[fic] Fortuna brevis - Gokudera; Yamamoto/Gokudera
Title: Fortuna brevis
Characters: Gokudera-centric, Yamamoto/Gokudera, vague Gokudera/OC
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, mafia violence, character deaths
Word count: 5,000~
Summary: Sometimes Gokudera feels like he’s the butt of a malicious celestial joke. Sometimes he knows he is.
A/N: This vaguely follows the multi-verse concept, so each section takes place in a different universe. Written for khrfest 6 prompt: Yamamoto/Gokudera - luck; "If it weren't for bad luck, he'd have no luck at all." Title comes from the Latin phrase for the fickleness of luck. Thank you rodicks for checking it over!
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 29
-I-
Once upon a time, Don Falcone had a son, a slight little thing with feather soft silver hair, jade eyes, and a stub nose. The pride of his father, the little Falcone boy was shown off to any guest in the mansion who had a minute to spare.
“He’s a pianist prodigy,” Don Falcone would say none too modestly, and not without reason.
“Look at his little fingers,” the impromptu audience would coo, “see how they fly!”
Everyone knew about Don Falcone’s pretty little piano playing son.
Don Falcone also had many loyal friends outside cosa nostra. With the help of a lawyer and a few crooked police officers, he put one of his rivals, the head of the Roccamena, in jail.
The Roccamena weren’t too happy about that.
“He’s getting too full of himself,” they said. “He’s got too many friends on the police force,” they said. “Someone needs to teach him a lesson,” they said.
“What about his son?”
Everyone knew about Don Falcone’s pretty little piano playing son. Everyone knew about Don Falcone’s pride and joy.
They kidnapped him while he was playing hide-and-seek in the gardens with his older sister. The little Falcone boy didn’t even have the sense to resist, and why should he have? He was seven; he had no reason to suspect that anyone meant him harm. They fed him rolls of bread when he was hungry, and they slit his pale little throat when his father had the nerve to call them on a bluff. The Roccamena didn’t bluff. They let the little Falcone boy’s blood stain his clothes crimson, and they threw him in a ditch north of town. It wasn’t that uncommon for unlucky innocents to be caught in the crossfire of cosa nostra politics.
-II-
Once upon a time, somewhere in Palermo at the cusp of dusk, a trio of men quirked their eyebrows in unison as a grubby boy snarled at them in mock audacity. Though he spoke Sicilian like a native, his name was salad of choppy foreign syllables. He smelled like a garbage dump in July, and his face was smeared with dirt and blood and what could have been tears, but boys didn’t cry-at least not boys in the back alleys of Palermo.
“Just give me a chance,” he insisted, because his pride wouldn’t let him plead. “Let me show you what I can do.”
If the boy wanted to be a foot soldier, then so be it. They gave him the name of the hit and told him to make it flashy, to show people what happened when their famiglia was crossed.
The boy smiled for the first time, a lopsided thing that was more a feral baring of teeth than an indication of happiness.
“I can make it flashy for you,” he promised, and they just laughed because who was going to believe a snot nosed punk?
It was flashy, alright. Pedestrians a few streets away claimed to have felt the explosion, and the flames flickering from the destroyed vehicle radiated an unbearable heat that sent rivulets of sweat streaming down the temples of the onlookers, including a young boy with dirty gray hair, sunken jade eyes, and a name with choppy, foreign sounding syllables. It gave him a sense of pride to watch the terror write itself on people’s faces as they gaped at the destruction-his destruction. Maybe his employers would ask for his help again, he thought; maybe they would give him more complicated assignments. Maybe he could make a real name for himself in the dank underbelly of Palermo.
He decided to reward himself with some piping hot arancini bought off a street vendor a block over from the car bombing, which was where the cops, tipped off by a witness who had seen a child with peculiar physical features tinkering with the vehicle before the explosion, found him. Though he was little antsy, he wasn’t too worried-he’d been down to the station before, and he was a good liar.
What he forgot to take into account was that he was also a liability, a fact he realized too late as a bullet ripped through his chest before the officers had a chance to shove him into their cruiser. While they were busy shouting frantic instructions into the radio and searching wildly for the source of the shot, the boy with the dirty face and the foreign name was busy bleeding out onto the cobblestones, cursing his bad luck for having such conspicuous hair and eyes in a business that required the utmost secrecy.
-III-
Once upon a time, by the loading docks of an abandoned warehouse in Osaka, two men crouched in the damp earth behind a forest of what had once been a row of ornamental bushes, shoulders hunched and guns out. The air weighed on their shoulders, hot and muggy despite the night falling around them, and the shrill cries of the cicadas effectively covered their whispers from prying ears.
“They should be here by now, fucking Mukuro gave us fucking faulty info, they were supposed to be here an hour ago, where the fuck are they?” Gokudera mumbled to himself, his fingers fumbling distractedly with the engraved lighter in his pocket even though he knew he couldn’t light it while on a stake out.
Beside him, Yamamoto lowered a knee to the ground, ignoring the moisture that soaked into his pant-leg as he checked the extra magazine in his pocket for the fifth time.
“Calm down, Gokudera,” he whispered. “They’ll be here.”
This was stupid. This was unnecessary. In fact, Tsuna, originally opposed to the plan, had only changed his mind after some convincing from Reborn, and while Gokudera would follow his boss to the ends of the earth-even for an operation he didn’t back whole heartedly-part of him wondered what he was really doing here, getting his ass wet behind some bushes while waiting for a shipment of fucking pornography to roll in. Sure, this yakuza family was encroaching on their territory, extorting businesses that were under Vongola protection, but was destroying illegal porn really the most effective way to send these blokes a message? But Reborn was the fucking Word of God, and if he said hit ‘em where it hurts, whether that be their dicks or their bank accounts, who was going to contradict him?
Yamamoto had found the entire business hilarious in a ‘haha, I can’t believe I’m helping you blow up porn’ sort of way, but that was hours ago, and Gokudera had gotten good enough at reading beneath his mask to see that he was starting to feel miserable, too.
The detonator lay in his pocket next to the lighter, but he refrained from touching it too much besides in a cursory brush of fingers to remind himself that it was still there. Fuck, even after the delivery guys arrived, they’d still have to wait until the load was transferred into the warehouse before they could do anything. In the mean time, Gokudera began listing off what he needed to do when he got home, like take a nice long shower, read over the Greco reports, check the accounts, maybe take a short nap...
