Just Gaara

“No,” you wheeze into the fabric. “Wait. I can’t breathe.”

He crosses the room carefully, setting the mugs onto the coffee table before placing the snack tray nearest to you on instinct alone. He bought your favourites for a reason, after all. The couch dips beneath his weight as he settles at the opposite end.

“What happened?”

You turn your phone toward him.

The first thing he sees is a long wall of text. Then his eyes catch on the myriad tags at the top. Finally, he looks at an attached photo of himself from a live performance three months ago. His stomach sinks with startling immediacy.

“What is that?” he asks carefully, already certain he does not want the answer.

Your shoulders start shaking again. “You have fanfiction.”

“I know that.”

“No.” You push upright so quickly you nearly fall over the cushions, wiping tears from your eyes. “No, you don’t understand. You have fanfiction.”

Gaara stares at you with the wary composure of a man realizing he has just stepped onto unstable ice.

You settle yourself beside him properly, still visibly fighting laughter.

“I found the archive.”

“...Archive.”

“The archive, Gaara.”

“I do not like the way you’re saying that.”

“You shouldn’t,” You grin, take a deep breath, and begin scrolling rapidly. “Okay, listen to this.”

Gaara already wants to leave. Unfortunately, he loves you, so he stays where he is, fingers tightening slightly around his coffee mug like proximity to caffeine might somehow preserve his dignity.

You clear your throat with unnecessary drama.

“The stage lights carved gold into the planes of his face, but there was something almost cruel about how gently he accepted the audience’s devotion, like someone holding a wounded bird with hands capable of shattering stone.”

Silence settles across the apartment. Rain taps softly against the windows. Somewhere below, a siren wails briefly through wet streets before fading into the city again.

Gaara blinks once, very slowly. “That seems excessive,” he says at last.

“Wait, wait, it gets worse.” You’re already scrolling again with the reckless delight of someone excavating treasure. “This person has a master’s degree somewhere!”

“Y/N, please.”

You look up at him, grinning helplessly. “They wrote twelve thousand words about your hands.”

Gaara closes his eyes in exasperation. “My hands?”

“Your rings, specifically, are a recurring motif, apparently.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Gaara lifts the coffee toward his mouth with visible caution. Steam ghosts briefly across his face before dissolving into the dim room.

This is not entirely unfamiliar territory. Fame has created stranger situations before this one. Fans waiting outside venues for hours in winter storms. Interviewers asking invasive questions with rehearsed politeness. Entire online arguments he’d unfortunately stumbled across debating whether his silence during behind-the-scenes footage was intentional artistic symbolism or severe social discomfort.

The answer is usually both.

This feels different than all of those things; strangely intimate, like discovering people had been standing outside the window of his life sketching theories onto the glass.

Beside him, you let out a sudden gasp. “No,” you whisper in horror, eyes widening further. “No way!”

Gaara knows that tone intimately, it is usually followed by catastrophe.

“What?”

“This one thinks you’re secretly pathetic.”

He frowns immediately. “That’s rude.”

“No, no. Affectionately pathetic.”

“That didn’t improve the sentence, beloved.”

You rotate the phone toward him again. Tags blur past too quickly to fully process, though a few still manage to lodge themselves in his consciousness. Slow burn. Mutual pining. Emotionally constipated Gaara.

The mug stops halfway to his mouth.

Gaara’s brows furrow at the screen. He looks at you for a long moment, then back at your phone screen. 

“Emotionally what?”

You’re crying openly again now, nearly folded in half by the look of genuine offense gathering on his face.

“They diagnosed you from interviews alone!”

“I don’t understand why strangers are discussing my emotional state.”

“Oh, love.” You drag in a breath, still recovering from the latest laughing fit. “They’re not discussing it anymore. They’ve built entire ecosystems around it.”

Rainwater slides slowly down the windows behind you, distorting the city lights into liquid gold. Somewhere deeper in the apartment, the dishwasher hums softly beneath the storm.

Gaara takes another careful sip of coffee while you continue scrolling. Each increasingly horrified noise you make seems to age him incrementally.

“This one says you look like you apologise when furniture bumps into you.”

He sighs. “Sometimes I do.”

“I know!” You point at him violently. “That’s why they’re winning!”

Heat gathers traitorously beneath the collar of his shirt now, because much of this is absurd, yes, but some of it is uncomfortably accurate. Apparently the internet has reconstructed entire sections of his personality using nothing but live performances, magazine interviews, and observational skills sharp enough to qualify as psychological warfare.

Beside him, you suddenly go very still.

“Oh no.”

Gaara closes his eyes briefly, bracing. “What now?”

