[chrome] Metamorphosis
Title: Metamorphosis
ID: [chrome]
Word Count: 3,300
Ratings/Warnings: PG for mentions of violence
Characters/Pairings: Gokudera, Yamamoto
Summary: You followed the trail of his revenge all the way to this city.
Theme Challenge: YES
For the longest time you’ve been dreaming of this city, of its majestic presence and long streets cobbled with history. Now that you’re actually here, though, you can’t help but feel disappointed, like you’ve been duped and taken to a city that looks and sounds like the one you've heard described in worshipping tones, but just isn’t it, somehow.
The people are extremely rude, for one. They bump against you and disturb your balance and don’t even look back, much less apologize. They curse in a language you can’t even begin to understand; you only know they’re cursing because the sounds are familiar, remembered by force of being shouted at you over and over again in anger in a place on the other end of the planet. You think of his shouting at you the most, his permanent scowl and the insults that roll off his tongue with complete ease whenever he's within a ten meter radius of you. You think of the crankiness with a smile, because you’d rather think of that than the reason you had to come find him here of all places.
An elbow stabs your side painfully and brings you back to the present. The owner of the offending limb is already walking away from you, shouting something unintelligible in Italian over the cacophony of typically Mediterranean loudness and the honking of cars on the road. Presumably it’s some kind of reproach to you for standing still in the middle of the street, looking vaguely around you as if thinking of the best route but never taking a step in any direction. You laugh sheepishly and rub the back of your head, out of habit, but whoever walked into you an instant ago is already gone. You can’t remember his or her face, and everyone in this country looks identical to you anyway.
You stand there, in front of the Palace, surrounded by an army of Western clones and wish you would recognize one face, just the one face, but Rome is imbued in its hectic rhythm and has no time to care for your wistfulness. You followed the trail of his revenge all the way to this city and, just as you’re wondering what to do next, having rushed headfirst into this place without a clear plan in mind, your phone rings.
"Heeey!" Squalo shouts from the other end of the line, and though your eardrums resent the abuse your heart welcomes it, finally something familiar in this jungle. "Where are you now?"
"In Piazza Venezia, Rome." You allow yourself a second to feel proud of yourself for having pronounced that, and then you ask the question that's been sitting like lead in your gut since you began this mad chase across the country. "Have you been to the villa? Were you in time?"
"In time to watch it burn to ash, sure!" yells Squalo, obviously angry. "This is like what happened at Milan and Naples! We get hired to exterminate the local branch of the Baressi, and when we get there that crazy motherfucker's already done the job! He killed every last one of them, down to their boss! We're professional assassins, not his fucking cleanup squad! This is --"
"Gokudera," you cut urgently. "Did you find his body?"
"Not yet. We'll keep looking, just in case, but if he was inside when the whole thing blew up, he's probably --"
"Thanks, Squalo. I'm sorry you have to do this."
"Damn right you should be sorry, hey! You'd better not be getting rusty over there, or I'll really let you have it next time I see you!" Which is probably Squalo's way of expressing concern, you reckon. You laugh sheepishly and say, "Wouldn't want that!"
"I'll call you again if we find his body," Squalo says, and hangs up.
You continue wandering the streets like a lost child, heart in your ears as you frantically scan the crowd for someone you recognize. You wade through the seas of people going somewhere else and once, just once, you spot that familiar set of the shoulders, the stiff back of those who carry their baggage with them wherever they go, and your heart stops. You start running, pushing aside men and women alike, their curses and shouted offenses mute to your ears. You have to reach him. When you do, you smile, start telling him off for heading into enemy territory all by himself. You place a hand on his shoulder to turn him around and it's someone else.
You had a dream like this before.
The man you had mistaken for Gokudera Hayato gives you a slack-jawed look of terror, starts apologizing profusely. You look at his face and can't understand how you ever thought this may be him. The eyes are different, small and nervous and scared, and he doesn't have wrinkles between his eyebrows from permanent scowling. It's all wrong. He's not even insulting you. You laugh at yourself, and apologize to the man in your horribly accented Italian, then walk away.