“Gokudera,” Yamamoto whispered suddenly, nudging him in the ribs. “Look. I think that’s them.”
Unless it was commonplace for unmarked delivery trucks driven by men with pompadours to park in this lot, Yamamoto was right. They waited impatiently for the men to unload the plain, cardboard boxes into the warehouse. When the job was finished and the yakuza men were loitering around and joking with each other next to the truck, Gokudera finally slipped the little remote from his pocket, tapped in the safety code, and depressed the detonator. The explosives weren’t enough to destroy the entire building, especially since the warehouse was made of concrete slabs, but the blast should have been loud enough to hear down the block.
Nothing happened.
“What the hell,” Gokudera muttered, jabbing the button again. Yamamoto peered over his shoulder as he retyped the safety code a few more times, knocked the remote against his thigh, and growled at it, but all to no avail.
“Did it not work?” Yamamoto asked.
“What do you think, moron?” Gokudera answered, not bothering to keep his voice down at that point because the yakuza were already starting up the truck and pulling out. It really didn’t matter if they were there, since it was just the boxes that needed to be destroyed, but it would have been nice to watch them run around like headless chickens when they caught wind of Gokudera’s handiwork. Now it was just a matter of personal pride. Gokudera Hayato was the motherfucking Smokin’ Bomb, and he wore the title like a badge of honor. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if Yamamoto weren’t there to see him fail, but now there was a witness, and even if Yamamoto would never talk shit about him for screwing up on a job, it was still one more person seeing the evidence of just how much of a fuck-up Gokudera was.
“One of the wires must have come loose. I’m going to check on it,” he announced, standing up while massaging the feeling back into his legs.
Yamamoto followed suit with a loud creak of joints. “Are you sure? I mean, I’m no expert, but I really don’t think it’s such a good idea to go into a building where there’s a bomb, especially if you’ve already activated it.”
Of course Yamamoto was right, but Gokudera ignored him on principle. Shamal would have a fucking field day with this, but screw personal safety, what mattered was pride.
Gokudera slipped into the warehouse with Yamamoto cautiously trailing on his heels. The boxes were being stored in one of the old supervisor offices near the center of the warehouse, and as they stalked past old conveyor belts and ceiling high shelving units, Gokudera could feel the idiocy of his brashness weigh on his conscience. He was breaking rule numero uno in the Handbook for How to Survive as a Demolitions Expert; this was how the amateurs were weeded out of the pack. For such an inconsequential job, why was he willing to take such a risk?
The answer, he knew without even a glance, walked beside him. Why was Yamamoto even here when this assignment would have been a cakewalk with just one person on task? Why did it seem like he was always there, tagging along like Mary’s little lamb, showing up at Gokudera’s apartment unannounced, volunteering to do jobs with him? It was bad luck to spend so much time with one person like that; when you hoarded someone’s attention, it just set you up for a more intense grief when they were gone. Hadn’t anyone ever told Yamamoto that?
He felt a warm hand against his shoulder as Yamamoto said, “Hey, Gokudera, let’s just-”
Gokudera wondered why Yamamoto hadn’t finished his sentence. Then he wondered why he was suddenly on his back, staring at the ceiling instead of standing in the warehouse with Yamamoto. Every bone in his body ached, and when he looked to his left, he cringed at the awkward angle at which his arm was outstretched. With a few painful, dry coughs, he made a failed attempt to clear the dust from his lungs and rolled onto his knees, cradling his broken arm close to his body. The ringing in his ears was driving him mad, and he could just barely hear the sound of his own voice over it as he called out either Yamamoto or help-he really wasn’t sure which. It might even have been oh God, what have I done? if he had believed in a god cruel enough to breathe life into his body.
When it became apparent that even if Yamamoto were screaming back to him, he wouldn’t be able to hear it, he began stumbling through the rubble of the warehouse, kicking away loose chunks of concrete and wiping blood and sweat (no tears because men of honor don’t cry) from his face with the back of his uninjured hand.
He found him under the remnants of a wall, chest crushed and staring at Gokudera with sightless eyes. Gokudera wanted to scream at him, to ask him why he’d ever thought it a good idea to worm his way under Gokudera’s skin like that, but it was pointless if neither of them could hear the words.
-IV-
Once upon a time, on the dirty linoleum of his tiny kitchen, Gokudera crouched next to the refrigerator and re-read the crinkled letter for the third time. He only let himself skim it this time, taking in just the bare bones of the message.
You’re so distant. I feel like I’m alone when I’m with you. Sometimes I wonder if you’re incapable of love.
The pages rustled in his trembling fingers, the only sound in the empty apartment apart from his own hitching breath. He wondered at his own reaction. It wasn’t like he had cared that much about her; she’d been a convenience, someone to come home to at night so he wouldn’t have to feel alone in his own skin. He’d never seen a future with her, yet here he was, falling apart at the seams because of the poisonous truth in her words. Without another person’s voice there to bounce off the walls, the apartment began to seem claustrophobic. Gokudera had to escape.
It wasn’t until he’d parked his car along the curb and was staring out the windshield through the rain when he realized where his body had lead him. The lights were on in Yamamoto’s apartment, emitting a soft, welcoming glow from behind the thin drapes. He covered his head uselessly with his jacket and ran to the front porch of the building. The letter was getting damp along its haphazard folds in his pocket, but he didn’t care. It was only there to serve as a charm that he could hold up later and mock.
After three rapid bouts of knocking, Yamamoto finally opened the door. Without a word, he ushered Gokudera inside, taking his dripping jacket and hurrying into the kitchen to brew a pot of tea. Such a good host, Gokudera thought, such a good boy, too dumb to realize how much of an emotionally stunted fuck up he was friends with. He collapsed cross legged onto one of the cushions spread out on the clean tatami mats of the living room.
Yamamoto called out from the kitchen, “Are you hungry?”
“No,” Gokudera answered simultaneously as his stomach gave a traitorous growl. He’d been planning on taking his girlfriend out for dinner, but that was before he’d arrived home to an empty apartment. “Kind of. Maybe.”
