It didn't feel like it… but somehow, some way, half a year had passed. Half a year of sporadic meetings with Byakuran, school, fighting and chaos – a good six months… minus the whole 'Byakuran' bit – that guy was still a royal asshat.

Gokudera was currently curled up on the couch in the living room of his flat, Tsuna resting between his legs and against his chest, fluffy hair tickling his chin and making his nose twitch.

"You awake?" Gokudera asked, gently guiding Tsuna's head up to see the brunet's closed eyes.

"Mmm?" Tsuna mumbled, nuzzling his chin and making Gokudera smile fondly.

Six months and they'd never gone past kissing, Tsuna constantly finding reasons and ways to avoid it. Gokudera never really minded, happy to just be close to the Decimo, content for lack of better word.

"We have to go see Byakuran in a few hours…" Gokudera reminded Tsuna a little hesitantly, knowing that Tsuna was still horrifically tense around the other man.

He couldn't blame him. Check ups every week spread to every month. There had been no sign of the disease yet – to Gokudera's extreme relief – but he wasn't about to relax and allow Tsuna's death to happen again… no matter what.

"What will happen… when it happens?" Tsuna asked, his voice hesitating and weak, obviously unsure and scared.

"When it happens, I'll cure you. That's it," Gokudera declared, tilting Tsuna's head up and claiming the other boy's lips as he had so many hundreds of thousands of times in the past eight months.

Tsuna turned in his arms, now lying chest-to-chest with him, and Gokudera ran his hands along the Decimo's back, under the other teen's shirt and gently stroked along the taut, tanned flesh there.

"You're so beautiful, Tsuna," Gokudera whispered against the Decimo's lips, and smiled as Tsuna turned bright red.

Instead of answering, Tsuna just started kissing him again, his tongue flustered and clumsy. Gokudera smirked against his precious person's lips and used his hands – returned from their journey beneath the threads of Tsuna's shirt – to guide the other boy's mouth and to gently stroke along his jaw, calming down and soothing nerves that he knew he'd frayed.

"M-maybe… maybe soon we can…" Tsuna stated, his eyes wide and scared, but with a hint of determination that Gokudera found highly endearing.

"We can…?" Gokudera trailed off, confused at what Tsuna was hinting at.

"We can… I mean…" Tsuna blushed scarlet and gently ground his body down on Gokudera's, making the other boy moan as his hips instinctively thrust up to meet the teasing pressure of Tsuna's body.

"Oh…" Gokudera panted, attempting to calm his body down – which was no easy task, considering that Tsuna was still sprawled all over him – while his mind ran rampant with all the thoughts of what 'maybe we can…' could entail.

"But… something still feels wrong… off… I don't understand," Tsuna frowned, placing his head on Gokudera's chest and gently running his fingers down the corded muscles of Gokudera's arm.

The silver-haired man nodded his understanding. Despite everything, despite how perfect everything was, with Tsuna, with him, something felt… strange, as though this weren't the natural way of things.

Gokudera glanced around his abode, noting that there were almost as many things of Tsuna's here as there were his own. He didn't generally have a lot of junk strewn around, preferring to keep things minimal and orderly in case he needed to leave in a hurry, but that hadn't really mattered a lot in the past year, and gradually Tsuna had started to move things in and clutter up his precious space.

"Y'know… I think…" Tsuna trailed off, fingers clenching in the material of Gokudera's shirt, and Gokudera allowed his arms to tighten around Tsuna's shoulders to hold him tighter.

"Hmm?" Gokudera asked, looking at the clock beside the couch to make sure of what time it was so that they weren't late.

"I think… I think I love you…" Tsuna stated, and Gokudera felt his entire body draw tight as a wire.

Love… love… love… love… love…

Tsuna loved him.

"It-it's okay if you don't yet… I mean—I mean, if you don't, that is… it's not really, I don't expect you to… not if you don't want to-!" Tsuna trailed off, stammering and fumbling for words.

"Okay," Gokudera breathed, his mind completely dysfunctional and unable to dig its talons into a single functional train of thought. Everything was just a rambling, twisting, malformed mess.

"I guess we should get ready," Tsuna said, gently climbing off of Gokudera's body and grabbing his jacket from where it had fallen on the ground.

"Okay…" Gokudera agreed, his voice tight and his mind a train wreck.

"Should I call a taxi?" Tsuna asked, looking at him, but Gokudera wasn't seeing him – wasn't seeing anything currently present in the room.

"…Okay," Gokudera nodded, hearing nothing, seeing nothing.

"…Okay…" Tsuna nodded, and Gokudera felt like the world had opened up to swallow him whole.

Tsuna loved him… and all he wanted to do was cry.

Love was a damaging emotion.

Love made you weak, made you dysfunctional, took everything good on the planet and warped it into flowers and sunshine – so easily crushed under foot and drowned by rain.

He didn't want to love… he had never wanted to love.

He'd declared love to be a monster, like something under your bed that you could hide from your entire life if you were skilled enough.

Gokudera attempted to ignore the itchy feeling of Tsuna's hand in his – something that had once been so comfortable – and turned away, fumbling with his left hand for a cigarette.

"We're about to enter the hospital… you know that they're just going to make you put it out," Tsuna reminded him in a teasing tone.

"Then I'll meet you later, I'm going to the roof," Gokudera declared, letting go of Tsuna's hand and feeling instant relief from the itchy sensation, his skin no longer attempting to crawl off his body, and he didn't turn back to see what was most definitely a hurt look on Tsuna's face.

He couldn't… not now… not… not ever.

His shaking digits brought the smoke to his lips and he winced at the taste – so different from Tsuna's lips – and he attempted to avoid thinking about his shitty situation for a few seconds.