Title: White Rhododendrons and a Couple Cats
Author: Carlile (notimetoreconcileme Tumblr, CarlileLovesAnime ffnet & AO3)
Rating: T
Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Characters/Pairings: Mukuro/Chrome; Lancia, Ken, Chikusa, Guido Greco
Genre(s): Action, Adventure, Romance
Words: 4582
Summary: Chrome Dokuro hopes when she gets home from a stressful day at work that she can just relax. But her crazy cats have other plans – plans that involve a very handsome and mysterious man.
Warnings: 6996 in an AU. And "action" sequences.
Author's Note: Done for the KHR Secret Santa Challenge on Tumblr in Arc 2, for spatulapyrope. Request: "Anything! " Also If I could request a fanfic it would be Tsuna/ Haru, Tsuna/ Gokudera, Tsuna/ Mukuro, Mukuro/ Chrome, or Chrome/ Ken/ Chikusa uvu"" Hope what you're getting is satisfactory (:
Disclaimer: No.
0o.o0o.o0
The sky comes through the aluminum blinds in gray slits of light, one window after another, down the hall. It's so dark, empty, long. Chrome Dokuro can't get home fast enough. She clumsily unlocks her apartment 417 door, and once she's inside she throws her fake Coach purse halfway across the foyer with disregard to the cats running to greet her.
"I hate my job," she sighs. Her back slides down the front door; she hits the linoleum and her legs splay out. Her head is in her hands.
One of the cats – the orange tabby with the missing tip of his ear and an odd dark line of fur running horizontally from underneath one eye to the other – rubs his head against her hip. He repeats the action until she acknowledges him, removing one of her hands to scratch at the nape of his neck. His head nudges into her palm. She opens her eye to him. The tuxedo-patterned cat, more in her peripheral, sits biding a yard or two away, watching them with his ice blue eyes through mild cataracts.
Chrome brings herself to smile. "One of these days, humans will be as kind as you are," she says forlornly. She scratches along the orange cat's neck and back, which incites a crescendo of purring. The black and white cat approaches her with more caution, but submits just as openly as the other when she uses her free hand to stroke his back.
Eventually she stands, and the two cats follow her. She picks her purse up off the floor and drops it on the hall table. "You want some wet food, Ken, Chikusa?"
Ken (the orange cat) meows at her. Chrome heads for the floating cabinet full of canned cat food. With one hand she blindly grabs a can of Iams, and with the other she opens a drawer to get the can opener. Both of the cats pace about behind her, grazing her calves.
Once the food is prepared, she sets it on the floor, where Ken and Chikusa attack it eagerly from different angles. She drags herself to the sofa at the other end of the great room and falls onto it face-first. Her position is uncomfortable but she doesn't move.
Her stupid boss. Unreasonable. And that pervert, Birds, is probably going to go postal at some point. And that weird frog guy can't take anything seriously. And then there's that red-haired woman in finance – Chrome's almost had it with her harassment… She wishes she could quit. She breathes deeply with her nostrils against the coarse linen of the couch. Beyond the smells of dust and feline, she can sense her mother's old cooking. Well, this is the couch from the house where she was raised. It makes her chest hurt a little.
Some minutes pass before she lifts her heavy head. She looks back at the placemat on the floor. The saucer in the center is thoroughly cleaned of all visible traces of the beef-flavored food. Chikusa is sniffing around it, licking a few places. He rolls back onto his hind legs to sit and begins to bathe himself.
Chrome gets up. She scans the room to find Ken mulling around with a splotch of gravy staining his chin. She watches him a bit.
Suddenly he stops moving. Freezes in his tracks. Front paw in the air, neck outstretched, tail stiff.
This seems like a normal cat behavior. Sometimes cats are just minding their own business when something captures their attention. Their hunting instincts kick in and they observe, stalk, creep – and then pounce! and there's a lot of energy involved.
She glances in the direction he's facing. There is nothing remarkable here: only the brick wall, the clawed-up side of the sofa, and a few hanging black and white photos of the Manhattan skyline. But he's probably occupied with a special thing that she can't see, she figures.
When she takes a look at Chikusa, he's motionless too beside the placemat, staring straight ahead. They must have both spotted the same thing.
A minute passes and neither of the cats has made a move. She stands, furrowing her brow, and sidesteps to further investigate the little space they're watching. As much nothing here as there has always been. Her hands rest on her hips and she looks closely at Ken. When a cat is in stalking mode, its eyes are intensely focused and sharp, like laser beams on a target. Ken's golden eyes now are blank, lost in some other dimension. This isn't right.
