Warning: I am not following the anime, nor the manga. Also, if the characters come across OOC, you'll have to live with it. This plot is burning a hole in my mind.

Lee had smiled and welcomed the jinchuuraki into his hospital room, laughing off the shiver that ran through his heart. He forgave the redhead. He told the redhead so.

Trust and happiness never came with forgiveness… Not always.

He was more than happy to hug the jinchuuraki as the other asked him to, his blue-green eyes narrowed in concentration so the hissing sand would not attempt to dismember him. Some trust was earned that day… but not much. Fear had lingered in his mind as he had subconsciously tensed, waiting for death's grip on his body once more. Chances were, his companion had been aware of it as well.

For three days, the jinchuuraki disappeared from his senses, the last memory Lee had of him sending a renewed shiver down his spine.

The redhead returned just as Lee was being led into a therapeutic pool found in the basement floor of the hospital. Rehabilitating shinobi and civilians could usually be found there, such as Lee could be some hours of each day attempting to get his leg and arm to work to their fullest potential once more. He refused to be weak.

The jinchuuraki refused to leave him alone.

The particular day in memory left Lee alone in the pool, as well as the room entirely… Except for the country's ally. His hokage was willing to trust them once more. His hokage's people were not so eager. He watched them flee with an almost choking sense of abandonment. Regardless, all that was left was him in small trunks waist high in softly swaying water, gripping onto the pool side with his good arm while he stared up at the redhead standing directly above him at the very edge.

A little more trust was earned as the redhead stepped fearlessly into the watery depths, leaving only behind his sandals and gourd as he reached out and grabbed Lee with no conflict from his sand. A trail of the golden grains sank to the floor of the pool as Gaara assisted him deeper into the water and allowed Lee to use him as a solid post to lean on and stand against as he did his exercises.

For the first time in the two weeks the redhead had been with him, he found himself truly laughing as he playfully splashed water into the other's face. He had thought, foolishly in the second he was doing it, that the humor would not be shared. Possibly, the sand would end him then. His laughter died in the same moment the water hit the redhead's face. In the next minute, he was laughing again. Laughing in joy, humor, surprise, and relief, as all the redhead did was blink in startled shock and then mimicked his action with a calculating gaze.

By the time heads began to peek around the corner into the room once more, uncertain whether or not it was safe, he and the Suna native had begun water war that had slowly began to involve the grains of sand beneath him attacking him as well… In the least violent way it seemed possible to do.

Three days later, he was lying in the pristine white prison others referred to as a hospital mattress. His dull obsidian gaze was outside of the room, watching the bird in the nearby tree go about her business of feeding her babes… Possibly, it was the male… He had time, so he could possibly look it up.

He was ready to give up. He was ready to stop and just die. His ninja way was unreachable, and by not realizing that, he was only killing himself faster. Even his hokage agreed. The only way to save his way of the ninja was also a revenue to death. He wanted to do it… hungered for the chance… It was a win-win situation. If he got out of the surgery successfully… then he could be a ninja once more. If he did not… he wouldn't be around to find out, would he?

Again, the jinchuuraki refused to leave him be.

He spent three hours with his head over the redhead's heart… or where he was certain his heart would be, seeing as how he could hardly hear it, much less feel it, through the sand armor.

He feared the jinchuuraki. He could not fully trust the jinchuuraki. He could not go a day without the jinchuuraki's company. Oh, how he had tried…

Sand danced uncertainly around the room, warding off all healing nins. Lee watched it flow, his eyelids flickering with distrust whenever the tendrils drifted over his skin.

He forgave and forgot. Yet, it was so much more difficult to forget when it was clear others had not.

For those two hours, the silence was hostile, the jinchuuraki's grip tight, and his heart slow. The redhead did not want him following through with it. Lee laughed, and it was not one of humor, but of irony. To think… the very boy he had tried to kill him twice over was now the one attempting to forbade him from doing a life risking surgery.

The redhead's eyes had narrowed dangerously upon his almost delirious laughter.

Five days went by this time without sight of him. Lee was happy for that, seeing as how his surgery was only two days later.

He laid in the white caged prison once more, eyes outside at the momma bird (he had confirmed it) and her babies.

His jinchuuraki came like a demon in the night and stole him away without a sound… Literally.

He could not remember being happier. Not since he had first mastered the lotus, possibly since having been told that the surgery was successful. He wasn't entirely certain though… They were up there, but this was simply beautiful.

Possibly it was his drug induced mind or his sleep depraved body. Possibly it was his never ending need for love or his want for positive attention. Whatever it was, he laid in the cool green grass by the side of the lake, watching the meteor shower with the redhead's red cloak as his blanket and the redhead himself using him as his pillow, his head resting on Lee's stomach as they both looked up and stared. Perhaps it wasn't the meteor shower. Perhaps it was the moment the redhead prepared to take him back once the sky cleared of flying streaks of light and had stared at him for such long seconds… Had stared, and had then done the unexpected.

