Fic Post
Title: His Manifesto
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Gokudera
Warnings: Uh. Character death.
Summary: And this is his manifesto, and always has been. Hate them more than they hate you, and you'll make it out alright. Future fic~
His Manifesto
He explodes, day after day, night after night. He's a bundle of nerves, he knows it, all his inconsistencies and weaknesses, and he winds tighter and tighter, every time, until he breaks. And every time, he explodes, screaming and fighting and trying to make them hurt as much as they hurt him.
Japan's the worst, though, because Japan's the last straw, the final time he hears you're not good enough. And so he goes to Japan, because if he's going to explode, if he's going to go down, then he'll take someone with him.
And in Japan, he's not good enough. The Tenth is better than him, and the Tenth has others who are better than him, and Hayato's only good for destroying everything in the same, mindless way he always has. And he lives this way, a short fuse and a shorter life, and wonders when the last time he's going to explode is.
And the last time is in the summer, when the sky is bright and the sun is broiling. He can feel sweat slick down his back, or maybe it's blood, and there's him and Takeshi between the Tenth and the world, and Hayato's never liked the world.
"I," he says, and he flicks his hands, one broken, the other bloody, and he doesn't have much, but he has himself, "hate you." And this is his manifesto, and always has been. Hate them more than they hate you, and you'll make it out alright. And he hates them, hates them all, except for his Family, and he'll kill everyone, even himself, for his Family. And it's not too hard, to let his Family break him.
The world takes Hayato down, and Hayato takes the world down with him.
Title: The Three
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Tsuna and Yamamoto
Warnings: Uh. Character death.
Summary: Takeshi stops talking the day Hayato stops breathing. Tsuna wonders when the two became so alike, and how one ghost can become two, when one is still breathing. Future fic, sequel to "His Manifesto" (above). Vague Takeshi/Tsuna if you squint.
The Three
Takeshi stops talking--
Takeshi stops talking the day Hayato stops breathing. Tsuna wonders when the two became so alike, and how one ghost can become two, when one is still breathing.
Hayato's buried in Italy, near Bianchi's grave, and Tsuna goes there every day for the first while, to sit next to Hayato, and talk about most anything. The world's half-gone, it seems. Takeshi's quiet, and Hayato's quieter, and Tsuna's Family is falling, one by one.
Hayato never talks back, and after a few months, Tsuna stops going, because the ground is cold and wet, and Tsuna lost his tears long ago. Instead, he takes to sitting outside his house, smoking, nodding to his girls as they leave for school. The cigarettes taste strange in his mouth, but if he's smoking, he doesn't have time for talking, and if he doesn't talk, then he doesn't have to notice the way Takeshi and Hayato never answer.
"Tsuna," Dino says every third Wednesday, crowsfeet behind his glasses, "Hayato--"
And every third Wednesday, like clockwork, Tsuna stands, and Takeshi with him, and Hayato with him, and they leave, ghosting into one room or another, opening the doors, then shutting them.
"Takeshi," Tsuna says one night, or one morning, when the sky is dark and the stars mostly gone, "Takeshi."
Takeshi's eyes are cold, and his mouth is thin, and he rests his hands upon Tsuna's shoulders for one minute, then two.
"I won't," Takeshi says, his voice gravelly, "leave you," and Tsuna says, "yes."
The world's not kind, and life isn't either, but Tsuna is kind, and he keeps his promises. Takeshi dies one day, staggering then falling, and Tsuna falls with him, because Tsuna will never let Takeshi leave him.
In the House, there are three ghosts, and many closed doors.
Title: Numbering Loves
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: unrequitted adult!Fuuta/Bianchi
Warnings: None, really.
Summary:He caresses the binding, runs his fingers along the seams where the thread is aged and yellowed-- Sorta TYL, sorta not. Mostly not. Mostly unrequitted. Love's a pain.
Numbering Loves
Fuuta's an only child. He doesn't have any brothers, doesn't have any sisters, and so he loves Tsuna's Family, the feeling of being part of a bigger whole. Of being more than just himself.
He tags along after Tsuna as often as he can, following in Yamamoto's and Gokudera's footsteps, but he always lags, gets left behind. He's small, his mother says, has always been small for his age, and he can't run as fast as everyone else, can't fight nearly so hard. All he can really do, day after day, is read his book, where he writes in tiny cursive. Act like a doll, a little prince to be set up in a castle, waiting for the world to turn for him.
Bianchi takes him by the hand sometimes, murmurs in his ear. She tells him to be patient, to wait. He'll grow, she says, and he'll run after them all. All the boys do, she says. He listens to her, his book heavy in his lap, and she tells him to wait.
