Prompt: I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment. From "Variations on the Word Sleep" by Margaret Atwood. Then I also riffed off the poem for the title.
He was walking. More than even breathing, than sitting up and pushing the lid of his coffin aside - Tsuna was on his feet, stiffly walking through the forest to meet them halfway.
Devastated joy locked Gokudera's joints and forced him to a halt, catching his balance on a tree trunk. Just as well. He'd been thinking, as he ran to the clearing where the coffin had been placed, that he ought to be at the back of the procession. The others would ... have more to communicate ... than he did.
"Everyone!" Tsuna cried out, shaking off his stiffness to put on speed.
Yamamoto's headbutt hit him with that much more force as a result, so that he went flying. Yamamoto had practically folded himself in half to land the hit, and straightened with a laugh as he hauled Tsuna back up.
"Those poor kids! What were you thinking?" Haru howled, smacking Tsuna over the ear before he was steady on his feet, and then collapsed on him in a hug that took him right back down. "How could you bring them here?"
Everyone else decided that the recriminations and welcomes might as well take place on the ground. Ryohei unleashed his dis/pleasure at top volume into Tsuna's ear, while blasting him with sun flames to counteract the effects of months spent in stasis, just in case. Lambo headbutted Tsuna too, waxing tragic in his usual overwrought way about having been so kept out of the loop that he hadn't even received word about Tsuna's sham death before getting shot with the Ten-Year Bazooka. And also about Yamamoto for initiating the headbutting, since it was a signature Bovino move—dumbass kid, as always, but it had been a long time since he'd deigned to hug his "older brother" like that.
Gokudera resisted joining in with all his might - to touch any part of Tsuna that could be touched - and harried them all into the base after a while.
He did allow himself to say, in greeting, the title he'd been thankful to bestow for ten good years. It was also a test, to see how natural or unnatural "Tenth" might feel on his tongue.
The ideal home was a cross between a barracks and a comfort. The ideal life was a cross between rebellion - the blaze that you could feed on - and acceptance - a warmth that could be felt inside, existence's greatest relief.
Gokudera had needed to put shape to his ideals when Tsuna had named him right hand. It had been a whole ritual - a masked party-cum-siege when the Vongola Tenth turned twenty. Stroke of midnight, and sleep-addled Tsuna had had to find, protect, name, and be protected by his guardians - all to name the next consigliere. Tsuna had complained that they could have asked him in the morning and he'd have given the same answer as the ritual had just delivered to them. God, he was sweet. But that was how Gokudera had known his title hadn't been earned.
In the face of Tsuna's bewilderment about the ordeal Gokudera hadn't been capable of turning the title down, but he'd throttled most of his gut instincts into submission so that he could sit down, isolated but doing his damnedest to maintain perspective instead of melting down, and think things through for once:
Being vital to the hulking machine of the Vongola - of any crime family - was important to him, still, as it had been from the time his understanding of the world began to form. It was like a safety net. Then there was the part of him that flipped the bird at safety nets - and it cherished the friends and allies he'd accrued. His more traditional (ugh) leanings were something of a problem when the Tenth had many ideas that ran contrary to the practices of the families; being consigliere was kind of tough when he still wasn't the best about interacting with people, though he tried.
With all that acknowledged ... it could still, truly work. Sitting on his bed in the dark, cracking his knuckles, Gokudera had nodded to himself. His goals, the Tenth's goals, and his friends' needs and wants could be fairly brought together. Of course he would have to work at it, but what it came down to was that it was a good thing that he was the mafia brat around here. He could take care of the rules and the ruthlessness that the others were working their way up to or avoiding. It would give him a vital place, and give them a measure of peace.
He'd burst out of the room to belatedly accept Yamamoto and Ryohei's offer of celebratory drinks, letting himself go wild that night with all it meant to have finally accomplished his goal of being right-hand man. Including, as a steadying certainty at his core, the knowledge that any plan Tsuna might want to accomplish that others would balk at - he wouldn't.
Or Tsuna could swan off in secret to Irie Shoichi instead, who - guess what! - wasn't his worst enemy after all.
And Hibari!
"Hibari?" Gokudera half-yelled. "Honestly! The bastard didn't so much as bother to stick around to say 'Welcome back to the land of the living, boss'!"
He handed Tsuna a mug of hot chocolate - well aware that Tsuna didn't like coffee, despite drinking it all the time lately to appear more mature. They were the only two in the kitchen, their friends having gone to check on everyone else they knew, and Tsuna needing a more time to recover than the rest of them. He had been in stasis a few days longer, after all; in his coffin.
