unrelenting_rhapsody | Sometimes when you live oddly enough

Entry tags:

chiaki au,
rp

Sometimes when you live oddly enough

Who: Gokudera, Uri, and Yamamoto. Hibari guest star.
When: Just after the TYL arc
What: Everyone needs a little quiet time to internalize and comprehend all that happened in the future. Taking the time to do so is another thing all together though.

She sat atop the kitchen counter, staring down at the belligerent little cat that had come back with her from the future. "Look, I'm fucking sorry you're named melon alright? I froze and asked Tsuna!" SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER!

Anyway. "Seriously, I'm not into sticking semi-living shit in boxes so you can stop glaring at me alright?" At least she assumed it was a glare, she wasn't exactly conversant with feline facial expressions. Who the fuck made a cat with scaled portions as a weapon? CATS DIDN'T LISTEN FOR SHIT.

Granted, she kinda liked that about the mostly-fuzzy thing. Fucked up huh?

Granted, Uri could also want some of the food sitting on the bowl on her knee. She'd only been picking at her meal, brain still churning a mile a minute from their trip. "Do you even need to eat?" Eh, what the fuck, it wasn't like she was going to finish it. She slid from the counter and set the bowl on the floor, hissing at the pull of cuts and bruises.

Proof they hadn't all been hallucinating right? Wounds didn't disappear just because they came home. Also? The future sucked and she didn't want to hear the people she cared about scream like that ever again.

Fuck. Torture. It was almost enough to make her regret being a delinquent Guardian. Almost. Fucked if she'd admit that though.

She didn't want to dream; that was probably why she hadn't slept. She hadn't slept for most the time they'd been in the future admittedly. Pushing past limits had been necessary; exhaustion also ensured a few hours of dreamless sleep. She'd learned that trick long ago.

"YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT!" Shamal yelped as he came in the door to see her spacing out in the short hallway. "Hold still!" His fingers were steady as they reached for dirt smudged bandages, it was a weird contrast to the worried expression he wore. "What did you do?!"

"Nothing much," she admitted in a slow drawl. "Just...been gone a while."

"All night," Shamal agreed. "I was checking alleys." And hospitals.

Oh, yeah. Time travel. "You know what..OUCH FUCK STOP THAT IT'S ATTACHED! Take it up with Reborn okay? He can fucking explain. Just give me the damn cream and stop poking my ribs!" They hurt like no one's business when he did that! Seriously, as long as no one was touching her injuries they could be ignored? Just...fuck. Ow. If Uri was a REAL weapon the damn cat would have been chewing on the doctor by now.

Instead the damn cat was still in the kitchen, polishing off rice and fish. Feh. Pets.

"These are burns, Chiaki," Shamal noted seriously as he peeled one of her sleeves back. "When did you get electrocuted? Take it all off, now, you need better tending than whatever you decided was 'fine'." Burns and breaks and bruises? Yeah. A lot better tending.

"You fuss too much," she growled, fingers spasming as leather peeled away from what had been salved burns. When the fuck had they dried out? Oh, right, probably some time in the week of training and advanced FUCKING WAR GAMES. "And it's GOKUDERA."

"Someone has to," Shamal pushed two fingers firmly against her collarbone and watched as she wavered on her feet, only the knowledge that leaning back against the wall would hurt worse kept her on her feet. "Don't move." He needed a better kit for this.

Don't move...like she had much choice at the moment with her jacket mostly off and her head swimming from his poking. Cruel, twisted fucker. Had he ever bullied Bianchi like this? She'd have to remember to ask some time, though based on how the pair acted around each other she was guessing he hadn't been a frequent visitor in the family home.

If Shamal was related at all. She was starting to have her suspicions. Fucked if she'd kick the old man out though, he did alright for an Uncle. Fuck, she was more tired than she thought if she was thinking that! "There's a cat in the kitchen," Shamal noted when he got back.

"Her name is Uri," Dera allowed, closing her eyes so she wouldn't wince away from the care Shamal had to do. She hated wincing. "She's mine."

"....ooookay then." that was new and unexpected from his voice.

"What?"

"It just seems..."

"I can have normal shit you know. A pet is fucking normal, even if Uri's not." She cracked an eye open to glare at him, not amused with where she assumed this was going. "She's a fucking construct. Don't try to mess with her too much it could damage her." Or something.

"Of course you can," Shamal agreed instead. "I think a pet is a good step, makes you more approachable you know?" His hands were working steadily but she had the sneaking suspicion he was grinning at her.

"Right...getting rid of the cat."

"No no no! C'mon, you can do SO MUCH BETTER than the baseball player! A kitten, learning to cuddle, maybe dress a little cuter..."

