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byzantyne · 7 years

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beautiful world

8059 as dads (super gokudera-centric tho SORRY) beautiful world, one step closer to immortality.

Yamamoto hears a suspicious crying sound from the next room, and he's pretty sure it's not a baby.

(Or if it is, a very large, twenty-six-year-old one.)

He knocks on the door cautiously. "Hayato...?" he ventures, and when he gets no response, he pushes the door open.

Sure enough, Gokudera is inside, hyperventilating, trying to soothe the wailing baby with desperate pleas while simultaneously wiping her butt with a damp Bounty towel. He doesn't even notice Yamamoto come through the door.

"Hayato..."

He puts a hand on Gokudera's shoulder, which makes the man jump.

"Takeshi." He frowns. "Don't scare me like that, I could've dropped her."

Yamamoto laughs. "Sure, sure. How're things going? Trouble in paradise?"

Gokudera scowls immediately, a sign Yamamoto's come to learn over the years to mean, not funny, asshole. "She peed on me." He nods to the crisp white shirt tossed over the side of the crib, marked with a suspicious yellow stain. "Five hundred fucking dollar Brooks Brothers." Sighs, shaking his head. "I'm a fucking failure at this already."

"Relax," Yamamoto says, rubbing his back, "it's only been a day. And Bianchi'll only be away for a couple of weeks. We'll be back to our quiet, bachelor lives in no time."

"I guess." He lets out another exhale, and the towel drops from his fingers. "We've talked about kids before, Takeshi."

Yamamoto blinks at him. "We have."

"But I think this just goes to show that I'd be a terrible parent."

"Is that what you're worried about?" He smiles and kisses Gokudera on the temple. "Don't worry. No one's a perfect mother on their first day."

The comment earns him an elbow to the stomach. "Fuck off."

"Hey hey. No bad language in front of the kid."

But Bianchi doesn't come back.

Gokudera is rocking the child in his arms by the window, angrily punching redial into his phone over, and over, and over.

It doesn't stop raining that day.

The Tenth is in his kitchen sipping tea, and Yamamoto is changing the baby's diapers because he's better at it. Gokudera sighs, leaning against the island, and kneads his forehead with his fingers.

"Still no word from Bianchi?" Tsuna asks.

"No." He grimaces. "What did I expect, really...in our profession, it's a fucking blessing to be killed rather than captured."

"Don't give up hope, Hayato." His boss gives him a reassuring smile. "Your sister is terrifying for good reason. And they haven't found a body yet."

He shakes his head and scratches his arm. "I know, dammit. And that's what bothers me." An index finger absently scratches a patch on his arm. Tsuna blinks several times.

"Hayato, are those...?"

"Nicotine patches." He glances at Tsuna's surprised expression. "What? I gave up smoking for the kid. Don't give me that look, you'd do the same for Nanako."

He smiles. "You're right, I would. What's Bianchi's daughter named again?"

"Arianna. After our grandmother."

"Well. Arianna is a very lucky little girl, then."

Reborn stops by one day during one of Arianna and Nanako's playdates. They are playing airplanes and trains with their amused fathers, and Gokudera watches them from the couch, turning over the Vongola ring in his hands.

"I thought you'd want to play with them as well," the hitman says. Twelve years old and he still has the uncanny ability to sneak up on people as if he were half the size.

Luckily, Gokudera has been, over the years, rendered immune to such abrupt introduction, and he doesn't even turn to look at Reborn. "What makes you say that?"

Reborn grins. "I remember you were very proud of your number one ranking about being good with kids when Nanako was born."

He scoffs. "Takeshi likes the make believe games. Brings out his domestic side, I think. Me, I don't have mothering instinct if it came delivered to me with step-by-step instructions."

"Is that so."

They're silent for a while, until Reborn remarks quietly, "She has Bianchi's eyes," before walking away.

The daycare center ladies learn very quickly: when it comes to Arianna's fathers, the friendly Japanese man is always polite and sticks around to chat with the other parents. He always picks his daughter up, kisses her on the forehead, and asks about her day, even though she can only manage simple words and cooing at best.