She tells him many things. She tells him about her mother, and Gokudera's mother. About her father, and her Family. About her fiance, shot in the head three times. About her best friend, throat slit at nineteen. About everyone she loves, dead or dying, and everyone she hates, living and breathing. He writes her name in list after list, ranking after ranking. Angriest, strongest, smartest, most dangerous. Loneliest. Saddest.
"Wait," she says, "be patient," and then she leaves, dogging the footsteps of all the older boys, her eyes fixed on Gokudera and Tsuna, Yamamoto and Reborn. Fuuta watches her go, and writes a new ranking. Most likely to die. Tsuna's at the top. Bianchi and Gokudera round out the top ten. Fuuta shuts his book, puts his pen away. Doesn't write for months.
He's always wanted a sister. Or a brother. Or anyone more than his mother, because his mother's gone now, and Fuuta feels alone. And so he dogs their footsteps, like Bianchi, and sits at their tables, eating their food and laughing at their jokes. He grows up in their houses, months in this house, years in that house. He grows in inches, then feet, and his Family's growing bigger. Tsuna's Family is growing bigger. And there are always more rankings in the book.
Fastest, sturdiest, most reliable. Most loving. Most beautiful.
Bianchi's name is slowly moving up, and he doesn't want to look at her, not like that, but he does, and he can't look away.
"Wait," Bianchi says, and Fuuta doesn't try to run anymore. He waits for her, walks next to her, and listens to her stories. She tells him about Gokudera, kicked out of university, and Tsuna, still living at home. About Yamamoto, his arms twisted and ruined, and Reborn, less than half of what he'd been. She tells him to write it down, this and that, all of it, and he writes as she watches, scratching his pen across the page.
"Wait," she says, and, "write something happy."
Love, he writes, and all the things he loves. His parents, his Family, Tsuna's Family. Tsuna, Yamamoto, Gokudera, and Chrome. Bianchi, alone at the top, a space the width of Fuuta's thumb between her and the others. And on the next page, again, and the next page, once more. And the next page, and the next. And list, after list, and the things change. His parents sink lower, as they sink lower in their graves, and he can't remember their faces. Yamamoto drags down the list as his career drags on in America, and Tsuna's name jumps between three and seven, nine and two. And Bianchi's name stays steady, slow and firm and there at the top, and Fuuta walks by her side.
"Wait," she says, and Fuuta holds onto his book, and writes down his happy things, and his lists of her. Most beautiful, most charming, most loving. Most loved.
Title: Bloodlust
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Gokudera/Yamamoto
Warnings: Sex, killings? Mafia boys being mafia boys.
Summary: Hayato slits his first throat at seventeen. Hayato/Yamamoto, dead men, close-quarters killings.
Bloodlust
Hayato slits his first throat at seventeen. The blood is hot on his hands, hotter than he expected, and the man convulses in Hayato's arms, limbs loose, then rigid, then loose again. Hayato fumbles, hears the knife clatter on the floor, and chokes back a breath.
He's never been this close before-- Dynamite is something different, something at a distance that takes men out with a roar, bodies strewn in his path. This is-- The man makes a sick gasping sound, wet, like he's drowning, and Hayato's hands slip, slippery-wet, on the man's arms.
"Gokudera?" Yamamoto asks, near Hayato's ear. Hayato jerks, then lets go of the body, stepping back and turning to grab at Yamamoto's shirt. He pushes, and then Yamamoto's pressed against the wall, and Hayato's pressed against Yamamoto, and he's shoving his mouth against Yamamoto's, teeth and lips and tongue.
There's slick wet, and heat, and the taste of blood, and Hayato doesn't know if it's his, or Yamamoto's, or the man's, and the thought is kinda good, in a fucked up way, and Hayato groans, pressing his hips forward, trying to grind against Yamamoto without being too obvious about it, because, damnit, Yamamoto isn't--
"You okay?" Yamamoto asks, mild and bland as always, as if Hayato's hand isn't halfway down his jeans, and as if Yamamoto's hand isn't all the way down Hayato's. Hayato snarls, kisses Yamamoto all the harder, and lets the taste of blood get all the stronger.
He might, he might, he might like this, too much, the closeness and the blood, and it's like dynamite, only more, explosions in his skin and in his blood, and maybe this is why Shamal gave him dynamite, because too close is too much, and Hayato's never been able to control himself.
"I'm fine," he snaps, and he is fine, better than fine, and that's what's wrong, what's scaring the hell out of him, fucking him up inside. He's better than fine, and Yamamoto's better than fine, and the dead men are dead, spread out on the floor, and their blood tastes bittersweet in Hayato's mouth.
Fine has always been a relative word.
Title: Plucking Feathers
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Dino/Hibari
Warnings: Implied sex, death? Crazy people.
