A/N: Tons of apologies if this switches tenses tons of times--when I started writing it I was accustomed to writing in past tense, then I left it alone for a while and by the time I came back to finish it I'd gotten myself used to present tense--which made finishing it a bear. So sorry about that!!
Incase it isn't painfully obvious, I have a heck of a lot easier of a time writing from Gokudera's POV than Yamamoto's, so bear with me there.
Just to let you know, in here we take one situation, begin in the middle of it, and go to the end--then there is them mirrored situation taken from the beginning, and left in the middle. I'm not insinuating with this that anyone dies. THIS IS NOT A DEATH FIC. Okay, just wanted to put that out there. Moving on--
Like Looking in a Mirror
"You went and got yourself hurt again. You're always getting hurt."
Yamamoto's words circled the room to fall flatly at his feet. With his breath coming in short, shallow bunches he made himself sit down and look.
Sometimes Yamamoto could swear he saw those eyebrows twitch together and form the same canyons and creases he knew so well; could swear he saw that mouth tug downward into a scowl, like it was just ready to open up and sling some smart-assed remark that would splatter all over his face.
His hands traversed the blanket, clutching at the cascade of folds at the edge of the bed. He tugged at them. Drug them half an inch and watched Gokudera's arm follow suit.
No growl. No disgruntled reprimand: just limp complacence masquerading as the limbs of a battered Italian.
This was not his Gokudera. His Gokudera was a man of steel and spitfire. His Gokudera was hiding between blinks—if he just kept his eyes open long enough…
He'd have to come back.
Nurses bustled in and out of the room at irregularly regular intervals. They halted in their march to brush their fingers over Gokudera only to breeze out again.
They wouldn't talk to him. They wouldn't look at him. They wouldn't tell him what was wrong.
Panic set in like an icy fist in the pit of his stomach, freezing its way up his throat and into his teeth. The blossoming buds of a migraine were beginning to starburst behind his eyes. He stopped caring four aspirins ago.
He was trying to be calm, he really, really was. But every second that groaned by—the little spitfire Italian quiet and unresponsive and completely complacent—was enough to drive another little splinter of fear through his chest.
He could swear the rise and fall of Gokudera's breathing was tapering off; he could swear the heavy pulse at his neck was dying away and it was even worse because the doctors were no where in sight and hell if he knew what to do in this kind of situation and the heart monitor wasn't registering anything out of the ordinary and—god damn fucking faulty machinery and—
He choked, swallowing down terror and forcing himself to prop his elbows up on the bed and pray, for God's sake.
Are you listening? Are you watching?
Good.
Hours must have passed in that suffocating little white room before another nurse meandered her way in. He held his breath, waiting for her to lurch in surprise, to tell the doctor that the monitor was on the fritz and that Gokudera was slipping.
She came in, did a quick routine sort of brush over, and left without a word. The air left him in a thin wheeze.
After a few moments, Yamamoto got up the nerve to touch him. His trembling fingers rested on the skin of Gokudera's wrist. It was warm. It pulsed with each heartbeat. He didn't want to let go of that heat, that rhythm.
Slowly, his hand traveled up and down the Italian's arm. An IV was tucked securely in the crook of his elbow, peeping out from its place beneath the skin. He had to pay attention, so as not to jostle the chord or the needle. It gave him something to focus on—something besides the pale, altogether-too-calm features of the man the arm belonged to.
"'Dera," he choked out, threading his fingers between Gokudera's. The hand remained unresponsive under him. He squeezed it; jostled it lightly. He would give anything to have those limp fingers squeeze back. With his other hand, he brushed hair out of the Italian's face, and kept brushing at it even when the stray strands were gone. A soft, helpless smile tilted his lips. "Come on, 'Dera, yell at me. I'm an idiot, remember? I wasn't paying enough attention. Punch me. Yell at me. I'm stupid. I'm stupid." His smile was snowballing into sobs. He hung his head, his forehead resting lightly on Gokudera's shoulder. He sucked in the pain; sniffled—brought his head back up to look at Gokudera, still so uncharacteristically at peace. "You should be mad at me."
Hours (days?) ticked by in silence and panic and pleading. It was early morning when the first movement reached Gokudera's eyes. Yamamoto was immediately ushered from the room by packs of doctors and nurses all swarming in to get a look at him, but the joy, the relief, is boundless.
"Hey, idiot!" Gokudera's voice drowned with too much air. It struggled to push upward and make itself known, to break the surface and scream. It was beaten down, wavering at a breathy whisper as he tottered towards the jumbled heap that bore a striking resemblance to his loud, giddy idiot. His legs gave out when he was almost there. Knees hit the pavement with a crack. His mind barely registered the blossom of pain as it seeped up his thighs and down his calves. "You son-of-a-bitch," he wheezed, his hand falling heavily on Yamamoto's chest. His fingers balled into a fist, taking the fabric of the idiot's shirt with them. He tugged weakly on it, struggling to heave the stupid bastard upright again. "What the… fuck… are you doing… sleeping… on the job, eh?" He panted out. The wet stream that had eased around his eyebrow was pooling against his eyelashes and slogging to seep through. The form in front of him slid in and out of focus in a time that rocked with the world around them.
He was gonna be sick. God, oh God, he was gonna be sick.
"You better… fucking get up now…" he forced out around the nausea, even though it pressed and undulated at the back of his tongue, "'cause… you're fucking insane if you think… I'm gonna… waste my time… moping around your hospital bed… like an idiot… okay? So wake up… before I… kick your ass… you bastard…" He cringed, doubling over and gulping down bile. Pain seeped from all around him and solidified in his stomach to make a slick, bubbling mass that was forcing its way up his throat. It didn't want to stay down.
