Some in the mafia don't. Blood stains on others deeper than some, tracking them into their dreams like a wounded and haggard wolf. True enough, even with all he tries to do, Tsuna has seen things that stay locked behind his ribcage lurking besides his heart.
It's not just that, however.
He carries more memories and bloody hands than his own with him.
It's likely not a thing Xanxus is intimately familiar with, considering the distance he keeps between himself and the Iron Fortress. A castle full of bitter memories. But tonight, it's not the Iron Fortress Tsuna sleeps at. Tonight has been hours of discussion and planning regarding a troublesome deal in the United States, and it's moved past a reasonable time. Why bother going to a hotel when there's Xanxus' bed there? Lovers are allowed to share such things.
...But Tsuna rarely rests easy, and tonight is no exception as he squirms and murmurs incoherently in his sleep, even with Xanxus nearby.
It's late. He knows that. But Xanxus keeps odd hours. Because of his work, the job he does, his sleep schedule is all sorts of fucked. There are reasons he takes little catnaps throughout the day. It's because assassins usually operate at night. This is when he's supposed to be working. So it's out of habit that he's working now, with his lover so close by.
Even more knowing that he's been recently injured enough that he had needed Lussuria to heal him. He should be in bed, resting with Tsuna. Instead, he sits at his desk and goes through more paperwork that's piled up between missions plus the new issues in the States. He hasn't had time to even cut his hair from the little side-effect that happens from too much Sun Peacock.
The desk is an old familiar thing really. Just as the chair he is sitting on. Just as the view out the window is.
As a child he had always been obsessed with the man in the second portrait on the wall of the Iron Fortress. The one everyone whispered about in fear. Dead for centuries and a name that still put the fear of god into people. The same man whose power he possessed. A man whom there had been a time he had wanted to be just like. He had idolized the Second as a little boy. It's why he has so many of his things now.
It's Ricardo's desk he sits at. It's Ricardo's chair. It's Ricardo's castle. Even the Varia had been Ricardo's. His idea. His creation. The first Varia Ring had been his and the stones within the Upgraded ones had been shards of the Rainbow left behind by Ricardo as well. And it's Ricardo's bed that Tsuna sleeps in.
Xanxus shifts through important paperwork until he can't stand the shifting and the mumbling any more. Then he stands to go over. Lightly, he puts a hand upon Tsuna's head to smooth his hair before heading towards a window, hoping the fresh air might do him well. It leaves him standing behind his desk, silhouetted in the moonlight.
That careful touch to his hair, familiar and reassuring, is what pulls him out of his dreams and stumbling back into consciousness. Sluggishly, his eyes twitch open and for a moment he can only stare into the dim room and how starkly the moonlight cuts through its darkness. The world is a mess, his mind is a mess, and it's only as his eyes follow the light to its source do things click into place.
Just not the proper place.
It's not Tsuna's memories that the figure at the window rings against, but someone else's, and his face is almost foreign when he gives a loose smile as he pushes himself up sleepily. He's still not half there, and the old Italian which fumbles out from his mouth is all reckless fondness.
"Ricardo." Like it could be anyone else. The blankets are shoved away from his body, freeing his feet so he can press them against the floor. He knows this place. Of course he does. It's Ricardo's place, he can tell from the floor alone. "Stay up so late like this so often, and you'll get gray hairs all the earlier, I keep telling you."
He heard the man on his bed shifting. He looked behind him to see Tsuna slowly sitting up. His smile is strange. He's seen so many of Tsuna's smiles but this is so much different. His voice is strange too. It sounds like Tsuna, but the language is odd. Old. He sounds like he's talking from an Italian Renaissance drama. He'd never heard Tsuna speak like that. He heard the old name and an eyebrow raises. "Tsuna? Can't sleep?"
He frowns a little, turning from the window to look at the man. "I always stay up this late. I needed to take care of some of that business we discussed earlier." To Tsuna's mangled memories, that voice should sound just as familiar. The man he is remembering has that same voice. That same tone, though slightly deeper.
The things in the States needed looking after. Tsuna might want to do this peacefully, but Xanxus had used that time to mobilized the Varia in America. Of course he knows not to say that because he knows how Tsuna gets about him readying the killing squads.
There's a word- foreign, not Italian- and he's so lost in his own mind that he can't even realize it's his own name. It just makes him blink for a moment before the rest of what his cousin draws his attention and Tsuna sighs, weary.
"That's the problem," he groans, pushing himself up onto unsteady feet. "Always late, turn into bed early for once, Ricci!" His walk is a bit wobbly and more than a little slow, but it's late, and he's tired. At least he makes it to Ricardo's desk, which feels so familiar and reassuring under his touch. God bless his cousin's tastes, even if the rest of him is probably too sinful for even the Lord to touch. He doesn't blame him for that, however. Not with what he's asked of him and how much he's leaned on his shoulder more than once. Slumping across the surface, he runs a hand through his mess of hair.
"I bet if I was a woman, you'd be in bed," he grumbles. A moment, and he amends, "And not family." That's important. He knows it is.
His eyes narrow more. He doesn't want to be concerned but he is. He hasn't seen Tsuna like this. Wobbling like that. With that strange look on his face, that old language on his lips and that name that isn't his. Tsuna seems so unsteady and he leaves his window side to walk around the desk where Tsuna has slumped.
