Title: A Prophet in His Own Country
Characters: Gokudera, a little Yamamoto
Summary: Gokudera told them so.
Notes: For Cliché Bingo, prompt: "Drugs." 1638 words.

A Prophet in His Own Country

Hayato wasn't a drinker--couldn't be, really, given the responsibilities attached to his position as the Tenth's right hand--but he was well aware of his limits, like they all were, because Reborn had spent a series of afternoons pouring booze into them and studying their reactions, because everything--everything--in the mafia world was lubricated with alcohol, from glasses of wine over dinner negotiations to tiny, deadly glasses of grappa when those negotiations were concluded. They had to know their tolerances, lest another Family use that against the Tenth, and so Hayato knew perfectly well that a single finger of single malt was not too much for him, even if drinking with the Pozzo Nero had its risks.

He also knew, perfectly well, that the room shouldn't be spinning like it was, and that Pozzo Nero and his men shouldn't be so fuzzy and so sharp at the same time. "What--" he began, looking at his glass and stumbling over the word, because his tongue felt swollen in his mouth. "You bastards," he tried again, and struggled to gain his feet, go for his weapons, anything.

Someone's hand landed on his shoulder, and kept him down with an ease that was humiliating. "Now, now," they chided him, as the room began to spin harder. "There's no need to be rude. We only wanted to talk."

"You're dead men," Hayato promised them, hearing the slur in his own voice. "Really dead men."

"Big talk," Pozzo Nero laughed. "You can't even sit up straight."

"Not me," Hayato told him, fighting to keep his eyes open. "When the Tenth finds out..."

"Ah," Pozzo Nero said, and his voice seemed to be coming from somewhere miles away, "he has to find out first, doesn't he?"

"He will," Hayato said, around the thickness of his tongue and the rising darkness. "He will."

And that was the last thing he remembered for a while.

When he came to, he was strapped down in a chair, and the inside of his elbow stung. His head ached, too, and felt fuzzy and floaty to boot, and someone was saying, "He should be coming around."

Oh, fuck. Fuck. He was in a bad place, here.

"And how are we feeling?" From this angle, he could see right up Pozzo Nero's nose. It wasn't a pretty sight, and Hayato felt the bizarre urge to tell him so.

Oh, fuck. Yeah, this wasn't good at all. Hayato stomped down the urge to tell Pozzo Nero exactly how he was feeling, and said, "Go fuck yourself."

Someone coughed, delicately. "The, ah, drug might take a few minutes to kick in, sir."

"So I gathered," Pozzo Nero said.

Drugged. He'd been fucking drugged again. Shit. "You fucking bastards," Hayato said, and gathered up all his bravado and stubbornness, even as he could feel his thinking getting fuzzier and his mood turning lighter. "You're not going to get what you want." How long had he been out? Had it been long enough to be noticed?

"Oh, I think we will," Pozzo Nero told him. "I think you're going to tell us exactly what we want to hear."

There was really only one thing Hayato could say to that. "The only thing I'm going to tell you is that you have an enormous booger hanging out of your nose," Hayato informed him. "Oh, and you should think about getting your nose hairs trimmed, too. Seriously, that's disgusting."

It was enormously satisfying to say, even if it did earn him a blow that cracked across his jaw and hurt like a bitch. Hayato seized on that ache, holding it close and using it to clear his head.

This was going to suck. A lot.

"Tell me what you know about the new weapons the Vongola is using," Pozzo Nero said, flat, but not before he'd made use of a handkerchief.

We perfected them after a trip to the future that wasn't, Hayato thought and didn't say. He drew a breath. "The chemical properties you should look at are of sulfur, charcoal, and especially potassium nitrate," he said again, and talking was good, because it made his jaw throb where Pozzo Nero had struck him. "The nitrate supplies the oxygen for the reaction..."

The best part was how intently they listened to him, until one bright spark realized that Hayato was reciting everything that he knew about black powder. Well, that was good, and so was the way Pozzo Nero smacked him again.

The man didn't have any idea how to conduct a proper interrogation. Thank God for that.

When he ran out of things to say about explosives--and that took some doing, since Hayato considered himself something of an expert on the subject--he switched over to musical theory. It took some concentration, since he had to dredge up things he hadn't thought about in years. That was the point, though; he'd do anything to keep from thinking about the box weapons and the secrets the Pozzo Nero couldn't be allowed to have.

