Title: Without Regrets
Rating: pg-13
Pairing: Xanxus/Tsuna, and- well, you'll see.
Notes: A Reborn!/Loveless fusion AU, and um, warnings for lots of liberties taken with everything.
Summary: Things start to snowball, because it can only get downhill from here.

Later, sitting in Reborn's office, Tsuna quaked and shivered, the first because that was his natural reaction to being in Reborn's office at anytime whatsoever, and the second because Xanxus had torn his shirt in his haste to reveal the identical mark they wore above their hearts, and Tsuna, being an unfortunately scrawny being, was cold.

His sacrifice (and how strange to think the word he had cherished for so long in relation to the tall, rangy and extremely feared senior) was railing at all seven of the teachers, positively incandescent with rage.

Tsuna bid a quiet, miserable farewell to his sweet, shy dream sacrifice. Squalo, who'd snuck in and was keeping a careful eye on the fireworks, having lost the janken outside to be the unfortunate Varia chosen to watch for whether they'd all need to be several miles away from the dorm by the time Xanxus came back, looked at him sideways and snickered. "Remorseless?" he said, not one to keep his mouth shut in favour of his life. "That's almost as big a joke as mine is, runt. It's good for boss-" and here Squalo seemed to remember that the words 'good' and 'named in a pair as a sacrifice' were not concepts to be mentioned in the same country as Xanxus in relation to him if you wanted to retain your face or all your teeth, and changed his tack. "A bit better than my joke, maybe, but damn it looks bad on you. Remorseless failure, maybe."

Tsuna knew all about the sorta-story behind Defenseless' name, having asked Dino about it when Reborn had sent the good-natured senior to motivate Tsuna (or possibly to scare him thoroughly about what it meant to be so damn bad that the principal took your progress directly into his hands) and received a smiling, self-conscious answer. It was common knowledge that neither Dino or Squalo bothered all that much with defensive spells, they let their attacks be their defense, one and all- a risky way to fight, but one that paid off for them well.

Remorseless, he thought, and turned his mind away from what it might mean, because he wasn't going to live to find out. He looked at Squalo, scraped hard as nails from years of being Xanxus's second, and feared.

Xanxus finished off an awesome oratory featuring rage, amazement and a truly terrifying array of threats and promises, to find the teachers, as was their custom whenever they faced a insubordinate student, soundly asleep. He made a noise like a volcano threatening eruption, and Squalo, with his famous reflexes, chucked Tsuna outside and slammed the door behind them both as quickly as he dared.

"Fuck, boss's in a mood. Looks like I'm bunking with the idiot tonight," said Squalo, and quite casually dragged Tsuna over to the clump of Varia members watching the admin building as though it might explode. "Dino'd kill me if I let his favourite tiny person be squashed," he said by way of explanation, before plunking Tsuna down in front of a collection of the most violent, feared people in the whole school, shirtless and utterly vulnerable.

They were taking bets on how long Tsuna had before Xanxus killed him, and by what means.

"Okay," said a blond and apparently eyeless boy. "I think it'll be in the café, with the chairs, in a week." He looked at Tsuna and changed his bet with a hungry grin, "actually, make that an hour. I'll be right because I'm a prince."

"Oh, how cute," said a boy with shaved and dyed hair. "Look, he's still got his ears." He reached out to touch them, and Tsuna flinched back, twitching.

Squalo looked over the tallies. "In the training grounds, made to look like an accident, the next time we have paired training. And for you, Lus, wherever you least expect it, with his bare hands, about five seconds after boss hears that you tried to lay a hand on his property. He's in a bad enough mood as is, I don't want to have to move in with the fucking idiot permanently. Hands off."

The boy pouted, but snatched his hand back with all speed.

"It'll never work," said a tattooed, pierced boy who was laying bets on Tsuna's violent death like he wanted to facilitate it himself. "Boss'll never settle for being a Sacrifice, ever." The look he sent the much smaller boy promised him that even if Xanxus did (when they all received invitations by flying pig to help the devil buy his ice-skates for the party he was throwing in hell) he never would.

