Fanfic: Starshine
Title: Starshine
Author: saying_sooth
Rating: PG13
Pairing: 8059, 27K
Notes: Written for luco_millian and her wonderful art. =) Specifically, for the first one on this page: http://luco-millian.livejournal.com/278281.html
Summary: Gokudera is smoking in the alley behind a restaurant, and Yamamoto finds him.
Gokudera hid the flame of his lighter behind his hand as he started on his fifth cigarette of the night, the previous four stubs littered around his feet. Smells of good Chinese food - the heartiness of duck and fish that had been fried and gilded with flavor - wafted around the rest of the alley, but the immediate space around him was tinged with secondhand nicotine. Gokudera watched the smoke drift up to the night sky and disappear.
The pitch black tapestry that was the night sky hosted a multitude of pinpoints of light - airplane lights, Gokudera knew. He sometimes liked to pretend they were stars, but tonight was not the time for juvenile thoughts. Tonight he was on high alert, all senses attuned to what was happening on the opposite side of the brick wall he was leaning against.
Its uneven surface chafed at his back but he didn’t mind, simply focusing on the feeling of the smoke sliding into his lungs. Inhale, exhale. Breathe in, sigh out. This was his form of meditation, albeit one that was slowly wearing away his life. Whatever.
The soft pat-pat of footsteps stirred him from his reverie, but as expected it was only the alley cat scrounging for food. Gokudera reflexively dug into his pockets, searching for scraps - but like the other two times she had come around, they contained nothing but change, dynamite and a lighter. Still, since Gokudera had an unexpected soft spot for cats (the non-household types), he promised to buy her a dish of something once he got off-shift.
The cat sprang away as a door opened from the kitchen, its opener a lackey-chef taking out the trash. He glanced towards Gokudera as he came out, taking in the cigarettes, the chain-bedecked clothing, the hostile expression that welcomed a fight. The noise of the restaurant filtered out for a moment behind the chef and Gokudera strained to make out individual voices - but he heard only collective chatter.
When the chef went back in, the door closed behind him with an abnormally loud thud. The silence left behind was shaded grey by Gokudera’s disappointment; he scowled and puffed harder at his cancer stick.
The smoker stayed undisturbed for a long time after that. The alley opened up to a side street unused by the patrons of the restaurant, so it was mostly devoid of traffic. Once in a while someone drunk and his equally drunk buddies would stumble into Gokudera’s periphery, but the languid smoker’s glare permeated the most inebriated of minds. The drunks would continue their shaky journey down the street, instinctually shying away from danger. They never knew that Gokudera only breathed easier once their raucous laughter was out of hearing.
Gokudera got only one surprise that night, and it wasn’t as unpleasant as it could’ve been. Around the last drags of his eighth cigarette, a shadow appeared around the corner that was neither cat nor drunk. Gokudera stamped out of the dot of flame that could give him away and fingered the dynamite in his pockets. But when he saw the intruder, he let go of his weapons and gave only a harrumph of annoyance.
Yamamoto in turn gave a surprised laugh and hurried towards Gokudera, lowering his baseball bat. “Ahahaha, I didn’t expect to see you here, Gokudera!”
Gokudera snorted in derision. “The fuck are you doing here, baseball-idiot?” He attempted to move away when the happy-go-lucky dumb shit shuffled next to him, but was hindered when Yamamoto threw an arm across his shoulders.
“My dad’s a friend of the owner of the restaurant you’re leaning against.” Yamamoto replied. “And he asked me to check out the suspicious teenager hanging out in his back alley.” Yamamoto beamed, but Gokudera made sure not to notice as he fumbled to light another cigarette.
“…Is that what the baseball bat was for, idiot?”
“Ahaha, yeah! Of course I wouldn’t actually damage my baseball equipment, but I figured it would help me look threatening.”
“So what would you’ve done if it hadn’t been me and you really had to fight?”
Yamamoto shrugged, and it jarred Gokudera’s shoulder since they were so close. “I dunno. I didn’t really think that far.” Simple-minded idiots, Gokudera concluded, were unimaginably simple-minded. It was a miracle that Yamamoto was still alive, really. “So what were you doing here in the first place, Gokudera? My dad’s friend told me you’d been here for almost 2 hours!”
Gokudera didn’t really want to tell the baseball-idiot, who would invariably come to the wrong conclusion. So he stayed silent and smoked moodily, hoping Yamamoto would take the hint and shut up. Understandably, that plan failed brilliantly.
Yamamoto bumped Gokudera’s shoulder again and asked excitedly, “Ne, is it a new game, Gokudera? Can I play?”
Gokudera gave the long-suffering sigh of the woefully misunderstood and swallowed the urge to punch his companion. “The Tenth has a date with Kyoko-chan inside that restaurant tonight, idiot. So like a good right-hand man, I’m outside standing guard.”
