Author's notes: August 16th - Day 2 || Sky: "My pride is you."
Option A: Favourite relationship(s)
Option B: Favourite pair → Tsuna and Hibari
I chose option B! This is a crossover with the manga Asterisk. I thought this would be easier to write than yesterday's ficlet but it was actually much harder. Maybe it's because the personalities of Kio and Fraw are really different to Tsuna and Hibari.
Anyway Tsuna and Hibari are my favourite platonic pair in KHR and this is 100% because of cywscross' fic To That Faraway Sky.
...
"Sorry, do you mind if I— it's just an insect in your hair, I'll get it for you—"
Tsuna struck his hand at the woman's neck. He grabbed the black spirit lurking at her back and pulled it to his side. He smiled apologetically at the woman.
"It was just a small bee, it flew away. Sorry about that."
"Oh no," the woman shook her head. She hoisted her handbag over her shoulder and stood from the park bench. "Thanks for getting rid of it. I better head off then, thanks for the chat!"
Tsuna waved until she had left before dropping his grin. Invisible to human eyes, manfis were evil spirits who possessed the remains of deceased souls and harmed living people. He had one in his grasp now.
"Stop growling," he murmured, slamming the manfis in a chokehold so they were chest to chest. "I'm going to release you now."
Tsuna exhaled and his breath of air shaped into one of his feathers between his fingers. He jabbed the sharp point into the spirit's arm. A black shadow shot from the wound, swirling into a shrieking mass that slithered away quicker than a snake. Tsuna grabbed the manfis before it could escape and crushed it in his tight fist.
The spirit in his arms glowed a pearly white as it was purified, sketching the silvery outlines of a school shirt, a messy fringe, a bruised neck. Suicide perhaps, or murder by strangling. Tsuna's heart clenched even as he cupped the spirit's cheek.
"You're still quite young," he said gently. "I hope next time you'll get to do the things you couldn't do in this life. You can see it right? Just go towards that light."
Now that the spirit had been purified, it could move on from being tied to the human realm. It didn't matter if Tsuna got bruised or battered or how dangerous it was to fight the manfis. It was all worth it for the smile on the purified spirits' faces as they flared up to the sky like a rising shooting star.
Tsuna craned his neck and traced the journey with his eyes. Then he caught a middle aged couple darting glances at him as they walked past, whispering. He flushed. He was so caught up in saving the spirit, he had forgotten to freeze time. Now the passerbys in the park must think he's a weirdo, or report him to the police again. Tsuna scrambled to his feet but his vision swam and tilted—
"Watch out!"
...
The tailor's hall doors swung open and all eyes spun to the customer. Knee high combat boots, tight trousers, tight T-shirt—all in the darkest shade of black that only highlighted the man's gunmetal wings. They were poised still behind his back, the perfect picture of control.
"Lord Hibari," the head tailor greeted from a respectable distance. Work had come to a halt as everyone gazed at Hibari with shining eyes. The supervisors should have been telling them off. The supervisors had dropped their needles and were clutching fabrics to their chests. "Congratulations to your promotion as one of the Seven. The coat is ready and we made it as you requested but…is this thin material really alright?"
Hibari folded the coat, rubbed the thin weaves between his fingers. He imagined, and then coolly said, "It's fine."
His lips curved up to himself as he turned on his heel and stalked out.
Five minutes later, the administration officer Basil manoeuvred his tower of paperwork to nudge open the tailor's hall doors. "Hey, I have the records of silk production you guys requested, and did Lord Hibari really ask you guys to make a coat from his feathers….Hello?" He finally dumped the papers onto a free table and looked around. "Why are is everyone's faces so red? What on earth happened in here?!"
...
"Hibari."
Hibari's only acknowledgement was a slight turn of head.
"Won't you please stay a little while longer? I'd like to hear more about Tsuna."
Behind him Lord Giotto smiled benevolently. With draping robes and a waterfall of hair as golden as his wings, the head of the Seven Angels was the highest ranked angel and Hibari's direct superior. Hibari turned fully to cut Giotto with a scowl that put glaciers to shame.
"You've been throwing jobs my way and interfering from letting me return to Tsuna all day," Hibari said in quiet menace, too low for the angels whispering reverently at their presence in the grassy fields to hear.
"So you caught on," Giotto laughed unapologetically and the whispers crescendoed. There was an increasingly high risk of someone fainting. "That child was the cutest of all my pupils. To think that he fought something so terrible that his coat was ripped beyond regeneration…Can you blame me for worrying?"
"He's too reckless." Hibari dug his nails into his palms.
"That's why you're there to protect him. Didn't you work hard just for that?"
Hibari glared.
"I don't know why he's so reluctant but please tell him to show up here once in a while," Giotto carried on gracefully, unperturbed by Hibari's stony silence. Hibari thought of the way Tsuna's nose scrunched up whenever Giotto pounced on him with a hug or his silent plea for rescue when Giotto dragged him for afternoon tea. Hibari snorted to himself. He knew perfectly well why Tsuna didn't want to come back to the angels' world, but it suited Hibari to have Tsuna to himself.