He's trying to work out why Tsuna kept calling him the wrong name. He had touched the ring once. Worn it one time. He had seen what was inside. He had only touched it briefly before the Ring and 7 of the 8 within declared him unworthy and it rejected him. He had perhaps dodged a bullet.
"Tsuna?" He slides next to the man and his fingertips lightly stroke against the back of Tsuna's neck. It's more than just a simple fond touch. It's the caress of a concerned lover. Then because he's unsure and he has seen the inside of the Sky Ring, he whispers, "Giotto? If you want me in bed with you, I'll go. But you know that there's business I can only do in the dead of the night." He's worried though. He's worried he's wrong. But even more concerned that he's right.
'Tsuna'. That word again. Maybe he's more tired than he thought, and is misunderstanding something. In the depths of his mind, a part of Tsuna stirs and disrupts the layer of intermingled dreams and foreign memories swathed over his mind.
Yet it slips under again when those rough fingers glad along his neck, and he shivers slightly. The feelings he has confessed of his cousin. The urges. If only he didn't touch him like he did sometimes, it would be so much easier to ignore them. This is a trial, he thinks sometimes. Something sent from up on high to see if he's deserving of the success he's made out of a tiny band of those who had enough of the injustice levied out by others.
And there's his name. His proper name, not the nickname Ricardo murmurs so fondly at times and yells at the top of his lungs at others. He must really be bothering him.
"I know," he answers back softly, reaching to take that large hand in his. "It scares me sometimes, you know. The work you do when it's so late, sometimes with not even the moon to watch you. It feels like I'll lose you to the night." Just one reason out of many to hate when they argue.
He's right. He's right and Xanxus almost wants to shake Tsuna. To shake him and demand his Tsuna back. He doesn't know what that would do to him. More than that, he doesn't know how to handle this. This man who thinks he's someone else. This man who has been dead for nearly 200 years.
His jaw clenches and he looks down to the hand that takes his. His eyes land on the ring. If he tried to take it, he wondered what would happen. But at the same time, he is worried that if he does take it, Tsuna might get stuck like this.
He tries to remember those journals he had poured over as a young boy. He had been so obsessed with the Second. Tries to think about how to handle the man that had looked at him inside that ring and refused him. Xanxus shifts his hold on the man's hand, lightly making little circles against the fragile insides of his wrist with a thumb.
He has to remember that this is still Tsuna. No matter who is there right now. He looks down at the man and that long tail falls over his shoulder.
He swallows a little and murmurs. "It's a little too late to worry about that, don't you think? I've made already my peace with it." That, at least, is very true. He'll let Tsuna be the noon day sky. He is fine ruling the night and making it so that Tsuna's sky keeps shining.
The words are still in that old Italian, that hasn't changed, but at their core... They're true regardless if it's the regrets of a dead man or the fears of one alive. Giotto Vongola and Sawada Tsunayoshi are two entirely different people, familial connections and too-good-to-be-coincidences aside. In some areas, however, they are alike.
Their fears for their loved ones is such an area.
His eyes drift shut as his wrist is stroked, and sleep is such a temptation again. "Life is too short for us to argue so much. Not when I care for you so much."
He keeps that small motion going. It reminds him that this is still Tsuna. No matter who it is talking through him, Tsuna is still in there somewhere. More than that, there's a soft hurt, a memory of those days he spent as a child pouring through Secondo's journals. Reading about the man's life. About the man he had somehow inherited power from.
He doesn't think he can be that man either. He doesn't even know if trying would be fair to Tsuna. Still, he wonders if there was a way to bring the man back. To so that, he'll try to remember all those things he read. "You know I don't enjoy it either. I hate fighting with you. But he's right." There's huge sections of those journals about Spade, about all those things Spade convinced the Second to believe. Things Xanxus understands aren't really that wrong, because it was what made them what they are today. "We'll never have enough power to do what you want if you're afraid to make sacrifices. It's because I love you so much that I'm willing to do what you won't."
That makes Tsuna stir again instead of drifting in the strange place on the edge of sleep. Brow furrowing, he tries to tug his wrist away. Still tired, still not truly there, it's a half-effort. With Xanxus' strength, there's no reason to let him carry through.
Still, he tries. Tries because there's a hazily miserable but dark look on his face now.
"We're doing it again," he murmurs, a shimmer of anger becoming apparent now as well. "We're- you know why he's pushing for that kind of thing, it's because..." Pushing himself up to his feet, he has to pause because the world swims, just like his memories. An enormous ballroom, a ruined and abandoned theater- both seem to mix for a second. "Trapped... in the past. He's trapped in the past and thinks all this bloodshed will fix things..."
He keeps his grip strong and he notes the way the other sways just a little. He knows they're rehashing dead men's arguments but he can't help it. Maybe it's because Ricardo had been his hero. Or maybe because there's a whisper of that man within him somewhere. Something that had awoken when he had worn that ring for those mere minutes. He knows but he also knows that it's because of the things Ricardo did that the Vongola were as strong as they were today. But he also knows that Tsuna had vowed to fix that. To fix the terrible violence, the killing, the darkness.
