This was done for the Livejournal community 20truths. Thanks, as always, go out to my beta, AisCrim.

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1. The first time Hatake Kakashi sees Sabaku no Gaara, it is sunset before the first round of the Chuunin exam, and Gaara is standing on the edge of a rooftop, painted blood-red by the sun, with a streak of blood tracing down the side of his face. Gaara’s tongue darts out and licks the blood away.

Kakashi is surprised to find Gaara beautiful.

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Gaara fights Rock Lee, Kakashi watches every move, memorizing the lithe nature of pale limbs and the golden trails of chakra swirling around every movement, and he wonders- as Gaara rises from the floor of the stadium with madness in his eyes and a snarl on his lips- whether it is wrong that he thinks that Gaara is the most beautiful creature he has ever seen.

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3. He begins to watch Gaara whenever he gets the chance, interested in the blood and the pain and the brimming sorrow-song spoken with each breath. Gaara is aware that he is watching; aware, but yet does nothing, and Kakashi reciprocates, doing nothing even as Gaara kills, doing nothing as Gaara’s sand sips the blood as red as its wielder’s hair.

The first time they touch, Gaara’s hands are slick and gritty with blood and sand, curved and closed around his neck, sand pinning his limbs to the wall and green anguished eyes pinning his heart to Gaara’s nonexistent one.

Gaara breathes the first words they have spoken to each other,

“Beautiful one, silver and cold,” and Kakashi doesn’t fight back as Gaara’s hands close tighter and black spots dance in his vision and he is choked and smothered by the darkness.

When he wakes in the alley, he finds himself treasuring the raw abrasions where sand rubbed against skin.

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4. When Sasuke slashes Gaara’s shoulder apart, he finds himself hard-pressed not to leap down into the arena and offer bandages.

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5. Gaara’s scream of pain and terror makes him flinch and stifle a gasp. It is only later, after the invasion is repelled, that he takes off his headband and feels the saline dampness of tears on the fabric.

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6. After Naruto leaves with Jiraiya, he spends most of his time in his apartment, alone, thinking (he refuses to call it brooding) over mistakes made and unmade, blood and sand on skin, and the taste of sorrow.

It is January 12th, the first time Gaara comes to his window without explanation. He lets him in, drags out an old tea set of his mother’s, and makes green tea for the first time in twenty years. They sit on the couch together, sharing tea, and they do not speak.

The first words he says to Gaara are, ‘More tea?’ They both hear the thousand of words left unspoken, humming behind the thin veil of two syllables. Gaara nods, although whether it’s in answer to the spoken or the unspoken, he will never know.

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7. Gaara comes every Thursday night. Sometimes they watch movies. Sometimes they drink tea. A few times, they spar. Once in a great while, they sit on Kakashi’s beat-up couch and talk.

It’s on the twentieth of these midnight visits that Gaara tells him about Yashamaru.

Kakashi answers the trust by confessing his failure with Sasuke.

Gaara, awkward and confused, takes his hand and squeezes it once.

They never speak of their vulnerabilities again.

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8. He is the third person in the entire world that knows that Gaara is a talented artist, and the only person to ever receive a picture from him.

The picture is of Pakkun, done in delicate line work with faded watercolors.

He hangs it above his bed, and thanks Gaara with a hug. Later, Gaara tells him that it is only the second time he has ever been hugged.

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9. He visits Gaara for the first time in Suna when Gaara is confirmed as the fourth Kazekage. Gaara is sixteen, the youngest Kage in the history of shinobi, and Kakashi wonders at how small Gaara appears, five feet tall and swimming in the Kazekage robes.

After the party, he walks with Gaara out into the desert, and they lie on their backs on the top of a mesa and watch the stairs pass overhead in swirling arcs. Gaara lays his head on Kakashi’s chest and allows Kakashi to stroke his hair.

Hours pass without words.

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10. If he hadn’t seen Gaara’s body in Deidara’s arms, he would never have been able to use his Mangekkyo Sharingan. Naturally, Gaara is the only one who knows this.

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11. After Gaara returns to Suna, free of Shukaku for the first time in his life, Kakashi wakes from sleep to see green eyes glowing in the darkness outside his hotel window. He opens the window and invites Gaara in.

Gaara is heartbreakingly fragile and slender in the darkness, but he stumbles- haltingly, words cracking from his lips like ice in summer- over his request. Kakashi rubs at his eyes, tosses Gaara a pair of pajama pants, picks him up and plops him in his hotel bed before climbing in himself and looping an arm around Gaara’s waist.

In the morning, he wakes to an empty bed, and only then realizes just what Gaara was asking.

If he could weep, he would have at the simple, implicit trust Gaara has in him to watch over him as he slept for the first time in his life.

As it is, he reduces his nightstand to matchwood.

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12. In his own way, he looks after Gaara, with Temari and Kankuro as his allies. ‘Looking after Gaara’ involves puppetry, clever hiding places, lots of caffeine, and way too many late night jaunts from Konoha to be healthy.

He finally wins when Tsunade, exasperated with ‘love-struck fools’, assigns him as diplomatic liason to Suna.

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13. Sometimes, when Gaara is cranky and has ink smeared across the side of his face from falling asleep on wet documents, and stalks into Kakashi’s apartment demanding a backrub, Kakashi wonders why in the world he fell in love with a workaholic former demon container.

Then Gaara does something unexpected, like leaning against his legs or sharpening his kunai to a mirror-bright finish with sand, and once in a great while shyly presenting a new book on jutsu that he obtained through questionable methods, and all Kakashi can think is ‘Oh. That’s why.’

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14. Gaara is a cuddler.

This amuses Kakashi greatly, although he knows he has to keep it secret on pain of death.

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15. Kakashi is deathly afraid of sandstorms.

Gaara fixes that by making sure no sandstorms pass by Kakashi’s apartment. This also has the added bonus of upping real estate value considerably, so that many families with children move into the building.

Kakashi moves into Gaara’s home shortly thereafter.

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16. The first time Gaara says ‘I love you’ is on June 4th. Kakashi has just gotten back from a long and tiring mission to scout the borders of Oto, and is standing naked under the cold spray of a shower shivering and watching the blood // red, filling his vision-- screams, children crying, in the midst of weapons and jutsus flying back and forth-- broken bodies, so small-- // spiral around the drain like the tomoe of the Sharingan.

A warmth presses up against his back, sand covering them both and shielding them from the world, and he falls to his knees and buries his face in Gaara’s stomach, and lets a great crackling sob heave out from inside him as he whispers every sickening detail of the mission to Gaara, beautiful Gaara, who is the only one who can understand because he has seen every kind of carnage and caused most of it.

Gaara follows him to the floor of the shower and holds him as he shivers and jerks in his arms, not stilling even when Gaara whispers those three words into his skin.

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17. Gaara tops from the bottom.

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18. Sometimes at night, Gaara stirs in Kakashi’s arms and whimpers as if in terrible pain, and it is all Kakashi can do not to go and find the Third Kazekage’s grave and desecrate it in as many ways as he can possibly think of.

He can think of a lot.

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19. When Temari and Kankuro finally understand just what is going on between the two of them (Kakashi privately thinks that they aren’t very bright; it’s only been seven years after all) the Council is forced to debate if they should call for an evacuation.

They don’t, but only because Gaara is there.

Later, when they return to their homes around the Kazekage’s compound, and see the widespread property damage, they wish they did.

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20. Kakashi doesn’t expect to live a long life.

Surprisingly, with Gaara by his side, ready to take on any and all comers who even think of attacking his husband, he does.