Thank you to all readers and reviewers (:

Chapter Seven: The ripples on the water surface had to be born somewhere. I just wish I hadn't dipped my toe in it in the first place.

LXI. Solution, resolution.

Overhead, the dust streaked in loose groups down the beams of light, disappearing upon contact with the gentle waves. Hayato's entire body lay submerged in this clear, shallow water. All sound was vacant, all vision distorted. There were no definitions here, as far as he could see – this was simply a bright place. Soothingly bright. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, but he didn't notice.

The flat ground beneath him melted into soft sands. He felt the grains displace slightly under his relaxing muscles.

Hayato wasn't sure whether he liked this or not. He couldn't direct his eyes anywhere but upward, or even close them; nonetheless he felt the constant sensation that he was naked. The water brushed so vividly against every inch of his skin. It tantalized him. He unconsciously and fervently longed for it to lift and carry him away. The water's purity imposed tingles onto his skin as it washed away all the pain, all the scars, all the wounds inside and out.

A single word floated across the top of his mind. Death. From him it incited no reaction, no feeling at all. No questions arose. Nothing. No other thoughts accompanied the word.

Birth and Death. Air he did not know he had leaked out of his nose, coalescing into one bubble that the tiny waves instantly swept out of reach. Creation and Destruction. Birth and Death. But neither of those phenomena existed here, birth or death. There was simply "being." Or perhaps Hayato failed to understand. Aside from these words that only traveled along with the flow of the water and sometimes caught in his brain, he was alone and blank.

The water grazed over him continuously, lightly kissing his silken skin. His head –

It was clear, numb, unthreatened, unthreatening.

Something began to dawn on him, however. He did not feel disturbed by it, or excited. It was a flat idea, nothing more.

I'm drowning.

His shoulder blades spread; the sands sighed apart and accepted them. Vaguely he became able to wiggle his toes and sense so. Feeling also restored in his chest.

I'm drowning. The message grew in size and urgency. I'm drowning. Its meaning remained foreign to him for another few seconds until the compulsion to breathe, don't die, breathe, breathe shot blazingly through him. The panic shortly followed. He knew he could not breathe but here he knew nothing save simple feelings and incomplete thoughts. His back arched; his head thrust backward, further into the ground; his jaw almost unhinged; his diaphragm shrank as liquid flooded into his lungs. He tried and tried to tell his muscles, move, get up, move, he floundered, move!, he tried again. Move!

He broke through the water's surface and all at once, the water in his lungs turned to blood, the sand solidified, the water vanished, the light dimmed, and everything real – the headache, the stomach pain, the chest pressure, the scars and the broken hand and the stinging contacts and the old slices along his arm – crashed into him.

Drenched in sweat, Hayato collapsed into the fetal position. Blood spilled out of his mouth in large amounts while coughing between ragged pants and gasps. He felt utterly helpless against the uncontrollable movements, the pain that refused to leave him, his cursed mind that haunted him in every moment of peace.

Gasping, sighing and whimpering, he held his head tight in his hands, the right hand protesting. His eyes watered underneath the clenched lids. The migraine was instantly debilitating.

His eyes opened briefly to catch a glimpse of the dark red puddle between his denim-clad legs before his torso swung over, the gravity inescapable, and he fell weakly flat on his back, the jacket hood bunching up under his neck. The only muscles he could detect were those used for breathing, and even at that they struggled. His lungs occupied the entire inside of his body. When he filled them too sharply, he'd cough wildly more and have to spit the blood out of his mouth. When he took too long to inhale, the dust poured down his throat, giving him an itchy, constrained feeling before plunging him into more bloody hacking.

Only once he finally calmed enough to start breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth did he open his bleary eyes again. This time he saw the cracks in the ceiling first. His location finally registered in his mind: he had wandered into an old music store last night, and supposed that he had fallen asleep there – here.

Slowly he gathered the strength to sit up again. The long sterling silver chain around his neck slid against the creaking wood floor. He cast through looks over his surroundings. Through the covered window and barricaded door, the sunlight still somehow found its way into this room. The dust tangoed endlessly in the light rays.

His contacts hurt his eyes so greatly that, after officially establishing where he was and what was around him, he removed the things one at a time and flicked them halfway across the room. They landed invisible on the floor. Nearsighted and farsighted, Hayato was now virtually blind. At best he could make out vague, amorphous spots of sunlight-soaked color. He couldn't have cared less at this moment, however. The contacts had stung excruciatingly, he had more pair at home, and besides, he was fairly proficient at finding his way to safety while sightless. He had sure done it before – such thoughts called to mind a time about four years ago when wore glasses every day instead of contacts, and he had been in the middle of a busy shootout between two rival gangs when his glasses broke and he had to make his way out of the battlefield, unable to see anything. He honestly had no explanation as to how he survived that.

He felt a large weight bearing down, all over, that hadn't been there before. Accompanying the pressure, the need to escape it. The interior of this store, though, was so comfortable to him. He felt an indescribable ease here unlike anything he had experienced in a very long time. He did not want to leave this place right now. Nor, he felt, was the compulsion exactly to leave it. He pondered, then his bony arm grazed the inside of his jacket sleeve.

With barely any thought, Hayato lifted the necklaces over his head, shrugged off his jacket, and swiftly removed his T-shirt. The air exhilarated his skin. He shuddered, and the trembling would not stop; the temperature was mild, but more sweat erupted from his goosebumped skin.

He felt much better. His hand slipped behind his back. He traced his fingers along the drastic bumps of his spine, moving up as far as he could at this angle. His stomach compressed in the reaction. His headache surged.

Yet somehow, sitting blind, half-naked, and alone in a dusty, run-down building in a suspicious neighborhood, Hayato felt…

He could feel the faint vibrations of music, hear its whispers in his ears, sense the tingles of it between the ridges of his fingerprints, taste the notes on his tongue, inundate his lungs with its air, and wondered if it was in his head.

LXII. My fire breathes while I cannot.

Tsuna scampered into the kitchen with determined, eager eyes and white tennis shoes. He grabbed an apple, slid into his place at the table and commenced eating all in one fluid motion.

Nana blinked at him, watched him take a few bites of breakfast, then said, "You know it's Sunday, right?"

Cheeks full of food, he nodded in his mother's direction. Bianchi dipped the end of a pastry into her coffee cup and stirred it around lazily. Fuuta yawned; afterward continued to stare blankly at the empty placemat in front of him.

"Then is there any particular reason why you're awake and dressed and alert before noon?" Nana asked.

Tsuna swallowed. "I've got stuff to do this morning," he said.

"What kind of stuff?" Nana said. She sat at the table with some grape jelly-covered toast.

"Stuff," he replied, and crunched into the apple again.

"School stuff? Friend stuff? Boyfriend stuff? You're not being very specific." She bit into the toast and the jelly began its slow descent down the side of the bread.

Tsuna shook his head. "Just stuff," he said simply.

"You seem pretty excited about this 'stuff,'" Bianchi chimed in.

Nana nodded and her gaze sharpened slightly. "Yes, you do. Suspiciously so."

"Mom," Tsuna chuckled, but he couldn't think of any real rebuttal. Before he knew it, he had reduced the apple to just a core. He got up, tossed it in the stainless steel trashcan and started out of the kitchen. "Reborn's coming, too. See you guys later," he said.

"Wait, Tsu-kun," Nana said, leaning out of her chair in Tsuna's direction.

Tsuna poked his head out from behind the wall. "Yeah, Mom?"

"Are you sure you got enough to eat?" she asked.

