Dino takes home strays.
Gokudera is smitten.
It takes him time to work up to doing a thing like that. He'll stand in the mouths of alleys, glare at the grassy space under park benches, and concentrate on the windows of pet stores with intensity that becomes increasingly ferocious. The various cats tend to carry on regardless. However scrawny and ill-used (or cute) the damn things look, he can't bring himself to take them back to the base. There isn't enough space, they'd eat Lambo or get eaten by Bianchi, and how pansy-assed could you get? Ryohei would laugh so hard he'd rupture something - the women would coo. In the end, the most Gokudera ever does about the cats is to sneak the damn things food.
The first day he finds himself on the Cavallone home grounds he's busy ignoring Yamamoto reminiscing about the most crowded baseball game he'd ever played that time during his first Italian holiday (but had Cavallone really got 100 of his men out here on the lawns for that? Damn, he's glad that the Vongola aren't so soft—)
And then he's knee-deep in kittens.
"Oh yeah," Yamamoto says, laughing, and stoops to meet one of the fluff balls stalking them from out of the shade of a tree basically infested with domestic cats. The kitten bites his petting hand, probably because of a lingering sushi smell, and he darts his fingers in front of its mouth in a snapping game. "I forgot about these guys!"
"These are the ugliest fucking fleabags I've ever seen," Gokudera says, jaw clenched.
"Aren't they?" Yamamoto beams at the animals tumbling over each other around them on the lawn. "Back when I visited the first time, Dino-san said he can't resist bringing stray animals back here when he finds them - doesn't like to see them alone and uncared for."
During the negotiations, Gokudera is non-confrontational and so downright quiet that Yamamoto asks if he's feeling sick when they take a quick break. Dino and Romario keep raising their eyebrows over the lunch table. The food alone should have been enough to release a stream of derisive and unfair comments from Gokudera, all about ludicrous informality and lack of poise and talentless Cavallone cooks.
The turning point in this strange situation is when Dino remarks on how Gokudera had always previously managed to avoid visiting the Cavallone family - his comment warm, not serious, and mostly to see if Gokudera would return to blowing things up at the insinuation that he had time to waste visiting instead of doing business. Instead Gokudera maintains the uncharacteristic silence, but his face gains a look of mild pain and panic, and then a rosy red blush.
Yamamoto gives up on understanding and decides to hope for entertainment, and Romario has his eyebrows near his hairline before he gives a start of realisation and takes a shrewd look at his boss: because Dino looks enchanted.
Dino has certain playful tendencies, and a poor grasp of how far he should push boundaries.
o - - o - - o
Gokudera smokes a lot in bed. It pains him, because there's a little voice inside that sounds like Haru, of all people to set up residence in his brain, telling him how rude it is. But he went to the trouble of opening some windows, and watching the twists of the smoke diffusing into the air, it feels like he needs it. The simple motions equal reassurance, and he needs some when he's well aware that he has the shittiest reason ever for being in a relationship.
Fuck, a relationship, next thing you know he'll be asking to borrow Bianchi's wedding dresses—
The pure tension radiating from next to him, probably, had woken Dino so that he began to stretch and yawn. "Still don't believe in sleeping in, Hayato?"
"Don't go telling me what I should and shouldn't do!"
"This again?" Dino says in wonder, and pinches his hip. "Good morning to you too, Smokin' Bomb Brat."
"Who the fuck are you calling a brat?" It's more plaintive by now than a serious challenge. Dino has acknowledged him in all seriousness in the past, and Gokudera sometimes has to concede the point when that nickname gets trotted out. Dino turns onto his back and smiles comfortably up at him.
Not a cuddler. Not a talker. (Looks ((really)) good shirtless.) Gokudera counts the small blessings and then swallows a curse, feeling the smile on his own face. He rolls his eyes and Dino laughs as he turns to stub out his cigarette.
"Should get up," Gokudera says. A reminder, a question.
"Time?"
"Nine-fifteen."
"Damn." Dino stretches again, knocks his hand against the bedside dresser and winces. Even a houseful of subordinates doesn't help his early morning coordination. "The hell with it," he says, sucking the side of his wrist, the tattoo giving him a mouthful of barbed wire. "Give it fifteen more minutes."
The two of them doing this kind of thing requires a lot of ritualised looking the other way. Walking out of the bedroom at this hour is pushing the boundaries, but in the heart of the Cavallone home are the most loyal and most indulgent subordinates. If Dino says it's fine, it probably is, and besides, Gokudera would hate to give any indication that he couldn't beat the average Cavallone asshole while blindfolded. Let anyone try and make shitty insinuations.
Dino's hair is a mess all over his face and Gokudera sweeps it neatly back, worrying. He hopes that Dino doesn't notice the worry, but fortunately it seems to have escaped notice - he shifts to rest his head against Gokudera's thigh lightly, in question, and then relaxes as fingers keep carding his hair. He's used to having things done for him, taking easily to the small gestures especially.