Yes, this was going EXACTLY where she thought it was. At least he was acting normal? She'd start to worry if he kept acting all worried and concerned and shit. That would mean she'd have to accept the injuries were worse than she was trying to play off. "That bullshit is a waste of time. Plus, really, do you want to be blamed if Yama ever gets jealous?" A natural born assassin? That would just be dumb.

Shamal snorted and taped a new bandage along an arm, amused at the thought, "It'd do him good, set him in his place if he suddenly he had to work for things."

"You're an idiot."

"And you should sleep. Want a pill?"

Shit, he was back to serious. "No. I'll figure it out." The only thing worse than sleeping and dreaming right now? Would be sleeping, dreaming, and not being able to wake up. "I know some tricks."

"Be careful, I only have one niece and no one wants to see the things I'd do if she died on me."

"It'd do you good," she snorted, pushing past him carefully so she could drop her jacket in the sink. It needed to soak and then get re-oiled...later. When she was back. She knew some tricks for bad nights, sure.

Her mom had shown her.

Fucked if she'd build a pillow fort here for him to laugh at though. It wasn't an uncle thing...it was a her thing. And her mother's thing. She had a couple of blankets in her closet that she didn't pull out often. One was a dark blue with holes neatly punched in it. Drape that over a lamp and suddenly there were stars...her mom's idea again. Another few were small, soft things left over.

Making a bundle of them was easy. Remembering not to toss it over a shoulder? That was hard. And she failed at it of course, "URI C'MON WE'RE LEAVING." she shouted instead of screaming. Ouch. For once the new cat listened, bounding out of the kitchen and hopping up to sink claws into the top of the blanket pack. Lazy little bitch.

Right.

She didn't look at Shamal as she headed out the door, she didn't want to see the look on his face or the calculation. She knew one of his bag of tricks was a sleeping sickness. She'd kill him if he sent a bug chasing her. Yes, anyway, where to?

The only place that made sense these days. The school was closed, naturally, but it was never hard to get over the fence and inside when someone really wanted to...and she wanted to. The Drama Club always had spare props she could dig through, and it only took a few trips to drag the cushions up to the roof.

There, a damn fort. The star blanket looked just as good with sun shining through it from above as with lamplight, and the softer pieces were nice on her stomach where she wasn't bandaged. The only problem was going to be getting a crick in her neck because damned if she'd lay on her back. Uri sprawled out in a patch of sunlight past the blankets and cushions, acting for all the world like a real cat.

Well then.

Sure, it wasn't sleeping? But it was relaxing wasn't it? It was closer than most would expect from her.

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The touch made him freeze for just a second before he smiled at her, just a little and not entirely happy. "I think I've been doing it longer, you know?"

Well, she'd wanted a straight answer for something. That was almost close to one.

"Fuck," she noted at the brief hitch. "I've got a kit here." She always had small kits somewhere nearby in case of fighting! "Let's see your back." Because one thing pulling off 'I'm okay' meant was that his dad hadn't helped with the burns.

"And yeah, guess you fucking have. Weird ass skill set you have."

He automatically backed away a little, hands raised. "Hey, now, it's fine." It really wasn't, but he didn't want Gokudera seeing it, anyway. Partly because he already knew Gokudera felt guilty about the whole thing, and partly because... well... it wasn't pretty, okay? Definitely not attractive, and that kind of mattered to him when it came to her.

Her face slipped from concerned to cold as he stepped away, hands balling into fists at her sides. Admittedly her first instinct was to fucking punch his back so he wouldn't be able to pretend it was 'fine'.

It might still come to that.

"Bullshit. I'm hurt, you're hurt, and if it's not fucking taken care of at least a little you could lose your mobility." SO DROP THE FUCKING ACT. "You don't want your dad to know, fine, you don't want me to fucking see the same thing on your skin as on mine? Fine. But it gets taken care of today even if I have to drag you to Shamal." AND SHE WOULD.

That would definitely be one way to get him to admit it, but he'd really rather it not come to that. Her expression made him take another step back, though, just in case.

Unfortunately, she did have a point, and he looked away, hands still raised defensively and smile turning awkward. "I thought you wanted me alive?"

"Damn straight I do, but the worst Shamal will do is give me shit about you for the rest of eternity," she pointed out grimly. "You yelled at me about being selfish and doing shit on my own? Yeah, well, back the fuck at you boy."

"...That was different?" But he dropped his hands, not even convincing himself with that half-hearted last attempt.

How could one single person make her so damn angry and so damn sad all at once?! IT DIDN'T MAKE ANY DAMN SENSE!

She didn't move when he dropped his hands, she didn't even speak for a solid minute as she got a handle on herself, "looks about the fucking same to me, Takeshi. So which is it? Kit or do we go back down the damn stairs so I can hover in the hallway of my apartment building while Shamal patches you?"

