I do not own Naruto.

THIS IS ALL LI'S FAULT. BTW. Beware, kiddies, this is intensely crack. Not because they're OOC, but because this is Gaara/Lee/Sakura. I don't write any of these characters often, but I had a ton of fun writing Gaara & Lee, so maybe I will more often. (LEE TALKS IN CAPSLOCK. WTF. OF COURSE I LOVE HIM.)

So. Spreading the love. :3

(irlyhatestocks.)

Gaara and Lee, that made sense. It made sense if you squinted, if you bit your lower lip between sharp teeth and put all your energy into understanding it. You could figure out how it might work, how the pain and the struggle might morph into something wholly different. Might, and did. But Sakura.

Everyone knew she loved Sasuke. It was axiomatic as the fact that Sasuke was gone and Naruto was crazy.

Everyone knew Lee adored Sakura, too. Even Gaara. And Gaara was just possessive enough to do something about it. He didn't like the idea that his Lee was thinking about some little pink-haired girl who wasn't worth snot. He liked Lee looking at him as if he didn't quite understand him, and the way he tasted of fruitcake. Neither of those things included that girl, except when they did.

Lee understood his Sakura-chan.

And Sakura would never hurt Lee.

Gaara wasn't really hurt by this reasoning. He knew it was true that he was a forceful ruler, and that was the way he liked it. What hurt him (if you could call it that; pissed him off might be more apropos) was that Lee might not like it that way. The thought that he could lose Lee bothered him, because he knew him. Knew that if he lost him, no amount of violence or persuasion or killing would change that.

So he went to speak to her, and to make a reasonable demand. No violence, even. He could be levelheaded. Hell, he had love printed on his forehead, didn't he?

"What do you mean, you want me to punch Lee in the face?"

He didn't see the need for such an outburst, and he blinked up at her frowning face. Anyway, he thought he had made it clear what he meant. He meant that she should go up to him, cock back her fist and rearrange his face, but gently. It wasn't like she had to make a cake after, or something. Just punch and walk away.

"Punch Lee in the face," he repeated, slowly, in case she had at some point grown mentally unstable and needed an extra push in order to reach the understanding necessary to do this.

She turned away and began to quickly take off her rubber gloves, rubbing the excess powder onto her pants. Then she washed her hands. This entire time she didn't say a word, just went along with the motions and left Gaara watching her, taking in every small action as if it all hinted at a secret answer. Then, with her back still turned to him, she began to speak. "Aren't you two…I mean, there's no reason for anyone punch Lee in the face, even if he's being incredibly annoying and/or drunk…well, when he's drunk he does need a good punch in the face. But, I mean, why are you asking me to punch him in the face? I would think that if you really wanted to, you could punch him for yourself. I'm not a punching mercenary, you know."

Gaara continued to blink. For him it was a conscious thing, blinking. It was a response in and of itself. After a lot of blinking and a lot of thought he would go as far as to reply verbally. "I want him to hate you."

Turning, she put her hands on her hips that typical female action. Temari did it some times, and Kankuro always mocked her. Although Temari never would dare go so far as to lecture him, it meant she was going to hand over some wise, wise knowledge from eldest to youngest.

"Hm. Even if I were to punch Lee in the face for no reason—"

"There's a reason," Gaara interrupted. "I asked you to." He was even being polite. He'd asked rather than demanded.

"As if that's reason enough," she shot back, and then went on. "He wouldn't hate me."

Gaara's mouth twitched. "I would hate you if you punched me." He hated her to begin with, so that wasn't necessarily true, but…

"But you're not Lee, thank goodness." She pointed a long, accusing finger at him, and Gaara felt a flurry of fast moving desires, none of which he acted upon. First, he felt like biting that finger. Then, he felt like calmly announcing that pointing was rude. Finally, he itched to punch her in the face, and then ask her if she hated him. She continued speaking before he could manage the latter. "Lee wouldn't leave me alone until he'd found out why I'd punched him in the face, and then he would hate only you."

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, by the way, bitch, fuck you. He hated logical people. This is why he was so rarely logical. It always came back to bite him in the ass.

"Can you insult Gai-sensei, then? That would be the next best thing."

Sakura covered her face in her hands and let out a sharp hiss of a sigh. "You don't get it, do you? Lee is going to like people beside you, Gaara. You can't stop that, and if you try, you're going to lose Lee."

Lose Lee? But he would lose Lee if Lee didn't hate Sakura. He would lose Lee, because Sakura was honey where Gaara was sand.

But maybe Lee needed honey? Gaara pushed this thought away roughly, displeased about the way it tasted and sounded and reverberated through his skull.

Sakura racked a hand through her pink hair, lightly greasy, Gaara noticed with slight distaste. Studying with Tsunade didn't leave much time for showers, apparently. He blinked to see if she had any more wisdom to impart, and was disappointed to find that she did have more.

"Lee's got enough energy to go around. I'm sure that whatever little crush Lee has on me is lost on whatever keeps him coming back to you."

She made it sound like it was incomprehensible to imagine coming back to him.

Gods forbid someone sees something in Gaara besides a monster.

