Title: The Scream
Author: Carlile (juuuudaime/notimetoreconcileme on Tumblr, CarlileLovesAnime on FFnet and Ao3)
Rating: T
Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Characters/Pairings: too fucking many. Tsuna-centric; ensemble, unimportant OCs here and there; various xTsuna ships that never really come to fruition.
Genre(s): Romance, Friendship, Humor, Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Family. AU.
Summary: Now, Tsunayoshi Sawada, recently outed homosexual, able to live without his parents and receive higher education because of his grandfather's inheritance, was finally getting another start in life. (Part 1 of "No Good Next to Diamonds" trilogy.)
Warnings: In this part alone, mentions of forced prostitution, a bit of neglectful parenting, bullying, anxiety, just general fail, and little to no knowledge of how university life (or working in a restaurant) actually is.
Disclaimer: I don't own KHR, yo.
Other: This is a birthday gift to Zee (Snow757 on FFnet, byakuzee on Tumblr and Ao3), who is one of the loveliest people alive. (Sorry it took me so long, darling!) She gave me a prompt request with which I took some liberties: 5927 AU, falling in love online. I tried to make it a rom-com. I really did. But you know me, I can't help adding dark themes here and there.
This fic is part one of what I hope will be a trilogy, which I am calling "No Good Next to Diamonds." "The Scream" is about Tsuna, of course; part two is about Gokudera and part three is about the two of them as a couple. Even though they go together and are in the same universe/on the same timeline, they can still stand alone. Part one will consist of five chapters. Let's see if I can pull off weekly updates with this fic… BTW, the title of the trilogy is a line from the song "Diamonds" by The Boxer Rebellion. Beautiful song, beautiful band. Obviously, the title of this particular part comes from that of Edvard Munch's famous work, as an homage to artist!Tsuna.
And last but not least, a very special thank-you to my beta-readers, Aki (akanoaki on Tumblr, Takigawa Aki on FFnet and Ao3) and Alli (fiercetigress on Tumblr), as well as the others who supported me throughout the process of writing this fic. Sorry for the long A/N.
0o.o0o.o0
Chapter One: Cave Art of the Twenty-First Century
Tsuna's stomach flopped with anxiety just as his grandfather Ieyasu was probably spinning in his fresh grave.
He laid his thumb over the left-click button – lightly. He didn't press. He couldn't yet. He gritted his teeth and for the ninth time scrolled through all the information on the screen, squinting at every adjective, every noun, every preposition.
Tsuna – 18 – Japan. I'm a first-year student at a university, majoring in graphic design and digital media. I've never dated anyone before, and I just came out a few months ago, but that doesn't mean I can't be fun!
(He deleted four of the five exclamation points at the end of the paragraph. Then he promptly regretted the move and retyped them. And backspaced two. He felt like hitting his head against the table.)
I love art, videogames, old movies and geeky Internet stuff.
Like I said, I haven't gotten into the dating scene much. I can't say exactly what I would want in a partner yet.
Tsuna shook his head. He couldn't read any further. What was he supposed to say about himself? He thought he was too awkward and self-deprecating to be attractive to anyone. He had a difficult enough time cherry-picking the best photos of himself. He'd found only three in which his eyes weren't closed and his face wasn't contorted in some accidental silly expression.
His best friend – one of his only friends, Yamamoto – had made the suggestion that he set up a profile on a dating site. He said the directness would be uncomfortable at first, but he didn't have to play politics as much. Yamamoto was usually right about things anyway. And besides, over his computer-staring years, Tsuna had found online relationships easier to digest, so this should have been a good fit for him.
He closed his eyes and clicked "post profile" as if he was pulling a trigger. As if there was no turning back and no possible way he could edit his page later. As if at this exact second he was exposing himself to the world in the most condemnable, irrevocable way.
Yet, at the same time, he felt a sense of self-actualization. He recognized the crushing pressure that had been looming over him since that one day in the boys' locker room in seventh grade; and that weight poof!-ed away just as quickly as it was identified.
