Yamamoto and Gokudera had gotten into the same university and ended up rooming together, then during their first year Dino called in a favor and they spent all of Golden Week running around Italy trying to hunt down a team of assassins: "I have more important things to do!" Gokudera hissed, thumping on Yamamoto's chest with his fist when they found themselves crammed inside a church confessional, hiding from the one with knives for fingers.

Yamamoto laughed and said, "This is a funny little box."

"Confessional, it's a confessional, grow some culture, you ignoramus," Gokudera said. "You know, for confessing, mi perdoni Padre?"

"Okay I have a confession," Yamamoto said quickly. The silence stretched for five, six, seven heartbeats and then Yamamoto slid his hands up the back of Gokudera's shirt and kissed him, palms damp with sweat. Gokudera let it happen, let Yamamoto kiss him and touch him and didn't say anything, not a word, not until after Yamamoto's elbow knocked open the secret passageway where the confessional connected to the wall.

"Is this okay?" Yamamoto asked when they took care of the assassins, catching Gokudera around the wrist outside. Gokudera took a deep breath of fresh night air and said, "Sure," said, "whatever," because that was easier than admitting how badly he wanted it.

"Thanks a lot," Dino said at the airport, clapping Yamamoto on the back and offering Gokudera his hand, eyes on Gokudera's face. "Well. Good luck."

It was just a thing, right, a sex thing. Two days after the confessional incident, Gokudera was sacked out on Yamamoto's hideous beanbag chair and Yamamoto knelt between his legs and said, "Um, do you remember what we?"

Gokudera said, "Do you want to fucking do this or not?"

Then Yamamoto touched Gokudera's neck and Gokudera opened his mouth for a kiss. They started getting each other off four, five times a week; Gokudera always swore a lot, during, but Yamamoto usually limited himself to saying Gokudera's name, variations on a mantra, and asking questions in a weirdly diffident way: "Is that good?" and "What do you want me to?" and "I was um, thinking, do you wanna fuck me in the ass?"

That was maybe the second week in, and Yamamoto bit his lip, flushed and breathless from necking on Gokudera's bed. "Not gonna say no," Gokudera said. Yamamoto grinned and wriggled off the bed to find some lube and condoms.

"How do you wanna do it?" Yamamoto said, then, "okay, it can be like this." He lay on the bed face-down and worked a couple of fingers into his own ass, eyes closed with concentration and his lip between his teeth. "Yeah okay," he said and Gokudera finally shook himself into action, pressing Yamamoto's shoulders down and pushing into him. It was so tight he almost came straight off, the sound ripped out of his throat finding a softer echo in Yamamoto's moan: "Are you okay?" Yamamoto asked breathlessly. Gokudera thought that was strange, like he should probably have been the one asking, but then Yamamoto shifted his knees wider and Gokudera stopped thinking.

The only time it got kind of weird was that stretch from October to November when Gokudera quit smoking for Tsuna—cold turkey, because nothing less would have been acceptable. In retrospect he could allow himself to admit he went a little nuts, especially during the first week or so, what with the insomnia and the coughing and the goddamn disgusting gum. Everyone walked on eggshells in his presence but it didn't do them any good; he shouted at Yamamoto a lot, more than usual, once in the kitchen:

"Shh," Yamamoto said after a few minutes of this, "shh, shh, it's okay," and that didn't shut Gokudera up so much as Yamamoto's hand over his mouth, fingers dry and warm. Yamamoto slotted their bodies together and sighed, said, "This is really hard on you, isn't it?"

"It is not!" Gokudera said automatically. "Fuck you, jackass." He felt rather than saw Yamamoto smile, and gave into the adolescent impulse to lick Yamamoto's palm. Yamamoto let out a soft whuff of air against Gokudera's hair.

That was where the nuts part came in: it was temporary insanity that made Gokudera open his mouth over Yamamoto's fingers, take them inside and taste his knuckles, skin and salt, every rough part of his hand. "Gokudera," Yamamoto said hoarsely.

"Shut up," Gokudera said. His jaw twinged when he dropped to his knees and wrapped his mouth around Yamamoto's cock, but he exhaled hard and ignored it. After an initial sound of shock Yamamoto didn't do much more than whimper, hands balled into white-knuckled fists at his side. When he was close he choked, "Gokudera," but Gokudera already knew; he'd turned his head to the side and Yamamoto came all over the floor. Yamamoto pulled him up to his feet and breathed "Gokudera" again, eyes wide.