He sighs. "We are doing it again. When you are far too tired to really put up a good fight." He doesn't know if this is something he did, but Xanxus is bold enough to do it anyway. Just sweep the smaller man off his feet and up into a carry. "So what we're going to do is we're going to put a pin in this for the morning and you are going to go back to bed."
For all his words, a very much Tsuna-like squeak erupts from him as he's hauled up. "Ricci!" is, unfortunately, still on the heels of it.
"Don't... Don't." He flops his hand against Xanxus' shoulder. "You always do this to throw me out..." And they're not even close to that level of an argument yet, the foggy memories say. No one is yelling, and nothing has been thrown. Although somehow that seems odd. Does he really yell or throw things like that? Tsuna goes quiet, the dissonance a little stronger now as he stays curled up against Xanxus.
He wakes up with a jolt in a bed that still feels too large for him.
For a moment, his mind swims, and he fumbles his hands upwards until he can feel the ring hanging from his neck in a chain. Oh good he thinks blearily. The ring is still there. Such a precious gift from the Giglio Nero's matriarch, and he thinks it might be the most expensive thing in the world he's ever touched. Every day he thinks he'll accidentally lose it, no matter how much his friends say otherwise. They think him so reliable, even though he was once just nothing more than any other man on the street. With a little unsteadiness, Tsuna draws himself out of his bed with memories still not his own swirling through his head.
So much responsibility on his shoulders, no wonder he's not sleeping well. G's presence will help, he thinks. G always makes the world seem so clear despite the flames inside of him. But doesn't the sky seem so much clearer after a storm?
Unsteady but determined, he begins to make his way to the room that once upon a time belonged to the first of the Vongola's Storm Guardians.
Tradition is in important in the mafia, so important that it sometimes overrides silly things like common sense, which would have dictated that the guardians rooms and their layouts changed over the years for their own protection and the rest of the Family's. As it is, tradition had held out, or at least re-exerted itself in the Tenth Generation and Gokudera's room was on the exact opposite side of the floor as Tsuna's. The idea was for the Right Hand and the Boss not to be injured in the same attack. It wouldn't work of course, if it happened on a night they shared the same bed, but for the other nights it was a sound enough strategy. His room also happened to be the one claimed by G in the first generation. He had claimed it for the balcony he could climb down to the old archery field.
For once Hayato is in bed, soundly asleep without extra work, Tsuna himself, Takeshi, or even Haru after a drunken crying jag she hid from the others curled up against him.
Hundreds of years passing takes its toll, and there are little things that are different even with tradition. New technology, new paintings. It's all just meaningless background, however, to tired eyes that rely more on muscle memory than anything else. Soon enough, there's a familiar enough door beneath his fingertips and he's pushing it open.
There's a figure in the bed. It's him. He knows it is. Who else could it be in G's bed?
He's already tired, so the best Tsuna can do is wobble over besides his bed and reach over to take his best friend's hand into his as he slumps down to his knees. There's something off here, something in the shadows that doesn't seem right, but it's not enough to knock his thoughts back into place just yet.
Most cases of having his room entered and being touched while soundly asleep would result in some kind of explosion, but the magnitude and influence of Tsuna's Sky flame is so familiar to Hayato that even subconsciously while sleeping he accepts Tsuna's presence and only just barely stirs when he's touched. His green eyes flutter open in the dark, and he can barely make out Tsuna's expression.
"Boss? Are you alright? Why aren't you in bed?"
Give him another beat or two and he'll panic but for the moment he's filled with sleepy confusion.
"Oh. I'm sorry, G." Resting his head against his arm on the bed, Tsuna gives a sort of faint smile. His gaze isn't quite there. "I didn't mean to wake you. I just couldn't rest, you know how it is."
There's so much wrong with what he's saying, and he doesn't even know it. It's not even just the wrong name. It's even the language on his tongue. Tsuna always speaks in Japanese in private when he's with his friends, keeping some part of home with him. It helps to deal with such displacement. But this is Italian... Old Italian, too, the dialect so different from what Tsuna had been taught from Reborn.
Before he can go on, however... Something in the gloom seems wrong, and a crinkle starts to gather between his eyebrows. Tsuna shifts forward, his other hand trying to find the other man's face. "Something... wrong with your eyes...?"
Having spoke in sleepy modern Italian upon being disturbed Hayato instantly comes more awake when he registers the name Tsuna calls him and the language he's speaking. He switches to Japanese and reaches out, cupping Tsuna's face. He's never sure quite how to help in these situations. He's seen G, sees him every day in some of the portraits in the Storm corridors. Hayato knows he could be a carbon copy if his coloring was different.
"You can wake me whenever you want, Tsuna. You know that." He slides back in the bed from the edge and opens the blankets invitingly. "Get in with me. Let me hold you." He doesn't know if Giotto and G ever did this, but he's going to try and comfort Tsuna anyway.
"You're Sawada Tsunayoshi. I'm Gokudera Hayato, and the year is 20--."
"And your tattoo..." He's still murmuring dazedly, even when Hayato cups his face. Hardly any invitation needs to be spoken. The gesture seems to be enough to push him up to his feet so he can crawl into bed with him. He's still softly touching along his face, fingers following the curve of his cheek down to his jaw.