Yamamoto frowned in confusion. “But wouldn’t it be better if you were inside…? Out here you can’t even see anything - ”
“What, you want me to infringe upon the Tenth’s hard-won privacy? Think before you speak, moron!” Gokudera’s teeth ground together in righteous anger. “Besides, I know that the Tenth can take care of himself, but just in case something breaks out…”
“You’re so considerate!” Yamamoto chirped.
“Yeah yeah, now shut up and let me stand guard in peace.” Yamamoto, to Gokudera’s surprise, obeyed.
The next few moments bordered on endurable. If anything, Yamamoto’s (unwelcome) arm made for a tolerable pillow, so Gokudera rested his stiff neck. But of course the big lug was incapable of silence for long. Yamamoto pointed up at the sky, baseball bat still in hand, and nudged Gokudera to say, “Look up at the sky, Gokudera! The stars are so bright this time of the year!”
“They’re airplane lights, stupid.”
“No no! I’m positive they’re stars, or at least some of them!”
Gokudera gave him a dirty look. “The glare of the airplane lights would block out the stars, idiot! So they’re either all airplane lights or all stars!”
Yamamoto laughed sheepishly. “I guess you’re right.” Gokudera would’ve come back with another insult, but suddenly the door from the kitchen opened and a Chinese man wearing a suit walked out. Yamamoto finally removed his arm from Gokudera’s immediate vicinity - only to wave and greet the man loudly. “Good evening Zhou-san!”
The Chinese man bowed and smiled politely. “Good evening, Takeshi. Have you, um…” He eyed the teenager behind Yamamoto.
“Oh! This is my friend Gokudera Hayato, Zhou-san. You don’t have to worry about him.”
“Well, that’s good…” But Gokudera saw he was unconvinced, and the Storm Guardian geared up for an argument. No way was he budging from this alley while the Tenth was still inside.
“Ah, Zhou-san, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll stay with Gokudera until he leaves, ok? I promise he’s up to no harm.”
The restaurant owner looked visibly relieved, and thanked Yamamoto before going back in. Gokudera grudgingly gave props (in his mind) to the baseball-idiot for being so trustworthy. If someone else had come to oust him from his guard - which would’ve inevitably resulted in a big commotion - and the Tenth had found out, Gokudera would never have lived down his embarrassment and shame.
But he didn’t voice his gratefulness, especially not when Yamamoto turned around with a big smile on his face and trotted back to his previous position. At least the arm didn’t come around again, though the idiot was still abnormally close. It was strange, because Gokudera thought Yamamoto would be driven away by the secondhand smoke, but what the heck. He wasn’t going to puzzle out the moron’s thought processes. “So you’re staying here, idiot?”
“That’s what I promised Zhou-san!” Yamamoto said happily. “But Gokudera, how are you going to know when Tsuna leaves?”
Gokudera grunted in annoyance. “I’ll know.”
“But how?”
“Shut up and you’ll be alive to see.”
Yamamoto’s mouth opened to say who-knows-what but Gokudera jammed his hand over the lower half of the baseball player’s face, the last time he’d touch Yamamoto voluntarily in this lifetime (or so he vowed). A sharply hissed “Shh!” stopped Yamamoto’s efforts to mumble around the fingers, and Gokudera pressed closer to the darkness of the alley as two familiar figures wandered under the streetlight just in front of them.
Yamamoto gave a sharp intake of breath, inhaled the metal tang of rings and gunpowder from Gokudera’s hands. It was Tsuna and Kyoko! They were holding hands, walking slowly, and they laughed with their heads close together like two moths attracted to the same light. The two of them had just gotten out of the restaurant and were evidently waiting for a ride, though they seemed oblivious to everything else as they stopped under the streetlight and laughed about a private joke.
Gokudera’s hand slowly slipped off as he turned fully to see the scene. They were so precious, he thought, and the Tenth really deserved this happiness. He stiffened when he felt someone come up behind him - too close, too warm. A bony chin flopped down on his shoulder, black hair tickled his cheek…and Gokudera would’ve exploded had it not blown their cover. Fuck, what the hell was Yamamoto trying to pull?
Gokudera discreetly (but viciously) elbowed the idiot. Yamamoto yelped, surprisingly loud, but didn’t move away. Instead his arms wrapped around Gokudera, and the smoker froze and eyed the tender couple before them. Thankfully, the Tenth and Kyoko didn’t seem to have noticed anything, but Gokudera didn’t dare do anything more for fear of catching their attention.
As it was, Gokudera was ticking closer and closer to detonation. And it seemed like God wanted Yamamoto to get punished too, because just then Ryohei drove up to drive Kyoko home. The two young people separated amiably with a promise to meet again tomorrow, and the Tenth waved after the siblings until the car turned out of sight. Then he wandered about a little, drinking in the summer air with a smile on his face. Gokudera hoped he didn’t smell the cigarette smoke. But the Tenth just strolled up the street, his head upturned toward the stars (err…airplane lights).