"Quit looking at me like that," Gokudera said, embarrassed.

So finally after about a year there was this incident where Yamamoto came home really late, about one in the morning, leaned heavily on the doorframe to Gokudera's room and said, "Hey, Gokudera. Hey, are you awake?" Gokudera put down his book and pulled off his glasses to get a better look.

"What the fuck?" he said.

"Can I kiss you?" Yamamoto said.

"Fine," Gokudera said. The bed dipped under Yamamoto's weight and he licked through Gokudera's mouth with insistent thoroughness, then down and along Gokudera's jaw, sucking on the pulse point beneath Gokudera's ear. Gokudera shifted and swallowed, heartbeat speeding up. Under his hands, Yamamoto gave off heat like a furnace, shoulder muscles bunching; he was suddenly everywhere, pushing up over Gokudera, fumbling at Gokudera's shirt, breath thick with alcohol.

"I want you," Yamamoto said into Gokudera's neck. "I want you all the time."

"What?"

"All the time," Yamamoto said, louder. "I really like?I really like your mouth. You're so hot, Gokudera. You've got this?" Yamamoto kissed the corner of Gokudera's mouth again, the curve of Gokudera's scowl. Gokudera's textbook slid of the side of the bed and thumped the ground, the sound startling. "Really like you," Yamamoto mumbled.

"Fine, you?fine," Gokudera said. Yamamoto was drunk; he rolled amiably onto his back when Gokudera pushed him and wriggled down his body to yank at his sneakers, hands shaking only a little. By the time Gokudera worked Yamamoto's pants off and settled in between his thighs, Yamamoto's breathing had slowed and his dick was soft; he'd passed out, Gokudera realized, squashing a spike of disappointment under a wave of irritation. "Asshole," Gokudera said. He pressed the heel of his hand against his own hard cock briefly and shuddered, crawling off Yamamoto to dig up some aspirin and fill a glass of water.

At four in the morning Yamamoto fell out of bed and scrambled into the bathroom. The thin line of light from the open door managed to land squarely across Gokudera's face. Gokudera groaned and turned over. "Are you puking?" he mumbled.

"No," Yamamoto said. He cleared his throat. "But I'm not wearing any pants."

"Brush your goddamn teeth," Gokudera said. "There's aspirin out here. And go back to sleep."

The toilet flushed and the faucet ran while Yamamoto presumably did as he was told, making faint splashing noises before twisting the water shut and flipping off the lights. Back by Gokudera's bed, he gulped down the pills and the water and sighed, silent for a long moment. Gokudera began to wish he hadn't turned away so he could see what the hell Yamamoto was doing. He wondered why Yamamoto wasn't getting back into bed.

"Sorry about that," Yamamoto said, leaning in to push the hair away from Gokudera's temple with his fingers. Eventually his hand lifted away and he padded out the door again, through the short hallway and into his own room. Gokudera exhaled, curling in on himself, tense with the uneasy residue of expectation.

Yamamoto had class in the mornings and Gokudera mostly had it in the afternoons, so they missed each other until it was time to eat dinner. Yamamoto cooked and they ate together, then Gokudera cleaned the dishes and sat down next to him on the couch: now, Gokudera thought, it's going to be now, he's going to finish it.

Gokudera's breathing had already quickened when Yamamoto turned to him and said, "You want to watch a movie?"

They ended up watching Kung Fu Hustle and Yamamoto got teary at the end, which Gokudera thought was pathetic, and he didn't touch Gokudera once, which Gokudera didn't know what to think about. "I have homework," Yamamoto said after the end credits.

He looked at Gokudera expectantly so Gokudera said, "Okay," and Yamamoto got up to go to his own room.

Two weeks after Yamamoto came home drunk, Gokudera ran into Dino Cavallone at the local grocery store; "Aren't you supposed to be in Italy?" he asked. Dino scratched his head and said, "No?"

"Are you okay?" Dino asked. "You look a little peaky."

"I'm fine," Gokudera said stiffly. He wasn't; Yamamoto hadn't tried to fuck him in fourteen days and Gokudera was spending an unjustifiable amount of mental energy obsessing about it. A lot of the time Gokudera didn't get Yamamoto, not just in this situation but like. His whole existence. How did people like him exist? It was impossible to follow Yamamoto's thought process, because it made no fucking sense. Logically, there was no reason they shouldn't be fucking.

