For saxon_dogs
Title: This time won't you save me
Rating: R-ish
Warnings: None
Summary/Prompt: 8059 career!au: as journalists, baristas, lawyers, policemen, undertakers, cat burglars, whatever!
A/N: Not sure how much I followed the prompt honestly...I sort of saw policemen and ran with it, sorry about that and the lateness!
Gokudera knows that this is stupid. Incredibly and utterly so. If he isn’t careful, it could even get him killed in the most horrible way imaginable.
He thinks it might be worth it though. In order to have something as far removed from his life as possible. Something away from the blood and the guns and the threats. Something that’s his that he doesn’t have to share with the family, with his Boss.
Not that he begrudges Tsuna a thing. The person who took him in and gave him everything he never had with his own family. But this…he can’t even bring himself to tell his Boss about. He’d been ashamed that he was betraying him or that he was being ungrateful.
Somehow though…he thinks Tsuna knows. After their nightly dinner meeting, he’ll make his reports about what’s been going on with the family and their allies and Tsuna will nod and listen, watching Gokudera with that intent way that he has that always makes Gokudera squirm whenever he’s hiding something.
But Tsuna never says anything. Not even on Thursdays when Gokudera excuses himself early because he’s got ‘business to take care of’. Tsuna asks him what it is and if he needs help and Gokudera has to make up some reason to refuse. Tsuna never presses or insists just gives him that enigmatic little smile, shakes his head and tells him to be careful.
Gokudera has to bite his tongue to not spill everything. It’s not that he doesn’t trust his Boss, he does…but he has a sinking thought that maybe…if Tsuna knew what he was doing behind his back…he would take everything away from him. That he would remember that Gokudera was useless after all and that he had made a mistake in making a gutter rat like Gokudera his right-hand.
It’s something that he knows will happen sooner or later. He’d just rather it be on his own terms and rather that he would have something to fall back on when the inevitable happened and he was tossed out.
He knows that this is probably going to be the last straw…but he can’t help it.
He gets on the A19 out of Palermo and onto the A20 at Buonfornello and doesn’t find money for the toll until he’s pulled up to the booth. It’s a tiny little rebellion. That he really isn’t doing this again until he pays the toll. When the attendant asks for his money, he hesitates. The man in the booth is insulting his mother by the time he makes up his mind and sighs, reaching into his cup holder and coming up with the exact change. He’s done this so many times now that he doesn’t even have to look to know how much he needs. He pays and the gate is lifted, he closes his eyes a second, exhaling slowly, trying to convince himself that he’s going to turn around at the next exit. That he can sacrifice a few euro for the choice he’s about to make.
By the time he gets to Falcone, he’s tightening his grip on the steering wheel, grinding his teeth. It’ll be the next one for sure.
But the exits for Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto and Milazzo pass right by him and he sighs again. He’s less than 40 kilometers out of Messina by now and it would be four in the morning by the time he got back. Far too late to sneak into the house and risk waking his Boss up.
He tells himself that this is going to be the absolute last time. That he’s a goddamn Mafioso and he should have more willpower than this.
He’s almost convinced himself of that by the time he gets to Messina and travels the short way through the city to that apartment complex. He pulls into the parking lot and he’s got the speech on the tip of his tongue. The one he’d had memorized since they’d started this. By the time he’s in the elevator, he’s starting to form the words in his mouth. He’s determined that he’s not going to let the idiot distract him from what he needs to say. That he’s not going to be bowled over by the enthusiasm and the friendliness like he’d been from the moment they met.
He’s going to say, they’re both going to cry, they’re going to fuck one last time and then they’ll fall asleep in each other’s arms and when it gets light out, Gokudera will slip out of his arms and leave.
Then he’ll change his phone number and email address and will delete the idiot’s. He won’t contact him and he’ll never go to Messina again if he can help it.
His resolve firm, he steps out of the elevator at the 7th floor and lets himself into the apartment with the stupid baseball shaped key.
There are already shoes by the door so he knows he isn’t the first one in.
He takes deep breath, ready to recite his speech but the idiot is too quick. He’s enveloped in a pair of warm and familiar arms and the breath is squeezed out of him, kisses pressed to his face and he’s too bewildered to do anything but swat at the idiot and rail at him for being too expressive.
His scolding is taken with a laugh and the moron takes his hand, leading him to the dining room, where he’s set the table, candles and everything and that’s when Gokudera notices the smell and his stomach rebels.
He sighs and gives the idiot another kiss, because he’d been practically bouncing up and down waiting for Gokudera to praise him.
As he sits down at the table and the idiot doesn’t let go of his hand, the entire time they’re eating, he steels his resolve.
Next time. He’ll get his speech out and he won’t let that stupid puppy dog face get to him and talk him out of it.