Lee got to look down at his village from a bird's eye point of view, feeling like the princess from Aladdin as the clumps of sand carried them seemingly effortlessly over the buildings and houses.

He awoke the next morning, almost positive it had been a dream. The feeling of sand gating together within his clothes made him happily wrong.

Three months went by as Lee forgot that the redhead was the boy who had murdered so many and tried to make him a number among them. His mind began to play funny games on him, showing him how often he had referred to the redhead as his jinchuuraki, his redhead.

As if the mint eyed Suna native could ever be his. The thought came and went without him missing it. The redhead could never belong to anyone, he was too wild like a passionate animal that chose it's own companions. Regardless, the jinchuuraki was his jinchuuraki… If only by assumption. No one else was his jinchuuraki's pillow, no one else shared night and day with his redhead.

No one else cried silently in their bed when they were told they could not follow his friend.

For five years, his jinchuuraki disappeared. The first few weeks had felt unbearable. The next few months had felt as if had been abandoned. The next few years were filled with wondering, and the fifth year filled with excitement and guesses.

The jinchuuraki was returning to Konoha… as Suna's kazekage, as their allied country… Perhaps still his friend?

He had waited on baited breath by the side of the hokage, hands trembling fists by his sides and his blonde friend on the kage's other side.

His welcome went just as he planned it. He bowed his head, stated that it was an honor to have the kazekage in their village… and then threw himself at the redhead with a deafening squeal of delight.

The only person who had not been expecting it was their blonde friend and the newly appointed kazekage's guards. Otherwise, his hokage scowled and told them to get over it.

In the next moment, everyone but the redhead were surprised and taken aback. For Lee, it lasted only a second, and then he was over it. He was over it, and beginning a war of tongues with the kazekage, his bandaged arms wrapped tightly around the redhead's shoulder as his legs squeezed slightly around the other's hips, feeling as long slender fingers gripped his own hips and held.

The moment was short and scorching. Lee knew that because he felt the inferno across his face as the redhead set him to his feet and walked away towards the conference room as if nothing had happened. For several weeks, the subject remained the juiciest piece of gossip in Konoha and Suna… Which was saying something in Konoha, seeing as how Shikamaru had been caught doing something very physical and untroublesome with Konoha's dear bottomless pit of a butterfly. Then again, maybe not.

It was two months later when they met once more. An almost repeat of the former meeting, Lee was more than ecstatic to leap onto the kage's back and scream piggy back ride into the redhead's ear.

His fear was gone, no longer caring the sands that rose and trembled warningly. His distrust was gone, no longer waiting for the other to finally end his life. Their past was forgotten, no longer something more important and all powerful over what was contained in the present.

The sand did not harm him. His jinchuuraki did not harm him. He swore the world smiled when the redhead continued walking by the side of a rock diplomat without a change in tone or step, as if an insane green clad teen was not clinging to him like a small child. Lee was more than content to rest his head in the junction of the other's shoulder. His jinchuuraki was more than content to allow one hand to slip behind himself and stroke his leg as his eyes flickered over the papers handed to him.

They were estranged friends. One day, they would be unbreakable lovers.

That day could be seen beaming in the horizon.

"Do you love me?"

Was the rough voice of his jinchuuraki as his length pushed ever so slowly into Lee, his pale arms supported him above Lee's body with the raven's legs over his shoulders.

Lee smiled through the pain, lifting one hand to stroke his jinchuuraki's beautiful face.

"Do you love me?"

He echoed, biting his bottom lip as his toes curled and his back arched.

His jinchuuraki's answer was to pant, meeting his eyes shamelessly as he continued forward.

"Does this feel like love?"

To that, Lee could only think of one word. Insanity was invading him, making him need so much stronger and cry so much louder.

"Yes!"

And, to that, all the redhead could do was thrust in and out, in and out, in and then out again, into Lee. All Lee could do was watch the redhead watch him, his mouth opening and no sounds escaping him as pleasure stole his breath and replaced though with a fuzzy sense of reality and a loss of every sense but what was happening in his own body, what he was seeing his jinchuuraki do to him.

Two years went by. Two very peaceful, almost too peaceful, years. Years where Lee was more than content to be his redhead' lover, companion, advisor, ally, and friend.

Two years went by… and then his jinchuuraki handed him a small green velvet box and had then stood very still, waiting for him to make his decision.

The simple golden band was never lost, nor was the photo of two men in each other's arms wearing wedding robes ever misplaced.

Distrust, pain, guilt, despair, fear, apprehension…

Each of them were a powerful emotion. None of them more powerful than this happiness, contentedness, need, want, possessiveness, protectiveness…

LOVE.

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A pointless one-shot I had the urge to write with no actual reason for it. For me, it all revolved around the scene with Gaara helping Lee do therapy in the pool and Lee being weary. The rest…. Filler.