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khrfest: Clothesline and Clothespins (Gokudera+Nana)
Title – Clotheslines and Clothespins
Fandom – KHR
Characters – Gokudera, Nana, Tsuna
Genres – General, Family
Rating – G
Summary – prompt: IV - 16. Gokudera, Nana - band-aids & bruised knees; "Gokudera wondered if this was what having a mother was like"
Clotheslines and Clothespins
It starts with a bowl of rice.
Gokudera doesn’t explicitly ask for a second helping (even though he does feel some leftover hunger), but the boss’ mother takes the empty bowl and opens the cooker and throws in a fresh scoop without a word. When he raises a hand and opens his mouth to stop her, she only ‘tut-tut’s while adding even more rice. By now, it’s beginning to look like a miniature mountain and Lambo is suddenly crying because he wants more on his plate too.
The Italian doesn’t quite know what he feels just then – gratitude and embarrassment obviously – but something else too, something that reminds him of a woman dressed in elegant gowns that swish with her legs and touch her ankles, hands with skinny wrists that held his face, and the saddest eyes.
The boss’ mother is a sharp contrast, Gokudera thinks, with her worn-out apron and rough, wash board hands and happy, happy gaze.
He takes the bowl from her and mumbles ‘thank you’ when he should be yelling the words out in due respect – it’s scary how a woman, a simple mother who cooks and cleans and sweeps, can intimidate a right hand man with nitroglycerin underneath his sleeve.
The Tenth offers a smile to encourage him and tell him he shouldn’t be so uptight, but balks when his mother shoves stalks of vegetables into his rice bowl.
-
The boss’ mother hardly ever gets angry. She laughs when the floors in the house are dirtied with mud and ramen soup (whenever adult-Ipin stumbles through), and sighs when they make too much noise up in the Tenth’s room, usually because Yamamoto’s his usual incoherent self, or because of the generic extortion note or grenade or threat. She squints when they bear more bruises than usual, but the boss passes most of them off as cuts from tripping over.
“Oh, I believe you,” she’d say, which brought relief to the Tenth’s face. “I’m more concerned about what happened to Gokudera-kun and Yamamoto-kun. They aren’t as hopeless as you, Tsu-kun.”
Gokudera focuses on cheering his boss up whenever this happens. He has to multi-task by reassuring Nana Sawada that he’s in near-perfect condition, and it’s difficult for him to cook up reasons to please her concern because he isn’t used to people caring for him.
-
When he wakes up, he smells eraser dust and the plastic pages of mathematical textbooks.
Gokudera jolts and sits upright, massaging the ache in his jaw and the side of his face – he isn’t going to sleep on a table ever again, he decides. The Tenth is sprawled on the floor of his room, half-done homework in his hands, and Yamamoto’s head is balancing precariously on a propped up hand. They’d fallen asleep while cramming for a test – at least, the baseball idiot and the boss had. Gokudera must have dozed off somewhere between explaining the Pythagoras Theorem to Yamamoto without contemplating homicide and solving the quadratic equations left blank on the Tenth’s homework.
Then, he realizes that blankets have been draped over the boss and Yamamoto, and the lights of the room are off and the air conditioning’s been turned on. While Reborn sleeps (eyes wide open) in a hammock overhead, Gokudera knows that he probably wasn’t the one who’d tidied everything up.
He turns to the door as it creaks open and the Tenth’s mother slips into the room with another blanket wrapped in her arms, footsteps muffled by her cotton slippers. She looks surprised to see him awake. Then, she inches over, maneuvering over her son’s body to hand him the blankets.
“I – uh – I don’t need– ” Gokudera whispers to avoid waking the boss. He thinks she’s pretending she can’t hear him as she throws the blanket around his shoulders. Then she’s closing the door behind herself and mouthing ‘good night’.
The Italian hurriedly takes the blanket off and fists with his hands, unsure of what to do with… it. He tucks in over the Tenth, just as an extra measure so that he won’t catch a cold, but panics when the boss swipes it off in a half-conscious daze. Then, Gokudera considers binding it over Yamamoto to stop the incessant snoring – but decides against it, because he doesn’t have the willpower to cook up a story to justify his actions to the Tenth in the morning.
After awhile, the room begins to feel chilly and Gokudera, disgruntled, shrugs on the blanket and rests his head on a pillow made out of books and papers. The unfamiliar scent of detergent and lilacs makes his nose itch (because in his childhood, he can only recall a small imprint of rose perfume behind the constant stench of poison cooking), but he finds his way to sleep.
-
When she plates a nostalgic dish on the table – spaghetti of all things in a Japanese household – his eyes widen, just a little.
“Tsu-kun told me you liked these,” she explains with perfect poise, and it’s strange that there isn’t a hint of intention behind the tone of her voice. It’s just unusual that someone can do something without possessing a specific reason, without polishing off a motive. This wasn’t the culture he’d grown up in, and he feels like he’s missing out on something big.