The other father is a rude, silver-haired foreigner who often declines speaking to anyone, is brusque with the daycare workers, and never smiles. But when he sees Arianna, he always drops to a squat, watching her crawl to him with gentle eyes. He always brushes her hair back with a finger, murmurs, "how ya doin', kiddo," and sweeps her up in his arms like she were a bag of broken china. And when he carries her out to the car, the day care ladies can agree: it seems like he has eyes for no one else in the world.

They fall asleep in bed, the three of them, Arianna wrapped up safely in Gokudera's arms, and Yamamoto's around Gokudera, and for the first time in his life, Gokudera simultaneously feels paradise and fears death.

Yamamoto chuckles and rakes fingers through grey hair. "You're holding her too tightly," he murmurs softly.

"She's not complaining," Gokudera grumbles back. Pauses, opens his eyes. "Every time I hold her, I'm...afraid. Deathly afraid. Like if I let go, she'd disappear forever."

"What's this? Have you fallen for someone else? I'm hurt, Hayato."

"Like hell you are." He elbows the man lightly in the gut, which elicits a small laugh. "Do you remember your parents holding you like this?"

"Yeah," Yamamoto says, reminiscent. "All the time." He kisses Gokudera's forehead. "Don't worry, silly. She's not going anywhere any time soon. Neither are we."

Instead of lullabies, they would tuck her into bed with stories about their famiglia. Gokudera could get Arianna to laugh at a few about Uncle Ryohei, and Yamamoto could always get excited squeals whenever he told the story of how her two fathers met, but the stories she loved best, the ones she couldn't stop asking for, were of her mother.

(Gokudera smiles. Funny, he muses, he was the same.)

Arianna is five when she first gets into trouble at school. (Frankly, with her upbringing, Yamamoto is surprised it didn't happen any earlier.) He's certain not to tell Gokudera about this -- firstly, because he didn't want there to be an accidental bombing incident in the principal's office, and secondly, because he knew Gokudera would be terrible at disciplining his kid.

Though, to be fair, Yamamoto isn't so great at it, either.

It's -- seven years --

something something Bianchi comes back

Bianchi smiles sadly at him. "I was going to be a wonderful mother, Hayato. The kind my mother never was to me. The kind...yours never got to be."

Gokudera chews on his lower lip. "Well, it's not too late to fucking try." He shrugs, kicking the ground. "We're her dads, you're her mom. Who gives a fuck about conventional families. All kids need are people who love them."

"Oh, Hayato," she's gathering him up in her arms and he doesn't even fight it, "oh, Hayato, how you've grown so much over the years, and how I love you so much."

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byzantyne · 7 years

Text

say something, i'm giving up on you

aka 10% smut sandwiched between 90% angst (im sorry)

They don't start off on the right foot.

"Hey, Bakasugi, when is your serial killer stalker gonna stop following us around?"

"Watch it, buddy, I'll cut your balls off before you can squeal, Shinsuke-sama, save me --"

" -- You bitch, I would never say something as pathetic as that -- "

" -- Gintoki, she's my fiancee."

"Oh. ...Oh, is that how it is."

"Yes, that's how it is."

Takasugi isn't an altogether unappealing guy. His looks aren't unlike those of a Sour Patch Kid -- at first, his face is rather sour, even annoying, but the more you look at it, depending on certain angles, it can be sweet. The slope of his nose is perfectly chiseled, for instance. And his eyes are gorgeously dark, like a black hole, like someone had dipped a corner of rice paper in a vat of ink and let it bleed. His hands are lithe and attractive when playing the piano.

And then, you don't have to look at him at certain angles to find him attractive anymore.

It's a calm day, so they spend it together splitting Mickey D's at the food court. ("You two argue so much," Zura says, shaking his head. "I never understand why you end up spending so much time together." For a guy who prides order above all else, it must be a pressing concern. But Gin and Takasugi thrive off the vulnerability of chaos. Feed off of it, even.) Gin licks a stripe of ketchup off his fingers. Takasugi smokes a cigarette languidly, and Gin finds himself watching the way Shinsuke's mouth makes O's around circles of smoke.

"Pretty sure we're sitting in the smoke-free zone of the mall, dipshit," he informs his friend, equanimous, couldn't care less.

Takasugi slants his eyes towards Gin. "Are you done eating my fries, freeloader?"

"Hey, it ain't my fault the video store pays a shit salary. And we're splitting, you ass."

