The week flew by without much incident. Lee hadn't worked much since there wasn't really any hours. Temari had him scheduled Friday morning, Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings. The rest of the week he was free unless they needed to call him in which was rare. Everyone that worked there was really good at getting there on time and not calling out.

By the time Saturday came around, Lee was so anxious to spend time with Gaara he couldn't keep himself calm all night Friday. Gaara didn't work Fridays it seemed so it was nice to see him longer than the few times they saw each other in the hallway. The other day Lee nearly melted at the sight of Gaara in the hallway with some flour on his cheek. He walked over to the younger male and brushed Gaara's cheek with his thumb. Gaara stared at him wide eyed and Lee just smiled sheepishly and mumbled "you had flour on your face" and walked off before he could embarrass himself any further.

Lee strolled in a few minutes before 4:30 to get everything ready. Temari left him alone to open considering he knew how to do it now and she wasn't a fan of getting out of bed early anyway.

Lee rushed through the morning routine in order to garner a few minutes with his red headed friend. He brewed the 3 main coffees (light, dark, decaf) and turned on the lights and took the chairs off the tables. Gaara walked out of the kitchen with a tray of sweets and Lee couldn't help but grin at him. His heart fluttered at the sight of the neutral faced teen.

"Gaara! Good morning! How are you?" He asked enthusiastically and Gaara rubbed his eyes and shrugged.

"Could be better, I suppose. Can't complain, really." Lee rushed to the counter and leaned over it and watched Gaara fill the cake stands with assorted pastries.

"They look amazing, Gaara." Lee complimented and Gaara paused, glanced over the pastries he was holding, grabbed the nicest cinnamon roll he had and handed it to Lee. "You didn't have to..." Lee's cheeks colored and Gaara looked at him and shrugged again.

"They're your favorite." He said simply and continued filling the pastry counter. Lee couldn't explain how that made him feel. His heart stuttered in his chest and for a second he didn't breathe, momentarily forgetting to.

"Thank you, Gaara." Lee smiled shyly and bit into the warm cinnamon roll. The fact that Gaara remembered they were his favorite just made him so happy.

By the time Temari came in, they were almost completely sold out of treats and Gaara was irritated. Lee didn't hear Gaara's entire rant but it was something along the lines of

"I feel like all I make anymore is fucking muffins"

The curse was new but it sent a shiver down Lee's spine. Why did Gaara cursing excite him? And just how many muffins did Gaara make all week?

Kankuro came in not too long after Temari to help with the breakfast rush. It surprised Lee since it was usually just him and Temari in the morning. Temari turned to Lee with a smile.

"Hey, think you can help Gaara out in the kitchen? He seems pretty stressed out." Lee's heart beat erratically and he forgot how to speak for a minute but when he finally found his voice, he was way too enthusiastic for it to seem normal.

"Yes! I will help him! Of course!" Temari smiled at him and he stood there awkwardly, turned red, and quickly made his way to the kitchen. Behind him Kankuro shook his head.

"Do you think Gaara knows he has an admirer?" Temari swat Kankuro on the shoulder and chuckled.

"If he doesn't know, he'll find out eventually..."

"Gaara! Temari told me I should assist you! Is there something I can do to help?" Gaara glanced up and looked back down at his list.

"I suppose if you want to you can help... I have to make more cinnamon rolls." Lee grinned; he wondered if this was a jab at him loving cinnamon rolls, or if it were merely a coincidence.

"Yes of course! What should I do?" Gaara gave him the very simple task of heating up milk to a warm temperature and adding yeast. He said give the yeast 5 minutes and it should foam up and they can use it.

Simple enough, right? Apparently not.

"Why isn't my yeast rising?" Lee asked suddenly and Gaara stopped cutting butter and walked over to the cup and sniffed it.

"The milk was too hot and you killed the yeast." He said simply and went back to cutting the butter. Lee's face felt hot and he quickly dumped the milk, rinsed the cup, and tried again.

The same result.

"I-I am so sorry, Gaara. I killed the yeast again." Lee felt mortified. Gaara looked back up and then walked over to a drawer and pulled out a thermometer.

