1Summary: And fade out again and fade out. (The distances are always cold, the differences, comforting.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Pairings: KimimaroxGaaraxLee
- - - -
I can feel death can see it's beady eyes
All these things into fruition
All these things we'll one day swallow whole
And fade out again and fade out again. -'Street Spirit (Fade Out)', Radiohead
- - - -
Hot hands, hands hot with a hot spirit, hot sand, hot desert. It is not the night, but the early, early morning and the cold has all but faded and it has lowered itself to lay dormant in his toes (always cold, the sheets are always too short for his long legs), and the rest of his body is hot.
Hot hands touching him in places they shouldn't be, and Kimimaro says "Is this what you want?"
It seems like a very serious question, like a question that should determine the fate of the world and everything else. Lee pauses for a moment, and another pair of hands creeps up his back, fingering each lump of spine from a body skinny and too skinny and always working, working, working..."Yes." he says.
And it is enough.
- - - -
He looks across the field to a man who he knows nothing about, who, and it seems odd to think, would've been facing Naruto at that moment if he hadn't have come.
This is the man, another one of Orochimaru's servants, who was standing in between retrieving Sasuke. Lee's fists raise, and determination sparks in his eyes as he was taught to do because Lee is loyal and Lee is kind and Lee is everything that Sakura or Naruto or Sasuke or this man cannot be. These people, who are selfish and cruel and misunderstanding, cannot be like Lee.
His identity may stand out and may be obnoxious and bright and highlighted, but it is an identity that no one can trace (and maybe would not want to trace), and Neji's byakugan never made him want to wear green and Sasuke's sharingan never, ever made him be so polite. Lee's politeness is spiteful.
It proves that everyone else is distasteful, says 'that is who you are and this is who I am and how different we are and how much better I am than you'. Gai-sensei is not like this, not often, but when he is his spitefulness far exceeds Lee's roots and rips them up and tears them into tiny little pieces and Lee is left oddly more inspired, to get stronger and stronger.
This man, who is selfish and stands only between the selfish and spiteful people, will not stand for long. Because Lee is determined to do what is right, if only right in his mind.
- - - -
Lee moves like a windmill, chugging dutifully and spinning dully with heavy, thick cranks. The other man is not half as mechanical, nor as fluid (Lee is obligatory, but he is not slow, or stupid, or lacking splendor in any way), and fights like he dances. Lee immediately is interested in him, and later, when Gaara tells him they are alike Lee will be pleased and proud and highly considering telling Gai of the man who fought with bones and pretty movements, who was so different but the same, the same in all the cracks in his reflection.
Lee has many cracks in his own, after all.
Though this is questionable, Lee knows that much, much later, he will have students of his own whom he will teach to also be dutiful and mechanical (and perhaps, if he can, if there is even only one student for which he can, he will teach it to be rebellious), and this will be one of the stories he will tell them. Like Gai, who pieced him together, he will repeat these stories until his students moan and groan and clutch their ears and beg him to tell something else-, so he will, eventually, and he will tell him of the Great Fifth Kazekage of Sunagakure, and how he knew him.
They feel so connected in the fight, him and Gaara and Kimimaro, and it is ironic that for the next generation, to child's ears, they still are. This is the pleasantry to youngsters, because everything about the past that they learn in the present, is the present.
Lee would like to replay this moment, shooting away like a surprised wolf from one of Kimimaro's finger bones, over and over and over again.
Everything is better times three.
- - - -
One...two...three...
Lee's mind runs as fast (perhaps faster) as his legs, and so in a moment of pure adrenaline, he thinks 'Is this what you want?'– and he can swear Kimimaro mouths the word 'Yes'.
- - - -
His hands press into your cheek bones with a rough sort of elegance. This is the man who can pull himself apart naturally and, even without the foundation of bones, will not collapse in on himself. Of course he is elegant, can make you shudder with the barest of touches.
He is Orochimaru's servant, after all. All of those boysmen are skilled in those types of things-, sly and crafty and wicked and, if only by character (or something more, something that would make Gai-sensei purse his lips and only his politeness would bite back angered words), the unmentionable. "This is what you want."
And then a voice joins Kimimaro's from behind Lee, "This is what we will give you."
Candles flicker, flicker, and extinguish, at the same time as a feral look ignites in Kimimaro's eyes and he lowers himself down on the bed.
- - - -
Lee, at the time, probably asked Kimimaro to pause so he could take his medicine more so he could see if he actually would or not.
