8059 Part I
Title: Wounded Pride
Summary: All Gokudera wants is to be left alone, but of course Yamamoto has other ideas.
Warnings: Angst, Lime, Gokudera’s Mouth, and Yamamoto’s Dogged Persistence Where Any Normal Human Being Would Have Conceded Defeat. There is also a smidge of Italian in there, it’s not really necessary to understand what it means but it is explained at the bottom ^__^
Disclaimer: Do you really think I’d make someone so resistant to being slashed as Gokudera; you have no idea how long it took me to force him into that final scene- why do you think this fic is really this long?
Gokudera scowled and bit the inside of his mouth unhappily.
He was sitting on the bottom bunk of the bed in the room he was forced to share with the baseball-idiot. On a cabinet beside him was a steaming bowl of water, a small, brown bottle- its contents lying unassumingly in his palm- and a large roll of bandages.
The bottom of his left trouser leg was stiff with blood and where it had dried it had adhered the fabric to the deep cuts left by the mandibles of his sister’s scorpions. Training with Bianchi had become one unacceptable failure after another but Gokudera was too proud to admit it out loud which was why he was now holed up in his room like an injured animal that had retreated to its den to lick its wounds.
Gokudera glared down at his leg and then looked back at the three small, white pills in his hand. He swallowed them dry as he wondered when would be the best to time to sneak into the medical room to steal some more. Usually, considering the base’s lack of an official doctor, it would have been easier than breathing to slip in and take a single bottle of painkillers but recently Gokudera had grown a tail. For some reason Yamamoto had made it his mission to foist his presence onto the displeased genius whenever possible and Gokudera was frighteningly close to just sticking dynamite under his bed in the middle of the night.
Gokudera grit his teeth as he gripped the edge of his black trousers (though not practical in a desert the colour was useful for hiding blood from anyone who wasn’t looking too closely) and, after a few seconds readying himself with deep breaths, he yanked it over his knee.
The recently formed scab was ripped away from his wound and Gokudera found himself muffling an agonised cry behind his tightly pressed lips as a fresh flow of blood splattered over his bare foot and onto the floor where it pooled grotesquely.
He watched it spread, a vivid reminder of yet another failure to the tenth- what use was he as a right-hand man if he couldn’t even advance in his training? He bet the baseball idiot wasn’t having these problems. He was always strolling around with that god-awful grin upon his face, looking for all the world as though he didn’t even understand the meaning of the word ‘problem’.
Gokudera pulled his eyes away from the ugly puddle to study the damage the scorpion had managed to inflict and pulled a face at the messy wound. Dried blood still clung stubbornly round the edge the jagged holes on either side of his calf and the fluid pouring thickly out of them made Gokudera’s stomach roll nauseatingly. With an irritated sigh Gokudera leaned over to grab a rag that had been floating in the steaming water beside him and squeezed out the excess as he lifted his foot onto the edge of bed so he could reach his injury more easily. The blood was already starting to slow as a new delicate membrane started to form over the top but it was growing around small pieces of sand, grit and dust that had managed to stick to the wound.
It was going to have to get worse before it got better.
Gokudera cleaned the outside first, clearing away the macabre stain settling itself on tender skin whilst doggedly avoiding the painful wounds until there was absolutely nothing else left. Gokudera folded the cloth over and resolutely pressed it against the first gash.
It burned. It burned and stung and made Gokudera want to throw the rag to the furthest side of the room without a second thought; but he didn’t.
Gokudera hissed helplessly through his teeth, refusing to admit yet another defeat that day by jerking away. Stubbornly, with Yamamoto’s bed sheets crushed desperately beneath his free hand, he wiped it clean, tearing away the patchy, dirty scab that had been trying to form and releasing new rivers for him to soak up with his already saturated rag.
It didn’t work and Gokudera scowled as the blood, instead of being cleared away, just began to smear across his shin. He unceremoniously dumped his rag back into the bowl of water with a displeased “che”. He swilled it around the warm water with a finger, watching as the water first turned a hazy orange and then deepened until it was almost as though he’d taken the water straight from the Nile during the first plague of Egypt.
“There shall be blood throughout the whole of Egypt, blood even in their wooden bowls and jars of stone,” Gokudera quoted in sarcastic Italian, a rare show of his Christian upbringing. The steam continued to rise from the bowl unperturbed and as he watched its spiralling tendrils Gokudera refused to liken its appearance to cigarette smoke.
Gokudera’s scowl deepened as he felt his hands itch.
He grabbed his rag angrily from the bloody water and applied it very deliberately to his second wound. It hurt. Jesus Christ it fucking hurt. But at least he wasn’t thinking about smoking anymore. Gokudera gritted his teeth as he wiped away the last of the old blood from the hole and took some satisfaction in the wet spot on the bed sheets below him from the surplus water he hadn’t bothered to squeeze from his rag. (1)
He just hoped it had soaked through enough to still be there when the baseball-idiot decided to go to bed.
Gokudera smirked a little, briefly contemplating adding more water beneath the duvet before the trickle of crimson from his sealing wounds reminded him he still had a job to finish. Flopping the rag back into the water he grabbed the dressing from beside the bowl and wrapped a quick first later around his leg to catch the welling blood, tying it off at the top as a makeshift tourniquet. The work was shoddy, but it allowed Gokudera to wrap a proper bandage without having to worry about any telltale stains being left on Yamamoto’s bed cover. The second layer of gauze was more methodically applied, wrapped in a tight spiral until his calf was covered in a thick, snowy binding from knee to ankle.