Dark red eyes. Brilliant red tattoos. And hair, too, pale red hair, not glimmering silver-
Tsuna blinks, slowly but surely pulling himself out of the mess of memories that cling to him like mud. "Hayato..." It's a soft repetition of the words he's just been told. His fingers go to that brilliant pale hair. "Hayato... Not..." Not G.
"I don't have one." He catches Tsuna's hand and pulls it gently to his ear and the piercings there instead so he can feel the difference. Hayato slides their legs together and scoots in close, sharing warmth.
"Not G. Hayato Gokudera. Tenth generation, Tsuna. You're not Giotto." He wonders if he's taking a risking actually using the Primo's name before Tsuna's pulled himself out of this, but he's done it and it's too late to take back.
Instead, he tucks his face against Tsuna's hair and nuzzles him for a moment.
Even when Hayato tucks his face into Tsuna's mess of hair, he's still feeling along the curve of his ear with such attentive care. Every finger lingers against each piercing, feeling the way it protrudes from his skin and is lukewarm to his skin.
"Hayato." Another soft repetition of his name. Hayato, the tenth generation Storm, piercings and fire, it's... That's right, not G, G is so different. His brow starts to furrow harder, an almost physical effort to something mental. "Gokudera Hayato."
The Japanese way of saying his name. Progress, in a way.
"That's me." He smiles and stretches out next to Tsuna a little, trying to think of something else that would help. His eyes fall on the small piano in his room, the same one he had bought himself before ever meeting Tsuna or traveling to Japan.
His mother's is there at the Japanese base, incentive to get him out of Italy sometimes, and there were a few others throughout the Vongola holdings all old and beautiful and he was honored to play on themwhen he could, but this one, the little piano he had bought himself sat in place of a desk in his bedroom.
By order of Tsuna himself and Takeshi, Hayato wasn't allowed to have a desk in his bedroom or he would never sleep.
There's just another muffled murmur of his name, like it's a charm to bring back his sense of stability, and Tsuna's touch starts to become less exploratory and just repetitive as he strokes the shell of Hayato's ear.
The memories are still tangled together, but at least they're all apparent instead of just one and very wrong dominating set. There are faces and names he knows Giotto isn't familiar with and, bit by bit, he thinks he's sorting it all out.
The request makes him blink back to awareness. "Play?" A mental image, this same person seated at a- "Piano?"
Hayato smiles when Tsuna puts the pieces together without further prompting or leading. He hums and his silver eyelashes flutter over his green eyes.
"That's right. I've got mine right over there. I can play for you, or I can stay right here for you. Whatever you want, Tsuna."
He let's himself use Tsuna's first name. This is personal, not business, it's intimate, and the more reminders he can give his best friend of his identity the better.
"Of course you can. You can have whatever I can give you." Hayato's not Takeshi, but he's no slouch, Tsuna's frame is entirely compacted hand-to-hand fighter's muscle, but he lifts him anyway, carrying softly to the piano bench. He settles down, and sits Tsuna in his lap, reaching around him for the keys as his feet tested the pedals.
For Hayato, Tsuna stays still and quiet. It feels kind of nice, to be carried, to listen to a heartbeat so near to him. Hayato is warm and comforting. Better, even, then the person the Vongola memories tried to think of.
Perhaps he's just biased.
"Not anything sad." A little dreamily, he reaches over to trace the back of Hayato's hand. "What are happier songs?"
"If you could sleep nearby?" is the request he always makes of her whenever Chrome is about the fortress, a smile on his lips as his brow furrows almost in apology.
Being a burden to his friends, letting them down in some way, Tsuna hates such a thing. Anyone who knows him knows that. It's the side effect of having grown up alone, no Family to curl in and protect him and love him until he was approaching fourteen.
Yet Chrome is the best choice. There's no other way to say it.
On nights like this, where he's thrashing in his bed with a grimace on his face, memories of past sin practically drowning him, sure to force him awake just like so many other nights...
"Of course, Boss. When I sleep it will be near you." Because when she does sleep it's in the room next to his the spare that no one really claims as their own. It has an adjoining door meant to be the Vongola Donna's room, but Kyoko had made it clear from the beginning that she and Tsuna would share one room and the adjoining one could be for the collective rotating use of all of them considering the number of lovers they all had and shared.
However, on the nights he poses that request to her, when he can actually bring himself to make such a gentle demand, Chrome does not sleep. She makes a point of joining him in the bed, illusioning herself intangible when need be to avoid his flying limbs. She lays there and watches his face, running conjured fingers along his skin gently and soothingly, waiting for him to wake from the Vongola's bloody past.
Those are the worse nights, in his opinion, because there's no real rest to them. Just wave after wave of blood, enough to suffocate, to drown. Whenever morning comes for him after those kind of nights, he meets his friends and lovers with a bloodshot gaze that even his best attempts to smile can't erase.
Better these sort of nights where he does wake up so that he can go back to sleep at some point... Even if he wakes up with a guttural gasp as he jolts upright in his bed, tears pricking at edges of his wide eyes. There's a flicker of flame at his hands, as if he needs to fight, to protect himself, and he's already jerking his head around to look for enemies.
Chrome can feel it the instant before he stirs, the surge of power that signals his awakening and she's so very careful not to react with her own. She doesn't want to be seen as a threat despite all the instincts in her screaming that Tsuna is dangerous. He is, but not to her, never to her.