Fuck, he hoped that they were coming. He was going to catch serious hell for this, but Hayato was starting not to care, in a giddy, dizzy sort of way. The teasing would be worth it, just as long as they got here before he spilled his guts.

And if they didn't... well, fuck. He wasn't going to think about that.

He was in the middle of explaining the most arcane bits of baseball lore that he'd managed to absorb over the years--and enjoying Pozzo Nero's apoplectic expression, too--when someone came pounding into the room, yelling, "Boss! Boss, the fucking Vongola, they're here!"

Pozzo Nero whirled away from Hayato. "What the fuck?" he demanded. "How the fuck can they be here already?"

"Oh," Hayato said, sweetly. "Didn't I tell you about the dead man's switch on my phone?" He smiled around his split lip. "They would have known that something was wrong when I didn't check in."

"You rotten little bastard," Pozzo Nero roared, and clipped him again.

Before he could do any worse than that, there was an explosion elsewhere in the building, a muffled whumpf that rattled things around the room. It sounded reasonably adequate, for an explosion that he hadn't been able to engineer himself, Hayato thought. "I told you that you were dead men," he said, when things had stopped rattling.

"We'll see about that," Pozzo Nero said, and went for his gun.

"Oh, now that's only going to piss the Tenth off more," Hayato told him, when the barrel of it was pressed against his ear.

"Shut up," Pozzo Nero growled.

"You know, I really don't think that's very fair," Hayato said. "You spent all this time trying to get me to talk, and now you want me to shut up? Make up your mind, huh?" This was starting to be strangely enjoyable, now that he knew his Family was on their way. And maybe he could understand why Yamamoto liked to spend so much time winding people up. Maybe.

Then the door to the room blew open. When the smoke cleared, the Tenth was standing there, along with Yamamoto and Ryouhei, and they were all three looking like grim death. Tsuna was lit up like a bonfire, his Will was blazing so high.

He was the most beautiful damn thing Hayato had seen all day. "Hi, boss!" he said, positively cheery, and felt the tremor run through Pozzo Nero. Yeah, he'd thought the guy was a coward, all right.

"Stop right there," Pozzo Nero called. "I have a gun. I think it's time we talked about terms, don't you?"

"The boss doesn't negotiate with trash like you," Hayato said, considering the fact that he couldn't see either Hibari or Chrome, which probably meant--

Hibari came out of nowhere, like the Devil himself, and Hayato grinned as he broke Pozzo Nero's arm with savage efficiency. "You and Chrome make an awesome team," he confided, over the sound of Pozzo Nero's howls.

Huh. He'd never seen Hibari nonplussed before. "Are you drunk?" Hibari asked after a long moment, staring down at Hayato.

Chrome made a sound, rather like a muffled giggle, and pulled the IV out of Hayato's elbow. "Drugged, I think," she said, and worked on his restraints.

"To the gills," Hayato confirmed. "Some kind of interrogation thing. They wanted to know about the boxes." And now it was relatively safe to talk, which was a fucking relief. "But I didn't say anything."

Hibari absorbed that; it must have been good enough to satisfy him, because he turned away and busied himself with whacking Pozzo Nero a good one across the ribs as Chrome helped Hayato up.

"Yamamoto." Tsuna's voice cracked like a gunshot. "Get Gokudera home, and under a doctor's care."

"Sure thing, boss," Yamamoto said, and loped over to take over from Chrome. He pulled Hayato's arm over his shoulder and started to help him forward.

"I can walk," Hayato informed him, as haughtily as he could, and then stumbled. "Shit. Maybe I can't walk."

"I'm thinking not, yeah," Yamamoto said, and hauled him upright again. "Come on, now, I've got you."

"Yeah, I know," Hayato said, as Yamamoto guided him out of the room.

The last thing he heard from behind them was Tsuna saying, low and deadly calm, "And as for you... let us discuss the terms of the reparations you will be paying for this outrage."

Hayato grinned. "I told him so," he told Yamamoto. "But he didn't believe me."

"I think he will now," Yamamoto said, his carefully neutral tone not doing a damn thing to conceal his underlying amusement.

"Damn right," Hayato said, as they lurched through the ruins of the Pozzo Nero house together.

And that was just the way it should be.

- end -

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