Darling, we go a-drowning.

8018 in 22 Acts.

This one takes place the moment the boys enter high school, in a continuum after the TYL arc finishes, however that's supposed to go. AMANO-SENSEI, I'M LOOKING AT YOU. Oh, and some of this is loosely based on events in the KHR RPlurk crew that I'm a part of.

The titles of this fic and its parts are taken from various themes in the 31 Days monthly sets.


The challenge: bring order to the whole.

It starts with change, a disruption in the routine: Sawada and his two favorite herbivores, they have stopped going to school together. They don't pollute the first year corridors with their noise anymore. They no longer crowd the rooftop during free periods. They are hardly ever on campus past the last bell.

These things, they're not exactly noticeable, but for all his idiosyncrasies Hibari Kyouya is a creature of habit, intolerable of any sort of change. He is also rather invested in the strange baby that hangs around the group – any five-year-old child with a penchant for shooting people in the head on a regular basis is bound to be interesting.

Said baby has not shown up on campus since the disruption happened.

Hibari, then, has every reason to want some answers.

A sharp tongue, an Achilles' heel.

A regular day for Hibari includes a journey to the rooftop at lunch period, where he takes it upon himself to bite (beat up) anyone who isn't following the school rules during their break – he believes, after all, that not a minute goes by without somebody breaking some sort of rule, and as the head of the Disciplinary Committee it is his job to punish that sort of behavior at any given occasion.

The rooftop clears out pretty quickly the moment he kicks the door open, and is soon empty of all people save for him and one of Sawada's herbivore friends, the one with hair like a frayed paintbrush and an idiotic smile.

Murderous thoughts come to mind, but this is normal. Four strides, and Hibari has his tonfa out.

"Oh! Hibari—"

He smacks out whatever words the idiot might have had prepared in two strikes, and finds himself mildly disappointed that some teeth didn't go with it. He could have sworn that he attacked fast enough, hard enough. Not a glassjaw, this one.

"Students on the suicide list are to be accompanied at all times. Eating alone is against the school rules for them."

"Ahahahaha… what?"

Another strike, and Hibari notes, with some satisfaction, that the idiot looks a little more fazed now. "You attempted to kill yourself in middle school. You are on the suicide list."

"Huh. I didn't know our school had one of those."

"We do."

And he tries to hit the idiot again. Really, he does. Except it doesn't quite work out as planned, not with the way the idiot catches his tonfa in mid-swing.

He's not supposed to be able to do that.

"I'm not going to do something like that again, you know."

Hibari pulls his tonfa free and turns away.

"Where are your friends?"

His question has nothing to do with curiosity, and a whole lot to do with hurting someone in a way beyond physical – not his usual style, but it can be effective, at times. This moment is no exception.

"I don't know."

Whipped puppies and drenched kittens come to mind, and that is not normal. As he leaves the rooftop, Hibari tells himself that only weaklings "don't know". He got lucky, dodging that strike. That is all there is to it.

Uninnocent these conversations start.

"The baby is not coming around anymore."

"Hmm?"

"The baby. The interesting one."

The Bucking Horse takes one moment too long to answer, and it might be because he's got the blond idiot backed up against the wall, one tonfa right up under his chin. The other one is tied down. Pesky whips and their pesky range.

"Oh, you mean Reborn?"

"Who else would I be talking about?"

The Horse laughs. "Point taken," he says with a smile. "I forgot that you were interested in him," he says, as he tightens his grip on the handle of his weapon. The whip tightens accordingly, and it's as irritating as it is glorious, the way it's suddenly difficult to breathe. Hibari decides that it is time to share the high, and he digs the tonfa in a little deeper.

Constructive destruction is what their encounters are always about.

"Do you know anything?"

"Nope. Have you tried asking Yamamoto-kun?"

The statement is ludicrous, so ludicrous that it angers him and anger brings out the adrenaline, enough adrenaline to free himself and take a swing at the Horse's head. The Horse loosens the hold he has with his whip and ducks, just in the nick of time. There is a pretty little dent in the concrete where his face used to be.

"Easy on the strikes there, Kyouya. You could hurt someone like that."

"Why would the baby hang out with that herbivore?"

"Because they trained together."

"But he said that he didn't know."

"Huh?"

But Hibari is not going to slip up the way he did earlier, because that had allowed the Horse to get close enough to wrap him up in leather. The prefect jumps away, wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve, gives the man a flat stare. The Horse has that confused look again, but his eyes are cool and neutral. Warm, the color of burned gold. Only someone like him could give a look like that with eyes like that.

"Maybe you should ask them for yourself."

"I don't talk to herbivores."