He takes to all of it better than Tsuna. What the hell kind of Mafioso sleeps with the boss of another family?
Damn, the man's hair is soft. Especially round the back of his neck; downier than a kitten's belly fluff. No wonder it falls into those magnificent mountainous shapes at no provocation. Gokudera suspects he should have a talk with Romario about giving Dino a buzz cut, but the Tenth looks that much more impressive when stood beside the terrible accidents that happen on Dino's head. Besides. This way, Dino looks more like an idiot, and it tends to be good for the health to be underestimated. It goes with Dino's jeans and t-shirts and constantly sitting with one foot on the furniture. He's really not supposed to think this stuff like it's his business.
"What?" says Dino, pressing his cheek to Gokudera's thigh in a quick caress. He does pick up on most emotional cues. And appears to care enough to speak up about it. (Weird.)
Gokudera gives him a baleful look, but with a smile lurking in the background. "Must be nice to be so damn comfortable. You're lying there like one of the pack of fleabags that hang around the house."
"Shut up about the animals." Dino's voice goes slightly deeper and he avoids eye contact most of the time when he talks about the cats, the dogs, and the occasional stranger pet - ways of trying to ward the conversation off. It embarrasses him a little, since it's not the manliest of habits. The kind of thing lots of people would give you grief for, especially in his position.
He snorts a laugh and Dino shifts to elbow him, much softer than it would have been if it were really accidental. Five minutes left, and now Gokudera thinks it might have been nice if they could have skipped the countdown for today.
The animals are definitely a problem for Gokudera, though not in the way Dino thinks. The cats especially. If held at gunpoint, he'd admit he has a soft spot for cats.
The biggest soft spot, however, goes to the openhearted. What it takes to grab a spitting alley cat and muffle the diseased animal in your coat, keep it in your lap on your backseat even if the damn thing decides peeing counts as self-defence, make it as well as you can and then feed it when you can, because there's nothing less grateful than a cat and half the time it'll head back to home ground - it's too much to describe, it's too little to mention, it makes Gokudera's face twist sometimes so he knows he needs to hide it. Kind - yeah, sweet - yeah, and brave in a way he hates people for not recognising more. He recognises it, though he doesn't have it. There's everything to admire in it.
That Dino decided to play along with this crack in the armour of Gokudera's common bloody sense is a relief, really. This kind of feeling surely needs an outlet. He'd probably be blowing a lot more things up if he didn't have one.
"Now for the shower," Dino says, and heaves himself upright. Gokudera is tensed to catch him, but he's awake enough to manage himself. Dino leers happily over his shoulder. "Do you want to jump in too, Hayato?"
"Go warm the water," Gokudera says, waving him on, because it does Dino good to receive orders now and then. Dino gives him a look as if aware of this theory, smiling, and crosses the room to the connecting bathroom.
Gokudera does not watch him go, instead cataloguing spots in the room where their clothes ended up last night. It makes no real difference, because he's sure as hell joining him in a minute, knowing intimately the joys of a polite excuse to slam Dino against a wall and keep him there so the slippery floor does not become an inconvenience. Not watching the body he's come to know feels like a decent step in the direction of going home.
He knows where home is. He has to, he always will. This relationship, if you wanted to call it that ... sometimes it feels as if the ground might as well crumble under his feet, and it wouldn't leave him any more unstable than he's making himself.
With the show of a spark of interest, Dino had become interested enough himself to push and push further, and now there is time enough for Gokudera to have seen how Dino could sometimes look pleasantly surprised when looking his way. Sometimes he just looks pleased - in a way that has settled into the bone - and sometimes he looks so good that it's a scramble to find a word that isn't 'beautiful'. His pupils have dilated under the effect of physical roughness in a way that makes Gokudera wonder exactly how messed up it is, and he's got great at shrugging off certain fights and even better at picking the small ones that he finds fun. They both know too much, and it's still all right.
From the bathroom comes a breath of steam across the threshold to leave ghost prints on the polished wood, and Dino calls him in. Gokudera pulls off his boxers and pads across the floor, because Dino appreciates offhand surprises. It must give that offhandedly open heart the feeling of being right after all.
He thinks of home, and thinks about thinking about finding it in a different place - because he'd never.
He shuts the bathroom door and locks it behind him, matching grins with Dino. "Aah, Hayato," Dino says with happy satisfaction, standing in the shower door with half his hair plastered down from the water, and extends a hand like he's got a complex where he feels the need to be Prince Charming.
The really nice thing, the best thing, is that they both know and don't need to talk about the fact that the 'relationship' has a time-limit - the rules of looking the other way don't allow for anything else. No sense wasting this. Time to stop thinking.
It's what allows Gokudera to step over and take the hand without repeating the complications to himself. He can take the offer and sink in, and for a change, find out how very good Dino is at catching, steadying, keeping hold.