Summary: The phone is small in his hand, and Kyouya's breath from the other side is smaller. Dino/Hibari, names, and what love really means. Or doesn't mean. Because you can't pluck the one you love. Shameless use (and subsequent destruction) of folktales and folksongs.
Plucking Feathers
"What does your name mean?" Kyouya asks once, sitting on the edge of the backseat, his fingertips resting against the window. Dino laughs, shrugs, looks away.
"Bernardino? It means bear."
Kyouya laughs, long and loud, and when he crawls over the car seat, he laughs into Dino's mouth, and bites Dino until they're both bleeding, and sweating, and coming, stinking of sweat and exhaustion and sex.
"Your name?" Dino asks days later, when he's coiling his whip and Kyouya's retying a shoelace with long, thin fingers. "What does it mean, Kyuouya?"
"Hibari--" Kyouya's fingers twists the laces, knots them once more, then drag over the shoe, brush the ground. "It's a bird. A skylark."
"Skylark," Dino echoes back, and he says, looking up, "it's pretty."
When Kyouya's backing him against an alley wall, blood glinting on his chin, fingers brushing against Dino's neck, he murmurs, against Dino's mouth, "pretty's not needed."
"There's a song," Dino says one night, leaning against a wall. The phone is small in his hand, and Kyouya's breath from the other side is smaller. "About a skylark."
Kyouya's breath changes, listening, and Dino blinks, says, "you pluck it, its head, its eyes, its heart."
"And that's love?" Kyouya sounds as though he's laughing, his breath quick and light. Dino grins, lets his head roll back against the wall.
"It's French, they're mad. Italians, much better."
"We," Kyouya says, with the strange pride he always has when he's speaking of his Japanese, of Namimori and his family and his name, with all its fucked up rules and regulations that hold Kyouya to the earth tighter than anything else, "pluck the sparrows' children, and cut out their tongues."
"Love?" Dino asks, confused and intrigued all at once, and Kyouya's laughter is brighter, harsher.
"You don't love birds," Kyouya says, "because in the end, they always fly away."
"There was a crane wife," Kyouya says one day, standing behind Dino. His hands brush down the center of Dino's coat, heavy enough for Dino to feel it, shiver away. "Her husband heard her clattering in the closet, and he looked inside. She was a crane, and when he startled her, she flew away."
"Kyouya," Dino says, and Kyouya's skittering away, blood on his face and his teeth in a bright smile.
"You don't love birds, Cavallone. They don't come when you call, not like your dogs. Can't pluck their feathers forever."
"Kyouya," Dino snaps, and his hand wraps around Kyouya's wrist, and Kyouya's fingers, long and thin, wrap around his throat. Kyouya's mouth is close, closing on his ear, and Kyouya's words are in Italian, harsh and panting.
"What do you pluck, when there's nothing left?"
Kyouya falls from the building, arms spread, and he doesn't fly. He falls, and Dino stands, and the world spins on love, lopsided and cut, with no one left to pluck.
Title: Cigarette Love
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Gokudera, World.
Warnings: None, really.
Summary: "Stop," Takeshi says one night, pulling a cigarette from Hayato's mouth, and Hayato says, "I can't." Alternate-future fic. Gokudera, the Tsuna Family, and cancer.
Cigarette Love
Takeshi's waiting for him outside the building, leaning against the sidewalk guardrail. Hayato takes a breath as the doors slide shut behind him, then taps out a cigarette, palming his lighter. Takeshi frowns and Hayate shoves the pack back into his back pocket, slouching.
"What'd they say?" Takeshi asks, and Hayato follows him down the street, lighting his cigarette with a careless flick.
"Not much." There's a pang in his chest, real or imagined, he doesn't know, and he flicks the lighter again, just to watch the flame blow out.
"Will you tell Tsuna?" Takeshi asks, and Hayate shoves the lighter in his pocket, too.
"Not much to tell him," he says, and he takes Takeshi out drinking. The beer's bitter, and the cigarette smoke in the bar clouds the air. Hayato breathes it in, and imagines that death tastes sweet.
The Tenth's not as naive as he used to be, and he figures that something's wrong in a couple days. He hounds Hayato, well-meaning eyes and worried mouth, and Hayato smokes cigarette after cigarette, sitting on the porch.
"Hayato," the Tenth says, and Hayato's out of cigarettes. He pats his pockets, wonders if he has enough change to go to a vending machine.
"Hayato," the Tenth says, sharper, and Hayato swallows, feels something in his throat and chest. He thinks it might be regret.
"Please--"
He's not sure who says it, but he bows and runs, because he's always been good at running away, from Shamal and Bianchi, Italy and Japan. When he reaches the vending machine, he's out of breath, and the cigarettes taste sour in his mouth.