He nodded. "Spartan breakfast." He began to walk away again, but she called him back. "Tsu-kun."

"Yes?" he said, a little less patiently.

"Promise me you're not going to do anything dangerous," she said with a scolding tone.

"Yes, Mom, I promise," he said, though he wasn't sure he would be able to keep that promise. This outing with Reborn had been planned. They knew what they were going to do. But then again, it was Reborn. He rolled his eyes as soon as he had stepped out of view of his mother again.

He heard her call to him a third time. "Tsu-kun!" He stomped over to the doorway. "What?"

She smiled sweetly at him. "I love you," she said.

He chuckled. "Love you too."

LXIII. Dancing on a breaking island in a sea of lava.

Tips of long grass reached for his ankles. The sun had risen only a couple of hours ago yet had already grown up to its full power. Tsuna held his hand stiff over his brow. The little guy beside him veered slightly to the side. Tsuna looked in Reborn's direction and, realizing that he was headed for the spot, followed him.

Reborn pulled a candle out of his pocket and set it on a tree stump. Then he sat on the largest root. The sunlight brought a tiny hint of color to his black eyes as they gazed up at his student. Tsuna, meanwhile, stared at the candle. He paled, stiffened. He began to think that this wasn't too good an idea after all.

"I'm waiting," Reborn said. He propped up one knee and set his elbow on it, then laid his chin in his open palm.

The teenager inhaled deeply, held the breath, and released it with a defeated sound. His eyes closed and his lips slowly turned up into a smile. He opened his eyes and flitted them in Reborn's direction, his head and then whole body following. He still smiled.

Reborn had an indefinable expression. "What?"

"Just…" Tsuna began, but stopped there for a moment. His neck went a little limp as he looked to the sky to find the right words to say. "I don't think I ever told you this out loud, to your face."

"Told me what?" Reborn said.

"Thank you," Tsuna replied.

Reborn squinted at his student, scowling in confusion, as a small, holey cloud passed the sun.

"I don't know why it took me so long to realize this, or why it came to me just now, but." Tsuna paused briefly. "I could never thank you enough for everything you've done for me, Reborn."

At this point, Reborn averted his eyes bashfully, but he kept listening. A timid breeze grazed his sideburns. It hit Tsuna's hair, too, though didn't move it much.

"I know I've been whiny and weird and probably the most difficult student you've ever had, but you've put up with me for years and done everything you could to make me into a better person. I just hope you know you succeeded. I'm proud to have a tutor like you. I appreciate you so much, you know? Because of you, I went from having no self-esteem and no future to being me, the real me. The one you uncovered. I have friends and strength and intelligence and confidence and love. I never would have had any of that without you."

After Tsuna had stopped talking for a few seconds, Reborn looked back over at him. He scanned Tsuna's sincere face. "You're wrong, Tsuna. You did all of that by yourself," he said. "I didn't make anything happen – I am just your connection, who came in at the right place and the right time. You're giving me too much credit – you were the one with the natural talent to take everything I gave you and use it to help yourself grow."

Tsuna's mouth curved into a sideways smile.

"Even so, you could stand to thank me more," Reborn said. Tsuna chuckled. "Now," Reborn instructed, "I believe you know what to do."

Tsuna nodded. He pulled the mittens out of his back pockets and slid them onto his hands. Then he inhaled through the nose and sighed calmly, spreading his legs shoulder-width apart. He shook his hands; his arms went limp, his forehead and palms ignited. He stared hard at the candle for one minute, two minutes, and Reborn watched his student silently as Tsuna gradually brought his eyes to a close. Tsuna inhaled deeply, hollowing his entire body, allowing the skin left over to become one with the wind. He descended into a pitch-dark nothingness. The image of his beloved boyfriend materialized out of the blackness in his mind. He knew each and every little detail about Hayato's appearance – right down to the approximate number of his long eyelashes, like flittering white lace framing his eyes – and embraced the overwhelming beauty of it. The flames' strength grew.

LXIV. El Tatio.

Reborn couldn't quite name the feeling he got when he saw the candle burst into flames, a wide column of fire completely swallowing it. The heat felt more intense than he remembered for the X-Burner or any other technique – it pricked at his skin, washed over him like a tidal wave. He stood on impulse on his short little legs. Almost as quickly as the geyser of flames had erupted from nowhere, it evaporated. Tiny embers drifted downward and disappeared when they hit the ground. The candle had melted to an undistinguishable black mass on the tree stump. Reborn hopped up onto the largest of the roots, observed the wax, and smiled.

LXV. Hammers and nails.

Upon returning to his apartment, Gokudera began stripping in preparation for a much-needed shower. He swore someone had called him on a cue. During the first few rings, he just stared at his cell phone pointedly, realizing right off that he really wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone. But, with a lengthy sigh, he stomped out of the bathroom and into the main room and reached a bare arm out to grab it.

"Yeah?" he groaned.

It was Yamamoto on the other end of the line. "Hey, Dera," he said. Gokudera could hear the hopeful smile in his voice. "How are you doing today?"

Gokudera scowled. "Cut the small talk, Moto. If you have no real reason to call me, then you should just hang up right now."

"I just want to know how you are," Yamamoto said defensively. "Why are you so peeved? Did I call you at a bad time?"

"That's the thing about phone conversations. All you can detect is my voice. You couldn't tell when you decided to call me that I was about to shower." He hooked a thumb around one of the belt loops on his jeans, hiking them up.

"Ah, sorry," Yamamoto said.

"It's no big deal. I can wait a minute, I suppose."

"Then can't one friend call another friend to chat? I mean, we are friends, aren't we?" Yamamoto said. He heard Gokudera grumble in lieu of an intelligent argument and couldn't help but smile again. "So. How are you?"

"I feel…" Gokudera drew a thoughtful sigh. "I feel like I've grown a pair of wings on my back. And they're liberating. But they're heavy."

Yamamoto nodded inaudibly. "Nice analogy," he said.

"I couldn't think of any other way to describe it," Gokudera replied.

"Though I can't tell whether that's a good thing or not…" Yamamoto half-asked.

Gokudera sighed again. "Neither can I."

Some static came over the line then, as though one of the boys was messing with the phone position. Neither realized that the other hadn't moved his phone at all. After a moment of awkward silence, Yamamoto could make out the faintest breathing sounds on the other end of the line. Gokudera sensed it too, another presence.

Yamamoto frowned in a playful manner. "Kenta, is that you?"

The teens heard little Kenta Yamamoto yelp and quickly disconnect. Yamamoto laughed. Gokudera rolled his eyes. "Was that your brother just now?" the latter asked.

"Yeah," Yamamoto said. "I'm on the landline, the home phone, so, I guess he just picked up another receiver." He failed to stifle a few more chuckles.

"Damned annoying Baseball Runt," Gokudera cursed under his breath.

Yamamoto sighed out of the laugh. "Well, guess I'll let you get off the phone and shower now."

"Thanks," Gokudera said sarcastically, and he hung up. He plugged his BlackBerry back into its charger at the kitchen counter – furrowing his brows, decided to switch it to vibrate at the last second – and made his way into the bathroom for a shower he felt he desperately needed.