He was not truly surprised when Kimimaro took a step backwards, and waited.
- - - -
Hot hands that mean nothing. Lee knows nothing, knows what it is, and every shape and form and darkened corner it relies in, and this time he had not realized his back had been so dark for there those hands are, those nothings, sliding down his spine. He idly wonders where they think they are going.
"Do you know what you are doing?" Kimimaro asks, sitting cross legged before him on bright, sky blue colored sheets. They remind Lee for a moment of a prostitute he had seen once, her light colored collar sticking out from an obnoxiously printed kimono, and the lightly colored flower comb clip hanging from her head and into her face. Her make up had been running from hardly disguisable tears, clumpy mascara and some sticky lip gloss that gathered directly underneath her bottom lip. Lee had handed her a handkerchief, but she had glared and slapped it to the ground.
He wonders if a handkerchief could wipe up the big, ugly mess before him-, thinks, 'probably not'.
"No, but I hope I am doing." Lee says back. Afterwards he touches his lips in puzzlement, because he didn't really mean to say that.
"You're going to get lost." Kimimaro states, and unfolds his hands from his lap, and lightly brushes that boney (a man with too many bones, but no solidity-, you tense up, because he attacks so sneakily, and you forgot you had even relaxed (when did you, when was it?)) limb across Lee's face. He collects the words, and Lee is left with nothing, which is much more comforting than what was slipping into 'everything'.
"I know." Lee responds mechanically (you are fake, but ever so sincere-, this is what obligatory means).
"Then so be it."
Hands (hot hands) are falling upwards.
Then they turn to sand.
- - - -
Gaara is suddenly there-, feet ankles calves knees thighs hips (girlish hips, ones you could grab in your hands and squeeze as you rocked, rocked into him...) waist chest arms crossed over shoulders collarbone neck chin lips (pursed, looking unhappy, but you see Gaara so well and you know that he's not really that upset to be there, except he is) nose cheeks eyes hair.
Lee counts every small bit of him, looking up until the sun shines straight through Gaara's hair and burns his eyes and he has to look away. He wonders if Gaara personally requested being Lee's rescuer, because Temari or Kankuro could've easily came, and yet they didn't. It's funny that the sand siblings allowed themselves to become so attached, because Temari most likely argued tooth and nail (or perhaps it was just an unspoken thing, that they got who they knew best respectively) to go to Shikamaru and Kankuro probably smirked a bit agreeingly at having to go to Kiba.
There Gaara stands, and he is effortless, a king among kings except Lee feels so much lower than the ground line as he is. "Careful Gaara-kun-, he fights with his own bones." Lee says, and Gaara gives a mute nod, throat working as if trying to say something before finger tip bones (tip-tap-toe, a dance instead of fighting) are sailing towards them and sand interrupts the entire atmosphere, breaks it.
Creates a new one.
One that whispers 'crown' and Gaara is the king, and Lee is the peasant, and Kimimaro is the loyal servant of a heartless and cruel master which they're all, in the end, trying to defeat and at the same exact time trying to avoid (funny how the bad side always stays the same, even in symbolization).
- - - -
About half of the fight had been done in a drunken slumber, and Lee ponders the idea, sitting on the ground grudgingly. It would be polite to fight with Gaara, but it is even politer to simply do as Gaara asked and not join in-, it is Gaara's way of apologizing for all that he has done, and Lee will not refuse that, perhaps for more than his own selfish reasons, and most likely not.
Either way, it does not matter.
Lee finds himself still drifting between reality and dream. He wonders with a brittle, almost breakable laugh (tangible, and something like sweet sesame crackers beneath your hands-, you have to work hard to not get them to break when you eat them, because you are so used to being rough and solid as you fight, which is what you use your hands most for anyway), what Gai would think about the whole situation, but does not think on it further.
It is easy, simple. 'Lee!'-, the sound would be so disapproving, especially coming from a man as hypocritical as Gai. He would, knowingly, even do the same thing had it been him (or perhaps not, perhaps you are molding the lines between you slowly, slowly, until you become one singular person because you've learned that you can't let the people you care about go, and when you idolize someone, it is maybe even more important to cling), and then no one would disapprove of him.
The day that Gaara apologizes would be the ends of the earth, and Lee, Lee came close.
- - - -
In, out. Lee feels foggy edges and dulled colors and yes, he can feel them, burning underneath.
