disclaimer: HURHURHUR.
dedication: to Lynnie and Jeremiah and Les and Sonya and Cheyenne and Becca and ELENI (WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME).
notes: omigod why do i have so many friends. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ANTI-SOCIAL SARA THAT USED TO EXIST?
notes2: since when do i write from Lee's POV, wtf is this?

title: fragile things
summary: Unrequited love isn't supposed to hurt this much. Lee, Sakura, Sasuke, and the bonds that lie between. Or don't. — Lee, Sasuke/Sakura. 25/5o.

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It is summer when Rock Lee first meets the girl that is going to be the love of his life.

It is hot and muggy, the air thick with unshed rain and the buzz of mosquitoes, but the sky is blue as a robin's egg, and the sun is bright. It is his day working. Summer camp counselling.

Lee is ecstatic.

The kids are great; the other guy he's working with is great (what's-his-face, Naruto?); everything is great. And Lee is outside, watching his kids, and they're eating lunch. And it's good, it's fun, and Lee is proclaiming and there's laughter and it's just—fun.

And then she walks by, and the whole world stops.

Lee is gobsmacked, frozen in time, watching her smile. Eyes as green as the Granny Smith apple slice that is half-way to his mouth glitter, and she's leading a group of ten year olds forward, half-shouting in laughter over her shoulder.

She's perfection incarnate, and Lee doesn't even know her name.

He holds his breath, and she throws herself down next to him, and easily instructs her group to do the same. The children mingle, and Lee can't breathe.

She glances at him, and grins. Her voice is low, when she speaks; a barely-there brush of air. "Hi! I'm Insert-Generic-Camp-Name-Here, but, you know, since we're going to be friends, you should probably call me Sakura."

Lee doesn't know what to say.

And that is not something that happens all that often.

So he sends her a sparkly smile back in return, and announces "I am Lee!"

(He hopes his campers don't hear, but, really, he can't bring himself to care. This girl—Sakura? It suits her—is laughing, and Lee is falling fast and hard, and, god, she's the love of his life, and he just knows it.)

"Well, Lee," she laughs, "it's nice to meet you!"

The sound is like diamond shards falling through rainbows, and Lee is struck dumb again.

—

The summer flies by in a blur of heat and rain and gymp braids, and Lee counts the seconds by how many times he sees Sakura. Sometimes he counts it by how many times she's not at work. But most of the time, he counts the seconds by how many times he can make her grin, because Sakura's grins are worth something.

Everyone likes her. Everyone.

It's hard to not like Sakura, Lee thinks, and watches a six-year-old messily smear face-paint across Sakura's cheek. She's flinching and laughing, and smearing the paint right back.

Typical Sakura.

Everyone likes her. Everyone wants to work with her, because she makes long days short, and her laughter is often proceeded by trouble. And she works so hard; she's worked with almost everyone.

But she spends the most time working with Lee (she put in a request that they work together, and their boss shrugged and complied), and Lee swells with pride, because he can see the almost-jealous looks that the other guys throw him when Sakura's not looking.

And Lee is falling more and more in love with her, every day.

—

They are sitting in a coffee shop after work—they both look scraggly and exhausted, but then, that is part of what they signed up for, and the weekends do really make up for the weeks. Lee is drinking a glass of ice water (because caffeine and Lee do not mix well, much to Sakura's endless amusement), and Sakura's hands are wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.

It rained, today.

The road is still wet, and the air still smells like just-washed laundry. Lee likes days like today, and Sakura has so much to do with it, it's more then pathetic.

But she's sitting there, looking out the window with a far-off look on her face, and Lee grins wide like the whole blue sky, clean and clear, for once. "What's on your mind, Flower?"

Flower. That's her camp name. He calls her that, because to say her name would be sacrilege, he thinks.

She starts, and looks up at him. "Oh. Nothing."

Lee just stares, bangs just brushing his eyebrows. It's odd to have them so long, but Sakura says that she likes them better that way—it makes him look "less formal, or something", and Lee has never been one to deny Sakura anything.

But they have been friends long enough, now, for Lee to know when Sakura was lying and when she wasn't. And right now, she is lying, and Lee really doesn't like it when Sakura lies.

"Flower, don't be like that," Lee says.

She heaves a sigh that moves her whole body, and Lee is suddenly worried.

"It's—there's this guy," she says, finally.

And Lee doesn't know what to say, again.