Gaara blinked at her rapidly before turning away and heading out the way he'd come in. He didn't slam the door on his way out, because his silence was louder.

Sakura stared after him until his angry flash of red hair disappeared. Then she let out another sigh, and began readying herself to leave. She knew that she wouldn't be eating dinner until late tonight, again.

Lee was drawing when she knocked on the door. The markers were strewn all across the floor, and the green one was hiding behind the couch. He would miss it later. He had only begun to scribble beyond the white of the sheet, but tomorrow was cleaning day, in any case. He would be rubbing at the floorboards vigorously, multi-colored marks or otherwise.

What he was drawing. That was a secret between the floorboards and him.

The knock was loud, but not jarring, and Lee recognized it quickly. "SAKURA," he cried, jumping up and going for the door. He stepped on one of the stray markers (pink one) and he fell face-first against the front door. Cheek pressed wetly against the wood, he tried to apologize. He sounded rather like an ape, instead.

"Lee? Did you fall? Stop getting excited, just open the door."

He shoved it open with his foot and grinned at the girl standing on his brightly-colored placemat (the one that Tenten had gotten him for his birthday, and Neji had dubbed Excruciatingly Gay). "SAKURA," he repeated, and stepped back to let her inside.

She walked in carefully, sizing up the room she'd been in hundreds of times before. Lee gazed at her steadily, a little confused by her cool attitude, but refusing to be bothered by it. "Do you have any...tea?" she asked, suddenly, halfway to the kitchen.

"YES. TONS. Neji and Hinata brought some over for my BIRTHDAY, SEE? I COULD DRINK IT ALL MYSELF BUT I TOLD MYSELF THAT IF I COULDN'T DO--"

Sakura turned and placed her hands on his shoulders. "Remember that breathing exercise I taught you?"

"YES. FIRST I--"

She rolled her eyes, gripped his shoulders just the slightest bit more tightly. "Don't explain it. Just do it."

"BUT, THE TEA--"

Sakura leaned forward, pressing her lips savagely, more an action of irritation than of affection. She tasted of mints, cool and clean. Lee stiffened, for once still and silent, which had kind of been her purpose.

Kind of.

She pulled away, unconsciously letting go of him completely, hands at her sides. She was glaring at him, as if annoyed that she had brought him to these lengths. "Do you still love Gaara?"

Lee blinked, and Sakura thought of Gaara for a second. "Yes. But--"

"Alright. Good. So he doesn't have anything to worry about, does he?" Her eyes seared him, daring him to say otherwise.

"Worry? About what?"

Sakura stepped away, and began pacing around, not really looking at Lee at all, just focusing on where her feet would step next. She was going into her explicating mode. "See, he came to see me, worried that your little crush on me would make you leave him. But I told him that was ridiculous, but he seems like the type of person who wouldn't really listen to anyone's advice. Am I right? So, I decided that probably it would be best to show him that he's wrong and that I'm nothing really to you. But I didn't want to just come and do it without having some sort of plan. That would be stupid. So, I came right here when I knew he definitely wouldn't be here, and I wanted to try it first.

"I was going to warn you, but you were being really obnoxious, Lee. Anyway, now that we've got that cleared up, and I was right, and he doesn't have to worry about me stealing you away, I'll come over sometime, maybe tomorrow, and kiss you again." She stopped pacing, her feet stopping suddenly. Lee's gaze kept going, an ocular inertia, before centering on her face. She was looking at him again, waiting.

"…"

Neji was rubbing off on him.

"You didn't feel anything when I kissed you, right?" she pressed on.

"…Did you?"

That caught her off guard, he could tell. "No," she replied quickly, too quickly. "Definitely not."

Lee didn't answer, just stared at her, his eyes an unnerving as Gaara's. His silence, like Gaara's was blaring. After an extended moment of awkward, Lee felt it weighing on him an he spoke. "Do you still want tea?"

"No, no. It's okay. I need to get home. I'm tired. I…we'll talk. Tomorrow." She fled, and Lee went back to where he'd left his drawing, but he couldn't remember what he'd been making. He pressed the unfinished work into a tight ball, and stood to throw it into the trash.

Gaara came to see her the next day, and rage came off him in waves. She glanced over her shoulder to see him coming towards her from across the room. She was surrounded by books, and in the middle of writing on her note card, but it wasn't as if Gaara would wait for her to wrap up. She pushed back her chair and went to meet him.

"You kissed him." It wasn't a question or even an accusation. It was a fact, and one that obviously was bothering him.

"The entire purpose of the exercise was for him not to tell you, but I suppose that was a little too much to expect of Lee." When that only seemed to make Gaara angrily, she immediately moved on, seeing that it wasn't in her best interest to ridicule Lee. "I only wanted to do it to show you that Lee loves you." So that you'd leave me alone.

His eyes narrowed. He was waiting for more, apparently. "…And not me."

His brows furrowed further. "Are you stupid?"

"No," she replied defensively. "I'm just--"

And Gaara kissed her. His lips were dry and he tasted of peanut butter. He pulled away, and looked at her, again.

"Lee was wrong. You taste like stupid. You were right. No competition from you."

And Sakura felt like the butt end of a joke that had gotten away from her.