You're a couple blocks away when your phone buzzes again. It's Basil. We have had contact from Gokudera-dono to confirm the death of Luca Baressi. The call to CEDEF headquarters was made from this location, and an address in Rome. You open the map attached to the message and find the old-school black cross. It's a couple of blocks away. You cross the street at a run, ignore the furious honking of a car that had to brake to avoid colliding with you. Usually you would stop to apologize, but today you run faster instead.
The address Basil gave you belongs to an unassuming little restaurant off the Via del Corso. There's a battered old Camaro parked defiantly in the blue zone out front, no trace of a ticket from the parking meter tucked under the windshield wipers. This is what the years have turned his rebellion against the world into, you suppose. You laugh and walk into the restaurant.
It's a cozy little place, brightly lit, packed with four-cornered tables each with its checkered white-and-red tablecloth and two candles on top. There's a short plump woman wiping dishes behind the counter, and arguing with her in machinegun Italian (something about not being allowed to smoke, if you're understanding them right) sits the very man whose trace you've been following for this past week. Gokudera Hayato.
"You shouldn't have parked your car in the blue zone, Hayato," you tell him in Italian, probably making a hundred grammar mistakes in the process. "It'll get towed away if you leave it there."
They both whip around at the sound of your voice, Gokudera with a wince that's replaced by his usual scowl fast enough that anyone else would have missed it. His hand withdraws from the inside of his jacket and comes to rest on the counter again.
"I thought it was just about time you showed up, baseball freak," he says. In Japanese, you note wryly. "You just can't keep your nose out of other people's business, can you?"
Normally you'd take his jabs in stride, but today, the way he says "other people's business" tips you over the edge. You walk up to him, ready to punch him off his stool if that's what it takes to get your point across, and you see the shape he's in, and freeze in place.
"You're injured." His right arm is in a sling. You couldn't see it from the threshold, but his hands are bandaged as well, most probably burnt, and his back's posture is tense and awkward. You place a hand lightly on his side and he flinches and hisses at you. "You shouldn't be moving about. Did you break a rib?"
"Just bruised," he says, not meeting your eyes. "I've had worse. I'm fine."
You'd like to shout at him for not taking care of himself, for rushing headfirst into his self-assigned suicide mission to avenge Tsuna's death, but at the same time you can't help feeling respect. You knew he was strong, of course, you've fought alongside him on innumerable occasions, but the stunt he's pulled this time is on a different level. He infiltrated and destroyed all three Italian bases of the Baressi Famiglia and killed the boss, and all he's got to show for it is a broken arm and a couple of bruised ribs. He's indestructible, that's what he is.
"What are you laughing about now?" Gokudera says, rolls his eyes at you.
"I guess I'm just relieved?" To see him alive, when you'd thought his blind rage at the Baressi for the hit on Tsuna would get him killed too. Now you've found him, it's a load off your shoulders.
You open your mouth to ask him why he didn't wait for you to start his rampage, but that's the moment your stomach chooses to remind you of your other priorities.
"Jesus, what kind of unearthly sound is that? Have you not eaten all day?" Gokudera asks, shakes his head in disbelief.
Before you quite know it, the old lady behind the counter is fussing over you, scolding you loudly in Italian and shouting at Gokudera for heaven knows what. They bicker back and forth for a few moments and then she's leading the two of you away from the counter and down the corridor, through a door you hadn't even noticed until now.
The room on the other side is tiny, a private room with a table for two in the middle of it. There's a small window, but the curtains are draped close. The only light in the room comes from the tens of candles that line every flat surface, even the floor. At the old lady's insistence you take one chair, and Gokudera the other. The atmosphere is oddly intimate. You look at Gokudera and see him fidgeting with his pack of cigarettes, opening and closing the lid compulsively and not meeting your eyes. You think he's blushing, but it's hard to tell in this light. Just when you think it can't get any more awkward, the old lady places a huge plate of spaghetti carbonara in front of you and another in front of Gokudera. She claps her hands together and gives you an expectant look.