Hayato turned the water on to piping hot, though it would take a minute or two for it to heat up to optimal temperature. He dropped his arms to the side and spun around to look at the medicine cabinet. One of his best repair jobs yet, if he did say so himself. Tentatively he touched his fingertips to the corner of the small wooden door and ran them along the grain, which he could see but not distinguish through texture. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, a mere flash of his silver hair and pale skin. Somehow the split-second glance had drawn him in. He stared unblinkingly at his reflection. This had to be the first time he had seen himself today. Hayato had known for years that he was well above average-looking – family and friends and even random strangers had told him so too many times for him to ignore it. Yet whenever he saw himself, he felt ugly. To him, on the outside, he looked as conflicted and miserable and dark as he was on the inside. It was a matter of perspective, he supposed: where others saw in his eyes a sensual shade of green, he saw the deep, bruised bags underneath; where others saw a perfectly sculpted nose, he saw the wicked trophy of a thousand fights; where others saw soft hair of an unconventional natural color, he saw the near-invisible strands that slipped out and brought him one step closer to a striking baldness.

His arms rose as gradually as he pulled his eyes away from his face in the mirror. He held the undersides of his forearms upward and gazed at the ashen skin there. One hand balled into a fist, the other struggled against the bandages to do the same. He counted all the scars. He tried to trace them from the origin on, pretending his piercing gaze was the razorblade that had borne them.

Until he realized it was not the blade that had formed them. It was he holding the blade. Night after night, nightmare after nightmare, he had brought all these burdens upon himself. There was nobody else to blame.

He thought back to his special conversation with Yamamoto. The talk had happened, the promises made, only two days ago, but it already felt like forever. Yamamoto's heartbroken face and voice came to his mind in muted watercolors. "You… cut yourself." Or maybe it had gone differently. Quite honestly, he couldn't remember whether it had actually taken place or if it was just another trick his cruel mind loved to play. He wasn't sure of anything anymore. Every moment he lived with the fear that none of this was real.

He crossed his arms over his bare chest, in the shape of an X, just like the X-shaped scar over his heart. It struck him now just how weak he was, in every sense of the word. His arms dropped to his sides.

At birth he had been cursed with a weak body. He was delivered two and a half months prematurely, to an unmarried 18-year-old mother, and he had asthma, epilepsy and a hole in his heart. And it all went downhill from there. Hayato had never known a moment when he didn't have to struggle. Everything stacked against him. He just never took into account how vulnerable he was.

Except now this was different. His weakness was his own fault. He gave in. He let himself give in.

He looked back up at the fogging mirror, then looked to the end table by the couch and wondered if the razorblade was still there. His body drifted into the main room, feet shuffling and stumbling, eyes dazed. The echo of water hitting shower tiles resonated throughout the whole apartment. The flip of a trashcan lid had never sounded so good.

LXVI. Call EnmaChat and you'll be connected to the hottest singles in your neighborhood.

Vacant red eyes emerged from behind the tree, watching from afar the movements of the other boy. Every muscle in Enma's body felt stiff and sore. His hand slid down the tree a few inches, stopping to finger a small knot in the bark.

God, just look at him, Enma thought, and he could physically sense the guilt in thinking such a thing. He clenched a loose fist over his own chest.

From the beginning Enma hadn't the vaguest idea how Tsuna's mind worked. The boys had their share of similarities. They had the same taste in food and clothes, almost the same personalities, and practically the same loving family of friends. So why can't we be together? It didn't make sense.Enma had to admit, Gokudera was not a bad-looking guy at all – brooding mossy eyes, hair like polished silver, porcelain skin, an expressive face, he was a thing of beauty. Plus, Gokudera had been in Tsuna's life well over a year before Enma came along, so of course they were closer. But what's wrong with me? Why can't I be the one who holds your attention the way Gokudera does?

There had to be something different about their relationship, something that Enma had not been able to identify, that made it so special, that made Gokudera and Tsuna eat out of the palms of each other's hands. At the very least, Enma had to find out what that something was. That way, even if Tsuna would never reciprocate his feelings, he could receive some kind of closure.

Timidly, he stepped out of the shadow of the tree and approached the Tenth Vongola.

"H-hi, Tsuna." His voice was barely audible, but Tsuna noticed it anyway and immediately turned to face his red-haired friend.

"Oh, Enma," he said enthusiastically, "I didn't know you were around." He flashed a smile – his pure, enchanting, lovely smile, contagious in a painless way.

"I just wanted to…" he stumbled over the words, "…to say thank you and I'm sorry. You know, for what you said yesterday." Reborn, whose conversation with his student had gone interrupted by Enma's appearance, sat watching the boys from his spot on the ground, a patch of dirt that the grass avoided.

Tsuna's eyes opened a little wider – Enma could see more of the brilliant brown color in them –, his smile more serious. "Ah, it's no big deal," he replied with a bashful pivot.

"I do kind of have a question, though," Enma said. "If you're not too busy…"

"No, I don't think I am," Tsuna said. He glanced at Reborn. "Yeah. We can talk."

Enma shuffled forward slightly, his usually blank eyes flooded with heat. "I wanted to ask. When did you know that you were in love with Kyoko Sasagawa?"

"What do you mean?" Tsuna asked. He ducked down, and Enma took the hint to sit in the vibrant grass, and he swore he could feel the movement of a million living things underneath him. Tsuna sat too, with his knees out to the sides, grabbing his feet that he had centered in front of him. His face looked so patient and welcoming and curious. He was so cute.

"Like, what happened to make you realize you were in love with her?" he said.

Tsuna didn't have to think long, though a dreamy, mawkish spark dawned in his eyes. "I pretty much fell in love with her at first sight," he said. He rocked forward a little. "I didn't know who she was, and she didn't know who I was. I just thought she had a nice smile. The fact that she had shown that nice smile to me without even knowing who I was, was, well, kind of a foreign concept to me then. It only took a split-second before I became obsessed with her." He chuckled nervously.

Enma gestured his acceptance of the answer with a very small nod and a very slow blink. "So, it just happened?"

"Yup."

Casting his eyes on a hill at the edge of the field, Enma pieced together the words he would speak next, carefully choosing and carving them in his own mind. All at once he trained his focus back on Tsuna and said, "What about Gokudera? When did you fall in love with him?"

This made Tsuna roll his eyes to the sky, click his tongue, and exhale. Hayato's image appeared inside his head and he rewound it until he found a familiar time.

"Well, it was the break between school years, you know," Tsuna began, "And – you remember. You and your family went to Italy. Yamamoto was traveling around for the Spring Tournament with the rest of the baseball team. Kyoko-chan toured with her dance company, too. Ryohei had to work. Haru visited her mother in Tokyo. Chrome spent the whole break in Kokuyo. Hayato was the only friend I had left for the whole break. So we hung out every day. I don't think we had ever done that before, at least not as much as we did during break."

"Done what, hung out just the two of you?" Enma asked, and Tsuna nodded. Enma could see the loving look that Tsuna's expression took on at the mention of his boyfriend's name, and it caused an aggressive heat to form inside Enma's throat.

"Just the two of us, Hayato and me, no other friends, no fights, nothing to do. It was a little strange, but… I found that I truly enjoyed myself with him." He leaned back. "I guess it also made me realize how much he had changed since we had met – I mean, he was still basically the same, but more mature, more composed, since he had gotten all the experience and settled down with Vongola work. Because, before, he was just a complete mess." He laughed once at that while Enma stayed diligently silent. "And I thought, 'I'm so lucky to have a friend like him. He's really amazing.'"

"During break was when you realized it, then?" Enma asked.

Tsuna pondered for a second, then shook his head. "Well, no. I do know that it was during break when I started to feel weird around him, though."

"When did the exact feeling come to mind?" Enma said. He found that he was starting to sound a little impatient, and, relieved that his tone didn't seem to faze Tsuna, calmed himself down. Reborn shot Enma an invisible scowl.

