AN: I found this on my hard drive this morning and don't even remember writing it. This happens a lot.
Music: Playradioplay - Some Crap About the Furniture
Gokudera looked all of thirteen laying on the hospital bed. His eye sockets were bruised and his lips were cracked and stitched, his earlobe ripped on the right side. There was a tube down his nose and an IV in his thin arm, creeping between gauze and scratches.
(Yamamoto fled from the room upon first arrival, stumbling heel over foot in attempts to not get sick on Gokudera's prone frame.)
They were seventeen.
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He will make it, the doctors said.
Though, there is mental trauma.
__________
They visited in groups. Tsuna and Kyoko, Ryohei and Lambo and Haru, Chrome and maybe Mukuro. Every day seemed brighter- Gokudera's wounds were slowly sucking back into his fair skin, bruises leeching back into his bloodstream. He was getting thinner and smaller, but there was progress everyday.
(But he wouldn't wake up, that was the problem.)
__________
Yamamoto visited whenever he could. Meals were skippable, baseball practices cut short. Flowers were so cliche, but he couldn't help but buy them every week, daisies, roses, whatever looked nice sitting next to the white hospital bed.
(Gokudera would have scoffed at him, rejected the flowers because he wasn't a girl and Yamamoto was fucking retarded. Yamamoto knew this.)
__________
Gokudera had kissed Yamamoto before he had left, before he had gotten so fucked up. Before the hospital. It had been wonderful and soft and wet and had left Yamamoto smiling and warm.
__________
Yamamoto wouldn't leave until the nurses would shoo him away.
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Gokudera looked so old when he finally woke up-eighteen and barely hitting ninety pounds, so weak and ow, motherfuck, full of needles.
"Shit, shit," he muttered, lifting from his pillow only to fall back with a gasp. What the hell, why couldn't he move.
He rolled his head from one side to another, wincing and cursing and out of breath from moving so much.
He wondered, briefly, where the flowers had come from.
__________
Tsuna brought him soup everyday.
Physical therapy hurt like a bitch.
Yamamoto hadn't showed up once.
__________
It was two months before the doctors deemed Gokudera fit to leave- he was a miracle, they told him. He shouldn't have survived those injuries.
Tsuna and Ryohei helped him stagger from the damnable hospital room. Fuck a wheelchair, he said.
They were nearing the double glass doors of the entrance when Gokudera noticed a familiar shape outside. Tall, lean, smiling-
"So he finally shows up," he hissed. His stomach flipped, full of semi-solid food and nerves, so sudden. Even after a year asleep, butterflies. Ridiculous.
"Yamamoto," Tsuna called in greeting as the doors slid open of their own accord, taking a hand from Gokudera's shoulder to wave. "There you are!"
"There he is?" Gokudera mirrored, frowning. "What-"
Gokudera didn't get a chance to say anything else. Yamamoto picked him up, careful yet swift. Like a doll or something, or a squirming, angry carton of eggs. Breakable.
"I'm here to take you home," Yamamoto said, looking very tired and a lot older than Gokudera remembered but very, very happy.
"Home?" Gokudera realized that Yamamoto's hands were clenching him so tight, his strong arms hooked under his knees and back trembling a little. Shaking.
"I've got a place." Yamamoto responded, walking slow, steps sure and even. "I've been working hard, since you woke up. Haha, it's small, but."
Gokudera opened his mouth, angry and disgusted and goddamn, tearing up a little. No words came out. His mouth was very dry.
"You need to be looked after, for a while," Tsuna interjected, voice small and gentle. "Yamamoto offered."
"Oh." Gokudera said. They were quiet for a while, all of them standing in front of the hospital, the sun high.
"Well, fucking take me home," Gokudera said harshly, sick to his stomach yet too happy, way too happy.
__________
Yamamoto did.