides out from his chair and begins trying to angle towards the stairs.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course we’re taking pictures. When do you want to go shopping?”
“I don’t—”
“I’ll get the clothes sorted out,” Kankuro says, slapping him on the shoulder. “You just worry about your mojo.”
“My mojo?”
“His mojo?!”
“You wouldn’t understand, Temari. It’s man stuff.”
Despite the fact that he’s seriously considering firing off an S.O.S. text to Lee, data plan be damned, Gaara can’t fully hide the smile on his face.
December 14th, after school
“Lee,” Gaara says, swaddled in green vinyl, sneaker tread skidding to a stop between the streetlights, “I need to ask you something.”
“Okay?” Lee’s eyebrows peak in the middle of his forehead, that half-worried, half-inquiring expression. “Go ahead.”
“Did you—” Gaara balls up his fists, willing phantom warmth into his hands. “Who did you want to buy that flower for?”
Lee’s cheeks flush. They’ve barely been strolling. “Why … why do you want to know that?”
“Because, I—” Nut up. Gaara inhales and tries to feel the heartbeat in his chest. “Because I sent one to you.”
“You—what?” Lee’s voice cracks off the identical rows of gingerbread houses. “You said they were sold out!”
Gaara slinks down into the jacket’s collar, where it still smells like smoke and sweat. “They were when you got there.”
Lee splutters. “That’s dishonest.”
“Well, what was I supposed to say?”
“That you were getting one for me!”
“I thought you were buying one for someone else.”
“I—” Lee’s cheeks puff around captured air, blowing it all out in one massive, indignant white cloud. “Who else would I be getting one for?”
“I don’t know. Sakura?”
“Sakura!?”
“You like her. She’s … pretty.”
“And she's also—” Lee’s heart blazes right through the panels of his jacket. Gaara can feel its rhythm in the white pavement between them, can see it beating in every blink of his wide, dark eyes. “I wanted to buy one for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes!”
“So—” Gaara’s gallium heart dares to try to beat. “—do you want to go to the formal with me?”
Lee beams, that crooked, repaired smile, all shiny white. Heat blooms in Gaara’s chest, warmth surging down to the very tips of his fingers.
“I would like that very much.”
December 16th, evening
Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro arrive at the edges of Ms. Huang’s neatly trimmed square of yard to find Lee, Neji, Tenten, and two identical-looking women who must be Tenten’s mother and aunt already gathered there.
All of Gaara’s hopes for an unobtrusive arrival and departure are utterly dashed by the collection of gazes he draws, punctuated by Lee’s shouted, “Gaara!”
He comes running over before Gaara’s even cracked the car door.
“Huh,” says Kankuro appreciatively. “So he is real.”
“I told you,” Gaara mutters, unfastening his seatbelt and wishing he could dissolve right through the car’s floorboards.
“He seems nice,” says Temari, smoothing down one of his cowlicks. “Loud, but nice.”
And then Lee’s throwing open the car door, hustling Gaara out and along the flagstone path to the front door.
“You look very handsome,” Lee whispers, face red right up to the freshly clipped ends of his bangs.
Gaara looks down at his cravat and spats and winces. “My brother’s latest play is a regency-era romance,” he explains. “When I wouldn’t go shopping with him, he … took matters into his own hands.”
“Well, I think it looks dashing on you. The Mr. Darcy look suits you.”
“I do not look like Mr. Darcy.”
“Well.” Lee fumbles the too-long sleeves of his white dress shirt down over his fingers. “If it makes you feel any better, I had to borrow my suit from Mr. Huang. The late Mr. Huang.”
“Is this the one he—?”
“Don’t!” Lee snaps, biting his lip hard not to laugh. “Do not ask if this is the one he wore to his own funeral.”
“How did you know I was going to?”
Lee smiles, soft and sure and handsome. “Because I know you.”
Then he nearly trips into a decorative bush.
“Okay,” says Temari, situating herself between the two Ms. Huangs, Kankuro already on his knees pulling his camera from its black case. “Picture time!”
Lee throws his arm around Gaara’s shoulder, and Gaara’s gallium heartbeat syncs to his.
The gym is already thrumming with strobe lights when Neji, Tenten, Gaara, and Lee all tumble out of Kankuro’s backseat.
“Make good choices!” Kankuro hollers. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
“That’s contradictory—” Gaara starts to say, but it’s lost in the cough of the engine and the screech of Kankuro peeling out of the parking lot.
Tenten links her elbow with Neji’s and turns to look over her shoulder. “Don’t,” she says, eyes keen and pointed, “fuck this up for him.”
“I won’t.” Gaara’s fingers fidget for pockets he doesn’t have, searching for a lighter he threw out weeks ago.
Lee takes his hand.
A heartbeat sings through his palm and up into Gaara’s chest.
Despite the lingering aroma of sweaty socks, the dance being held in the gym has its perks. Chief among them that while their friends are occupied by the last slow dance, they can sneak out unobserved through the fire door.
With the tails of Gaara’s brocade jacket flapping and Lee stumbling over Mr. Huang’s oversized loafers, they hurry across campus to the abandoned practice field. Lee climbs the fence first, and at the top he perches, his hands extended down to Gaara.
Gaara takes them both and lets Lee haul him to the top.
When they jump off, hand-in-hand, Lee loses one of his shoes. They hit the ground in a jumble of bony knees and elbows, laughing, shushing each other all the while.
“Oh my goodness,” Lee pants, tugging loose his bowtie. “Do you think anyone saw us?”
Gaara shakes his head. The sky is heavy with the threat of either freezing rain or the first snow they’ve seen all winter, and the low clouds reflect enough ambient light to illuminate the practice field like the inside of an unshaken snow globe.
Lee’s collar gaps open at his throat, exposing the inner edges of his collarbone and the top of his sternum.
“What’s this?” asks Gaara, realizing only after he’s boldly touched it that the scar he’s tracing is on Lee’s chest.
Lee’s eyes go crossed, staring at his fingertip.
“Pardon?”
The scar is thick, ribbed, whiter and denser than the others Gaara can see peeking out from behind the curtains of starched white. It trails right down the center of Lee’s chest to disappear beneath his undershirt.
“This.” Gaara crawls closer, unable to release his touch from Lee’s skin. The pulse of Lee’s heart—his real, genuine heart, no metaphor at all—thunders beneath his fingertip. “Is it also from—?”
“I had to have a lot of surgery.” Lee’s voice is as close to a whisper as Gaara’s ever heard it. Their faces are terrifyingly close.
“Including—?”
“My heart, yes.”
Lee’s thumb seems to come out of nowhere to stroke his cheekbone. The dual frost clouds of their breath get all tangled together between them. Gaara’s hand grazes up Lee’s throat—Lee, perfectly imperfect Lee with his perfectly imperfect heart, who’s been broken and patched back together all the stronger as many times as Gaara’s heart’s been melted and reforged—and when he cups Lee’s face in his hands he feels nothing but warmth.
“Human mouths, you know,” Gaara murmurs, studying Lee’s, “they’re incredibly dirty.”
“Uh-huh,” says Lee, and licks his lips.
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
They kiss just as the season’s very first snowflake flutters down between them, lost between their lips.
And Gaara’s heart—his terrible, wonderful, human heart—beats, and beats, and beats.