Tsuna's head went backward as he gazed at the sky through the thin canopy above him. A romantic smile curled his sweet lips, bringing a pinkish color to his skin. Enma forced down a shudder. "April first this year. The first day of ninth grade." Tsuna's head lowered slowly until his eyes met Enma's and stopped. His brown eyes swam with a wistful glow. Enma stifled a desperate noise.

"We were standing around in a big mob in the courtyard. Nobody was in uniform, since it was the first day and you know, we never do anything on first days. I was really excited because I had you and P. and Yamamoto and Kyoko-chan and Chrome and Hayato in my homeroom again this year – I couldn't believe how lucky I was. I mean, third year in a row I had all my friends in the same class as me. It had to be some universal fluke or gift or something, but I didn't care, I was happy."

"I was happy, too, I remember," Enma mumbled.

"I know exactly when I realized I loved Hayato, as more than just a friend," he said, and he made a gesture with his childish hands and then returned them to their spot holding his feet. "He was walking alone down that path to the courtyard, with all the sakura falling and dancing around him. When I saw him step out of the shadows of the trees and into the sunlight, he looked like an angel, and I swear I forgot how to breathe for a minute." He sighed quietly. "I sound like a poet, don't I? I suppose that's what people sound like when they talk about the person they love."

"And that was when you knew," Enma breathed. His eyes seemed glazed.

"That was when I knew," Tsuna repeated. "And between coming to terms with the way I felt and gathering up the courage to confess to Hayato, it took me two weeks. Man, those were an extremely awkward two weeks. I barely spoke to him. I never agreed to hang out with him after school, even though some other friends would join us every time. I just could not make eye contact with him, or be in the same room with him for too long. I was probably pretty rude to him. But I think he understands why." He practically melted forward, a beautifully content smile on his face. The warmth in his heart had been projected for practically all the world to see.

Enma called to mind the moment he realized his love for Tsuna. Hibari had gone to Kokuyo to seek out a rematch with the elusive Mukuro Rokudo, so Adelheid, high on her power as the other co-chairperson of the Namimori Middle School Disciplinary Committee was missing, went on a rampage. She punished any student whose uniform was in any way incomplete, whose behavior was even slightly out of line, who was tardy by even one second. She had trapped Ryohei, Koyo and Julie in nets and hung them from a tree as punishment for fighting and philandering. But she wouldn't let Enma or Tsuna slip by a few seconds after the bell – she tied them by the ankles to the outside wall of the school building, leaving them upside-down for an hour. The experience was painful and humiliating – he really couldn't have "picked" a more embarrassing time to fall in love with someone, while the blood was rushing to both of their heads.

His expression melted into a smile without his control, but he didn't mind it in the slightest. "I hope Gokudera knows how lucky he is," he said.

"Oh, no, he thinks he's a lot luckier to have me than he actually is," Tsuna said with a bewildered chuckle. "I have no idea what he sees in me. He's smarter, stronger, more experienced, better-looking than I am or probably ever will be." His face grew despondent, but only for a short moment. "Yet he still loves me. I don't get it. I'm nothing special."

"You're special to him, apparently." Enma shrugged. "You… You have this effect on people, Tsuna." Their eyes met. "I can't quite explain it, but something about you just makes everyone you meet better. I don't think I could find a single person who has met you and can say they haven't changed because of it." Enma averted the gaze, blushing. "I guess that's what Gokudera likes best about you. You changed him for the better. That's what you do to everyone without even realizing it, without even trying. Including me – before I met you, I was an angry and sad little wallflower, but you set me on the path to become happier and more assertive and self-aware. And I didn't know Gokudera before you came into his life, but I'm sure you did something similar for him."

Tsuna didn't quite know what to say to that. He glanced back at his tutor and the two of them exchanged little smiles. Sometime over two years ago, Tsuna was stuck in his inescapable No-Good rut. He lived miserably, thinking that everybody either secretly or overtly hated him. He had lay awake many a night, staring at his unmoving bedroom door or the blank television screen, contemplating suicide. No one would miss me, no one would care, if I died, surely – he had convinced himself of that. Now, if he died, a world of people would be lost without him. He had found a calling, a family. Enma said that he changed people's lives for the better. But Reborn had been the one who changed Tsuna in the first place, starting a chain reaction of redeemed souls.

"That might be it," Tsuna thought aloud. Then he returned to facing his redheaded friend.

Enma's shoulders sank noticeably. He peered down at the grass just in front of his knees. At length he stood, blinking in the mid-morning sun, and his hands began to fidget. "Well, ah. Th-thank you very much, again, Tsuna. I'm glad I got to talk to you." He stepped toward him a few inches, then paused. "You're really the best friend I could have asked for," he said.

In the end, Enma supposed he had not found the answer to his questions. Tsuna's reasons for whom he fell in love with had to be unexplainable with words, or go over his head in some other way.

"I think so too," Tsuna replied, "About you," and he stood as well. "It's always nice to talk to you." Reborn got on his feet.

Enma grinned – a large, smitten, exasperated grin that made his eyes glitter. The expression quickly hardened with determination. "I have a small favor – and I will officially leave you alone after that." He ground his toe into the dirt, alarming a passing grasshopper. He started walking toward the Vongola boss again.

"Well, you don't have to leave me alone," Tsuna said. "What is it?"

"Just hold still and close your eyes," Enma said. He couldn't help how quietly the words came out. He hated the fact that he mumbled. When he caught the confused look in Tsuna's open eyes, he instantly felt ashamed. "Hm?" Tsuna blinked innocently –

Enma's lips trembled as they brushed shyly against Tsuna's. The kiss was light and untried and more afraid than anything, and Enma's hands flew behind his own back. Tsuna took a large step backwards, bringing his hand up to half-push himself away from the other boy. His brown eyes went wide. He felt the sweat begin to seep out of his pores.

"I-I'm so sorry!" Enma said. "I just – I needed this! I can't help myself!"

"Enma…" Tsuna breathed. Reborn tipped the brim of his hat over his eyes and looked away.

Hanging his head in a shameful bow, Enma clasped his hands in front of him. "Please forgive me, Tsuna. Please. I beg you. I won't do anything like that to you ever again."

"Enma," Tsuna said, a little louder, making the Shimon boss bow lower.

Another boy had just taken his lips. His mind rushed to his right-hand man, and the nightmare of losing him over this. A desperate noise escaped from him as if Hayato had been standing right there and Tsuna had tried to reach out and grab him before he would turn away forever.

Tsuna clutched his hands to his chest. "I have to go," he said. "I'm sorry."

He turned and walked hurriedly out of the field as Enma stood straight. Reborn shook his head and followed closely behind.

LXVII. Anymore of this.

Back and forth, back and forth.

Tsuna clutched the sides of his head, scratching his scalp, and groaned loudly, which turned into a whining moan, which turned into an exasperated sigh. He turned on his heels to stomp to the other end of the room.

The corner of Reborn's lip curved downward as the sitting baby watched his student pace around the room in frustration. Reborn brought legs up from the edge of the bed and bent them Indian-style. He grabbed onto the toes of his feet with both hands. Tsuna made another turn and quickened his pace for about half a lap.

Then Tsuna gasped in revelation, but not without a swift recovery to furrowed eyebrows and heavy feet. He grabbed his iPhone, almost angrily, and dialed one of the numbers in his favorites. This still did not stop him from pacing, until he heard the other boy's voice after just the first ring and immediately stood still.

"Hey, Tenth," Hayato had said, eagerly and lovingly, as he always did.