"Even if they're interesting?"

"I never said they were interesting."

A cellular phone rings, and Hibari is suddenly reminded of Romario's presence close to the edge of the rooftop, right at the spot where that dark-haired idiot was the other day.

"Boss. You've got a meeting with the local gangsters at three, and I promised Kusakabe-kun that I would bring his president back in one piece after lunch."

It's a long-winded way of saying that their time is up. Hibari turns, spits out a little blood. The Horse chuckles, and he's suddenly too damned close again, tilting his chin up, brushing the hair out of Hibari's eyes. "You heard the man," he says, as he easily dodges Hibari's retaliating strike, pulls him in with an arm around his waist. He says, "Time to patch you up", and he kisses his forehead.

Rumpled beds and the taste of someone else's nicotine on one's lips come to mind. Hibari shrugs out of the Horse's grip.

"I can take care of myself, Cavallone."

"All right. Say hi to Yamamoto-kun for me, will you?"

Hibari slams the door shut behind him.

And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

Baseball, he realizes not for the first time, is both a waste of energy and space. Energy because there's no sport like a bloodsport. Space because it requires an enormous field that could be put to better use. Watching a game, Hibari realizes, irritates him a lot more than it should.

"…So this is what the guys on the team were referring to."

The idiot – Yamamoto Takeshi – looks even more idiotic than he usually does in a baseball jersey, but the batter's hat keeps his hair out of sight, at least. Hibari turns away, leans against the chain-link fence separating them, folds his arms across his chest. The sight of the field annoys him too much.

"Where's the baby?"

"Eh?"

"The baby. Reborn."

"…Oh, you mean the little guy! Ahahaha, do you know him?"

"Answer the question."

"Sorry, sorry… well, maybe you should ask Tsuna about him. I don't really hang around their house that often these days."

"I'm not going to ask Sawada. I'm asking you."

"And I'm telling you that I can't help you." He doesn't need to look to know that Yamamoto's smiling; it's in his voice. "Sorry."

And as Hibari walks away, he makes a mental note to bash Yamamoto's teeth out at the next best opportunity.

A laboratory for thought experiments.

He sees them the next day, which is exactly twenty-four hours too soon for his liking: Sawada, walking, talking and laughing. Gokudera Hayato, the Smoking Bomb, matching Sawada stride for stride, smiling, his fingers brushing Sawada's fingers from where their hands lay idle beside each other, between their bodies. Yamamoto trailing only three steps behind, hands in his pockets, with a funny smile closer to the one he gave on the rooftop than the stupid one that's usually painted on his face. Maybe he's watching them both. Maybe he's watching just one of them. Maybe he's not watching either of them at all.

Whipped puppies, drenched kittens. Hibari wonders why that comes to mind first before it occurs to him that Yamamoto might have been lying to him about not hanging around with Sawada. Might have been, except that back when they still had a routine Yamamoto never walked behind the pair, but with them.

"Ah! H-Hibari-san!"

"Five minutes to the first bell. Go to your classrooms."

No baby means that he's under no obligation to talk to them.

Blue, like an orange.

"Dino says that you have been looking for me, Hibari."

Lunch period, and the baby has somehow appeared in his office, waiting for him behind the locked door, sitting cross-legged at the edge of his desk; he is sipping macchiato from a tiny cup, and eyeing Hibari with eyes too old to fit a face still round with baby fat. The lizard flicks his tongue. Hibari pulls out his tonfa.

Reborn stops Hibari's strike with just a finger to the end of his weapon, and Hibari remembers why he had gone out on a leg to try and find out where the baby was all this time.

"Fight me."

"Defeat Dino first."

"I already have."

"Not as much as you ought to before you can face me properly."

If that had come from anyone else's mouth, Hibari would have been insulted.

"Yamamoto Takeshi interests you. Why?"

"Because he has potential."

Reborn sets the cup aside, hops off the desk. He smiles, tips his fedora in Hibari's direction.

"Clean that up for me, will you?"

The next day, Kusakabe Tetsuya delivers a tiny, meticulously cleaned cup in a box to the Sawada Residence, addressed to Reborn. Tsuna, of course, is smartening up fast enough to know better than to ask.

Your notes on his margins.

Two weeks after, it's Gokudera Hayato and Sawada Tsunayoshi walking to school together, gloriously late. Hibari punishes them both as he sees fit, and punishes them again when he catches them in an act of indecency out in the corridor (read: holding hands while balancing water buckets on their heads).

During study period of that day, it is Yamamoto Takeshi up on the rooftop again, the only one who doesn't clear out when Hibari comes around to exact discipline upon the delinquents of Namimori High. Alone again, and with a music player this time.

