Story Title: The Scientific Process
Rated: R for Gokudera's potty mouth and horizontal shenanigans
Status: Complete // 1300+
Summary: [Gokudera/Hibari] "What's worse, do you think," Hibari returns slyly. "Finding pleasure in receiving pain, or finding pleasure in giving it?"
Steve's Notes: This would be another request I filled for the for this prompt: TYL5918, Gokudera burning Hibari with his cigarettes. I have an intensely secret love for this pairing and an intensely secret love for BAMF!Gokudera, so I had to write it.
Disclaimer: Katekyou Hitman Reborn! © Amano Akira


They've been sequestered in this godforsaken backwater town in northern Italy for the past two months, and Gokudera begins to wonder if he just has really bad luck or divine retribution is at work.

"Put it out," Hibari snarls as he slinks into the room—Gokudera refuses to call it their room, even though they've shared it since they arrived—shutting the door silently behind him. He's covered in blood and Gokudera doubts that a single drop of it belongs to Hibari. "You're polluting my air."

"Then open a fucking window," Gokudera snaps as he turns back to his paperwork. He's been at it since dawn, after he bought a shitty cappuccino from the chain café down the street from their hotel, and it's already—here Gokudera looks over at the clock on the bedside table—two-thirteen in the morning. He exhales a weary, frustrated sigh of poison smoke.

"I said, put it out, herbivore," Hibari reiterates. Gokudera glances at the other guardian over his shoulder; he's tossed his jacket into the spare chair, and his tonfa are tight along the rigid length of his forearms.

Gokudera's response is a plume of smoke that smears the image of Hibari's bared canines and a swift, sarcastic, "Didn't get enough from them, did you?" before he needs to drop his head to avoid being smacked in the temple with the butt of Hibari's tonfa. It sings, high, shrill, and metallic as it whips over Gokudera's head. The tense muscles in Gokudera's neck protest the quick, sudden movement and he sees, but cannot dodge the other tonfa as it comes down hard on clavicle. Gokudera hisses with the sharp pain and his cigarette nearly falls from his mouth.

"Give up already?" Hibari mocks as he pulls his steel weapons back towards his sides.

"You fucking wish," Gokudera replies, and kicks Hibari's feet out from under him. It only works because he knows Hibari is exhausted; something, two months ago, he wouldn't have been able to pick up on with just a look as the other came through the door. Then again, two months ago, he didn't know why Hibari picked this particular fight each time he came back bloody and unsatisfied.

His back against the cheap carpet, his arms and legs pinned by a cocky Gokudera, Hibari writhes and snaps his teeth. His hair is wild and crusted by blood and sweat to his pale forehead; his eyes flash and his fingers dig through Gokudera's tailored pants. It takes more effort than it should—damn Hibari and his adrenaline drunk strength— but soon he has both of Hibari's sinewy wrists in one hand while the other makes short work of his Windsor-knotted, violet silk tie and the pearly buttons of his Armani three-piece. Hibari's exposed chest is taught and already slick with sweat, muscle tense underneath flawless skin and litany of scars.

"You killed all of them," Gokudera says as he scrapes a fingernail over one of Hibari's dusky nipples. Hibari makes no noise, nor does he respond to the touch, but it pebbles and strains underneath the pleasure-pain of the scratch. "The Tenth explicitly told us that all he wanted was information; he didn't want them fucking dead."

"I don't listen to herbivores," Hibari sneers. "Much less obey them like you, like a dog."

"Fuck you," Gokudera spits angrily. He takes the dying stub of his cigarette from his mouth and pinches it between two fingers, then snubs the hot ash end into the center of Hibari's chest. Hibari does not make a sound—Hibari never makes a sound when Gokudera hurts him—but his narrow, almond eyes widen minutely and his jaw goes slack. Gokudera thinks he looks pathetic, but he keeps the cigarette tight against Hibari's skin until he smells the burnt flesh and no longer hears the faint sizzle of sweat and keratin. He pulls the cigarette away, flicks it into the trash bin in the corner, and eyes the angry, pink circle that will scab and turn into a white, fibrous mark. It will match the others littered across Hibari's torso, a constellation of reprimands and tethers.

"Done admiring your handiwork?" Hibari mocks as Gokudera's fingers ghost over the burn.

"Done getting off on pain?" Gokudera shoots back, and then grinds down on Hibari's erection to prove whatever point he's trying to make or counter. Not that there's anything to prove after two months of the same routine.

"What's worse, do you think," Hibari returns slyly as he rocks back up, meeting Gokudera's hardness with his own. "Finding pleasure in receiving pain, or finding pleasure in giving it? Really makes you wonder, doesn't it, about who you really want to—ahhh—"

Gokudera digs his thumbnail into the burn and Hibari makes that pathetic, choked face again. His whole body twists and Gokudera trusts that he's far enough gone to remove his hand from Hibari's wrists. He shrugs out of his own clothing—a crimson button down and black tie—and works at his studded leather belt with one deft hand. He undoes Hibari's as well.

When they're like this, Gokudera doesn't want to think. He doesn't want to analyze the willing way Hibari slips his slender legs over Gokudera's shoulders and hooks his ankles behind his head. He doesn't want to calculate his erratic, too-high heart rate. He doesn't want to hypothesize why he spits on his fingers and slicks Hibari's hole before he enters, stays still until Hibari tugs painfully on his hair and tilts his hips just so, forcing Gokudera to move.

But he does.

He thinks about the insanity this stupid reconnaissance mission has brought to him. He thinks about the men Hibari has killed, the men Tsuna specifically told Gokudera were not to be killed. He thinks about how it all began—Hibari bare-chested and slick as he comes out of the shower, an icy glare around his eyes, and an impulse that could not be restrained when Hibari got too close—and wonders how it will all end. It will probably fall to ruin the moment their mission comes to an end—days, weeks, or months from now—with nothing left but a finite number of pale stars burned into Hibari's skin. Gokudera is not sure if he will miss it.

He does not know what he will do if he does.

Hibari bites the meat of his shoulders until he draws blood, then licks the stick away with the broad of his tongue. He scratches long, jagged lines into Gokudera's back, his ass, his thighs, his biceps. He mocks, he threatens, he cajoles. Sometimes, he even kisses Gokudera—more teeth than kiss. In the end, Gokudera is as pissed as he is turned on. One of his hands is planted against Hibari's sternum, over the cigarette burn, pressing him into the cheap carpet. Hibari is bent nearly in half, silent save for his rasping, shallow breathes, and when he comes his eyes widen and his jaw goes slack. He clenches impossibly tight around Gokudera, and Gokudera follows him with a choked moan reverberating low in his throat. They collapse together, Gokudera on top of Hibari. Hibari shoves him off and stands even though his legs still tremble and Gokudera's cum stains his inner thighs.

"Herbivore," Hibari says then.

"Masochist," Gokudera returns, and fumbles for his pants. Moments later, there's a cigarette between his lips and he's inhaling a nicotine calm. There's a strange silence between the two of them that Gokudera thinks might be understanding. But before Gokudera can think too hard about it, form a hypothesis, create an experiment, and derive a conclusion, Hibari commands, "Put it out."

"I don't think I will," Gokudera answers. His eyes flicker to the pink, burnt circle in the center of Hibari's chest, just over his heart. Hibari lets him stare for a moment—a moment in which Gokudera thinks impossible, ridiculous things—before he merely turns his back and goes to open a window.


end.