[Katekyou Hitman Reborn]: "To Kill a Mockingbird" (KHR mini-bang fic, 1/3(?))
So, the combination of the deadline (YEAH, TWO MONTHS WASN'T LONG ENOUGH FOR THIS, SUE ME) and my inability to keep this prompt plot-driven and simple has turned my mini-bang fic into a mini-bang MULTI-PARTER, but in order to (lol) make the deadline, I decided to just submit the first part as my contribution to the 'Bang as a whole. It's 10,000 words, so I'm assuming that a 'chapter' to a 'multi-parter' is acceptable, coomasieblue? If not, uh..........WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE *runs*
Anyway, this fic was written for the mini-bang prompt #14, which was basically something along the lines of, "while Tsuna+tachi are in the future fighting future people for the future etc., the TYL cast is back in the current Namimori, just chilling out, or whatever. TYL!Gokkun then takes it upon himself to assassinate Irie Shoichi, the future's greatest threat. Problem is, Sho-chan is just a nerdy, robot-loving middle school kid who hasn't done anything wrong (yet). Will that stop Gokudera?"
My answer? DOES IT EVER? :)
[EDIT]: Oh god dammit, 'post is too large' message. Fuck you.
Title: To Kill a Mockingbird, Stanza One: Let He Who Is Without Sin, Or In Possession Of Some Sort Of Heavy Artillery, Cast The First Stone
Author: Lee Harper...sort of Lorelei DiAngelo
Rating: This part is R for Gokkun's foul mouth. ^__^ I kind of feel weird and dirty for saying that my goal is to eventually make this NC-17, but eh, there one has it.
Pairing(s): Nothing for now, but a certain member of the cast is kind of jonesing for some 8059. (lawlz) And eventually, there will (probably) be an 805948 sandwich, if I feel like I have the gusto to brave a potential LJ ban. Also, don't ask where the rest of the cast is. Just...please. Don't.
Summary: In which Yamamoto finds room for baseball even in pornography, Gokudera has a bizarre and somewhat incriminating dream, Irie Shoichi worries excessively about his eclectic music collection amidst a hail of bullets, and I try my hand at writing a 5,00010,000-word comedy of errors.
For: Oh, I don't know. coomasieblue, perhaps, who organized this whole thing? Though I should say, more accurately, wherever the awesome prompt for this entire fic came from. I'm...not exactly sure where that is. O.o
Notes: jfdafk;adslfkad;ljgd;lakfds'kfadslkfds;akf! :)
Word Count: 10,833. Will go up substantially as more chapters are added. Yes, by the way, this is a threat.
The first bullet went winging past his ear to jam itself, neatly, into his bedroom wall.
Irie Shoichi turned, slowly, with all the comedic stiffness of a children's cartoon character, to stare wide-eyed at the smoking hole that was now decorating the space below his vintage 60's Beatles poster he'd had imported over from the United Kingdom.
His first thought was, Surely it was just a trick of the light. His second thought, come almost immediately after the first, was, Oh, no, not this again, not after the therapist had said that I was doing so well.
It was probably just an inexplicable failure of depth perception, he decided, in a most impressive display of self-denial, and pushed his glasses up farther on his nose. He squinted at the anomaly. The hole remained. Then, if that were the case, maybe he had a speck of dust in his eye. He blinked, furiously, and scrubbed at the offending orbs, and while he was doing that, a second bullet went the way of the first.
The boy took a deep, calming breath.
"Someone," he said aloud, "is shooting at me."
Which meant, unfortunately, that he had no choice but to accept the grim reality that he was, in fact, being shot at by an unknown assailant for God knows what reason, and he turned his head back to his window so automatonically that he could have sworn that he heard the joints in his neck creak.
Outside his window, a street light went out. Shoichi fought to keep his breathing even, his thoughts calm. It wasn't exactly possible when there was someone outside, firing bullets at him, but he tried nonetheless - should he duck? Hit the floor? What about his stereo system; oh God, it was right by the window and it had his limited edition Best of Bob Marley CD in it -
And then the third bullet put out his bedroom lamp.
And Irie Shoichi, eventual Squad Captain to the 2nd Millefiore Rosa Squad, White Spell, and eventual second-in-command to the mafia's most powerful family in all but name, took one look at the crackling, shattered remains of his bedside lamp, and fainted outright.
[in which a different perspective tells a different story]
The first bullet went winging past the brat's ear to jam itself, neatly, into his bedroom wall.
Gokudera muttered a low oath and fed another shell into the rifle, even as that idiot Yamamoto lounged on the rooftop next to him and rambled on about all things inane.
"You sure you don't want your glasses, Gokudera?"
The Italian narrowed his eyes, intently, and squeezed down on the trigger. Zing! The second bullet planted itself, assuredly, right below the first, but no closer to its target than its comrade. He almost swore again, but, well, it was an outdated rifle, after all - there was probably some sort of trick to firing it. Gokudera jiggled it a bit in his hands and attempted to adjust the equation.
"They'd probably help, you know."
A clack, as he reloaded the rifle, and an uninterested grunt. Would that idiot ever shut up? He was busy.
Zing! A nearby street light went out, but unfortunately, the alert, coppery-colored head some two hundred and fifty feet in front of him had yet to explode in a brilliant rainbow of blood and brains. Gokudera barely managed to bite back his loud, frustrated howl. How the hell hard could it be? The bastard was parked right in front of an open window, standing stock-still, for Christ's sake!
"Can you even see without your glasses?" Yamamoto queried, concernedly, but took a considerable scoot backwards as Gokudera swiveled the Sniper CR right up to his stupid, laughing face, close enough to see the hairs up the other man's nose.
"I dunno," he said, deceptively calm, "you want to find out?"
"No thanks," Yamamoto laughed, hands held up in surrender, and went back to peering at their target, interestedly. "Anyway, don't you think it's kind of odd that a timid little kid like this is the one who winds up tearing our world apart? I mean, look at him, standing there - he's petrified. I kind of figured he'd be a little more - I don't know - apocalyptic, if you know what I mean. More apt at dodging bullets, at the very least."
Gokudera shrugged, uncaring, as he sighted down the end of the rifle once more. "Doesn't matter what he is," he pointed out, flippantly, as he pulled the trigger a final time; "'cuz now he's dead."
Zing!
The lights in the room went suddenly dark, and there was the unmistakable sound of a body falling lifeless to the floor. And then a sudden, almost familiar sort of silence.
And Gokudera stood, feeling the weight of an eternity lifted in little under an hour, and turned to the man standing beside him on the rooftop, a rare smile on his face.
"Well, we've got five minutes," he said, and slung the CR over his shoulder with ease. "Think that's enough time for the two of us to grab a beer?"