And neither, Tsuna was absolutely certain, would 'boss'. For all of above five milliseconds he contemplated adding, 'off the Tokyo tower, spattered on the ground, as fast as I can buy the tickets', but did not quite dare.

.0.

"MMAUUURGGGGH," said Gokudera, with Yamamoto's tie stuffed in his mouth and his fighter (oh how he despised the possessive pronoun) on his back and Sasagawa Ryohei of Artless on his legs. He'd been carefully disarmed after he'd had a slight heart attack at seeing Tsuna shirtless with his name black and cold on his collarbone, and jumped before six words had left Tsuna's mouth. ("Well, Xanxus is a little roug-")

The other half of Artless, Sasagawa Kyouko, carefully sewed up Tsuna's shirt, clucking all the while in concern.

"Well," Yamamoto said, in one of his usual feats of supreme understatement, "that sounds bad."

"Bad?" said Miura Haru, who'd also suffered a supreme disappointment today. She was part of Tactless, with the blond boy (who was in their year, if in most of the advanced classes) who'd made constant claims to royalty. "This is the WORSE! What if Xanxus kills Tsuna-kun? What if those stories the seniors told us about the baby's blood are true? Haru doesn't want Tsuna-kun to DIE!"

"The only way to do this," said Ryohei, struggling with a scrawny smoker who weighed less than half of what the older boy bench-pressed, "is to the EXTREME! Tsuna, you must be a good fighter to the MAX! Then, your sacrifice will accept you for SURE!"

It was generally accepted as fact that Ryohei, despite undisputed claim to the title of loudest student ever, had also claim to the title of densest, despite all the competition Yamamoto, Haru and his sister had given him for it.

Tsuna looked up at the ceiling, and wondered if he was really going to die without ever coming so much as close to losing his ears.

.0.

"Students," said Reborn in his usual squeaky tones, "today I want all the new pairs to familiarize themselves with their partners- all the new pairs," he said, and made an adorably frowny face at Xanxus and Tsuna sitting as far away from each other as they could get.

"I'm a prince," said Bel, and smiled in a creepy way at Haru, hand clasped over the Tactless branded on her arm. "So you can be a princess, princess."

"Haru a princess?" She breathed, forgetting almost instantly that she was supposed to be eternally opposed to fate. "Oh how sweet," she said, and smiled in way even more creepy than Bel's. "Okay, then- Prince!"

"OH GOD HOW DID I GET STUCK WITH YOU," shouted Gokudera. "AND DO YOU NEVER WASH YOUR DAMN TIE, IT TASTED FUCKING DISGUSTING-"

"This looks like a lot of fun," said Mukuro, and Chrome said, "Yes."

Outside, Hibird sang loudly, and Hibari idly considered which of the new pairs it would be most fun to bite to death first.

Tsuna and Xanxus looked at each other, and six of the seven teachers, the in-school doctor, Shamal, and every one within hearing range found excuses to hang around the assembly hall.

"I," said Tsuna with a sort of prepared finality (he'd written his will last night) "I don't want to die," he blurted out, and stood all clenched up ready for a violent death.

"I'm not going to kill you," said Xanxus, with an I can't believe this retard face. "If I did, I could never battle again. We need to talk, and then you need to do whatever I fucking say, because I can think of a thousand fates worse than death that don't need to be it. Understand?"

Tsuna nodded like a man fatally sure that the light at the end of the tunnel means the tunnel's on fire.

"Good," said Xanxus, and glared around at the circle of incredulous spectators. "Is this a circus sideshow? Are you all looking to die? Fuck off."

The hall cleared faster than Mukuro could clear the boy's showers. Which, for those who would have been happy never to know that fact, is pretty damn fast.

And then Xanxus grabbed Tsuna by one impossibly velvet-soft ear, and pulled him out of the building.

-tbc-