Title: Dreamlinked
Pairings: N/A, Gen
Rating: T
Summary:
Tsuna had always spent a bit too much time in bed. He napped the days away, avoiding chores, homework, and even thinking. He found that his dreams were refreshing, almost magical. It was an escape from reality, one made up of sunlight and comfort.
It was too bad, then, that he could never remember them - even when he woke up crying.
Have you ever wanted a dream walking!Tsuna fic? No? Well too bad, I reached into the cesspool that is my brain and I pulled out a khr AU from its depths. So have at it, fuckers!
In all seriousness, I mainly wanted to write this au because I am very tired. And, for once, I would like to write a fic where the characters are ALSO tired. I also want to develop the relationships between characters better and in a healthier manner. I hope to give more depth and meaning into the relationship between Tsuna and his guardians, as well as those among his non-guardian peers.
So, here we are.
This is the prologue, so it's going to be short and narration heavy. Next chapter will get plot heavy, and we'll fall into a more natural progression of events. Note, though, that I'm dumb and write a lot. Also, note that I try to get chapters out every 1-2 months. If I weren't juggling so many projects, it'd probably be faster, but alas, I am juggling more than 10. Though, some are unpublished.
Anyway, enjoy!
It's his first year at Namimori Middle School and it's gearing up to be the same as every other year.
He hasn't made any friends, his grades are at an all-time low, and he still can't seem to walk across a room without collecting an assortment of bruises.
He finds his old routine resurging with vengeance, too.
As soon as the bell rings, Tsuna finds himself hurriedly forcing half-written notes into his disorganized backpack. He then eases back into ignoring the way his classmate's eyes linger on him, picking apart his every move and mocking him relentlessly. Quickly, satisfied that nothing will fall out while he's high-tailing it back to his house, Tsuna flees the campus, jogging at a speed more akin to a power walk than a run, as he really didn't want to provoke the disciplinary committee.
Then, upon his arrival at his house, he flings open the door to the foyer. Tsuna shucks his shoes off - not even flinching as they're sent flying - and takes the stairs two at a time. His mother receives nary a hello, and he pointedly ignores her shouting as he fumbles with the doorknob and stumbles into his room, stepping over chip bags and candy wrappers. He carelessly slides off his bag, ignoring the way it spills out onto the floor in favor of eyeing his bed. Finally, with a great sigh of relief, Tsuna flops onto it face-first, bouncing slightly as he sinks into the mattress.
His bed hasn't been made in months, but Tsuna cuddles into the pungent, rumpled covers anyway, fluffing his pillow and rearranging his blanket so that he can slip under it comfortably. Within minutes of settling down, Tsuna is out like a light.
His mother would open his door, peeking in to check on him. Then, upon finding him sound asleep, she would sigh fondly, and shut the door again.
It was not a particularly rare sight to see Sawada Tsunayoshi holed up in his room, curled up in his bed and reading manga among a mess of snack bags and litter. In fact, it was nearly his everyday routine.
Get up. Go to school. Come home. Rot in bed. Eat, sleep, repeat.
To Sawada Tsunayoshi, life was a pain too great to be bothered with. If you couldn't do it, never could've done it, then why put yourself through the trouble?
'Some people just weren't meant to succeed.' he would tell himself, ignoring the way his heart ached and his gut simmered with self-loathing, flipping to the next page in whatever manga series he was binging that afternoon.
It was painful to try, painful to fail, painful to live and struggle for something that wasn't guaranteed. So, instead of losing himself under all that pain, instead of driving himself to exhaustion only to fail, again and again, to hit the same walls that knock him down every single time… he gives up.
'It's better this way. Easier.' Tsuna tells himself, even as the hole in his chest stretches wider and wider until he can barely look at failing grades, can barely gather the motivation to step even a toe out of his comfort zone.
His lethargic existence was lead with his nose in volumes of manga, mind somewhere else entirely. Whether that be in a vague, light daydream, where he's not exactly asleep but still somewhere far from the present. He finds himself unable to acknowledge himself as anything other than Dame-Tsuna, but avoids thinking about himself by drowning in the whirl of action manga, creating worlds and people that he can escape to, where his identity slides off his shoulders and he can become someone else. If only for a little while, his problems and failings and flaws disappear, and he can fall into stories of grandiose worlds where the danger can always be overcome, where there's a tangible light at the end of the tunnel.
Tsuna has a vague idea where he'll end up, has spent time pondering his own future. A future in which he can't shake the images of overwork, of stress and loneliness, of a mediocre dead-end job.
He tries not to think about it anymore.
Instead, he endeavors to enjoy his lazy, sedentary childhood as much as he can, soaking up as much enjoyment as he can before the inevitable drop off of adulthood.