Not five minutes later, Yamamoto came back with two mugs, a pot of green tea, and a half finished bag of shrimp puffs tucked under his arm. Gokudera didn’t bother to thank him, but Yamamoto smiled as if he had anyway.
“What’s up?” Yamamoto asked after a while because he was sage enough to know that its close cousin, what’s wrong? was a sure fire way to get Gokudera to shut down completely. “How’s Rina?”
Okay, maybe ‘sage’ wasn’t the most fitting description, especially since Gokudera looked liked he was being strangled. Or at least ready to strangle someone else.
“Gokudera?” Yamamoto prodded when the sounds coming from his friend’s mouth refused to translate into any language he knew (i.e. Japanese, English baseball terminology, and a smattering of Italian and Sicilian curses).
Gokudera’s knuckles were white in their grip on his damp jeans. “She left.”
That was too bad. She’d seemed like a nice girl, Yamamoto thought, but now was probably not the time to say that. “Sorry.”
“Fuck her,” Gokudera snarled, “If she thinks, I, fuck!”
Yamamoto nodded silently, wondering if it was better to offer verbal support or just be a set of ears for Gokudera to vent to. He prepared to listen to an incensed assault on the ex-girlfriend’s character.
“I’m not incapable of love.”
Well, that was definitely not what Yamamoto had been expecting. The voice Gokudera had used sounded so small and pathetic, like he was hardly convincing himself, and when Yamamoto looked up, his heart broke a little to see Gokudera shivering across from him, eyes focused on the floor and looking so terribly alone.
“Did she tell you that?” Yamamoto asked.
Gokudera didn’t answer, but he did look at Yamamoto’s face this time. His eyes which were puffy and pink. How had Yamamoto not noticed before?
“Well, she’s wrong. I know you care a lot for Tsuna, and for your sister, and Dr. Shamal, and even for me, even if you don’t show it all the time, but that doesn’t matter because it’s the thought that counts, right? And we love you too. You don’t have to feel so alone.”
Gokudera knew he should have left before he did something he’d regret, but that opportunity had long since passed. He was tired of closing himself off to everything, and maybe little desperate, and Yamamoto had always been so nice to him, even when he was a jackass in return, and maybe he was a little irrational because of Rina leaving, and maybe Gokudera just wanted to feel alive. His grip on the back of Yamamoto’s neck had to have been painful, but they could do gentle later; now he needed lips and teeth and saliva and blood rushing in his ears, making him feel faint. It was equally exhilarating and terrifying, this admission of ‘hey, we could do this, I know you want it, I’m willing to make it work, just don’t let me be alone.’
Yamamoto grunted a little when Gokudera bit down on his lower lip, which was a good thing, but then he pushed Gokudera off and away, which was not such a good thing.
“I’m not...” There was no need for him to finish his sentence because Gokudera already knew what he was trying to say. He felt like an utter fool.
“Forget it.” Gokudera stood up, and padded over to the foyer to slip on his sodden jacket and shoes.
Yamamoto followed him. “Gokudera, I care about you, just not in that way.”
“I said forget it.”
“Gokudera, please-!”
Whatever else Yamamoto had wanted to say lay trapped on the other side of the slammed door. Gokudera knew how pathetic he looked running (away) through the downpour to his car. He didn’t care. All he really wanted right now was to sit in the dark with a decent bottle of Syrah and some Tiziano Ferro on the surround sound. All he really wanted was to forget about everything that had happened tonight, every fucking proof of his having been born under a dark star. He wanted to forget about how he would have to face Yamamoto tomorrow, and how he would have to act as if he hadn’t just ruined their relationship. Was this his lot in life? To be the butt of a malicious, celestial joke?
When he drove off, he could see Yamamoto run into the middle of the street in his rear view mirror, bedraggled and shouting something, but Gokudera knew it wasn’t anything his selfish ears wanted to hear.
-V-
Once upon a time, in a nondescript bakery in a nondescript town, a nondescript young man smiled tiredly at his friends over the cup of coffee clutched in his hands.
“It’s over,” he said, sighing in relief. “I can’t believe it’s finally over.” His eyes were dark rings of insomnia bruised skin, and the lines tracing across his face spelled out a lifetime of years lived out beyond his physical age.
“Yeah,” someone answered, and then everyone just stared off into lost space.
The oldest one was the first to leave. “Well, I’d better get going. Hana and I are going out to celebrate,” he said in a voice a decibel or two too loud for indoor use. “I’ll see you guys around.”
“Bye, Sempai,” the first man, the leader, replied. “Thanks. For everything.”
The eldest’s gray eyes crinkled around the edges when he spoke. “You know you can always rely on me, Sawada.” And then he was gone.
Sawada Tsunayoshi turned back to the other two men sitting with him. Maybe ‘men’ wasn’t the correct term to use, but while they were still too young to be considered adults in the eyes of the law, they had left boyhood behind long ago. He took a sip of coffee.
“Do you guys know what you’re going to do now?” he asked. “Yamamoto?”
The lankier of the two leaned back in his chair. “I’m going to stick around and help my old man out with the shop,” he answered. “I think the grade school by my house is looking for a coach, so there’s that, too.”
Tsuna didn’t bother to ask why Yamamoto wasn’t following through on his original plans of leaving home to play professional ball.
The other man drummed his fingers against the table before speaking. “...My father wants me to go back to Sicily to help out the Family.”
“Is that what you want to do?” Tsuna asked.
The man gave a wry smile. “Well, there’s this amazing guy I know who kind of got me to consider life outside the mafia, so...”
Tsuna rested a hand on his forearm. “You’re always welcome here, you know that, Gokudera-kun.”
Gokudera nodded. “Yeah, I know. I might start taking classes at the junior college. I really don’t know. What about you, Ten-” He caught himself with a sheepish look. “Er, Tsuna.”
“Dad’s met a lot of people throughout the years. He said he probably has some contacts that might help me find a job. Pushing papers in an office sounds pretty nice right now.” He was joined in his chuckling by his friends as they all tried to imagine the man before them, responsible for dismantling the most powerful mafia family in history, at a desk job. They felt like they were floating on a cloud of surreality.
The Vongola didn’t come up once in their conversation thereafter. Instead, they tried to make small talk like a normal group of friends their age, something that had been lost to them for what seemed like forever.