Ken lowers his paw, but the rest of his body stays in its place. He calmly and slowly turns around. He pauses for a few seconds. Then he heads for the door. Chikusa rises to all four of his paws and migrates in the same direction.
It takes a short time for Chrome to register their behavior in her mind. Maybe they're playing some strange game or maybe they hear a high-pitched noise or maybe they'll just start floating through the air like magic any second now, she has no idea, no explanation. She creeps along after them from a few yards back.
Chikusa sticks his front leg under the door, and after a bit of fumbling, opens it just wide enough for Ken to slip through, and follows.
Her eye widens. The front door was not latched. She breaks into a run through the foyer, flinging the door wide open. "Ken! Chikusa!" She sees Chikusa's white-tipped tail disappear behind a corner and, dragging her apartment door fully shut behind her, races after them.
They bound down the next hall, faster than she's ever seen them go, and duck into the open stairwell door without warning. She has to brake – stomping and sliding and making a bit of a ruckus because she's a human, bigger and clumsier than a ten-pound housecat – to go after them. By the time she's halfway down to the third story the cats are still far ahead. Adrenaline propels her to the ground floor of the apartment building despite her work-related exhaustion and size-too-big heels. She's gaining on Ken and Chikusa, but not significantly. Their stamina hasn't worn a bit, and she has no idea where they're trying to go.
She weaves through the lobby, keeping her eye trained on them as best she can with the rather dense crowd around her. When they scurry around the automatic revolving door her heart nearly stops.
No, not outside – not outside where the rush hour traffic can make the roads into parking lots, and there are rude and crazy people not watching where they're walking.
Chrome shoves her way through the revolving door as if her strength can make it move faster, flying onto the sidewalk – bumping into a man in a bubble jacket. "Sorry," she mumbles, but she can't stop. She sees her cats between the legs of a line of pedestrians. They step close to the curb just as the light at the end of the block turns green.
The cars start moving. The cats descend the curb one after the other.
There's no time to think.
Chrome forces her way through the mob of Seattle citizens. Those two cats are the only things in her world right now, and this sea of flesh and offended remarks is just a setback.
The cats change direction. They run up the edge of the road. Chrome changes direction as well and somehow manages to fight the crowd enough to close the distance between her and her pets to only a few feet.
Right behind the crosswalk at the intersection, Ken and Chikusa dart in front of a black Corolla.
Chrome lurches after them and grabs them with both of her arms in one fluid move.
She hears a loud squeal. Her head turns. There's a grille right in front of her face. It stops less than an inch away from her. Her heart is pounding. In the background, the traffic light turns red.
For a few seconds, she's on her knees in the street, motionless, breathless, holding Ken and Chikusa in a steel grip.
The front driver-side door of the Corolla opens. A man with a round face stands with one foot on the concrete and the other on the floor mat. He peers over the front end of his car, laying one hand on the roof.
"Are you all right?" he asks. He seems panicked, too.
She does not come out of her shock effectively enough to answer him.
"Lady?"
She nods. "Yeah, I'm okay," she says over the honking horns and din of pedestrian conversations.
He reaches across the hood of his car to help her up, but she stands on her own, both cats tucked to her chest. "Sorry, my cats ran away and I had to chase them."
"It's fine. As long as they're okay, and you're okay… Are you sure you're all right?" he says.
"Yes," she says, nodding harder now. "Yes, yes, yes." She steps up onto the sidewalk, still feeling a little numb, and carries her pets back into the apartment building.
0o.o0o.o0
She makes certain to lock the front door this time when she gets back into her apartment. Dropping Ken and Chikusa to the floor, she starts to chastise them.
"Were you trying to get yourselves killed?" she huffs. "What the hell?" Ken wanders about and Chikusa finishes his tongue-bath as though nothing has happened.
Chrome takes a short break to collect herself. She decides that it's best to change into more comfortable clothes (and out of these damn shoes), eat a little something, and fall asleep under the afghan on the couch while watching some two-star teen drama or mindless reality show. And so, in the middle of another tale of frustration with the Abby Lee Dance Company, while Chikusa purrs in her lap and Ken sniffs around the dishes in the sink, there is a knock. She hangs her head, lifting her hands from Chikusa's fur. She musters the will to remove the very comfortable Chikusa from on top of her, throws the blanket aside, and shuffles over to the door. The tuxedo cat jumps off the couch to accompany her.
To see out the eyepiece in the door, she must rise to her tiptoes. The man outside her door has a plain, quietly confident expression, and he's wearing a suit. She slides the chain out of its position and opens the door to him.
