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Gokudera can’t sleep.
He’s bedridden in the silent room, alone and aching in more ways than one. The adrenaline from his and Yamamoto’s encounter with Gamma has long worn off by now, yet he can’t sleep. And when he feels his mind beginning to reel, he doesn’t have the will to fight it.
He shouldn’t have snapped at Yamamoto. Yes, the guy is an idiot who can hardly think about anything other than baseball most of the time, but he did have a point. Gokudera is not fit to be the Tenth’s right-hand man. Not like this—not when he’s so brash and terrified and does nothing but hold the Boss back.
“Shit,” he mutters aloud to himself. The room’s lights are too bright all of a sudden, so bright that they feel like little daggers digging into his brain. He wants to bring his hands to his face and leave them there to block them out, but his limbs feel too heavy to do anything of the sort. He shuts his eyes and swallows the lump that’s appeared in his throat. He can’t bear to think about the Boss right now.
That’s what he thinks, but upon thinking it, the little box in his mind full of all his suppressed anxieties opens, almost as if that single thought of defiance was its key.
The Boss was in a coffin–a fucking coffin –when I arrived here. I failed. I didn’t protect him. How could I let that happen? How could I let him die? Gunned down, Gamma said. Shot in front of his comrades.
His breath hitches.
Does that mean . . . I would’ve seen it?
Gokudera bites his lip. His throat is searing, eyes stinging, sobs threatening to rush from him in waves. The Tenth was the first person to open his heart, that baseball freak told him, and Gokudera reluctantly realized that he was right about that, too. He can’t imagine losing the Boss. Can’t think of him lying dead right before his eyes. He’d rather have salt poured into his wounds, rendering them raw and bloody anew.
And as if on cue, Gokudera hears a soft, tentative knock on the door. It slides open with a little mechanical whir before he can say anything.
“Gokudera-kun?”
The Tenth’s voice is faint. He sounds tired and worried. Gokudera curses himself for making the Boss worry over him of all people. He should be better than that.
The Vongola’s footsteps are just as hesitant as his knock, but Gokudera didn’t expect his voice to sound as close as it did when he whispered, “Are you awake?”
His body aches too much to turn his head and his throat’s still too tight to form anything other than a pitiful croak. But he sees him. The Tenth, hovering above him with his amber eyes so full of concern that Gokudera wants to curl up into a ball and hide beneath the sheets in shame. The Tenth, whose vexation seems to vanish the instant he meets Gokudera’s eyes, his smile so endearing that the bomber very quickly begins to feel shame for a different reason. The Tenth, who's alive in front of him now, and who may very well . . . disappear.
The stinging is back.
“You are awake! Thank goodness,” the Boss exclaims. “I wanted to visit again after lunch but Lal Mirch—”
He stops. The concern in his eyes has returned. Why? Gokudera hasn’t done or said anything. What the hell can he see?
“Gokudera-kun, why are you crying?”
That’s when he notices it—the warm sensation on his face and the strange ticklish feeling of it trailing down his cheeks until it soaks into the pillow. The medication has made everything numb and hazy. And it’s infuriating, really, how in this supposed healing process he’s only causing more pain. He wonders how weak he looks right now, bandaged and bedridden and fucking weeping like a child.
He squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t face the Tenth like this.
When he feels a new type of warmth against his cheek, however—something gentle yet solid and certain—his eyes shoot back open, stunned. The Boss is touching him. Skin against skin. Gokudera feels like he’s going to melt. He should be losing it at why someone as valuable and capable and beautiful as the Boss is touching someone so inferior, but he’s not. He leans into the palm without thinking and it’s only then that he realizes his mind is finally silent.
A delicate thumb wipes away the remnants of his tears. The little caresses make him hum. His gaze is locked on the Vongola. Somehow he looks satisfied. (As for Gokudera? Well, he probably looks insanely lovesick right now.)
Then the Tenth yanks his hand away as if he’d been burned, embarrassment riddled on his face.
“I-I’m sorry, Gokudera-kun. I didn’t mean to do that! I wasn’t think—!”
Gokudera is moving before he even processes it, his own hand gripping the slim wrist of the Boss and bringing the palm back to where it was—where it belonged —so that it can ease and warm him. He hated the brief chill he felt when the Vongola's touch ceased.
The Boss is quiet. He gazes down at the bomber with an unreadable expression, but something tells Gokudera that it is not one of anger or disgust. And even though Gokudera knows that he’s going to hate himself later for practically manhandling the Boss, he can’t bring himself to care right now.
“Please, Tenth. J-just a little longer,” Gokudera mutters after a while, voice coated with rasp (and perhaps a hint of longing that he failed to subdue).
The Boss’s expression softens, a small smile tugging at his lips. He’s doing those gentle caresses with his thumb again and Gokudera can’t help but think it’s a silent act of reassurance. I’m here, he’s saying. I’m real .
And with a soft sigh, Gokudera closes his eyes.
____________
Gokudera is not fit to be the Tenth’s right-hand man. Not like this—not when he’s so eager for the Boss’s attention, approval, and affection. Gokudera is a boy full of selfish desires. All of the things he wants to himself he will probably never have. But at least he can have this moment of intimacy and tenderness with the Tenth; the sort of moment he’s secretly yet desperately craved since his mother’s death.
Gokudera can’t have him now. But maybe in another life, another world, Tsuna would finally be his.