Sand Beast

Ch. 6

"Hey, you! The red-head with the eye makeup!"

Lee froze with his tea halfway to his mouth. On the other side of the table, Gaara turned his head slowly to look over at the man who’d addressed him.

"Yeah, you. Care to show a hardworking sailor a good time?"

Lee sat in stunned horror for a brief instant, then he plunked down his cup hard enough to attract the man's drunken attention.

"He's not interested," he said, trying to keep his tone firm but unprovocative.

"Oh yeah? And who are you?” the man asked, swaying a bit and trying to focus on Lee. “The daddy?"

Lee stared at the drunken sailor, aghast.

"You should leave," he finally managed to say. "Now."

The sailor started to protest, but just then one of his friends who hadn't gotten quite as plastered, grabbed him by the shoulders and started to drag him away. Lee didn't know what kind of face Gaara was making because he didn't dare look quite yet, but the second man was staring at the Sand nin and he'd gone pale.

"Come on, mate," the second sailor muttered tightly, "I don't think that guy's a rent-boy."

"But he's dressed like-"

"For the love of god, shut up and let's go!"

Lee made sure the two sailors had actually exited the tavern. Then with the great courage that characterized Rock Lee, he turned to face Gaara.

Gaara didn't look ready to kill, strangely enough. He was staring at Lee, unperturbed and impassive as usual, but Lee could detect a faint layer of curiosity in the green eyes.

"What's a rent-boy?"

"Um..." Lee coughed and tried to think of what to say.

"Why would he think you're my father? You're only a year older than me, and we look nothing alike."

"He was very drunk. I think we should leave," Lee said, his voice pitched higher than usual. He stood up, leaving their unfinished tea behind with a few coins for the waitress, and headed quickly towards the tavern’s back door.

Lee sidestepped a thin cat in the back alley, as well as a couple of crates of fish that were starting to stink under the sun, and headed towards the street as fast as he could. But he didn't make it.

"He thought I was a prostitute," Gaara said right behind him, in the tone of one who'd just now figured it out.

Lee stopped and put a hand out to lean briefly against the wall, though what he really wanted to do was bang his head against it. He'd been hoping Gaara wouldn't catch on. Gaara might have been born in blood, killed his first man by the age of three and have more murders to his name than most Shinobi were reasonably expected to at his age, but nobody had bothered to give Sunagakure's lethal weapon much of an education outside of the art of killing as Lee had found out on previous occasions. In some ways, Gaara was quite-...

Lee tried to fit the word 'innocent' in the same sentence as 'Gaara' and failed completely. No, not innocent by a very long stretch, but Gaara was missing some information about how the non-Shinobi world functioned. Lee, as a ninja, had been taught the ins and outs of the criminal underbelly of society at the academy. He might have to use it to go undercover on missions, or he might be commissioned by his country or village to target certain areas of it. Lee hadn't liked that part of his education much, but at least he knew what a rent-boy was. His face was now a shade of red it normally didn't reach unless he'd opened his Life Gate. He had the feeling that Gaara was going to force him to elaborate, and serious wall-induced head trauma was looking very appealing.