"You'd better eat up," Gokudera says. "Or she'll scold you again."
You pick up your fork and try to imitate Gokudera. You don't know how he does it, but with a little flick of the wrist he manages to scoop the spaghetti up perfectly without dropping any. And he's doing it left-handed. It's an Italian thing, you suppose. Encoded in his DNA.
The old lady offers you a spoon to help you roll the spaghetti around your fork, but Gokudera says that's for small children and rejects the offer on your behalf. The old lady leaves the room and you tuck the corner of your napkin under the collar of your shirt to act as bib before Gokudera has a chance to shout at you for dripping tomato sauce all over your expensive suit.
The lady comes in with drinks and more food a couple of times, until you assure her the food's delicious (it really is) but if she brings any more you won't be able to eat it without your stomach exploding. Gokudera's done eating all three courses before you've even started on the salad that came after the pasta, and you'd be impressed if you'd never seen him put away twice his weight in food on the nights after completing a mission for the Family.
Little by little, Gokudera starts talking about the last few days. He describes the attacks on the Baressi in clinical, detached tones, and you listen to every word. He had help from the Cavallone and the Longchamp on today's attack, he says; apparently, they engaged the small fry so Gokudera would be free to fight the boss. You hear him talk and know from the look of his face he's feeling guilt, like Tsuna's death was in any way his fault, but you can't very well tell him to snap out of it when you feel just as responsible, yourself.
In a way, it was nobody's fault, you suppose. You had set airtight defenses around Tsuna, protected him with everything you had, but the bullet slipped through your barriers anyway. You couldn't do anything to save him, which is the worst part of all.
"The old lady that runs this restaurant let me stay here overnight once, a long time ago. I'd managed to somehow piss off every gang in Italy, but she didn't care. This was just before I moved to Japan, just before the Tenth -" his voice breaks on the title "-just before he took me in. I couldn't think of anywhere else to wait for you, so I came here."
"You came here to wait for me?" you ask, though it makes sense in hindsight; you would never have found him in Rome if he hadn't given his location away to Basil.
"Of course I was waiting for you. I couldn't let you loose in Rome," Gokudera sniffs. "You speak crap Italian."
For the next ten minutes, you're too busy eating to be good conversation, and Gokudera's already volunteered more about himself in one evening than he has in the past year, so the two of you sit in silence. The only sounds are the patrons' voices in the restaurant and the roar of traffic on the street outside. You're watching Gokudera out of the corner of your eye while pretending to be fully concentrating on your food, and you can see his frown deepen with every passing minute, a surefire sign that he's descending into one of his brooding moods. You would like to avoid this, because once he's given himself up to the downward spiral it's going to be hard to snap him out of it.
You suddenly have an idea. A terrible, terrible idea that you will probably regret come morning, but since morning is a good seven hours away you're not too concerned with it just yet.
"Are you on painkillers?" you ask, wiping your mouth with the napkin and leaving it on the table, finally finished eating.
Gokudera looks taken aback, like he'd forgotten you were even there with him. "No," he says. "I used the Rain Flames from my Rain-class ring to calm the pain. Why?"
You announce: "I am getting drunk tonight. And so are you," and get up to find a nice bottle of whiskey.
At some point, the old lady comes in to tell you she's closing up but you can stay there overnight, and to bring you a midnight snack. After that, you're not quite sure how it happens, but before you know it you've got an anecdote-telling session on your hands. You've long since finished the bottle of wine the old lady brought to help you wash down the food, and are halfway through the whiskey bottle, and Gokudera's gesticulating wildly in his efforts to describe "the Tenth's greatness" and "heart of gold" that time he climbed a tree to help a kitten down, when you were all in your last year at Namimori. If you recall correctly, Tsuna ended up needing your help to get down from that tree, but Gokudera seems to be ignoring that part completely. It isn't really that important, you suppose. Laugh.
