I.
He is 15 years old when he first falls in love.
He is new to his profession, but not unprepared. He has been taught all his life to take up after his father, the (former) greatest hitman of the world, and so he executes his first, then his second, and then all of his killings afterward with accurate precision.
She is his first mistake.
She is gorgeous with emerald eyes and a cheeky grin; she has darker features: black hair and earthy skin. She doesn't know what he is, but she says she loves him for who he is. She's a year younger than him and she's a civilian – a girl whose closest near-death experience was when she nearly drowned in a public pool.
She has never had to face a gun or a blade or any sort of weapon held by any sort of bad person. She is completely and utterly innocent.
But he is 15 years old; the best-to-be hitman that had ever been since his father's demise. He believes wholeheartedly he can protect her, so he shows no fear in his affection for her.
He loves her, so he spoils her with the dirty money he gets. She loves him, so she gives him everything she can, though her profits are meager compared to his and she's too prideful to act like a housewife at age 14.
He loves her like that; he loves her strong will and he loves her beautiful eyes and he just loves her.
He plans on marrying her. He plans on having children with her. Someday, he even plans on leaving behind the bloody life of a hitman, just to be with her more.
One day, he comes home early. He has gone through his morning and afternoon with his gut twisted in apprehension. Foreboding has left its cold, wet grasp on his skin.
His apartment is trashed. Someone had managed to sneak through all of his booby traps, disengage all of his alarms, and slip into his haven.
He hunts for her, her name on his lips, but he can't voice the name just because he isn't sure how he'll fair if she doesn't answer.
He finds her on the bed – their bed, the bed she had giggled when they had bought it because they were so young and already they were acting like adults and she had thought that was funny – in rivers of her own blood. Her emerald eyes are dull in death, her dying expression blank and uncaring.
She is naked and there are fluids between her legs.
Before she had died, she had been broken.
And he remembers, while he stands there numbly with not a clue of what to do next but scream, that he isn't invincible.
He realizes a little too late that he couldn't be everywhere at once; he couldn't be the best if he could be out-bested; he couldn't protect her.
He acts as if she's still alive as he cleans her up and then straightens out the apartment. He makes it look as perfect as it had before he had left.
Holding vials of the fluids that had stained her, he calls the landlord and tells him that he has to evacuate the apartment building under pretense of being from the gas company.
He waits until everyone floods out of the building, kisses her goodbye, and then burns down the apartment, leaving through a window.
He finds the men who had defiled her and he tortures them, dragging their death on for hours until they look just as dull and listless as she had.
When he kills them, he still doesn't feel better.
II.
He is 25 when he feels something relative to love again; nothing nearly as strong as what he had felt for his first love, but he's tired and he wants to believe that he can feel something again.
He's more experienced this time around; he is observant and guarded when he takes him out in public – and, yes, a him, a man – and spoils him. He wants this one to not rest on his guilty conscious, to haunt his dreams until he simply doesn't dream anymore. He wants to have someone to rest on when he's tired and he wants someone to smile at him in that soft, mysterious way that's like love with lovely secrets.
This lover is 27 years old and his emerald gaze penetrates him; he doesn't have her cheeky grin or her prideful spirit – but his hair is black and his skin is tanned. He knows what he needs and he's selfless when he gives it. And this man can protect himself; a master of Kudo, experienced with a pistol – he is far from helpless.
He feels confident that he can leave this emerald-eyed beauty to himself and he will be fine.
His confidence is misplaced for the second time.
His lover is kidnapped off the street with two dozen witnesses around who see nothing. When he finds him, he's missing a heartbeat… and his eyes.
He, as he had for his first love, avenges his male lover.
He feels no comfort when the murderers' blood runs through his fingers.
III.
He's an arcobaleno when he meets her. By this time, his name is Reborn.
She is gorgeous in her own way: her with her wave of cotton candy pink hair and her cotton candy pink lips… her sap green eyes…
She is loyal and she is fiery and she loves him with all her heart.
Best of all, she's an assassin; she can protect herself and she can do it without a problem.
Yet he doesn't love her; he feels a possible fondness for her, but his heart is cold and numb when she's near. She is a fling to him and so he leaves when he's done; except she follows him.