She waits for him to look at her, carefully vulnerable in her slip of a night gown, exposed from where his thrashing and wakefulness has thrown off the covers.
"We're safe, Boss." She murmurs. It's the first thing to tell him.
No immediate answer, not verbally. Tsuna just stares at her, pale and feeling as though he's been left in the snow from how cold he is even with the sweat on his skin. Every bit of air is gulped down.
"Safe?" he quotes back to her, still breathless, but at least the heat in the air is starting to dissipate. His eyes are dark, not bright piercing amber. Shakily, he wipes a hand across his face. He can still see blood. "We're safe..."
Chrome reaches up, catching his hand after he wipes it across his face, and brings it to her own, rubbing her cheek against his fingers. Then she props herself up on one elbow, the strap of her night gown sliding off her shoulder.
She moves closer to him, pressing against his side now that he's acknowledged her presence and has registered her as something other than a threat.
Her weight besides him, her hand guiding his touch to her weight, it keeps his dazed stare on her. Automatically, without really thinking about it, he leans back. His fingers stay along her cheek. A woman, missing an eye, with indigo hair- like no one in so many of the memories.
"You," is the simple but honest answer, his fingers still roaming slowly along her skin and dipping down to her now bare shoulder. He knows he needs her, to be exactly as she is. It brushes away any of the other, foreign, memories.
Chrome is a little afraid sometimes she's spent too much time with Mukuro because of the surge of possessive satisfaction she gets when Tsuna expresses his desire for her. Not Kyoko, not Yamamoto, or Gokudera, or any one else, just her.
"I'm here and I'm not going anywhere."
She lays back again, making herself purposefully vulnerable to him, and to the room at large, another signal to prove to his subconscious that they are safe.
A small noise hops out his throat when she suddenly goes back against the bed, away from his touch. He stares at her, blinking slowly, before his request falls from his lips.
"Can I touch you?"
He knows her, he does, and he's certain that exploring with his hands will make it all clear. Just that, nothing else.
Chrome smiles, and shifts, lifting the thin silk over her head and dropping it away towards the empty part of the large bed. She doesn't know if Tsuna wants something sexual or just confirmation of her, but it doesn't matter.
"However you want to."
She will give him as much of herself to touch with no illusions as he wants. Her scars are all there, from the accident and organs, eating up her skin across her right ribs and her stomach, but there are other smaller ones too littered here and there from later years.
With Tsuna, admittedly, sometimes the lines can be rather blurred. The soft way he ghosts his hands across her chest is very much similar to the way he enjoys touching his partners in bed- adoring them, worshiping them, taking his time so that he doesn't forget the shape of their bodies. Chrome has never been any different, with how much he loves her, too.
Every scar gets his utmost attention as his fingers trace out the lines and shape, eyes staring down quietly, and he lingers on every curve of her breasts. It's when his touch reaches the blatant scarring on her sides that he slows even further. Flame flickers to life again at his fingertips, but just briefly, a flare of soft orange, and sinks into her flesh.
"Chrome," he whispers after a moment, blinking rapidly in succession a few times, but still a little spacey.
"Boss." Chrome murmurs her name for him back low in her throat.
His tracing of her scars has drawn goosebumps along her skin. She is alternately over sensitive and unfeeling at different points around her scar tissue and she never quite knows what part of his touch is going to create a reaction for her.
The harmonious flames he sinks into her skin, right over her transplanted organs seep relaxation through her and pull a soft moan from her throat.
Whether he actually notices the sound that pours out from Chrome is a mystery. Tsuna doesn't act like he hears her, just slides his fingers against the subtle differences where her skin is scarred and not. Something about it seems to sooth him and, eventually, he curls up against her side with his head on her stomach and hair brushing along the underside of one breast.
"It's really you." The world is starting to come into focus again.
Chrome hums and carefully threads her fingers into Tsuna's hair. It tickles the sensitive skin it's brushing against as she plays with it, but a tickle is by no means the hardest sensation she's ever had to work around or ignore.
"It's me, Boss. In the flesh, no illusions. Is there anything else I can do for you?"
Despite the conversations they've had in the past, Chrome's fingers still rank high in Tsuna's list of favorite things about her. Something about them is noticeable, unique, as they thread through his hair, and Tsuna breathes. In, out, slowly. Steady.
Safe. Everything is safe, and Chrome is there. No one else.
"...Tell me a favorite memory. Between the two of us. Please?"
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badliifechoiice22016-01-03 08:14 pm
Xanxus
Some in the mafia don't. Blood stains on others deeper than some, tracking them into their dreams like a wounded and haggard wolf. True enough, even with all he tries to do, Tsuna has seen things that stay locked behind his ribcage lurking besides his heart.
It's not just that, however.
He carries more memories and bloody hands than his own with him.
It's likely not a thing Xanxus is intimately familiar with, considering the distance he keeps between himself and the Iron Fortress. A castle full of bitter memories. But tonight, it's not the Iron Fortress Tsuna sleeps at. Tonight has been hours of discussion and planning regarding a troublesome deal in the United States, and it's moved past a reasonable time. Why bother going to a hotel when there's Xanxus' bed there? Lovers are allowed to share such things.
