Kakashi shifted, stretching his legs once more. His arm was beginning to complain vehemently about the awkward position it was being held in, and Kakashi wanted to complain about not being able to sleep, like Gaara was doing so peacefully.

Well… not really peacefully. Gaara slept like a dead man, flat on his back, black eyelids- a mark of how much heartbreaking damage had been done, one that would never leave- quivering slightly, his chest hardly rising and falling at all. Kakashi amused himself by studying Gaara's thin form, confused by the Sand-nin's skin. It was inhuman: hairless, pale as alabaster, and completely lacking in any sort of pores whatsoever. It was as if Gaara had been carved out of a solid chunk of marble. 'I suppose the sand makes him that way.' He moved to look at Gaara's face, tracing the blood-red tattoo with his eyes, then the sharp, elfin chin and nose.

Gaara twitched, his hand clenching around Kakashi's, a low whimper, like that of a wounded animal, emerging from him, lips curling into a frown. A rasped word, so soft Kakashi could hardly hear it,

"Yashamaru…"

Kakashi closed his eye, sighing. He really wasn't cut out for this. He jerked as Gaara suddenly thrashed, the sand in the corner whirling into a cyclone, humming with agitation. That did it. He got up from his position on the floor and grabbed Gaara by the shoulder, shaking him, teeth gritted with the hope that the sand wouldn't react and slash him into tiny bloody pieces. Gaara's mouth opened, and he wailed, the sound so broken and appallingly resigned, something Kakashi would never in a million years have expected from someone he had feared so much. Kakashi winced, took a breath, and began to shake him harder, Gaara's head lolling alarmingly with each shake.

"Gaara, wake up!" Gaara's eyes flickered open, blurry green pinning him in place. Kakashi stared dumbly into the hypnotizing gaze, his grip loosening.

His mouth opened, and he heard himself say, as if from a great distance, "Who's Yashamaru?" Gaara's eyes widened. 'Oh great job, Hatake. You've really done it now. Getting killed by comforting someone, not an illustrious way to go.'

Gaara slid out of his grip and moved up against the headboard, drawing thin, knobby knees up to his chest, the posture of a frightened and wounded animal. He stared at the far wall, green gaze unfocused and terrible in its sadness. His throat worked and finally a few halting words escaped.

"How… do you know that name?"

"You said it before I woke you up."

Gaara blinked, turning his head to look at him.

"You want to know?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

That gave Kakashi pause. Why did he want to know? He had no stake in this, no reason but simple curiosity as to what had broken Gaara so badly, warped him into this bundle of raw nerves, abraded by the smallest sensation.

"He's obviously important to you," he ventured. Gaara looked down, red hair flopping forward to hide his eyes. The silence stretched between them for a long moment. Kakashi was just getting ready to stand up, thinking that Gaara wouldn't answer, when Gaara forced out,

"Yashamaru was my caretaker."

Kakashi sat back down and settled, recognizing the beginning of a long story, having heard many and told many himself. Gaara stared at his hands, utterly still, the words slow and halting as if they were being pulled from somewhere deep within.

"The Kazekage found out about Shukaku's powers before I was born. He decided that the demon would make a perfect weapon, if it could be controlled by being sealed inside someone. He impregnated my mother, and sealed the Shukaku in me while I was still unborn, using her soul as the sacrifice. The effects of bearing a demon inside her without her soul drove her insane." For a moment Kakashi wondered at the calm coldness of the words, so dispassionate, as if Gaara were telling the story of someone else.

"I tore her to pieces when I was born. She named me Gaara, the one who loves only himself, and placed a curse upon Suna, one that I was born to fulfill. Her blood became the sand that protects me. Mother protects me because as long as I am alive, I can kill and avenge her death. She died hating the village, hating me for killing her, and that hate became part of Yashamaru, my uncle." He paused, drawing a ragged breath. Kakashi said nothing, afraid that breaking the trance that Gaara was in would make him unable to draw the strength to continue the story.