"Stop," Takeshi says one night, pulling a cigarette from Hayato's mouth. Hayato sighs, falls back onto the porch.
"I can't," he says, stretching out his legs. He feels Takeshi sit next to him, close enough to bump him, and sighs again.
"You've lost weight," Takeshi says mildly, and his fingers are light on Hayato's skin. Hayato closes his eyes, turns away.
"Not hungry. Get me a cigarette."
"Tsuna--"
Hayato grabs Takeshi, pulls him close enough to slam a hand over Takeshi's mouth. Takeshi's eyes are narrowed, but his lips are still behind Hayato's hand, and it's quiet for a moment.
"Come drinking with me," Hayato says after a moment, pulling his hand away. He feels fever-bright, breathless with excitement and life, and he wants to burn. "We can find girls to fuck, someone to fight."
"Hayato," Takeshi says, and Hayato kisses him, hard, and wonders if Takeshi can taste cigarette smoke and blood.
"Come with me," he says again, and Takeshi's eyes are cold.
He coughs up blood in the morning, bright red and sticky. The Tenth's face is pale, and his hands are shaking, and Hayato wants a cigarette, needs a cigarette, because he can feel his life shaking away.
"Hayato," the Tenth says, "you need--"
"Nothing." Hayato presses the back of his hand to his mouth, curls the stained tissues in close to his chest.
"Please," the Tenth says. Hayato can feel himself shake all the more, because he can't say no, can never say no.
"I don't want to know," he wants to say, but the words are stuck, and they taste like iron on his tongue.
"They said," he says days later, sitting on Shamal's table, "a few months."
Shamal is moving around the room, dark head bowed against the white coat, and Hayato watches him, leaning back on his hands. He breathes, coughs, then taps at the table with his fingertips.
"Why are you here, then?" Shamal finally asks, still turned away. Hayato scratches at the table, then taps again, looking stubbornly across the room.
"No reason."
"I can't," Shamal says, "do anything."
"I didn't--" Hayato begins, but Shamal's arms are around him, and Hayato leans forward, lets his forehead fall against Shamal's shoulder. "I don't--"
"I can't," Shamal says again, "do anything."
"Fix me--"
"I can't--"
Hibari views Hayato with the same thoughtless disdain he views the rest of the world, and Hayato almost feels happy. He stands in front of Hibari, wonders what he can say to make Hibari hit him, and wonders if he's gone crazy.
"Hey," he says, voice rough. Hibari looks at him, a mixture of rage and boredom, and Hayato bites back a sharp smile.
"You're in my way," Hibari says, pushing past, and Hayato follows along in his wake, the feeling of pressure twisting him inside out, like he's still alive, and the thought that he's alive--
"Hey," Hayato dogs again, death sentence and all, and he doesn't want to think he's desperate, because he hates desperate people, but he might be desperate, because all around, everyone's desperate, and he can't do this, can't be strong when the Tenth looks at him like that, and when Takeshi talks like this, and Shamal weeps like he's lost another son.
"My bird," Hibari says suddenly, and Hayato's caught off-guard like always, because Hibari's like a rabid dog. Look, don't touch, and watch for the teeth. "It died a few months ago."
"Yeah?" Hayato asks, and Hibari's turning, face close to Hayato's, his breath moving Hayato's hair.
"You can't," Hibari says, "find another bird that sings the same. It's hard, to replace the favorites."
"Yeah?" Hayato asks again, and that night he sinks onto the Tenth's floor.
"You'll miss me?" he asks, feeling like a child, and wondering if he's always been a child, only twenty-three and still so stupid.
The Tenth is tight-lipped, eyes shut just as tight, and Hayato wants to reach out and touch him. He pulls out his lighter, flicks it, and wonders if the Tenth's skin is as cold as it looks.
"Will you miss me, Tsuna?" he asks, and the Tenth's eyes open, flicker. Hayato swallows and asks, "will you?"
"Yes," the Tenth says, and Hayato watches him bow to the floor, shaking. He wants to reach out, touch the Tenth, and feel him shake.
"I'm sorry," he says, and he's sorry for so many things. "I'm sorry," he says, and he bows down, and kisses Tsuna.
Italy is far drier than Japan, and Hayato feels his throat tighten, and a pain in his chest that stabs a little deeper. He takes a breath, holds it until the pain is throbbing, and knocks at the door. There are footsteps on the other side of the apartment door, slow then quick, and Hayato takes another gasping breath, biting his lip against the pain.
When the door opens, and Bianchi looks at him through thick glasses, Hayato feels himself let go.
"Hayato," Bianchi says, and her arms are around Hayato, warm and strong. Her eyes are sad, and the eyes of the mother that was never Hayato's. Hayato feels something in him break, and he thinks this might be a place he's always been looking for. "You're back."