Gokudera shifted his foot experimentally. The wounds still stung painfully, and they clearly didn’t appreciate movement, but it was endurable. Slowly Gokudera eased himself off the bed, grimacing as his left foot took more weight than he’d planned, and picked up the bowl of now cooled, ruby water before limping over to the sink to pour the contents away.
The rag landed with a squelch in the bottom of the sink and Gokudera squeezed as much of the water out as he could before throwing it in a lidded bin. His trousers followed it as soon as he’d managed to pull them off and he grabbed a spare pair he’d found in the back of the older Gokudera’s closet that he’d laid out earlier on the side. They were too long, of course, but it wasn’t too noticeable in they were rolled up on the inside.
His leg protested vehemently as the new material pressed against his wounds but Gokudera ignored it with gritted teeth. Instead he turned his attention to the cherry red puddle lying so obviously beside the baseball-idiot’s bottom bunk and Gokudera pulled a face as he realised he’d just thrown away his best way to clear it up. He looked down at the bin with a glare, wondering whether to just grab his trousers as quickly as possible and clean up before the idiot got back from training, or whether to risk an excursion outside to find some other old rag.
Unfortunately the sound of someone strolling obtrusively down the hallway outside their room made Gokudera’s decision for him and he had barely thrown his ruined trousers over the puddle when Yamamoto whistled happily into the room.
His wounds screamed their protest at how fast he’d managed to cross the room and Gokudera glared at the intruder because, as usual, it was all his fault.
“Oh you came to get changed too!” The idiot grinned vapidly, “I walked past the kitchen on the way here, the girls are making curry again- I hope it tastes as good as it smelled!”
Gokudera’s glare deepened but of course that idiot paid no attention as he started to strip. His dark skin shimmered with a heavy sheen of sweat and his hair was even messier than usual as it clumped together wetly. The smell made Gokudera’s lip curl and he disdainfully diverted his eyes (and nose) from the source.
“I’m starving too,” the idiot continued, oblivious as always to just how much Gokudera wished he would leave, “I’m going to eat as much as possible so you better get down there quick or there might be nothing left!” He laughed in that stupid way of his as he pulled his trousers over sweat-slicked thighs and grabbed a t-shirt to throw over his head, “I’ll see you in a minute yeah?” he asked standing patiently for an answer and Gokudera grunted a reply only because it was the fastest way he knew to get rid of the idiot. “Alright, see ya!” the idiot chirped before strolling back out of the door to the great relief of the room’s remaining occupant.
Gokudera knelt down beside his trousers and lifted them up to check how much blood they’d managed to soak up. Only the last vestiges of liquid remained and a few quick swipes left the former puddle just looking like every other stain on the dark floor.
The involuntarily-ex-smoker stood back up with a wince and limped across the room to return his old trousers to the bin. He leant back against the sink and staring over at the door unhappily. His stomach growled urgently, demanding that Gokudera show his face in the kitchen and right now that was the last thing he wanted to do. How was he supposed to face the tenth after another day of failure?
The rumble came again and Gokudera scowled at his traitorous body. The smell of dinner was already starting seep into the room and Gokudera could feel his saliva glands go into overdrive as he tried to remember the last time he’d eaten something- this morning? Or had he skipped and gone straight to training? That idiot would know, seeing as he’d suddenly taken such a keen interest in Gokudera’s life.
Gokudera blinked, he’d already gone and told that baseball-idiot he’d be down hadn’t he. Gokudera glared at an innocent patch of wall as he realised that he was going to have to walk all the way down to the kitchen on an injured leg and pretend that absolute nothing was wrong. But for the end it was nothing; he rather spend a night in hell than do something as undeserving of the right-hand man position as falling down on his word in front of that guy
---
.
Voices drifted through his mind, there were… three? Four? They sounded familiar. He could only hear snippets of their conversation but in his hazy daze he didn’t mind.
“…fell asleep before…”
“…3 days…”
“…tired…”
“…Gokudera-san…” he perked up at the sound of his own name, his mind finally deciding to take note of the conversation.
“…I wonder if his wounds are alright.” His wounds? Shit, how did they know? He’d hidden them right? Or were they talking about the bruises and scrapes? He was covered in them after all.
“Leave him be. He’s only ashamed of the results of his training.” Gokudera froze; Bianchi, that was definitely Bianchi.
“It didn’t go well?” that one was Reborn.
“Yeah… in the span of a minute only two of them… I wonder if this kid really has the determination to do this…” Gokudera bristled, what the hell did she know? He slammed his hands down on the table, taking a little satisfaction in the gasps he heard from Haru and Kyoko, before standing angrily. Pain shot through his leg but he ignored it as he walked to the door with a deliberate lack of speed.
“Reborn-san, I’m going to rest for now. Please give the tenth my greetings.”
As he walked out he slammed the door behind him; barely hearing Reborn’s agreement. He had lied of course, he had no intention of going back to the bedroom where he knew that idiot was just going to come bounding in, acting like they were all best mates and expecting Gokudera to actually give a shit.
No, he was going to the medical room first to pick up some more pills- he was going to need them too because the last dose clearly hadn’t been strong enough if the throbbing in his leg was anything to go by- and then he was going to hole himself up in the library until he finally managed to figure out this bloody Sistema C.A.I.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1)- Or the surplus water he hadn’t bothered to squeeze from his wig, apparently…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately this is going to have to be in three parts because apparently it's too long for just one post TT__TT
So here's Part II
And here's Part III