Title: Boom
Rating: G
Pairing: Mostly Gokudera gen; vaguely 5927
Comments: For myrafur who is pretty much the only person (ASIDE FROM MY SEME <3) who can say 'Hey questy, can you write so and so for me' and I'll immediately say 'OF COURSE!!' ^^;; ILU Myra <3 Also, hahahaha, the title I totally blame on give credit to silverwyrm who repeatedly shouted that at me during the course of the writing.
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Gokudera Hayato lights a cigarette outside the Basilica Santa Maria sopra Minerva ten years later; he counts down from sixty in his head. Rome is in the midst of a heat wave. The air undulates across the Piazza della Minerva, swelling in thermal tides around Bernini’s baby elephant. Yamamoto stands several feet removed from the sculpture. His smile is directed at the weathered walls of the Pantheon, the rise of its great dome distorted in the humidity.
Be quick. Be discreet, Tsuna had said. Everything we do, we do for the family.
In strategically placed locations on his person, Gokudera is a one-man army of exactly one hundred mini bombs, fifty rocket bombs, six smoke bombs and five boxes. He estimates that by the time the first smoke bomb clears, he will have used ten mini bombs and one box. Yamamoto may also have drawn his sword, but Gokudera doubts it. He inhales deeply and pushes damp bangs from his forehead.
49… 48… 47…
Gokudera had stood before the façade of the Pantheon, in the shadow of a column, fifteen years ago. He had placed one hand against the ancient stone—his other had clutched a stick of dynamite in his pocket—and prayed. Not for salvation, nor wealth, nor longevity. He had pulled his hand from the building and closed his fingers around the dust in his palm.
Gokudera watches the birds flit from the roofs and gather in a chaotic flock along the edges of the Piazza. The heat sits at the crown of his head like a burning wreath. Shigure Kintoki shifts against Yamamoto’s back as he moves; he drops his head back to admire the lines of the elephant’s obelisk. Gokudera acknowledges the simpleton’s easy awe with a snort, but says nothing.
Everything we do, we do for the family. It has become Tsuna’s stock phrase, but means no less to Gokudera now than it did the first time Tsuna had said it eight years ago.
Gokudera suffers the heat and the company because, for Tsuna, it’s never really suffering. Fate—in the form of an infant hitman—had shuffled him out from the panoply of nameless mafioso and set him at the right hand of the Vongola; Gokudera remembers daily the dry film of grains against the dip of his palm and is glad he has never asked for spiritual afflatus. Tsuna guides him now, as surely as he guides the Vongola—not because he is the boss, his Juudaime, the reigning powerhouse of the mafia underworld, but because he is Tsuna, perfectly imperfect Tsuna.
20… 19… 18…
Yamamoto shuffles his feet. The soles of his shoes, custom made Bruno Magli, scrape along the cobblestones.
Gokudera thinks: In fifteen seconds, there will be one less enemy of the Vongola.
He takes a drag from his half burnt cigarette. Smoke dissipates in the rippling heat. He makes sure to snuff out the tip before tucking the butt into his pocket for later disposal. He will not litter at the doors of a church.
Be quick. Be discreet.
Across the way, a dark car passes. Gokudera steps away from the basilica and Yamamoto falls in stride. The baseball idiot has become a common fixture at his side, a constant like lawnhead, who is hidden behind the tinted windows of the car parked just down the alley. They are each, in turn, a moiety of Vongola, of each other. Gokudera thinks of Tsuna and lights his smoke bomb.
3… 2… 1…