It was a talent? Or something.

Between the silence and the fact that he knew she was right, he couldn't even look at her when she finally did talk. He just pulled his shirt over his head, pausing before doing the same with the undershirt. "He wouldn't really make you wait outside, would he?"

"I'd do it fucking voluntarily so I didn't kill one or the other of you," she admitted, doing him the honor of not wincing when the shirts came off.

Yeah, that was about what she'd seen in the mirror when she checked her own back. Fuck. "At this rate we'll have matching scars, won't that be all cutesy and shit?" she snorted and went to snag her first aid kit from one of the roof units.

Plus the couple Squalo had left him with as training souvenirs. That guy didn't joke around.

He laughed softly, rubbing the back of his neck. "You wouldn't kill us. You'd just yell a lot." He didn't have anything to say on the subject of matching scars except that he really wished she didn't have to have them in the first place. He definitely wouldn't be saying that, though, because he liked not getting yelled at sometimes.

"The two of you in a room might get me to kill you," she admitted. In the past couple years since meeting Tsuna and Reborn she had learned to kill so there was no telling some days!

"This'll hurt, want to sit?" That wasn't a challenge oddly enough, just a calm, almost apologetic statement of fact. Cleaning burns hurt like a son of a bitch most days. She'd had anger and adrenaline to get through Shamal's treatment, he...didn't have her short fuse to help.

"...Yeah, probably better." Especially since he rather obviously hadn't been taking the best care of them since he got back, and maybe sitting down would make her not hit him quite so much when she noticed.

"Don't bleed all over and you can sit in my fort," she touched a spot just above his hip once she was sure he wasn't hurt right there so he note which direction her fort was in. "Don't fucking laugh," in case he was so inclined.

Sue her, it was the best comfort she could offer at the moment?

To his credit, he didn't laugh, even if he kind of wanted to. Not because it was weird, but laughing was just what he did. He did smile a bit stupidly. "You've got a fort? Is that allowed on school grounds?"

She'd have smacked the back of his head if he did laugh! HONEST! "I've got a fucking fort. It's a thing that's suppose to help me rest without Shamal drugging me alright? School can deal. Or I'll finally manage to nap and then Hibari will come around..." It was kind of like setting an alarm!

"I'm using your shirts as a towel, it's not like you fucking need them." And washing his back with her bottle of peroxide would drip!

"I'm gonna need them eventually." But he didn't say anything else to stop her, too busy taking her up on the offer to use the blanket fort. Inside, it was a lot cooler than it looked from the outside. "Huh."

"For what?" she laughed, settling in behind him and getting a good long look at his back. Oh. Fucker. She wasn't sure who to be more angry at, Yama or Gamma. Not like being angry would HELP right now but fuck. "Did you have anyone help you with these in the week before we got back?" During any of that training?!

Maybe she should be pissed at his basketcase of a tutor in the Varia?

HOW ABOUT ALL THREE?!

"To wear?" Somebody would probably notice him walking around town without a shirt, even on a Sunday.

He didn't flinch away from her question, but he did look properly chastened. "We were sort of busy?" It had hurt, but everything had hurt by the time he was done with Squalo, so he hadn't really thought about it.

"Heh," she noted. "You're fine without." HE WAS OKAY?! Besides they'd just assume she was rubbing on him or something.

...

...

SHIT. "This'll really hurt you idiot." She should strangle Squalo with his own hair for this. She really should. Well, no reason to hesitate, the sooner she got his back cleaned the sooner she could get salve on his back.

At least it wasn't rubbing alcohol?

That was neither a stupid grin not a slight blush to his cheeks from that comment. Nope. No such thing.

She wasn't lying, though. It hurt, and he hissed through clenched teeth when she started. Just the once, though. It didn't hurt nearly as much as it had when the scars got put there, after all.

At least she was efficient? She didn't rush, but she didn't have to go back and reclean any wounds before she switched over to the salve and bandaging. Granted, the muttered swear words had started about the third or fourth dab because...it was just easier to be angry about the marks on him than on her?

"Burns scar like a bitch," she noted finally. "It'll fuck over your batting if not taken care of alright?" Because maybe then he'd listen?

His laugh was strained but there. "That's why I've gotta keep in practice, you know? Need to keep them from tightening up."

"No," she snorted, smacking the back of his head lightly, "you need to fucking keep them from being bad scars." A bit of prevention went miles alright?

She wove her fingers into his hair and pulled his head back so she could look at him, more worried than angry now honestly, "the fuck are you seriously thinking Takeshi?"

That he kind of wanted her to keep doing that? Not admitting it, not even a little bit, but he was definitely thinking it. "Don't you ever worry about being ready?"

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