saving pennies for a rainy day
I don't even try;
I know I have seen the best I'll have.
i. the burial of the dead
After the service, Takeshi finds Kyouya slouching against the stone wall just outside the cathedral's massive doors, barefoot on the dirt path, with crushed grass between his toes. Inside the cathedral, with its stained glass windows and worn wooden pews, the solemn voices of the gathered mourners echo in the hallways. But out here, among rows of solid stone tombstones, scattered here and there about the dewy grass, it's quiet. Just the way Kyouya likes it.
"Yamamoto Takeshi," Kyouya says, glancing up. His face is flushed pink in the cool morning air. He must be wearing one of Reborn's old shirts today, Takeshi thinks; it's too big for him, leaving his collarbone exposed, even buttoned all the way up as it is, with the shirt-tails sagging halfway to his knees.
"Hibari," Takeshi answers, with a smile, the way he always does. (With the name 'Hibari' on his lips, but 'Kyouya' in his heart.) He puts his grimy hands in his pockets; nervously wiggles his right index finger in the hole at the bottom, out of habit. "You should've come. Reborn wanted us to pay our respects."
Kyouya doesn't look back as he weaves away through the tombstones, towards the wrought-iron gate decorated with tiny wrought-iron cherubs at the end of the path. The distant look on his face fills Takeshi with a feeling of melancholy, as though watching the coming of rain. "The dead don't need your respect," he says. "They're dead."
Takeshi just laughs, and trails after him. "I guess that's true." He reaches out; tugs, playfully, on the end of Kyouya's borrowed, oversized shirt. "Did you come to pick me up?"
Kyouya ignores him, lacing thin fingers behind his neck as he walks, where loose strands of hair fall to tickle them. Still, Takeshi smiles at his back - a secret, affectionate smile. They're going home.
ii. with a little patience
That evening they're sitting round the table at dinner, under a single bare light bulb which dangles from the ceiling by a wire, messily spooning stew from chipped bowls into their hungry mouths. The folding-card table in the center of the tiny kitchen is set for four, though the seat next to Takeshi is conspicuously empty. Reborn's battered fedora is hanging from a hook on the door. In the next room, through the thin walls, they can hear the tinny sounds of a football game coming from their shitty little TV.
Takeshi pauses, spoon halfway to his mouth, as a thought strikes him.
"Hey, Hayato."
"Yeah?"
"Is Reborn your dad?"
"How could he be my dad? Bianchi's my sister, you idiot."
"Oh."
Tsuna pipes up, slightly muffled due to the spoon dangling from his mouth like a silver tongue. "You guysh sheen Hibari today?"
"Who knows. That bastard is always going off by himself," Hayato says, dismissively.
"He might get hungry, though..."
"I'll take some food up to him later," says Takeshi, and Tsuna smiles at him.
After dinner, Takeshi rinses a bowl out in the sink under the sputtering tap, ladles some stew in and heads up to the roof. Far below, a pack of kids yells trash-talk at each other as they kick a can around the cobblestone streets. The setting sun reaches fading rays through all the laundry lines hanging between the cramped slum apartments - these crumbling pre-war buildings which sag towards each other like tired old men. But up here, there's scarcely any sign of life - only the bare grimy rooftops which line the way to the horizon, with their sooty brick and steel chimneys belching smoke into the sky.
Kyouya is seated over at the edge of the roof, next to a crooked TV aerial that Hayato once smashed a bottle over, his bare feet dangling over the distant street below. He often comes up here to be alone - to stare moodily into the distance, to look out over this filthy city, practically a living breathing thing in itself, roiling with too many people in too small a space. Gazing, always, at something invisible, something remote - far beyond Takeshi's ken.
Tonight, Takeshi simply kneels down beside him, there on the edge of the roof, and smiles. "You missed dinner."
"Not hungry."
"You have to eat," Takeshi goes, cajolingly, holding out the bowl. "Keep your strength up."
Kyouya shoots him a dirty look, but says nothing. So Takeshi takes the hint, leaves the bowl there on the ledge with the spoon sitting in it, and goes back downstairs.
He never hears Kyouya come back in, but in the morning there's a fourth cracked bowl drying by the sink. Under the breakfast table Takeshi brushes his toes against Kyouya's ankle accidentally-on-purpose, and just grins when a poker-faced Kyouya gives him a vicious kick in the shin.
"What's so damn funny?" Hayato demands, eyeing him suspiciously.
"Nothing," says Takeshi cheerfully, and does it again.
iii. i wanted to breathe smoke
Takeshi catches Hayato smoking the first time completely by accident. He gets home, somewhat downhearted after a fruitless afternoon spent trying to pick pockets in the market. Tsuna is off waiting tables at the cafe where the girl he likes works, and Kyouya disappeared earlier that morning without so much as a word to anyone.
The house is dark inside, but there's a pair of shoes by the door.
"Anyone home?" he calls, into the silent apartment. Well, mostly silent. At the end of the hall, he hears a cough, and pads towards it. The door to the TV room is ajar. Takeshi nudges it open and pokes his head round the doorframe, only to discover Hayato seated on the floor next to the TV, in a little cloud of smoke.
"What are you doing?" Takeshi asks, wrinkling his nose. "It stinks."