He leaned back in the chair, dropping his arms at his sides and angling his face toward the ceiling. He could not help but smile. A stream of energy tore through him, jumped him to his feet. He began to pace to and fro. "I did it!"
His roommate came back into being, having never left his bed in the first place. "What?" he asked, lowering the copy of Homer's Odyssey in his hands.
Tsuna turned toward him with an even bigger grin on his face. "I signed up for a dating website," he explained.
"Good for you." Basil gave him a small, congratulatory smile.
He nodded, rubbing his hands together, and when Basil returned to his book, he spun on his heels to close the lid of the laptop. I think I'm going to go for a walk. And he did – he grabbed his only hoodie and ran up and down the back stairwell of the dormitory building a few times. The newfound excitement in his system was just too much to handle.
Now, Tsunayoshi Sawada, recently outed homosexual, able to live without his parents and receive higher education because of his grandfather's inheritance, was finally getting another start in life.
0o.o0o.o0
Tsuna practically leapt from his crappy mattress to his computer. He found one new message, which he thought a huge victory, considering his admittedly bad profile.
Hi Tsuna! My name's Mukuro. Care to check out my info?
Without taking his eyes off the screen, he scooted the chair out from under the desk and sat in it. He clicked on the name of the sender.
Mukuro was 21, a student at another university not too far from where Tsuna was, double majoring in comparative religion and international studies. He worked as a magician and hypnotist on the side. He had a rather liberal sense of humor. Judging from the few photos he had posted, he was tall and muscular, tanned, with beady eyes and spiked, jet-black hair slicked back from his forehead. There were two slash-like scars on one side of his face.
Something about him made shivers run up Tsuna's spine – and not in a good way. But he couldn't find anything so bad about him that it would justify a rejection. So he replied:
Hi, Mukuro! I'd love to get to know you better.
He stared at the message for a moment, pulling at his hair in nervousness. At the last second he replaced "love" with "really like" and then sent it off. Then he stood from his chair with a clamor, which woke Basil.
"'Severything a-right, Tsuna?" he asked. He sat up, but his eyes were still closed, and his voice groggy and weak. Basil was no morning person. Normally, neither was Tsuna.
"Yeah." Tsuna swiped a hand across his forehead and at once realized he was sweating. He turned around to face his roommate. "Yeah, I just—"
Basil was lying down again. Tsuna sighed. His hands started to shake. He assured himself they would talk later, and maybe he would see Yamamoto too.
He figured that he should go ahead and get dressed since he was awake now, and as he did, he wondered if dating was supposed to be this frightening or if it was just him.
0o.o0o.o0
"Is dating supposed to be this frightening or is it just me?"
Yamamoto burst into laughter.
"You don't have to be scared," he said, sighing out of the laughing fit. Then he saw his best friend's face, and a memory flashed through his mind of Tsuna in middle school, meek and anxious and unable to so much as think about talking to strangers without tearing up. Laughter was Yamamoto's best technique for dealing with negativity. It was just a knee-jerk reaction.
He gritted his teeth and averted his eyes. "Sorry."
"It's okay," Tsuna said. "I know I'm stupid for feeling so nervous."
"You're not stupid. I mean, it's scary for everyone, just starting out. How you feel has nothing to do with how smart you are." He added a chuckle.
Tsuna shrugged. "I guess so." He looked into the mouth of the glass in front of him, watching the carbon bubbles pop at the air.
Smiling again, Yamamoto waited a moment before he spoke. "So. Tell me about him." He reached across the table and drummed his fingers next to Tsuna's drink to get his attention.
Yamamoto had always been accepting. He was bubbly, warm, extroverted, but he did his best to respect Tsuna's social problems, which in part helped alleviate them. He was athletic and many of his friends were jocks, but he never teased clumsy Tsuna – instead he encouraged him, and prevented others from harassing him. He was straight, but when Tsuna came out as gay just three months before, he didn't abandon him, he didn't treat him differently, and he didn't even bat an eye.