After a spell, Tsuna glanced at his watch and said, “Kyoko-chan’s coming over in a bit. We’re going to...well, we’re going to talk things out.” He took a sip of now cold coffee. “And stuff.”
It was their cue to leave. Yamamoto and Gokudera laid some coins on the table and got up.
“We’ll see you around,” Yamamoto said.
Gokudera seemed to be warring with himself, but he finally spoke in a too chipper voice. “I’ll stop by sometime, um...soon. Tell Kyoko we said ‘hi’.”
“Sure.” Tsuna’s bright smile took on a more nostalgic tint. “See you guys.”
They left the bakery and made it to the street corner before either of them said a word. The roar of traffic and babble of passing pedestrians spun around them, but a bubble of silence encased them until Yamamoto bumped against Gokudera’s barely trembling shoulder and asked, “Can I come over?”
Gokudera inched away. “I’ve got stuff to do.”
“I can help.”
“I’ve got errands to run.”
“I’ll tag along.”
Gokudera groaned. “You don’t take a hint, do you?”
“Nope, haha.”
They ended up in Gokudera’s apartment because Yamamoto was persistent and Gokudera only knew a finite number of ways to say no. It was stuffy from being shut up all day, so they pushed the low table in the living room next to the window and angled the little electric fan just right so it would pull more air into the room. Yamamoto wasn’t sure how the physics of all that worked, but he trusted Gokudera to find a way to keep them cool and set about shuffling cards while Gokudera made coffee in the other room. He didn’t bother to ask why they were having coffee again when they had just come from a bakery because he knew the only answer he’d get would be a snarl and maybe something about it’s an Italian thing.
When Gokudera came back with two cups, Yamamoto didn’t wait for him to ask what the hell he was doing here.
“I was wondering if I could move in with you.”
To his credit, Gokudera managed to set the cups on the table without making a complete mess. “I thought you were going to stay with your dad,” he said. “Isn’t that why you aren’t joining a traveling league?” Even if Tsuna didn’t think it polite to pry into Yamamoto’s reasons for staying in Namimori, Gokudera was never so couth.
“I’ll see him at work, still. I just figured I should try living on my own,” Yamamoto replied.
“You won’t be on your own if you’re living with me, moron.”
Yamamoto shrugged and riffle shuffled the cards again. “You know what I mean. Don’t you think it’ll be fun?”
“Living with you? It sounds like a nightmare. You always leave your shit everywhere whenever you come over.” Gokudera glared at an offending windbreaker lying in the corner that had been abandoned there earlier that week. “Why do really want to move in?”
“I think it’ll be good for us,” Yamamoto said. “Don’t you think so?”
“That’s-that’s just stupid. Us?” Gokudera wavered, like he was torn between throwing more insults and just being embarrassed.
Yamamoto’s laughter didn’t quite diffuse the situation, but it helped a little. “You’re not fooling anyone, Gokudera. I practically live here half the time as it is.”
“What about your dad?”
“I already told him I was thinking about moving out. He seemed to think it was a good idea. He likes you.” He adjusted his legs so the tips of his toes brushed up against Gokudera’s calves. “I like you, and I want to be with you. Unless you’re really considering going back to Italy...?”
For a few long seconds, Gokudera just stared, knuckles white in his clenching fists. A breeze fluttered through his hair, blowing a few stray strands into his eyes.
Yamamoto leaned forward and asked, “Gokudera, what’s wro-”
“I don’t know what to do with myself,” Gokudera whispered. His eyes wouldn’t meet Yamamoto’s, and Yamamoto was suddenly very glad that he had decided to stop by after noticing how strange Gokudera had acted at the bakery.
“My whole life I’ve been a mafioso, whether I knew it or not,” Gokudera continued without prompting, his tongue loosened by the excess caffeine, “and now that the Tenth’s gotten rid of the Vongola, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. It’s not like I’m blaming the Tenth-I mean, I know he did the right thing-but being made an underboss in the Vongola was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, and now I feel like my purpose in life’s been taking away.”
“Gokudera,” Yamamoto murmured, “there’s more to life than just the mafia. You don’t have to let one identity rule you.”
“I know, I know, I saw what happened with you and baseball.” Gokudera managed to swing his arms manically without knocking over the coffee. “But this is different. It’s cosa nostra, our thing, and I’m always going to be part of that ‘our’ whether I like it or not. The code’s always going to be there in the back of my mind; it’s part of who I am. I can’t just turn my back on everything I’ve ever known. Shit, this should be a good thing, dispersing the Vongola, but it’s my fucking luck that it’s just another nail in my coffin.”
Gokudera’s chest was heaving with agitation, like he was just this side of a panic attack. It was all Yamamoto could do not to scoot around the table and hold him close, but he knew that that would just earn him a smack or two. Though he was pleased that Gokudera felt comfortable enough to be so open around him, it still hurt to hear him talk like this.
“Gokudera,” he said, repeating it until the other man finally looked directly at him. “Gokudera, is being in the mafia what’s going to make you happy?”
“No,” Gokudera finally replied. “The Tenth didn’t do this just to have me make the same dumb decisions again. I just don’t know what to do. Who am I now?”
“You’re Gokudera Hayato,” Yamamoto said matter-of-factly. “You’re smart and loyal and curious and driven, and even though you’ve been hurt before, you still have a big heart. Even if you have some mafioso blood deep down in you, you have the strength to move on. You can still be happy. We can make each other happy.” This time Yamamoto gave in and crawled next to Gokudera to pull him into an embrace despite the danger.
“You are a fucking sap,” Gokudera grumbled, but he didn’t pull away. “You sound like one of those dumb Change Your Life in Ten Easy Steps books.”
“Haha, do you want to see what step ten is?” Yamamoto asked with a leer.
Gokudera rolled his eyes. “Is it safe to assume that it involves you being a total perv?” He let Yamamoto kiss him anyway, whining when they parted too quickly.
Yamamoto left his lips touching Gokudera’s as he whispered, “I’m glad you told me how you feel.”
“Shut up.”
“So, can I move in?”
“Since when has me telling you ‘no’ ever stopped you?”
As Yamamoto stroked cool fingers over his bare skin in response, Gokudera briefly wondered whose good luck he’d stolen that let him experience such undeserved emotions. In the back of his mind, he began counting down the days until reality would come back to slap him in the face. For now, he would appreciate what was in front of him while it was still there.