[in which one's conviction wavers, whilst the other's grows stronger]
In the future, they modified the 1,000-yen bill to feature the face of Pierro Rosetti, the bloodthirsty Italian-Japanese diplomat who finagled his position by knowing the right people and slaughtering all the others, so Gokudera had to break a 10,000 to buy a pack of smokes at the local 7-11. He prayed to God that the snaggle-toothed old shopkeep wouldn't have the sense to look at the date printed on the bill; he didn't, thank Christ, which meant that the sharp-tongued young Italian wasn't going to have to resort to third-rate robbery this night.
Premeditated murder, though - well, that was something else.
"Are you sure it was the right guy?" Yamamoto asked, for the eighteenth time, lounging back on one of the twin beds at the dingy motel they'd secured for the week, flicking through the late-night porn channels with his typical nonchalance. "I mean, you weren't wearing your glasses, after all."
"Of course I was fucking sure!" the shorter man hollered, grinding an unlit cigarette into unattractive little pieces of tobacco smashed between his teeth as he paced circles around the theadbare hotel carpet. "I'd know that bastard's face anywhere; are you fucking kidding me?"
"Well, you're the one who's always complaining that all Japanese people look alike," Yamamoto pointed out, over the sounds of copious moaning coming from the television, and tilted his head a bit sideways at the strange position the aspiring young actress had somehow managed to achieve. "See, if you'd actually look, like at this girl; see, she's got these killer legs - "
"How 'bout you turn that shit off?" Gokudera suggested, in a manner that was more like threatening than actual suggesting.
But Yamamoto, who was used to such things, only shrugged, and fiddled a bit with the remote. "I'll mute it."
"That's even worse," Gokudera groused, uncomfortable, but let it drop. "Anyway," he backtracked, attempting to redirect the conversation, "what the fuck are we gonna do now, hunh? Maybe I was wrong, and - " His voice shook, a bit, and his hands shook the worst as he attempted to light the ruined cigarette in his mouth; " - maybe I was wrong, and someone builds the little shit's machine, anyway. And we're right back where we started. How the hell are we supposed to put things right, then? Are you saying we'll have to track some other fucker all over God's creation and put an end to him, too - "
"Or maybe," Yamamoto supplied, mildly, sliding his eyes from the screen to glance, briefly, at Gokudera's taut face, "it was just the wrong guy." He paused before continuing, in a tone even milder than the one before; "I mean, it was dark, and how well can you see without - ?"
"Would you shut up about my goddamned glasses?!" Gokudera hollered, clicking his lighter again and again yet finding it irritatingly unable to ignite. "It's not like I need the fucking things!" (He tried not to wince as one of his contact lenses slipped, painfully.) "Would you focus, for God's sake? What the hell are we supposed to do now?"
"Maybe," Yamamoto pointed out, serene, "you should have tried talking to the little squirt, first, rather than putting one in his head from the get-go."
"How the hell could I just talk to him," Gokudera exploded, pitching his lighter across the room in a sudden fury, "when that little shit grows up to - !"
- knock on the door during one of their rare family meetings; Hibari sits closest to the end to avoid feeling like part of the crowd, and Gokudera was the unfortunate loser at rochambeau who was forced to sit next to him. Yamamoto is at the front, on the Tenth's left, and the strange young Dokuro woman is the one who has the honor of sitting on his right. The stupid cow cringes from Hibari's other side, Reborn calmly keeping him in place with a gun barrel to the back of his neck. He hates these meetings; always has, and always tries to avoid them. Sasagawa sits on Gokudera's other side, and it feels strange to call him that after years and years of 'lawn head'. He is taking notes furiously because he will undoubtedly forget everything that has happened here some five or so minutes later.
Not Gokudera, though. There's a quiet, polite knock on the rearmost door.
"Well, Tsuna?" Reborn asks, tall and authoritive with his fedora tipped jauntily downwards to cover the greater part of his face; "Who's going to answer, hmmmm?"
And a look passes between them that none of the others could have even began to understand.
"I'll get it," the Tenth says, voice determined and yet no less gentle. He crosses the room in seven silent strides and pulls open the heavy mahoghany door.
And Gokudera sees, as if from a dream, the slender, auburn-haired young man with the glasses before the moment when all hell breaks loose.
"Don't I...know you?" the Tenth asks, slowly, almost resignedly, before the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns drowns out everything else.
Including;
"Hey, hey," Yamamoto said, sliding from the edge of the bed calmly to retrieve the slender canister of metal from where it had fallen behind the misshapen chest of bedside drawers. He held it out to Gokudera, affably. "Nothing's set it stone, yet. Just take it easy, okay? Have a beer. Watch a, uh, movie." He picked, idly, at the old scar on his chin, and squinted at the television screen for a moment in perplexion. "Which, speaking of this, I think I've seen this one before. Gah, I can never tell... In Japan, everyone under the age of 18 gets deflowered on the bullet train in these; look, there she goes - " He pointed, for emphasis.
Gokudera looked, against his will, and immediately wished that he hadn't. Her boobs were easily as big as any Italian's. "I told you to turn that shit off," he complained, scrubbing a hand through his dirty, messy hair and snatching his lighter back, irritably. He was in a temper, but not in enough of one to stop from following the idiot into the kitchen and peering over his shoulder reluctantly at the contents of the hotel's mini-fridge.
"She's got a good grip," Yamamoto went on to observe, staring over the dented refrigerator door even as he was in the process of uncoupling two beers from their narrow, plastic rings; " - she'd make a hell of a baseball player, I think." He offered a beer to his companion, good-naturedly. "Ah, what a waste. She could 'special train' me anytime, I swear." Gokudera went to grab the proffered beer, only to find it jerked back out of his grip in the next second, teasingly.
"Like you're going to complain about that stupid woman's choice of profession," he pointed out, prudishly, gesturing with an open fist to the flickering TV. "And give me my goddamned beer."
"Do you so solemnly swear that you're going to use this beer as the first of many on the path to drinking yourself stupid, and then get a good night's sleep for a change following immediately after?"
Gokudera blinked. "What stupid shit is this?" he asked, making a swipe that fell just millimeters short, fingers grazing the can; "You're not my mother."
"No," the taller man agreed, suddenly serious, and tossed him the can. "I'm not."
"Thank Christ for that," Gokudera acknowledged, with feeling, popping the tab and downing half of the brew in a single chug. "Even the very idea of being related to you makes me feel sick to my stomach." It was bad enough that his only actual relative did make him sick to his stomach, and quite frequently, at that.
"Well, it's good that we're not, then," Yamamoto agreed, amicably, raising his beer in a silent toast to God-knew-what, and setting it on the kitchen counter just as quickly. "It's good that we're something else, instead."
Christ, it wasn't exactly the right time to be having 'that' talk, now was it? The idiot always had impeccable timing. Gokudera twisted his mouth, sourly, and managed with a grunt of unease; "What are we, then, baseball-head?"
Yamamoto shrugged.
"Partners in crime," he said, sweetly, grinning; shaped his thumbs and forefingers in the shape of a heart and made dodging the empty beer can that came zooming towards his head seconds later look like a thing of minimal effort. "What else?"