"I'm home."
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Gokudera
Warnings: Uh. Character death.
Summary: And this is his manifesto, and always has been. Hate them more than they hate you, and you'll make it out alright. Future fic~
His Manifesto
He explodes, day after day, night after night. He's a bundle of nerves, he knows it, all his inconsistencies and weaknesses, and he winds tighter and tighter, every time, until he breaks. And every time, he explodes, screaming and fighting and trying to make them hurt as much as they hurt him.
Japan's the worst, though, because Japan's the last straw, the final time he hears you're not good enough. And so he goes to Japan, because if he's going to explode, if he's going to go down, then he'll take someone with him.
And in Japan, he's not good enough. The Tenth is better than him, and the Tenth has others who are better than him, and Hayato's only good for destroying everything in the same, mindless way he always has. And he lives this way, a short fuse and a shorter life, and wonders when the last time he's going to explode is.
And the last time is in the summer, when the sky is bright and the sun is broiling. He can feel sweat slick down his back, or maybe it's blood, and there's him and Takeshi between the Tenth and the world, and Hayato's never liked the world.
"I," he says, and he flicks his hands, one broken, the other bloody, and he doesn't have much, but he has himself, "hate you." And this is his manifesto, and always has been. Hate them more than they hate you, and you'll make it out alright. And he hates them, hates them all, except for his Family, and he'll kill everyone, even himself, for his Family. And it's not too hard, to let his Family break him.
The world takes Hayato down, and Hayato takes the world down with him.
Title: The Three
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Tsuna and Yamamoto
Warnings: Uh. Character death.
Summary: Takeshi stops talking the day Hayato stops breathing. Tsuna wonders when the two became so alike, and how one ghost can become two, when one is still breathing. Future fic, sequel to "His Manifesto" (above). Vague Takeshi/Tsuna if you squint.
The Three
Takeshi stops talking--
Takeshi stops talking the day Hayato stops breathing. Tsuna wonders when the two became so alike, and how one ghost can become two, when one is still breathing.
Hayato's buried in Italy, near Bianchi's grave, and Tsuna goes there every day for the first while, to sit next to Hayato, and talk about most anything. The world's half-gone, it seems. Takeshi's quiet, and Hayato's quieter, and Tsuna's Family is falling, one by one.
Hayato never talks back, and after a few months, Tsuna stops going, because the ground is cold and wet, and Tsuna lost his tears long ago. Instead, he takes to sitting outside his house, smoking, nodding to his girls as they leave for school. The cigarettes taste strange in his mouth, but if he's smoking, he doesn't have time for talking, and if he doesn't talk, then he doesn't have to notice the way Takeshi and Hayato never answer.
"Tsuna," Dino says every third Wednesday, crowsfeet behind his glasses, "Hayato--"
And every third Wednesday, like clockwork, Tsuna stands, and Takeshi with him, and Hayato with him, and they leave, ghosting into one room or another, opening the doors, then shutting them.
"Takeshi," Tsuna says one night, or one morning, when the sky is dark and the stars mostly gone, "Takeshi."
Takeshi's eyes are cold, and his mouth is thin, and he rests his hands upon Tsuna's shoulders for one minute, then two.
"I won't," Takeshi says, his voice gravelly, "leave you," and Tsuna says, "yes."
The world's not kind, and life isn't either, but Tsuna is kind, and he keeps his promises. Takeshi dies one day, staggering then falling, and Tsuna falls with him, because Tsuna will never let Takeshi leave him.
In the House, there are three ghosts, and many closed doors.
Title: Numbering Loves
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: unrequitted adult!Fuuta/Bianchi
Warnings: None, really.
Summary:He caresses the binding, runs his fingers along the seams where the thread is aged and yellowed-- Sorta TYL, sorta not. Mostly not. Mostly unrequitted. Love's a pain.
Numbering Loves
Fuuta's an only child. He doesn't have any brothers, doesn't have any sisters, and so he loves Tsuna's Family, the feeling of being part of a bigger whole. Of being more than just himself.
He tags along after Tsuna as often as he can, following in Yamamoto's and Gokudera's footsteps, but he always lags, gets left behind. He's small, his mother says, has always been small for his age, and he can't run as fast as everyone else, can't fight nearly so hard. All he can really do, day after day, is read his book, where he writes in tiny cursive. Act like a doll, a little prince to be set up in a castle, waiting for the world to turn for him.
Bianchi takes him by the hand sometimes, murmurs in his ear. She tells him to be patient, to wait. He'll grow, she says, and he'll run after them all. All the boys do, she says. He listens to her, his book heavy in his lap, and she tells him to wait.