...But Tsuna rarely rests easy, and tonight is no exception as he squirms and murmurs incoherently in his sleep, even with Xanxus nearby.
no subject
Even more knowing that he's been recently injured enough that he had needed Lussuria to heal him. He should be in bed, resting with Tsuna. Instead, he sits at his desk and goes through more paperwork that's piled up between missions plus the new issues in the States. He hasn't had time to even cut his hair from the little side-effect that happens from too much Sun Peacock.
The desk is an old familiar thing really. Just as the chair he is sitting on. Just as the view out the window is.
As a child he had always been obsessed with the man in the second portrait on the wall of the Iron Fortress. The one everyone whispered about in fear. Dead for centuries and a name that still put the fear of god into people. The same man whose power he possessed. A man whom there had been a time he had wanted to be just like. He had idolized the Second as a little boy. It's why he has so many of his things now.
It's Ricardo's desk he sits at. It's Ricardo's chair. It's Ricardo's castle. Even the Varia had been Ricardo's. His idea. His creation. The first Varia Ring had been his and the stones within the Upgraded ones had been shards of the Rainbow left behind by Ricardo as well. And it's Ricardo's bed that Tsuna sleeps in.
Xanxus shifts through important paperwork until he can't stand the shifting and the mumbling any more. Then he stands to go over. Lightly, he puts a hand upon Tsuna's head to smooth his hair before heading towards a window, hoping the fresh air might do him well. It leaves him standing behind his desk, silhouetted in the moonlight.
no subject
Just not the proper place.
It's not Tsuna's memories that the figure at the window rings against, but someone else's, and his face is almost foreign when he gives a loose smile as he pushes himself up sleepily. He's still not half there, and the old Italian which fumbles out from his mouth is all reckless fondness.
"Ricardo." Like it could be anyone else. The blankets are shoved away from his body, freeing his feet so he can press them against the floor. He knows this place. Of course he does. It's Ricardo's place, he can tell from the floor alone. "Stay up so late like this so often, and you'll get gray hairs all the earlier, I keep telling you."
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He frowns a little, turning from the window to look at the man. "I always stay up this late. I needed to take care of some of that business we discussed earlier." To Tsuna's mangled memories, that voice should sound just as familiar. The man he is remembering has that same voice. That same tone, though slightly deeper.
The things in the States needed looking after. Tsuna might want to do this peacefully, but Xanxus had used that time to mobilized the Varia in America. Of course he knows not to say that because he knows how Tsuna gets about him readying the killing squads.
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"That's the problem," he groans, pushing himself up onto unsteady feet. "Always late, turn into bed early for once, Ricci!" His walk is a bit wobbly and more than a little slow, but it's late, and he's tired. At least he makes it to Ricardo's desk, which feels so familiar and reassuring under his touch. God bless his cousin's tastes, even if the rest of him is probably too sinful for even the Lord to touch. He doesn't blame him for that, however. Not with what he's asked of him and how much he's leaned on his shoulder more than once. Slumping across the surface, he runs a hand through his mess of hair.
"I bet if I was a woman, you'd be in bed," he grumbles. A moment, and he amends, "And not family." That's important. He knows it is.
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He's trying to work out why Tsuna kept calling him the wrong name. He had touched the ring once. Worn it one time. He had seen what was inside. He had only touched it briefly before the Ring and 7 of the 8 within declared him unworthy and it rejected him. He had perhaps dodged a bullet.
"Tsuna?" He slides next to the man and his fingertips lightly stroke against the back of Tsuna's neck. It's more than just a simple fond touch. It's the caress of a concerned lover. Then because he's unsure and he has seen the inside of the Sky Ring, he whispers, "Giotto? If you want me in bed with you, I'll go. But you know that there's business I can only do in the dead of the night." He's worried though. He's worried he's wrong. But even more concerned that he's right.
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Yet it slips under again when those rough fingers glad along his neck, and he shivers slightly. The feelings he has confessed of his cousin. The urges. If only he didn't touch him like he did sometimes, it would be so much easier to ignore them. This is a trial, he thinks sometimes. Something sent from up on high to see if he's deserving of the success he's made out of a tiny band of those who had enough of the injustice levied out by others.
And there's his name. His proper name, not the nickname Ricardo murmurs so fondly at times and yells at the top of his lungs at others. He must really be bothering him.
"I know," he answers back softly, reaching to take that large hand in his. "It scares me sometimes, you know. The work you do when it's so late, sometimes with not even the moon to watch you. It feels like I'll lose you to the night." Just one reason out of many to hate when they argue.
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His jaw clenches and he looks down to the hand that takes his. His eyes land on the ring. If he tried to take it, he wondered what would happen. But at the same time, he is worried that if he does take it, Tsuna might get stuck like this.
He tries to remember those journals he had poured over as a young boy. He had been so obsessed with the Second. Tries to think about how to handle the man that had looked at him inside that ring and refused him. Xanxus shifts his hold on the man's hand, lightly making little circles against the fragile insides of his wrist with a thumb.
He has to remember that this is still Tsuna. No matter who is there right now. He looks down at the man and that long tail falls over his shoulder.
