Gokudera grew up with flowers covering his room, carefully maintained in high quality vases. They came in so many colors and types, so vibrant it almost hurt his eyes. He used to babble to his piano teacher, swinging his legs as he sat perched on the bench, explaining how he was the luckiest kid ever! Six soulmates! His teacher would laugh a little and listen patiently as he would explain each of the flowers and the extensive research he had done on each of them. What kind of person he thought or hoped the other would be. How he couldn't wait to meet them.
When the truth about his mother and his father came out he threw all of the vases against a wall, screaming in anger, tears streaking down his face. Soulmates weren't real - couldn't be real. Each flower he used to have pressed in a book he threw out or crushed, letting the pieces of them turn to dust and tossing it out his window.
The older Gokudera got, the less he cared about his soulmates. Did they have to injure themselves so often? It was hard to ignore them when they spouted all over his body constantly, yellow goldenrods getting caught on his dynamite, purple Lavender bunching up on his forearm under his clothing. It was frustrating having to hunt down all the flowers to tear them off. He was an independent hitman now, he didn't need these weighing them down.
Meeting Tsuna changes everything.
This is… the end of me. That's all he has time to think as the sticks of dynamite fall from his hands, clattering to the ground. There's no way he can get out of range of all of them in time. He messed up.
"Defuse!" Sawada leapt forward, his hand curling around the fuse, a small sizzle of the weak flame is extinguished. "Defusedefusedefuse!" Gokudera stood there in shock as Sawafa proceeded to take out every single one of his sticks of dynamite.
"Phew!" Sawada sat back, wiping his brow as he admired his handiwork. "That could've been bad!" And Sawada smiled up at Gokudera, and Gokudera as just dumbfounded at this person so full of light in front of him. Something in his core reached out to Sawada.
"I was wrong!." Gokudera immediately hit the ground, bowing in front of Sawa- the Tenth. "Vongola Decimo, I will follow you! Command me to do anything!"
"W-what?" Tenth exclaimed, taken aback.
"Having the loser serve under the winner is a famiglia tradition." Reborn explained off to the side.
"I didn't actually want to be the 10th gen." Gokudera explained, picking himself up. "I just heard that the heir was my age and I wanted to test out his skills. You're even greater than I anticipated!" Gokudera gushed. "Putting your life on the line like that to save me, my life is surely in your hands!" Gokudera clasped Tenth's hand, and Tsuna flinched back. "Ah, I'm sor...ry…." Gokudera's voice drifted off as he examined Tsuna's hands. The palms had slight burn marks on them, from defusing so many bombs in a row no doubt. But the more than that was the matching small orange Chrysanthemum's on Gokudera's hands.
"Those flower's…" Tsuna leaned forward, for the first time since meeting Gokudera not seeming to be trying to put as much space between the two of them as possible.
"It… It's an honor to be your soulmate Tenth!" Gokudera hastily gave a deep bow, face red. So this was a soulmate. He could feel it inside of him somewhere, something in him shift and fall into place.
oOo
"Tenth, I was wondering if you had any… any vases I could borrow." Tsuna tilted his head at Gokudera's request, looking up from the homework he had been trying to muscle his way through (to no avail).
"Of course Gokudera-"
"Hayato." He corrected hastily. He had a few verbena flowers gathered in one hand, nervously playing with their small petals with his other hand.
"You call me Tenth." Tsuna pointed out.
"That's different, you're the Tenth Vongola. To call you anything less would be a discredit to you." Tsuna sighed a little as Hayato continued to give of that intense vibe that comes with whenever Tsuna tries to get them to, heck, even just a last name basis. They we're soulmates for heavens sake.
"There should be some in the left corner cabinet." Tsuna continued to scratch away at the math, biting his lip nervously. He only had so much time before Reborn got tired of waiting on him figure it out on his own.
"Tenth, I know I have to right to ask but, would you help me?" Tsuna looked up as Gokudera continued to nervously fiddle with the verbena.
"Could you teach me how to… properly vase a flower?" He gave a small bow as he asked, and Tsuna smiled a little. Gokudera was so much… softer than Tsuna had first thought.
"Yeah, here's, let me see one of those…"