"Lord Hibari," Basil scolded as he strode up to them from the tailor's hall. He tucked his silky hair behind one ear as he carried on, "The next time you need something from the clothing office, please tell an officer to go! The workers are useless now! Oh, and give these to Tsuna please."
Before Hibari could do more than bare his teeth at Basil, a hefty pouch was pushed into his hands. He felt the texture of soft spheres inside thick canvas and knew in a heartbeat what lay inside. Hibari's face was a stone portrait as he callously yanked open the drawstring.
"Nono fruit," Basil said, unnecessarily. "They're the first of the season, harvested yesterday."
Hibari stared at the pouch before nodding curtly and leaving without a word. Of all angels, Hibari was the last one who needed to be told what nono fruit were.
In that moment he was a young angel of ten years again, with soggy paper for lungs and an invisible boulder crushing his chest. He was coughing, tossing, turning, and then Tsuna was tumbling into his sickbay window with bruised knees and a cloth of handpicked nono fruits in his scratched hands.
They, too, were the first of the season. Tsuna insisted with a too bright laugh that he hadn't gone to the red mountain where they ripened quicker. Hibari simply looked at the dirt beneath his nails and let the sugary nectars soothe his tongue so he could pretend there wasn't a sweetness spreading in his heart.
They were Tsuna's favourite food and if they had become Hibari's favourite too, well, no one needed to know.
...
"That was admirably done," the person who had caught Tsuna mid-fall was saying. "But you should look after yourself better. Wait, is that Hibari's coat you're wearing?"
"He forced me to wear his while my coat is getting fixed—wait, Lord Ugetsu?" Tsuna exclaimed. Even as he was carefully guided into sitting back onto the park bench, Tsuna's attention was caught by the fresh scar coiling up Ugestu's otherwise unturbulent face. "What happened to your face? Why is one of the Seven down here in the human world?"
The light pooled in Ugestu's oceanic eyes as he said, "I've already retired from the Seven."
A boy in mismatched socks ran past the bench, hollering and whooping as he kicked his football. Tsuna opened and closed his mouth a few times. "What?!"
"This injury," Ugestu said unabashedly, as if he were talking about the jungle climbing frame or the ice cream van. "It was from a mantis, a powerful one. It won't heal no matter what I do. I told the archangel that since I've already fulfilled my duty, I'd like to spend my days travelling alone. Do not worry Tsuna. I have made my peace."
Tsuna couldn't help but worry. Worry was all that made his heart beat on some days. Worry for the spirits, worry for the angels, worry that he would one day fail to protect those in need. A companionable silence blanketed them both broken only by the melody of birdsong and children chattering in the play area.
He would worry, but Tsuna would manage. "So…someone must have been promoted to the Seven to fill your place—"
Arms wrapped Tsuna from behind and Hibari's voice said sharply, "Tsuna, I'm back."
"Hibari—what are you—let go of me!" Tsuna yelped, squirming valiantly yet unable to break free of Hibari's iron grip. It was easy to forget sometimes the monstrous strength Hibari's slim body could unleash. To Tsuna's annoyance, Hibari was silent.
"Tsuna," Ugestu said slowly. He looked at Hibari with an uncharacteristically smooth expression before he shook his head and smiled at Tsuna. "My successor hasn't been appointed yet. Well, your job is important but you should rest in the angel's world every now and again. Giotto says he misses you dearly."
"I bet he does," Tsuna muttered and Ugestsu laughed as he walked away.
"Tsuna," Hibari said, finally letting him go. A demand for Tsuna's attention. "I bought you your coat."
"Wait," Tsuna interrupted. He fumbled with Hibari's black leather coat, slipping it from his shoulder to drape it over Hibari's instead with a grin. "It really does suit you better."
Anyone else would have been bitten with Hibari's feathers for touching him, if not his words. Hibari simply rearranged his coat better with a practised apathy before manhandling Tsuna to help put on his new coat. With its zipper and short length, it was much easier for Tsuna to fight in than Hibari's billowing coat, but…
"Isn't this a bit too thin?" Tsuna asked hesitantly. A breeze made the bare oak trees sigh and Tsuna huddled in on himself with a shiver.
Hibari narrowed his eyes and Tsuna slowly edged away from him. He said dangerously calmly, "That's because you don't want to show your wings. If you're cold, you can warm yourself with your wings. So why don't you?"
Tsuna flinched and looked down at his boots. They were getting scruffy from too many roundhouse kicks. Maybe he should talk to Basil about regenerative combat shoes.
"Tsuna."
"My wings are…I don't want to show them. When I gained my adult wings, the thing is, no one else has wings that colour. It looks weird on wings," Tsuna mumbled.
Feather tickled his nose and Tsuna was startled into looking up. Hibari was hugging him again, this time from the front with his shimmering silvery-grey wings wrapped around them both. It was a cocoon of living warmth, a protective place where only the two of them existed.
"Don't be so weak," Hibari murmured into Tsuna's hair. "If you won't show your wings, you can use mine when you're cold."
...
"…Okay," Tsuna said quietly and let himself hug Hibari back.
...
Hibari clutched one of Tsuna's stray feathers in his pocket, and thought of heavy secrets and Tsuna's wings the captivating colour of the glowing orange sun.