In that instant, you feel the most at peace since Tsuna died. This is the proper way to see Tsuna off, re-telling random tales you've already told a million times before among friends, instead of that big Catholic funeral with the most prominent members of the allied families that had to be organized for the sake of politics and outside expectations.
You and Gokudera, Tsuna's best friends, crammed into a tiny room in a Roman restaurant, attempting to drink the other under the table and remembering all the good moments - this is how it's supposed to be.
You lose track of the time until you take a peek through the curtains and see the first light of morning appearing on the horizon. You realize through the haze clogging your head that you've talked all through the night, and you still haven't run out of anecdotes. The second thing you notice is that both you and Gokudera are irretrievably drunk, and it's a good thing most of the candles have burned out, or you'd be seriously worried about losing your verticality and setting yourself on fire. It occurs to you that this is the first time in your life you've allowed yourself to get this drunk, even though you're already in your thirties. It's probably the same with Gokudera.
You're not too concerned about that, in any case. You know CEDEF have got this place watched. The restaurant is safe. And none of the minor families in Italy are stupid enough to attempt a hit when Gokudera's spent almost a week dealing out retribution. Staying upright is the biggest of your problems right now.
You look at Gokudera. He's suddenly turned serious, frowning at the air in front of him.
"Now that the Tenth's dead, they're all going to try and get up on the empty throne, aren't they," he says, enunciating the words carefully, in the manner of the moderately drunk who wish to be considered sober. "I'll deal with them, but you'll all have to pinch in. Can't expect me to do the dirty work every fucking time."
"We'll protect the Vongola until Mari's ready to take over," you agree. "No matter who tries to hurt them."
"If it's Xanxus and the Varia, we'll crush them too." He's watching you carefully as he says it, as if he thinks you may not have considered the possibility. You have, of course. You know you will have to fight and maybe kill Squalo if that's the road things take. You've made up your mind. You became Tsuna's Rain Guardian for a reason.
Gokudera seems satisfied. He stands up from the chair, wobbles, and has to lean against the wall to keep his balance. "I need coffee," he says. "A vat of it."
You assault the coffee machine behind the counter and drink espresso after espresso until you begin to feel like you might belong to the human race after all. The headache is killing you, but you've resigned yourself to that. You'll have time to sleep it off on the plane back to Japan. Home.
When you brave the world outside, you discover the sun is a lot brighter than you remembered. You raise your arm to shield your eyes against the glare, and see Gokudera doing the same next to you, but not before lighting up and taking a long drag of his cigarette. It's the start of a blustery day, and Gokudera's jacket and hair are flapping in the wind. It makes you think of rooftops, for some reason, so you place a hand on Gokudera's shoulder, keep him there.
"You'd better wait for us, next time," you tell him. "We were all worried sick about you."
"Don't go getting sappy on me now, baseball freak," he says with his standard crankiness, but there's a flicker of something when he looks at you that you'd never noticed before, something you'd never even dared hope for. You file it away for later consideration and take a look at the street you're standing in. There's something off about it, you feel, but you can't figure out what it is until you see the parking meter standing a couple of meters off to the side.
"Your car's gone, Hayato."
"Fuck the car," he replies at once, releasing a puff of smoke. "I never even liked it. It's a fucking heap of scrap. And the leather seats are a nightmare in this heat."
You start laughing.
"Come on," he says, rolls his eyes at you. "Let's go home."
Author's Notes: The "Mari" mentioned in this fic is Tsuna and Kyoko's daughter, and the rightful heir to the Vongola. According to my head!canon, she would be eight or nine at the time this fic is set, so there's still a few years until she can take over as the next Vongola boss.