"There's not much to tell," Tsuna admitted, meeting his best friend's eyes. "His name's Mukuro. He's a magician and a university student. And he probably works out."
"Sounds neat. You should get him to teach you some card tricks." Yamamoto raised his eyebrows and swigged a hefty amount of water.
Tsuna chuckled. "Not sure that's the kind of magic he does," he lilted. Seeing his friend drink made him thirsty as well, so he sucked out a sip of C.C. Lemon. "His profile says he also hypnotizes people."
Yamamoto's shoulders jerked forward and his eyes went wide. He lowered the glass from his lips, coughed a couple times, and pounded his chest with his fist. "Whoa."
"What?"
"You ever seen a hypnotist show?" Yamamoto said. He glanced about, leaned forward and lowered his voice as if afraid he would offend.
"No," Tsuna whispered, bending toward him, his chin low to the table.
"Nah, dude, it is so freaky. My dad had a hypnotist come perform at our restaurant one time for a wedding rehearsal dinner there, and I got to watch, and holy crap. The guy told his subjects, the people he hypnotized, that they had all caught flies in their hands and couldn't let them go, and then he snapped and everyone was supposed to come awake and this one lady couldn't open her hand back up. She was screaming bloody murder. The guy just laughed. He said that happens almost every time."
Tsuna's face went white, and his hand flew upward to cover his gaping mouth. "Oh, my God."
They both sat straight against the backs of their seats. Yamamoto waved his hand frantically. "Tsuna, if you end up meeting him in person, please don't let him hypnotize you," he pleaded. "Ever."
Tsuna raised his right hand. "I won't, I swear, I won't," he said. His eyes were wide and he shook his head.
A few minutes passed for the two of them to cool down, for Tsuna's racing heart to slow to normal. He drank nearly all of his soda, even forsaking the straw to ingest more, faster.
"But, yeah, he sounds like a cool guy. I'd say try it out." Yamamoto grinned.
Just like that, dating became even scarier.
0o.o0o.o0
Mukuro replied with his email address. Tsuna wondered if this was going too quickly. He wondered if this was safe. After about an hour of deliberation, he opened an email draft.
He typed a number of different messages and subsequently deleted each of them. Then he heard his roommate enter the dorm.
"Basil!" he called, more loudly than he'd intended, which made Basil jump and almost drop the textbooks in his arms.
"What? What? What?" He rushed to the desk.
Tsuna turned toward him. "Can you help me?"
Basil glanced back and forth between him and the computer screen. "What are you doing?" he asked. He set his books down beside the computer, laid his palms on the desk for balance, and leaned in closer.
"I'm trying to figure out what to say to this guy I met online," he explained.
"Already you found somebody?"
Tsuna nodded.
Basil nodded too, pursing his lips. "Nice."
"Yes, but I have no idea what to say to him," Tsuna whined. He pulled up the message log between him and Mukuro, not that they had written much to each other, and then had Basil read Mukuro's profile. At length, Basil just shrugged. "Make small talk."
He walked away, taking the satchel strap off his shoulder and laying the bag on his bed.
Tsuna's heart thudded in his chest. Nothing came to mind.
He sighed and resigned to Googling "how to make small talk".
So, how are you?
0o.o0o.o0
Dad never approved of him being an artist. He didn't approve of many other things, either, but art was one of the big no-nos. Had he paid attention early on, he probably wouldn't have been so disappointed in Tsuna for not being big or athletic or very masculine. Tsuna still felt bad about it sometimes. But there came a time in high school when Tsuna realized that a child, like him, was an individual and not just the physical manifestation of a parent's dried-up dreams.
So he didn't feel that guilty about it anymore, holding a pen to a tablet, his eyes alternating between a blank Adobe Illustrator canvas and the wall.
A shadow of an idea popped into his head. He dragged a few lines into being. Then he set his pen aside, leaned back, and tried to come up with anything that could fit into what he already had there. He squinted, moved his lips, brushed his finger back and forth across his jeans.
