(no subject)
Title: Stitches
Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Pairing: Yamamoto/Gokudera
Rating: PG-13 (for some potential needle squick and non-explicit sexuality)
Warnings: Minor spoilers for current arc.
Word Count: 1500
Notes: First, apologizing for the lame title. I was on the "stitches" page on Wikipedia, looking for inspiration, saw the first picture of someone's bloody fucking thumb and almost vomited. So. Also, anyone familiar with my Loveless fic may have noticed a certain...affinity for piercings. Really, I wrote this just to write about TYL!Gokudera's sexy pierced ears. Also, the tending of wounds. *_* (...Why do I no longer read/write Loveless fic, again?)
"What do you think," Yamamoto asked, staring at himself in the mirror, "a beard?"
Gokudera frowned and doused a cloth with some antiseptic. "Nn," he said. He didn't bother to say that hair wouldn't grow there anyway.
"That's gonna scar, huh?" Yamamoto tilted his chin up to get a better look at the wide gash there. Blood was dry and caked inside, clinging to the torn skin at the edges. It was hardly the worst blade injury he'd received, but it was the first one that he couldn't hide under a fine, tailored suit. They'd already gotten most of the blood off the rest of his face.
Gokudera nodded and lifted his wet cloth up to Yamamoto's face. "Hold still," he said.
And he began to wipe at Yamamoto's cut. It was deep. He could see where the blade had torn through the thin muscle stretched over his jaw. Not good.
Yamamoto hissed at the contact. "Haha, just like the movies," he said, smiling. The expression looked like it hurt him, but he kept doing it.
So Gokudera told him to shut up. No point in making the wound any worse; no point in stretching it out until it tore down lower over his chin.
***
Yamamoto had gone with him just two weeks before as he'd let some girl pierce his ears. He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the doorway to the shop. "Shop" was generous--it was a tiny room carved out between two existing buildings. A counter, a chair for the customer, a bench for the girl with the needle. A stainless steel cart covered with stainless steel instruments. The girl's face was covered with steel, too: a ring in her lip, a stud in her nose, two hoops in her eyebrow.
Yamamoto watched on. It was summer. Hot. His suit clung to him. He leaned up against the door jamb, legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed at his chest, and he watched with that amused smile that had learned quiet over the years. Now that they were older, Gokudera said it had become even more of a game to Yamamoto once they got the suits. After graduation, they traded in their Namimori uniforms, and then, for days at a time, Yamamoto could dissolve entirely into his character.
He was very striking; the girls still fawned over him and he'd learned to play that game, too.
***
"Would you stop?"
"No," Yamamoto answered, kissing each of the thick scars on Gokudera's back. These were wounds that had not been stitched up. Gokudera couldn't see them to do it himself, and he never let Yamamoto use needle and thread on him. ("You'd pass out," he'd said. He was right.)
"It tickles. Stop."
"Mm," Yamamoto disagreed, his lips against a long, pale scar that ran parallel Gokudera's spine, "I'm making it all better."
***
"Aw, not this again? It's just a small cut--you don't have to stitch it, do you?"
Gokudera pulled a needle out of the kit. "Quiet. It'll heal better if we get it closed up. Just a few."
The Vongola had access to the finest doctors available, but this kind of petty fieldwork, they were used to doing themselves. They had to be. And Shamal would have just spit on it anyway.
The needle should have been sterile, but Gokudera heated it with a lighter anyway. Mostly for show. Yamamoto watched him thread it -- he used heavy stuff when he stitched up Yamamoto's wounds, stuff that would last, but for his own, he just used the same kind of thread he'd use to patch up a shirt.
Yamamoto had walked in on him once: Gokudera was closing up a gash in his arm, thread pulled tight by his teeth; the thick tendons of his neck stood out. He was shirtless; all of the muscles in his upper body were tensed with the strange contortion, with the pain of sliced and pierced skin. His eyes were fierce and sharp when he paused and looked up at Yamamoto. And Yamamoto felt his knees waver beneath his weight for a moment.
***
"The beard," Gokudera said, "is definitely out."
"Yeah," Yamamoto agreed, "hey, you know who should grow one? Ryohei, right? He'd look sort of like Tsuna's dad, wouldn't he?"
Gokudera smirked.
***
"Hey, ouch. Would you knock it off?"