"Second offense, Yamamoto Takeshi, and you're cutting a period. You also have a forbidden item on your person."

"Ahahaha. Sorry?"

Hibari decides that an apology doesn't cut it. He settles for breaking the music player by throwing it off the rooftop. When he comes back to the roof after class, Yamamoto is there again, and alone, again. Maybe he never left.

He is watching Gokudera Hayato and Sawada Tsunayoshi walk home.

Constructive destruction comes to mind, only it's not constructive destruction. More like self-torture.

Hibari leaves before Yamamoto can notice that he was even there.

There are less crowded rooftops to occupy on the school grounds.

Making love in the temple.

"So did you get to talk to him?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"I don't know why he finds Yamamoto interesting."

The Horse has him up against the wall of his office, and he's retaliating not with a kick, nor with a fist to the face – Hibari believes that his mouth is enough of a weapon at the moment, because when they're pressed this close and feel this hot, it's fun, trying to smother each other by locking lips and seeing how long they can hold out before one of them lets go in order to breathe.

"You know," Dino Cavallone mutters just over the nape of his neck and then up, against his ear and the hair curling around it, "I'm almost turned on by how you insist on talking about things like this while I'm trying to fuck you."

"I will talk about what I want to, when I want to," Hibari replies. He punctuates his statement by ripping out the top buttons of Dino's jeans and dipping his hand in, reaching for the man's crotch.

"So why are you suddenly interested in Yamamoto?" Dino asks later, when he's flat on his back on the couch and watching a very naked Hibari prowl about the room, picking up his clothes one article at a time.

"He's acting like an herbivore on my school grounds."

"Okay. What are you going to do about it then?"

"It's not my problem."

Dino laughs. Murderous thoughts, again.

"I don't really follow your logic there, Kyouya."

Hibari pulls up his pants, straightens his collar.

"Let yourself out or I'll bite you to death."

White it out.

And a lot of time passes. A whole lot of time, enough for Hibari to consider changing what he believes to be routine, revising all the little things he's noted down regarding Sawada Tsunayoshi and his ragtag team of herbivores.

Then he wakes up one day, roused from his nap by the sound of voices, and he has half the mind to bring out those tonfa and beat all the noise out of the offending parties, but he recognizes who is talking.

Yamamoto Takeshi. Gokudera Hayato.

"…Idiot. If you had just told me sooner…"

"Sorry."

"You know, don't you? About Jyuudaime and I?"

"Yeah."

"Then why?"

"Sorry."

"Is that all you've got to say?"

"Sorry."

And they're quiet again, that sweet, golden sort of silence that Hibari's only ever heard after he's finished beating people up. Hibari closes his eyes. The shade he's in, cast by the water tank. It's almost pleasant.

Sometime after and right below him, footsteps sound, and the door to the rooftop closes behind them.

You'll remember me only when I fall apart.

Disciplinary Committee business and a fight (fuck) with the Bucking Horse has Hibari staying late on campus that very same day, "late" being less like the late of club activities and varsity teams; "late" more like the kind that has people up at such a time wondering whether they'll make it to the station for the last train out. He finishes the last of his paperwork, picks up his coat, checks for an umbrella. It had started raining after lunch, and he has no intention of getting wet. Rainwater was bad for the wounds, after all.

Now doors are supposed to open when one pushes against them, and this one does, only not as fully as Hibari had intended. There is a figure in the way, huddled on the floor, curled up tighter than a pillbug.

Yamamoto Takeshi.

Somehow, Hibari isn't surprised.

"Oh… ahahahaha. Hey there."

It's not the face of a living man, Hibari decides, as he looks down at Yamamoto looking up at him on the floor. It's the sort of pale you get with white hospital sheets, the sort of pale that only comes after you've drained every other color out. His eyes look sunken, though, and red.

"You're not supposed to be here, Yamamoto Takeshi."

"Eh, really? Huh. I better go home."

Only he isn't getting up; he's trying to, that much is obvious, but it isn't working. Strange, for the object of Reborn's interest – the baseball freak with the Ring of Rain around his neck – can't even will his own body to work the way he wants it to.

"That's funny… can't get up. Guess I've been here for a while."

Yamamoto's voice, it's not the choked up of someone who drank water so fast that it went down the wrong way. It's more the choked up of someone who's been crying into his own shirt and knees and fighting to keep it quiet, to make sure nobody hears but him.

Hibari leaves without answering. He's halfway to the stairs when he watches, through the corner of his eyes, as Yamamoto curls back in on himself. Maybe his shoulders shook. He couldn't tell; he was walking away too fast.