ID: [chrome]
Word Count: 3,300
Ratings/Warnings: PG for mentions of violence
Characters/Pairings: Gokudera, Yamamoto
Summary: You followed the trail of his revenge all the way to this city.
Theme Challenge: YES
For the longest time you’ve been dreaming of this city, of its majestic presence and long streets cobbled with history. Now that you’re actually here, though, you can’t help but feel disappointed, like you’ve been duped and taken to a city that looks and sounds like the one you've heard described in worshipping tones, but just isn’t it, somehow.
The people are extremely rude, for one. They bump against you and disturb your balance and don’t even look back, much less apologize. They curse in a language you can’t even begin to understand; you only know they’re cursing because the sounds are familiar, remembered by force of being shouted at you over and over again in anger in a place on the other end of the planet. You think of his shouting at you the most, his permanent scowl and the insults that roll off his tongue with complete ease whenever he's within a ten meter radius of you. You think of the crankiness with a smile, because you’d rather think of that than the reason you had to come find him here of all places.
An elbow stabs your side painfully and brings you back to the present. The owner of the offending limb is already walking away from you, shouting something unintelligible in Italian over the cacophony of typically Mediterranean loudness and the honking of cars on the road. Presumably it’s some kind of reproach to you for standing still in the middle of the street, looking vaguely around you as if thinking of the best route but never taking a step in any direction. You laugh sheepishly and rub the back of your head, out of habit, but whoever walked into you an instant ago is already gone. You can’t remember his or her face, and everyone in this country looks identical to you anyway.
You stand there, in front of the Palace, surrounded by an army of Western clones and wish you would recognize one face, just the one face, but Rome is imbued in its hectic rhythm and has no time to care for your wistfulness. You followed the trail of his revenge all the way to this city and, just as you’re wondering what to do next, having rushed headfirst into this place without a clear plan in mind, your phone rings.
"Heeey!" Squalo shouts from the other end of the line, and though your eardrums resent the abuse your heart welcomes it, finally something familiar in this jungle. "Where are you now?"
"In Piazza Venezia, Rome." You allow yourself a second to feel proud of yourself for having pronounced that, and then you ask the question that's been sitting like lead in your gut since you began this mad chase across the country. "Have you been to the villa? Were you in time?"
"In time to watch it burn to ash, sure!" yells Squalo, obviously angry. "This is like what happened at Milan and Naples! We get hired to exterminate the local branch of the Baressi, and when we get there that crazy motherfucker's already done the job! He killed every last one of them, down to their boss! We're professional assassins, not his fucking cleanup squad! This is --"
"Gokudera," you cut urgently. "Did you find his body?"
"Not yet. We'll keep looking, just in case, but if he was inside when the whole thing blew up, he's probably --"
"Thanks, Squalo. I'm sorry you have to do this."
"Damn right you should be sorry, hey! You'd better not be getting rusty over there, or I'll really let you have it next time I see you!" Which is probably Squalo's way of expressing concern, you reckon. You laugh sheepishly and say, "Wouldn't want that!"
"I'll call you again if we find his body," Squalo says, and hangs up.
You continue wandering the streets like a lost child, heart in your ears as you frantically scan the crowd for someone you recognize. You wade through the seas of people going somewhere else and once, just once, you spot that familiar set of the shoulders, the stiff back of those who carry their baggage with them wherever they go, and your heart stops. You start running, pushing aside men and women alike, their curses and shouted offenses mute to your ears. You have to reach him. When you do, you smile, start telling him off for heading into enemy territory all by himself. You place a hand on his shoulder to turn him around and it's someone else.
You had a dream like this before.
The man you had mistaken for Gokudera Hayato gives you a slack-jawed look of terror, starts apologizing profusely. You look at his face and can't understand how you ever thought this may be him. The eyes are different, small and nervous and scared, and he doesn't have wrinkles between his eyebrows from permanent scowling. It's all wrong. He's not even insulting you. You laugh at yourself, and apologize to the man in your horribly accented Italian, then walk away.