They sit in the silence for a half minute, and then Lee asks "Who is it?"

Sakura just half-smiles. "No one you know, Lee. Don't worry about it—I'm just being crazy. It's probably nothing, anyway."

They don't speak on the subject again.

—

It is August when that "nothing" turns into "something".

Sakura comes in, glowing, and rushes to the girl called Kiwi (she is blonde, and, apparently, she and Sakura have been friends for years), and she screeches "OMIGOD, INO, YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED—"

Lee turns away, and heads towards the pool area.

He doesn't want to know what made her look like that.

Mostly because it wasn't him, but he doesn't tell anyone that.

—

And then that "something" turns into "someone".

Lee meets Uchiha Sasuke for the first time. Sakura's standing at the entrance of the building, looking up into the face of the most—and Lee hates to admit it, because his looks are suddenly beyond inadequate—handsome boy Lee has ever seen, and smiling a very different smile then he's seen before.

Sakura is talking fast, trying to get the words out, and the boy just looks amused.

Lee is not so amused.

He loves Sakura.

But Lee has never been all that lucky, and so when he watches the girl he loves throw her arms around someone else's neck, he does absolutely nothing but walk over, and blink at the both of them.

Sakura pulls away, flushing to the roots of her cotton-candy hair (Lee has dreams about that hair, swirls and swirls of pale pink in the sunlight), and starts a clumsy introduction that dies in her throat.

"Uh—Lee, this is—uh, Sasuke. Sasuke is my—"

"I'm her boyfriend," and the voice is smooth and perfect as cream, and Lee hates him instantly on principle.

The two boys size each other up. Lee doesn't know what Sasuke is seeing, but he hopes it is something threatening (although that seems a little bit unlikely. Lee has tried his damndest to not be threatening, for the kids' sake), because what Lee sees is something he never wanted to see.

Not around Sakura, anyway.

Sasuke is dark, Lee decides. There's something about his eyes—something shadowy and wild, and while he and Sakura-in-her-bright-red-camp-shirt do make a striking pair, Lee suppresses a shiver and the urge to grab Sakura and run.

"It's good to meet you, Sasuke," Lee declares.

Sasuke just raises an eyebrow, and tilts his head at Sakura. She stares at him for a long minute, deciphering an equally long look. She laughs. Then, as one, they turn, and start to leave.

Their hands are twined together. Lee feels ill.

And then Sakura is yelling "BYE, LEE! SEE YOU TOMORROW!" over her shoulder, and waving frantically.

Lee feels no better, and raises his hand in a half-hearted wave in reply.

He ignores the distant splintering that is his heart, and goes home.

—

He decides, that night, that if Sasuke is what makes Sakura happy (and he does make her happy—Lee has never seen Sakura smile so, before), then Lee will support it.

Because Lee loves Sakura, and as long as Sakura is happy, then so is Lee.

(But that doesn't stop him from clenching his fists every time he sees them together.)

—

"Do you love him?" Lee asks, one day after work, but before Sasuke has come to take Sakura home.

"Yes," she says simply. "I always have."

Lee is reminded of diamonds falling through rainbows, but this time, it's the shards of his heart, and he knows that he can't keep this up.

"Well, my darling Flower, if you're sure—"

"I am—Sasuke!" and Sakura is gone in a flash of pink-red-green, and tackles the dark boy to the ground.

Lee can't watch.

He's just second best.

And that hurts.

—

Lee quits the next morning.

Sakura catches up to him, concern shining in those eyes, and Lee almost feels his resolve slip. If only, if only—

"Why?" she asks.

Lee is about to explain everything; that he does love her, that Sasuke is just—bad, wrong for her, that—

But he raises his eyes, and stares Uchiha Sasuke in the face. He watches Sakura's eyes flick in the dark boy's direction. And Lee knows, then, that he never stood a chance in the first place.

"Because," Lee says.

He pretends he doesn't see Sasuke wrap his arm around Sakura's small shoulders. He pretends that she doesn't move away. Lee pretends a lot of things, these days.

Lee shoulders his backpack, and leaves the building for the last time.

"Goodbye, Sakura," he murmurs.

It's always the fragile things, he thinks.

And then Lee is gone.

—

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fin.

notes3: you know, i never actually thought how it must feel, to be Lee… it would suck, man. it would just suck.
notes4: this sort of may or may not have actually happened. sort of.