[and a question is asked to which the answer should have been obvious]
"I wonder, though," he mused aloud, hours later, as Gokudera snored on the other end of the sofa from somewhere around his feet; "why a guy like that would hold such a grudge against guys like us, to begin with."
[and an average young boy grapples with a problem that is not-so-average]
"They shot at me, Mom!" Shoichi wailed at his mother over his tamago the next morning, hair sticking up in a disarray from where he had been pulling at it, distraughtly. "There were bullet holes and everything; I swear!"
"Now, now, Sho-chan," his mother said, serving up a sizeable portion of rice to his snickering older sister, who pointed at him and crossed her eyes from behind the morning's comics, "there was probably a power surge or something last night, and that's why the lamp in your bedroom short-circuited. One of the street lamps from across the road was out this morning, too."
"From the bullets, Mom; and what about the holes in my wall, hunh?" Shoichi's eyes bulged with the consternation he was feeling towards his humble, yet hopelessly naive mother. It was a sad thing, being thirteen years old and smarter than both of your parents put together. Even sadder still was winning the National Science Award for Young Adults and yet still somehow managing to be targeted by the yakuza.
"Termites, Sho-chan," his mother assured him, peaceably. "I'll call the exterminator today." She bustled back to the stove, stirring this and that and the other thing while muttering under her breath, in a tone that she thought perhaps was inaudible; "Honestly, that boy... Is it hormones? His sister never acted that outrageously when she was his age... It's probably too much television... Maybe I should unplug the cable for a few days or so...?"
His sister leaned at him from across the table, using the newspaper to hide her smug, smiling face. "Sho-chan's in trouuuuble~" she drawled, and flung a glob of sticky rice at him with her spoon, which stuck to his face, unattractively. "Too much robot anime lately, little bro? Things as glamorous as assasination attempts don't happen to white-collar, middle-class people like us. Try using that big brain of yours for once, dork."
Shoichi wiped his face, resignedly, and shot his sister what wound up to be a very timid, half-hearted sort of glare. "I'm telling you, sis, they were there! It's the same as when I went to give back that b - " and he froze. That box. That thing that haunted his nightmares, his every waking day. It was unlikely; so unlikely it was impossible, really, but... Could the two silhouettes he saw last night on his neighbor's roof somehow be connected to that strange little kid with the horns?
No way - he thought, and shook his head furiously to dispel himself of the notion. What on earth would two grown, presumeably dangerous men have to do with a little afro-headed child in a cow suit? Did he even want to know what sort of answers his brain could come up with for that?
"No," he sighed aloud, suddenly quite tired despite having just gotten out of bed; "I suppose not."
And Yoko, in a rare moment of sisterly fondness, reached over and scrubbed the tangled hairs atop his head.
"A bad dream, bro," she said, and went back to her rice. "You just had a bad dream."
[in which an unorthodox love confession is somewhat obliquely made]
Gokudera awoke the next morning with a terrible headache and the unpleasant sensation that he had probably spent almost a quarter of his night wallowing in a pile of his own vomit. "I had," he announced dramatically, emerging from the bathroom with a wet washcloth, which he threw over his stinging eyes, "a terrible dream."
"Oh?" Yamamoto asked, from somewhere near the motel door; there was the distinct sound of him removing his expensive, shiny Italian shoes. "I brought McDonald's."
"In it," Gokudera continued, ignoring him entirely, "I was married. To you." And he gagged, and made a great show like such a thing was enough to make him be sick all over again. And then peeked, very discreetly, from the underside of his compress.
"Hope you like coffee and cold rice," Yamamoto said, cheerfully, also ignoring his companion entirely, setting the food down on the table with a clunk. "I thought it'd be safer if we started you on something easy to eat today."
Gokudera sagged against the bathroom doorframe, removing the cloth from his eyes entirely with slow, irritable deliberation. "A nightmare," he stressed, for extra clarity, voice growing so loud for a moment that he winced, painfully. "I was married, to you." He pointed, for emphasis - the idiot was an idiot, after all, and maybe a little slow to catch on. "You made disgusting sushi for every meal; you dragged me along to every shitty baseball game that you could fit into your schedule." He shuddered, and threw the washcloth over his eyes again as he accidentally caught a glimpse of bright morning sunlight; "I was your wife; for God's sake, don't you think that was a terri - "
"Hey, so I saw that kid," Yamamoto interrupted, already in between chews. "That Ryou Ichi kid or whatever - " and in an instant, Gokudera had thrown the washcloth in some remote corner of the room to smell and grow mold at a later date, and had crossed the room to where the idiot sat in five seconds flat.
"What?!" the shorter man growled, hands twitching as though he couldn't decide to give the man munching on McDonald's at the table a headlock or a high-five. "Did you get him? Don't tell me you forgot your sword, you gigantic - "
"Nah," Yamamoto said, confidently, "I got it."
Gokudera plopped into the chair across from him, letting out a sigh of relief and propping his chin on his hand. "Thank God," he said, with feeling, "you're not a total fucking - "
"I got it," Yamamoto repeated, and rummaged around the fast food containers to pull out a series of papers, which he held up, importantly. "The job, teaching P.E. at Nami Middle."
Gokudera's hand slipped from his chin, which banged, painfully, on the table.
"Shit!" he hissed, with feeling; "Fuck!" He did a strange dance of pain around the motel room that Yamamoto very pointedly pretended not to see. And then the shorter man lunged forward, with intent, and grabbed the baseball idiot by the collar. "What the hell do you mean, teaching?! What the fuck are you gonna teach anyone, hunh, 'cept how to fuck up what should have been the easiest mission of our goddamned careers - !" He cut himself off, with a strangled, mournful growl, before resuming his deathgrip on Yamamoto's shirt collar with calm, frightening intent. "What. Did. You. Do?"
"Well, Ichi-kun is - "
"Irie Shoichi, you fuckhead - !"
" - ohhh, really? Hope I applied for the right grade, then."
It was only 11 in the morning, but Gokudera let go of Yamamoto's shirt collar to stride, resolutely, to the refrigerator, and pull himself out another beer.
"You have until the time I finish this to convince me not to shove the empty can up your ass," he snarled, in a fury, and threw himself into one of the kitchen chairs with a huff.
"Oh, wow," Yamamoto laughed, chopsticks dangling out of his white, grinning mouth. "I hope you drink slow, then, darling."
Gokudera choked.
[in which an unexpected tenure is formed between two people]
His only solace was that there were plenty of educational opportunities overseas, too.
"Yo," the tall Japanese guy with the short, stiff black hair and the wild-looking scar on the right side of his chin said brightly, bending a bit to wave at them all; "I'm your new P.E. instructor, Yamamoto Take-sensei."
And Irie Shoichi wondered just how on earth he was going to convince his mother to let him drop out of his middle school.
[and they are both moderately unaware of it]
His pop's philosophy had always been that one should ask first, and save the shooting for later. It was how he'd won Yamamoto's mother, having the courage to ask her name when all the other guys in his class had been too afraid of her and her baseball swing. It was how Yamamoto had won the scar on his chin, being uppercutted on the jaw when he'd had a few too many beers and the nerve to ask Gokudera's sister for a kiss (why Gokudera had hit him, too, still remained a mystery, though).
