Title: Imagine This, Chapter 2: Rolling Rain

Author: anza

Disclaimer: I do not own Katekyou Hitman Reborn! And I couldn't sell this piece of crap if I tried.

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As if on cue the door to the prison opens. He's turned away from the light, but he can see the shadow of the person behind him, with long hair and a sword in one hand. "Ooooiiii," Squalo taunts, "what have we here?" The rest is all a blur, the sighing relief as his feet touch ground and his chains are broken, the pain in his arms that can't be lowered because he's been hanging from them for so long. In a moment of narrow-eyed thoughtfulness, Squalo says it's a miracle they aren't broken. They both know a swordsman's life is in his limbs, it's something they share with grudging reluctance on Squalo's part. They shuffle out as the building just as the factories go up in explosion, one by one. The 'fireworks' are nothing like Gokudera's, who after Varia, learned to color and produce his own so the family could see them whenever they wanted to. The fiery burst of smoke and collapsing buildings reminds him of other times, of more trying times than the summer festivals, the girls in yukatas, chocolate bananas, Gokudera basking in the light of praise from Tsuna...

"You smell like shit," Squalo says suddenly, and with a wrinkle of his nose.

Thank you, he answers automatically in his head. "Where's Tsuna?," he asks, out of force of old habit. He knows if he's not here already, he'll be here soon.

Squalo doesn't answer for a moment. "Not here, and won't be for a couple of days." And the others slide into view, Marmon and Bel without a smile on his face though his coat has blood splattered on it, Lussuria resting his back against a tree and Basil who does a quick bow and hustles a First Aid kit out of nowhere. Yamamoto puts his arms down slowly, painfully, with Basil's help as the others watch, their eyes following different things. Only Squalo's are on him as they all take a breather.

"Look, alright," Squalo begins roughly, as is his way, "we weren't following the 10th orders to storm the place. We just knew you were in there and had to get you out. So," and Basil gives the Varia a sharp look, "we'd appreciate if you'd made it clear we saved you rather than you wandered out in the explosion -"

"That's enough," Basil cuts in. "He's injured." Lines are drawn faster than swords, faster than Yamamoto can see.

I'm right here, Yamamoto wants to say, along with You know Tsuna's not that kind of person, he'll just be thankful you guys hauled me out of there. He doesn't say, and tries not to think, of anything to do with bloodlust or mental stability, because the Varia are family too, just grudgingly so.

"I'll give him your regards," he says, and wonders when he got so good at diplomacy.

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He didn't know why, but it always stuck with him, the feel of Gokudera's face under his fist, the satisfying sound of his hurt being assuaged even as his temper built up to even higher levels. He wondered if it was just Gokudera, and he couldn't see himself attacking another family member - not Tsuna, not Hibari, not Ryohei. And he knew they were family members now, bound by more than blood, because blood could only take you so far, sympathy and heart did the rest.

He tried to say sorry in his head, but he realized soon enough there was no way for it to sound completely cheesy and unsimpering. He wasn't sorry, maybe there had been some other reasons he blew up like that, but at the core of it, it was because they wanted the same thing. No victor had been decided, though they'd had the fight. He'd simply recognized that it had been wrong to explode with anger like that when he did, and that though they both had it coming, Gokudera didn't really expect or deserve a full-out fistfight just because he was feeling vindicative.

They'd settle it some other way.

It had been strange to think that it was also one of the most vulnerable, intimate moments in his life. He couldn't remember becoming so angry at anyone before. He wondered if that was just a special talent Gokudera had been fostering, with his scowling face and defensive attitude. And there was something about it, fighting, that brought the soul out into the open, for victory or loss. But then again, it hadn't been for nothing. It had been for something, he just didn't know what.

Soon after he began to daydream, and night-dream about being a mafioso. He wondered if Gokudera had these kinds of dreams, where there were little kids who screamed as he killed their parents emotionlessly. Or if he faced down an enemy, and left him behind strapped to a bomb that would detonate as soon as he was far away enough. Or breakdowns that would occur, as he imagined himself half-crazed with the blood on his hands, on the spectral smiles he thought he fought for. He wondered if Gokudera had these dreams, or if his resolve to be Tsuna's confidante and counselor-in-one was truly as steel-solid as it seemed.

It itched at him, that kind of mindless trust, though Tsuna inspired it. Thinking wasn't condoned, though, especially when he lay on his bed and thought traitorous thoughts. Just like Gokudera had said.

He dreamed of being Lanchia-san too, except when he opened his eyes there were the broken bodies of his family members there. He imagined the smooth curve of his sword, casually slipping between ribs, then upwards to the heart. Flesh didn't cut so easily, but in his dreams it did, it gave way to steel and muscle and bone, to empty eyes and blood all over. His sword would look like liquid silver in the light; he'd wipe it off on the body of one of the girls, and when he looked up at the staircase of a grand house he'd never seen before there would be Gokudera, with his bombs. They would have practiced a hundred times, a thousand times against each other, so he'd know a trick or too, and when the blade slid home he wondered if he'd feel that same sick satisfaction of a job finished, a job well done.