Finally he gave up and started a thread on a forum site. "Art block! Help please!"
He didn't have to wait long for a response, albeit a short and rather vague one. Just a link, actually. Wikipedia:Random. (He recognized the username of the poster, too – dunamis, who frequented his blog.) Another post followed the suggestion: "Can't wait to see what you'll come up with."
Tsuna half-scowled. What a presumptuous move. It was better than nothing, though.
He clicked the Special:Random link a number of times, and after each, pressed the back button. Nothing seemed inspiring, and very few even usable. AVIRIS, Red Elvises, Angadi, MacCAM, Kohlu. All turned down by the first paragraph.
Then the randomizer took him to the article on the Fenghuang, two godlike mythological birds of ancient East Asia. He read through the page for the phoenix as well, and the metaphorical light bulb in his brain sparked to life.
Smiling, he switched tabs back to the thread he had started and found a few other users had posted more responses, pretty much all of them useless now. "Listen to music!" "Redraw a frame from a badly animated TV show." "Go for a walk, then come back and illustrate a scene you saw."
He typed "Thanks guys (: I know what to do now" and closed the window. He had the perfect vision in his mind and did not need any distractions.
The piece took hours upon hours of nonstop work. When he finally took his eyes off the computer screen for the first time since starting it, the alarm clock on the nightstand showed a fuzzy 3:38 a.m., the lights were out and Basil was fast asleep. Exhaustion crashed onto him at that moment. He turned back to look at his work and smiled as widely as his tired muscles allowed.
A beautiful bird – flowing, elegant, vibrant, and engulfed in flames.
This is the best thing I've ever done, he thought, unable to recall any of his other works for comparison. His eyes grazed over the toolbars around the canvas. He realized then that he had not saved the file at any point. For a few seconds, enough consciousness came to mind for him to click "save as" and title the work Phoenix.
He eased the laptop shut, stood on wobbly legs, and dragged himself to bed. Light bulb and all, he was out before his head even hit the pillow.
0o.o0o.o0
Of course Tsuna woke up late that morning. The clock was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes, and he sprang out of bed and raced from point to point in the room, failing several shaky, desperate attempts at everything he did before succeeding. The clamor drew Basil out of his sleep as well.
But when Basil tried to speak to him, Tsuna hadn't even the time to answer. He met his eyes once, nodded, and then swept everything into his backpack.
He should have known better – should have known better than to stay up until quarter-to-four, should have known better than to have signed up for an 8 a.m. class in the first place.
He stumbled heaving into Professor Reborn's classroom, but the only things there to greet him were empty tables and a lazy voice saying, "Class' canceled today. Go home."
Still too frantic to think straight, Tsuna took a few more steps inside. He loosened his grip on his laptop case. The room was so unusually dark. He stopped and stood in the center of it, glancing around to see if any other students were there. If they had come, they had already left by now.
Leon, Reborn's TA, sat hunched over the iMac at the back desk. His fingers moved so nimbly over the keyboard that the clacks of his typing blurred into a constant noise. He seemed tired: his green hair had solidified from too much gel and the bags under his eyes were more pronounced than usual.
He faced Tsuna and scowled. "Didn't you hear me? I said, 'Class is canceled today.'"
Tsuna's heart jumped and the air around him grew hot. He scanned the room again in false hope that he was not the one addressed.
"I'm sorry," he stammered. "I guess I didn't get the memo."
"It was on the door," Leon said.
Tsuna leaned backward and threw a glance at the door behind him. He turned to Leon with a nervous smile. "R-really?" He could feel himself start to sweat.
"Guess someone must have taken the sign down or something." Shrugging, Leon brought his attention back to the computer screen.
At the start of the year, Tsuna liked Reborn the least of all his teachers. But now he was Tsuna's favorite. He allowed his students independence but still kept class time structured – not to mention he was the master of motivating and giving advice. He rarely interacted with Tsuna despite the small class size, but as far as Tsuna had observed, he was something admirable.