Or perhaps it is just another human body? A body which makes color real, and foggy edges touchable? There is an important difference between a description and an 'is', and it is lost on Lee.
He wonders where it went. Somewhere between the 'everything' and the 'nothing's.
"Lee." It is Gaara-, Lee was right, he was beneath him, and Lee is sprawled out on top, feeling very exposed, feeling like he is waiting for something might possibly never come, and might actually. It is all so unintelligible, so faded it is almost invisible, and the only thing that is clear is the facts: that this is not a normal dream, that that is Gaara, that somewhere there is Kimimaro and he is perhaps the very person he is waiting for-, no, that they are waiting for.
"Lee, there's nothing here for you. Why are you still here?" Gaara continues, and one of his hands (those treachorous, terrible hands, because he shouldn't be touching Lee like a woman would touch a man, like a husband and wife, like those strange dreams Lee will sometimes have about Sakura) trails down Lee's arm, all feather light touches.
(Oh and here's another bird to count, Neji. LeeLeeLee is a bird, here, in a place with no boundaries, no solution, too many problems. And doesn't that just fit the description of the regular world? You'd much rather stay here, feeling like a marionette to dream-men, than being in the real world and actually being one, tugged by a real-man.)
"Because..." Lee says, and his voice breaks and trails off and is a chalky whisper, and he has to clear his throat before he goes on, "Because there is nothing there for me, either."
He swears, against the back of his shoulder blade, that Gaara smiles.
- - - -
Lee watches Gaara out of the corner of his half-lidded eyes, and compares all of their movements again. Gaara is stiff, and sand comes like vines out of him, around him, twisting and curling and slipping all over the place.
They all move differently, all are so very different. "Is this what you want?" Lee murmurs.
The sand catches on the end of his sandal for a moment, and it is warm (but not hot, it does not burn his skin with it's touch, does not say anything negative), and seems to whisper 'yes'.
Completion is hollowed out with heavy, bandaged hands, and each movement is painstaking, painful, pained...
- - - -
The room is breathy, bursting full of air that is chilled around them, like cold hands clamping down on their bodies. Their bodies have yet to go as cold, however, and he still has to resist bringing up his hand to wipe some of the sweat from his brow.
He feels like a single movement would break whatever it is, whatever has built (steadily and forcefully but with soothing fingers that seem to carry the same ache that they all do, like the ocean waves brushing up on the sand), and so tries to stay as still as possible. Gaara's breath puffs out onto his shoulder, and his neck feels cold.
"Discomfort is knowing that you are waiting." Gaara says, and seems to purposefully blow out the next huff of air onto Lee's hair line.
"What...are we waiting for, Gaara-kun?"
"We are waiting for..." Gaara's lips twist– Lee can feel it. "Completion."
But Gaara did not know that completion is hollow as the feeling of unsatisfactoriness, and that ignorance brushes itself up with the touch: a trail of fingers sliding down Lee's back, and counting each vertebrae as he waits, and waits, and is never came for, just like anyone else's waiting.
- - - -
Blood is...(blood is blood is blood? The pillow case covers the color of it, Gaara's hair which has, always and since forever, been the warning sign of what he was(is), the whorish, becoming outline of crimson around Kimimaro's eyes, mismatching with green like a toad and a fox sitting next to each other.
Surely, if red and green clash, then so do Gaara and Lee, and if Kimimaro pulled it off, then perhaps those long moments of waiting were worth it, if only for the memory.
It says, 'skin against skin, heat, red and green, your determination-, which has, as surely as death coming towards all of you, always failed in the end, and you know this, but won't admit it, because there's a difference between stubborn and determined and you are one but you aren't the other', and Lee says, "I'm sorry."
"Mm." Gaara replies, staring straight ahead into nothing, and it is this which makes Lee remember it is a dream-, that, unless he thinks of it, there will be nothing for where he does not look. The knowledge is not comforting, it is not forgiving.
His body feels cold.) spattered onto the grass, the not-quite-in bloom weed flower, which looks artificial, as if planted there for the affect of seeing red patterned on white (red patterned on green, the blood on the flower which looks so much better than the blood on the grass).
"I'm sorry."
"You already..." - "...said that."
Later, when Kimimaro lunges up from the pit of Gaara's and the Earth's sand like some sort of semi-god, some angered, crazed man who realized that his beliefs meant nothing to who he believed in, Lee will be fully conscious.
- - - -
Author's Note: Happy birthday, lotus head. -loves on-