You're a couple blocks away when your phone buzzes again. It's Basil. We have had contact from Gokudera-dono to confirm the death of Luca Baressi. The call to CEDEF headquarters was made from this location, and an address in Rome. You open the map attached to the message and find the old-school black cross. It's a couple of blocks away. You cross the street at a run, ignore the furious honking of a car that had to brake to avoid colliding with you. Usually you would stop to apologize, but today you run faster instead.
The address Basil gave you belongs to an unassuming little restaurant off the Via del Corso. There's a battered old Camaro parked defiantly in the blue zone out front, no trace of a ticket from the parking meter tucked under the windshield wipers. This is what the years have turned his rebellion against the world into, you suppose. You laugh and walk into the restaurant.
It's a cozy little place, brightly lit, packed with four-cornered tables each with its checkered white-and-red tablecloth and two candles on top. There's a short plump woman wiping dishes behind the counter, and arguing with her in machinegun Italian (something about not being allowed to smoke, if you're understanding them right) sits the very man whose trace you've been following for this past week. Gokudera Hayato.
"You shouldn't have parked your car in the blue zone, Hayato," you tell him in Italian, probably making a hundred grammar mistakes in the process. "It'll get towed away if you leave it there."
They both whip around at the sound of your voice, Gokudera with a wince that's replaced by his usual scowl fast enough that anyone else would have missed it. His hand withdraws from the inside of his jacket and comes to rest on the counter again.
"I thought it was just about time you showed up, baseball freak," he says. In Japanese, you note wryly. "You just can't keep your nose out of other people's business, can you?"
Normally you'd take his jabs in stride, but today, the way he says "other people's business" tips you over the edge. You walk up to him, ready to punch him off his stool if that's what it takes to get your point across, and you see the shape he's in, and freeze in place.
"You're injured." His right arm is in a sling. You couldn't see it from the threshold, but his hands are bandaged as well, most probably burnt, and his back's posture is tense and awkward. You place a hand lightly on his side and he flinches and hisses at you. "You shouldn't be moving about. Did you break a rib?"
"Just bruised," he says, not meeting your eyes. "I've had worse. I'm fine."
You'd like to shout at him for not taking care of himself, for rushing headfirst into his self-assigned suicide mission to avenge Tsuna's death, but at the same time you can't help feeling respect. You knew he was strong, of course, you've fought alongside him on innumerable occasions, but the stunt he's pulled this time is on a different level. He infiltrated and destroyed all three Italian bases of the Baressi Famiglia and killed the boss, and all he's got to show for it is a broken arm and a couple of bruised ribs. He's indestructible, that's what he is.
"What are you laughing about now?" Gokudera says, rolls his eyes at you.
"I guess I'm just relieved?" To see him alive, when you'd thought his blind rage at the Baressi for the hit on Tsuna would get him killed too. Now you've found him, it's a load off your shoulders.
You open your mouth to ask him why he didn't wait for you to start his rampage, but that's the moment your stomach chooses to remind you of your other priorities.
"Jesus, what kind of unearthly sound is that? Have you not eaten all day?" Gokudera asks, shakes his head in disbelief.
Before you quite know it, the old lady behind the counter is fussing over you, scolding you loudly in Italian and shouting at Gokudera for heaven knows what. They bicker back and forth for a few moments and then she's leading the two of you away from the counter and down the corridor, through a door you hadn't even noticed until now.
The room on the other side is tiny, a private room with a table for two in the middle of it. There's a small window, but the curtains are draped close. The only light in the room comes from the tens of candles that line every flat surface, even the floor. At the old lady's insistence you take one chair, and Gokudera the other. The atmosphere is oddly intimate. You look at Gokudera and see him fidgeting with his pack of cigarettes, opening and closing the lid compulsively and not meeting your eyes. You think he's blushing, but it's hard to tell in this light. Just when you think it can't get any more awkward, the old lady places a huge plate of spaghetti carbonara in front of you and another in front of Gokudera. She claps her hands together and gives you an expectant look.