He doesn't mind simply because he doesn't care. She holds him and cherishes him and he knows it will lead nowhere, so he accepts her needs in return for her companionship.
He doesn't show any emotion for her; no matter in public or in private. If she chooses to hold onto him or make the first move, he doesn't bother to fight her. But there is no passion on his end.
She isn't forward enough, isn't cheeky enough, isn't special enough; she doesn't flash that mysterious smile nor does she care to put forth an opinion opposing his.
She isn't her and she isn't him. She simply… is.
IV.
He's in a bar when he meets the child.
An annoying little underling, Lambo is straightforward and happy to meet him.
He instantly summarizes that the child doesn't know who he is, even though the horns that poke out from his enormous afro and the cow-print pajamas he wears say he's from the Bovino family; there's an elder man who's watching Lambo from the corner of the bar with a hawkish, protective gaze and he knows the man to be the Don of the Bovino family.
And he is as quick to dislike the baby. He's too cheeky, too straightforward. He flashes a confident grin and laughs obnoxiously.
He has dark features with emerald eyes.
Scratch that; he doesn't dislike the baby – he hates him.
Because he is everything she and he had been, but in the most offensive way.
He picks his nose and then grins cockily, saying that he could play with him if he would become his manservant.
He decides to ignore the child; it's a better choice than killing him, though he does want to. He takes a nap while the child continues to speak to him animatedly.
He believes he will never see the annoying brat again.
He is proven wrong when he is tutoring Sawada, Tsunayoshi.
He uses the 10-year bazooka and when the pink smoke clears, he is looking at a teenage boy with a mysterious smile directed at him, emerald eyes focused on him, and a soft voice speaking to him.
To hide how his heart speeds, he beats the child up.
When the child wails and runs away, he knows he did the right thing.
He's too tired and too numb to let his heart shatter again for another person who's going to die at the hands of his enemies because of his profession.
He believes he is justified in ignoring the child, and the teenage form of the child.
He proves to be more affectionate with Bianchi; he doesn't want her, doesn't need her – but he's smarter than to leave himself alone with the holder of his desires.
Time passes and his student (with his family) is facing off with the Varia for the Vongola rings.
Lambo steps onto the platform.
When the teenage-version of Lambo disappears in a puff of pink, an adult-Lambo steps out.
And he fights with the capability of one who can stand up for himself.
Even though Lambo loses the fight in the end, he feels he can be a little less cautious – possibly a little forward.
He gives acknowledgement in small ways – never being obvious about it and never being too giving.
He's abusive and he's ignorant, but he is letting the wanna-be-assassin into his little circle tiny step by tiny step.
V.
Lambo is 17 when Verde finds a way around the arcobaleno curse; not necessarily a cure, but they will have their bodies back.
He is almost melancholy at the loss of his small body; it had been useful when spying or when cosplaying.
Nonetheless, he isn't too upset about it.
Lambo is his first visit. And he isn't surprised to see him.
He flashes that mysterious smile with eyelids drooping over his emerald gaze.
He doesn't welcome him into his apartment until he knocks off three bullets from the gun that had been hiding behind his back.
After the third shot, they tumble into Lambo's flashy abode, lips clashing, hands flying, and bodies traveling.
When they get to the bed, they're naked. His fingers are being laved by Lambo's tongue and he has Lambo's nipple between his teeth.
When he enters Lambo, he can't help but think that the brat is gorgeous. He shakes away the numbness and tiredness that had been haunting him for far too long and his heart creaks painfully open with every thrust.
Lambo is looking up at him with teary emerald eyes, that mysterious smile as loving as it lovely.
The stupid cow is infuriating, childish, cowardly, overly confident… And he is his.
VI.
Lambo is 19 when gay marriage is legalized in Italy.
Two years have gone by since their relationship began and the brat is still alive, still loves him in that annoying way that he has where he switches between spoiling him and trying to kill him.
He is stronger now than he had been back then. He can defend himself, if not a few others. He can be left to himself without another coming from thin air to cut his life short.
He takes the brat to the alter, knowing all its consequences. He won't have an heir with a male husband; he will have to defend his pride with ferocity.
Yet there is an advantage – one magnificent, undefeatable, exceptional benefit.
Lambo looks up at him as they say their vows, his eyes teary and his mysterious smile not so mysterious in that moment.
His heart will never break again.