Postcards From Italy: 8059

All that was to be remembered from Italy lay on warm breathing flesh; bruises on calves and scabs on knuckles, too preoccupied to be distracted by stone walls, bread, tomatoes, and art born from countless hours of patience.

"Don't overexert yourself"

From the knees down, flesh turns to fake, but Yamamoto knows by now how moving fluidly happens. His thighs are marred with vicious, angry red scars even now. These exist as a childhood memory. But as it snows and the wind whips against the doors and windows, metal joints remind him painstakingly that his adulthood is clearly a reality. He can't play baseball anymore, the most he can do is catch and he didn't do it often during high school. He doesn't know how his toes feel between mud anymore, how a jolt of pain ensues from stepping on rocks, how cold his floor is on winter morning. He forgets as he goes. And at twenty six, simple things come rarely but happily. He works, eats, sleeps, and breathes Vongola. He doesn't have time for childhood memories.

One memory he doesn't forget though, is the one that ensues off the 4'' by 6'' postcard tacked to his wall of bright red gondolas in a sparkling canal.

Gokudera leaves Namimori for Italy in his second year of high school to finish the remainder of the school term. Two years tick away. Reborn arranges a flight for the family to go to Italy to sightsee and return back with Gokudera.

At the mansion, Yamamoto detaches from the group to explore the space. He finds Gokudera's room in a corner on the second level. The walls are a pale grey and the floor is a chestnut brown wood. The queen size bed in the center of the room against the right wall has four high posts and a trunk at the end. A wooden desk is on the very back wall with a wardrobe at the far left corner. And streaming light into the room in a triple window set with a window seat and dark blue curtains.

A drawer set into the wall under the window seat caught his attention. Instead of trying to crouch down, he sat on the hard floor in one fluid motion.

The drawer slid open to reveal a stack of papers written in Italian with a few scrawled Japanese characters at the heading, Yamamoto's name. On top of the papers lay a postcard, face down, address written in Japanese and Italian. As soon as Yamamoto registered the address, heels pounded in the hallway.

Yamamoto doesn't make an effort to turn around as he hastily shoves the postcard in his pocket. Gokudera stops Yamamoto by trapping his left hand between his foot and the window seat. Yamamoto looks up with a grin, like they hadn't even been apart for two years at all.

"What do you think you're doing?" The silverette hisses, pushing his foot onto Yamamoto's hand with even more force. His hair is longer, but tidier than usual; even his bracelets and rings are missing, all but the ones that pronounce him Vongola. He's flushed and out of breath, and Yamamoto knows, in need of a smoke.

"Just looking," Yamamoto says without breaking eye contact, "They were addressed to me anyway."

No nice to see you agains, no smiles, hugs or handshakes; but a punch in the face, an open window, and scattered white papers descending into the garden. "Don't read those," Gokudera mumbles in a shaken voice as Yamamoto leans against him, taller than he was two years ago, laughing, mocking him, "They were in Italian anyway."

And then all he remembers about Italy is one Italian, sitting between prosthetic legs on a window seat with cigarette smoke billowing from his lips and the commotion of the family downstairs. Yamamoto hastily shoves the postcard into the mailbox as they're leaving. Gokudera doesn't know until a fall afternoon when Yamamoto reads the postcard for the first time sitting at the counter of the sushi shop with Tsuna and Gokudera. Gokudera sees him in the middle of an eel roll, Yamamoto grinning and laughing and running awkwardly away from an angry, choking Gokudera.

In May, Yamamoto and Gokudera ride a red gondola to the other edge of Venice, walking to the outskirts of town where only the water and the willows can hear their conversation. On the third finger from the thumb, each have a silver band with a black notch on it. Yamamoto whispers, and not even the vibrations from his stomach allow Gokudera to hear him,

"Vorrei che tu fossi in Italia. Noi non devi preoccuparti di tante cose più. E, potrei insegnare come questo posto è incredibile. Si potrebbe dipendere da me un po '. In attesa di sei mesi, ci si sente già come se fosse passata una vita. Gokudera."

Gokudera rolls over onto his stomach and plants in cigarette into the soil, his own fingers meeting Yamamoto's.