Fluent in bullshitting.

They run into each other on the train the next morning – odd, because according to the intelligence that his lackeys on the Committee have gathered, Yamamoto usually takes a different route going to school. The route that allows him to meet up with Gokudera Hayato and Sawada Tsunayoshi on the way.

Perhaps that is no longer so odd. Hibari has come to learn that a routine can change only too quickly as of late.

Constructive destruction comes to mind.

"Hey."

Hand on his shoulder. Hibari slaps it away and comes face-to-face with Yamamoto.

"Too close."

"Ahahaha! I just wanted to apologize. For yesterday, I mean."

People flooding into the train all around them. Hibari brandishes his tonfa, and they clear out of the car they're in and move to the others pretty quickly. The doors close, leaving them alone, free to take whatever seat they want to.

Neither of them move.

"You weren't supposed to see that. I'm okay now."

"I don't care."

The smile doesn't even flinch, but there's something quiet in Yamamoto's eyes.

"Right. You're right, of course."

They stay on opposite ends of the train once it starts moving. They don't talk for the rest of the way.

Forget love, do it for the money.

Next Monday, Hibari comes to the rooftop and it's the idiot threesome again, laughing, eating lunch together. Only, Gokudera focuses all his energies on fussing over Sawada and acts like Yamamoto doesn't exist. Only even while he's laughing, the quiet look has never left Yamamoto's eyes.

Hibari chases everyone off the rooftop, them included. Oddly, the whole exercise leaves a bad taste in his mouth, one that he only comes to ignore when he finds Reborn in his office yet again. Black coffee this time, judging from the smell. Good, strong black coffee.

"Shouldn't you be up with them?"

"Not when I need a favor from you, Hibari."

"What's in it for me?"

"We can fight, maybe."

'Maybe' is a whole lot better than an outright no. Hibari says nothing, however, because speaking would mean that he is interested, and being interested betrays weakness.

With the way Reborn smiles, it is hard to tell whether he bought it or not.

"Take care of Yamamoto. He's a precious family member."

"I'm not part of your family."

"I know."

Reborn smiles. When he leaves this time, he brings his cup with him.

Hell hath no limits.

"Do you have a death wish?"

"Um. What?"

Wednesday, in Yamamoto's room. Because Yamamoto wasn't on the rooftop during the day, but he wasn't with Gokudera and Sawada either. Because it's raining, and water is bad for the wounds, and Yamamoto probably has an umbrella somewhere. Because the baby asked, and he is looking for a good fight. Because the Bucking Horse is off in Italy, doing Bucking Horse things.

"Er…"

"You're acting like an herbivore."

"Um. Don't I always?"

"I heard you. You and Gokudera Hayato."

The confusion only lasts for three seconds, roughly the same amount of time that it takes for a body to hit the floor. The silence: that one lasts longer.

Hibari shifts from his position on Yamamoto's windowsill, looking around. There's an umbrella all right, and it's just within reach. No effort required.

"Shape up or I'll bite you to death, Yamamoto Takeshi."

And he's gone the next moment, before Yamamoto can even reply.

This conversation never happened.

"You can have the umbrella, by the way."

On Saturday, there is a Yamamoto Takeshi-shaped hole in the sky, looming over him. It is blocking out the sunlight, at least. Hibari does not open his eyes; he only turns, rolling on to his side. Somewhere above him, Yamamoto laughs.

"I'll make this quick. I don't want to bug you for too long anyway." The shadow shifts away, replaced by a warm weight settling beside him, just at his back. "I'm really okay with it, you know. Gokudera likes Tsuna. They're good for each other."

The rush and rabble of Namimori High at lunch is nothing but white noise from where they are, up on the rooftop. The sound of cloth rustling against cloth and limbs re-arranging themselves is much, much louder.

"Thanks for the concern, though. Ahahaha… I guess you're a nice guy after all."

Hibari wants to correct Yamamoto, but he is supposed to be asleep. It is for that reason that he doesn't move, even when he feels a hand wander through his hair, graze the skin of his cheek. The fingers are long and callused; callused from what, he isn't sure. The Rain has not been wielding a sword for very long, at least for not as long as Hibari has been fighting with his own weapon.

"That's it, really. Come over to my place again sometime. I'll feed you and I'll keep real quiet, I swear."

He tells himself that he is asleep, so he does not give an answer to that either. It's only much later, after Yamamoto finally gives up and leaves, that he opens his eyes.

Arguing with the insane.

"We're not friends."

Yamamoto doesn't look nearly as surprised as he ought to, Hibari finds himself thinking. He is looking down at the baseball idiot (swordsman) now from where the latter was slumped over his books, fast asleep in between one period of class and the next.