Yamamoto is far more practical. He knows why this is hard for Gokudera and if he was a less selfish person, he would probably just let him go. If he was less selfish, he wouldn’t have asked him out in the first place. He’d known who Gokudera was the moment he saw him, he’d had the advantage of being out of uniform so Gokudera didn’t have the same advantage.
He’d been off duty and Gokudera had wandered into his favorite bar in Messina and he couldn’t resist. He’d delivered one cheesy line after another before Gokudera had relented with a bemused grin and had followed him back to his apartment towards the edge of the city. The one he used when he would be tired to drive back to Syracuse that night and would save his report for the morning.
It was stupid, granted, but he didn’t regret it. What was done was done and there was no getting around it.
The next time he’d gone to Messina, he stopped off at the bar on the off-chance that Gokudera might have stopped by as well. When he walked in and saw that odd silver hair and the cloud of smoke that surrounded it, he couldn’t help the wide grin as he approached.
Of course, Gokudera denied being there for him. Said that he had some business to take care of in the city and had remembered that the bartender was generous with his whiskey and didn’t water it down. The fact that he happened to meet Yamamoto here again, two Thursdays in a row was pure coincidence.
It didn’t stop him from following Yamamoto to the apartment again, however.
After two months, the bartender was starting to give them looks. It was then that Yamamoto resolved to take things in a different direction. The next Thursday he gave Gokudera the key and couldn’t help but laugh at the blush that came over his face. He threw it against the wall and tackled Yamamoto to the bed and took both of their minds off of it for the rest of the night.
When Yamamoto woke up in the morning, Gokudera was gone and so was the key and he realized that he’d won what was to be the first of many arguments.
When Yamamoto finishes his patrol on Thursdays, he denies his coworkers calls to go for drinks with them and hops onto the A18. He’s got his change for the tolls on the dashboard and by this time he’s friendly with the attendant. He asks about Signore Guigliano’s children and if his daughter’s no account his husband has cleaned up his act yet. At this time of night, the booths are mostly empty and he knows that the old man enjoys his company for the brief few minutes that he stops to talk.
The son-in-law has gotten a proper job and had the fear of God put into him when Carabinieri with a ridiculously long sword had showed up at his door step one night. Signore Guigliano finds this a weird coincidence and Yamamoto does nothing but laugh along with him before paying the toll and continuing on his way.
His trip is far shorter than Gokudera’s and he makes it to the apartment with an hour to spare.
He knows that this stresses Gokudera out so he does everything he can think of to convince him that this is worth it. That the thing they’ve never bothered to put a name to is worth both of their lives and careers. Because he knows who Gokudera is behind the mafia mask and he hopes that Gokudera knows that he isn’t just Carabinieri.
They’ve been doing this a year and by this time, he’s learned Gokudera’s favorite foods and which ones he just says are his favorites to save face because his real ones would violate some obscure mafia tradition of manliness that demands all food be full of meat, cheese and spices.
So he makes pesto cavatappi and lights candles and waits to ambush Gokudera at the door. Before he can have time to launch into the speech that Yamamoto has heard him practicing in the bathroom when he thinks Yamamoto is asleep. The one he tries to start every week and the one that Yamamoto always distracts him from.
One day, maybe he’ll let him get it out. He’ll listen to every one of Gokudera’s well-reasoned points about how stupid this is and how many levels of unsafe it is. That they aren’t fucking Romeo and Juliet and the fact that this will kill them both is anything but romantic. He’ll let him get it all out and watch his forehead scrunch up in those little lines like it does when he’s really troubled about something.
When he’s done Yamamoto will smile and kiss him and tell him not to worry about it. Maybe he’ll tell him that he’s already taken care of it. That he has friends in high places. That the ROS is just as corrupt as the rest of the Carabinieri and that his captain is childhood friends with the Tenth Vongola Boss. Hibari is strict and a taskmaster but he was willing to negotiate. Vongola stays out of Syracuse and the ROS stays away from Vongola.
Maybe he’ll tell him that he’d gone to Hibari a month after they’d met and had confessed everything. And that the bruises he’d had that Thursday hadn’t been from a bust gone bad, but from his captain losing his temper before calling his old friend for an emergency meeting.
On second thought…that would probably just make him worry more.
On the day that Yamamoto lets him finish that speech, he’ll kiss Gokudera and hold him and tell him that everything will be fine. He’ll tell him to have a little faith and that things will work out. He knows that Gokudera won’t stop worrying immediately but it’s better than the alternative.
Gokudera wouldn’t believe him if he told the truth.
(translation notes: A18, A19 and A20 are highways that connect different major cities in Sicily. ROS stands for Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale and is a special group of the Carabinieri that is responsible for, among other things, organized crime.)