Characters: Gokudera-centric, Yamamoto/Gokudera, vague Gokudera/OC
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, mafia violence, character deaths
Word count: 5,000~
Summary: Sometimes Gokudera feels like he’s the butt of a malicious celestial joke. Sometimes he knows he is.
A/N: This vaguely follows the multi-verse concept, so each section takes place in a different universe. Written for khrfest 6 prompt: Yamamoto/Gokudera - luck; "If it weren't for bad luck, he'd have no luck at all." Title comes from the Latin phrase for the fickleness of luck. Thank you rodicks for checking it over!
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 29
-I-
Once upon a time, Don Falcone had a son, a slight little thing with feather soft silver hair, jade eyes, and a stub nose. The pride of his father, the little Falcone boy was shown off to any guest in the mansion who had a minute to spare.
“He’s a pianist prodigy,” Don Falcone would say none too modestly, and not without reason.
“Look at his little fingers,” the impromptu audience would coo, “see how they fly!”
Everyone knew about Don Falcone’s pretty little piano playing son.
Don Falcone also had many loyal friends outside cosa nostra. With the help of a lawyer and a few crooked police officers, he put one of his rivals, the head of the Roccamena, in jail.
The Roccamena weren’t too happy about that.
“He’s getting too full of himself,” they said. “He’s got too many friends on the police force,” they said. “Someone needs to teach him a lesson,” they said.
“What about his son?”
Everyone knew about Don Falcone’s pretty little piano playing son. Everyone knew about Don Falcone’s pride and joy.
They kidnapped him while he was playing hide-and-seek in the gardens with his older sister. The little Falcone boy didn’t even have the sense to resist, and why should he have? He was seven; he had no reason to suspect that anyone meant him harm. They fed him rolls of bread when he was hungry, and they slit his pale little throat when his father had the nerve to call them on a bluff. The Roccamena didn’t bluff. They let the little Falcone boy’s blood stain his clothes crimson, and they threw him in a ditch north of town. It wasn’t that uncommon for unlucky innocents to be caught in the crossfire of cosa nostra politics.
-II-
Once upon a time, somewhere in Palermo at the cusp of dusk, a trio of men quirked their eyebrows in unison as a grubby boy snarled at them in mock audacity. Though he spoke Sicilian like a native, his name was salad of choppy foreign syllables. He smelled like a garbage dump in July, and his face was smeared with dirt and blood and what could have been tears, but boys didn’t cry-at least not boys in the back alleys of Palermo.
“Just give me a chance,” he insisted, because his pride wouldn’t let him plead. “Let me show you what I can do.”
If the boy wanted to be a foot soldier, then so be it. They gave him the name of the hit and told him to make it flashy, to show people what happened when their famiglia was crossed.
The boy smiled for the first time, a lopsided thing that was more a feral baring of teeth than an indication of happiness.
“I can make it flashy for you,” he promised, and they just laughed because who was going to believe a snot nosed punk?
It was flashy, alright. Pedestrians a few streets away claimed to have felt the explosion, and the flames flickering from the destroyed vehicle radiated an unbearable heat that sent rivulets of sweat streaming down the temples of the onlookers, including a young boy with dirty gray hair, sunken jade eyes, and a name with choppy, foreign sounding syllables. It gave him a sense of pride to watch the terror write itself on people’s faces as they gaped at the destruction-his destruction. Maybe his employers would ask for his help again, he thought; maybe they would give him more complicated assignments. Maybe he could make a real name for himself in the dank underbelly of Palermo.
He decided to reward himself with some piping hot arancini bought off a street vendor a block over from the car bombing, which was where the cops, tipped off by a witness who had seen a child with peculiar physical features tinkering with the vehicle before the explosion, found him. Though he was little antsy, he wasn’t too worried-he’d been down to the station before, and he was a good liar.
What he forgot to take into account was that he was also a liability, a fact he realized too late as a bullet ripped through his chest before the officers had a chance to shove him into their cruiser. While they were busy shouting frantic instructions into the radio and searching wildly for the source of the shot, the boy with the dirty face and the foreign name was busy bleeding out onto the cobblestones, cursing his bad luck for having such conspicuous hair and eyes in a business that required the utmost secrecy.
-III-
Once upon a time, by the loading docks of an abandoned warehouse in Osaka, two men crouched in the damp earth behind a forest of what had once been a row of ornamental bushes, shoulders hunched and guns out. The air weighed on their shoulders, hot and muggy despite the night falling around them, and the shrill cries of the cicadas effectively covered their whispers from prying ears.
“They should be here by now, fucking Mukuro gave us fucking faulty info, they were supposed to be here an hour ago, where the fuck are they?” Gokudera mumbled to himself, his fingers fumbling distractedly with the engraved lighter in his pocket even though he knew he couldn’t light it while on a stake out.
Beside him, Yamamoto lowered a knee to the ground, ignoring the moisture that soaked into his pant-leg as he checked the extra magazine in his pocket for the fifth time.
“Calm down, Gokudera,” he whispered. “They’ll be here.”
This was stupid. This was unnecessary. In fact, Tsuna, originally opposed to the plan, had only changed his mind after some convincing from Reborn, and while Gokudera would follow his boss to the ends of the earth-even for an operation he didn’t back whole heartedly-part of him wondered what he was really doing here, getting his ass wet behind some bushes while waiting for a shipment of fucking pornography to roll in. Sure, this yakuza family was encroaching on their territory, extorting businesses that were under Vongola protection, but was destroying illegal porn really the most effective way to send these blokes a message? But Reborn was the fucking Word of God, and if he said hit ‘em where it hurts, whether that be their dicks or their bank accounts, who was going to contradict him?
Yamamoto had found the entire business hilarious in a ‘haha, I can’t believe I’m helping you blow up porn’ sort of way, but that was hours ago, and Gokudera had gotten good enough at reading beneath his mask to see that he was starting to feel miserable, too.
The detonator lay in his pocket next to the lighter, but he refrained from touching it too much besides in a cursory brush of fingers to remind himself that it was still there. Fuck, even after the delivery guys arrived, they’d still have to wait until the load was transferred into the warehouse before they could do anything. In the mean time, Gokudera began listing off what he needed to do when he got home, like take a nice long shower, read over the Greco reports, check the accounts, maybe take a short nap...
