Disclaimer: Nothing but the story is mine. The prompt isn't mine, KHR isn't mine, the characters aren't mine. The Book Thief does not belong to me either. They belong to their respectable owners.
Thank you!
Tsuna rubs his eye as he curls himself into a ball, snuggling into Byakuran's side.
"Why are you still up," Byakuran pokes Tsuna's cheek without looking up from his book, "Tsu-chan?"
"I can't sleep." Tsuna gently pats his hand on Byakuran's thigh. "Read me a part of your book."
"This isn't really the type of book to put someone to sleep."
Tsuna groans, "Surely there's a part you can read to me!"
"Let me see."
Byakuran grabs his bookmark which he placed at the back of the book, placing it to mark the pages he was currently reading. He then goes back to the pages he's read, fingering through the many pages before finding a certain spot.
"Did you find a place?"
"I think so," Byakuran clears his throat. "Let's see."
"There was once a strange, small man. He decided three important details about his life:
1. He would part his hair from the opposite side to everyone else.
2. He would make himself a small, strange mustache.
3. He would one day rule the world.
"The young man wandered around for quite some time, thinking, planning, and figuring out exactly how to make the world his. Then one day, out of nowhere, it struck him-the perfect plan. He'd seen a mother walking with her child. At one point, she admonished the small boy, until finally, he began to cry-"
"I don't think this is gonna get me to sleep, Byakuran."
"Just wait and see."
"He began to cry. Within a few minutes, she spoke very softly to him, after which he was soothed and even smiled.
"The young man rushed to the woman and embraced her. 'Words!' He grinned.
'What?'
But there was no reply. He was already gone."
Byakuran continues to read for the next few paragraphs, allowing Tsuna to get the concept of the story.
"Soon, the demand for the lovely ugly words and symbols increased to such a point that as the forests grew, many people were needed to maintain them. Some employed to climb the trees and throw the words down to those below. They were then fed directly into the remainder of the Führer's people, not to mention those who came back for more.
"The people who climbed the trees were called word shakers.
"The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be without words.
"That's why she could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them.
"One day, however, she met a man who was despised by her homeland, even though he was born in it. They became good friends, and when the man was sick, the word shaker allowed a single teardrop to fall on his face. The tear was made of friendship-a single word-and it dried and became a seed, and when next the girl was in the forest, she planted that seed among the other trees. She watered it everyday.
"The tree grew everyday, faster than everything else, till it was the tallest tree in the forest. Everyone came to look at it. They all whispered about it, and they waited... for the Führer."
Byakuran read with a voice that was unnaturally calm and soft. Tsuna found it very soothing as he listened to his partner continue to read about the Führer and how he tried to chop the tree down and failed, how the word shaker-the little girl-went to the top of the tree and stayed there for a long time.
"'But how does she eat?' the people asked. 'how does she sleep?'
What they didn't know was that other word shakers threw supplies across, and the girl climbed down to the lower branches to collect them."
Tsuna could feel his eyes becoming heavy but he didn't want to fall asleep yet. He was intrigued by story of the Word Shaker.
"No one knew how long it had taken, but one afternoon, a new axman walked into town. His bag looked too heavy for him. His eyes dragged. His feet drooped with exhaustion. 'Where is the tree?'"
Byakuran continued to read about the young man hammering nails into the tree, the audience laughing as they watched, how the axman climbed the tree up to the scrawny girl.
"The climb seemed to last for miles. It took many hours for him to reach the final branches, and when he did, he found the word shaker asleep in her blankets and the clouds.
He watcher he for many minutes.
The warmth of the sun heated the cloudy rooftop.
He reached down, touching her arm, and the word shaker woke up.
She rubbed her eyes, and after a long study of his face she spoke.
'Is it really you?'
Is it from your cheek, she though, that I took the seed?
The man nodded.
His heart wobbled and he held tighter to the branches. 'It is.'"
Byakuran could hear his Tsu-chan's breathing slow down but he continued to read, wanting to finish the story himself as well.
"When they had looked and talked enough, they made their way back down. They left the blankets and remaining food behind.
"The people could not believe what they were seeing, and the moment the word shaker and the young man set foot in the world, the tree finally began to show the ax marks. Bruises appeared. Slits were made in the trunk and the earth began to shiver.
"'It's going to fall!' a young woman screamed. 'The tree is going to fall!' She was right. The word shaker's tree. in all its miles and miles of height, slowly began to tip. It moaned as it was sucked to the ground. The world shook, and when everything finally settled, the tree was laid out among the rest of the forest. It could never destroy all of it, but it nothing else, a different-colored path was carved through it.
"The word shaker and the young man climbed up to the horizontal trunk. They navigated the branches and began to walk. When they looked back, they noticed that the majority of onlookers had started to return to their own places in there. Out there. In the forest.
"But as they walked on, they stopped several times, to listen. They thought they could hear voices and words behind them, on the word shaker's tree."
Byakuran ends quietly in almost a whisper, setting The Book Thief down on the coffee table gently, and turning to his small lover. Tsuna had fallen completely asleep, a smile curved on his face.
"Goodnight, Tsu-chan."
3.3 pages · 1147 words
Prompt: Imagine person A of your otp is reading a book late at night and person B can't sleep so they ask person A to read to them so person A starts reading out loud and a few minutes later person B is completely knocked out and person A gives them a kiss on their forehead.
I love The Book Thief, in fact it's one of my favorite books.
*Spoiler to The Book Thief*
I decided to add Max's story, The Word Shaker, as the bed time story Byakuran tells Tsuna because it's a good story and plus I didn't know what to put anyway. I also kinda would like to think that Tsuna is a word shaker, seeing as how he befriends and takes care of everyone and protects them, including his former enemies (such as Byakuran). I guess I kinda made this oneshot angsty by putting it that way but I don't know.
*Spoiler Done*
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. Byakuran is pretty OOC but eh. Replace it with someone else if you want when reading; I don't really care.
Please leave review on your way out. They fuel my internal ego and they drive me to write more.
Also maybe check out my other stories, that is, if you liked this one.
Thanks for reading.