Title: Security Blanket
Rating: K+
Pairings/Characters:Lee and Gaara friendship, could be a pairing if you want
Warnings: possible boy love
Word Count: 634
Summary: Lee's the best comfort any friend could want.
Lee first knew something was wrong when he found Gaara sitting on the flood wall beside the lake, jacketless in the middle of January.
He didn't speak when he walked up- but that was normal. Sometimes he did not speak even after he had been trying for hours to make him say something. But Gaara did not acknowledge him. He did not shiver when the cold wind blew across the water. He did not move when Lee took off his own jacket and threw it over his shoulders, or when he climbed nimbly up to sit beside him, chilled by the cold that hardly seemed to bother his friend.
He didn't speak, or try to make him speak himself. He was working through something. His job was to keep him company, make sure he did not freeze to death, and listen to the steady crash of waves on the beach as the sun sunk lower and lower.
"How long have you been like this?" he asked finally, turning to look, hoping he would not see any signs of hypothermia starting. He had his arms wrapped around himself in a self-hug to keep the warmth in, still shivering despite wearing a sweater. Gaara had been here for who knew how long in short sleeves. Working through his problems or not, he wanted to make sure he didn't die.
He did not answer. Lee nearly prodded him to make sure he was awake and ask again, when he parted his (thankfully not blue) lips and a rasping whisper came out.
"She's pregnant."
He folded in on himself after speaking, burying into the large jacket Lee had draped over him while the sun was still up. Lee stayed quiet.
If there was one thing he had ever been jealous of, one thing he had wanted most of all that Gaara had, it was his family. No, not specifically his family- but those relationships, the closeness to people related to you. He had nothing like that, no family to speak of outside of the friends he had adopted into a makeshift one over the years.
He liked to think that he and Gaara were something like family. He had finally moved out of the home he had shared with his siblings all their lives only months ago, and into the home he was sharing with Lee while they went to school. He knew it had been hard on him and that he was still reeling from that change and the feeling of being unattached. Lee had started to think he was getting over it when they celebrated their first holiday in their shared home. Now this was happening.
If he had been someone else he might have tried to convince him this was a good thing, a miracle even. He knew better - on some level Gaara was happy for his sister. But deep down where thinking didn't apply, and nobody but himself existed he was scared. It was written on his face and in his bent body and in the voice he spoke in, barely letting the words get through. Lee couldn't get through to that part with words, no matter how kind or rational. He did the only other thing he knew- and jumping off the wall, scooped him into his arms and brought him home. "Home", he told him, as he sat rigid in the front seat. "We're home", he told him again, carrying him back into the house- because he wanted to, he just wanted to carry him, he said against his weak protests. He knew it made him feel safe.