"You'd better eat up," Gokudera says. "Or she'll scold you again."
You pick up your fork and try to imitate Gokudera. You don't know how he does it, but with a little flick of the wrist he manages to scoop the spaghetti up perfectly without dropping any. And he's doing it left-handed. It's an Italian thing, you suppose. Encoded in his DNA.
The old lady offers you a spoon to help you roll the spaghetti around your fork, but Gokudera says that's for small children and rejects the offer on your behalf. The old lady leaves the room and you tuck the corner of your napkin under the collar of your shirt to act as bib before Gokudera has a chance to shout at you for dripping tomato sauce all over your expensive suit.
The lady comes in with drinks and more food a couple of times, until you assure her the food's delicious (it really is) but if she brings any more you won't be able to eat it without your stomach exploding. Gokudera's done eating all three courses before you've even started on the salad that came after the pasta, and you'd be impressed if you'd never seen him put away twice his weight in food on the nights after completing a mission for the Family.
Little by little, Gokudera starts talking about the last few days. He describes the attacks on the Baressi in clinical, detached tones, and you listen to every word. He had help from the Cavallone and the Longchamp on today's attack, he says; apparently, they engaged the small fry so Gokudera would be free to fight the boss. You hear him talk and know from the look of his face he's feeling guilt, like Tsuna's death was in any way his fault, but you can't very well tell him to snap out of it when you feel just as responsible, yourself.
In a way, it was nobody's fault, you suppose. You had set airtight defenses around Tsuna, protected him with everything you had, but the bullet slipped through your barriers anyway. You couldn't do anything to save him, which is the worst part of all.
"The old lady that runs this restaurant let me stay here overnight once, a long time ago. I'd managed to somehow piss off every gang in Italy, but she didn't care. This was just before I moved to Japan, just before the Tenth -" his voice breaks on the title "-just before he took me in. I couldn't think of anywhere else to wait for you, so I came here."
"You came here to wait for me?" you ask, though it makes sense in hindsight; you would never have found him in Rome if he hadn't given his location away to Basil.
"Of course I was waiting for you. I couldn't let you loose in Rome," Gokudera sniffs. "You speak crap Italian."
For the next ten minutes, you're too busy eating to be good conversation, and Gokudera's already volunteered more about himself in one evening than he has in the past year, so the two of you sit in silence. The only sounds are the patrons' voices in the restaurant and the roar of traffic on the street outside. You're watching Gokudera out of the corner of your eye while pretending to be fully concentrating on your food, and you can see his frown deepen with every passing minute, a surefire sign that he's descending into one of his brooding moods. You would like to avoid this, because once he's given himself up to the downward spiral it's going to be hard to snap him out of it.
You suddenly have an idea. A terrible, terrible idea that you will probably regret come morning, but since morning is a good seven hours away you're not too concerned with it just yet.
"Are you on painkillers?" you ask, wiping your mouth with the napkin and leaving it on the table, finally finished eating.
Gokudera looks taken aback, like he'd forgotten you were even there with him. "No," he says. "I used the Rain Flames from my Rain-class ring to calm the pain. Why?"
You announce: "I am getting drunk tonight. And so are you," and get up to find a nice bottle of whiskey.
At some point, the old lady comes in to tell you she's closing up but you can stay there overnight, and to bring you a midnight snack. After that, you're not quite sure how it happens, but before you know it you've got an anecdote-telling session on your hands. You've long since finished the bottle of wine the old lady brought to help you wash down the food, and are halfway through the whiskey bottle, and Gokudera's gesticulating wildly in his efforts to describe "the Tenth's greatness" and "heart of gold" that time he climbed a tree to help a kitten down, when you were all in your last year at Namimori. If you recall correctly, Tsuna ended up needing your help to get down from that tree, but Gokudera seems to be ignoring that part completely. It isn't really that important, you suppose. Laugh.