“Gokudera,” Yamamoto whispered suddenly, nudging him in the ribs. “Look. I think that’s them.”
Unless it was commonplace for unmarked delivery trucks driven by men with pompadours to park in this lot, Yamamoto was right. They waited impatiently for the men to unload the plain, cardboard boxes into the warehouse. When the job was finished and the yakuza men were loitering around and joking with each other next to the truck, Gokudera finally slipped the little remote from his pocket, tapped in the safety code, and depressed the detonator. The explosives weren’t enough to destroy the entire building, especially since the warehouse was made of concrete slabs, but the blast should have been loud enough to hear down the block.
Nothing happened.
“What the hell,” Gokudera muttered, jabbing the button again. Yamamoto peered over his shoulder as he retyped the safety code a few more times, knocked the remote against his thigh, and growled at it, but all to no avail.
“Did it not work?” Yamamoto asked.
“What do you think, moron?” Gokudera answered, not bothering to keep his voice down at that point because the yakuza were already starting up the truck and pulling out. It really didn’t matter if they were there, since it was just the boxes that needed to be destroyed, but it would have been nice to watch them run around like headless chickens when they caught wind of Gokudera’s handiwork. Now it was just a matter of personal pride. Gokudera Hayato was the motherfucking Smokin’ Bomb, and he wore the title like a badge of honor. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if Yamamoto weren’t there to see him fail, but now there was a witness, and even if Yamamoto would never talk shit about him for screwing up on a job, it was still one more person seeing the evidence of just how much of a fuck-up Gokudera was.
“One of the wires must have come loose. I’m going to check on it,” he announced, standing up while massaging the feeling back into his legs.
Yamamoto followed suit with a loud creak of joints. “Are you sure? I mean, I’m no expert, but I really don’t think it’s such a good idea to go into a building where there’s a bomb, especially if you’ve already activated it.”
Of course Yamamoto was right, but Gokudera ignored him on principle. Shamal would have a fucking field day with this, but screw personal safety, what mattered was pride.
Gokudera slipped into the warehouse with Yamamoto cautiously trailing on his heels. The boxes were being stored in one of the old supervisor offices near the center of the warehouse, and as they stalked past old conveyor belts and ceiling high shelving units, Gokudera could feel the idiocy of his brashness weigh on his conscience. He was breaking rule numero uno in the Handbook for How to Survive as a Demolitions Expert; this was how the amateurs were weeded out of the pack. For such an inconsequential job, why was he willing to take such a risk?
The answer, he knew without even a glance, walked beside him. Why was Yamamoto even here when this assignment would have been a cakewalk with just one person on task? Why did it seem like he was always there, tagging along like Mary’s little lamb, showing up at Gokudera’s apartment unannounced, volunteering to do jobs with him? It was bad luck to spend so much time with one person like that; when you hoarded someone’s attention, it just set you up for a more intense grief when they were gone. Hadn’t anyone ever told Yamamoto that?
He felt a warm hand against his shoulder as Yamamoto said, “Hey, Gokudera, let’s just-”
Gokudera wondered why Yamamoto hadn’t finished his sentence. Then he wondered why he was suddenly on his back, staring at the ceiling instead of standing in the warehouse with Yamamoto. Every bone in his body ached, and when he looked to his left, he cringed at the awkward angle at which his arm was outstretched. With a few painful, dry coughs, he made a failed attempt to clear the dust from his lungs and rolled onto his knees, cradling his broken arm close to his body. The ringing in his ears was driving him mad, and he could just barely hear the sound of his own voice over it as he called out either Yamamoto or help-he really wasn’t sure which. It might even have been oh God, what have I done? if he had believed in a god cruel enough to breathe life into his body.
When it became apparent that even if Yamamoto were screaming back to him, he wouldn’t be able to hear it, he began stumbling through the rubble of the warehouse, kicking away loose chunks of concrete and wiping blood and sweat (no tears because men of honor don’t cry) from his face with the back of his uninjured hand.
He found him under the remnants of a wall, chest crushed and staring at Gokudera with sightless eyes. Gokudera wanted to scream at him, to ask him why he’d ever thought it a good idea to worm his way under Gokudera’s skin like that, but it was pointless if neither of them could hear the words.
-IV-
Once upon a time, on the dirty linoleum of his tiny kitchen, Gokudera crouched next to the refrigerator and re-read the crinkled letter for the third time. He only let himself skim it this time, taking in just the bare bones of the message.
You’re so distant. I feel like I’m alone when I’m with you. Sometimes I wonder if you’re incapable of love.
The pages rustled in his trembling fingers, the only sound in the empty apartment apart from his own hitching breath. He wondered at his own reaction. It wasn’t like he had cared that much about her; she’d been a convenience, someone to come home to at night so he wouldn’t have to feel alone in his own skin. He’d never seen a future with her, yet here he was, falling apart at the seams because of the poisonous truth in her words. Without another person’s voice there to bounce off the walls, the apartment began to seem claustrophobic. Gokudera had to escape.
It wasn’t until he’d parked his car along the curb and was staring out the windshield through the rain when he realized where his body had lead him. The lights were on in Yamamoto’s apartment, emitting a soft, welcoming glow from behind the thin drapes. He covered his head uselessly with his jacket and ran to the front porch of the building. The letter was getting damp along its haphazard folds in his pocket, but he didn’t care. It was only there to serve as a charm that he could hold up later and mock.
After three rapid bouts of knocking, Yamamoto finally opened the door. Without a word, he ushered Gokudera inside, taking his dripping jacket and hurrying into the kitchen to brew a pot of tea. Such a good host, Gokudera thought, such a good boy, too dumb to realize how much of an emotionally stunted fuck up he was friends with. He collapsed cross legged onto one of the cushions spread out on the clean tatami mats of the living room.
Yamamoto called out from the kitchen, “Are you hungry?”
“No,” Gokudera answered simultaneously as his stomach gave a traitorous growl. He’d been planning on taking his girlfriend out for dinner, but that was before he’d arrived home to an empty apartment. “Kind of. Maybe.”
Not five minutes later, Yamamoto came back with two mugs, a pot of green tea, and a half finished bag of shrimp puffs tucked under his arm. Gokudera didn’t bother to thank him, but Yamamoto smiled as if he had anyway.