Only his eyes threw him. They were so dark, no one could tell where the irises ended and the pupils began. And he never blinked. Ever. Tsuna had heard rumors that the man slept with his eyelids open.
Leon was the same way – unblinking. Though his eyes were light yellow in color and almost devoid of a soul.
Once he took a couple minutes to catch his breath and let his heart recover, Tsuna opened his mouth. "If class is canceled, then why are you here?" he asked. The heat and sweat and shakiness flashed back to him, like an aftershock.
He stopped typing and fixed his stare on Tsuna. "What?"
Tsuna inhaled and exhaled to release the words hitched in his throat. "I-if class is canceled, then why are you here?" Too quiet. Too fast. Dang it.
Leon had to process Tsuna's words for a few seconds. "I've got some online shit to do. My laptop was stolen the other day and all the computers at the library are taken, so." He looked back at the screen and started typing again. He seemed annoyed now.
Tsuna shuffled to his usual spot and pulled out the chair. Better seats were available since the room was empty, but he would not have felt right sitting anywhere else. He slid his laptop out of its case, set it on the desk and spent a few minutes plugging the power cord and tablet connections and Ethernet cable into it.
"You don't have to stay in here, you know," Leon said, but Tsuna responded with nothing but a quick small nod.
At last he flipped open the lid. The machinations inside the computer whirred, and about half a minute later the blackness faded off the screen. He smiled.
He had forgotten about the phoenix.
Last night was still mostly a blur to him, but he could remember Feng and Huang and how they ruled the skies of China together. He supposed he had left the Illustrator window open. Maybe he would post it to his blog – he hadn't updated in a while, anyway.
Just as he was about to minimize it, he heard, "Oh, wow. That's amazing."
Tsuna looked over his shoulder. Leon, with a smile on his lizard-like face, had directed his eternal stare right at Tsuna's screen.
"Thanks," he mumbled. His heart fluttered a little. "That means a lot."
0o.o0o.o0
Dear Tsuna –
I would love to talk to you further and allow our relationship to progress, as interesting and charming as you seem.
However, I regret to inform you that I will be offline for an indefinite period of time, and thus unable to communicate with you in the same manners we have used previously.
I wish I did not have to leave you in this way. I will make it a priority to contact you when I return.
Thank you for providing such pleasant conversation this week.
Mukuro.
Tsuna felt his stomach sink. He reread the email no less than four times, at first to confirm its meaning, then to search for an explanation.
He clicked onto the dating site, which admittedly he had been neglecting. He logged into his account and opened his inbox. Empty.
Confused, he searched the name "Mukuro Rokudo" on the site's main page. Nothing.
0o.o0o.o0
He knew it was wrong to blame himself for everything. But old habits died hard, and he began to think that the changes he had made to his life weren't entirely complete. Maybe he was still a loser with no skills, destined to be alone, and could never change that no matter what he tried.
Tsuna laid on his side, lost in his head, staring at the brittle white paint on the wall. He thought about his situation, and realized it wasn't so much that he would miss Mukuro as it was the fact he had just met someone and already had to leave him before even getting to know him. He couldn't help but feel a little heartbroken. He criticized himself for such a foolish reaction.
He curled his knees close to his body and clutched his chest. At the other end of the room, his phone pinged. His eyes slid shut. Tsuna was too tired, for now. He figured he'd get it later.
The more he closed off his senses from outside stimuli, the more active his brain became. He heard his mother's voice. It's just a bad day. Pick yourself up.
It's just a bad day, he thought after a moment. More like, it's just a bad week. More like, it's just a bad life.
He started on a different tangent. All things considered, he was better off than he could have been. He wasn't good at talking to people and he wasn't popular, but at least his good friend Yamamoto was there for him. His laptop, which he had bought from a pawnshop, was cheap and slow and had a love-hate relationship with the school's Wi-Fi, but at least he had a medium to work. His dorm was tiny, in the oldest building on campus, but at least there was a roof over his head.