And it was how his pop had ultimately chose to die, at 3 in the morning, with the Millefiore who were claiming to be friends of his in desperate need of aid firing machine guns at him through their shop's open doors.
Gokudera would hate it, but Tsuna...well, even knowing the future wouldn't have changed it, would it? Tsuna would have lauded it.
So Yamamoto asked.
"Hey, champ," he said, dropping to his knees and looking at the little hellbreaker with calm, kind eyes, "what the heck grade is this, again...?"
[in which irie hinako has difficulty understanding various words]
"Mom!" Shoichi wailed, tearing through the house in a frenzy, throwing his schoolbag into some remote corner of the living room and not even bothering with his shoes; "we have to leave, now!" He burst into the kitchen, red-faced and hair in a disarray.
His mother looked up from the sink, from where she had calmly been doing the dishes. "Oh; Sho-chan?" she asked, smiling, "how was - "
"They found me!" Shoichi hollered; poured himself a glass of water from the tap and gulped it, hurriedly, in an attempt to stay calm. "Those crazy yakuza from last night - they found me! Well - " he paused, momentarily, voice lowering a bit in volume, " - I suppose they always knew where I was, since they shot at me, and all, but..." He grabbed his mother, insistently, by the arm. "Mom, the yakuza, they're - they're teaching gym! At my school! For my class!"
"Ah, your new teacher promised to teach you P.E., Sho-chan?" his mother asked, idly, reaching for the dishtowel with the same vapid smile on her face that Shoichi remembered seeing every day from the moment he was born.
"Not promised," he cried, slamming his empty glass on the counter and darting out of the kitchen into the hallway; "yakuza; I said!" He flung open the door to his bedroom and began emptying the contents of his dresser drawers onto the floor in haste. "Look, just - we're in danger, all right, Mom? We've gotta start packing and get out of - " He paused, green eyes wild. "Yoko! Where's Yoko?!"
His mother poked her head through the doorway, determined smile starting to falter, ever so slightly. "At tutoring, Sho-chan, for arithemetic, like always." She crossed his room to kneel next to him, concernedly, and press him into a tight, motherly hug. "Sho-chan, dear, what's wrong? You're shaking."
Why? Why? He'd won the National Science Award for Young Adults, and was on the road to being accepted into any high school and subsequent university of his choice with full honors. He wanted to be an architect, for God's sake, so why was he being targeted by the Japanese mob? What had he ever done to any of them, hunh?
To his embarrassment, to his horror, tears were starting to form in his bright, wide eyes. He dashed them away with a swipe of his hand. It didn't matter why - he'd be a man, and take care of his family, no matter what happened: something his father, gone some three years before without so much as a word or a letter, could not.
"Mom," he said, trying to keep his voice moderate and calm, "when's Yoko due back from - ?"
"I'm hoooooome!" his sister trilled, from the front doorway, as though on cue. Shoichi broke free from his mother's grasp and scrambled for the living room.
"Yo - " he started, relievedly, and then caught sight of the tall, broad-shouldered frame stepping through the doorway behind her.
And felt the world collapse suddenly around him.
[and gokudera has difficulty understanding women (and the occassional idiot)]
"It'd have been one thing," Gokudera said, tiredly, stubbing out another cigarette butt into the already-enormous pile in the ashtray, "if the dumb bitch actually listened." He fished another out of his pack and lit it, with a sigh. "But all she wanted to do was talk, about stuff like her favorite bands - who the hell is Morning Musume, anyway? - and her favorite foods, and..." He slouched, considerably, against the headboard of the motel bed. "...well, me, I guess," he mumbled, finishing in a very small, almost defeated sort of tone, taking a long drag on his cigarette and watching the smoke puff, listlessly, across his wearied face.
Yamomoto burst into a degree of laughter that could only be called obscene. "Ha ha ha! It's good news, though, if the sister likes you - makes our job a hell of a lot easier, you know?"
"Who's job?" the shorter man muttered, scrubbing the heel of his palm across his forehead, but he was ultimately forced to concede that yes, the idiot was right about something, for a change. "Fine, then. Say your stupid scheme actually works. You keep an eye on the brat at school, I keep an eye on the brat at home. If that's the case, then what good exactly is this going to accomplish?" He squinted, thoughtfully. "I guess it'd be an easier shot if I was standing next to him, instead of on the neighbor's roof..."
"Hey, no shooting!" Yamamoto reminded him, smile fading a bit around the edges, on the finishing touches of building a house from all of Gokudera's discarded matchsticks, still in his teaching sweats with his duffel bag at his feet. "We tried things your way, Gokudera."
"Not completely - !" Gokudera started to argue, about to say something regarding Irie Shoichi and opossums, but Yamamoto went on, obliviously;
" - so now we're going to do things my way. Got it?" He paused, for a moment, to frown, thoughtfully. "Hey, what'd you do with Hako-chan's old arithmetic tutor, anyway?"
Gokudera couldn't even be bothered to remind the idiot that the girl's name was 'Yoko'. "Dunno," he answered, shrugging, stubbing out his second cigarette, "nothing much. Hope he likes Hong Kong."
"Ooh," Yamamoto laughed, faking a shudder, "you're so scary, darling."
"Why don't you cut that shit out?" Gokudera suggested, in his usual manner that was more like threatening than actual suggesting. He was such a fucking idiot, to think that Yamamoto wasn't listening when he was talking about that horrible dream - Yamamoto was always listening, specifically so that he could have moments like this. It was about the only time that he listened, really.
"Nah, I don't think I will," the idiot decided, off-handedly. He set the last matchstick in place and stood from the table, stretching so hard that Gokudera could actually hear some of his joints pop. "Anyway, in case you've forgotten, we could use some money, too, dear wife. We've still got the motel fees to pay, and food and stuff besides. I had to use up my entire collection of old 10,000-yen bills just to get this place for a week, and I had to pawn my favorite watch, too."
Gokudera gnawed on an unlit cigarette, guiltily. "Fine, then," he muttered, and reached around on the bed for the television remote. "I'll go along with your dumbass plan - for now."
"Hey, thanks," Yamamoto laughed, grinning, and flopped himself down on the bed beside the other man, even though he had an empty, perfectly acceptable bed of his own. Gokudera bristled, scooting as far to the other side as he could manage without falling off.
"Get up, you shit," he growled, booting at the annoyance with one small, socked foot.
"Oh, come on, mercy," the taller man pleaded, looking upside down at Gokudera with a winning smile that from that angle looked more like a frown. "I ache all over, you know. Running after all those energetic kids at my old age..."
"My ass," Gokudera snorted, in Italian, booting harder.
"A good wife rubs her husband's shoulders after he's had a hard day at work," Yamamoto parried, eyes crinkling at the corners, something teasing but not necessarily friendly sharpening the corners of his smile.