"Okay," Dino said. Gokudera looked at the strawberries and champagne in his basket.

"What the hell is that for?"

Dino looked down. "An apology? Hayato, you—"

"What?"

"How is Takeshi?"

"Fine," Gokudera said. After Gokudera got out of the shower that morning Yamamoto had slammed into him, twisted his mouth into an unidentifiable expression and said, "Sorry," just like that, nothing. So much for wanting me all the time, Gokudera thought furiously. Fuck.

Another three days went by and Gokudera found himself buzzing Bianchi's apartment; she might make him nauseous but she was still his sister, for what that was worth. He could even mostly look at her without wanting to vomit now, if he braced himself ahead of time, which was why he was so surprised when door opened and a shirtless Dino said, "Hayato!"

"What," Gokudera said.

Bianchi appeared behind Dino and squinted, said, "You fucked it up, didn't you?"

And that was when Gokudera figured out Dino Cavallone was fucking his sister and the shit hit the fan; there was a lot of screaming in Italian and Japanese and Gokudera lunging at Dino and finally Bianchi shouted, "Out! Out! You, sit the fuck down!" Gokudera sat. Bianchi sat, too, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Fuck off, Hayato," she said after a pause, "I never gave you crap about screwing the sushi kid."

"It's not the same," Gokudera said, just as Dino said, "Can I come in now?"

"Are you going to blow him up?" Bianchi asked.

"No," Gokudera said sulkily, and Dino tripped over a pile of clothes on the floor, landing with his arms braced on the back of Bianchi's chair. Bianchi sighed and touched his elbow. Gokudera wondered what had happened to Bianchi's crush on Reborn, wondered why he suddenly felt so out of his depth, watching Dino maneuver himself gingerly into the seat with Bianchi so they were crammed in together.

"Wait," Gokudera said, "how did you know I was fucking Yamamoto?" Bianchi closed her eyes.

"You know he's been in love with you since you were like, fourteen years old," she said. "You could cut the poor bastard a break once in a while."

"I don't—"

"Go home, Hayato."

"You're not in love with me," Gokudera said at the kitchen table. Yamamoto spit out a mouthful of okonomiyaki and started coughing, scrabbling for water. When he swallowed, he cleared his throat and wiped his mouth, not making eye contact, knuckles white around the glass.

"Er," he said.

"I mean," Gokudera said louder, "if you were in love with me we'd still be fucking, right. But you stopped. We stopped."

"I couldn't?" Yamamoto started, then stopped, taking a deep breath. "I thought you didn't want to. You never said said anything."

"I never—" Gokudera said.

"I didn't want to push you," Yamamoto said desperately.

"Fuck," Gokudera said. He clenched his hands and pushed his chair back, then turned around and walked out.

Gokudera splashed some water on his face and stomped back out of the bathroom. Yamamoto had cleared the plates away and was standing at the sink, water running over his hands. "Are you washing the dishes?" Gokudera asked. Yamamoto twitched guiltily. "Fuck," Gokudera said again, touching Yamamoto's shoulder. Yamamoto turned, docile, still white around the lips. Gokudera pulled him down and kissed him; Yamamoto's mouth opened tentatively, one of his damp hands settling on Gokudera's hip and the other bracing against the counter. "So I'm gonna suck you off now," Gokudera said. "You like that, right?"

"Gokudera?" Yamamoto said.

"You said you liked that, you said you liked my mouth, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna?" Gokudera worked Yamamoto's pants open and sank to his knees, pulling Yamamoto's cock out. It wasn't hard yet, so he nuzzled at the skin of Yamamoto's thigh.

"You don't have to do this," Yamamoto said.

"Fuck you, I know that." Yamamoto sucked in a breath and settled his hands on Gokudera's head as Gokudera licked him to hardness; after a few moments of ragged breathing he pulled Gokudera's head back, gently.

"I don't know if I can do this," he said.

"I'm sorry," Gokudera blurted. He balled his hands into fists on top of his knees. "I want to. I'm sorry I never said anything. I don't really know how to handle it when people are good to me." Yamamoto didn't say anything for a long time, and then Gokudera heard him kneeling, too; he opened his eyes when Yamamoto's hand touched his face, unaware until then that he had closed them.