The pulpy, black-and-blue look to Yamamoto's face wasn't helping either. Neither was the fact that the hand Gokudera had left on his chest had a palm that wasn't the same color as when he'd set it down.
Blood feels so slick. Especially when it isn't yours.
And, God, he knew there was no way Yamamoto was wearing that color when they got here.
"Just… stop… bleeding, you idiot," he moaned, clenching his eyes shut and trying to forget just how much the concrete pitched under his legs. "Wake up, wake… up!" He shook him.
It was the lolling of Yamamoto's head that did it. The scream he'd been looking for all this time burst from between his teeth, so broken and disembodied he couldn't at first recognize it at his own. The world was empty. The world was Gokudera. Yamamoto. An endless expanse of tarmac.
And all of it, each atom, filled to the brim with a scream.
-
Bright lights were certainly unmerciful creatures.
Gokudera flung an arm over his eyes, a groan crawling from his lips. Muted, mechanical sounds dripped into his ears, slowly gaining clarity. Minced in with them was a sharp and sterile smell he was trying to talk himself out of believing.
A hospital.
A motherfucking hospital.
Dragging the heel of his palm across his eyes he moaned, "Why couldn't you have just left me on the sidewalk?"
Why, hello, motherfucking paneled ceiling.
Hello, mother fucking white-washed walls.
Hello, motherfucking beeping machinery.
Hello, motherfucking doctors and your motherfucking nurses with your motherfucking matching outfits.
Come get the motherfucking needle out of my motherfucking arm.
It was probably a good ten minutes before he was lucid. His head felt like there was at least ten pounds of dynamite crammed in, all of them lit and starting to blow. And if it weren't for the mop of black hair that had caught his eye, he would have laid contentedly (or, as contentedly as he could with the disgusting reality of "hospital" bearing down on him from all sides) and slept for at least a good hour or so more. As it was, dread emerged from the back of his mind to skulk down his throat and nested in his stomach.
It was at this point that all rational thought was willingly abandoned, Gokudera yanking the IV out of his arm and all but flying to his feet.
The nurses were on him almost before he was upright, their mouths full of "You really shouldn't…", "why don't you lie back down?", "Sir, I don't think…", "Doctor?", sorts of phrases that he barely heard.
He refused to be hassled back to bed, he refused to rest any longer, he refused the goddamn band-aid for his arm, and no, he didn't really give a shit if it was bleeding!
It was this guy—this goddamn, shit-faced, motherfucking idiot right here—that had him occupied, and Christ, did he look like hell. Bandages and casts and IVs and shit all over the fucking place.
But there was that beep—that steady, little, annoying-as-hell beep from the heart monitor—that assured him his fool-hearty idiot had, indeed, survived.
But he didn't like it.
He didn't like how long it took for one beep to follow the other, didn't like how Yamamoto's skin looked more like paper: thin and pale and delicate. That couldn't be right.
His idiot was fucking indestructible.
What was this mess?
Up until now, he had been blaming the way the room looked out-of-focus on his condition; then the blur eased aside and skid down his face to pit-stop at the corner of his mouth.
Goddamn stupid baseball idiot; getting him all worked up like this.
Words popped in irregular, nervous sequences. "Y-you… you think I'll stay here, don't you, idiot?" His knuckles cracked. "Think I'll nurse you back to health like your fucking nursemaid?" He was shaking—son-of-a-bitch, he was shaking! His voice burst from his throat with unfocused fire. "Well, I'm not! You fucking idiot, I'm NOT! If you want me you come and fucking get me! I'm not waiting around here while you waste time! There are things I've gotta do! I've got a responsibility to the tenth, you ass-hole!"
He broke his vow not to look back before he'd even made it. At the door he stopped, his voice low and left trembling on the tile floor. "So do you."
In the span of ten minutes he'd argued his clothes and possessions (this included at least nine or ten pounds of dynamite they were more than reluctant to give back to him) out of the nurses' hands, changed, and begin his march back home.
God knows when he made the fucking U-turn. He sure as hell didn't notice until his nose hit glass double doors. With an inarticulate jumble of curses in various languages, he beat a cigarette out of the box and crushed the end between his teeth. He must have fumbled with his lighter a good two minutes before the thing would hold its flame for more than three fucking seconds.
God damn it, nothing was going right.
He couldn't fucking think! And his mind kept going back to how helpless and pale the idiot—no, no way in hell, no! He refused to be this worried over this! They'd all been hurt before. They all knew what they were getting into. The bastard would probably wake up any minute laughing and blabbering like he always did, and then what a fucktard he would feel like for ever worrying about the creep.
He wasn't even halfway collected by the time the Tenth stepped outside to see him, and his last minute straightening did nothing to ease the haggard look of his whole demeanor. He was haunted, and furious, and this whole swell of secondary emotions he didn't dare let himself think about.
The Tenth was quiet, reserved—worried as hell but trying not to fall to pieces over it—trying a hell of a lot harder than Gokudera was. He watched before he spoke, and his words rang out with a quiet truth that was maddening and altogether convincing if nothing else.
"Yamamoto needs you there."
Protestations died on his lips. Slowly, carefully, he nodded, with a wide eyed look and a touch of the fear he hadn't allowed himself to feel.
-
Perched broodingly next to Yamamoto's hospital bed, the hours crawled.