Gokudera shoved the unlit cigarette in his mouth up the idiot's nose to hide his flush.
Hey, look, an ending point! God, I hate Livejournal's posting limits, I really do. I also hate my inability to shut up, but since one of these problems can be modified, I'm going to complain about the opposing party instead of myself.
Anyway, epic word count was epic, so have the next part to this.
Anyway, this fic was written for the mini-bang prompt #14, which was basically something along the lines of, "while Tsuna+tachi are in the future fighting future people for the future etc., the TYL cast is back in the current Namimori, just chilling out, or whatever. TYL!Gokkun then takes it upon himself to assassinate Irie Shoichi, the future's greatest threat. Problem is, Sho-chan is just a nerdy, robot-loving middle school kid who hasn't done anything wrong (yet). Will that stop Gokudera?"
My answer? DOES IT EVER? :)
[EDIT]: Oh god dammit, 'post is too large' message. Fuck you.
Title: To Kill a Mockingbird, Stanza One: Let He Who Is Without Sin, Or In Possession Of Some Sort Of Heavy Artillery, Cast The First Stone
Author: Lee Harper...sort of Lorelei DiAngelo
Rating: This part is R for Gokkun's foul mouth. ^__^ I kind of feel weird and dirty for saying that my goal is to eventually make this NC-17, but eh, there one has it.
Pairing(s): Nothing for now, but a certain member of the cast is kind of jonesing for some 8059. (lawlz) And eventually, there will (probably) be an 805948 sandwich, if I feel like I have the gusto to brave a potential LJ ban. Also, don't ask where the rest of the cast is. Just...please. Don't.
Summary: In which Yamamoto finds room for baseball even in pornography, Gokudera has a bizarre and somewhat incriminating dream, Irie Shoichi worries excessively about his eclectic music collection amidst a hail of bullets, and I try my hand at writing a 5,00010,000-word comedy of errors.
For: Oh, I don't know. coomasieblue, perhaps, who organized this whole thing? Though I should say, more accurately, wherever the awesome prompt for this entire fic came from. I'm...not exactly sure where that is. O.o
Notes: jfdafk;adslfkad;ljgd;lakfds'kfadslkfds;akf! :)
Word Count: 10,833. Will go up substantially as more chapters are added. Yes, by the way, this is a threat.
The first bullet went winging past his ear to jam itself, neatly, into his bedroom wall.
Irie Shoichi turned, slowly, with all the comedic stiffness of a children's cartoon character, to stare wide-eyed at the smoking hole that was now decorating the space below his vintage 60's Beatles poster he'd had imported over from the United Kingdom.
His first thought was, Surely it was just a trick of the light. His second thought, come almost immediately after the first, was, Oh, no, not this again, not after the therapist had said that I was doing so well.
It was probably just an inexplicable failure of depth perception, he decided, in a most impressive display of self-denial, and pushed his glasses up farther on his nose. He squinted at the anomaly. The hole remained. Then, if that were the case, maybe he had a speck of dust in his eye. He blinked, furiously, and scrubbed at the offending orbs, and while he was doing that, a second bullet went the way of the first.
The boy took a deep, calming breath.
"Someone," he said aloud, "is shooting at me."
Which meant, unfortunately, that he had no choice but to accept the grim reality that he was, in fact, being shot at by an unknown assailant for God knows what reason, and he turned his head back to his window so automatonically that he could have sworn that he heard the joints in his neck creak.
Outside his window, a street light went out. Shoichi fought to keep his breathing even, his thoughts calm. It wasn't exactly possible when there was someone outside, firing bullets at him, but he tried nonetheless - should he duck? Hit the floor? What about his stereo system; oh God, it was right by the window and it had his limited edition Best of Bob Marley CD in it -
And then the third bullet put out his bedroom lamp.
And Irie Shoichi, eventual Squad Captain to the 2nd Millefiore Rosa Squad, White Spell, and eventual second-in-command to the mafia's most powerful family in all but name, took one look at the crackling, shattered remains of his bedside lamp, and fainted outright.
[in which a different perspective tells a different story]
The first bullet went winging past the brat's ear to jam itself, neatly, into his bedroom wall.
Gokudera muttered a low oath and fed another shell into the rifle, even as that idiot Yamamoto lounged on the rooftop next to him and rambled on about all things inane.
"You sure you don't want your glasses, Gokudera?"
The Italian narrowed his eyes, intently, and squeezed down on the trigger. Zing! The second bullet planted itself, assuredly, right below the first, but no closer to its target than its comrade. He almost swore again, but, well, it was an outdated rifle, after all - there was probably some sort of trick to firing it. Gokudera jiggled it a bit in his hands and attempted to adjust the equation.
"They'd probably help, you know."
A clack, as he reloaded the rifle, and an uninterested grunt. Would that idiot ever shut up? He was busy.
Zing! A nearby street light went out, but unfortunately, the alert, coppery-colored head some two hundred and fifty feet in front of him had yet to explode in a brilliant rainbow of blood and brains. Gokudera barely managed to bite back his loud, frustrated howl. How the hell hard could it be? The bastard was parked right in front of an open window, standing stock-still, for Christ's sake!
"Can you even see without your glasses?" Yamamoto queried, concernedly, but took a considerable scoot backwards as Gokudera swiveled the Sniper CR right up to his stupid, laughing face, close enough to see the hairs up the other man's nose.
"I dunno," he said, deceptively calm, "you want to find out?"
"No thanks," Yamamoto laughed, hands held up in surrender, and went back to peering at their target, interestedly. "Anyway, don't you think it's kind of odd that a timid little kid like this is the one who winds up tearing our world apart? I mean, look at him, standing there - he's petrified. I kind of figured he'd be a little more - I don't know - apocalyptic, if you know what I mean. More apt at dodging bullets, at the very least."
Gokudera shrugged, uncaring, as he sighted down the end of the rifle once more. "Doesn't matter what he is," he pointed out, flippantly, as he pulled the trigger a final time; "'cuz now he's dead."
Zing!
The lights in the room went suddenly dark, and there was the unmistakable sound of a body falling lifeless to the floor. And then a sudden, almost familiar sort of silence.
And Gokudera stood, feeling the weight of an eternity lifted in little under an hour, and turned to the man standing beside him on the rooftop, a rare smile on his face.
"Well, we've got five minutes," he said, and slung the CR over his shoulder with ease. "Think that's enough time for the two of us to grab a beer?"
[in which one's conviction wavers, whilst the other's grows stronger]
In the future, they modified the 1,000-yen bill to feature the face of Pierro Rosetti, the bloodthirsty Italian-Japanese diplomat who finagled his position by knowing the right people and slaughtering all the others, so Gokudera had to break a 10,000 to buy a pack of smokes at the local 7-11. He prayed to God that the snaggle-toothed old shopkeep wouldn't have the sense to look at the date printed on the bill; he didn't, thank Christ, which meant that the sharp-tongued young Italian wasn't going to have to resort to third-rate robbery this night.
Premeditated murder, though - well, that was something else.