“What’s up?” Yamamoto asked after a while because he was sage enough to know that its close cousin, what’s wrong? was a sure fire way to get Gokudera to shut down completely. “How’s Rina?”
Okay, maybe ‘sage’ wasn’t the most fitting description, especially since Gokudera looked liked he was being strangled. Or at least ready to strangle someone else.
“Gokudera?” Yamamoto prodded when the sounds coming from his friend’s mouth refused to translate into any language he knew (i.e. Japanese, English baseball terminology, and a smattering of Italian and Sicilian curses).
Gokudera’s knuckles were white in their grip on his damp jeans. “She left.”
That was too bad. She’d seemed like a nice girl, Yamamoto thought, but now was probably not the time to say that. “Sorry.”
“Fuck her,” Gokudera snarled, “If she thinks, I, fuck!”
Yamamoto nodded silently, wondering if it was better to offer verbal support or just be a set of ears for Gokudera to vent to. He prepared to listen to an incensed assault on the ex-girlfriend’s character.
“I’m not incapable of love.”
Well, that was definitely not what Yamamoto had been expecting. The voice Gokudera had used sounded so small and pathetic, like he was hardly convincing himself, and when Yamamoto looked up, his heart broke a little to see Gokudera shivering across from him, eyes focused on the floor and looking so terribly alone.
“Did she tell you that?” Yamamoto asked.
Gokudera didn’t answer, but he did look at Yamamoto’s face this time. His eyes which were puffy and pink. How had Yamamoto not noticed before?
“Well, she’s wrong. I know you care a lot for Tsuna, and for your sister, and Dr. Shamal, and even for me, even if you don’t show it all the time, but that doesn’t matter because it’s the thought that counts, right? And we love you too. You don’t have to feel so alone.”
Gokudera knew he should have left before he did something he’d regret, but that opportunity had long since passed. He was tired of closing himself off to everything, and maybe little desperate, and Yamamoto had always been so nice to him, even when he was a jackass in return, and maybe he was a little irrational because of Rina leaving, and maybe Gokudera just wanted to feel alive. His grip on the back of Yamamoto’s neck had to have been painful, but they could do gentle later; now he needed lips and teeth and saliva and blood rushing in his ears, making him feel faint. It was equally exhilarating and terrifying, this admission of ‘hey, we could do this, I know you want it, I’m willing to make it work, just don’t let me be alone.’
Yamamoto grunted a little when Gokudera bit down on his lower lip, which was a good thing, but then he pushed Gokudera off and away, which was not such a good thing.
“I’m not...” There was no need for him to finish his sentence because Gokudera already knew what he was trying to say. He felt like an utter fool.
“Forget it.” Gokudera stood up, and padded over to the foyer to slip on his sodden jacket and shoes.
Yamamoto followed him. “Gokudera, I care about you, just not in that way.”
“I said forget it.”
“Gokudera, please-!”
Whatever else Yamamoto had wanted to say lay trapped on the other side of the slammed door. Gokudera knew how pathetic he looked running (away) through the downpour to his car. He didn’t care. All he really wanted right now was to sit in the dark with a decent bottle of Syrah and some Tiziano Ferro on the surround sound. All he really wanted was to forget about everything that had happened tonight, every fucking proof of his having been born under a dark star. He wanted to forget about how he would have to face Yamamoto tomorrow, and how he would have to act as if he hadn’t just ruined their relationship. Was this his lot in life? To be the butt of a malicious, celestial joke?
When he drove off, he could see Yamamoto run into the middle of the street in his rear view mirror, bedraggled and shouting something, but Gokudera knew it wasn’t anything his selfish ears wanted to hear.
-V-
Once upon a time, in a nondescript bakery in a nondescript town, a nondescript young man smiled tiredly at his friends over the cup of coffee clutched in his hands.
“It’s over,” he said, sighing in relief. “I can’t believe it’s finally over.” His eyes were dark rings of insomnia bruised skin, and the lines tracing across his face spelled out a lifetime of years lived out beyond his physical age.
“Yeah,” someone answered, and then everyone just stared off into lost space.
The oldest one was the first to leave. “Well, I’d better get going. Hana and I are going out to celebrate,” he said in a voice a decibel or two too loud for indoor use. “I’ll see you guys around.”
“Bye, Sempai,” the first man, the leader, replied. “Thanks. For everything.”
The eldest’s gray eyes crinkled around the edges when he spoke. “You know you can always rely on me, Sawada.” And then he was gone.
Sawada Tsunayoshi turned back to the other two men sitting with him. Maybe ‘men’ wasn’t the correct term to use, but while they were still too young to be considered adults in the eyes of the law, they had left boyhood behind long ago. He took a sip of coffee.
“Do you guys know what you’re going to do now?” he asked. “Yamamoto?”
The lankier of the two leaned back in his chair. “I’m going to stick around and help my old man out with the shop,” he answered. “I think the grade school by my house is looking for a coach, so there’s that, too.”
Tsuna didn’t bother to ask why Yamamoto wasn’t following through on his original plans of leaving home to play professional ball.
The other man drummed his fingers against the table before speaking. “...My father wants me to go back to Sicily to help out the Family.”
“Is that what you want to do?” Tsuna asked.
The man gave a wry smile. “Well, there’s this amazing guy I know who kind of got me to consider life outside the mafia, so...”
Tsuna rested a hand on his forearm. “You’re always welcome here, you know that, Gokudera-kun.”
Gokudera nodded. “Yeah, I know. I might start taking classes at the junior college. I really don’t know. What about you, Ten-” He caught himself with a sheepish look. “Er, Tsuna.”
“Dad’s met a lot of people throughout the years. He said he probably has some contacts that might help me find a job. Pushing papers in an office sounds pretty nice right now.” He was joined in his chuckling by his friends as they all tried to imagine the man before them, responsible for dismantling the most powerful mafia family in history, at a desk job. They felt like they were floating on a cloud of surreality.
The Vongola didn’t come up once in their conversation thereafter. Instead, they tried to make small talk like a normal group of friends their age, something that had been lost to them for what seemed like forever.
After a spell, Tsuna glanced at his watch and said, “Kyoko-chan’s coming over in a bit. We’re going to...well, we’re going to talk things out.” He took a sip of now cold coffee. “And stuff.”