He eyes the two boxes of fries, one empty, the other Gin currently had his greasy fingers around, on Gin's tray, and neither on his. "If 'splitting' in your dictionary means 'being a greedy bitch.'" He makes a grab for the box in Gin's hand. "Give me one, you bastard."

"Hey!" Gin whisks it away, arm high in air, sending half of the fries flying. "Sneaky fucker. Hey," he says again, leaning in, grinning. "I'll make you a deal. A fry for a smoke."

"That easy, Sakata?" He reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a cigarette, dangling it between his thin fingers. "Here."

"No, I'm not that easy, stupid." (Takasugi isn't liking the grin on his face.) "A fry if you shotgun it to me."

"Pfft." Smoke billows out from between his teeth. "Just one fry? I'm not a cheap whore, Gintoki."

"You look pretty cheap to me, asshole."

Takasugi sends another long drag through his lungs and Gin is thinking of giving up, joke or not, when the boy murmurs, "I shotgun it, and I get what's left. Whatever's not on the floor, that is."

"Wha --", when Takasugi leans across the table, pulls Gin's chin forward, and tugs Gin's lower lip open with his thumb. The delivery is quick -- Takasugi funnels his lips in a small "o," blows a steady stream of smoke into Gin's mouth, and then leans back again, crossing his arms. Gin breathes in and tastes hot ash on every square inch of his lungs, still stunned.

They hadn't broken eye contact the entire time.

There's a clearing of a throat (Takasugi), and an awkward cough of recycled smoke (Gin), before Takasugi reaches forward and grabs the box from Gin's now-lax hand. "Five left," he says, peering in and jiggling the remaining fries around. "What a waste, spending money on you, I swear to God."

He's trying to act so cool, but Gin recognizes the slight crawl of blushing pink on Takasugi's downturned cheeks.

"Gintoki." "Gintoki."

Someone is shaking him gently awake.

Without opening his eyes, he rolls onto his other side and mumbles, "Five more minutes, Zura."

The boy in question frowns, crosses his arms. "It's not Zura, it's Katsura. And It's 4PM, Gintoki. Your laziness is starting to astound me. Maybe we should take you to a doctor? There's a possibility it's a disease."

"You're a disease," comes muffled from under the covers, and frowning, Zura yanks them violently off. Gin gives one undignified yelp before Zura gasps himself.

"Gintoki...your eyes..."

Gin is only 90% certain that Zura is pointing in horror at the bags under his eyes. The other 10% is reserved for the assertion that Zura is hallucinating a strange, mutated alien crawling out of Gin's eye sockets right now.

"I couldn't get a wink of sleep last night, alright," he says, pulling the blankets back over his head. "Leave me alone, okay."

Gin can't pay attention during class.

(It's Takasugi's fault, that sonuvabitch, all that damn bastard's fault -- )

"Sakata-kun!" He jumps in his chair at the sound of his name. "Start reading from where Okita-kun left off."

He looks down at his Soseki text, a spaghetti dish of jumbled tongues. "Sensei, Okita-kun's haughty tone was pissing me off. I couldn't possibly pay attention to what he was actually reading."

The class erupts in a rumble of laughter -- not at Okita, no, at Gin, who is notorious for slacking off and coming up with the lamest excuses. He rolls his eyes and stares out the window. The teacher snaps something like, "Next time, pay more attention, Sakata-kun!" and assigns him an extra essay which he certainly won't write.

After school, Gin drives Takasugi home on his scooter. They both live a fair distance away from school, and the scooter is an old dinosaur, coughing up smoke and sputtering at the worst instances, and which Gintoki always has to kick once or twice in order to start up. Still, no matter how much he complains, Takasugi always hitches a ride with Gin anyway, and wraps his pale, thin arms around the small of Gin's waist.

This afternoon, it just happens to be very distracting.

They stop at a convenience store because Gin complains of hunger and Takasugi wants a pack of smokes. Languidly, Gin leans against a shelf of potato chips and watches Takasugi furrow his eyebrows at the selection of cigarette brands.

"Piece of shit konbini sells pieces of shit, what a surprise," the boy mutters from under his breath. Gin raises an eyebrow.

"What does it matter?" Gin says around a mouthful of strawberry-flavored KitKat. "They all taste the same anyway."

"You stupid fuck, they do not all taste the same. You would know if you actually -- "

Then stops, and closes his mouth abruptly.