She tells him many things. She tells him about her mother, and Gokudera's mother. About her father, and her Family. About her fiance, shot in the head three times. About her best friend, throat slit at nineteen. About everyone she loves, dead or dying, and everyone she hates, living and breathing. He writes her name in list after list, ranking after ranking. Angriest, strongest, smartest, most dangerous. Loneliest. Saddest.
"Wait," she says, "be patient," and then she leaves, dogging the footsteps of all the older boys, her eyes fixed on Gokudera and Tsuna, Yamamoto and Reborn. Fuuta watches her go, and writes a new ranking. Most likely to die. Tsuna's at the top. Bianchi and Gokudera round out the top ten. Fuuta shuts his book, puts his pen away. Doesn't write for months.
He's always wanted a sister. Or a brother. Or anyone more than his mother, because his mother's gone now, and Fuuta feels alone. And so he dogs their footsteps, like Bianchi, and sits at their tables, eating their food and laughing at their jokes. He grows up in their houses, months in this house, years in that house. He grows in inches, then feet, and his Family's growing bigger. Tsuna's Family is growing bigger. And there are always more rankings in the book.
Fastest, sturdiest, most reliable. Most loving. Most beautiful.
Bianchi's name is slowly moving up, and he doesn't want to look at her, not like that, but he does, and he can't look away.
"Wait," Bianchi says, and Fuuta doesn't try to run anymore. He waits for her, walks next to her, and listens to her stories. She tells him about Gokudera, kicked out of university, and Tsuna, still living at home. About Yamamoto, his arms twisted and ruined, and Reborn, less than half of what he'd been. She tells him to write it down, this and that, all of it, and he writes as she watches, scratching his pen across the page.
"Wait," she says, and, "write something happy."
Love, he writes, and all the things he loves. His parents, his Family, Tsuna's Family. Tsuna, Yamamoto, Gokudera, and Chrome. Bianchi, alone at the top, a space the width of Fuuta's thumb between her and the others. And on the next page, again, and the next page, once more. And the next page, and the next. And list, after list, and the things change. His parents sink lower, as they sink lower in their graves, and he can't remember their faces. Yamamoto drags down the list as his career drags on in America, and Tsuna's name jumps between three and seven, nine and two. And Bianchi's name stays steady, slow and firm and there at the top, and Fuuta walks by her side.
"Wait," she says, and Fuuta holds onto his book, and writes down his happy things, and his lists of her. Most beautiful, most charming, most loving. Most loved.
Title: Bloodlust
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Gokudera/Yamamoto
Warnings: Sex, killings? Mafia boys being mafia boys.
Summary: Hayato slits his first throat at seventeen. Hayato/Yamamoto, dead men, close-quarters killings.
Bloodlust
Hayato slits his first throat at seventeen. The blood is hot on his hands, hotter than he expected, and the man convulses in Hayato's arms, limbs loose, then rigid, then loose again. Hayato fumbles, hears the knife clatter on the floor, and chokes back a breath.
He's never been this close before-- Dynamite is something different, something at a distance that takes men out with a roar, bodies strewn in his path. This is-- The man makes a sick gasping sound, wet, like he's drowning, and Hayato's hands slip, slippery-wet, on the man's arms.
"Gokudera?" Yamamoto asks, near Hayato's ear. Hayato jerks, then lets go of the body, stepping back and turning to grab at Yamamoto's shirt. He pushes, and then Yamamoto's pressed against the wall, and Hayato's pressed against Yamamoto, and he's shoving his mouth against Yamamoto's, teeth and lips and tongue.
There's slick wet, and heat, and the taste of blood, and Hayato doesn't know if it's his, or Yamamoto's, or the man's, and the thought is kinda good, in a fucked up way, and Hayato groans, pressing his hips forward, trying to grind against Yamamoto without being too obvious about it, because, damnit, Yamamoto isn't--
"You okay?" Yamamoto asks, mild and bland as always, as if Hayato's hand isn't halfway down his jeans, and as if Yamamoto's hand isn't all the way down Hayato's. Hayato snarls, kisses Yamamoto all the harder, and lets the taste of blood get all the stronger.
He might, he might, he might like this, too much, the closeness and the blood, and it's like dynamite, only more, explosions in his skin and in his blood, and maybe this is why Shamal gave him dynamite, because too close is too much, and Hayato's never been able to control himself.
"I'm fine," he snaps, and he is fine, better than fine, and that's what's wrong, what's scaring the hell out of him, fucking him up inside. He's better than fine, and Yamamoto's better than fine, and the dead men are dead, spread out on the floor, and their blood tastes bittersweet in Hayato's mouth.
Fine has always been a relative word.
Title: Plucking Feathers
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Dino/Hibari
Warnings: Implied sex, death? Crazy people.