Rating: R-ish
Warnings: None
Summary/Prompt: 8059 career!au: as journalists, baristas, lawyers, policemen, undertakers, cat burglars, whatever!
A/N: Not sure how much I followed the prompt honestly...I sort of saw policemen and ran with it, sorry about that and the lateness!
Gokudera knows that this is stupid. Incredibly and utterly so. If he isn’t careful, it could even get him killed in the most horrible way imaginable.
He thinks it might be worth it though. In order to have something as far removed from his life as possible. Something away from the blood and the guns and the threats. Something that’s his that he doesn’t have to share with the family, with his Boss.
Not that he begrudges Tsuna a thing. The person who took him in and gave him everything he never had with his own family. But this…he can’t even bring himself to tell his Boss about. He’d been ashamed that he was betraying him or that he was being ungrateful.
Somehow though…he thinks Tsuna knows. After their nightly dinner meeting, he’ll make his reports about what’s been going on with the family and their allies and Tsuna will nod and listen, watching Gokudera with that intent way that he has that always makes Gokudera squirm whenever he’s hiding something.
But Tsuna never says anything. Not even on Thursdays when Gokudera excuses himself early because he’s got ‘business to take care of’. Tsuna asks him what it is and if he needs help and Gokudera has to make up some reason to refuse. Tsuna never presses or insists just gives him that enigmatic little smile, shakes his head and tells him to be careful.
Gokudera has to bite his tongue to not spill everything. It’s not that he doesn’t trust his Boss, he does…but he has a sinking thought that maybe…if Tsuna knew what he was doing behind his back…he would take everything away from him. That he would remember that Gokudera was useless after all and that he had made a mistake in making a gutter rat like Gokudera his right-hand.
It’s something that he knows will happen sooner or later. He’d just rather it be on his own terms and rather that he would have something to fall back on when the inevitable happened and he was tossed out.
He knows that this is probably going to be the last straw…but he can’t help it.
He gets on the A19 out of Palermo and onto the A20 at Buonfornello and doesn’t find money for the toll until he’s pulled up to the booth. It’s a tiny little rebellion. That he really isn’t doing this again until he pays the toll. When the attendant asks for his money, he hesitates. The man in the booth is insulting his mother by the time he makes up his mind and sighs, reaching into his cup holder and coming up with the exact change. He’s done this so many times now that he doesn’t even have to look to know how much he needs. He pays and the gate is lifted, he closes his eyes a second, exhaling slowly, trying to convince himself that he’s going to turn around at the next exit. That he can sacrifice a few euro for the choice he’s about to make.
By the time he gets to Falcone, he’s tightening his grip on the steering wheel, grinding his teeth. It’ll be the next one for sure.
But the exits for Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto and Milazzo pass right by him and he sighs again. He’s less than 40 kilometers out of Messina by now and it would be four in the morning by the time he got back. Far too late to sneak into the house and risk waking his Boss up.
He tells himself that this is going to be the absolute last time. That he’s a goddamn Mafioso and he should have more willpower than this.
He’s almost convinced himself of that by the time he gets to Messina and travels the short way through the city to that apartment complex. He pulls into the parking lot and he’s got the speech on the tip of his tongue. The one he’d had memorized since they’d started this. By the time he’s in the elevator, he’s starting to form the words in his mouth. He’s determined that he’s not going to let the idiot distract him from what he needs to say. That he’s not going to be bowled over by the enthusiasm and the friendliness like he’d been from the moment they met.
He’s going to say, they’re both going to cry, they’re going to fuck one last time and then they’ll fall asleep in each other’s arms and when it gets light out, Gokudera will slip out of his arms and leave.
Then he’ll change his phone number and email address and will delete the idiot’s. He won’t contact him and he’ll never go to Messina again if he can help it.
His resolve firm, he steps out of the elevator at the 7th floor and lets himself into the apartment with the stupid baseball shaped key.
There are already shoes by the door so he knows he isn’t the first one in.
He takes deep breath, ready to recite his speech but the idiot is too quick. He’s enveloped in a pair of warm and familiar arms and the breath is squeezed out of him, kisses pressed to his face and he’s too bewildered to do anything but swat at the idiot and rail at him for being too expressive.
His scolding is taken with a laugh and the moron takes his hand, leading him to the dining room, where he’s set the table, candles and everything and that’s when Gokudera notices the smell and his stomach rebels.
He sighs and gives the idiot another kiss, because he’d been practically bouncing up and down waiting for Gokudera to praise him.
As he sits down at the table and the idiot doesn’t let go of his hand, the entire time they’re eating, he steels his resolve.
Next time. He’ll get his speech out and he won’t let that stupid puppy dog face get to him and talk him out of it.