"Hayato," Tsuna replied bluntly. He suddenly found that he couldn't keep his voice steady.

Hayato's tone changed immediately to one of deep concern. "Is everything all right?"

"No," came Tsuna's quiet voice.

"Tenth, what's wrong? Tell me."

Tsuna felt vastly awful right now – even the sound of his boyfriend's sympathy in that sweet, smoky, Italian-accented voice did very little to quell the feeling. Instead, it brought the distraught Tsuna dangerously closer to tears.

"I… I just really want to see you right now. In person. That would make everything better," Tsuna explained. "C-could we meet somewhere?"

"Okay," Hayato said. "We can meet halfway. How about outside the main entrance to the mall? Is that good with you?"

Tsuna nodded, many times. It took him a few seconds to remember that Hayato couldn't see what he was doing over a phone. "Mm-hm," he could barely sound out.

"I'll be there in about fifteen or twenty minutes, then," Hayato said.

"…K-…'kay." When Tsuna looked at Reborn, his will strengthened a little. He forced his near-sobs back down deep inside him, deep enough to last him until he was somewhere better: in the arms of his beloved.

"Tenth?"

Tsuna gasped silently at the call of his name.

"I love you," Hayato said. The words dripped with sincerity, reassurance. Their meaning rocked Tsuna's very core, dislodging the potential tears back to their previous places. "I love you," he repeated when he heard Tsuna's badly hidden sniffle.

"I love you," Tsuna replied. He hung up hesitantly, shut his eyes tight, holding the phone to his heart and taking in an exaggerated sniffle, and started out his bedroom door. Not without a last glance at the baby on his bed, who acknowledged the look with an understanding nod.

LXVIII. Eternal eyes, eternal hearts.

Pocketing his BlackBerry upon ending the call, Gokudera minimized the Firefox window active on the laptop– Tumblr and three different Google search results pages on the tabs – and closed the laptop. He stood robotically from the couch. The television on the wall, showing a game show to which he hadn't really been paying that much attention, promptly shut off at the press of a button on the remote. Gokudera made a quick bathroom stop, checking himself in the mirror at the last minute to make sure he looked normal. Then he grabbed his wallet and keys, slipped on a beat-up pair of tennis shoes, and walked out the door.

0o.o0o.o0

He found his boyfriend waiting casually beside a pillar. As soon as he had spotted him, Tsuna graduated from a hurried walk to a canter. He lifted his arms at a few feet away, and Hayato stood straighter. A mother sauntered past them, throwing a quick glance at the two boys before looking back down at the stroller she pushed. Once he had gotten in Hayato's arms, all Tsuna's floodgates opened, and he pressed his blushing face into Hayato's welcoming chest.

Frowning sympathetically, Hayato stroked the Tenth's back, patted him a few times. He settled on just holding him tighter after that.

"Why is everything so hard?" Tsuna blubbered out. I wish I knew, Hayato thought in unspoken response.

Tsuna craned his neck upward to meet Hayato's eyes. Hayato looked down at his teary face. "Th-the-the new technique and the base and all the papers and meetings and everyone wants to talk to me but I don't want them! I just want these people to leave me alone. I just want to spend all day with you and not have to worry about all this other crap," Tsuna blubbered. He sniffled.

Hayato nodded, petting his boss' chestnut hair.

"Just being around you makes everything better, Hayato," Tsuna said. "I'm sorry I'm such a mess right now. I really needed to see you, in person, and now that I'm here with you all those things don't seem so big. You're my only relief, you know?"

The notion of smiling came to Hayato's lips. He leaned his head down and, brushing aside the tousled brown bangs, affectionately kissed the Tenth's forehead. Tsuna closed his eyes. He hugged Hayato more tautly now, the side of his head against the warm hollow of Hayato's chest. He could hear the sweet, subtle sounds of Hayato's heartbeat and breathing, and within a few short moments, he had stilled, cutting off the tear flow.

"I will always stick by you, Tenth," Hayato said, stroking the brown hair sweetly. "Unshakably, unyieldingly, through anything. Always. I will." Tsuna could feel the subtle vibrations coming from Hayato's chest accompanying the soothing voice. Hayato always knew just what to say. Tsuna wished he could be as eloquent.

Tsuna's lips tugged into a piteous frown. He held in a moan, letting it out silently after a few seconds. Slowly his grip on Hayato slackened until eventually the two of them separated, leaving Tsuna self-depreciatively lonely and Hayato a little confused.

"Hayato…" Tsuna murmured. His voice started sounding weepy again. He fisted one hand, then the other. Tsuna's eyes met his boyfriend's, and the brown pair looked so wet and fragile.

"…I really, really love you, you know," Tsuna finished. He firmed his voice to the best of his ability.

"I love you too, Tenth," Hayato said. "You're my world, my life, my everything."

Tsuna could tangibly feel the sincerity of Hayato's words smack him in the face. His eyes narrowed and his vision blurred completely with tears.

"Only you," Tsuna said under his breath. Even though Hayato heard, he didn't reply to it, since he could tell Tsuna was trying to tell it to himself more than to him.

Tsuna couldn't take Hayato's gaze anymore, so he averted his eyes to the ground. "Enma… he… he's in love with me too." His shoulders sank. "And I don't feel the same about him, and he came on to me – he kissed me today, and I just should have told you in the first place, right when I found out." His voice grew quieter with every word that came out. "I made a mistake in not letting you know and… I'm sorry, please don't be mad at me, or at him—"

He stopped when he felt Hayato's hands take his own and hold them gently. They were warm, smooth, embracive hands that gave him a peace of mind and evoke a feeling in him that nothing else could. Large, deft, with long, slender, graceful fingers, and soft skin: if any pair of hands was more perfect than Hayato's, it probably didn't belong to a human. Tsuna couldn't get enough of them. Holding hands with Hayato had become Tsuna's favorite thing in the whole world.

Perhaps that was something about falling in love with someone. Everything about the person seemed perfect, the hands, the hair, the face, the eyes, the lips, the skin, the voice, right down to the very heartbeat. Whether flawed or well endowed, all the smallest details were beautiful, and even the big picture more than the great sum of its parts. A purpose, a previously unattainable rightness, a sense of self-worth, an elimination of loneliness – the boys were all these things and more for one another.

Tsuna wrapped his fingers around Hayato's. He dared to peer back up into those mossy eyes again.

"Tenth," Hayato whispered, "Don't be upset."

"But I feel like I've… betrayed you."

Hayato shook his head. His snowy lashes followed his eyelids as they quickly dropped and lifted. His hair swayed slightly with the movement. "You did nothing wrong," he said. "He kissed you, didn't he? It wasn't the other way around, and even if it was, I'd forgive you."

Tsuna's eyes widened as he brought his and Hayato's hands closer together, toward the middle. "But… you're not mad at him?"

"Tenth, I know first-hand how hard it is to control yourself around someone you love," Hayato said. "I've loved you for so long… I knew it before you could have even grasped a hint of it. I can't tell you how many times, while we were just friends, that I had wanted to just grab you and kiss you all over and not let you go. It took every ounce of my self-control to keep from making a fool of myself like that whenever I was around you." Tsuna smiled timidly at this, as if a full smile wouldn't punish him enough for putting Hayato through such a thing. But Hayato smiled back to show, in some sort of way, It's not your fault, Tenth. "I actually admire Kozato for keeping it up this long. I can't be mad at him. Not unless you gave me reason to."

Hayato's head cocked very slightly. "You forgive him, don't you?"

Tsuna nodded.

"Then, if it's not a problem to you, it's not a problem to me." Hayato smiled wider.

