Estoy Enamorada de mi Hermano

(I'm in love with my brother)

I. CAPITULO UNO:

I ascended the stage nervously but with dignity as I went to receive my diploma. On his seat, comfortably away from the staring crowd of happy parents and guardians, Mano was looking at me with a teasing grin but he couldn't hide the sparkle of pride from his eyes. He was terribly proud of me and my current success. I smiled at him and felt likewise proud. He was wearing in his black suit a bar-pin bearing his name and license number as a full-fledged lawyer. My mano was so cool.

I did not notice I had stopped walking halfway the stage until he signaled me to walk. Embarrassed at my slip, I looked away with flushed cheeks and went on with the ceremony wishing it would end quickly.

"You were nervous, Tsuna," he murmured as we walked outside after the graduation exercises ended.

"Yeah," I sighed still blushing. "It's not every day that you graduate from high school, you know."

He chuckled and took the white hat off my head and put in on his own head. "Well said. Have you thought up what course you will take for your university studies?"

"Business Administration," I replied and bit my lip. Mano probably did not notice it but he the suit he wore made him look terribly sexy. Why in the world do lawyers wear suits?

Oblivious of my flushing cheeks, mano pulled his necktie loose and replied, "It's good that you have already chosen. It would spare me the trouble of doing it for you."

An obscure "Truly" was my only reply.

Probably judging my answer as insufficient, he glanced at me. And saw my blush. "You're red. What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Don't you lie to me, pendejo."

"I-It's nothing really." Damn, I was stammering. "I-It's just the toga…it-it's very…"

He shot me a dark look. "Idiot, all high school graduates wear togas."

"B-but wearing it in the street makes me…"

Turning his back away from me, he told the nearby cherry tree, "Ah, I get it now. Wearing a toga embarrasses him a lot. What a useless guy."

The useless comment made a vein on my forehead pulsate a little. I forgot the uneasiness I felt previously. "What the - Excuse me? May I dare you to say that again, mano?"

"I said you're useless," he said facing me with a deadpan expression. "Making me repeat myself a second time means you've also become deaf."

That said, I smiled the smile I have always worn whenever I was ready to attack somebody. Mano knew what that meant obviously and was already trotting away from me in a pretty fast pace. But I would not allow myself to be defeated. I ran after him to pull the revolting hat from his head.

"Hey now! That hurt, useless Tsuna." He was already laughing while defending himself from me. I pulled at his curling sideburns and he frowned. "Now you've gone too far. Be ready for my revenge." It was my turn to run away.

It was familiar, the feel of his hair on my skin, for as far as I could remember, his sideburns had always been in my hands, twirled and tangled between my fingers. As far as I could remember we had always been together, shared everything together be it food, clothes, bed, sometimes even girlfriends. Everything I know, I learned from him for he was the one who painstakingly raised me into the man that I had become. We were quite close, mano and I, and I couldn't imagine living life without him.

I first met my mano fifteen years ago. I, Sawada Tsunayoshi, was a toddler at that time, an ever-crying three-year-old whose mouth wouldn't just shut up no matter what efforts my elders did to pacify me. He was a young lad of thirteen, irritable and sensitive as was a male going through that delicate period of adolescence. Perhaps it was by chance that I met him then…or perhaps it was destiny…who knows?

It was a rainy day, I could still remember with clarity, when my father brought home a foreign woman. She was Spanish, she said in broken but understandable Japanese, and insisted that I call her mama since she declared she would never try to take the place of my late okaa-san. She introduced to me her son Miguel whom I was to call my hermano mayor, my big brother,from that day on.

Great was my joy indeed that day I first beheld him for I had truly been enamored by his sideburns. I pulled at them, twirled them over and over until his skin ached, and moistened them with mama's pomada (more often than that, with my saliva). He could only complain, not retaliate, for fear of my bawling. He understood that once I have started crying, the entire house would have to listen to my concerto for five hours straight. And, much to his displeasure, he had no chance to escape from me for my father was resolved to marry his mother.

After a month of living together and another month of preparation, our parents were wed. Father legally adopted my Hermano Juan Anastacio Miguel de Cordova and renamed him Sawada Reborn. It had been a good five years of honeymooning before otou-san and mama died in a plane crash.

It was all too sudden. Even now, as I was running with him through this asphalt road littered with cherry blossoms, I would recall it as too sudden and too soon. Our parents never left us any fortune and mano who was not really under-aged at that time was too young to handle such responsibilities which had been transferred instantaneously on his scrawny shoulders. From that day on, he was to provide for his university's tuition fees, keep house and raise me by himself all at the same time. But he managed to succeed in those tasks somehow through his clever wit and formidable courage.

After obtaining a government scholarship for his college education, he made us two qualify for financial assistance from the state through the social welfare bureau. All other expenses not covered by the sum of money we received each week he defrayed through his gambling revenues, the collected tributes he extorted from the neighborhood street gangs and by blackmailing the local yakuza.

Truly, he was a fearsome guy. Cool, I must add. During my first months as a sad, timid orphan who had not yet gotten over the tragedy of losing my smiling father and kind stepmother, he would always end up defending me from the petty bullies who attacked me on a daily basis. Well, that was before the bullies knew I was his younger brother. After learning their lesson from mano's fists, the former bullies soon began to call me 'big boss' whether or not my brother was around. Eventually, mano taught me the ways of fighting and I, the kid anxious to become his big brother's equal, learned quite fast under his careful but strict tutelage.

"Whatever you do, do it as if your life depended on it. A man who strives for excellence will eventually succeed no matter how many times he falls, but a man who does not will end up in mediocrity all his life."

The lessons he gave me were harsh and unforgiving, perhaps as harsh as life itself, but those lessons molded me into someone who could be called as on par with him, although I could not shed off my timid self completely.

During those times when my shyness got the better of me, especially in front of girls, my mano would act as a go-between and I would have the girl in my bed the following night but, of course, with the condition that he got to bed her afterwards. What an unbelievable guy! I thought that such a system wasn't good so I learned to woo and enjoy my girlfriends' company by myself. Not long after, I realized with shock that girls don't satisfy me at all, so I started bedding males. It was not long before I ultimately learned that I did not want either girlfriends or boyfriends but my mano himself. What does that make me now, huh?

We arrived home at last, sweating, laughing, badly bruised and carrying two cellophanes of food purchased from a nearby fast-food chain. Looking at him now confidently sprawling without care on the floor reminded me of the many times I could have taken advantage of him (we share the same bed). But on second thought, taking advantage of someone like him was next to impossible. Oh well, my time would come. Eventually.

A/N: Tsuna refers to Reborn as mano all the time so yeah…Mano is the shortened form of hermano, Spanish word meaning 'brother' (I think it's obvious). Pendejo means 'dumbass'. Yeah Tsuna's pretty much a dumbass here…Hmm, hmm…what else? Uh, reviews? Please? *Lenore flies*