Gokudera would beg, he saw that too, would beg him to not kill Tsuna, would tell him that was the last thing before he could be forgiven. But he'd just set the other down gently to the floor, blood trickling from one corner of the mouth. "Please, please," he'd beg. "Listen to me. Don't you remember? Don't do this. Don't do this. Listen to me." It would fall on deaf ears; he wouldn't be himself, he wouldn't be the Yamamoto they all knew and loved.

He imagined looking into those dying eyes and seeing the reflection of himself, with an emotionless face and no words to speak of, a broken person who only recognized his need to be free from whatever or whoever gave him pain. Because he was human, after all, and he was afraid of it just like everyone else, no matter how fearlessly he stood in front of Tsuna and smiled.

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He tried it just once, took Gokudera and slammed him into the wall with both hands and felt that rush of something like power surge from his head down to his toes. "What the fuck are you doing?," the other had snarled, and knocked his hands away, but he didn't want it to end there, he wasn't sure how it wanted it to end, but that wasn't it.

So he grabbed the back of Gokudera's shirt and did it again, pulled him back against the wall and tried to keep him there while he tried to figure out what exactly was the purpose of all this. Of course, it satisfied a need somewhere inside of him. A power trip? Perhaps. But it felt like more, what was it they said about teenage boys?

He thought he hadn't been thinking about it, but he had been, in secret little corners of his brain when he wasn't looking. It would come up when the sun glinted off of Gokudera's head when he was in the yard and Yamamoto was up above, watching his back as usual. He'd think, Silver sure is a strange color. And then he'd remember the feel of it in his hands, silky and fragile and not like Gokudera at all, why did he keep his hair long when it just gave enemies a handhold? But he and Tsuna were still separate entities, he didn't do everything to Tsuna yet.

He'd remember it when the other scowled and raged and when his dynamite went off on the other side in that distinctive Boom! of noise that had people's heads perk up interestedly, as if by sound alone they could determine what had happened. Only Yamamoto knew, and he felt lonely in those times, even as something in him reached out and took hold of his memories of Gokudera, their similarities and their situation. He still hadn't asked about the dreams, about killing family members and forgetting who he was, about power trips. He didn't talk much with Gokudera these days, after all, everything was said with eyes or with Tsuna like a Great Wall between them.

The fight had widened the gulf between them in some ways and shortened it in others. Finally, now that he knew it wasn't a power trip and he didn't really want to kill his family because he'd never forget their smiles, and if he did he'd tell Gokudera to kill him, finally he knew what slamming Gokudera in the wall made him want.

That was it. It made him want.

This is more dangerous than the mafia, he thought, and laughed at his own joke as he leaned down and tried it.

Gokudera was all edges and no softness except for his hair and now his lips. He'd learned something new that day, something about his family, something about Gokudera. The other froze, then began to struggle and flail like hell. But Yamamoto had height and strength on him, and he was insistent. Finally the other broke free, coughing from lack of air. Yamamoto had watched him breathe, back heaving, remembering all the things that had brought him here, wondering where this would take him.

"You fucker!," Gokudera had spat, but he was blushing, and he looked cute even with the world's unfriendliest scowl. "What was that all about?" And then he turned tail and ran.

Something rose up, something like bloodlust but without the blood and not quite with the lust. Yamamoto wanted, and he hoped Tsuna wouldn't begrudge him a little curiosity-sating.

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"Are you alright now?" They sit a little ways into the forest for a while, out of sight while the authorities swarmed the burned-out husk of the factory. He never got to kill the bastard who strung him up like a doll and poured vinegar on his open wounds after all.

"Just thinking." His arms are even more sore now that they are down, it feels as if he'll never be able to swing anything again, not a bat or a sword or anything. His borrowed clothes are baggy because whoever owned them before was larger and taller than he was. Squalo comes back with a canteen of clean water and a hard look at him as if to say, You'd better keep your promises, and leaves without a word. Basil looks relieved, but guardedly so, as if Tsuna would disapprove. He thinks to Tsuna, and thinks that the 10th would.

Now they are waiting for reinforcements, whenever they come. Basil is quiet, staring at the sky. They still hold clouds of black smoke from the fire, shielding the stars at some parts and revealing them at others. He stares too, for lack of anything to do, and remembers fireworks and good times with a not-quite smile. A song about returning home plays in his head, along with disjointed memories. In some of his old imaginings he doesn't return home, but this time, he fully expects he will.

He twists the ring on his finger - he'd lost the chain, but gotten the ring back when they escaped, he tried to ignore the way Squalo looked at it, long and longingly - back and forth, then around in a circle. It fits his fourth finger perfectly, like a wedding ring, except on his right hand. Now when he swings his bat or his sword, he sees it glint and his eyes follow it. On it rests responsibilities he never thought he'd have. On it rests memories he'll swears he'll never forget.

"I'm alright," he replies absently to no question at all.

