Tsuna glanced at the meadow and wondered if this was allowed.
"Won't we bother whoever's having the dream by walking through it like this?" he said, eyes darting back to Chrome. "What if we wake them up?" He looked uncertainly at the grass around his slippers, waiting for it to vanish and leave the two of them falling through someone's brain, all grey and gross.
"It would be easy to walk into a different dream if that happened," she said.
"Oh." Tsuna shuffled along, and lifted his eyes from the ground after it stayed solid for a few seconds more. Chrome walked ahead of him, dressed in a Kokuyo uniform even though it was night time. The only difference to her normal outfit was that she was barefoot. He was in his pyjamas and house slippers, or at least he was imagining that he was. Didn't she have other clothes? Maybe she really liked the uniform.
"How do you find someone else's dream from here? Tsuna asked, catching up to Chrome. "Do the dreaming people have to know each other?"
"I think it might help. But..." She looked at the trident she held with both hands. "I can find a way even if they don't."
"Oh. That's good." Chrome could be so certain sometimes, even now when she looked a little sleepy. He wished he had the knack.
Assured, Tsuna took in the landscape properly. Luckily there wasn't any stuff like the giant moths he had nightmares about - there wasn't anything particularly dreamlike about it, really. Their surroundings looked like they could be real, and it was really pretty. He'd never been in a place like this in real life.
It was a little wild. There were plants as far as he could see, with hills going blue-green in the distance. In some places the grass reached his hips. The sun was hot enough that it could be summertime, though it was autumn in the real world lately. A few short trees dotted the landscape, twisted but healthy and green, and everywhere there was flowers, fallen leaves and feathers.
A few things were weird. It should have been frightening - sounds from nowhere, places where there was a smell of the sea, and wispy patches of movement passing them that were shaped almost like people. He made out gestures and colours and clothes ... and a lot of it left familiar impressions. Was the dreamer someone he knew, dreaming of mutual acquaintances? He would have worried about that, but it was as if the entire landscape had a feeling, as present as the breeze, of happiness and peace.
"Most of this is so real," Tsuna said. "When I have dreams, they don't make this much sense."
Chrome's pink cheeks got pinker. "It's partly illusion. I can strengthen dreams so they're more ... like this."
"Do you do this a lot?"
She nodded. Tsuna was about to try and find out if this was someone he knew by asking if she'd ever walked into a friend's dreams, and then thought that she might say Yes. Yours. He decided that he never, ever wanted to find out.
They walked past a sheet of grass paler and more ragged-looking than the rest, but in the heat it gave off a scent like... Tsuna stopped walking and sniffed. Like the cheap lemon-cream biscuits that his mother served to unexpected guests when nothing else was available. For the longest time he'd thought they must taste sour rather than sweet, and had refused when she'd tried to give him one or two as a treat. He smiled. This was more like a dream.
He poked through the edge of the grass patch a bit to see if it wasn't growing biscuits, and then felt a creeping sense of something wrong. It was quieter. He couldn't hear any insects and the birdcalls seemed further away.
Tsuna looked up. It was night on his left, as suddenly dark as if a blanket had fallen over his head. The grass was gone and the ground was bare and stony - it had all been fine just a few seconds ago! In the middle of it stood Chrome, looking over her shoulder at him. She seemed to be shrinking, and he started to run. "Chrome! Are you-"
He didn't even finish asking if she was okay before she was suddenly close again, the distance disappearing faster than was possible. Two steps before he stopped the warmth of the sun was on the back of his neck again, the night fading from the landscape like there was a super-fast sunrise. It made his eyes water. Chrome blinked up at him as he stopped, and he realised that the dream hadn't been making her shrink, she'd just been scared and had hunched up her shoulders.
"What's going on?" he said, almost putting an arm around her shoulders, but not bold enough. Besides, she looked all right. "Is it safe?"
"That kind of thing can happen." Chrome hunched up more. He watched her hands work around the shaft of the trident, her knuckles showing up white.
"Do you think it's going to happen again?" Tsuna asked softly. He made himself pat her shoulder; they were friends, so surely she wouldn't think that he was being overly familiar.
Chrome looked at him with an almost luminous eye, so intently that he blinked. Then she looked down. "I don't think so. That..." She took a deep breath. "Was a feeling from the dreamer, coming into the dream."
A sudden, ugly night in this garden-wilderness - it couldn't have been a good feeling. Whoever was having the dream must have been upset.
"It seems mean..." Tsuna shifted from foot to foot, marvelling at how real it all was, down to his feet slipping around in the overlarge slippers. "Going into someone else's mind like this... Thank you for inviting me for a walk, but maybe ... we shouldn't."
"It's my dream."
Tsuna looked back to her, startled. "Huh? This is..." He stepped away and looked around wildly.
"It's all right, in that case. Isn't it?"
It was better. In other ways it was far worse; his stomach turned over and a blush flooded his face. He stared at her and then hurriedly looked away - but technically everything around him was Chrome. He squinted his eyes shut. "I-i-it's all right?"
"Boss?" said Chrome. She didn't sound certain now. In fact, she sounded like she might be as embarrassed as he was, and - he didn't want that.
Tsuna opened one eye, then the other, and said, "Thank you." He tried to add that it was really nice of her to ask him to come, but he actually thought it was weird, so he smiled. Chrome looked stricken as she smiled back, and deeply relieved.
Why did you ask me? We barely talk at all on normal days, when there's nothing about the mafia going on... But he couldn't ask her that. They were each as bad as the other, Tsuna realised. He didn't want to talk about something so personal, and neither did she; she only wanted him here. So that he could see something beautiful.
"Let's go," said Tsuna. "This is, this is all ... I've never seen anything like this." Like you? Maybe now he knew her better than he ever had, and maybe he wouldn't remember this in the morning. It was hard to remember dreams.
They continued their walk. Tsuna fumbled for conversation and talked about the biscuit-grass, and felt stupid when Chrome told him it was a real plant that had taken over a patch at Kokuyo Land, called lemongrass. She didn't mean to make him feel that way, though, so he said it smelled nice, and then nearly froze when he thought that maybe it was like telling Chrome that she smelled nice...
He forgot the embarrassment when he noticed Chrome was hunching up again, and when he tried to figure out what was wrong, saw the dream of his hand in hers; a wispy ghost of a thing. It looked really weird, especially since Chrome had both hands clutching her trident.
Tsuna put his hand where the dream hand was, and suddenly her trident was in her one hand and the other held his.
He stumbled because it was too easy and he didn't know exactly what either of them meant by it, even if he thought it was better to do this. Then he saw Chrome smile and felt an answering smile on his own face, blooming wide as his heart thudded. He wondered if it really was his own, or if it was also part of Chrome's wish.
It might have been a dream too, but it was a good one.