"Yashamaru always took care of me. He told me about everything. He told me what pain was, what love was, what family was. He would take me out to the playground and push me on the swing when everyone else ran away. He'd give me crayons to draw with and stitch up my bear when it got ripped." Kakashi closed his eyes at the image of Gaara as a child, dragging a teddy bear, something well-worn and well-loved, something that Gaara loved with all the desperate feeling that no one else would accept.

"I tried so…" Gaara swallowed hard, "So hard to fit in. All I wanted was to be like the others. But every time I tried, it all went wrong." Gaara raised a hand restlessly, let it drop. "The Kazekage saw me as a failed experiment. He ordered me assassinated." Kakashi hissed, fingernails cutting into his palm. 'What kind of a man sacrifices his own son?' His throat ached with unshed tears for this boy who had wanted nothing more than to be loved.

"I killed them all. I think there were thirty. I didn't want to kill them, I never did, but the sand did it for me. It crushed them all." Gaara went silent, his fingers clenching on the sheet. Kakashi moved a few inches closer, swallowed, and extended a hand, resting it tentatively on Gaara's knee. Gaara lifted his head and gazed at him for a moment, took a breath, and continued tonelessly,

"I was six when Yashamaru was ordered to kill me." Kakashi winced, his hand tightening on Gaara's knee and feeling the blood pump sluggishly under his fingers, feeling as if he had been stabbed, but he couldn't say that he hadn't expected this conclusion. "The sand injured him mortally. I didn't know that it was him, then. He took his hood off and lit the fuses for the explosives he had strapped to him. Then he-" Gaara sighed, long and low, "told me that he had always hated me, that everyone hated me, that they all just wanted to forget that I existed. He asked me to die."

He made a dry, hacking noise, that from any other person, in any other situation, would have been a laugh, but Kakashi only found it horribly sad, weighted with sorrow and sharp pain. "The sand wouldn't let me die. It never will, but I suppose he thought that I could make it let me die. I wanted to, so many times after that. That was when I-" he lifted a hand and touched the blood-red tattoo, so glaringly dark against marble-pale skin, "realized that no one loved me, and made this with the sand and my blood." He trailed off, his hand falling into his lap.

Kakashi was silent, the words stuck in his throat. What could he possibly say to this, to comfort? 'Thank you for trusting me,' seemed so terribly inadequate in the face of the gift that Gaara had given him, the trust of a man who had so little of it to spare.

He looked up when Gaara moved, the pale hand dipping down to catch a few tears, raising his hand to eye-level and inspecting them, his green eyes luminous and rimmed with salty liquid.

"Are these… tears?" The complete bewilderment in his voice was heartbreaking. Kakashi's chest ached with every breath, and he itched to reach out and hold this man who had never had anyone to do that, who needed help perhaps even more than Naruto. Help that he could give, something he could actually do while Naruto suffered from pain he was unable to heal.

"Why am I crying?" Gaara tilted his hand, letting the tears fall onto the dark blue sheets with wet little splashes. His voice was slow, brimming full of pain and torment and boundless confusion, "Why… does my chest hurt?" Kakashi didn't know what to say. He opened his mouth, shut it again, cleared his throat, and tried,

"Because you're sad."

Gaara glanced up from the three black spots on the blue blanket at Hatake, gazing at the gray eye, lidded and dark with some sort of emotion.

He came to the conclusion that he didn't like sadness, didn't like the burning feeling in his eyes and the bone-deep ache in his chest and the clogged feeling in his nose. But how to get rid of it? When he first saw sadness, Temari had been rejected by some boy and was crying about it. Kankuro had… hugged her. It had appeared to help.