"Hi," he says. He smiles a little smile, courteous and hopeful. "Are you Miss Chrome Dokuro?"
She glances back and forth before she answers him. "Yes…" She faces him and – he's holding a bouquet of flowers. She did not notice that before. Coreopsis arkansa, agrimony, white rhododendrons and sprigs of wild sorrel*.
"I wanted to apologize for almost hitting you with my car earlier," he says, holding out the flowers to her.
"Oh, uh… It's okay. No one was hurt," she replies. She takes the flowers. "Um, thank you for braking." She chuckles.
Quietly she observes his features. He's tall with tinted skin and long, black hair slicked back from his forehead. His face is diamond-shaped, and two large scars – tattoos? marks of some sort – slash across the lower right side of it. His eyes are a piercing dark brown. His charcoal gray suit is well tailored.
He's not a bad-looking man but he doesn't seem familiar. She could swear that the man in the Corolla earlier was smaller, paler, with a younger face and shorter hair. Then again, she did not get too good of a look at him before.
Then she realizes that she's never met this man in her life before today, doesn't even know what his name is. But he's at her apartment right now.
"Also, I apologize if my appearance here disturbs you at all," he says. Her neck cranes upward to meet his eyes, which almost bore into her brain like rocks thrown at a wet piece of paper. "I just couldn't let it go. I saw where you walked, this building, and once I got home I turned around and came to that lobby down below. I asked the receptionist if a certain person lived here: 'a woman, probably in her twenties, with two cats and long purple hair and an eye patch.' And she gave me your apartment number and your name."
"Oh," Chrome says. Chikusa slips back and forth between her legs as she closes the front door an inch or two.
He rolls onto the balls of his feet, then onto his heels, and then stands firmly. "Chrome Dokuro. Nice name. Unique."
"You… noticed all those things about me?" she asks.
"Well, of course. You're quite a notable person. And I'm a notice-er. I notice little things all the time."
She raises the flowers to her nose, partly to smell the crispness of them, mostly to cover her smile. "You're smiling," he says. "You had dark pink lipstick on earlier. Most of it's gone now."
"What is your name?" she asks. Her tone is deceitfully serious. As charming as this man is, there are plenty of weirdoes in Seattle, and she can't put it past him to barge in and steal her appliances or something. It pays to be cautious – that's what her mother said often.
His polite smile grows as he nods. "Manlio Lancia."
Chrome does not know what about him or her current circumstances moves her to say the things she says, but she makes her bold request, and when she closes her mouth at the end of the question she feels a jolt in the atmosphere, the kind of jolt that brings a new sort of awareness.
"Would you like to come inside?" she asks.
He hesitates at her words, just a little. She thinks maybe he feels the same energy shift she just sensed. "Miss Dokuro, if it's not imposing, I'd be delighted," he says. His teeth show now. One of them is a dulled gold filling.
She leans against the door so as to make room for him to enter the apartment, picks up Chikusa with one arm and closes them all inside. She lets Chikusa down and sees that Ken has been stationed not-too-far behind her this whole time. A few feet into the apartment, she throws glances about and realizes two things. One, the place is pretty much trashed. And two, there is nowhere to put these flowers – no vase or anything. She bids her guest to take a seat on the couch while she searches her kitchen cupboards for a container anyway.
Under the far right side of the counter, she sees a narrow, pink-tinted glass vase. She grabs it, fills it with a little tap water, and sticks in the bouquet. Odd – she doesn't remember having anything that could hold flowers.
She turns around and both of her cats are bowed toward the man on the couch, their front paws stretched forward along the floor in front of them, their heads lowered. "Oh," she starts.
"Seems as if they've taken a liking to me," he says with a laugh. Ken and Chikusa rise simultaneously and jump onto the couch, close to his sides. He begins to stroke them with both hands. "What are their names?"
Chrome loves talking about her cats. They're her favorite things in the world, and really her only friends. "The orange one is Ken. The black and white one is Chikusa. I adopted both of them from the SPCA three years ago – they're four now. They're practically inseparable." Just as much as she's taken care of her cats over the years, they have taken care of her. She has to admit that if her little furry babies had reacted badly to Mr. Lancia, she probably would have made him leave.
"Ken and Chikusa, huh…" he says to himself. "Those are rather unique names, too. How did you come up with them?"
She shrugs, moving toward the couch to sit down beside the man. She can hear both Ken and Chikusa start to purr. "Eh, those were just the names they were given at the shelter."
"Do they always run off like they did today?"