The Tenth seems unfazed by his mother’s change in menu, more preoccupied with struggling to wind the strands of spaghetti around his fork. Lambo blows raspberries and I-pin makes reprimanding noises and Reborn thanks the woman for the pseudo-native food with one of those rare, genuine, tight-lipped smiles.
Gokudera fidgets with the rings on his hand, but this time when he says ‘thank you’ his voice sounds louder.
When he takes a forkful of spaghetti into his mouth, the immediate taste is peculiar and misplaced and she’s sprinkled some Japanese spices in the sauce and not nearly enough cream and – and it feels… like home.
-
Another one of Lambo’s inconvenient grenades detonates in the Tenth’s backyard. Nothing that could be considered uncommon – but it didn’t mean that Gokudera had been prepared for it. He sustains a few nicks and scratches that will blend in with the rest that mark his skin. Even the Tenth looks almost expectant as he rubs his head and extracts himself out of a nearby bush. Lambo had been blasted off with the explosion, which really doesn’t bother Gokudera as much as it should.
The parlour door slides open and a woman steps out, her hands on her hips.
“Really now, you boys shouldn’t be roughhousing so much,” she sighs while the Tenth fumbles with the right words to say. She proceeds to bring out a first-aid kit, cementing bandages onto her son and dabbing antiseptic on a wound on his arm. Gokudera watches her laugh at the expressions colouring his face as he winces.
And Gokudera’s known for a very, very long time that he’s always lived (breathed) by an inborn respect, duty – friendship – for the Tenth. But now, he thinks this might be the first time he feels a slight sting of envy, of all possible emotions.
Suddenly though, the boss is staggering onto his feet and hobbling into the house, and his mother is sitting expectantly on the porch, waving the brooding cigarette-smoker over to her. Gokudera stalks over with his hands in his pockets, he doesn’t know why, but he feels intimidated again – or maybe this awkward sensation might be uncertainty, might be a result of the fact that he’s never stood so close to a kind, middle-aged mother with a pretty smile since he was six.
“Thank you,” he says for the umpteenth time. She looks up at him as she finishes pasting the last of the bandages on his arms, shaking her head and offering him a warm gaze. “Now, now, you don’t need to thank me, you’re like a part of this family, Gokudera-kun,” she tells him with patience, her hands folded on her lap – and Gokudera suddenly knows who the Tenth received his winning charisma from.
-
It ends with a bowl of rice.
He takes her bowl and fills it up. She smiles and pats his hand, with all its deep scars and metallic skull rings, and Gokudera just thinks, maybe, somehow, this is what having a mother is like.
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Yes, Gokudera, mothers are efficient right-hand men - more efficient than you. /dynamite'd.
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I'm glad I was given the chance to write this in fact! I agree that Nana's a rarely touched on character. I'm writing another fic about her and Iemitsu now too (:
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and her cooking.Iemitsu/Nana
Iemitsu/Nana
IEMITSU/NANA
I SHIP THEM SO MUCH. I WILL READ. Though I might not comment straightaway since I will be busy the entire day tomorrow, what with school and Prince William's wedding.
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oh man, I remember internally crying buckets when I found out the story behind Gokumama so reading this was simultaneously heartwarming and heartwrenching. WAUGH.
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Anyway, thanks for the comment :D
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thank you!
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Thank you for fulfilling it this beautifully XD
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Oh thank you so much, really ♥
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:D Seriously--I think I'm going to read this over and over and over again! It's just beautiful! I asked for this prompt and I don't think anyone could have done better--this is perfect! It's just---gyah!!! So wonderful!
I love how you started and ended it with a similar theme, I love how you had Gokudera slowly get more and more exposed, I love how Gokudera didn't really know what to do with the blanket that Nana gave him, I loved the line: and it’s strange that there isn’t a hint of intention behind the tone of her voice. It’s just unusual that someone can do something without possessing a specific reason, without polishing off a motive. This wasn’t the culture he’d grown up in, and he feels like he’s missing out on something big. because that's just so incredibly true, I like how you showed that Gokudera could even feel envy of his boss when Nana helped him and...and IT WAS JUST SO INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL! So going into memories~ ♥
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omg can I just say I love you for requesting this? This is probably the best, unexplored relationship ever, and I'm very happy you gave me the chance to try my hand at it (: I'm also relieved that you find the fic nice, especially Gokudera because we don't really see this pensieve, awkward side of him that much ;D That being said, thanks again for the opportunity to write this and for leaving such a heartfelt comment!
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PS--your icon is amazing! Go old Disney movies!!
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And yes, I do love Nana's motherly character, she's amazing!
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♥♥♥!!!
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Very sweet. Good work!
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adding to memories :3
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Thank you very much!
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You did a great job of showing Gokudera's pure awkwardness around Nana, and a great job showing Nana as an important character to characters other than Tsuna, which is really amazing. It's a really nice story. (Bad self is bad at explaining).
:D
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