Getting on his tiptoes, Tsuna leaned forward over the small gap between the two of them, and kissed Hayato softly on the lips. "I'm so glad," Tsuna whispered, his lips a hair's breadth away from Hayato's, before flattening his feet again. A middle-aged man approaching the mall entrance from the sidewalk averted his eyes from the boys' direction in disgust, but three tween girls standing by the door giggled to each other over the spectacle, stealing playful glances at the "cute gay couple" by the pillar.

"But, still," Hayato said, hunching down a little, "You seem… kind of tense. You're pretty stressed."

Tsuna nodded again, fervently. Hayato's sweet smile turned into a mischievous one. He released the Tenth's left hand, holding his right tighter, and started a few steps to the side when he said, "Come with me."

0o.o0o.o0

Holding hands not too many blocks away from the mall, Hayato had still not given the Tenth any hints about where he was taking him, when they passed a college-age lesbian couple walking down the sidewalk, also holding hands. The woman with the butch haircut grinned and held her open hand up at her side. "Homo pride," she said. Gokudera slapped his bandaged palm against hers as they crossed, replying, "Hell yeah," with a matching smile. Tsuna and the other girl glanced back at each other and chuckled.

LXIX. "I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world." – Walt Whitman.

The wind pushed past them, rude and barely fazed by their presence. Hayato's baggy clothes ruffled wildly. Tsuna's hair tried to fly. The latter timidly shuffled closer to the edge of the cliff, but upon seeing the crumbling rocks there and the smallness of the objects in the distance, he shrank back.

"Why did we come here?" Tsuna asked into the headwind. His meek voice echoed off the rock walls.

Hayato smiled at him, taking his hand. "Sometimes, Tenth," he said, "You're not scared or trying to get someone's attention. You just need to scream."

Tsuna's eyebrows furrowed. "Scream?"

"You know, Scream. Yell. Shriek. Shout. 'Sound your barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.'"

The smaller boy scowled. "We didn't have to come all the way out here to do that," he said.

"But here it's much more satisfying. The view is splendid, we're isolated, there's an echo, and it sure beats opening up your bedroom window and scaring the shit out of your neighbors," Hayato said, chuckling, and the two of them turned to face the horizon simultaneously. He released the Tenth's hand and sauntered toward the edge. "Here, let me show you."

He stopped when the toes of his shoes were just inches from the edge, his hair whipping about behind his head like a raging silver fire, Tsuna gazing at his azure silhouette with a mix of concern, awe and curiosity. Hayato brought his arms out perpendicular to the rest of his frame. The sides of his jacket flew unrestrainedly backward, riding every subtlety of the wind. He threw his head back and opened his mouth to the vast heavens. A hoarse scream thundered forth from him. The sun itself blinked at him in response.

The smile that appeared then on Tsuna's face grew exponentially by the second. What struck him was the inspiration, the passion, the pure energy of the act, and of the infinitely beautiful Hayato Gokudera in front of him, raw, performing it.

Hayato's scream ended in a glorious gasp, and in an instant the wind erased all traces of it. He turned around, arms bent slightly but still out to his sides. From beneath the sheet of silver hair billowing around his face, a refreshed smirk pinkened his lips. "See?" he said breathlessly.

At that, Tsuna rushed forward to his boyfriend's side, stopping a little shorter of the cliff's edge. He released a powerful beast of a scream that he, until this moment, had no idea had been boiling and aching deep inside him for years. It pierced the sky, shook the earth, and for a minute, stilled the wind. With each second that passed Tsuna felt as though all his troubles and sins and everything bad inside of him flew out with the air. He finished, and he felt so clean and free and light that he grabbed onto Hayato in the unconscious fear that he might just be blown away.

Hayato put his hand on the small of Tsuna's back. In a split-second decision, he pulled the Tenth closer. "Didn't that feel good?" he said. Tsuna clutched him closer, burying the side of his face in Hayato's plaid shirt while staring out at the peak of the mountain on the other side of the canyon. "Yes," Tsuna said. "Yes. Yes." Tsuna's fists squeezed the material of his boyfriend's shirt tighter.

However, after a minute or two, Tsuna began to release him. "It – agh." Tsuna lost the words, and he let go fully, and he took a large step forward, toes hanging just over the edge. He threw his arms in the air. The hem of his T-shirt flew up. "It just feels so… And it's so… I'm so… I just wish I could…" Each time he started, he could not finish. No words could describe how he felt right now. So in the end he settled for raw, childlike laughter, swaying his torso back and forth so the wind could hit him at different angles. Hayato stood and stared at him all the while with a small smile and his hands relaxed in his pants pockets. Out of nowhere he became reminded of his boss' clumsiness and current carefree attitude, and at the edge of a cliff those may not have made a good combination, but he was close enough to the Tenth right now that, if he did slip and start tumbling, he would be able to reach forward and grab him quickly. He wasn't too worried. He was mostly enraptured by his feelings, let alone the Tenth's overwhelming lifted spirit. Seeing the Tenth so happy made him feel good, too.

Tsuna turned around and faced Hayato with the most epiphanic expression Hayato had ever seen on him.

"It's like the end of the world here," Tsuna said. "The wind is really strong."

Hayato's worries grew a little at that so he shuffled over to him and grabbed his arm protectively. "Do you want to sit down?" he asked.

Tsuna thought on it for a moment, his bright brown eyes lost somewhere between Hayato's face and the mysteries in the distance. At length he nodded and the boys carefully lowered themselves to the ground, hands joined. Their legs dangled over the cliff. Some nervousness started to well up inside Tsuna so he lied down, Hayato doing the same. The wind hardly bothered them now, simply passed right overhead without a fight. Strands of their hair tangled in the cracks between the rocks under their heads. The negative thoughts began to slowly pipe back into Tsuna's mind as he studied a wispy cloud in the sky above.

"There's just so much to do in this world, you know?" Tsuna said, the sudden clarity of his words making him feel as though he and Hayato were alone in a bubble of sorts. "It never ends."

"This sort of place just makes it seem like it does," Hayato said, "If only for a moment. Coming here is like throwing your troubles into an abyss. They come back up and bite you, but for a little while, at least, you're at liberty to forget them." He sighed. "That's why I love places like this. When I travel, they're the first I try to find."

Tsuna squeezed Hayato's hand gradually tighter. "I don't want to leave here," he said, on some impulse he had not recognized until he had expressed it.

"Another thing, though, about these special places: somehow they always remain imprinted on your memory," Hayato said. "They're the only truly good things you ever remember."

Tsuna smiled. The mountains were a little ways away from the outskirts of Namimori. He had only been to this general area once or twice before, but he had neither been right here specifically nor appreciated this place at all until now. He recalled a time in fifth grade when he participated in a class discussion on the students' favorite spots in town, and he couldn't think of anything, so he just said, "My house." Now he had a real favorite place, and a love story to go with it, and knew that if he ever got asked that question again, he would answer differently. He shut his eyes for a few seconds, breathed deeply. His eyes opened to a somehow more vibrant sky.

Meanwhile Hayato reflected on his words. His thoughts turned his smile into a grimace. He grit his teeth and his hand went limp in the Tenth's. He became aware of his own heartbeat, his breathing, the heaviness in his head.

His eyes melted into sorrowful puddles as they pointed to the sky and fixed themselves there. "Do you know, what happened to me, when I was ten?" As soon as the words left his lips he hoped the wind had snatched them up and prevented them from reaching the Tenth's ears.

