Story Title: Like These Pages, Black and White
Rated: PG-13 for character death and age discrepancies
Status: Complete || 1000+
Summary: [Fuuta/Tsuna] There was nothing in the universe further apart than the living and the dead.
Steve's Notes: Written for mochalatt3, because I love her. She likes to throw impossible pairings at me and see if I can jump through her flaming hoop of illegal drugs and fire. I like to think that I come out mostly sober and lacking severe burns, but here's the reality: I just wrote Fuuta/Tsuna angst. /facepalmheaddesk
Disclaimer: Katekyou Hitman Reborn! © Amano Akira
He had just turned twenty just before Tsuna turned twenty-five, before Tsuna was shot to death between here and there. He was less than five miles away when it happened, but distance hardly mattered because Tsuna had been killed, and there was nothing in the universe further apart than the living and the dead. Fuuta didn't never got to see the body, because Yamamoto—his skin dotted with blood and tiny pieces of white shrapnel that Fuuta would later know were bits of Tsuna's skull—had held him back and clamped a hand over his eyes. He screamed and sobbed and swore until his throat was raw and his body had given up, until he could do nothing but tremble. Yamamoto had half-dragged, half carried him to the other end of the base, tucked him into Tsuna's large bed, and left him so that he could clutch at the white sheets and breathe in the faint smell of Tsuna and his soap.
The funeral was a small, quick affair three days after, and the casket had been sealed shut. Fuuta did not cry at the funeral but, later, when he returned to the unfinished base beneath Namimori, Fuuta went into Tsuna's room and ripped the pictures from the walls, tore the sheets from the bed, yanked all of Tsuna's suits and pressed slacks from his closet, and upended every drawer. Among the chaos, he discovered a small, black velvet box with a gold ring and a small scrap of paper inside that read, I'm so sorry.
All of Fuuta's rage had gone as he slipped the ring over his third finger, replaced by an emptiness that was far worse than the anger had been. He had loved—loved—Tsuna with every fiber of his being, but he had never known if Tsuna returned his feelings; Tsuna always passed a hand over his eyes when Fuuta told him he loved him and remained silent. Once, Tsuna had muttered, "You're so young," even though there had only been the space of five years between them. It had stung so badly that Fuuta had excused himself from their bed and padded to the adjoining bathroom, taking too long to brush his teeth and splash cold water on his face. He had been seventeen, and despite being tall and handsome and wrapped in teenage sinew, he couldn't bear to look at truth in his reflection.
Then, not even a month after Tsuna had died, he reappeared. He was fifteen again and Fuuta's first thought was, He looks so young. Fuuta immediately cringed at the echo, but it was true; Tsuna was only fifteen, as Fuuta had been when he cornered a twenty-year-old Tsuna, blurted out his confession, and pressed a sloppy kiss to Tsuna's surprise-slack mouth. Bianchi looked at him sideways when he stared too long, jabbed him in the ribs, and whispered fervently into his ear, "That's not him."
But oh, oh, it was him. This was the Tsuna Fuuta had first loved before he knew it was love, before he grew into adolescence and learned that admiration, respect, and affection could be tinged with carnal urges and physical needs. He was a specter to haunt Fuuta, to remind him of wide eyes and a soft mouth, the cowlicks and the clumsiness of the person he loved. Fuuta was torn between trying to find every excuse to be with him and every excuse not to but, in the end, it hardly mattered. Between Tsuna's training and Fuuta's duties to the quickly unraveling Vongola Family, Fuuta saw him too often and saw him too little.
So it comes as a surprise when, one night, they cross paths in the softly lit corridors of the base. Fuuta cannot sleep—could not sleep, has not slept, since Yamamoto placed him in Tsuna's bed—and it's well past midnight. Tsuna smiles at him, with a sliver of shyness and guilt at being caught wandering around so late, and Fuuta is struck by how terribly he missed that smile, how he misses every smile, even the bittersweet ones that Tsuna gave him when he said, "I love you."
It's good to speak with Tsuna again, even if Fuuta realizes that he's already begun to forget the cadences of Tsuna's speech and the way his fingers fiddle with the cuffs of his hoodie when he's nervous. They talk about nonsense, and all about Tsuna: his progress, his worries, his wishes. It hurts because it makes Fuuta think about all the conversations he and Tsuna will never have, but it's so, so precious too, because he gets to talk to Tsuna for a final time before he's all alone once more.
"I think you're the only one who doesn't expect anything of me," Tsuna confesses to Fuuta after they circle the base for the fifth time. "Everyone is telling me that I have to better, have to be stronger, but—I don't want to fight, I don't want to be in the mafia! I just want to make sure everyone is okay and get back to the past. You understand, right?"
He looks up at Fuuta underneath the smear of his eyelashes, and Fuuta suddenly knows, with clarity sharper than when he makes his lists, that if he leans down steals a kiss from this Tsuna, this Tsuna will let him. He'd probably let Fuuta press against him, hold him to his body, and rut against him until they've both came in their pants. He might, if Fuuta goes slowly and carefully, let Fuuta unzip his jeans and swallow him down, so he could remember the taste of him. But it would be wrong, so very wrong, because this Tsuna is not his Tsuna, who once smiled at him in the way Fuuta smiles at Tsuna now.
"You're wrong," Fuuta says lightly, almost sweetly, twists the gold ring about his finger behind his back, and Tsuna's hopeful face falls. "Of everyone, I expect the most from you."
There is nothing in the universe that is wider than the gap between the living and the dead but, Fuuta thinks as he finally understands, that these five years between his twenty and Tsuna's fifteen comes very, very close.
end.