Sawada and Gokudera are watching. Hibari wonders if Yamamoto cares more about this than he does.

"I only talked to you because the baby asked me to. Don't get any ideas."

"Is that so?" Yamamoto chuckles, leans back, smiles. He is not supposed to be smiling. Hibari thinks of the velocity of a tonfa strike, of how easy it is for him to reach over and strangle somebody. "Ahaha. That little guy's pretty cool, isn't he?"

"Did you hear what I just said?"

"I did. My offer's still open."

Their teacher for the next period arrives and promptly drops all of the papers she is carrying the moment she sees that the dreaded President of the Disciplinary Committee is in her classroom. Hibari leaves.

Some mad hope.

When Hibari changes his patrol route, he knows that Kusakabe wants to know why but can't work up the courage to ask. Hibari, of course, uses this to his advantage.

Kusakabe still doesn't ask, even when Hibari decides that he will be the one handling the patrols for a particular area from six to six. There are certain things that subordinates do not need to know, after all.

That would, of course, assume that leaders know what they are doing. Hibari likes to think that he does, anyway. He tells himself that he does, and that is enough.

When he passes a certain sushi shop on a certain street between 8:10 and 8:11 PM, he knows that he is being watched from a certain window on the second floor. He ignores it with the same dogged tenacity and unreal stoicism that he uses to deal with most things.

Hibari does, at least, until he comes home, spots the coats and other oddities dumped in the corner by his door, and remembers.

When he does what he does next, he tells himself that it's because he doesn't like a messy apartment, cluttered with things that don't belong to him.

Creative interpretation of orders.

Yamamoto, to his credit, doesn't wake up with much of a sound – no surprised yelp, no flailing limbs. Just a short gasp and wide eyes for half a second before he realizes who snuck into his room through the window, yet again. A smile, when he notices what that other person is carrying.

"You really didn't have to return it."

Hibari walks over without a word and climbs unto the bed, tossing the blanket away, settling right on top of Yamamoto's waist, just over his crotch. It is his way of saying, without words, that this really isn't about the umbrella he nicked from the other boy's room at all.

"Hibari—"

"Don't make me change my mind about letting you get what you need."

The way he runs a finger down Yamamoto's jawline is both a promise and a threat; the way his hands move over the other boy's skin is smooth, decisive, professional.

Dino Cavallone comes to mind.

He is a most excellent tutor.

Any protest Yamamoto might have had dies in his throat the moment Hibari kisses him and lifts himself up, just enough to free himself of his own pants. The look in his eyes goes quiet when Hibari reaches down, rubbing a reaction out from between the Rain's legs.

Yamamoto Takeshi, his eyes are still. His eyes are blue.

Hibari trades his hand with his mouth in order to look away from them.

Something familiar about the way they fit together.

It is nothing like the way it is when Dino Cavallone is fucking him, and more like something graceless and awkward, with a boy who has no idea how and where to put his limbs and where he himself knows only too much for his eighteen years.

Still, Hibari thinks of killing Yamamoto all the same when the other boy is inside of him, and that means that he enjoys it well enough.

Casually smashed to pieces.

"Why?" Yamamoto asks afterward, when it's 3 AM and Hibari is walking around in Yamamoto's clothes because his are as good as soiled.

"Because we are not friends."

Hibari dumps the umbrella by the windowsill and leaves.

The censorship of my skin.

"You smell of someone else," Dino Cavallone tells Hibari later, when his student comes into his hotel room and out of the rain. Hibari lashes out, Dino dodges, and it isn't long before they've fallen into each other on the bed.

"Is that a problem?"

"No. Not at all."

They kiss and bite and breathe each other in, and Hibari decides that he can afford to miss the first half of school today.

Parting gifts.

The umbrella is at the foot of the door to the Disciplinary Committee office when Hibari arrives late in the afternoon.

Kusakabe steps up to the rooftop to return it to the sender during study period, because the latter is in the company of his two closest friends. He is talking and he is laughing but there's something quiet and tired to the way he looks.

"What was that about, Yamamoto-kun?" Sawada Tsunayoshi asks, the moment Kusakabe is gone.

"I don't really know. I guess I forgot it somewhere."

Somehow, Tsuna knows that he ought to press for details, but decides against it. They talk on other things.

Brush it off like lint.

It takes Hibari exactly three weeks, two days and sixteen hours worth of daily patrols in a particular area of town to realize that Yamamoto Takeshi still leaves the lamp by his window on whenever it is raining.

It takes Hibari less than a minute after that to decide that he does not care.