The Tenth turned his head slightly on its side. His eyes gravitated to Hayato's sunken profile. Still the same oval-shaped face and low bridge he loved to see, but his eyes were so much more serious than they normally were. They didn't seem cold or angry or determined. They seemed sad.

"I don't think so," Tsuna replied, apprehension in his voice.

Hayato sighed quietly, trying to expel guilt and depression and some panic.

"That summer I spent four weeks in a small town in eastern Spain," he began. "It was a shipping hub – cargo trains came through there all the time. More than half the people there worked for the railroad. The station was pretty developed for such a small place. That was kind of what brought me there: some trains had illegal loads – counterfeit goods, narcotics, guns – and there was a large underground transport network, so I could work with the gangs that ran it."

Tsuna nodded slightly in understanding, though Hayato barely noticed. The former kept his eyes on Hayato's face, but Hayato continued to stare intently at the sky. There was no way he could look the Tenth in the eye while telling him this story.

"While I was there, I stayed with this girl named Lydia Suarez. She was twelve years old; she had flat feet, golden hazel eyes and dark brown hair that she always kept in a braid; and she sang hymns quietly to herself whenever she thought she was alone. It was just her and her single mother, but her mother worked three jobs and was never home, and Lydia never associated herself with any gang members really – she and I just sort of met randomly on the street and clicked, but. I got to sleep at her house four nights a week, and I stayed there or in the neighborhood pretty much all day, every day, when I wasn't down at the station negotiating things. I was Lydia's private project, her forbidden friend. Her mother never found out about me."

"Sounds like she was real nice," Tsuna said. The Tenth had a lilt of nostalgia in his voice despite just learning about this memory he himself had never experienced.

"She was my only friend then," Hayato said, "And she was very good to me." He paused briefly as he tried to recall her face, mentally piecing together even her most understated features. If his memory was correct, Lydia was quite a pretty girl, a classic kind of pretty. He hadn't thought so before. He never really regarded her that way.

"Anyway, I guess it was about three and a half weeks in when it happened. No, I know because I left town three days later. Ah…." He stopped a minute, and unable to find the right way to tell this part of the story, closed his eyes. The memory flowed into his mind. Every single detail in chronological order. Clear. Painfully clear. He gulped to compose himself, and continued speaking, eyes still shut. Tsuna watched his Adam's apple move up and down slightly.

"One minute I was at the station, talking to this middle-aged man who mostly lifted and carried, and followed the trains wherever they went, squatting in the boxcars. The next…" Hayato's eyes opened to slits. His long, white eyelashes meshed over them for protection from the accusing sunlight. "I must have been knocked out or something. I woke up in some strange room, in a different bed, and I was wearing this jacket that I had never seen before – a dark green windbreaker, big-and-tall size, for adult men, you know. It was huge on me. It felt strange."

Tsuna moved slightly closer to Hayato, heart beating fast in the suspense.

"I was a little delirious, but I got up and walked out of the bedroom. The door was locked – I had to unlock it to get out. It was easy, though… I was in some guy's apartment, and he was in the kitchen cooking something when I came in. He was this huge dude with a week-old beard and arms as big around as tree trunks, but a weirdly high voice. I had no idea who he was or anything. He had a pot with a handle on the stove, filled with water that had just started boiling… He saw me… And…."

Hayato inhaled sharply, gnashing his teeth together, as pain crashed through his body. His eyes shut; his hand, shaking uncontrollably now, squeezed powerfully around the Tenth's. He felt the Tenth's nervous breathing on his neck. Hayato swallowed down the nightmare.

"… He… molested me."

He shuddered out the breath that had caught in his throat. The memory of the incident flooded into his head, its tide swelling, eating all other thoughts. The smell of steam on the stove, the dark clouds through the bars on the windows; he tried to back away but the look on that man's face had frozen him, and the man reached down and –.

"I knew he could have done even worse if I let him go on, so I ended up… grabbing the pot by the handle and smashing him over the head with it. Scalded him and knocked him out at the same time. I dropped it to the floor then and just got the hell out of there, ran back to Lydia's house."

Hayato's voice trembled in terror, anger, humiliation. Tsuna gasped in quiet horror and tried to hold back the tears that pricked at his eyes.

"I said nothing to her, but she knew. She knew just from looking at me. She told me she herself had been 'touched' too, when she was nine, by her mother's ex-boyfriend. She knew just how terrified and helpless and disgusted and violated I felt."

Tsuna's heart sank into the pit of his stomach. Hayato's hand loosened ever so slightly around his.

"She told me, too, how she dealt with it, and I guess I learned then that she was a closet pyromaniac: she took the dress she had worn when 'it' happened into the backyard, put a match to it and watched it burn. So that was what we did, with the man's jacket – I assumed it was his, anyway, but I was wearing it when it happened to me. For a long time after, I let myself believe that the experience was behind me, that everything about it was gone.

"Eventually I realized that destroying the jacket wasn't destroying the memory. Getting rid of the evidence did nothing to change the fact that it happened. It ate away at me and I tried almost too long to convince myself I was okay. No matter for symbols. The incident still haunted me. I had to come to terms with the thing itself instead of erasing something indirect."

A solitary tear rolled down from Tsuna's eye, across his cheek, dropping on a shining rock. Hayato's eyes peeked open only a little.

"Have you ever told anyone?" Tsuna whispered.

Face drooping into a frown, Hayato swallowed again, weakly rubbed his thumb up and down the Tenth's hand.

"Other than Lydia, you're the only person who knows," he said. "Getting molested is not exactly something someone goes around advertising." He chuckled forcibly, almost soundlessly. "I'm mostly over it, anyway. It still hurts to talk about, but I can do it without suffering too much. I can use it as an example. A lesson. It's not the only thing wrong, anyway – I have far more issues than that. I can't let it get me down too much."

Tsuna came closer to Hayato, nuzzling his head against his shoulder in the most empathy he had ever given. Hayato jumped at the touch, gasping quietly, and Tsuna felt the air rush in and saw his boyfriend's chest rise sharply. Tsuna almost retreated, but ended up in this position, holding the quivering Hayato.

"What worked for Lydia doesn't work for me. Symbolic things like burning clothes and screaming feel good when you do them," Hayato said, "But when you get down to it, you've done nothing but make a fool of yourself. His jacket is in ashes but I still feel it around me sometimes. You're here now but when you get back home you'll still have all the same problems.

"We try to throw all our worries off the end of the Earth. We forget that the Earth is round."

Hayato didn't end up staying in this position for long. He shrugged stiffly out of Tsuna's grip and sat up, pressing his hands on the rocks behind him, which hurt a little to do. Tsuna sat up with him, and quickly faced the other direction so he could remove the tiny tear on his cheek, before looking at his boyfriend again. Hayato had paled significantly; his lips shivered in a taut scowl. Although Hayato showed no signs of coming close to crying, his eyes displayed a tremendous sadness, a sense of loss – the greatest loss of all, the loss of innocence – that made his silence all the more poignant. He hunched forward weakly, taking his arms out from behind his back and wrapping them around the front of his abdomen. For half a second he felt the sensation of cheap leather brushing against his skin.

Tsuna had seen a similar reaction in Hayato once before, the day Hayato had told him about the lack of safety on a Glock, his first kill, and his aversion to strawberries. He could see the same pain written on his face. Hayato's past, however complicated and scary it was, (Tsuna knew he hadn't the slightest idea), was full of only bitter memories. And, as was the most undeniable trait of a past, it followed him everywhere, influenced his every thought, would never leave him until the day he would die. A bad past, Tsuna thought, was about the worst thing that a person could have. A bright future and a content present meant nothing if bad memories kept bogging someone down. Hayato claimed to have put it behind him, but he and Tsuna both knew that deep down a person could never fully get over anything.