"Oh, no, no," Chrome says, shaking her head. "No. I don't know what came over them."
"Mm." Mr. Lancia looks over at the television screen for a moment, at the costume colors flashing and Abby yelling. In this moment Chrome feels a little nervous. She lays her hands in her lap and rubs them together; glances at the flowers in the vase on the counter, down at the cats (who are enjoying themselves.) After a little while she gets up and heads toward the kitchen area. "I'm sorry. Where are my manners?" she says. "Would you like something to drink?"
"I'm fine, thanks," he says, his attention clearly starting to move from the TV back to his hostess.
She makes herself a glass of water anyway, pressing a cup against the dispenser inside her refrigerator door. He watches her intently. The second she turns around, he speaks to her again.
"So, where do you work?" he asks.
She sighs in exasperation. "Kokuyo Publishing."
"You must not like your job much, huh?"
After a bit of hesitation, she shakes her head, then stops herself abruptly. "Well, I had kind of a bad day today," she explains. She looks off to the small window in the side wall of the kitchen. "Although I've had a lot of bad days lately," she adds under her breath.
There's a short pause between the two of them that works to absorb the new depth of their conversation. He is the one to end it.
"Not many people have eye patches. How did you get yours? Why do you wear one?" he asks.
On some sort of instinct her hand flies to her face. Her fingertips graze the black circle over her right eye. An odd smile comes over her, and Mr. Lancia tilts his head just slightly as if trying to figure out what her expression can mean. Chikusa dismounts the sofa.
She leans against the counter and sips a bit of water. "It's a long story…" Her eyes follow the tuxedo cat slinking across the great room floor. He jumps onto the countertop and sniffs the flowers behind her.
Mr. Lancia places his elbow on his knee, leans forward and rests his cheek in his palm. He grins. "I quite like long stories. They're almost always interesting," he says.
"True, but the other thing about long stories, Mr. Lancia, is that most people are uncomfortable telling them." She copies his expression on a smaller scale, which makes her feel more confident about what she has just said.
The man nods. "Fair enough." But he stands, adjusting his necktie like he's preparing to leave. Ken scrambles to his feet and glares at the man.
"Could I use your restroom?" he asks, his tone quieting appropriately.
She springs forward from the counter. "Yes," she half-shouts. She points to the rather unimposing door between the foyer and the great room.
"Thank you." He walks calmly to the bathroom, locking the door behind him.
Chrome takes another drink of water, turns and sets the cup on the counter. She digs her nails into the fur behind one of Chikusa's ears, which instantly starts him purring. At the back of her mind she realizes her face feels very hot. She touches one of her cheeks.
The second Mr. Lancia appeared, Chrome knew that he had to be an odd person. There's an aspect of him that voids his appearance, and makes her heart race – not in the way that it does when any other good-looking man comes into view, but the way she thinks bungee jumping off a high bridge might feel. Something innate, inside or maybe around him, has captivated her.
But she came to terms a while ago that, physically, he is definitely not the same man who drove the Corolla earlier. He feels like the same person, sure, but he is not.
When she looks down at her cat, she sees that her hand has stopped moving, and his dry-ice eyes are trained on her. The walls of her apartment are thin, so normally when someone uses her bathroom, she can hear every noise. Since Mr. Lancia went inside, it's been completely silent.
She lifts her hands from Chikusa's fur and takes one step back. "Mister Lancia…?" she calls. No response comes.
Ken leaps down from the sofa, and he and Chrome cross paths as she takes the remote control in hand and turns off the television. She looks back at the bathroom door. "Mister Lancia," she says again.
Then she throws a glance at the bouquet in the vase. Somehow, the flowers seem to have bloomed larger now. Both of the cats are staring at her. She focuses on their little faces for a moment in fruitless hope that they might possess deeper knowledge of the situation.
The air all over the apartment sinks with a dark feeling. Shadows of things not there fly up the walls. Visual space warps, and Chrome's skin crawls with numbness and pain, ice and fire at the same time. She is surrounded, but alone. It takes forever, yet lasts only an instant.
At once she is immobilized. The urge to scream rushes over her, but she holds it back. She forces herself to move. "Mister Lancia," she says, like a cry for help. She stops in front of the bathroom door and raises her hand to knock.
The door flies open and the pressure lifts. "Miss Dokuro!"
She takes a step back. Gawking at the sight before her, she covers her mouth with her hand.
That is not Mister Lancia. This man has lean muscle, dark purple hair in a ponytail with a tuft at the top, and the most handsome face she has ever seen. His eyes are two different colors – one red, one blue – and the red right eye looks very unnatural.