In that instant, you feel the most at peace since Tsuna died. This is the proper way to see Tsuna off, re-telling random tales you've already told a million times before among friends, instead of that big Catholic funeral with the most prominent members of the allied families that had to be organized for the sake of politics and outside expectations.
You and Gokudera, Tsuna's best friends, crammed into a tiny room in a Roman restaurant, attempting to drink the other under the table and remembering all the good moments - this is how it's supposed to be.
You lose track of the time until you take a peek through the curtains and see the first light of morning appearing on the horizon. You realize through the haze clogging your head that you've talked all through the night, and you still haven't run out of anecdotes. The second thing you notice is that both you and Gokudera are irretrievably drunk, and it's a good thing most of the candles have burned out, or you'd be seriously worried about losing your verticality and setting yourself on fire. It occurs to you that this is the first time in your life you've allowed yourself to get this drunk, even though you're already in your thirties. It's probably the same with Gokudera.
You're not too concerned about that, in any case. You know CEDEF have got this place watched. The restaurant is safe. And none of the minor families in Italy are stupid enough to attempt a hit when Gokudera's spent almost a week dealing out retribution. Staying upright is the biggest of your problems right now.
You look at Gokudera. He's suddenly turned serious, frowning at the air in front of him.
"Now that the Tenth's dead, they're all going to try and get up on the empty throne, aren't they," he says, enunciating the words carefully, in the manner of the moderately drunk who wish to be considered sober. "I'll deal with them, but you'll all have to pinch in. Can't expect me to do the dirty work every fucking time."
"We'll protect the Vongola until Mari's ready to take over," you agree. "No matter who tries to hurt them."
"If it's Xanxus and the Varia, we'll crush them too." He's watching you carefully as he says it, as if he thinks you may not have considered the possibility. You have, of course. You know you will have to fight and maybe kill Squalo if that's the road things take. You've made up your mind. You became Tsuna's Rain Guardian for a reason.
Gokudera seems satisfied. He stands up from the chair, wobbles, and has to lean against the wall to keep his balance. "I need coffee," he says. "A vat of it."
You assault the coffee machine behind the counter and drink espresso after espresso until you begin to feel like you might belong to the human race after all. The headache is killing you, but you've resigned yourself to that. You'll have time to sleep it off on the plane back to Japan. Home.
When you brave the world outside, you discover the sun is a lot brighter than you remembered. You raise your arm to shield your eyes against the glare, and see Gokudera doing the same next to you, but not before lighting up and taking a long drag of his cigarette. It's the start of a blustery day, and Gokudera's jacket and hair are flapping in the wind. It makes you think of rooftops, for some reason, so you place a hand on Gokudera's shoulder, keep him there.
"You'd better wait for us, next time," you tell him. "We were all worried sick about you."
"Don't go getting sappy on me now, baseball freak," he says with his standard crankiness, but there's a flicker of something when he looks at you that you'd never noticed before, something you'd never even dared hope for. You file it away for later consideration and take a look at the street you're standing in. There's something off about it, you feel, but you can't figure out what it is until you see the parking meter standing a couple of meters off to the side.
"Your car's gone, Hayato."
"Fuck the car," he replies at once, releasing a puff of smoke. "I never even liked it. It's a fucking heap of scrap. And the leather seats are a nightmare in this heat."
You start laughing.
"Come on," he says, rolls his eyes at you. "Let's go home."
Author's Notes: The "Mari" mentioned in this fic is Tsuna and Kyoko's daughter, and the rightful heir to the Vongola. According to my head!canon, she would be eight or nine at the time this fic is set, so there's still a few years until she can take over as the next Vongola boss.