Gintoki swallows. "Hey," he says, "take it easy."

Takasugi throws him a glare. "I pity the easy-going fool."

Gin murmurs, "You are so fucking difficult, sometimes, I swear to God."

"What about you, huh?" Takasugi rounds on him, pulling Gin's shirt collar. "Sometimes you disgust me, Gintoki. With your laziness and unambitiousness and the way you don't understand things -- "

"Understand what, huh?" Now it's Gin tugging on Takasugi's collar with his fist. "Understand what, huh?"

He expects Takasugi to shoot something back, like simple arithmetic, or how to work an AC, but instead, Takasugi falls silent, with a vaguely horrified look in his eyes. The sales clerk stumbles towards them, waving his arms. "Hey!" he shouts, essaying authoritatively while looking terrified, "if you're gonna fight, do it outside!"

Gin sighs and slings his arm around Takasugi, dragging him along. "C'mon, idiot," he grumbles, and is surprised when Takasugi doesn't struggle. When they get outside, Gin pushes him against a wall, barring escape with his arms.

"Get off me -- "

"No fucking way," Gin says between his teeth. "Not until you tell me what you meant when you said I don't understand."

Takasugi is breathing hard. Gin finds his fingers inevitably tangled in Takasugi's hair, and, for the first time, is enjoying his advantage in height over Takasugi in an entirely new way.

There's a brief exchange of shared breaths, until Takasugi blurts out, "I have a fiancee."

"Is that what this is about," Gin says, leaning back. His muscles relax, his face scrunches. "You fucking tease. What was yesterday, then?"

"I don't fucking know." Takasugi presses the heel of his hand against his eye. "A lapse in judgment, probably. Most likely."

Gin gently pries his hand away from his face. "Well, you can't argue this ain't mutual." He takes a step closer. Takasugi's eyes widen.

"What are you doing."

Gin strokes the shell of Takasugi's ear, traces skin all the way down to his bobbing Adam's apple, until the boy starts to shiver at his touch. At certain angles, Takasugi Shinsuke is a fascinating study in vulnerability and defensiveness, all at once. At any angle, Gin feels a compulsion to press his fingerprints into his ribs, leave his marks and presence there like a tracking hound.

"Just this once," he murmurs, "please."

Underneath him, Takasugi eases. "...Just this once."

This is not a romance, or else it wouldn't have started with awkward handjobs in the sketchy back washrooms of gas stations. The first time Gintoki is sucking Takasugi's neck like a vacuum, hand wrapped around cock.

Takasugi pushes him away. "You're going too fast," he grumbles. "What are you trying to do, start a chainsaw?"

"Shut up," Gin growls, "it'd be easier to get a chainsaw hard, you fucking limpdick," which is how they end up with more bruises that night than erections.

(But later, when Gin is applying ointment to the blossoming blue patch on Takasugi's forehead, his hands are still gentle.)

Just this once, they said.

Yeah, okay.

Matako and her threats of castration, unfortunately, are becoming a constant presence in Gin's life.

"So," Gin says, leaning against the railing circling the roof, "explain to me the circumstances of your engagement again."

Takasugi rolls his eyes. "There's not much to explain, Gintoki. I've already told you numerous times, if only you'd listen -- it's an arranged marriage. When I turn twenty-two, I'll marry her."

"Yeah, but." Gin scratches the back of her head. "Did she hold your father at gunpoint? Did he get brainwashed by one of those weird aliens Sakamoto keeps talking about? I don't get it. We're only like, eighteen. Aren't arranged marriages out of style these days, anyway?"

"Don't be such an empty-headed priss," he snaps. "It's not about out of style or not. It's just the way things are done."

Gin blinks rapidly. "Takasugi..."

He stubs his cigarette out on the railing. "We're done talking about this," he says, and then walks away.

It happens, of course, when they're watching some pay-per-view on the television and Gin keeps complaining about how drafty it is in Takasugi's room, which is how Gin ends up with a blanket wrapped up around his entire body like a burrito.

"Do you think we spend too much time together?" Takasugi suddenly says, right when some Spartan warrior is jump-striking some Persian with a spear.

"Hm?" Gin scratches his cheek absently. "Have you been talking to Zura again? I told him, it's just friendly banter."