Yamamoto hummed against his ear and grinned. His body was heavy and warm curved over Gokudera's back. "Thought you liked that it hurt," he said, running his nose along the new studs in the pink, warm shell of Gokudera's ear.
Gokudera growled and pushed his hips back against Yamamoto's; his knees sank deeper into the mattress. "If you keep chewing on it, it'll get infected, you moron."
Yamamoto smiled into the warm crook where Gokudera's neck met his shoulder. "Picky, picky," he said, kissing down his shoulder blade and rocking their hips together.
***
Yamamoto's spine was pressed against his own, and Gokudera swore he could feel a heartbeat. It matched the one in his own chest. They'd faced more guys than this before, but in previous battles they had been better armed. No matter.
"Ready, Hayato?" Yamamoto's voice was bright and low.
"Che," he answered. He could feel Yamamoto's laugh rumble up his back.
"Good." And they pushed off of each other. Gokudera's feet pounded against the ground. The dynamite was clenched between his fingers, fuses lit on the cigarette hanging down from between his lips. And his opponent smiled at him.
"Shit." The Millefiore box weapon burst open, and a hawk swooped out. It's eyes blazed; it's talons looked like knives. Gokudera drew his arm back, readied the release. But the hawk screeched once and dove past him. He wasn't the bird's target. Yamamoto was.
"Yamamoto!" And Gokudera turned in time to see one of the hawk's talons slice down the curve of Yamamoto's chin.
***
The girl in the piercing parlor put her hands on her hips and appraised him. "You sure you want two of these, baby?"
Gokudera raised his eyebrows at what he considered a grave condescension; Yamamoto snickered.
"Yes," he said. The girl with the needle shrugged.
Yamamoto kept his eyes on Gokudera for the rest of the procedure, this smile gracing his lips that was deeply amused. He knew he'd be hearing about this for the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of the week.
***
So Gokudera had taken out the whole fucking lot of them. Double bomb. Triple bomb. Rocket bomb and fire and smoke and screams and then bodies hitting the ground like shrapnel.
"Hey, Takeshi," he whispered, kneeling beside his friend's body on the ground, "hey, come on. You okay?" He rested a hand on Yamamoto's temple when there was no answer.
The wound on his chin was nothing compared to the hole ripped through his upper arm by a bullet. The Millefiore grunt had waited for the distraction of the hawk box weapon; then he had fired. Gokudera had seen that, too.
So the slice down Yamamoto's chin was the least of their worries. But the thick way the blood smeared his lips and ran over his cheekbone made Gokudera's hands tremble. It had been his fault. If he'd just read his opponent better...
Yamamoto opened one eye. "Hey yourself," he said, then smiled, "I think I'm deaf from all the explosions." A cough against the smoke still lingering. "We have to teach you a quieter attack."
Gokudera scowled and cuffed him upside the head.
***
"They're hot," Yamamoto said, smiling over at Gokudera as they walked back to the car. Gokudera's ears were a warm pink from the new studs there.
"Shut up," he said, embarrassed. Cute.
"Haha, okay, okay. Hey, did they hurt?"
"Of course."
"I'm sorry."
Gokudera shrugged. "I wanted them to."
***
Gokudera stared at the both of them in the bathroom mirror. Yamamoto stood behind him, his good, unbandaged arm hooked across Gokudera's chest. Yamamoto was a head taller, even still.
"It'll look better once we get the stitches out," he said, eyes appraising the new suture on the other's chin.
Yamamoto smiled. "It's fine," he said, "you did a good job."
Gokudera frowned. As usual, compliments were lost on him. Fine.
Yamamoto nestled his head into the curve of Gokudera's neck. Days like this made his head spin: the mundane morning, Gokudera warm in bed beside him, the trip into town. The attack. The fight, the blood, the fear, then a night like this, close and quiet and safe. Saving each other because that's what Family does.
"Hey," he whispered in Gokudera's ear, his eyes still closed to enjoy the warmth and the nearness, "let me clean the piercings."
"I can get them," he said, "you're injured."
Yamamoto caught his eyes in the mirror. "I'd really like to." He traced a fingertip over a long scar on Gokudera's chest.
Gokudera's reflection stared back at him. Then he sighed. "Fine," he said. And he passed the antiseptic to Yamamoto.
Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Pairing: Yamamoto/Gokudera
Rating: PG-13 (for some potential needle squick and non-explicit sexuality)
Warnings: Minor spoilers for current arc.
Word Count: 1500
Notes: First, apologizing for the lame title. I was on the "stitches" page on Wikipedia, looking for inspiration, saw the first picture of someone's bloody fucking thumb and almost vomited. So. Also, anyone familiar with my Loveless fic may have noticed a certain...affinity for piercings. Really, I wrote this just to write about TYL!Gokudera's sexy pierced ears. Also, the tending of wounds. *_* (...Why do I no longer read/write Loveless fic, again?)
"What do you think," Yamamoto asked, staring at himself in the mirror, "a beard?"
Gokudera frowned and doused a cloth with some antiseptic. "Nn," he said. He didn't bother to say that hair wouldn't grow there anyway.
"That's gonna scar, huh?" Yamamoto tilted his chin up to get a better look at the wide gash there. Blood was dry and caked inside, clinging to the torn skin at the edges. It was hardly the worst blade injury he'd received, but it was the first one that he couldn't hide under a fine, tailored suit. They'd already gotten most of the blood off the rest of his face.
Gokudera nodded and lifted his wet cloth up to Yamamoto's face. "Hold still," he said.
And he began to wipe at Yamamoto's cut. It was deep. He could see where the blade had torn through the thin muscle stretched over his jaw. Not good.
Yamamoto hissed at the contact. "Haha, just like the movies," he said, smiling. The expression looked like it hurt him, but he kept doing it.
So Gokudera told him to shut up. No point in making the wound any worse; no point in stretching it out until it tore down lower over his chin.
***
Yamamoto had gone with him just two weeks before as he'd let some girl pierce his ears. He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the doorway to the shop. "Shop" was generous--it was a tiny room carved out between two existing buildings. A counter, a chair for the customer, a bench for the girl with the needle. A stainless steel cart covered with stainless steel instruments. The girl's face was covered with steel, too: a ring in her lip, a stud in her nose, two hoops in her eyebrow.
Yamamoto watched on. It was summer. Hot. His suit clung to him. He leaned up against the door jamb, legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed at his chest, and he watched with that amused smile that had learned quiet over the years. Now that they were older, Gokudera said it had become even more of a game to Yamamoto once they got the suits. After graduation, they traded in their Namimori uniforms, and then, for days at a time, Yamamoto could dissolve entirely into his character.
He was very striking; the girls still fawned over him and he'd learned to play that game, too.
***
"Would you stop?"
"No," Yamamoto answered, kissing each of the thick scars on Gokudera's back. These were wounds that had not been stitched up. Gokudera couldn't see them to do it himself, and he never let Yamamoto use needle and thread on him. ("You'd pass out," he'd said. He was right.)
"It tickles. Stop."
"Mm," Yamamoto disagreed, his lips against a long, pale scar that ran parallel Gokudera's spine, "I'm making it all better."
***
"Aw, not this again? It's just a small cut--you don't have to stitch it, do you?"
Gokudera pulled a needle out of the kit. "Quiet. It'll heal better if we get it closed up. Just a few."
The Vongola had access to the finest doctors available, but this kind of petty fieldwork, they were used to doing themselves. They had to be. And Shamal would have just spit on it anyway.
The needle should have been sterile, but Gokudera heated it with a lighter anyway. Mostly for show. Yamamoto watched him thread it -- he used heavy stuff when he stitched up Yamamoto's wounds, stuff that would last, but for his own, he just used the same kind of thread he'd use to patch up a shirt.
Yamamoto had walked in on him once: Gokudera was closing up a gash in his arm, thread pulled tight by his teeth; the thick tendons of his neck stood out. He was shirtless; all of the muscles in his upper body were tensed with the strange contortion, with the pain of sliced and pierced skin. His eyes were fierce and sharp when he paused and looked up at Yamamoto. And Yamamoto felt his knees waver beneath his weight for a moment.
***
"The beard," Gokudera said, "is definitely out."
"Yeah," Yamamoto agreed, "hey, you know who should grow one? Ryohei, right? He'd look sort of like Tsuna's dad, wouldn't he?"
Gokudera smirked.
***
"Hey, ouch. Would you knock it off?"