"May I," he paused, glancing up at Hatake, "have a hug?" Hatake breathed in sharply but nodded, taking his hand off Gaara's knee and opening his arms. Gaara slid out from under the sheets and slowly made his way over to Hatake's side. He looked up once more, meeting the gray, tired gaze, searching. Hatake nodded again, so Gaara leaned forward, carefully, fear thick in his throat and heart that this was a dream, that Hatake would vanish like smoke on the water or scream like everyone had when he was young and run from him-

But no, Hatake was here, solid and warm and real. His nose bumped into the sharp line of a collarbone, making him tilt his head upwards before he settled it on the older man's chest. Warm hands wrapped around his wrists, pulling them up and around the silver-haired man's waist. Gaara closed his eyes, cataloguing the sensations for future times, as he would never get this chance to get so close to anyone ever again.

The man smelled of sandalwood and sweat, a clean, earthen smell that reminded him of the desert and the dunes that had been his home. Warmth, something that was lacking here in winter, the first real winter he had ever seen, seeped through his thin shirt and into his skin, warming him. Hatake's arms moved, sliding up over his hips to wind around his shoulders and pull him flush against him, the older man rocking back and forth, his large hands pressing over his back. Gaara stiffened as the hands paused.

'What…?' Kakashi felt Gaara stiffen against him as he brushed his fingers over his spine. It felt… wrong. Incredibly wrong. He skimmed his fingers downward to rest over Gaara's hips, than dragged them back up, feeling the line of bumps. Gaara shivered against him, his arms locking a little tighter. Except Gaara's spine wasn't a straight line, rather a twisted series of curves that almost resembled an 'S' shape.

"Gaara, what happened to your back?" He felt the younger man rest his forehead on his shoulder, warm breath stirring against his chest and surprisingly soft hair tickling his ear as he mumbled,

"It was the gourd."

"The gourd?" Gaara moved forward a bit and settled, folding his knees as he situated himself more comfortably. "It weighs over eighty pounds. I first started wearing it when I was seven." Kakashi continued absently running his hands up and down, feeling the dips of the ribs and the surprising warmth of his skin, although since he was from the desert…

He shouldn't be doing this. Shouldn't be touching a shinobi from another village in such a familiar way, particularly not one that was capable of destroying Konoha singlehandedly.

But Gaara needed this, he rationalized, feeling the younger man hold himself perfectly still, slender frame fitting against his chest. How long had it been since someone had simply held him, he wondered, providing comfort without expectation of reward? Gaara's breath traveled over his skin, making goosebumps appear in its wake as he breathed,

"You're the second person I've told all this to, after Naruto." Kakashi's arms tightened, his eye cutting to the side to glance at Gaara's pale, still face. No more tears, his lean frame all sharp lines and angles. Still hiding, but that was okay, this was progress; Gaara was allowing himself to seek comfort from someone, seeking human warmth and contact.

The man he had in his arms now was a million miles away from the terrifying boy he remembered from the Chuunin exams, who decimated the competition with a snarl on his lips and blood-encrusted sand flaking from his skin. Sakura's quivering, repulsed expression swam before his eyes, her words as clear as day in his ears.

'That is so… weird.' He shifted his weight, sliding his arms down to Gaara's waist as he tightened his hands and settled Gaara more comfortably. Sand hissed in the gourd, the ominous rattle loud in the silence.

"Be quiet, Mother," Gaara muttered. Kakashi felt hysterical laughter bubble up from his chest. He was so unprepared for this, so wrong for the role of confessor and caretaker of these two emotionally raw, suffering men. He was a shinobi, for God's sake! A killer, not a comforter, not like Iruka or Sakura.

"Gaara?" He spoke into the silence. The Sand shinobi made a quiet noise. Kakashi continued,

"Why me?"

Gaara's chest stopped moving for a moment, the thin arms locked around his waist tightening. Finally he said, finality in every syllable,

"You're warm."

Kakashi closed his eyes in incredulity. Warm? What a load of bullshit. Warm was Iruka, warm was Lee and Sakura and Obito and Rin and always, always Naruto, not him, prodigy and pervert and killer.