Summary: The phone is small in his hand, and Kyouya's breath from the other side is smaller. Dino/Hibari, names, and what love really means. Or doesn't mean. Because you can't pluck the one you love. Shameless use (and subsequent destruction) of folktales and folksongs.
Plucking Feathers
"What does your name mean?" Kyouya asks once, sitting on the edge of the backseat, his fingertips resting against the window. Dino laughs, shrugs, looks away.
"Bernardino? It means bear."
Kyouya laughs, long and loud, and when he crawls over the car seat, he laughs into Dino's mouth, and bites Dino until they're both bleeding, and sweating, and coming, stinking of sweat and exhaustion and sex.
"Your name?" Dino asks days later, when he's coiling his whip and Kyouya's retying a shoelace with long, thin fingers. "What does it mean, Kyuouya?"
"Hibari--" Kyouya's fingers twists the laces, knots them once more, then drag over the shoe, brush the ground. "It's a bird. A skylark."
"Skylark," Dino echoes back, and he says, looking up, "it's pretty."
When Kyouya's backing him against an alley wall, blood glinting on his chin, fingers brushing against Dino's neck, he murmurs, against Dino's mouth, "pretty's not needed."
"There's a song," Dino says one night, leaning against a wall. The phone is small in his hand, and Kyouya's breath from the other side is smaller. "About a skylark."
Kyouya's breath changes, listening, and Dino blinks, says, "you pluck it, its head, its eyes, its heart."
"And that's love?" Kyouya sounds as though he's laughing, his breath quick and light. Dino grins, lets his head roll back against the wall.
"It's French, they're mad. Italians, much better."
"We," Kyouya says, with the strange pride he always has when he's speaking of his Japanese, of Namimori and his family and his name, with all its fucked up rules and regulations that hold Kyouya to the earth tighter than anything else, "pluck the sparrows' children, and cut out their tongues."
"Love?" Dino asks, confused and intrigued all at once, and Kyouya's laughter is brighter, harsher.
"You don't love birds," Kyouya says, "because in the end, they always fly away."
"There was a crane wife," Kyouya says one day, standing behind Dino. His hands brush down the center of Dino's coat, heavy enough for Dino to feel it, shiver away. "Her husband heard her clattering in the closet, and he looked inside. She was a crane, and when he startled her, she flew away."
"Kyouya," Dino says, and Kyouya's skittering away, blood on his face and his teeth in a bright smile.
"You don't love birds, Cavallone. They don't come when you call, not like your dogs. Can't pluck their feathers forever."
"Kyouya," Dino snaps, and his hand wraps around Kyouya's wrist, and Kyouya's fingers, long and thin, wrap around his throat. Kyouya's mouth is close, closing on his ear, and Kyouya's words are in Italian, harsh and panting.
"What do you pluck, when there's nothing left?"
Kyouya falls from the building, arms spread, and he doesn't fly. He falls, and Dino stands, and the world spins on love, lopsided and cut, with no one left to pluck.
Title: Cigarette Love
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Gokudera, World.
Warnings: None, really.
Summary: "Stop," Takeshi says one night, pulling a cigarette from Hayato's mouth, and Hayato says, "I can't." Alternate-future fic. Gokudera, the Tsuna Family, and cancer.
Cigarette Love
Takeshi's waiting for him outside the building, leaning against the sidewalk guardrail. Hayato takes a breath as the doors slide shut behind him, then taps out a cigarette, palming his lighter. Takeshi frowns and Hayate shoves the pack back into his back pocket, slouching.
"What'd they say?" Takeshi asks, and Hayato follows him down the street, lighting his cigarette with a careless flick.
"Not much." There's a pang in his chest, real or imagined, he doesn't know, and he flicks the lighter again, just to watch the flame blow out.
"Will you tell Tsuna?" Takeshi asks, and Hayate shoves the lighter in his pocket, too.
"Not much to tell him," he says, and he takes Takeshi out drinking. The beer's bitter, and the cigarette smoke in the bar clouds the air. Hayato breathes it in, and imagines that death tastes sweet.
The Tenth's not as naive as he used to be, and he figures that something's wrong in a couple days. He hounds Hayato, well-meaning eyes and worried mouth, and Hayato smokes cigarette after cigarette, sitting on the porch.
"Hayato," the Tenth says, and Hayato's out of cigarettes. He pats his pockets, wonders if he has enough change to go to a vending machine.
"Hayato," the Tenth says, sharper, and Hayato swallows, feels something in his throat and chest. He thinks it might be regret.
"Please--"
He's not sure who says it, but he bows and runs, because he's always been good at running away, from Shamal and Bianchi, Italy and Japan. When he reaches the vending machine, he's out of breath, and the cigarettes taste sour in his mouth.
"Stop," Takeshi says one night, pulling a cigarette from Hayato's mouth. Hayato sighs, falls back onto the porch.