He gorges himself on snacks, braves his mother's scolding about his abysmal grades, and when his guilty, nagging conscious (sounding eerily like his peers, all jeers and mocking whispers) threatens to overcome his fragile, paper-thin resignation, Tsuna sleeps. When the judgment that follows him daily lingers, distracting him from the latest chapter of some manga or another, Tsuna sleeps, avoiding being conscious altogether.
Navigating his day to day life was a delicate game of avoid avoid avoid. Avoid thinking of his flaws, avoid thinking about what his classmates have to say about him (Nothing good, that's for sure), avoid dealing with it and going through all that pain.
'Anything, anything at all to avoid dealing with this.' Tsuna would think, evading his mother's pointed stares by escaping up to his room. Hoping the flimsy lock on the door would keep her and her judgment out.
He ends up sleeping a lot, going to bed early if he's not invested in some volume or another, taking long naps on the weekends, after school, or whenever he finds himself particularly bored.
All-in-all, Tsuna is actually quite good at sleeping. It could even be called a talent!
Which, unsurprisingly, was what Tsuna's latest activity happened to be.
Tsuna had been reclined on his bed, leg bouncing as he tried and failed to stay interested in the latest issue of some action series he'd been perusing. He eventually gave up, melding further into his room. His face twisted as he examined the contents of his room, searching for something else to distract himself with.
His eyes caught on his bag, and the blank homework sheet hanging out of it, practically begging him to sit down and at least attempt to complete it. Tsuna twitched, about to get up and at least try.
He rubbed his eyes, a wave of exhaustion tumbling over him. He turns over onto his side, facing away from his school bag, and his nagging thoughts are crushed under the weight of his sleepiness. Tsuna gives in and falls into the open arms of sleep.
Tsuna's dreams had always been kind of strange. Whilst others would be swept along, unable to control whether the spider around the corner would catch them, or determine if the weird disfigured shapes could be touched instead of existing as some sort of warped backdrop, Tsuna found himself able to navigate his dreams just fine. His control stayed intact, even as the world around him warped and filtered and became increasingly detached from reality.
It wasn't that he was aware he was sleeping and that what he was experiencing was merely a dream made up by his unconscious mind, so much as having his intent read and listened to readily.
Even though he could move freely, Tsuna found that a lot of his dreams were recurring, taking place in the same place over and over again. The events were never really the same, consisting of a different dream cast every time, but he'd had the same dreams a noticeable amount of times, even though, come morning, Tsuna found he could remember next to nothing about what'd he'd been dreaming about.
His current dream was the same. The scene was tinted warmly, the dream's atmosphere thick and cloudy. He was in the same clearing he always was, dream fogged and filtered, like looking at the world with the sun in your eyes, and Tsuna found himself squished in between blurred, shaded figures, bright and incomprehensible, existing without any definition.
And yet, the affection he felt for the people around him was very real, so thick and raw that it bunched in his throat and made him feel like crying.
It was too bright, much too bright.
The dream was soundless, light and dreamy, without any particular sensation apart from the emotions coursing through him. Even though everything was hazy, he couldn't help but soak up the obvious affection the figures were showing him, one of them having a muted, hazy arm thrown casually over his shoulders, their heads were angled towards him, jolting slightly as they mimicked the flow of conversation and fidgeting.
He responds in kind, soundless words falling from his lips.
He doesn't know what they're talking about, only that it's warm and bright, and that even though this clearing is so small, surrounded by a thick fog, the figures around him jostle and engage him, happy in friendly in the vaguest of ways.
A couple figures sit away from the group, but Tsuna feels no hostility towards them, only a fond exasperation.
He gets to his feet, looking around the clearing to see if there was anyone else nearby. The other figures stand, too, looking wherever he is and nudging him with their elbows. He opens his mouth to respond, to communicate more voiceless words, but something pops.
The dream cracks, fracturing and then shattering. The figures slip away, brightness fading.
Tsuna wakes up.
His room is messy, absolutely trashed with his snack wrappers and carelessly handled objects. It's no longer bright and hazy, but dark and patchy, like a scratched film reel, breaking and ripping where the movie should be.
He's crying, hand balled into a fist, clutching the area over his chest, where the elated feelings of fondness broke into something aching and jagged, like glass broken to reveal a void underneath, sucking light into its depths like a black hole come to earth.
Tsuna wakes up alone, the remnants of a dream too pleasant and pretty to be true slipping through his fingers.
He's crying, and he doesn't even know why.
I made some edits to the prologue. They're not that noticeable, just a few added sentences here and there, some corrections to grammar mistakes and typos I didn't catch last time, etc. I hope it reads better now! The next chapter is due to be published within the next five days, so look forward to that! (Edits made 10/6/18)