It was their cue to leave. Yamamoto and Gokudera laid some coins on the table and got up.
“We’ll see you around,” Yamamoto said.
Gokudera seemed to be warring with himself, but he finally spoke in a too chipper voice. “I’ll stop by sometime, um...soon. Tell Kyoko we said ‘hi’.”
“Sure.” Tsuna’s bright smile took on a more nostalgic tint. “See you guys.”
They left the bakery and made it to the street corner before either of them said a word. The roar of traffic and babble of passing pedestrians spun around them, but a bubble of silence encased them until Yamamoto bumped against Gokudera’s barely trembling shoulder and asked, “Can I come over?”
Gokudera inched away. “I’ve got stuff to do.”
“I can help.”
“I’ve got errands to run.”
“I’ll tag along.”
Gokudera groaned. “You don’t take a hint, do you?”
“Nope, haha.”
They ended up in Gokudera’s apartment because Yamamoto was persistent and Gokudera only knew a finite number of ways to say no. It was stuffy from being shut up all day, so they pushed the low table in the living room next to the window and angled the little electric fan just right so it would pull more air into the room. Yamamoto wasn’t sure how the physics of all that worked, but he trusted Gokudera to find a way to keep them cool and set about shuffling cards while Gokudera made coffee in the other room. He didn’t bother to ask why they were having coffee again when they had just come from a bakery because he knew the only answer he’d get would be a snarl and maybe something about it’s an Italian thing.
When Gokudera came back with two cups, Yamamoto didn’t wait for him to ask what the hell he was doing here.
“I was wondering if I could move in with you.”
To his credit, Gokudera managed to set the cups on the table without making a complete mess. “I thought you were going to stay with your dad,” he said. “Isn’t that why you aren’t joining a traveling league?” Even if Tsuna didn’t think it polite to pry into Yamamoto’s reasons for staying in Namimori, Gokudera was never so couth.
“I’ll see him at work, still. I just figured I should try living on my own,” Yamamoto replied.
“You won’t be on your own if you’re living with me, moron.”
Yamamoto shrugged and riffle shuffled the cards again. “You know what I mean. Don’t you think it’ll be fun?”
“Living with you? It sounds like a nightmare. You always leave your shit everywhere whenever you come over.” Gokudera glared at an offending windbreaker lying in the corner that had been abandoned there earlier that week. “Why do really want to move in?”
“I think it’ll be good for us,” Yamamoto said. “Don’t you think so?”
“That’s-that’s just stupid. Us?” Gokudera wavered, like he was torn between throwing more insults and just being embarrassed.
Yamamoto’s laughter didn’t quite diffuse the situation, but it helped a little. “You’re not fooling anyone, Gokudera. I practically live here half the time as it is.”
“What about your dad?”
“I already told him I was thinking about moving out. He seemed to think it was a good idea. He likes you.” He adjusted his legs so the tips of his toes brushed up against Gokudera’s calves. “I like you, and I want to be with you. Unless you’re really considering going back to Italy...?”
For a few long seconds, Gokudera just stared, knuckles white in his clenching fists. A breeze fluttered through his hair, blowing a few stray strands into his eyes.
Yamamoto leaned forward and asked, “Gokudera, what’s wro-”
“I don’t know what to do with myself,” Gokudera whispered. His eyes wouldn’t meet Yamamoto’s, and Yamamoto was suddenly very glad that he had decided to stop by after noticing how strange Gokudera had acted at the bakery.
“My whole life I’ve been a mafioso, whether I knew it or not,” Gokudera continued without prompting, his tongue loosened by the excess caffeine, “and now that the Tenth’s gotten rid of the Vongola, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. It’s not like I’m blaming the Tenth-I mean, I know he did the right thing-but being made an underboss in the Vongola was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, and now I feel like my purpose in life’s been taking away.”
“Gokudera,” Yamamoto murmured, “there’s more to life than just the mafia. You don’t have to let one identity rule you.”
“I know, I know, I saw what happened with you and baseball.” Gokudera managed to swing his arms manically without knocking over the coffee. “But this is different. It’s cosa nostra, our thing, and I’m always going to be part of that ‘our’ whether I like it or not. The code’s always going to be there in the back of my mind; it’s part of who I am. I can’t just turn my back on everything I’ve ever known. Shit, this should be a good thing, dispersing the Vongola, but it’s my fucking luck that it’s just another nail in my coffin.”
Gokudera’s chest was heaving with agitation, like he was just this side of a panic attack. It was all Yamamoto could do not to scoot around the table and hold him close, but he knew that that would just earn him a smack or two. Though he was pleased that Gokudera felt comfortable enough to be so open around him, it still hurt to hear him talk like this.
“Gokudera,” he said, repeating it until the other man finally looked directly at him. “Gokudera, is being in the mafia what’s going to make you happy?”
“No,” Gokudera finally replied. “The Tenth didn’t do this just to have me make the same dumb decisions again. I just don’t know what to do. Who am I now?”
“You’re Gokudera Hayato,” Yamamoto said matter-of-factly. “You’re smart and loyal and curious and driven, and even though you’ve been hurt before, you still have a big heart. Even if you have some mafioso blood deep down in you, you have the strength to move on. You can still be happy. We can make each other happy.” This time Yamamoto gave in and crawled next to Gokudera to pull him into an embrace despite the danger.
“You are a fucking sap,” Gokudera grumbled, but he didn’t pull away. “You sound like one of those dumb Change Your Life in Ten Easy Steps books.”
“Haha, do you want to see what step ten is?” Yamamoto asked with a leer.
Gokudera rolled his eyes. “Is it safe to assume that it involves you being a total perv?” He let Yamamoto kiss him anyway, whining when they parted too quickly.
Yamamoto left his lips touching Gokudera’s as he whispered, “I’m glad you told me how you feel.”
“Shut up.”
“So, can I move in?”
“Since when has me telling you ‘no’ ever stopped you?”
As Yamamoto stroked cool fingers over his bare skin in response, Gokudera briefly wondered whose good luck he’d stolen that let him experience such undeserved emotions. In the back of his mind, he began counting down the days until reality would come back to slap him in the face. For now, he would appreciate what was in front of him while it was still there.