They watch an impressive decapitation, CGI blood spraying fantastically across the scene. "No, Kijima said so."

He scoffs. "Since when are you and that bitch on first name basis?"

Takasugi glares at him. "Don't call her that."

"Okay, jesus." Gin sighs, leaning back against the couch. "You shouldn't let her boss you around, anyway. What's it been, a month since you met?"

"She doesn't." Takasugi chews on his lower lip. "I was the one who brought it up, Gin."

"Oh." He lets the blanket fall from around his shoulders. "Um."

Takasugi watches the fleece descend to his arms, but does nothing to move it back. "And of course, you're simple-minded enough to think this arrangement will somehow work out."

"What do you mean?" Gin sighs, scratching the back of his head. "It's not like we're -- " god forbid " -- dating."

Takasugi gives him a wilting look. "You understand nothing, do you."

"Again with this understanding and not understanding thing. What, is it actually code for, I wanna jump your bones, Gintoki? Jeez, you can really be a pain in the ass sometimes." He scrunches his nose when he remembers what they did just last Saturday. "Literally."

"Stop that," he groans. Gin thinks he's talking about the bad jokes, but then Takasugi murmurs, "I can't be the only one who has thought about touching again," and Gin tackles him so hard it knocks them both to the ground. (Somewhere in the background, a Spartan falls.)

"Shinsuke," he says, voice feral, "I've been waiting for you to say please."

This is not a romance. This is not how Meg Ryan and Patrick Swayze fall in love. This is backs thrown against walls, zipper teeth chafing, real teeth drawing blood when every impatient kiss is more like a punch to the face. Takasugi already has his hands under the waistband of Gin's boxers, and Gintoki already has his bottom lip sucked between his teeth, like this: "f-f-f-f-f -- " trying hard not to plead the word fighting its way past his lips.

"You're already hard," Takasugi murmurs, bending at the knees and pulling Gin's cock out from his Superman drawers. His breath is moist against skin, and Gin's fingers dig into the wall behind him.

"Fuck you," he manages to spit out, instead of "fuck me," and Takasugi irritatingly catches on.

"I fully intend for you to," he says, before closing his mouth around the head, and unraveling the growls from the base of Gin's throat.

something something haha

"My father expects impossible things from me..." he murmurs.

If this were a Nicholas Sparks novel, Gin would:

a) tell him, "you look beautiful when you cry."

b) kiss his tears away.

c) hold him tight, hold him close, until the sunlight died and a moon was reborn.

But it isn't. But this is Gin, wanting at once to push him away and pull him close, so he struggles: "Do you want to talk to Zura? I -- I can go find him for you..."

Takasugi glances at him with such undisguised misery that Gin wants to throw up. Tell me what a dick I am. Do it. Throw a fit and sock me in the face.

But Takasugi just says, "Sure."

Gin nods.

He turns the corner.

He doesn't want to think about how it is raining today.

This is not a romance, because Takasugi is not waking up in Gintoki's bed in the mornings, and Gin is not bringing him breakfast in bed. Gin is watching his pale, thin legs walk away for the nth time in the shine of the moonlight, and he wants to grab them, halt their motion.

He wants to say, Come back to bed, baby, like some smooth motherfucker, like a lovestruck mooner.

But he is cursed, like Cassandra, except instead of unfailingly predicting the future, the things he sees in his head will resolutely not come true.

This is not a romance, but --

he turns back round the corner, sprinting, tripping over his shoelaces, and does the following things in the following order:

a) tells Takasugi, "You look beautiful when you cry."

b) kisses his tears away.

c) and holds him tight, holds him close, like he's afraid the boy might disintegrate in his arms right them and there.

Takasugi chokes out, breathlessly, "Gintoki, you know we can't be together."

He laughs. "Listen to yourself. I bet you never thought you'd say something so stupidly heart-breaking, like some dumb chick flick." His fingers curl, around shirt, around hair, around -- Shinsuke. "I'm not stupid. I know things won't work out. But I can't erase these feelings. I don't want to stop myself from doing the things I want to do. I want to say the things I want to say to you, because I want you to hear them."

"Gintoki," Takasugi is cursing, "you stupid fuck, you stupid, stupid, stupid bastard," cursing his name until his lips run dry and his throat has no more words.

Gin lets his grip slacken slightly.

I know.

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