Hell~o my friends. i'm so happy to talk with you again and also to publish the next chapter of my new story. i'm very ill right now. maybe my friends are right when they say i'm always ill. my most of time, when i feel i am, i feel in the mood of writing. now i'm only fed up with everything. but maybe it's b/c of that angsty/drama fic (cruel intentions, a mikhafei fic i found on ao3).

aaa i'm so fed up with everything. i'm not sleepy, though, even if i took medicines. perhaps b/c of coffee.

When Xanxus woke up that morning, the first thing he could feel was a weight on his chest. The weight wasn't that heavy, but it sure smelled good. And it felt warm, too.

The second thing the raven felt was an awful backache: he had spent the whole night on the floor.

"Motherfuck…" He mumbled furiously when the third thing – the hangover – made itself known. In the end, mixing too many sorts of booze together had been a real bad idea.

He tried to rise from the floor, but that was when he understood that he actually couldn't move freely at all. His hands groped in the blinding light of the morning, only to meet a pulpous matter, rounded and soft and firm in the same time… Then his eyes cracked open to see long, gleaming and silvery hair. His glance trailed down on a naked, lean back, and lower and lower until they recognized the soft matter under his fingertips as being a stranger's ass (more exactly, the towel on a stranger's ass).

A chick? Had he slept with her last night? Hell, he had been so drunk Xanxus couldn't remember anymore. He was about to push the girl aside when the latter suddenly shifted in her sleep and rose her head a little so that she was fully facing the raven, her eyelids still heavy and her eyes sleepy.

As Xanxus tried to distinguish her features in his blurred vision, the chick's face became more and more precise. She wasn't ugly; she was even far from being ugly: long eyelashes, smooth skin, thin lips and… (He pressed the woman's bottom cheeks again) nice ass.

"Huh?" She uttered with a very deep and grave voice, which really wasn't matching her face. It was too much masculine, too much virile… Xanxus froze when he sensed no breast at all where there should naturally be some. "Huuuuh? Let go of me, you pervert!"

The chick – no, actually the man – struggled, the beautiful face now a mask of ire and shame. But something in Xanxus' mind surely did shut down at the revelation, since his hands kept on clamping at Squalo's ass.

"You shit, who the fuck are you? And what the hell…" Xanxus fumed menacingly.

"I'm not gonna talk about that again, fucktard! Let go! Get the fuck out of here, right now!"

Holy mother of God, Xanxus pondered, last night, was it possible that he and that guy…? No way! But again, he was too drunk to remember anything. All he could recall was that he had been in the usual bar, he tried to hook some bitch but in the end he got slapped on the face, then he went home but couldn't find his keys. So, too lazy to call for the landlord, he climbed on the wall (as stupid as it may sound, that was really what happened the night before) then got in his room… Then at some point everything went black. A total blackout.

"Voooi! Did you hear me? Bastard, let g-"

"Umm…" A voice resounded from the door. Both men turned to glare at the intruder. It was only a young boy, short and with fluffy brown hair who was watching at them with a wide blush spread all over his girlish face and a fuming cake in his hands. "G-G-Good morning, sir. I-I-I'm living on the second floor with my mother. She told me to bring you this (he presented the cake). I-i-it's a pleasure to mee-mee-meet-"

"Voi, brat!" Squalo roared angrily. "If you have nothing to do here anymore, get away or I'll rip your eyes out of their sockets!"

And how are you supposed to do that in your position? Xanxus wanted to say, but instead he pulled at the silken hair, making the silverette turned to look at him once more. "It hurts, damn you! It hurts!"

"Don't forget this is my house, damn shit."

Squalo couldn't even find the strength to yell to the man beneath him anymore. He just kept on staring at him with a what's-the-point-of-fighting face. He didn't' expect the other brunette to raise his voice again.

"Mr. Xanxus, I think you're wrong." He quacked. "Your room is next door. Maybe you mistook them yesterday? And since you didn't come back for days, you couldn't have known someone else has rented this one…"

Xanxus looked at the kid questioningly, his eyebrows furrowing, then at Squalo.

"You burst my window-bay and fell on me, moron!" The latter concluded.

Xanxus' face went blank (like 'Oh, so finally I didn't do that idiot transvestite') – which, mixed with his always menacing air, resulted in a rather funny expression.

"So?" Squalo asked. "Satisfied?"

His answer was a shoving on the ground, and Squalo's head hitting a nearby chair leg.

