Sand Beast

Ch. 7

Lee considered himself a nature lover. He had a great respect for the animal kingdom and believed that every living creature deserved to be appreciated. But a hive full of bloated roaches the size of poodles was straining his principles somewhat. The smell alone would have been enough to knock a normal man down.

"I did warn you," Gaara pointed out as Lee gagged. Anybody else would have been smug, saying that. Gaara just sounded factual.

"Yes, I know you did. Aw man, that really stinks."

Gaara glanced back, as if to see if Lee was really about to pass out, and his chin brushed against the high collar of the Jounin flack jacket he was wearing. He flattened it with a flash of annoyance in his green eyes, shifting the gourd a bit so it pulled the vest and collar back and away from his face. The gesture distracted Lee from the smell momentarily. It was so strange to see Gaara in ordinary Sand Jounin clothes. Not that they didn't suit him, but it was just... odd. Different. He looked like an ordinary seventeen-year-old Shinobi to start with.

Lee was dressed the same way. The Sand Shinobi outfit he’d been issued was light, tough and designed for the desert, but he still missed his form-fitting suit. He wondered briefly what he and Gaara looked like together. Two young men side by side, wearing the same uniform. A pair of regular Sand Shinobi; two team-mates out on a mission. A very, very smelly mission. Lee thought the insides of his nostrils were starting to curdle.

"I told you to stay back at the camp," Gaara said with a total lack of sympathy for the way Lee was turning green. The smell didn't seem to inconvenience Gaara too badly, but then he'd been exposed to it before.

Lee just snorted at the suggestion. He'd have said something, but he was too busy breathing through his mouth.

"I don't need any help," Gaara added.

"Course you don't." Lee waved his hand in front of his nose. It didn’t help.

"If you go back now, I won’t have to watch out for you."

"You won’t have to watch out for me anyway."

The back-and-forth was almost entirely automatic. Gaara had long since given up trying to shake Lee off of a dangerous mission. The biggest part of their attention was on the enemy, judging the best approach through the shallow canyons, rocks and sand dunes that bordered the Hive.

Finally Gaara turned back toward him.

"We'll take them from the east."

"You sure?" Lee looked at the suggested terrain with a frown.

"Less cover that way."

"Less cover for them, but also less cover for us. They'll see us."

"They'll sense our chakra signatures long before they see us.” Gaara gave Lee’s shoulder a nudge in the right direction when Lee still hesitated. “Cover will hamper my attacks anyway. Move."

Lee wasn’t bothered by the curt order, in fact he barely noticed it. That was just Gaara. What Lee did notice was the hand that had rested briefly on his shoulder. This was a recent development. Gaara didn't touch others ordinarily. Even back in the bad old days when he used to kill people on a regular basis, he didn’t actually go and touch them to do so.