Yamamoto hummed against his ear and grinned. His body was heavy and warm curved over Gokudera's back. "Thought you liked that it hurt," he said, running his nose along the new studs in the pink, warm shell of Gokudera's ear.
Gokudera growled and pushed his hips back against Yamamoto's; his knees sank deeper into the mattress. "If you keep chewing on it, it'll get infected, you moron."
Yamamoto smiled into the warm crook where Gokudera's neck met his shoulder. "Picky, picky," he said, kissing down his shoulder blade and rocking their hips together.
***
Yamamoto's spine was pressed against his own, and Gokudera swore he could feel a heartbeat. It matched the one in his own chest. They'd faced more guys than this before, but in previous battles they had been better armed. No matter.
"Ready, Hayato?" Yamamoto's voice was bright and low.
"Che," he answered. He could feel Yamamoto's laugh rumble up his back.
"Good." And they pushed off of each other. Gokudera's feet pounded against the ground. The dynamite was clenched between his fingers, fuses lit on the cigarette hanging down from between his lips. And his opponent smiled at him.
"Shit." The Millefiore box weapon burst open, and a hawk swooped out. It's eyes blazed; it's talons looked like knives. Gokudera drew his arm back, readied the release. But the hawk screeched once and dove past him. He wasn't the bird's target. Yamamoto was.
"Yamamoto!" And Gokudera turned in time to see one of the hawk's talons slice down the curve of Yamamoto's chin.
***
The girl in the piercing parlor put her hands on her hips and appraised him. "You sure you want two of these, baby?"
Gokudera raised his eyebrows at what he considered a grave condescension; Yamamoto snickered.
"Yes," he said. The girl with the needle shrugged.
Yamamoto kept his eyes on Gokudera for the rest of the procedure, this smile gracing his lips that was deeply amused. He knew he'd be hearing about this for the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of the week.
***
So Gokudera had taken out the whole fucking lot of them. Double bomb. Triple bomb. Rocket bomb and fire and smoke and screams and then bodies hitting the ground like shrapnel.
"Hey, Takeshi," he whispered, kneeling beside his friend's body on the ground, "hey, come on. You okay?" He rested a hand on Yamamoto's temple when there was no answer.
The wound on his chin was nothing compared to the hole ripped through his upper arm by a bullet. The Millefiore grunt had waited for the distraction of the hawk box weapon; then he had fired. Gokudera had seen that, too.
So the slice down Yamamoto's chin was the least of their worries. But the thick way the blood smeared his lips and ran over his cheekbone made Gokudera's hands tremble. It had been his fault. If he'd just read his opponent better...
Yamamoto opened one eye. "Hey yourself," he said, then smiled, "I think I'm deaf from all the explosions." A cough against the smoke still lingering. "We have to teach you a quieter attack."
Gokudera scowled and cuffed him upside the head.
***
"They're hot," Yamamoto said, smiling over at Gokudera as they walked back to the car. Gokudera's ears were a warm pink from the new studs there.
"Shut up," he said, embarrassed. Cute.
"Haha, okay, okay. Hey, did they hurt?"
"Of course."
"I'm sorry."
Gokudera shrugged. "I wanted them to."
***
Gokudera stared at the both of them in the bathroom mirror. Yamamoto stood behind him, his good, unbandaged arm hooked across Gokudera's chest. Yamamoto was a head taller, even still.
"It'll look better once we get the stitches out," he said, eyes appraising the new suture on the other's chin.
Yamamoto smiled. "It's fine," he said, "you did a good job."
Gokudera frowned. As usual, compliments were lost on him. Fine.
Yamamoto nestled his head into the curve of Gokudera's neck. Days like this made his head spin: the mundane morning, Gokudera warm in bed beside him, the trip into town. The attack. The fight, the blood, the fear, then a night like this, close and quiet and safe. Saving each other because that's what Family does.
"Hey," he whispered in Gokudera's ear, his eyes still closed to enjoy the warmth and the nearness, "let me clean the piercings."
"I can get them," he said, "you're injured."
Yamamoto caught his eyes in the mirror. "I'd really like to." He traced a fingertip over a long scar on Gokudera's chest.
Gokudera's reflection stared back at him. Then he sighed. "Fine," he said. And he passed the antiseptic to Yamamoto.