Tsuna folded his hands around the mug like he needed the warmth. "You and I both know that that bird was flying along with us in the forest for a reason. Ugh, did you know he taught at least one of them the funeral march? And then it was chirping that all the time when we were strategising..."
There was a point where it no longer provided relief to cuss Hibari out. Gokudera kept his heart attack contained and just slumped into the chair beside Tsuna's with a groan. "I can't say I'm surprised."
As he met Tsuna's gaze - so bright, once again - Tsuna's smile gave up the ghost. "Gokudera..." he said, very softly, "I... I don't know that I can say I'm sorry. It's such a relief the plan worked, something had to be done ... but you had to think I was dead for longer than the rest, out of everybody who got the immediate alert about it, and that's... No, I am sorry. It's just ... if the apology doesn't mean much to you, that is understandable. It's not enough at all."
"You made me useless." That was an easy thing for Gokudera to complain about. Then again - everything was easy when he could see Tsuna sitting right next to him at the kitchen table. "You ignored my oath, Tenth, that I would advise you on any path you wished to take. So you'd better appreciate that drink."
A blink at the teasing tone, and then Tsuna gulped hot chocolate so fast it nearly spilled, his eyes fixed on Gokudera.
With not quite a smile, not yet, Gokudera interrupted the chugging streak. "But, your whole crazy plan, the basis of it... Your regard for us saved the world. You knew that even when we were dumbass kids, your love for us could help you do that."
Gokudera's pride and satisfaction stirred in ways he was supposed to have overcome - the follies of youth, but whatever. As if the day wasn't weird enough to excuse everything from dropping to his knees and weeping yet again to laughing his head off. "Your love for me," he added. "I was the first one to be brought over, huh?"
The way Tsuna stared at him - Gokudera elbowed him, like it had been a bit of teasing, and immediately regretted breaking that avid gaze. Tsuna was out to take all the steadiness out of Gokudera's heartbeat today, when he was trying to be a sturdy presence while everyone was still grappling with all the revelations.
"Well, I couldn't put young Gokudera through too much right away. He would have gone nuts looking for ten-years-younger Tsuna, so..." Now Tsuna's gaze rested on the bags under Gokudera's eyes. "And you were the first to know. So you definitely had to be the first one taken, so you wouldn't have to think I was dead too long. Leaving you with that was—I know it was—"
Tsuna half-stood to lean in close, clasping Gokudera's arm and giving him a searching look. Gokudera aggressively wrapped his free arm around Tsuna's shoulders, and Tsuna thumped into his chest to settle so close that it was possible to feel his answering sigh of satisfaction and relief. It had been way too long. Days and nights, and seeing bullet holes in the body.
"I have to make calls and organise some things, and so do you," Gokudera said, this side of an instruction, as he stroked a thumb back and forth across Tsuna's skin. Warm, soft. "There's your mom and dad and finding wherever they went to hide. But Tenth, you should rest, and when you do...?"
It had started before Tsuna had got gunned down on his own secret orders. Lying in bed together, curled close. It was better this time, with no more mystery about why it was happening and how to stop Tsuna's anxious moments of trembling and tension. With something entirely new about it. Gokudera spread his hand over the rise and fall of Tsuna's breathing.
"I'd still do anything," Gokudera said. "Whatever you come up with in future, Tenth, I will help with it! Remember that."
They both knew it was untrue. He wouldn't have been able to stand a plan like the one Tsuna and those other two had taken to its conclusion.
Gokudera was happy enough with that, though. He would strive for his own ideal of being a necessary cog, for sure, but since they'd met he had been devoted to Tsuna's ideal of wanting things like safety on behalf of others, devoted with his whole longing heart; that it had saved the world could only strengthen that.
Though he'd been torn up living under a great lie, with something like a betrayal ... his ideal, the permanent back-of-brain hope, of being wanted was fulfilled such that he didn't know if he'd be able to bring himself to leave this bed in the morning.
Tsuna peeled off the hand Gokudera had over his ribcage and kissed the fingers, then put it back where it had been.
"You can save your apologies for the others, Tenth. Promise," Gokudera said. The gesture had had that air to it.
"Um. OK." Tsuna's hand clenched over his, an urgent spasm of feeling that carried over to his voice. "So then ... this time isn't an apology..."
It didn't feel like one when Tsuna kissed his palm, his wrist. Definitely not when he turned in Gokudera's arms and dropped a testing kiss on his mouth. It felt like yet more promises of the impossible made possible.