Yamamoto is far more practical. He knows why this is hard for Gokudera and if he was a less selfish person, he would probably just let him go. If he was less selfish, he wouldn’t have asked him out in the first place. He’d known who Gokudera was the moment he saw him, he’d had the advantage of being out of uniform so Gokudera didn’t have the same advantage.
He’d been off duty and Gokudera had wandered into his favorite bar in Messina and he couldn’t resist. He’d delivered one cheesy line after another before Gokudera had relented with a bemused grin and had followed him back to his apartment towards the edge of the city. The one he used when he would be tired to drive back to Syracuse that night and would save his report for the morning.
It was stupid, granted, but he didn’t regret it. What was done was done and there was no getting around it.
The next time he’d gone to Messina, he stopped off at the bar on the off-chance that Gokudera might have stopped by as well. When he walked in and saw that odd silver hair and the cloud of smoke that surrounded it, he couldn’t help the wide grin as he approached.
Of course, Gokudera denied being there for him. Said that he had some business to take care of in the city and had remembered that the bartender was generous with his whiskey and didn’t water it down. The fact that he happened to meet Yamamoto here again, two Thursdays in a row was pure coincidence.
It didn’t stop him from following Yamamoto to the apartment again, however.
After two months, the bartender was starting to give them looks. It was then that Yamamoto resolved to take things in a different direction. The next Thursday he gave Gokudera the key and couldn’t help but laugh at the blush that came over his face. He threw it against the wall and tackled Yamamoto to the bed and took both of their minds off of it for the rest of the night.
When Yamamoto woke up in the morning, Gokudera was gone and so was the key and he realized that he’d won what was to be the first of many arguments.
When Yamamoto finishes his patrol on Thursdays, he denies his coworkers calls to go for drinks with them and hops onto the A18. He’s got his change for the tolls on the dashboard and by this time he’s friendly with the attendant. He asks about Signore Guigliano’s children and if his daughter’s no account his husband has cleaned up his act yet. At this time of night, the booths are mostly empty and he knows that the old man enjoys his company for the brief few minutes that he stops to talk.
The son-in-law has gotten a proper job and had the fear of God put into him when Carabinieri with a ridiculously long sword had showed up at his door step one night. Signore Guigliano finds this a weird coincidence and Yamamoto does nothing but laugh along with him before paying the toll and continuing on his way.
His trip is far shorter than Gokudera’s and he makes it to the apartment with an hour to spare.
He knows that this stresses Gokudera out so he does everything he can think of to convince him that this is worth it. That the thing they’ve never bothered to put a name to is worth both of their lives and careers. Because he knows who Gokudera is behind the mafia mask and he hopes that Gokudera knows that he isn’t just Carabinieri.
They’ve been doing this a year and by this time, he’s learned Gokudera’s favorite foods and which ones he just says are his favorites to save face because his real ones would violate some obscure mafia tradition of manliness that demands all food be full of meat, cheese and spices.
So he makes pesto cavatappi and lights candles and waits to ambush Gokudera at the door. Before he can have time to launch into the speech that Yamamoto has heard him practicing in the bathroom when he thinks Yamamoto is asleep. The one he tries to start every week and the one that Yamamoto always distracts him from.
One day, maybe he’ll let him get it out. He’ll listen to every one of Gokudera’s well-reasoned points about how stupid this is and how many levels of unsafe it is. That they aren’t fucking Romeo and Juliet and the fact that this will kill them both is anything but romantic. He’ll let him get it all out and watch his forehead scrunch up in those little lines like it does when he’s really troubled about something.
When he’s done Yamamoto will smile and kiss him and tell him not to worry about it. Maybe he’ll tell him that he’s already taken care of it. That he has friends in high places. That the ROS is just as corrupt as the rest of the Carabinieri and that his captain is childhood friends with the Tenth Vongola Boss. Hibari is strict and a taskmaster but he was willing to negotiate. Vongola stays out of Syracuse and the ROS stays away from Vongola.
Maybe he’ll tell him that he’d gone to Hibari a month after they’d met and had confessed everything. And that the bruises he’d had that Thursday hadn’t been from a bust gone bad, but from his captain losing his temper before calling his old friend for an emergency meeting.
On second thought…that would probably just make him worry more.
On the day that Yamamoto lets him finish that speech, he’ll kiss Gokudera and hold him and tell him that everything will be fine. He’ll tell him to have a little faith and that things will work out. He knows that Gokudera won’t stop worrying immediately but it’s better than the alternative.
Gokudera wouldn’t believe him if he told the truth.
(translation notes: A18, A19 and A20 are highways that connect different major cities in Sicily. ROS stands for Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale and is a special group of the Carabinieri that is responsible for, among other things, organized crime.)