Okay, so it wasn't a bad life. It hadn't even been that bad of a week. He retracted his mental statements.
He still felt like crud, though. To that he had a right.
Consciousness came back to him bit by bit against his will. His eyes opened bleary and watery to the white wall and he sat up slowly. The room had a shallow warmth to it – a feeling easy to slip into, but fleeting.
His phone began to ring. He sat through the first two rings to make sure the sound was not just in his head. Then he rubbed his hands over his face a few times, half-sighed-half-growled, and slid off the bed to the desk where he had left the phone to charge.
"Hi, Yamamoto," slipped out of his mouth.
"Hey, Tsuna." He sounded winded – probably had just finished exercising or practicing for baseball. "What's up?"
Tsuna opened his mouth to speak, but a yawn escaped instead, and before he could add any words to his answer, Yamamoto said, "I see," and chuckled. Tsuna laughed breathlessly with him.
"So, um. Just found out my little brother conked his head on some playground equipment and is in the hospital now."
"Oh," Tsuna said. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"Well, I was on the phone with my dad when he told me and he said he'll probably be fine – he's just there because it gave him a nasty concussion," Yamamoto explained. "But even so, I'm going back home for a few days to be with the family and such."
"Okay," Tsuna sighed. "I'm, um, glad he's not dying."
"Thanks." Yamamoto laughed again and took a moment to catch his breath afterward. Unsure of what to say, Tsuna left this time empty.
"Anyway, just wanted to let you know what was happening. If you want to come with me, or if you want to stay here, that's cool." He could hear the smile in Yamamoto's voice – that big toothy grin he plastered onto his face when things were unpleasant. Even though he knew it to be transparent, it was so bright that he couldn't help but feel reassured whenever he saw it.
Tsuna swallowed hard. "Thanks for telling me," he finally said.
"Sure thing. I'll talk to you later, then." The call ended.
He lowered the phone from his ear, unlocked it, and checked the two emails he had been sent – one just a newsletter from an art website where he was a member (he had been meaning for a while to delete his account, since he didn't use that place anymore) and the other a notification from the dating site. The latter made him smile.
He set aside his phone and opened his laptop. The fan cranked for a minute, worrying him. He remembered that the old desktop at his parents' house made a sputtering noise similar to this, and his mother used to joke that the computer was "taking off," and he smiled. He grazed his fingers over the touchpad as though it would speed up the waking process.
The screen flashed white. It went black again. He heard a popping sound that made him jump.
"Wha—?"
Smoke started to pour out the vents along the back of the computer.
Tsuna's eyes widened. He chomped on the inside of his cheeks and slammed his finger into the emergency shutdown button. "No." He shook his head. "No, no, no."
The laptop did not respond.
"No. Crap. Nonono."
Still, no response. The smoke started to get to his eyes. He closed the lid of the computer as gently as he could, sprang to his feet, and paced the room.
"What do I do, what do I do?" he whimpered to himself. He pulled at his hair as he walked. For some subconscious reason he broke into a jog, but just after he reached the door he stopped and breathed heavily. All of his artwork was on that computer. His notes, his photos, his games, everything.
A little white box on the wall to his side beeped frantically, flashing the red light in its corner. He heard a hissing sound above him. The sprinkler heads in the ceiling squeaked and expanded.
Just like that, it was now raining indoors.
"No, no," he said under his breath, back against the wall as he watched the water come down and soak everything.
Confused footsteps and voices gathered on the other side of the door. "What's going on?" "Is there a leak? A fire?" "Do we evacuate?"
Sparks shot out of the laptop's vents.
Tsuna slid downward until he hit the floor. He brought his legs as close as he could to his torso, laid his face on his knees, and covered the back of his head with his hands. This wasn't happening, this wasn't happening, this couldn't be happening. He felt like he couldn't breathe.
He could not breathe. Chills prickled all over his skin.
He heard someone yell a command to the students in the hall, and the chaos grew louder and people were running.