A/N: This fic hints at incest. If you don't like it, feel free to read something else.
Kankurou remembers being scared of Gaara.
That was a long time ago and a different Gaara, a very different Gaara, a creature of blood and night, snarling at anyone who got too close and living surrounded by an air of latent violence, the heavy static feeling the same as that which preceded a sandstorm. It was no wonder no one had wanted to reach out. And those few who were forced to be close to him – Kankurou and Temari – had been targets for his unstable moods, living with constant, casual threats of death.
That had changed, though. Gaara had forced himself to change, had reined in the dark bloodlust that surrounded him. Had reinvented himself, carefully building from the outside in a shell of a more or less normal human being – albeit one that didn't sleep, that didn't flinch when a sharp blade flew at his chest, that didn't quite fit in all those little ways – until it became more and more reality. And as he changed, so too did Kankurou's emotions and attitudes toward him change. Where there had once been fear, slowly there came respect, and then affection, and then the love that had sent Kankurou running alone into the desert, face-to-face with the one enemy he could never have defeated, thoughtless of his own chances of survival. Gaara had changed into a brother, and a beloved one.
And now he would change again. Over the past two days, since Gaara had been given back to them – brought back from the dead by the woman who had cut him out from humanity – Kankurou had watched his brother's eyelids begin to droop, his motions lose their sharp edge of precision, his attention occasionally wander.
Gaara was getting tired.
Once, this would have been cause for extreme alarm. A normal human would die after about two week without sleep, but from what Kankurou understood, Gaara had been able to draw on Shukaku's power to refresh himself without sleeping, keeping the beast contained. But now, there was no Shukaku to draw on – or to repress. The long overdue sandman was coming for Gaara of the Desert, and while the carefully-honed instincts of seventeen years screamed at him to do something – slap Gaara awake, shove energy pills down his throat, something to get that droop out of his eyelids – there was also something almost endearing. Gaara seemed to shed years as he got sleepy, going from the calm and controlled Kazekage into something… softer, sweeter maybe.
But he was afraid. Gaara, whose only sleep had been the forced oblivion of a jutsu, had never simply let consciousness fade into dreams, and Kankurou could see with the eye of keen experience that Gaara was afraid to – afraid of the sensation, of the lack of control that drowsiness brought on.
When Gaara asked him, quiet and hesitant, if he would stay close by for that night, just in case – in case of what, Kankurou hadn't asked, aware that Gaara probably couldn't vocalize his feelings – he agreed, and Gaara joined him in his bedroom that night. Dressed in slightly-too-large, borrowed sleepwear, dark eyes at half-mast, Gaara looked like a child, like a little boy up past his bedtime. Innocent.
He settled into Kankurou's bed, and Kankurou joined him. Gaara didn't have a bed, had never needed one, and they were brothers. There was nothing wrong with the two of them curling up together, although once upon a time – not so many years ago – the mere prospect of being in this situation would have had Kankurou gibbering in fear.
Gaara was the only person who ever truly managed to frighten him.
Now, his little brother, the Kazekage, once the Ichibi's container and now once again a member of the human race, Gaara was curled up against his chest, drowsy but not yet asleep.
"Kankurou," he asked softly, "What is it, to dream?"
The question was not unexpected; Kankurou considered his answer, and then said quietly, "It's like the rain."
The answer was oblique, but Gaara nodded as though it satisfied him. "I've never dreamed," he said quietly, and Kankurou could gauge in those words his exhaustion; Gaara never said such self-evident things normally. "In the jutsu… there was nothing. Just a brief moment of it." And then he would awaken to destruction.
Kankurou slid an arm around his brother's waist, drew him closer. "You'll learn," he said quietly. "You'll learn what it is to dream."
They slept that night, and in the morning awakened, still curled together.
Kankurou was awake long before Gaara; with no responsibilities arising immediately, he was content to stay in bed and watch his brother sleep, a sight he had never before seen. Everything that had been written across Gaara's face while he was awake – the bloodlust of the young demon-tormented killer, the firm determination of the shinobi who wanted to live in connection with his village, the calm poise of the Kazekage – all of it had drained away, and Gaara's face was open.
Kankurou remembered abruptly that Gaara was only fifteen.
When Gaara awoke, it was slowly, by degrees; nearly half an hour after he first stirred, he raised his head and looked at Kankurou. "I dreamed," he said softly. "And it was like the rain." What he dreamed of, he didn't say.
In the days following, Kankurou often wondered when Gaara would decide it was time to buy a bed. But he didn't say anything; Gaara was happy to sleep beside him, and he realized that to ask Gaara about a bed of his own would in essence tell Gaara he was no longer welcome.
It was the last thing he wanted. In truth, Kankurou enjoyed it too – waking beside a warm, sleep-heavy body, knowing that Gaara trusted him to be the one watching over him as he slept, him and not anyone else. He liked that. He found contentment in it, and from the way the bonds between them deepened with every night they spent, Gaara's smaller, leaner frame fitting perfectly with Kankurou's larger, broader build.
And then Gaara had a nightmare.
Kankurou awakened the moment Gaara did; when you slept so close, and with a shinobi's hair-trigger senses, it was hard not to. The former jinchuuriki, who once had been a nightmare himself, was wild-eyed, and immediately fisted his hands in the undershirt Kankurou wore to bed, burying his face against his brother's chest and trembling with the emotion his subconscious had aroused.
Gently, carefully, Kankurou slid his arms around his brother and eased them both into a sitting position, holding Gaara close. "Shh. Shh. You're all right. Dreams are bad, sometimes, but they're still just dreams. It's not real."
Gaara just shook his head a little, and pressed closer; it seemed as though he would climb into Kankurou's skin if he could. "You were dead," he said quietly. "You were dead and your blood was on my hands. I could taste you." And he shuddered again.
"Hey," Kankurou said lightly, scrubbing a hand gently through disordered red hair. "A dream's still just a dream. I'm right here, and I'm not going to die. You're not going to kill me." A mood seized him, a thought, and he pressed a brotherly kiss into those strands, a little touch. Something to tell Gaara that things were all right.
Gaara stopped, looked up at him, and there was something growing in those eyes that Kankurou couldn't name. Something whose origins had been forged between them as fear and manipulation slowly gave way to understanding, respect, and affection. And then those origins, that seed, had been planted when Gaara was captured, had been watered and tended for the past week of nights that they had slept twined together, and now… and now that seed was blooming.
"You kissed me," Gaara said uncertainly. He didn't sound upset, though. "…Why?"
"Because you deserved it," Kankurou replied simply, not knowing where this would take them, but unwilling to back down.
"Do you…" Gaara hesitated. "Do you love me?" And in his eyes, Kankurou saw a child, alone and isolated.
It was to that child he answered without hesitation. "Yes." He didn't know how much Gaara understood of the simple human emotions that bound people together, didn't know if Gaara was conflating the brotherly kiss with more passionate contacts, wasn't sure how related the two questions really were anyway. But he knew that he loved Gaara.
"I…" Gaara looked away. "I don't know how."
"It's okay." Kankurou shrugged a little. "I'll teach you. You've made a good start." He could still see Gaara's lingering distress from the nightmare, and it gave him confidence. The dream had been so upsetting… it meant that Gaara had those connections in place already. He just needed to learn them and learn to express them.
Everything would be okay.