"Don't fucking make yourself fucking comfortable, damn trash." The raven, released the silverette then got up while looking at Squalo with an obvious disdain. So now, he was only going to play dumb, Squalo thought. But something he hadn't been able to understand was why the raven didn't leave the apartment yet and instead slouched on the couch and switched the TV on.

"What are you…"

"Anyway I can't go back home. I've lost my keys and there's no food there." He waved an imperious hand toward the silver haired man.

"So you're telling me to feed you, shitty bastard?!"

"Mr. Squalo." Tsuna was murmuring so the TV completely would cover his voice. "It's no use with that man, maybe. That is… technically, he's this building's owner, and of many others. He's kind of a powerful man in the country…"

Squalo's eyes widened with horror and pointed an accusing finger at the raven who had just puked on his carpet.

"That?"

…

That day, Squalo arrived late at Namimori U. The day after, the one after, and again the one after, he had also been late.

At his dark eye rings, his slightly messy look and the vein that was about to explode on his forehead, the students knew better than messing with him the whole day. If their favorite professor had always been very irritable, now he was almost looking like a nuclear bomb ready to destroy the university and everything within a radius of ten kilometers.

But the reason to all of this was quite simple: as if by magic, the silverette more or less didn't have any choice but cook for his bastard neighbor, first every morning, but it slowly turned to be for breakfasts and dinners.

This is something the silver haired man would have never believe would happen in his entire life. Ever. Yet everything happened so naturally it was almost extraordinary.

So, the first day, Squalo clearly told Xanxus to 'go fuck himself in Hell', that he 'didn't feed freaks', and also that he 'had to clean up all the shit that the bastard made in the living'. However, the raven didn't give in. It had become a real battle of will in the chaotic décor of the ruined living-room. But the conditions were against Squalo: he had to be at the university one hour later and Xanxus was what one could call a lazy-ass NEET and a more than qualified squatter-to-be.

Of course, no one at Namimori U was aware of that fact. Tsuna, who happened to be the professor's neighbor, didn't breathe a word about the scene he had been witness of on that dreadful morning. He would always manage to leave his own apartment before the silverette left his, and practically run back home not to meet him on his way (which was purely useless since Squalo didn't ever remember his face).

This wasn't hatred, though. This was pure cowardice.

So, on the first day, Squalo capitulated and prepared as fast as he could a copious breakfast (the fridge, fortunately, was full of provisions). First, Squalo did just enough for one person – for him, obviously – but it didn't pleased the raven at all. The man just stole the silverette's chocolate pancakes and cinnamon rolls, then threw away the orange juice, saying it was 'pure shit'. Yet, perhaps the others weren't that bad, since next morning the squatter was back claiming more food. The next morning, too, and the one after that, then the evening, like a beast hunting for food and smelling some next door. Soon, the raven didn't leave Squalo's couch anymore.

At night only would he go out, God only knows where. Squalo didn't bother asking him. When he was back the day after (very early in the morning, maybe around 3 or 4 a.m.), a strong scent of woman perfume, alcohol and cigar would always linger around him. Then Xanxus would sprawl heavily on the couch and only wake up hours later with a hellish headache and, on the table next to him (and, the days after, this had practically become a silent rule), a glass of water and aspirin both left by the silverette before he went to work.

The bay-window had been repaired the next day. Squalo had to call for a glazier. Obviously, Xanxus didn't raise a little finger.

From time to time, Squalo pondered. Maybe if he had been a stray cat or dog, the silver haired man wouldn't have raised a complaint about him. But a grown up human being, and moreover a man that would drink whisky and loot his kitchen every day God would grant them… That wasn't cute at all.

"Voi! Can't you go eat someone else?" He inquired him angrily. "I don't know… Restaurant, fast food or anywhere else but at my place! Why do I always have to cook for two people and arrive late at work every fucking day?"

"Are you crazy?" Xanxus answered the most naturally possible, as if it as a matter of fact. "Restaurants are damn miles away and I won't eat trashy fast food."

Squalo facepalmed. "Then take a maid, dammit! Maybe you spoiled rich brat can't understand the very concept of job and all that stuff, but let me tell you that most of people have to do that to keep on living. And being late every morning doesn't help me at all!"

"Che. You poor commoner."

"Asshole! Are you fucking looking down on me?"

"Yes. So what?"

"Get. Out!"

But Xanxus didn't.

Every day after work, the silverette wasn't surprised anymore to see that man lying uncaringly in his living-room, watching idly any shit broadcasted on the TV, the fridge totally emptied and the remnants of its contents scattered on the floor in a chaotic confusion – and Squalo could never explain himself where did all the booze (whose bottles were now scattered in the fourth corners of the house) was coming from.