"I can't," he says, stretching out his legs. He feels Takeshi sit next to him, close enough to bump him, and sighs again.
"You've lost weight," Takeshi says mildly, and his fingers are light on Hayato's skin. Hayato closes his eyes, turns away.
"Not hungry. Get me a cigarette."
"Tsuna--"
Hayato grabs Takeshi, pulls him close enough to slam a hand over Takeshi's mouth. Takeshi's eyes are narrowed, but his lips are still behind Hayato's hand, and it's quiet for a moment.
"Come drinking with me," Hayato says after a moment, pulling his hand away. He feels fever-bright, breathless with excitement and life, and he wants to burn. "We can find girls to fuck, someone to fight."
"Hayato," Takeshi says, and Hayato kisses him, hard, and wonders if Takeshi can taste cigarette smoke and blood.
"Come with me," he says again, and Takeshi's eyes are cold.
He coughs up blood in the morning, bright red and sticky. The Tenth's face is pale, and his hands are shaking, and Hayato wants a cigarette, needs a cigarette, because he can feel his life shaking away.
"Hayato," the Tenth says, "you need--"
"Nothing." Hayato presses the back of his hand to his mouth, curls the stained tissues in close to his chest.
"Please," the Tenth says. Hayato can feel himself shake all the more, because he can't say no, can never say no.
"I don't want to know," he wants to say, but the words are stuck, and they taste like iron on his tongue.
"They said," he says days later, sitting on Shamal's table, "a few months."
Shamal is moving around the room, dark head bowed against the white coat, and Hayato watches him, leaning back on his hands. He breathes, coughs, then taps at the table with his fingertips.
"Why are you here, then?" Shamal finally asks, still turned away. Hayato scratches at the table, then taps again, looking stubbornly across the room.
"No reason."
"I can't," Shamal says, "do anything."
"I didn't--" Hayato begins, but Shamal's arms are around him, and Hayato leans forward, lets his forehead fall against Shamal's shoulder. "I don't--"
"I can't," Shamal says again, "do anything."
"Fix me--"
"I can't--"
Hibari views Hayato with the same thoughtless disdain he views the rest of the world, and Hayato almost feels happy. He stands in front of Hibari, wonders what he can say to make Hibari hit him, and wonders if he's gone crazy.
"Hey," he says, voice rough. Hibari looks at him, a mixture of rage and boredom, and Hayato bites back a sharp smile.
"You're in my way," Hibari says, pushing past, and Hayato follows along in his wake, the feeling of pressure twisting him inside out, like he's still alive, and the thought that he's alive--
"Hey," Hayato dogs again, death sentence and all, and he doesn't want to think he's desperate, because he hates desperate people, but he might be desperate, because all around, everyone's desperate, and he can't do this, can't be strong when the Tenth looks at him like that, and when Takeshi talks like this, and Shamal weeps like he's lost another son.
"My bird," Hibari says suddenly, and Hayato's caught off-guard like always, because Hibari's like a rabid dog. Look, don't touch, and watch for the teeth. "It died a few months ago."
"Yeah?" Hayato asks, and Hibari's turning, face close to Hayato's, his breath moving Hayato's hair.
"You can't," Hibari says, "find another bird that sings the same. It's hard, to replace the favorites."
"Yeah?" Hayato asks again, and that night he sinks onto the Tenth's floor.
"You'll miss me?" he asks, feeling like a child, and wondering if he's always been a child, only twenty-three and still so stupid.
The Tenth is tight-lipped, eyes shut just as tight, and Hayato wants to reach out and touch him. He pulls out his lighter, flicks it, and wonders if the Tenth's skin is as cold as it looks.
"Will you miss me, Tsuna?" he asks, and the Tenth's eyes open, flicker. Hayato swallows and asks, "will you?"
"Yes," the Tenth says, and Hayato watches him bow to the floor, shaking. He wants to reach out, touch the Tenth, and feel him shake.
"I'm sorry," he says, and he's sorry for so many things. "I'm sorry," he says, and he bows down, and kisses Tsuna.
Italy is far drier than Japan, and Hayato feels his throat tighten, and a pain in his chest that stabs a little deeper. He takes a breath, holds it until the pain is throbbing, and knocks at the door. There are footsteps on the other side of the apartment door, slow then quick, and Hayato takes another gasping breath, biting his lip against the pain.
When the door opens, and Bianchi looks at him through thick glasses, Hayato feels himself let go.
"Hayato," Bianchi says, and her arms are around Hayato, warm and strong. Her eyes are sad, and the eyes of the mother that was never Hayato's. Hayato feels something in him break, and he thinks this might be a place he's always been looking for. "You're back."
"I'm home."