The first time he saves your life you don’t even really notice until later, and he doesn’t either. That’s just the sort of guy he is: saving people, to him, is like passing the salt. It’s just what you do. See someone in trouble, save them. Only later when you’re back with Shikamaru, lying under a tree and enjoying the first weak warmth of spring on your half-healed wounds you remember, and tell the jounin beside you. He shrugs without moving much: What can you do? He asks with a twitch of a shoulder and a long sigh. That’s just the way Lee is.

The first time you really meet him is when you’re huddled under a tree and gloomily munching your fourth bag of chips. It’s almost finished but you really, really don’t want to venture out and head back home –April’s such a bitch- when he comes stomping over the hill, spattered with mud and beaming ear-to-ear in that weird demented-turtle way. He pauses, seeing you under the tree and you can almost see the gears turning in his head as he tries to figure out where he remembers you from. Uncomfortable, you offer him your last bag of chips.

He falls on the food like a starving wolf, his eyes actually watering and not just from the rain. He tells you, between mouthfuls and as offhand as if he were commenting on a trip to the grocery store, that he’d forgotten to eat for awhile, he’d been training.

You ask how long, partly out of politeness and partly out of morbid curiosity. Lee turns the bag inside out and frowns as he licks his fingers, thinking. What day is it? he asks, Tuesday? Horrified, you grab his wrist and drag him home in time for dinner, where he starts bawling like a child from gratitude and to just see so much food. It earns him some weird looks from your cousins but a seventh serving from your mom, who normally never lets anyone have more than six unless they really earn it. Later on he’s conked out on the couch and you can hear the awed whispers starting up, and even your uncle admits that the boy can really pack it away.

The next day he wakes up and staggers groggily downstairs, wondering where the hell he is, and finds the kitchen before he finds you. It isn’t hard, considering the way the Akimichi compound’s built, but he looks a little embarrassed at breakfast.

But you get to know him, and quickly too because Lee’s never been one for tact and he grabs you by the wrist this time. What are you doing? you ask him, more than a little embarrassed because your cousin’s smirking at you. He beams. Training, he shouts at the top of his lungs, and gestures grandly at the Great Beyond  like the hero of a movie, and damned if he doesn’t sweep you off your feet and you two go dashing out the door.

Hours later you’re sitting on the top of a huge post and watching him finish off push-ups like you finish off popcorn but for all that he’s thick as an iron brick he doesn’t miss the expression on your face when he bounds to his feet. He asks what’s wrong and you don’t miss the –kun he’s already added to your name and you end up telling him everything, how you’re fat and lazy and dumb and you’ll never amount to anything.

He frowns, thinking, then beams. If, he shouts, pointing a finger in the air like some crazy professor, if he can’t help you feel better about yourself, you’ll hate him and not be his friend anymore. The news that you are his friend at all is, well, news, to you but before you can protest that you won’t hate him he’s got you flat on the ground and is shouting encouraging words at you while you sweat your way through one thousand, one hundred and thirty-five push-ups, and eight-hundred seventy-nine sit-ups.

You stagger home, not even amazed anymore at how much of your weight he’s supporting, and your mom smiles to see him come in. It turns out that Gai-Sensei’s still out on the B-rank mission so Lee stays over a second night, and you beat him nine to nothing at shougi.

I told you I’d make you feel better, he laughs as you fall asleep smiling.

By the fourth night Lee’s an honorary Akimichi. Shikamaru smiles in that sly sort of way during their next mission and says he’d better be careful if he wants to stay your best friend for much longer. It’s only when Lee goes back to his apartment with Gai that you realize just how well he does fit, but it’s too late and no one but you really notices, except maybe your mom and you’d rather pretend that she doesn’t.

But the second time he saves your life it’s different, because you’re partners in your fourth chuunin exam, and you’ve known each other for three years now and he’s damned if he’s going to let his precious person die again because Gai’s been gone since the summer and you’re the only one he has left.

Not even he really says it but as you slog back out into the rain, shoulder to shoulder, it doesn’t need saying. You just sort of know, because you’re Akimichi Choji and you’re a lot smarter than you let on, and he’s just Lee, dense as a brick but not in this.

Never in this.