Title: Live by the Sword

Fandom: Gokusen

Pairing: Shin/Yankumi

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 1,353

Summary/Description: Scars tell a story. Where you've been, what you've gone through. Yankumi has a lot of scars.

Warning/Spoilers: Slight sexual situations, nothing big. No spoilers, I should think.

A/N: 31 days, March 4th: this scar I carry proudly. Established relationship. Set about a year or two after canon, the canon being a sort of infusion of the drama, anime and manga. It should make sense no matter which one you follow.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gokusen.

"Damn it, Sawada!" Yankumi growled, pounding a fist into the bed. "Do it harder, damn you, harder!"

Shin snorted a little, and rolled his eyes. If Tetsu and the others were listening at the door of her bedroom like they normally did, they probably all just had a hernia.

"I don't exactly want to dislocate your shoulder," he drawled, and nevertheless applied more force as he massaged the muscles of her neck and shoulders and back. He was sitting astride her as she lay face down on her bed, arms stretched out at her side. Her back and shoulders were sore after a week of grading papers and dealing with punks from an errant group across town, so Shin had offered his services, seeing that he was pretty good at this.

"Heh!" his old teacher scoffed. "As if you could ever even bruise me." She twisted her neck so she could look back and smirk at him, and was immediately pushed back down to the surface of the bed.

"No moving," he said dryly, smiling softly as she yelled into the pillow. "This'll just take longer if you do."

Yankumi raised her head and glared, this time without turning around.

"This will take long if you keep treating me like a delicate flower. Come on, pound into those knots!"

"Okay," Shin said, though he had not intention of doing any such thing. He could do it a little harder though, he supposed. He cracked his knuckles. Before he could start back his ministrations, Yankumi continued.

"And sit up a bit and let me take off this jersey, will you? I'm sweating, and the material feels damn uncomfortable when you rub it against my skin."

Shin sighed, shaking his head.

"That's why I told you to wear a sleeveless jersey," he said, climbing off of her back. She made no reply except to smile brightly, and tell him to avert his eyes.

He rolled his eyes.

"Not like I haven't seen it all before," he muttered, and turned away. All of two times, he scoffed at himself, and nevertheless felt his pulse quicken at the memory.

When he next turned around, she was bareback except for the thin lines of her bra that crossed on her back. He was glad that she was lying down, and couldn't see his slight blush. Even if he had seen it all before, that didn't stop his heart from skipping a beat.

He sat astride her again, and got straight back to work, rubbing and massaging her shoulders, pressing his fingers and the heel of his palm into the knots, working them out and easing the tension he felt there. Yankumi made faint sounds of satisfaction as he worked, sighing happily into the pillow.

"Lower," she moaned, and, blushing faintly, Shin moved to sit on her butt so he could accommodate her.

This time, however, he saw something that he had never noticed before, not in all their time together. His hands stilled.

"Where," he inquired slowly, "did you get this?"

He ran his index finger along the scar on her back that he had just spotted. He didn't know how he'd never seen it; it was quite large, and very noticeable. It started just under her bra, and ran in a diagonal line down her back, well beyond the gentle swell of her hips, and disappeared into the waistband of her pants. It looked deep, and the scar tissue that bunched up around it was thick and firm and discoloured.

Yankumi squirmed, and cocked her head to the side, as if trying to remember.

"Ahhh… dunno. Can't remember." And she buried her face in the pillow as if that settled it.

Shin wasn't having that. He pinched her lightly in the side.

"Don't be ridiculous; there's no way you could 'not remember' something like this." He tugged lightly on one of her pigtails. "Where did you get it?"

She gave a long suffering sigh, but after adjusting her position beneath him, she spoke.

"I got it in a fight, high school. Well, not exactly a fight," she amended, narrowing her eyes. "More like plain idiotic violence. One of the senior guys was pissed that he couldn't beat me in a fair fight, so he decided to make it an unfair fight. Brought a knife to school one day, and tried to stab me in the back while I was playing on the field. My reflexes weren't as good back then, so I wasn't able to dodge it completely, but I did get away to some extent, and he ended up slashing me instead of knifing me." She shrugged. "Simple story."

Shin remained silent, save for his quiet breathing. He fingered the spot where the scar started. If Yankumi hadn't moved away when she did, the knife could have pierced her flesh, drove into her body, and hit a lung. Maybe her heart. Yankumi could have died.

Shin felt a quiet rage building in him, and he had the sudden urge to go track down the guy, whoever and wherever he was, and give him a serious beat down. It was stupid, he knew, and illogical, but he was learning that love made people want to do a lot of stupid things. He'd been learning that since he was seventeen years old.

He calmed himself, and traced his finger along the length of the scar once more.

"What happened to the guy?"

"Oh, I taught him a lesson," Yankumi said casually, "as soon as I was able to. I don't think he ever went around stabbing people in their backs again."

Shin chuckled. He was willing to bet on that. Yankumi had a way of talking to you that could change you forever.

"But, you know," she continued, turning a little so that she could look at him, "I don't mind it that much. The scar, I mean." She laughed. "Actually, I think it's kind of cool. But other than that, scars tell a story. Where you've been, what you've gone through, what kind of person you are… that kind of stuff. This scar reminds me that I've got to watch my back, because there are people in this world that play dirty, and they don't care what they've got to do to get to you. I learned a lot from that incident; I wouldn't trade this scar in for my life. That's why you've got to respect scars. In fact--"

She cut herself short abruptly, and threw Shin a sheepish look, cheeks a little pink.

"Ahh, sorry. I guess I started to ramble there, huh?"

Shin smiled, one of his rare, true ones. He shook his head, digesting her words, and knew that he was a lucky guy.

He dropped a brief kiss along the raised skin of the scar, and thought, respect. Raising his head, he said,

"Or have someone watch it for you."

"Huh?" She sounded confused. Shin smirked a little, and started massaging her lower back and sides like she'd wanted.

"You got to watch your back, like you said, or have someone important watch it for you. Someone you trust."

Yankumi grinned, realisation dawning, and nodded.

"Thanks, Shin," she said softly.

He grunted in reply.

"Now, I think that's enough." She wiggled her body a little, trying to shake him off. "Thanks Sawada, you were a great help."

"Yeah," he said. Instead of getting up, though, he started to unhook her bra. Yankumi all but squawked in shock.

"S-Sawada! Wha- what the hell?!"

He didn't reply, but simply shifted his body so that he could roll her onto her back, and remove the bra completely. Yankumi's face was deeply flushed, and well as a large portion of her chest. It was a fair sight.

Yankumi sputtered as he pressed a kiss to her sternum.

"Sawada!" she repeated. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"Finding more scars to pay my respect to," he said calmly. His next kiss landed on the curve of her breast, and the next, lower still.

Yankumi, as Shin would find out, had a lot of scars.

A/N: XD Thanks for reading. Feel free to drop a comment!