"There's no more food." He would say lazily. Squalo would only cast at him a stare of defeat, and then go to the kitchen to prepare the dinner, after cleaning the mess in the room (which, by the end of the day, looked much more like a dump than anything else).

If it all started with lodging and feeding, little by little – and in a so natural way that it was almost creepy – it developed into laundry and hangover nursing: unfamiliar clothes dirtied with pizza sauce ("So that bastard can order fast food if he wants to." Squalo gritted), vomit and other mysterious substances would slowly but surely pile up in the laundry, and bizarrely, in this God forsaken world, it is a crime to let someone enjoy a good alcoholic coma without giving them any assistance.

Oh, he knew there was nothing to do about that situation anymore. The first days, he thrashed, he changed the locks, the keys, but the tanned man would always find a way to sneak in. Well, more exactly, to kick his way in. One day, Squalo thought about leaving the apartment and never coming back; but it was no good: he had signed a leasing for a whole year. Then what about going to a friend's house for few days and let the squatter starve to death? He had no friends. A hotel? No way was he going to spend a fortune in order not to leave in a shitty motel!

Squalo was bitter. That man was just like a cockroach. An obnoxious, capricious, short-tempered cockroach.

"Voi, you really have no will of leaving this fucking couch one day, don't you." Squalo said one evening as they were having dinner in the living-room while watching a new program on the TV. In the end, his daily evenings had ended up like that: chitchatting pointlessly with Xanxus while having dinner. "You know, like go find a job or something."

"A job?" Xanxus spoke, not detaching his attention from the screen. "You stupid piece of scum, I do have a job."

"What fucking kind of job? Sleeping and eating all day long ain't a job, you retard!"

"Who told you I was only sleeping and eating, dumb shit?"

"When I leave in the morning, you're whether sleeping or watching TV. When I come back, it's exactly the same!"

"Didn't you know?" Xanxus hissed. "There's a laps of 8 hours between your leaving and coming back here."

"And?"

Xanxus frowned. A headache was looming on his forehead, so he preferred staying quiet. Squalo raised an eyebrow and, getting up, he picked up the dirty dishes from the coffee table then walked to the kitchen.

"In any case, it's not as if you were going to live like this forever." Squalo said while doing the washing up. "Any plans for the future?"

"What? Are you my school counselor?"

The silverette sighed. "I say," he resumed, "that no normal woman would accept walking down the aisle with a leech like the one lying 24/7 on her couch. And how is it that the only times you succeed in getting out, it's only to come back as drunk as a lord?"

"I already told you…"

"Yeah, yeah."

"And as long as I got someone to clean my house and some action on a regular basis, I don't need a wife."

"Excuse me, but I don't remember this house becoming yours." Squalo was done with the dishes and went back to the living. He then took the remote, sat next to Xanxus and started zapping indifferently one channel after another, his head resting on his palm, his arm folded on crossed legs. "Nor do I remember seeing you dating any woman since I got here."

For some time, Xanxus stared quietly at Squalo, watched the shiny hair falling straight on his shoulders and waist, and somehow recalled the memory of the softness of the silverette's ass. That somehow irritated him. He was a man, wasn't he? He couldn't seriously be attracted by a man's body. He was getting laid on a daily basis, and he was more than just good at that. Being with the silver haired trash was simply convenient for him, like a food distributor. One that didn't need any adjustment but, strangely, seemed to be already perfect for all his needs.

Hell, Xanxus didn't like to have to justify himself. He didn't like that at all – damn that was more than infuriating.

"Because now I have to specially report to you every woman I date?" He finally replied, annoyed.

"Voi, Xanxus. Bumping random whores is quite different from dating a woman."

"Quite the same for me."

"And since when do you have to pay women you're dating?"

"But a hooker won't ask for presents or for me to bring her to restaurants or on holidays or-"

"Okay, okay, I got it."

They both remained quiet. Apart from the movie displaying on the TV screen (an old thriller in black and white starring Anthony Perkins and Vera miles, Psycho) only silence was lingering in the room.

One hour later, when the woman was finally getting stabbed in the shower, all panicking and screaming, Squalo yawned and got up, stretching his arms behind his head.

"Aw… I'll take leave for today. Voi, Xanxus. When you're back tonight, if you can, go back to your own room."

"Shut up."

Squalo grinned and walked to the unique bedroom. But suddenly, he stopped halfway and looked back at Xanxus, a sarcastic smirk still stretching his lips.

"Wanna join me in bed?"

Crash was the sound of the glass hitting and breaking on the long haired man's head.

TBC