Your voice drops into something dangerously reverent. “The good writers found you.”

“I didn’t realise there were categories.”

“Of course there are categories,” you scoff, shifting instinctively closer, curling sideways against the couch as you turn the screen back toward yourself. “This person understands yearning on a molecular level.”

“Beloved.”

“No, listen—” you cut yourself off, clearing your throat loudly. “‘He loved with the caution of someone who still expected tenderness to explode in his hands’.”

Gaara stops moving completely, the coffee cup frozen where he holds it on his thigh, and something shifts subtly in his face. Outside, rain rattles harder against the windows for a few brief seconds before softening again. Of course, because the universe enjoys humiliating him personally, you notice the change in his expression immediately. The grin spreading slowly across your face turns incandescent.

Gaara looks away toward the windows as warmth begins climbing traitorously up his throat. 

“They got you exactly right.”

“They do not know me,” he mutters.

“No, but they know the vibe.”

“I still don’t know what that means.”

You lean sideways against Gaara’s shoulder, still scrolling, while the city outside glitters wetly beneath the downpour. For a while, you simply read snippets aloud between laughter. Some are ridiculous. Others are strangely beautiful. Some are alarmingly observant in ways that make Gaara feel briefly as though he’s being studied under laboratory lighting. Some are earnest enough to remind him painfully of old songs scribbled into notebooks at three in the morning; lyrics written during hotel insomnia and tour bus silence and moments of loneliness too embarrassing to revisit in daylight.

You reach another passage and let out a strangled sound. Gaara sighs heavily.

“This author thinks you’d fall in love because someone handed you a bottle of water after rehearsal.”

“That seems unrealistic.”

“You literally carried my migraine medication around for six months because I forgot it one time.”

He inhales to answer automatically, then pauses. His mouth remains slightly open for a second too long as he visibly recalculates. “That was…practical.”

The two of you stare at each other across the couch in complete stillness while rain patters softly against the windows, then, very slowly, you lower your phone. 

“Gaara.”

“Yes?”

“You’re in love exactly like fanfiction.”

“I don’t think that sentence means anything.”

“It means you’re doomed.”

He rubs one hand tiredly over his face as you collapse against him again in obvious victory. 

The room gradually softens around the two of you after that. Rain and distant traffic drift through the cracked window alongside the scent of cooling coffee. One forgotten lamp throws warm amber across the apartment while the skyline beyond the glass blurs silver with weather.

The snack tray sits abandoned on the coffee table now, half demolished. Gaara’s arm settles loosely around your waist without thought. Your socked feet disappear beneath his leg for warmth. Slowly, your breathing evens out as the laughter finally burns itself away. Beside you, Gaara makes the naive mistake of believing the danger has passed.

You inhale sharply beside him.

“Oh,” you murmur, “this is smut.”

Gaara nearly inhales his coffee. He coughs hard enough to jostle the cushions beneath both of you.

“I don’t think I want to hear this,” he manages eventually.

“Unfortunately, I think it’s important that you do.”

“I disagree—”

You are already reading tags aloud. 

“‘Tender dominance.’”

Gaara goes completely still beside you.

“‘Worship kink.’”

His eyes close for a moment.

“‘Service top Gaara.’”

“I don’t know what that means.”

You peer at him over the top of your phone. “Yes, you do.”

“I do not.”

“You do.”

Before he can defend himself further, you continue reading.

The flush gathering beneath his collar now is unmistakable. Controlled embarrassment. The kind he is trying very hard to survive with dignity while the person he loves most in the world treats this entire experience like live theatre.

“Whoa,” you whisper, visibly awed. “They think you make eye contact during sex like you’re apologizing for the collapse of the Roman Empire.”

“Y/N…”

“They think you kiss like a man handling sacred texts.” You pause thoughtfully for a moment before shrugging. “Not untrue, actually.”

“Y/N.”

“This one called your hands ‘devotional.’”

Gaara covers his eyes with one hand and exhales slowly through his nose like a man attempting self-regulation in real time. The traitorous thing is that none of this sounds impossible because intimacy, to him, is careful. Intentional. Serious. Unfortunately for him, the internet has apparently mistaken emotional sincerity for devastating eroticism.

You suddenly suck in a breath. “No.”

“What now?” Gaara asks, sounding genuinely tired.

“They figured out the forehead touch thing.”

The silence that follows is fatal.

Rain rattles softly against the windows. Somewhere in the kitchen, the dishwasher hum suddenly feels deafening.

Gaara lowers his hand slowly.

“...How?”

You stare at the screen like someone witnessing divine intervention as you read, “They think you do it automatically when you get overwhelmed by affection.”