He grabs her by the shoulders. "Who are you?" she asks, her voice struggling.
"Don't be alarmed," he says. He comes closer to her. There is a grin on his face.
She still tries to tug away from him. "Who are you? What are you doing?"
"Miss Dokuro, my real name is not Manlio Lancia. I am Mukuro Rokudo, and I was testing you."
"What?" she breathes. Her eyebrows furrow and she finds that she can't move.
He looks off to the side, and she hardly notices how fetchingly his profile cuts a line against all color behind him. From somewhere in that direction, she hears an unfamiliar voice call, "Mukuro-san!"
She slowly brings herself to look there. Her two cats are gone. In their place are two young men. One has black hair down to his jawline with a white hat over it, and light blue eyes; the other has messy blond hair and a scar running horizontally across his face.
"We protected her just as you asked us to, Mukuro-sama," the black-haired one says in a deep and quiet voice.
Mukuro nods slightly and brings his eyes back to her. He releases her shoulders.
"I think you need to leave," Chrome says firmly. She starts to back up.
"Miss Dokuro, listen to me," he says. He matches her step for step coming after her. "I need you."
She's in such shock that she does not even notice the room around her turning into a beautiful landscape, a green meadow under a bright sun with water in the distance, and white rhododendrons blooming every few square yards. "No. Get out, please," she says.
He does not leave. "Let me speak."
"You already spoke plenty," she quips. "Where's Mister Lancia?"
"I amManlio Lancia," he says.
She frowns. "You don't look like him."
"I can look like anyone," he says. "I'm an illusionist."
"I don't know what an 'illusionist' is. I don't care. I should have never let you in my home."
"I'm afraid you are an illusionist too, Miss Dokuro," he says, "And a highly skilled one at that. You and I both can create things that are not really there. I need you – I need your illusion-casting abilities for something very important."
She feels her heart sink as the false reality snaps into her brain. The grass billows at her feet, the tides of the water hum. She extends her arms behind her and feels tree bark. This scenery is so beautiful, yet she finds that she cannot take her eyes off the man.
"What do you need me for?" she asks. Her voice sounds much calmer, though the alarm is not entirely gone.
His smile grows wider. "Just come with me, and all will be explained." He holds his hand out to her.
She presses her back against the tree with an unrelenting grip around the trunk. For a moment, a long moment, she stares at his hand. There are two strange-looking rings on the fingers. The breeze brushes past his hair and hers.
He's dangerous. She's figured that out now, and she can see it lying beyond his red eye and mischievous voice. She has no way of knowing whether he's being honest or malicious, or even if all events of today have actually happened.
All she has wanted in her adult life was to move to some pretty place, read books, drink coffee, and maybe be romanced by a down-to-earth and sophisticated man. Of course, things have not worked out entirely this way: this pretty place is the rainy Seattle, she has to read bad books to make a living, the coffee is cheap, and the closest things she's ever seen to the man of her dreams are small and covered with fur and don't speak any human language. Whatever Mukuro Rokudo's plans are must be even further from her own than her current circumstances.
When her attention eases back to the present situation, she sees that his smile has faded. His tone is serious. "Miss Dokuro, it takes a lot for me to put myself in this position. I can't ask again." He takes a step in her direction, closing the distance between them. She stands there breathless.
Soon he's right in front of her. His imposing height casts a warm shadow over her, and his face as he looks down at her has a sweet expression. She feels something on her chin.
He leans down and kisses her.
His finger is still on her chin when he stands straight and takes half a step away. She's left to stare up at him in awe.
"What is your answer, Miss Dokuro?" he says with a smile.
Clumps of wild sorrel, delicate and unimposing, replace rhododendron bushes all over the meadow.
Chrome can't close her mouth. Her long hair falls in her face.
"Mister Rokudo…"
All around them, the scenery starts to fade to a translucent fantasyland. The breaths of the water, the force of the wind, the light smell of the grass leave them.
"I… I'll go with you. I'll do it." She exhales heavily, a warm shudder coming over her. She can sense Ken and Chikusa coming toward her, not in cat but in human forms. And for the first time today – for the first time in a long time, she feels comfortable. Safe. Like she has made the right decision. "I'll do it."
0o.o0o.o0
*"Coreopsis arkansa, agrimony, white rhododendrons and sprigs of wild sorrel"
Incorporating flower language because Mukuro knows it in canon and it's just cool as hell.
Coreopsis arkansa = love at first sight
Agrimony = gratitude
White rhododendron = danger
Wild sorrel = affection