He swallows a little and murmurs. "It's a little too late to worry about that, don't you think? I've made already my peace with it." That, at least, is very true. He'll let Tsuna be the noon day sky. He is fine ruling the night and making it so that Tsuna's sky keeps shining.
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The words are still in that old Italian, that hasn't changed, but at their core... They're true regardless if it's the regrets of a dead man or the fears of one alive. Giotto Vongola and Sawada Tsunayoshi are two entirely different people, familial connections and too-good-to-be-coincidences aside. In some areas, however, they are alike.
Their fears for their loved ones is such an area.
His eyes drift shut as his wrist is stroked, and sleep is such a temptation again. "Life is too short for us to argue so much. Not when I care for you so much."
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He doesn't think he can be that man either. He doesn't even know if trying would be fair to Tsuna. Still, he wonders if there was a way to bring the man back. To so that, he'll try to remember all those things he read. "You know I don't enjoy it either. I hate fighting with you. But he's right." There's huge sections of those journals about Spade, about all those things Spade convinced the Second to believe. Things Xanxus understands aren't really that wrong, because it was what made them what they are today. "We'll never have enough power to do what you want if you're afraid to make sacrifices. It's because I love you so much that I'm willing to do what you won't."
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Still, he tries. Tries because there's a hazily miserable but dark look on his face now.
"We're doing it again," he murmurs, a shimmer of anger becoming apparent now as well. "We're- you know why he's pushing for that kind of thing, it's because..." Pushing himself up to his feet, he has to pause because the world swims, just like his memories. An enormous ballroom, a ruined and abandoned theater- both seem to mix for a second. "Trapped... in the past. He's trapped in the past and thinks all this bloodshed will fix things..."
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He sighs. "We are doing it again. When you are far too tired to really put up a good fight." He doesn't know if this is something he did, but Xanxus is bold enough to do it anyway. Just sweep the smaller man off his feet and up into a carry. "So what we're going to do is we're going to put a pin in this for the morning and you are going to go back to bed."
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"Don't... Don't." He flops his hand against Xanxus' shoulder. "You always do this to throw me out..." And they're not even close to that level of an argument yet, the foggy memories say. No one is yelling, and nothing has been thrown. Although somehow that seems odd. Does he really yell or throw things like that? Tsuna goes quiet, the dissonance a little stronger now as he stays curled up against Xanxus.
"...You aren't going, are you?"
Gokudera
For a moment, his mind swims, and he fumbles his hands upwards until he can feel the ring hanging from his neck in a chain. Oh good he thinks blearily. The ring is still there. Such a precious gift from the Giglio Nero's matriarch, and he thinks it might be the most expensive thing in the world he's ever touched. Every day he thinks he'll accidentally lose it, no matter how much his friends say otherwise. They think him so reliable, even though he was once just nothing more than any other man on the street. With a little unsteadiness, Tsuna draws himself out of his bed with memories still not his own swirling through his head.
So much responsibility on his shoulders, no wonder he's not sleeping well. G's presence will help, he thinks. G always makes the world seem so clear despite the flames inside of him. But doesn't the sky seem so much clearer after a storm?
Unsteady but determined, he begins to make his way to the room that once upon a time belonged to the first of the Vongola's Storm Guardians.
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For once Hayato is in bed, soundly asleep without extra work, Tsuna himself, Takeshi, or even Haru after a drunken crying jag she hid from the others curled up against him.
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There's a figure in the bed. It's him. He knows it is. Who else could it be in G's bed?
He's already tired, so the best Tsuna can do is wobble over besides his bed and reach over to take his best friend's hand into his as he slumps down to his knees. There's something off here, something in the shadows that doesn't seem right, but it's not enough to knock his thoughts back into place just yet.
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"Boss? Are you alright? Why aren't you in bed?"
Give him another beat or two and he'll panic but for the moment he's filled with sleepy confusion.
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There's so much wrong with what he's saying, and he doesn't even know it. It's not even just the wrong name. It's even the language on his tongue. Tsuna always speaks in Japanese in private when he's with his friends, keeping some part of home with him. It helps to deal with such displacement. But this is Italian... Old Italian, too, the dialect so different from what Tsuna had been taught from Reborn.
Before he can go on, however... Something in the gloom seems wrong, and a crinkle starts to gather between his eyebrows. Tsuna shifts forward, his other hand trying to find the other man's face. "Something... wrong with your eyes...?"
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"You can wake me whenever you want, Tsuna. You know that." He slides back in the bed from the edge and opens the blankets invitingly. "Get in with me. Let me hold you." He doesn't know if Giotto and G ever did this, but he's going to try and comfort Tsuna anyway.
"You're Sawada Tsunayoshi. I'm Gokudera Hayato, and the year is 20--."
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Dark red eyes. Brilliant red tattoos. And hair, too, pale red hair, not glimmering silver-
Tsuna blinks, slowly but surely pulling himself out of the mess of memories that cling to him like mud. "Hayato..." It's a soft repetition of the words he's just been told. His fingers go to that brilliant pale hair. "Hayato... Not..." Not G.
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"Not G. Hayato Gokudera. Tenth generation, Tsuna. You're not Giotto." He wonders if he's taking a risking actually using the Primo's name before Tsuna's pulled himself out of this, but he's done it and it's too late to take back.