"Are you sure it was the right guy?" Yamamoto asked, for the eighteenth time, lounging back on one of the twin beds at the dingy motel they'd secured for the week, flicking through the late-night porn channels with his typical nonchalance. "I mean, you weren't wearing your glasses, after all."
"Of course I was fucking sure!" the shorter man hollered, grinding an unlit cigarette into unattractive little pieces of tobacco smashed between his teeth as he paced circles around the theadbare hotel carpet. "I'd know that bastard's face anywhere; are you fucking kidding me?"
"Well, you're the one who's always complaining that all Japanese people look alike," Yamamoto pointed out, over the sounds of copious moaning coming from the television, and tilted his head a bit sideways at the strange position the aspiring young actress had somehow managed to achieve. "See, if you'd actually look, like at this girl; see, she's got these killer legs - "
"How 'bout you turn that shit off?" Gokudera suggested, in a manner that was more like threatening than actual suggesting.
But Yamamoto, who was used to such things, only shrugged, and fiddled a bit with the remote. "I'll mute it."
"That's even worse," Gokudera groused, uncomfortable, but let it drop. "Anyway," he backtracked, attempting to redirect the conversation, "what the fuck are we gonna do now, hunh? Maybe I was wrong, and - " His voice shook, a bit, and his hands shook the worst as he attempted to light the ruined cigarette in his mouth; " - maybe I was wrong, and someone builds the little shit's machine, anyway. And we're right back where we started. How the hell are we supposed to put things right, then? Are you saying we'll have to track some other fucker all over God's creation and put an end to him, too - "
"Or maybe," Yamamoto supplied, mildly, sliding his eyes from the screen to glance, briefly, at Gokudera's taut face, "it was just the wrong guy." He paused before continuing, in a tone even milder than the one before; "I mean, it was dark, and how well can you see without - ?"
"Would you shut up about my goddamned glasses?!" Gokudera hollered, clicking his lighter again and again yet finding it irritatingly unable to ignite. "It's not like I need the fucking things!" (He tried not to wince as one of his contact lenses slipped, painfully.) "Would you focus, for God's sake? What the hell are we supposed to do now?"
"Maybe," Yamamoto pointed out, serene, "you should have tried talking to the little squirt, first, rather than putting one in his head from the get-go."
"How the hell could I just talk to him," Gokudera exploded, pitching his lighter across the room in a sudden fury, "when that little shit grows up to - !"
- knock on the door during one of their rare family meetings; Hibari sits closest to the end to avoid feeling like part of the crowd, and Gokudera was the unfortunate loser at rochambeau who was forced to sit next to him. Yamamoto is at the front, on the Tenth's left, and the strange young Dokuro woman is the one who has the honor of sitting on his right. The stupid cow cringes from Hibari's other side, Reborn calmly keeping him in place with a gun barrel to the back of his neck. He hates these meetings; always has, and always tries to avoid them. Sasagawa sits on Gokudera's other side, and it feels strange to call him that after years and years of 'lawn head'. He is taking notes furiously because he will undoubtedly forget everything that has happened here some five or so minutes later.
Not Gokudera, though. There's a quiet, polite knock on the rearmost door.
"Well, Tsuna?" Reborn asks, tall and authoritive with his fedora tipped jauntily downwards to cover the greater part of his face; "Who's going to answer, hmmmm?"
And a look passes between them that none of the others could have even began to understand.
"I'll get it," the Tenth says, voice determined and yet no less gentle. He crosses the room in seven silent strides and pulls open the heavy mahoghany door.
And Gokudera sees, as if from a dream, the slender, auburn-haired young man with the glasses before the moment when all hell breaks loose.
"Don't I...know you?" the Tenth asks, slowly, almost resignedly, before the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns drowns out everything else.
Including;
"Hey, hey," Yamamoto said, sliding from the edge of the bed calmly to retrieve the slender canister of metal from where it had fallen behind the misshapen chest of bedside drawers. He held it out to Gokudera, affably. "Nothing's set it stone, yet. Just take it easy, okay? Have a beer. Watch a, uh, movie." He picked, idly, at the old scar on his chin, and squinted at the television screen for a moment in perplexion. "Which, speaking of this, I think I've seen this one before. Gah, I can never tell... In Japan, everyone under the age of 18 gets deflowered on the bullet train in these; look, there she goes - " He pointed, for emphasis.
Gokudera looked, against his will, and immediately wished that he hadn't. Her boobs were easily as big as any Italian's. "I told you to turn that shit off," he complained, scrubbing a hand through his dirty, messy hair and snatching his lighter back, irritably. He was in a temper, but not in enough of one to stop from following the idiot into the kitchen and peering over his shoulder reluctantly at the contents of the hotel's mini-fridge.
"She's got a good grip," Yamamoto went on to observe, staring over the dented refrigerator door even as he was in the process of uncoupling two beers from their narrow, plastic rings; " - she'd make a hell of a baseball player, I think." He offered a beer to his companion, good-naturedly. "Ah, what a waste. She could 'special train' me anytime, I swear." Gokudera went to grab the proffered beer, only to find it jerked back out of his grip in the next second, teasingly.
"Like you're going to complain about that stupid woman's choice of profession," he pointed out, prudishly, gesturing with an open fist to the flickering TV. "And give me my goddamned beer."
"Do you so solemnly swear that you're going to use this beer as the first of many on the path to drinking yourself stupid, and then get a good night's sleep for a change following immediately after?"
Gokudera blinked. "What stupid shit is this?" he asked, making a swipe that fell just millimeters short, fingers grazing the can; "You're not my mother."
"No," the taller man agreed, suddenly serious, and tossed him the can. "I'm not."
"Thank Christ for that," Gokudera acknowledged, with feeling, popping the tab and downing half of the brew in a single chug. "Even the very idea of being related to you makes me feel sick to my stomach." It was bad enough that his only actual relative did make him sick to his stomach, and quite frequently, at that.
"Well, it's good that we're not, then," Yamamoto agreed, amicably, raising his beer in a silent toast to God-knew-what, and setting it on the kitchen counter just as quickly. "It's good that we're something else, instead."
Christ, it wasn't exactly the right time to be having 'that' talk, now was it? The idiot always had impeccable timing. Gokudera twisted his mouth, sourly, and managed with a grunt of unease; "What are we, then, baseball-head?"
Yamamoto shrugged.
"Partners in crime," he said, sweetly, grinning; shaped his thumbs and forefingers in the shape of a heart and made dodging the empty beer can that came zooming towards his head seconds later look like a thing of minimal effort. "What else?"
[and a question is asked to which the answer should have been obvious]
"I wonder, though," he mused aloud, hours later, as Gokudera snored on the other end of the sofa from somewhere around his feet; "why a guy like that would hold such a grudge against guys like us, to begin with."
[and an average young boy grapples with a problem that is not-so-average]
"They shot at me, Mom!" Shoichi wailed at his mother over his tamago the next morning, hair sticking up in a disarray from where he had been pulling at it, distraughtly. "There were bullet holes and everything; I swear!"