Gaara’s gaze fixes on the opposite wall instead. Beyond the glass, rainwater slides down the skyline in distorted ribbons. Heat climbs mercilessly up his throat until even his ears burn red in shade that disappears into his hair.

“They’re studying you,” you say quietly, amusement still threaded through your voice.

“They are making assumptions.”

“Correct ones.”

“They are still assumptions.”

You giggle softly and shift closer until you’re pressed fully against his side, stealing warmth through the fabric of his shirt.

“You know what the worst part is?”

“I suspect you’re going to tell me.”

“You would say half the things they write for you.”

“I would not.” The response is immediate. Offended.

You raise an eyebrow at him. “Oh, really?”

“Really.”

You hum softly, scrolling a little further through the story currently open on your phone before pausing and reading aloud, “‘You don’t have to earn gentleness from me.’”

Gaara freezes. For a moment he simply watches rainwater streak down the towering windows, city lights smearing gold beneath the storm. Then he clears his throat quietly. “That one is…better written.”

You make a sound so loud and delighted that it startles him outright.

“YOU ADMITTED IT!”

“I did not.”

“YOU CRITIQUED THE PROSE!”

Gaara exhales slowly through his nose. Somewhere beneath the embarrassment, amusement has finally begun slipping through the cracks despite himself, small and reluctant and warm enough that the tension in his shoulders eases for the first time all evening. Because unfortunately, some of it is well-written.

Your grin softens for a brief, dangerous moment into something genuinely fond before sharpening again with catastrophic intent.

“You know,” you say carefully, “there are probably fanfictions about us specifically.”

Gaara looks genuinely alarmed.

“…Us?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Y/N.”

You’re already typing.

Rain drums softly against the windows while the apartment settles deeper into midnight around you. The coffee has long since gone cold on the table. One corner lamp still burns amber beside the couch, throwing soft light across abandoned snack wrappers and tangled blankets.

Several minutes pass in increasingly suspicious silence.

Then you suddenly make the kind of horrified delighted noise that signals you have discovered something unspeakable. Gaara closes his eyes immediately and, with perfect clarity, he understands this is how he dies.

Not through scandal. Not through exhaustion. Not even onstage beneath hot, blinding lights.

But on a couch after midnight while the person he loves most in the world reads internet pornography about him with the delighted concentration of a scholar uncovering lost scripture.

bonus because i can’t help myself

You wake up to an empty bed and thin amber light spilling beneath the bedroom door. For one disoriented second your brain supplies ‘intruder’ before you remember who you live with.

The apartment is quiet except for distant rain and the low refrigerator hum that always seems louder after midnight. 4:23 AM glows neon-blue across the microwave clock as you pad barefoot into the living room. The apartment still looks faintly wrecked from earlier. Cold coffee abandoned on the table and half-demolished snacks left out on the tray. A blanket is tangled sideways on the couch, hanging precariously off the edge.

Gaara sits in the middle of it wearing sweatpants and an old black band t-shirt, laptop balanced across his knees and sitting completely motionless. 

The expression on his face is gravely serious, neither entertained nor embarrassed, but more like…studying.

You narrow your eyes through the darkness.

“Gaara?”

He doesn’t look up from the screen.

“This characterisation is inaccurate.”

A beat of silence hangs perilously in the air.

“YOU’RE READING THE FANFICTION?!” you shriek, absolutely obliterating what remained of the apartment’s peace and quite possibly waking at least one neighbor.

He finally glances over then, entirely calm despite the fact that you’re yelling like you’ve just caught him committing treason.

“This version of me wouldn’t say that.”

You stare at him in utter disbelief. 

The laptop glow reflects faintly in his eyes. Paragraphs of text scroll endlessly across the screen, AO3 tags lined across the top like cursed academic terminology. 

“I can’t believe this. You’ve become your own fandom discourse.”

“That is not what’s happening.”

“Gaara, you’re fact-checking fanfiction at four in the morning.”

“I was curious.”

“YOU’RE PEER-REVIEWING IT!”

He pauses thoughtfully, and then, with absolute sincerity, “This author fundamentally misunderstands how I would approach emotional vulnerability.”

You make a noise usually only heard in wildlife documentaries moments before the predator attacks its prey. You gasp, catching sight of something on the screen and stumble closer. “You left kudos on this one!”

Gaara’s expression shifts microscopically into something that could almost be called sheepish. “I appreciated the pacing,” he admits awkwardly.

You collapse face-first into the couch cushions beside him, laughing so hard that you can barely breathe while Gaara simply turns back to the screen with that same grave concentration and says, “The dialogue improves significantly in chapter four.”

🖤 tag list: @4theloveoflotus, @neuschwastein