"Smoking." As if to prove his point, Hayato takes a drag, and adds defiantly, "Grown-ups smoke." He takes another drag, then chokes, which makes Takeshi giggle.
"You look ridiculous."
"Shut up," says Hayato, affronted. "You'd look just as stupid if you did it, I bet."
"Oh yeah? Let me try, then."
Hayato passes the crumpled pack of stolen cigarettes over to him, reluctantly. Takeshi plops down beside him on the grungy floor; accepts the lighter that Hayato hands him. Almost reverently, he draws a single cigarette from the pack, then pinches it cautiously between finger and thumb, and flicks the lighter.
Smoke burns his throat, fills his lungs with heat; the feeling, though uncomfortable, is intoxicating. He chokes a little, eyes watering, and Hayato rounds on him triumphantly.
"See? I told you."
"Yeah, you were right," says Takeshi, amiably. There is, he notices, suddenly, white ash coating his fingertips. "Let me have another one."
"Get fucked! These are mine."
"I'll steal you another pack," Takeshi says, hoping he sounds convincing. That notion gives Hayato pause - one smoke in exchange for an entire pack is a good deal no matter how you slice it. At last, he relents.
"You better not be playing me," he says, and grudgingly drops the single cigarette into Takeshi's outstretched palm.
"Never," Takeshi says, and grins, slapping him on the back. "What do you take me for, a thief?"
vi. everything is changing
In the evening, Takeshi lazes about in his makeshift bed under the window, toying with a bic lighter which he'd swiped, guiltily, from Reborn's bedside. The single cigarette he'd conned Hayato out of rests on the dusty sill. He's been holding on to it all day, trying to draw it out - trying to spin out the feeling of having something adult, something illicit, in his possession. But at last, temptation gets the best of him - he lights the cigarette, more confidently this time, and sits up, taking the first of many deep drags.
A voice at the door interrupts his reveries.
"Yamamoto Takeshi."
"Hibari," says Takeshi automatically, turning to face him. The feel of the cigarette between his lips, the smoke rising all around him and inside him, fills him with a stupid, heady confidence. Kyouya studies him in silence, leaning casually against the doorframe with arms crossed.
"... Where did you get that?"
Takeshi grins, looking cross-eyed down the length of the cigarette at the tail of smoke which curls up from the tip. "Not telling."
Kyouya remains in the doorway for a moment longer, his face impassive. The setting sun crashes through the windows on the far wall, dispersed through the broken glass into dozens of points of light which dance across Kyouya's eyelashes like falling dew. Takeshi blinks, and tries not to stare. His eyes seem to be watering again. (Probably the smoke, he thinks, and ignores the way his heart flutters weakly against his ribcage like a trapped bird.)
A couple of steps is all it takes to close the distance between them. Kyouya seats himself at the edge of Takeshi's pile of ragged blankets, curling his legs round neatly, in that strangely feline way he has of doing things sometimes. (They're close enough now that their knees brush.) Then he reaches out, just the tips of his fingers visible inside too-large sleeves, and plucks the cigarette from Takeshi's still mouth. Twirls it round once, delicately, and then presses it between his own lips. His cheeks hollow out obscenely as he sucks, and the end of the cigarette glows red-hot. It strikes Takeshi how easily Kyouya does this - how casually the cigarette dangles from his lip, how much older than Takeshi he seems, in that moment. How distant... how untouchable.
"Keeping secrets from me, are you?" says Kyouya, quietly. The dangerous look in his eyes, the way the warm smoke pouring from his mouth catches the dying light makes Takeshi's heart clench, and unconsciously, he swallows.
"No... never," murmurs Takeshi, every word ripped from his breathless throat. He leans forward, as though in a daze, barely aware of what he's doing, and slips a hand over Kyouya's knee to steady himself. Takes the cigarette back, now burnt down to ash; tosses it carelessly to the floor. Then, clumsily, he bumps their lips together, in the awkward close-mouthed kiss of a fourteen-year-old boy, whose entire prior experience with kissing has been limited to surreptitiously watching late-night adult flicks on a shitty staticky TV.
After a few moments, he pulls back. Kyouya is gazing steadily at him.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asks. It's hard to tell, since it's Kyouya, but he might almost sound amused.
"... Kissing you," says Takeshi, sheepishly.
"Whatever for?"
"'cause... I wanted to?"
Kyouya raises his eyebrows sarcastically, which makes Takeshi feel even more ridiculous. And he's about to go, okay, sorry, I'm an idiot and I know it, now can we please forget this whole thing. But then Kyouya's lips are on his; Kyouya's tongue slips into his mouth, and this time they're really, really kissing, the way he's only seen on TV.
It's better than he had ever imagined.
"... Oh," Takeshi mumbles, when they pause for breath - pupils dilated, lips parted in a little 'o' of confusion and desire. He runs shaking hands up Kyouya's sides, feeling the ridges of his ribcage through the washed-thin shirt. When Kyouya doesn't object, Takeshi nervously slips arms around him to pull him close. "Hi - Hibari?" The way his voice trembles, it's as though he's expecting to wake up any moment now.
"Shut up," is all Kyouya says, silencing him deftly with lips and tongue.
And just this once, Takeshi does.