"Now, now, Sho-chan," his mother said, serving up a sizeable portion of rice to his snickering older sister, who pointed at him and crossed her eyes from behind the morning's comics, "there was probably a power surge or something last night, and that's why the lamp in your bedroom short-circuited. One of the street lamps from across the road was out this morning, too."
"From the bullets, Mom; and what about the holes in my wall, hunh?" Shoichi's eyes bulged with the consternation he was feeling towards his humble, yet hopelessly naive mother. It was a sad thing, being thirteen years old and smarter than both of your parents put together. Even sadder still was winning the National Science Award for Young Adults and yet still somehow managing to be targeted by the yakuza.
"Termites, Sho-chan," his mother assured him, peaceably. "I'll call the exterminator today." She bustled back to the stove, stirring this and that and the other thing while muttering under her breath, in a tone that she thought perhaps was inaudible; "Honestly, that boy... Is it hormones? His sister never acted that outrageously when she was his age... It's probably too much television... Maybe I should unplug the cable for a few days or so...?"
His sister leaned at him from across the table, using the newspaper to hide her smug, smiling face. "Sho-chan's in trouuuuble~" she drawled, and flung a glob of sticky rice at him with her spoon, which stuck to his face, unattractively. "Too much robot anime lately, little bro? Things as glamorous as assasination attempts don't happen to white-collar, middle-class people like us. Try using that big brain of yours for once, dork."
Shoichi wiped his face, resignedly, and shot his sister what wound up to be a very timid, half-hearted sort of glare. "I'm telling you, sis, they were there! It's the same as when I went to give back that b - " and he froze. That box. That thing that haunted his nightmares, his every waking day. It was unlikely; so unlikely it was impossible, really, but... Could the two silhouettes he saw last night on his neighbor's roof somehow be connected to that strange little kid with the horns?
No way - he thought, and shook his head furiously to dispel himself of the notion. What on earth would two grown, presumeably dangerous men have to do with a little afro-headed child in a cow suit? Did he even want to know what sort of answers his brain could come up with for that?
"No," he sighed aloud, suddenly quite tired despite having just gotten out of bed; "I suppose not."
And Yoko, in a rare moment of sisterly fondness, reached over and scrubbed the tangled hairs atop his head.
"A bad dream, bro," she said, and went back to her rice. "You just had a bad dream."
[in which an unorthodox love confession is somewhat obliquely made]
Gokudera awoke the next morning with a terrible headache and the unpleasant sensation that he had probably spent almost a quarter of his night wallowing in a pile of his own vomit. "I had," he announced dramatically, emerging from the bathroom with a wet washcloth, which he threw over his stinging eyes, "a terrible dream."
"Oh?" Yamamoto asked, from somewhere near the motel door; there was the distinct sound of him removing his expensive, shiny Italian shoes. "I brought McDonald's."
"In it," Gokudera continued, ignoring him entirely, "I was married. To you." And he gagged, and made a great show like such a thing was enough to make him be sick all over again. And then peeked, very discreetly, from the underside of his compress.
"Hope you like coffee and cold rice," Yamamoto said, cheerfully, also ignoring his companion entirely, setting the food down on the table with a clunk. "I thought it'd be safer if we started you on something easy to eat today."
Gokudera sagged against the bathroom doorframe, removing the cloth from his eyes entirely with slow, irritable deliberation. "A nightmare," he stressed, for extra clarity, voice growing so loud for a moment that he winced, painfully. "I was married, to you." He pointed, for emphasis - the idiot was an idiot, after all, and maybe a little slow to catch on. "You made disgusting sushi for every meal; you dragged me along to every shitty baseball game that you could fit into your schedule." He shuddered, and threw the washcloth over his eyes again as he accidentally caught a glimpse of bright morning sunlight; "I was your wife; for God's sake, don't you think that was a terri - "
"Hey, so I saw that kid," Yamamoto interrupted, already in between chews. "That Ryou Ichi kid or whatever - " and in an instant, Gokudera had thrown the washcloth in some remote corner of the room to smell and grow mold at a later date, and had crossed the room to where the idiot sat in five seconds flat.
"What?!" the shorter man growled, hands twitching as though he couldn't decide to give the man munching on McDonald's at the table a headlock or a high-five. "Did you get him? Don't tell me you forgot your sword, you gigantic - "
"Nah," Yamamoto said, confidently, "I got it."
Gokudera plopped into the chair across from him, letting out a sigh of relief and propping his chin on his hand. "Thank God," he said, with feeling, "you're not a total fucking - "
"I got it," Yamamoto repeated, and rummaged around the fast food containers to pull out a series of papers, which he held up, importantly. "The job, teaching P.E. at Nami Middle."
Gokudera's hand slipped from his chin, which banged, painfully, on the table.
"Shit!" he hissed, with feeling; "Fuck!" He did a strange dance of pain around the motel room that Yamamoto very pointedly pretended not to see. And then the shorter man lunged forward, with intent, and grabbed the baseball idiot by the collar. "What the hell do you mean, teaching?! What the fuck are you gonna teach anyone, hunh, 'cept how to fuck up what should have been the easiest mission of our goddamned careers - !" He cut himself off, with a strangled, mournful growl, before resuming his deathgrip on Yamamoto's shirt collar with calm, frightening intent. "What. Did. You. Do?"
"Well, Ichi-kun is - "
"Irie Shoichi, you fuckhead - !"
" - ohhh, really? Hope I applied for the right grade, then."
It was only 11 in the morning, but Gokudera let go of Yamamoto's shirt collar to stride, resolutely, to the refrigerator, and pull himself out another beer.
"You have until the time I finish this to convince me not to shove the empty can up your ass," he snarled, in a fury, and threw himself into one of the kitchen chairs with a huff.
"Oh, wow," Yamamoto laughed, chopsticks dangling out of his white, grinning mouth. "I hope you drink slow, then, darling."
Gokudera choked.
[in which an unexpected tenure is formed between two people]
His only solace was that there were plenty of educational opportunities overseas, too.
"Yo," the tall Japanese guy with the short, stiff black hair and the wild-looking scar on the right side of his chin said brightly, bending a bit to wave at them all; "I'm your new P.E. instructor, Yamamoto Take-sensei."
And Irie Shoichi wondered just how on earth he was going to convince his mother to let him drop out of his middle school.
[and they are both moderately unaware of it]
His pop's philosophy had always been that one should ask first, and save the shooting for later. It was how he'd won Yamamoto's mother, having the courage to ask her name when all the other guys in his class had been too afraid of her and her baseball swing. It was how Yamamoto had won the scar on his chin, being uppercutted on the jaw when he'd had a few too many beers and the nerve to ask Gokudera's sister for a kiss (why Gokudera had hit him, too, still remained a mystery, though).
And it was how his pop had ultimately chose to die, at 3 in the morning, with the Millefiore who were claiming to be friends of his in desperate need of aid firing machine guns at him through their shop's open doors.