Instead, he tucks his face against Tsuna's hair and nuzzles him for a moment.
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"Hayato." Another soft repetition of his name. Hayato, the tenth generation Storm, piercings and fire, it's... That's right, not G, G is so different. His brow starts to furrow harder, an almost physical effort to something mental. "Gokudera Hayato."
The Japanese way of saying his name. Progress, in a way.
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His mother's is there at the Japanese base, incentive to get him out of Italy sometimes, and there were a few others throughout the Vongola holdings all old and beautiful and he was honored to play on themwhen he could, but this one, the little piano he had bought himself sat in place of a desk in his bedroom.
By order of Tsuna himself and Takeshi, Hayato wasn't allowed to have a desk in his bedroom or he would never sleep.
"Do you want me to play for you?"
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The memories are still tangled together, but at least they're all apparent instead of just one and very wrong dominating set. There are faces and names he knows Giotto isn't familiar with and, bit by bit, he thinks he's sorting it all out.
The request makes him blink back to awareness. "Play?" A mental image, this same person seated at a- "Piano?"
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"That's right. I've got mine right over there. I can play for you, or I can stay right here for you. Whatever you want, Tsuna."
He let's himself use Tsuna's first name. This is personal, not business, it's intimate, and the more reminders he can give his best friend of his identity the better.
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Just sitting besides him as he plays, keeping both his warmth near while something- maybe familiar even- plays and soothes him.
Or maybe that's not possible. But he'd like it to be.
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"What sort of thing would you like to hear?"
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Perhaps he's just biased.
"Not anything sad." A little dreamily, he reaches over to trace the back of Hayato's hand. "What are happier songs?"
Chrome
Being a burden to his friends, letting them down in some way, Tsuna hates such a thing. Anyone who knows him knows that. It's the side effect of having grown up alone, no Family to curl in and protect him and love him until he was approaching fourteen.
Yet Chrome is the best choice. There's no other way to say it.
On nights like this, where he's thrashing in his bed with a grimace on his face, memories of past sin practically drowning him, sure to force him awake just like so many other nights...
She's the best choice for helping him fix it all.
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However, on the nights he poses that request to her, when he can actually bring himself to make such a gentle demand, Chrome does not sleep. She makes a point of joining him in the bed, illusioning herself intangible when need be to avoid his flying limbs. She lays there and watches his face, running conjured fingers along his skin gently and soothingly, waiting for him to wake from the Vongola's bloody past.
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Those are the worse nights, in his opinion, because there's no real rest to them. Just wave after wave of blood, enough to suffocate, to drown. Whenever morning comes for him after those kind of nights, he meets his friends and lovers with a bloodshot gaze that even his best attempts to smile can't erase.
Better these sort of nights where he does wake up so that he can go back to sleep at some point... Even if he wakes up with a guttural gasp as he jolts upright in his bed, tears pricking at edges of his wide eyes. There's a flicker of flame at his hands, as if he needs to fight, to protect himself, and he's already jerking his head around to look for enemies.
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She waits for him to look at her, carefully vulnerable in her slip of a night gown, exposed from where his thrashing and wakefulness has thrown off the covers.
"We're safe, Boss." She murmurs. It's the first thing to tell him.
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"Safe?" he quotes back to her, still breathless, but at least the heat in the air is starting to dissipate. His eyes are dark, not bright piercing amber. Shakily, he wipes a hand across his face. He can still see blood. "We're safe..."
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She moves closer to him, pressing against his side now that he's acknowledged her presence and has registered her as something other than a threat.
"What do you need, Tsuna?"
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"You," is the simple but honest answer, his fingers still roaming slowly along her skin and dipping down to her now bare shoulder. He knows he needs her, to be exactly as she is. It brushes away any of the other, foreign, memories.
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"I'm here and I'm not going anywhere."
She lays back again, making herself purposefully vulnerable to him, and to the room at large, another signal to prove to his subconscious that they are safe.
"What do you need from me?"
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"Can I touch you?"
He knows her, he does, and he's certain that exploring with his hands will make it all clear. Just that, nothing else.
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"However you want to."
She will give him as much of herself to touch with no illusions as he wants. Her scars are all there, from the accident and organs, eating up her skin across her right ribs and her stomach, but there are other smaller ones too littered here and there from later years.
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Every scar gets his utmost attention as his fingers trace out the lines and shape, eyes staring down quietly, and he lingers on every curve of her breasts. It's when his touch reaches the blatant scarring on her sides that he slows even further. Flame flickers to life again at his fingertips, but just briefly, a flare of soft orange, and sinks into her flesh.
"Chrome," he whispers after a moment, blinking rapidly in succession a few times, but still a little spacey.
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His tracing of her scars has drawn goosebumps along her skin. She is alternately over sensitive and unfeeling at different points around her scar tissue and she never quite knows what part of his touch is going to create a reaction for her.
The harmonious flames he sinks into her skin, right over her transplanted organs seep relaxation through her and pull a soft moan from her throat.
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"It's really you." The world is starting to come into focus again.
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"It's me, Boss. In the flesh, no illusions. Is there anything else I can do for you?"
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Safe. Everything is safe, and Chrome is there. No one else.
"...Tell me a favorite memory. Between the two of us. Please?"