Fic: Saving Gokudera
Title: Saving Gokudera
Characters/Pairing: 8059, but it could just as easily be gen.
Word Count: 534
Excerpt: “Yamamoto is like the shock of someone thumping him in the lungs and breaking his ribs to make him breathe.”
1. There's something to be said about Italian blood. Gokudera is his mother's boy; it's where he gets his hands, his eyes. But if it's her romanticism that causes him to run those hands around the rim of a stray shell, then it must be his father's delight that leads him to laugh when his fingers come away red and wet. The throb of salt on jagged skin shoots just enough adrenaline to ebb the tears as the four-year-old prances barefoot in the sand, presses the shell to his ear and then hurls it into the sea.
It’s been a year. The boy is still convinced his mother’s sailed away on a grand adventure. He whispers secrets to her and folds her paper boats cross-legged on the beach. His soul is shared equally between her and his piano; his papa owns but a sliver of it, the part he managed to snag with a fistful of euros and three pints of blood. The child won’t know until his birthday that she’s dead. He won’t know until the next birthday how she died, and he’ll be eight before he overhears the truth and flees Italy altogether. Before he meets Tsuna, he’s walking underwater, a prized ship in a bottle unused to the shatter of freedom.
Everyone makes bad decisions, Gokudera, my boy. Sometimes people die.
From then on, his birthday is also the anniversary of his mother’s death, his father’s sick way of ensuring he regrets being born for the rest of his life. And he does. He regrets; regrets that alcohol loosens wagging tongues, regrets staying for so long in the house of a murderer and above all, regrets being that murderer’s son.
2. Gokudera knows the feeling of drowning (the pressure building inside your chest of something dragging you under, and the holding out, hope, desperation as you realise nobody’s coming). But Yamamoto - Yamamoto is like the shock of someone thumping him in the lungs and breaking his ribs to make him breathe. Gokudera hates him on sight.
Hey. Stop. Can’t you see I’m not worth saving?
He hates him afterwards too, the boy as irritating as rain on a peaceful afternoon. From his first frustrating, blinding smile, Yamamoto douses Gokudera’s fire, water on dynamite until all that’s left is the vertigo seizing his gut. In the recesses of his soul, need and pride circle each other and refuse to get along.
He’s chilled when Yamamoto hauls him from the bathtub, slams him against the towel rack and screams, “Do you want to fucking die?”
“Yes,” he gasps (chokes) and socks the stunned bastard in the jaw with all the strength he can muster. You can’t save me. I won’t let you. So there - So there -
He feels himself go under.
2.5. Later, when Tsuna is pacing back and forth, muttering about ambulances, Reborn fixes Yamamoto with a look. The baby makes an expansive gesture with his hand that could indicate anything from the purpling bruise on Gokudera’s spine to his current frozen, unconscious state to Yamamoto’s own throbbing imprint of a fist. “What happened here?”
“I -“ Failed. Utterly.
He drops his head into his hands and wishes things could be different.
Characters/Pairing: 8059, but it could just as easily be gen.
Word Count: 534
Excerpt: “Yamamoto is like the shock of someone thumping him in the lungs and breaking his ribs to make him breathe.”
1. There's something to be said about Italian blood. Gokudera is his mother's boy; it's where he gets his hands, his eyes. But if it's her romanticism that causes him to run those hands around the rim of a stray shell, then it must be his father's delight that leads him to laugh when his fingers come away red and wet. The throb of salt on jagged skin shoots just enough adrenaline to ebb the tears as the four-year-old prances barefoot in the sand, presses the shell to his ear and then hurls it into the sea.
It’s been a year. The boy is still convinced his mother’s sailed away on a grand adventure. He whispers secrets to her and folds her paper boats cross-legged on the beach. His soul is shared equally between her and his piano; his papa owns but a sliver of it, the part he managed to snag with a fistful of euros and three pints of blood. The child won’t know until his birthday that she’s dead. He won’t know until the next birthday how she died, and he’ll be eight before he overhears the truth and flees Italy altogether. Before he meets Tsuna, he’s walking underwater, a prized ship in a bottle unused to the shatter of freedom.
Everyone makes bad decisions, Gokudera, my boy. Sometimes people die.
From then on, his birthday is also the anniversary of his mother’s death, his father’s sick way of ensuring he regrets being born for the rest of his life. And he does. He regrets; regrets that alcohol loosens wagging tongues, regrets staying for so long in the house of a murderer and above all, regrets being that murderer’s son.
2. Gokudera knows the feeling of drowning (the pressure building inside your chest of something dragging you under, and the holding out, hope, desperation as you realise nobody’s coming). But Yamamoto - Yamamoto is like the shock of someone thumping him in the lungs and breaking his ribs to make him breathe. Gokudera hates him on sight.
Hey. Stop. Can’t you see I’m not worth saving?
He hates him afterwards too, the boy as irritating as rain on a peaceful afternoon. From his first frustrating, blinding smile, Yamamoto douses Gokudera’s fire, water on dynamite until all that’s left is the vertigo seizing his gut. In the recesses of his soul, need and pride circle each other and refuse to get along.
He’s chilled when Yamamoto hauls him from the bathtub, slams him against the towel rack and screams, “Do you want to fucking die?”
“Yes,” he gasps (chokes) and socks the stunned bastard in the jaw with all the strength he can muster. You can’t save me. I won’t let you. So there - So there -
He feels himself go under.
2.5. Later, when Tsuna is pacing back and forth, muttering about ambulances, Reborn fixes Yamamoto with a look. The baby makes an expansive gesture with his hand that could indicate anything from the purpling bruise on Gokudera’s spine to his current frozen, unconscious state to Yamamoto’s own throbbing imprint of a fist. “What happened here?”
“I -“ Failed. Utterly.
He drops his head into his hands and wishes things could be different.