Title: Strangers on a Train
Summary: Yamamoto is just a passenger. Gokudera is just a stranger. They end up sitting across from each other on a train, but where does it take them?
Pairing: Yamamoto/Gokudera
Rating: PG-13
Notes: AU with some slice-of-life. There's 8059, really, if you squint extra hard.
Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn doesn't belong to me.



There's a man sitting across from him with silver hair and a mouthful of silver smoke.

"Hey," Yamamoto says to the man, "what's your name?"

"That's none of your damn business," the man replies, smashing his dying cigarette on the compartment wall and there's a sizzling sound as ashes burn on wooden veneer.

"Haha, but I just told you mine," Yamamoto says with a laugh, finding the man's rudeness refreshing.

"I never asked you to introduce yourself, moron," the man says, spitting his laugh back with a scowl before placing another cigarette between his lips.

Yamamoto thinks that his glaring green eyes really match well with silver.

 


On the train, everything goes by frame-by-frame in still-life motion; there's no accelerator pedal he can just press on like a fast-forward button that erases everything outside of metal frame and tinted windows. Even thoughts that usually rush by two hundred miles per hour start to brake and Yamamoto finds himself dwelling on unimportant things like how those bulky metal rings look too heavy on the man's skinny fingers. Or how those black boots and pants with crosses give him this gothic vibe that's kind of really interesting. In a good way.

"Hey, do you like horror movies?" Yamamoto asks, just because the man seems like he might.

"What the hell," the man says, and Yamamoto is drawn to the contrast of his black nails on white cigarette. "Stop asking stupid questions and fuck off."

"Haha," Yamamto says, "how about action movies, like James Bond or Indiana Jones?" The topic gets him excited. "The special effects look cool, don't you think? I really like the suspense, too, but things always works out in the end."

"What are you, a goddamn six-year-old?" the man says, and turns his head to look out the window. "Those movies are shit. Real life doesn't always work out so damn perfect all the time."

Yamamoto laughs. "Yeah, I guess you're right," he says, and notices for the first time the thin scars on the man's neck.




Another hour into the ride and Yamamoto is starting to get used to the rhythmic beat of moving metal. The other man has his eyes closed, looking like he's already asleep but his breathing isn't even.

The sunlight outside is heavy, and it's the perfect time for an afternoon nap, except–

"No."

"What?" Yamamoto straightens up and looks at the man across from him, whose eyes are still closed but his mouth is  slurring unidentifiable words save for ones like fuck. shit. die.

"Hey, wake up," Yamamoto says. It doesn't work.

"Hey," he tries again, hand reaching out for a shoulder. That's when he almost gets his arm twisted off.

"Who the fuck–" The man says, break-neck alarm in dilated pupils and tense jaw, his face suddenly two inches away from Yamamoto's. Then recognition sets in. He lets go.

"Are you okay?" Yamamoto asks, and thinks maybe he should ask himself that question first. His arm still burns from the almost-torn muscles.

"I'm fine," the man replies curtly, doesn't look him in the eye now. "Shit," he says, "I fucking fell asleep." The words sound like a sin.

Yamamoto doesn't say anything for a while, letting the tension collect into smoke from one. two. three. four cigarettes.

"Hey," he finally says, "it's okay."

"What the hell do you know," the man begins to say, then he shuts his mouth and he's looking like he wants to say thank you and fuck you in the same sentence.

"Forget it," the man says.



Everyone has nightmares, just like how everyone has bad memories. It's normal – the sweat, the panting, the hitch of breath and the jump of heart like you're diving into death.

It's normal, Yamamoto wants to say to the man, but it's been an hour since and the right time for that has long been left behind in those shadowy groves in the countryside.

They're in the mountains now, the train curving like a snake through familiar territory, its tail wrapping around the base of a rocky hill.

"I'm bored," Yamamoto says instead.

"So go count sheeps in your head or something."

"But that's boring." And before the other man can cuss him off for whining, he says, "Want to play a game?"

"Hell no."

"But I haven't even said what kind of game yet." Yamamoto laughs.

"No means fucking no. Get it through your head, dumbass."

"How about we tell each other stories then? My dad used to do that when I was bored as a kid." Yamamoto says, and almost adds a haha in the end, but doesn't.

"Then call your dad up and ask him to tell you a story. You're so fucking annoying."

"Well, um," Yamamoto says and swallows, "my dad's dead."

There's an expected silence.

"Shit, fine. I'll tell you a story then." The man leans back in his seat and snarls. "There used to be a boy in a happy family. Then one day, his mom disappears. Then he finds out that she died. Then he finds out that his dad killed her. Then his sister almost poisoned him to death and shit never got better from there. Happy fucking ending."

Yamamoto's mouth is opened in a what the fuck but the words don't come out.

Guess the telling-a-story thing isn't such a good idea after all, he thinks. "I'm sorry," he says.

"What the hell are you sorry for? It's just a story."

"Yeah," Yamamoto says. Then he remembers the man's cigarettes, the scars, the fucks and the dies –

Yeah. Everyone has nightmares.




"Hey, when the hell is your stop?"

"Huh?"

"I said, you idiot, when the hell is your stop?"

"Oh," Yamamoto says, lamely, not expecting the other man to start a conversation. "In half an hour, maybe?"

"You don't even fucking know?" The man scoffs and looks like he's about take out his pack again.

"Well, I haven't been back in a while," Yamamoto says and scratches his neck, "I...don't visit my dad's grave often. Guess I'm a bad son, huh?"

The man watches Yamamoto fidget for a while before asking, "How did he die?"

It's a little too straight-forward and Yamamoto pales, swallows again. His breath shakes.

"Oh, well, um," He feels the pressure under the man's gaze and stumbles, "fel– he fell down a cliff." Someone pushed him down. He doesn't say that.

"That sucks," the man says, and takes out a cigarette then. Yamamoto has the urge to ask him, "Where is your dad?"

He doesn't say that either.

"At least there's a body," the man says, and Yamamoto chokes. "When my mom died, she was blown into so many pieces we couldn't even give her a proper funeral."

Yamamoto doesn't know how to react to that; it's probably the first full sentence the man has said without a cuss word, and he thinks that it probably means something.

"Thanks," Yamamoto says, watching the rocky hills shrink into mounds and catching a glimpse of flatland ahead.




When the mountains clear, Yamamoto recognizes the scenery; the windmills on those fresh-green grass and houses that scatter here and there like an unfinished puzzle.

"My stop is coming up," Yamamoto says, his heart suddenly hitching up and expanding in his ribcage. He looks at this place where he used to grow up, where his dad was murdered, then he looks at the man in front of him. "Um. Yeah. Guess this is it," he says, and leans down to pick up his luggage from the floor.

Before he gets up from his seat to stand by the door, he stops and asks, "Hey, where's your stop?"

"That's none of your damn business," the man replies like he did when they had first met, but it sounds less scorching this time. 

Yamamoto smiles. "Well then," he says as the train stops, "Goodbye, stranger."

The man looks at him one last time before the metal double doors slam together like an iron fist and says, "Goodbye, Takeshi."