"Heat the milk up to 105-110 degrees Fahrenheit." Turns out it was a lot harder to do than Lee thought. Where one side of the pot it was at the correct temperature, the other side was 120 degrees.

Lee was becoming increasingly frustrated and humiliated that he couldn't even heat milk up to the right temperature. He didn't know how Gaara even put up with him ruining yeast 4 separate times.

Finally the fifth time he got it right and tried not to feel proud, but he did. More embarrassed than proud, but proud nonetheless. Gaara nodded at him and was finally able to make the dough. Once the dough was ready, he greased a bowl and plopped the dough in and put it in the proofer and set a timer for an hour. Lee really hoped he didn't embarrass himself more...

Turns out, he could.

Gaara told Lee to roll out the cinnamon roll dough, spread butter on it, then sprinkle a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon. Then after that, cut them with the bench scraper and put them in a pan to proof.

"Lee." Gaara said, looking down at the rolls. Lee looked up, on his second round of dough. "Why are the cinnamon rolls... lacking cinnamon?" Lee glanced over, then back down at the dough he rolled up and groaned.

"I am so sorry. I forgot to put the cinnamon sugar in." Lee's face couldn't be more red and he felt pure humiliation in his bones. He messed up 6 times already! "I will unroll each of them individually and fix them! I am so sorry, Gaara. I will do better!" Gaara looked at him with a brow raised, then looked back at the butter rolls.

"Don't bother. I'll make do with these." He picked up the pan and put it in front of his work station.

"B-but Gaara! I will fix it! It is my fault." Lee was mortified and even more so when he realized he was shaking. Gaara looked at him and with the most earnest face he could muster said,

"Lee. It's fine. I will use them. Part of being a good chef in any instance isn't not making mistakes, its fixing mistakes. Besides, I've been wanting to try doing something new for a while and now... I have the chance. It's fine. Calm down." Lee frowned but didn't say anything and slowly unrolled his unsugared cinnamon roll dough, silently thanking whomever was out there that he didn't cut these ones already too.

Lee watched with interest as Gaara examined the cinnamon rolls. He took them out one by one, thankfully one roll of dough only produced 8 rolls. He unfurled them on the table and greased the pan and rolled them thinner and added them to the pan. He reached into the refrigerator and pulled out some pie fillings and spread a thin layer on the bottom layer, and repeated. In the end it looked like a dessert lasagna. It was four layers, he needed 2 rolls per layer. He then looked up at Lee and smiled slightly.

"See? It's fine. Four berry dessert lasagna. Raspberry, strawberry, blackberry and cherry." Lee smiled softly at Gaara's attempts to cheer him up. He was thankful.

"How is it going in here?" It was Temari's first time in the kitchen since Lee came back two hours ago. She walked to the fridge and pulled out several cartons of half-and-half.

"It's going well." Gaara said simply and Lee looked at him surprised. Well? Lee messed up more times in an hour than Gaara probably ever had.

"Good! Maybe Lee could come back and help you more often!" Temari teased and Gaara nodded simply.

"That's fine with me." Lee's heart thudded in his chest and he held his breath. Why would Gaara want to work with him? He was doing terribly.

"Awesome. Lee, you're welcome back up whenever you'd like. Right now we aren't busy but we may need you for the lunch rush." Temari left the kitchen and Lee bit the inside of his cheek.

"Why is it fine with you if I stay when I messed up so much?" He asked and Gaara stopped cracking eggs and turned his head to face Lee.

"How else are you to learn? You don't have any kitchen experience. I have plenty." He reasoned and went back to cracking eggs. "Besides..." He said, and Lee looked up at him but Gaara's head didn't turn. "I enjoy your company." Lee smiled warmly and stood next to Gaara to look at the list.

"What should I do next?"

"Gaara?" Gaara looked up to stare at Lee as he walked into the kitchen. It was now 1, which was the time Lee left. Temari tried to convince him to leave at 12, but Lee seemed to enjoy being there for whatever reason.