He almost didn't hear Hayato say quietly, "I guess I just kind of ruined this whole thing by being so depressing, didn't I?"

Tsuna would not change the subject again, like he had done last time Hayato opened his heart about his past. This time he would not dismiss it with silence and an ambiguous kiss. He whipped his arms around him and squeezed. He laid his chin over Hayato's shoulder. Hayato slowly raised his arms and set them on Tsuna's back, clutching his shirt weakly, lowered his head to Tsuna's level and pressed their cheeks together. At Hayato's trembling touch, Tsuna found he could not contain his tears anymore. Hayato felt a small, warm, wet stream crawl out of Tsuna's eye and run down the sides of their faces.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," Tsuna whispered. His quiet voice broke at the end. Hayato felt Tsuna's whimpering breath against his skin. Tsuna gulped. Hayato felt that too. He cradled the back of Tsuna's head in his loving, protective, reassuring left hand. His slender fingers tangled in the strands of Tsuna's hair.

"It's not your fault," Hayato breathed, just as much to Tsuna as to himself, his voice low and deep and silken in Tsuna's ear. Tsuna just pulled him closer, held him tighter. He moaned against Hayato's shoulder and the tears buckled out at double the rate.

Gokudera didn't consider at all the fact that the Tenth was crying over something that hadn't even happened to him, that had actually happened to Gokudera and didn't make him cry. Instead, he blamed himself. He thought himself despicable for saying something that upset the Tenth so much.

Meanwhile Tsuna felt bad enough for crying. He knew it wasn't his place to do so, but he couldn't help it. This was his Hayato. He grieved for Hayato's lost innocence and cursed the mystery man who had caused so much pain. Tsuna felt guilty also for complaining about such petty issues when Hayato had been through so much worse yet still sympathized with Tsuna. Guilty, and blessed.

LXX. Soul.

With a kiss in closing, Hayato walked off again, but this time, he knew where he was going.

Children ran past him, eager and laughing and taking full advantage of the final hours of the free day's light. One had nearly touched Hayato as she rushed past. He smiled despite the rush of dizziness as he turned the street corner. He walked to the entrance of his most preferred hardware store, holding the door open for an elderly man before going in himself.

The clerk looked up from the computer screen to the two incomers. He grinned, flicking one strand of wet black hair from his forehead. "Hajima-san and Gokudera-kun, two of my best customers. Good to see you again." The elderly man nodded and Gokudera replied coolly, "Hey, Abe-san."

Gokudera laid his elbows and forearms on the counter and slouched. "Back so soon, eh? Did your medicine cabinet repair not turn out too well?" Abe asked.

"Actually, it's good as new," Gokudera said. "I have another project in mind, though, that I want to start."

"What is it?" Abe asked, intrigued, as he set his elbow on the counter, his chin in his palm.

Gokudera smirked. "It's a bit of a risk – but it's going to be a little secret of mine for a while."

"So you'd rather not say?"

"If that's all right with you," Gokudera said, a smirk setting a spark in his green eyes.

0o.o0o.o0

The arm of the hand holding the sledgehammer swung dramatically as he entered the place where he had woken this morning. A small, completely full duffle bag was tucked under his other arm, the straps pulling hard on his shoulder, leaving marks. He had pulled his silver hair into a ponytail. The dust swam thickly in the air, making him cough once.

Dropping the sledgehammer to the floor gently, Hayato aimed a toothy, apologetic grin downward. He knelt to the ground. The bag slid down his arm and he unzipped it upon its landing.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said in his native Italian, "But this is for your own benefit." He dragged his right hand along some of the old floorboards. When he lifted his hand again, he examined the dirt and dust on his bandages. His smile turned sweet as he patted the floor now. "You're beautiful," he whispered. "Don't forget that for a second."

Judging from the dust and decay of the place, he knew he had to take certain precautions. He snapped a mask over his mouth and nose, adjusted to the claustrophobic breaths, sealed the bag, grabbed the sledgehammer, and stood. His head rushed upon the sudden movement, amplifying the perpetual headache; he held the side of his head for a moment before he continued. He set his eyes on the dilapidated shelves clinging to the wall. The things had once been so proud to hold instruments of beauty. Now the purpose of their existence was long gone and they sat here alone, begging for death. They reminded him of the days he braved before he met the Tenth, when he stumbled along life's path alone, searching for a reason. The bruises, the tears, the sleepless nights. Sure, these shelves were inanimate objects. But he identified with them more than he did with almost any other person or thing. He figured himself a deliverer of mercy, because while he did eventually find a savior in the form of a small boy with fire in his big heart, these shelves could never again feel as whole.

He raised the hammer at an angle behind him, and then chuckled lightly as he realized he was holding the thing like a baseball bat. Which reminded him…. "You wanted me to find an alternative, Yamamoto?" he asked into the mask. He swung the sledgehammer back, poising himself on mostly one leg, preparing to strike.

"Well, here's your 'alternative.'"

0o.o0o.o0

Fruitlessly chasing a chunk of food around his plate with the fork, Tsuna stared at his dissected meal. The others at the table kept up enough conversation for a large group. They barely noticed Tsuna's lack of participation. Nana peered over at him every few minutes, the look in his eyes repeatedly catching her attention. She took her drink cautiously in her hand and sipped.

"I feel so bored in school lately," Fuuta complained. "I already know pretty much everything they're teaching."

"Well, you're a smart kid, Fuuta. I had the same problem when I was your age. A lot of smart kids get bored in school," Bianchi said.

"What did you do, Bianchi-nee?" Fuuta asked.

"Grinned and bore it," she said. "Though that's not really what I'd recommend." She added a chuckle as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, exposing her gold earrings.

"Maybe I could take something up…" he pondered.

"It's always good to get a hobby –" she paused. "Erm, one that doesn't involve tampering with gravity." She set her elbow on the table. Her eyes were beginning to feel sleepy. They slowly read everyone's faces. Reborn listened intently and butted in at key points. Lambo and I-Pin had their own small, private food fight going in the corner. She couldn't quite identify the aura of the brown-haired boy sitting beside his tutor, though.

"What's on your mind, Tsuna?" she asked. It seemed to startle him a little. At first he didn't answer, just eyed her curiously. She realized that he had looked pale and slightly distraught before she had called his mind back to the present situation.

He blinked. "It's been a long day," he said quietly. He cleared his throat casually, released a silent sigh. Tsuna laid his fork down at the lip of his plate. His hands gripped the edge of the table. "May I be excused?" Upon Nana's hesitant nod, Tsuna stood from his seat, took his dishes to the sink to rinse, and shuffled out of the kitchen.

0o.o0o.o0

So I have planned for the next chapter to be pretty much nothing but pointless and shameless fluff. It will have almost no plot advancement at all. Prepare yourselves. Schedule an appointment with your dentist. (;

I'm sorry this chapter took a while. I had most of it written for a long time, but a few of the sections dragged out for weeks because I just couldn't for the life of me figure out how to write them.

But I have come to a realization about this: I think I might be some sort of secret genius. Like, you know those AP English essays on style and rhetoric? I feel I could write one on this fic. I've put symbolism and extended metaphors and allusions and stuff I didn't even realize into this thing. Maybe I should take up writing, guys! XD

Seriously, though. Is this chapter okay? Is it good enough? I hope so, really.

(Oh, and… Legend of Korra. 8D)