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He didn't realize he'd picked up not a stray cat or a casual lover. What he had picked up was a habit.

It wasn't a habit of throwing Gokudera against walls, or kissing Gokudera, or anything physical. It was thinking about it, thinking about the things after kissing, things like "where we could do it" and "where it would be dangerous" and "how we'd do it". It had become a 'we' before he realized it, because love and sex and tango all took two people, even if one wasn't willing. He wasn't looking forward to the conversation or sappy little things like looking into each other's eyes (because when he looked in Gokudera's eyes what he saw was himself, a little surprised but otherwise still whole), that wasn't what he wanted.

What he wanted was what he dreamed of, of the hard feel of the desk under him and Gokudera squirming in his lap, half-fighting, half-cursing. He imagined the planes of skin and stomach under his hands, white with a shirt tan where the mouth of the shirt made a V-shape a little past the clavicle. And he could hear the breathy little gasps and curses, insults not-so-much snarled anymore as whispered like prayers in the dying light from the school windows. Harsh, desperate pleas to a God that might or might not exist, in a language he'd never learned but dropped naturally from Gokudera's mouth, the little intonations running up and down like a scale. He imagined the moment where there was nothing between his hand and skin, he imagined the wetness and how Gokudera would bury his face into the crook of his neck to stifle his cry, he imagined leaning down and pressing his lips gently to that pale forehead. He could see arguments and fights and blushes but more than anything, he saw their lives undeniably intertwined for the rest of their lives.

Like the most illuminating and illusionary paintbrush, he remembered things like the strength in Gokudera's punches, the desperate fade of his childhood dreams, of future days holding a gun instead of a baseball bat. He wasn't looking forward to the talk that would come, inevitably, because they were going to be together for a long time after. Tsuna would make it happen.

There would be staring into Gokudera's eyes and seeing himself. He wondered if he would smile when he saw it, like an inside joke that not even he understood. He wanted it, he wanted it sometimes so hard with a blood-pounding passion, other times with the slow burn of a lit fuse. Waiting, waiting.

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And then there was the day when he cornered Gokudera in the classroom, locked it behind him. He took long strides - he was taller still, though Gokudera would grow up and fill out those shoulders, those shoulders that could carry the world if only Tsuna smiled in approval - and met the other where he stood, shocked, and grabbed what he could, held what he could. All at once there came the stinging scent of pepper and ash, and under it all was something warmer and more volatile than even dynamite, something like lava that bubbled up and couldn't be controlled. He remembered he likened it to coming home, because his imagination had supplied what to do but not the things that had be felt for real. It all fit together, the need and the want and Gokudera's body against his, struggling, squirming, looking for an escape.

Those hands fisted again his shirt again, but this time Gokudera was ready, Gokudera pushed him back and closed his shirt with closed eyes and a defeated expression. "Stop," he said, but Yamamoto was gentle, he held him up with his hands and didn't do anything, because he'd waited and dreamed and waited and dreamed some more, and it had been a while since the last time he'd found Gokudera wasn't hard and pointy all over, and he could wait a little longer. "Why are you doing this?" He could see himself reflected in those green eyes, and somehow that made him calm, because he had imagined that too.

"Don't you want it?," he asked, low and why was his voice so husky. He saw something like lust dilate Gokudera's features for a second, then blink away in the next moment. Gokudera shook his head, side to side, bangs moving in time to the movement. It felt like the fight had been won, and he wondered if it was something stupid like sacrifice that had taken all the powder and explosion out of Gokudera. It would be easy, so easy to shove him against the wall and take and take, but that wasn't a need. It all went back to what he needed, and he needed someone to depend on him.

He wanted Gokudera to depend on him. For this.

"It'll be only yours," he continued. He licked his lips, "It'll be only yours, and no one else will have it. It'll be something not even Tsuna has."

And when he said that, Gokudera looked at him like he was crazy, Something that Tsuna doesn't have? But Tsuna has everything! And then it sank in slowly, and he knew he'd guessed right, that all teenage boys had this need, not just to fuck but it had to do with pride and friendship and family. Like a balance that had to be equal on both sides, a tangled string straightened. He was offering his body and his monogamy along with satisfaction and intimacy, because it always seemed to him Gokudera hadn't been touched enough, and that when he shied away it was because he was afraid of it.

He was afraid of this too, but more excited, because he'd never done it before. Never given and gotten the same gift.

And he found he liked it, finally able to reach out and take Gokudera's hip and fit it to his, his thumb brushing over the sharp jut of the pelvis. He liked the smell of Gokudera's shampoo and the sensation of long hair against his face, and the way Gokudera muffled his cry into the junction of his neck, the hot feel of a foreign hand cupping his, the wet and warm skin that didn't belong to him. He liked the new things too like the look in his face that said Please, please without saying a word. In fact, he more than liked it, he just didn't have a word for more than like, not when his mind was on other things.

"Fuck you," Gokudera spat afterwards, and he always thought it was odd there were tears in his eyes even though Yamamoto hadn't punched him.