"Yes?" Gaara was dumping the contents of the mixing bowl into a 12qt cambro.

"Um... Would you...Hm... Do you want..." Lee was fidgeting which was something he didn't normally do. It only got worse when Gaara looked up to gaze at him questioningly. What had him so nervous? "When you're done with work...would you like to do something? With me?" Gaara seemed confused at Lee's question. Why would he want to spend more time with him? They spent most of the day together. After the cinnamon roll mix up, Lee was too embarrassed to talk much so most of their work was done in a comfortable silence.

"Do what?" Gaara asked blankly and pressed the lid on the cambro and started dating and labeling it with tape.

"I... I don't know." Lee felt more embarrassed now than he did before. And he was so damn nervous! "Would you like to go for a walk with me?"

"A walk?" Gaara slid the cambro into the storage fridge and pulled off his black headband and stuffed it in his chef pants pocket. "Where to?" Lee pointed in a random direction, not really knowing where they were in correlation to the path he was referring to.

"T-the railtrail. Have you been on it yet? It's like 14 miles-not that we have to walk 14 miles. It's like a huge loop through this town and other neighboring towns. A lot of businesses put their signs on the path and just a few minutes off of the trail in any direction is a lot of places to shop and eat and stuff. You don't have to go if you don't want to. I mean, you've been working all day since who knows when so you probably don't want to walk right now which is okay, but I mean we could really do anything if you wanted to-"

"Lee. Stop." Lee closed his mouth tightly and bit his tongue. He couldn't help rambling. He wanted to talk to Gaara so badly he felt anxious and he was just nervous to talk to him. And he asked him out? Well, not exactly on a date. Was it a date? Would Gaara consider it a date? Would he think Lee was asking him out on a date and get really weirded out and not talk to him anymore. "Lee, stop thinking too. You look like you're going to pass out." Gaara's deadpan voice pulled Lee out of his thoughts and right now he was too nervous to be mortified. "Sure, let me get changed and we can go."

Lee let out a long puff of breath and Gaara ran his fingers through his hair. He hated wearing a headband, it pushed his hair up funny and his forehead sweat and made his hair all greasy and gross. It wasn't like he was going somewhere special. They were just taking a walk. He didn't need to look immaculate. The weather was also supposed to be nice out today so maybe it would be good for him. A nice 64 degrees, perfect sweater weather.

Gaara walked to the door on the opposite end of the bathroom and closed it behind him. Lee immediately felt his forehead, he was sweating so bad, he was sure he had a fever. What made him so nervous about being around Gaara? Did he want to be his friend that badly?

Lee went to the bathroom and changed his shoes to his running shoes and removed his hat and apron. He looked at himself in the mirror and sighed. He knew he wasn't very cute, his eyes too wide, his eyebrows to thick, his body was lanky no matter how hard he worked out. He wondered if anyone would ever like him.

He shook his head and got himself out of those thoughts. He wasn't sure what had him so down on himself right now. Who was he trying to impress? Gaara? Lee's face heated up and he felt a shiver down his spine. No. Certainly not Gaara.

Lee ran his fingers through his hair and made sure it was okay looking. Honestly though, how do you mess up a bowl cut? When he was a least slightly satisfied, he grabbed his green windbreaker jacket and walked out of the bathroom.

Gaara stared around the room and fingered through all of the clothes hanging from the pipe. He really didn't have anything good to wear. He didn't have many clothes. With a frown, Gaara removed his checkered pants and put them into his laundry bag and pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and his comfortable maroon pullover. He had a small mirror and took his brush and tried to tame his hair but no matter what he did, it stuck out haphazardly in every direction. He sighed and grabbed his green beanie and put it over his head. He stared at himself for a minute and thought about the temperature. Was it cold enough for this hat? Was this hat being too dramatic? He exhaled deeply and tugged the hat off. Whatever. Messy hair it was.

He put on his old shoes. He only had two pairs. One work pair and one everyday pair. He silently wondered when his father would allow him to get new clothes and new shoes. He stared at his bedroom a final time and closed the door behind him.