Gokudera counted to 10 very slowly in his mind. Yamamoto must’ve thought he was relaxing into his grip, because he hugged Gokudera closer - and then Gokudera struck. In a second Yamamoto’s baseball bat had fallen to the ground, pulled by gravity out of his slack grip. Yamamoto himself had also hit the ground, with Gokudera’s knee against his stomach and his pianist fingers clutched around his throat. “What the fuck did you think you were doing, idiot?”
Yamamoto must’ve had strong vocal muscles, because he managed to laugh around Gokudera’s strangling hold. The weak chuckle fluttered up Gokudera’s locked arms, his grip faltering out of reflex. Yamamoto gasped for air, his smile belied by the desperation in his breaths. “Ahaha…I was just moving to get a better view of…of Tsuna and Kyoko!” He wheezed; Gokudera’s fingers had tightened once more, and the cold rings of silver and titanium were digging into his windpipe.
“Yeah?” It came out as a snarl. “You’re a freak of nature when it comes to height, moron. There’s no way you couldn’t have looked around me.” He had not just implied he was short, Gokudera seethed. Yamamoto was just way too tall.
“Ah…you’re…r-right…ah, Gokudera…” Yamamoto blinked rapidly; his vision was going fuzzy at the edges (or were those really transparent creepy-crawly things slithering over every visible surface?).
Gokudera growled. He recognized signs of blacking out when he saw them, so his fingers reluctantly peeled away from Yamamoto’s throat. To the sounds of the baseball-idiot’s hacking coughs, he proceeded to sit on Yamamoto’s stomach and light another cigarette. He blew the smoke in the idiot’s idiotic face (Yamamoto was smiling again!) when he leaned close to speak. “I know I’m right. So why don’t you answer my question truthfully this time?”
“W-What question was that, Gokudera?” Yamamoto’s hands were rubbing softly at his injured neck and he was wincing, but Gokudera paid that no mind. From experience, he knew there would be no permanent damage on that neck tomorrow, only nasty bruises.
“I asked you what the fuck you thought you were doing with your little stunt back there. Idiot.” This time Gokudera blew his smoke into the sky, but he was utterly aware of everything outside his field of vision. If Yamamoto moved to escape, the lit cigarette would be stubbed out painfully on some part of his body not covered by jeans or shirt or school sweater. Dumb jock. He’d probably just finished showering after a(n inevitably victorious) baseball game when he’d come to find Gokudera. The smoker could just imagine Yamamoto-senior smilingly asking his son to check out the “suspicious teenager” behind Zhou-san’s Mystic Garden, and Yamamoto just as happily obliging. Che.
Yamamoto swallowed with difficulty and reached up to twiddle with Gokudera’s chains and necklaces. The smoker had some strange blue drop dangling from his neck, altogether smooth and shimmering. Yamamoto rubbed the little bauble and tugged until he got Gokudera’s attention, or rather the smoker’s disdainful glare. Yamamoto would’ve laughed had it not been so painful and what came from his throat more resembled a burble. “’okudera…it’s nice to be like this…even with a situation strange like this…because I like you. And it’d be fun to go on dates with you, like Tsuna and Kyoko do! So will you…”
Gokudera thought Yamamoto was one hell of a sap. But he’d be a hypocrite to criticize the idiot’s preferences (girls were just too…clingy). So he opened his mouth to reluctantly assent…and his cigarette dropped out and singed the idiot’s neck.
Yamamoto jerked away, croaking in distress. “Ah…that’s a no?” Gokudera flicked the cigarette away, his mouth set in a slash sharp enough to murder, and wished he didn’t feel so stupid.
“No- I mean, not a no, accident…” Gokudera dipped down and mouthed the burn in apology, his elbows grounded on each side of Yamamoto’s shoulders. Afterwards, the smoker still didn’t say sorry, but Yamamoto smiled and accepted his apology.
Gokudera got off of the baseball player and gave him a hand up, brushing the dust off of Yamamoto’s school sweater once they were both standing.
“So what are we doing now, Gokudera?” Yamamoto retrieved his baseball bat and hefted it over his shoulder.
“Don’t group us together so easily, dimwit. Who says I’m not sending your sorry ass home right now?”
Yamamoto’s smile was blinding.
“Fuck, fine, stick around if you want to. I’m going to buy some food for the alley cat that lives around here.” Gokudera jammed his hands into his pockets and walked toward the kitchen door. Yamamoto followed him happily, bumping his shoulder in an unbearably friendly way. Gokudera was about to protest, but one glance at Yamamoto’s face quieted his complaint. Even if the airplane lights up in the sky were actually stars, Yamamoto’s cheerful eyes outshined all of them.