Gokudera would hate it, but Tsuna...well, even knowing the future wouldn't have changed it, would it? Tsuna would have lauded it.
So Yamamoto asked.
"Hey, champ," he said, dropping to his knees and looking at the little hellbreaker with calm, kind eyes, "what the heck grade is this, again...?"
[in which irie hinako has difficulty understanding various words]
"Mom!" Shoichi wailed, tearing through the house in a frenzy, throwing his schoolbag into some remote corner of the living room and not even bothering with his shoes; "we have to leave, now!" He burst into the kitchen, red-faced and hair in a disarray.
His mother looked up from the sink, from where she had calmly been doing the dishes. "Oh; Sho-chan?" she asked, smiling, "how was - "
"They found me!" Shoichi hollered; poured himself a glass of water from the tap and gulped it, hurriedly, in an attempt to stay calm. "Those crazy yakuza from last night - they found me! Well - " he paused, momentarily, voice lowering a bit in volume, " - I suppose they always knew where I was, since they shot at me, and all, but..." He grabbed his mother, insistently, by the arm. "Mom, the yakuza, they're - they're teaching gym! At my school! For my class!"
"Ah, your new teacher promised to teach you P.E., Sho-chan?" his mother asked, idly, reaching for the dishtowel with the same vapid smile on her face that Shoichi remembered seeing every day from the moment he was born.
"Not promised," he cried, slamming his empty glass on the counter and darting out of the kitchen into the hallway; "yakuza; I said!" He flung open the door to his bedroom and began emptying the contents of his dresser drawers onto the floor in haste. "Look, just - we're in danger, all right, Mom? We've gotta start packing and get out of - " He paused, green eyes wild. "Yoko! Where's Yoko?!"
His mother poked her head through the doorway, determined smile starting to falter, ever so slightly. "At tutoring, Sho-chan, for arithemetic, like always." She crossed his room to kneel next to him, concernedly, and press him into a tight, motherly hug. "Sho-chan, dear, what's wrong? You're shaking."
Why? Why? He'd won the National Science Award for Young Adults, and was on the road to being accepted into any high school and subsequent university of his choice with full honors. He wanted to be an architect, for God's sake, so why was he being targeted by the Japanese mob? What had he ever done to any of them, hunh?
To his embarrassment, to his horror, tears were starting to form in his bright, wide eyes. He dashed them away with a swipe of his hand. It didn't matter why - he'd be a man, and take care of his family, no matter what happened: something his father, gone some three years before without so much as a word or a letter, could not.
"Mom," he said, trying to keep his voice moderate and calm, "when's Yoko due back from - ?"
"I'm hoooooome!" his sister trilled, from the front doorway, as though on cue. Shoichi broke free from his mother's grasp and scrambled for the living room.
"Yo - " he started, relievedly, and then caught sight of the tall, broad-shouldered frame stepping through the doorway behind her.
And felt the world collapse suddenly around him.
[and gokudera has difficulty understanding women (and the occassional idiot)]
"It'd have been one thing," Gokudera said, tiredly, stubbing out another cigarette butt into the already-enormous pile in the ashtray, "if the dumb bitch actually listened." He fished another out of his pack and lit it, with a sigh. "But all she wanted to do was talk, about stuff like her favorite bands - who the hell is Morning Musume, anyway? - and her favorite foods, and..." He slouched, considerably, against the headboard of the motel bed. "...well, me, I guess," he mumbled, finishing in a very small, almost defeated sort of tone, taking a long drag on his cigarette and watching the smoke puff, listlessly, across his wearied face.
Yamomoto burst into a degree of laughter that could only be called obscene. "Ha ha ha! It's good news, though, if the sister likes you - makes our job a hell of a lot easier, you know?"
"Who's job?" the shorter man muttered, scrubbing the heel of his palm across his forehead, but he was ultimately forced to concede that yes, the idiot was right about something, for a change. "Fine, then. Say your stupid scheme actually works. You keep an eye on the brat at school, I keep an eye on the brat at home. If that's the case, then what good exactly is this going to accomplish?" He squinted, thoughtfully. "I guess it'd be an easier shot if I was standing next to him, instead of on the neighbor's roof..."
"Hey, no shooting!" Yamamoto reminded him, smile fading a bit around the edges, on the finishing touches of building a house from all of Gokudera's discarded matchsticks, still in his teaching sweats with his duffel bag at his feet. "We tried things your way, Gokudera."
"Not completely - !" Gokudera started to argue, about to say something regarding Irie Shoichi and opossums, but Yamamoto went on, obliviously;
" - so now we're going to do things my way. Got it?" He paused, for a moment, to frown, thoughtfully. "Hey, what'd you do with Hako-chan's old arithmetic tutor, anyway?"
Gokudera couldn't even be bothered to remind the idiot that the girl's name was 'Yoko'. "Dunno," he answered, shrugging, stubbing out his second cigarette, "nothing much. Hope he likes Hong Kong."
"Ooh," Yamamoto laughed, faking a shudder, "you're so scary, darling."
"Why don't you cut that shit out?" Gokudera suggested, in his usual manner that was more like threatening than actual suggesting. He was such a fucking idiot, to think that Yamamoto wasn't listening when he was talking about that horrible dream - Yamamoto was always listening, specifically so that he could have moments like this. It was about the only time that he listened, really.
"Nah, I don't think I will," the idiot decided, off-handedly. He set the last matchstick in place and stood from the table, stretching so hard that Gokudera could actually hear some of his joints pop. "Anyway, in case you've forgotten, we could use some money, too, dear wife. We've still got the motel fees to pay, and food and stuff besides. I had to use up my entire collection of old 10,000-yen bills just to get this place for a week, and I had to pawn my favorite watch, too."
Gokudera gnawed on an unlit cigarette, guiltily. "Fine, then," he muttered, and reached around on the bed for the television remote. "I'll go along with your dumbass plan - for now."
"Hey, thanks," Yamamoto laughed, grinning, and flopped himself down on the bed beside the other man, even though he had an empty, perfectly acceptable bed of his own. Gokudera bristled, scooting as far to the other side as he could manage without falling off.
"Get up, you shit," he growled, booting at the annoyance with one small, socked foot.
"Oh, come on, mercy," the taller man pleaded, looking upside down at Gokudera with a winning smile that from that angle looked more like a frown. "I ache all over, you know. Running after all those energetic kids at my old age..."
"My ass," Gokudera snorted, in Italian, booting harder.
"A good wife rubs her husband's shoulders after he's had a hard day at work," Yamamoto parried, eyes crinkling at the corners, something teasing but not necessarily friendly sharpening the corners of his smile.
Gokudera shoved the unlit cigarette in his mouth up the idiot's nose to hide his flush.
Hey, look, an ending point! God, I hate Livejournal's posting limits, I really do. I also hate my inability to shut up, but since one of these problems can be modified, I'm going to complain about the opposing party instead of myself.
Anyway, epic word count was epic, so have the next part to this.