But even so, even though all that this could bring was pain, he couldn't bring himself to move from his spot on the bed with Gaara resting against his chest, alive and real as so few things were. He shouldn't be doing this.

Shouldn't have done a lot of things, really. But Gaara needed him, Naruto needed him, and that was enough.

The sun rose on the whitewashed house on the corner of the street, slanting down and inside Naruto's room. He threw an arm over his eyes, wincing as the ache in his hips and spine intensified, hovering right below the border of agony.

The door creaked open, Gaara entering with a plate of sliced fruit and a mug of tea thick with numbing solution.

"Thanks," he rasped, tears prickling his eyes at the pain in his throat. The Kyuubi, ecstatic at his plan coming closer and closer to fruition, had been especially rough last night. Naruto was sure that most of the skin on his back had been flayed by the scraping claws. Gaara nodded, set down the plate beside him, and came over, slipping an arm beneath his shoulders and pulling him into a sitting position.

Naruto sighed, white-hot pain ripping through him with every movement as he stabbed at the food with a fork. Gaara watched him, and Naruto was grateful for his silence, grateful for the lack of smothering pity.

Then Gaara opened his mouth.

"What is love?"

Naruto spit out his tea and spattered the expensive green sheets.

"What?"

Gaara's brow drew together.

"Are you having trouble hearing? Shall I send for a medical nin?"

"No, no, I'm fine! But why do you want to know?"

Gaara looked down at his hands for a moment before speaking,

"I think I love someone. I want to know if what I feel is true or not. You know everything about emotion, so the logical person to ask was you."

Naruto set his mug down on the nightstand.

"Uh, I'm flattered that you think that, I guess. But couldn't you have asked an easier question?"

Gaara blinked. "Easier? What do you mean?"

"Well, what kind of love are you talking about? Romantic, or what?"

Gaara wrinkled his nose, and his expression was so (dare he say it) cute. "I'm not sure. I was told that I would never have the chance to experience romantic love and that no one would want such a thing from me."

"Okay, see, this is what we have to fix! You're a hot guy, I mean you have all those fangirls and… uh… never mind." Naruto shut his mouth, unsure as to how Gaara would react to being told by a male that he was good-looking. But the other vessel simply stared at him patiently. Naruto rolled his eyes and sank back into the pillows, hissing as he did so.

"Okay, let's see. Love is when you… damn, this is hard. Love is when someone else's happiness is more important to you than your own."

"So I have a romantic love for every person in my village?"

Naruto choked. "No, just let me finish, okay?"

Gaara nodded.

"You feel like you can tell them anything, and they aren't going to leave you or hate you for it. When you're around them you feel like you can do anything, like you're willing to do anything to make sure they're safe and happy and all that stuff."

"What about intercourse?"

Naruto managed not to choke this time. "Uh, we can deal with that one later. Anyway, if you love someone, you feel like this person understands you more than anyone else on the planet. They hug you when you're sad and make you laugh when you're upset. I guess the most important thing is…" he shrugged, thinking of silver hair and mismatched eyes, "you're willing to die for them. Does all that help?"

Gaara's breathing was loud in the silence. Naruto looked up as the floorboards creaked, and watched as Gaara rose from the chair, crossed in a deliberate fashion to his bed, and sat down, green eyes vivid in the dim light.

"Uh, Gaara? You okay?" Gaara tilted his head, gaze unnervingly intense and studying.

"If that is the definition of romantic love, than I think…" he leaned forward until their noses were touching, and Naruto found himself unable to breathe, drowning in green, his hands limp in his lap.

"I think I love you."

And then there were lips on his lips, something clumsy and inexperienced and unskilled but sweeter than honey all the same, a warm hand stealing up to bury itself in his hair. Naruto made a noise low in his throat as Gaara pulled back, opening his eyes - when had he closed them?- to see Gaara's expression, intense and thoughtful, before one corner of his mouth twitched upwards into the smallest of smiles as he repeated in a tone of utter wonder,

"I think I love you."