"Alright baby Sawada, where do you want this to happen?" Shamal asks after dinner is done and the dishes have been washed.
Hayato has to stop himself from twitching every time he catches a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye, the pasta in his mouth seeming to turn into bitter, wiggling worms. Focusing on Lambo had helped enough that he'd been able to clear half his plate before he had to stop, even though he could tell from the tastes he got occasionally that Sawada-san had done an amazing job with the pasta despite the different herbs common in Italian food that weren't usual for Japanese food.
"Just my room will be fine," Sawada replies, standing from his spot at the table where his mother had sat him down gently but firmly when he tried to help her with the dishes.
"Alright. Can you lead me to a bathroom so I can prepare my instruments?" Shamal asks, lifting the black bag that he'd left by the leg of his chair earlier.
"Of course," Sawada says.
Hayato shoves his hands into his pockets and glances over to Lambo, who's watching them with an air of distraction.
"I guess we'll be going now," Hayayo says to Sawada when he comes back into the kitchen, and he turns slightly to look at Sawada Nana. "Thank you Sawada Nana-san for the food."
Sawada shifts, leaning against the doorway, a faintly bemused look on his face. "What's the rush?"
"You don't . . . want us to leave?" Lambo asks.
"Why would I want you to leave?" Tsuna asks.
"It's called medical confidentiality, Tsuna," Reborn says from the table, holding bits of meat up for the chameleon on his hat to eat. "I believe your friends are trying to respect your privacy."
"Ahhh," Sawada says, nodding slightly. Then, like he hadn't heard a word Reborn said, he turns back to then and asks, "Well, are you coming?"
Hayato hesitates, then nods. He'll probably never end up becoming an actual doctor like Shamal, but after his troubles with Bianchi early on he'd picked up an interest in how human bodies work.
Later, picking up poison as a weapon meant he'd needed to know more in order to determine dosage, especially when he'd been hired to incapacitate rather than kill. He'd gotten good at judging people's weight and muscle and fat distribution under their clothes.
And after his skill with poison got him picked up by the Varia, well, no one objected to him picking up a few classes from the Sun division's medical subset or Lightning's science department. He's not quite as good at compensating effect for effect with poison as Shamal is with diseases, but he can do a lot.
Stereotype for stereotype, after his experience with the Varia Hayato is fairly sure that of the people he's seen drawn to Sawada's side, Sasagawa Ryohei is the sun. But stereotype for reality, it's due to his exposure to the Varia that he knows that despite what the rest of the mafia world would say about Vongola Suns, they're not all healers, and until Reborn has that position filled, and as long as Tsuna is offering, at least one of Tsuna's guardians should know his medical conditions.
With his medical experience, it might as well be Hayato.
Lambo glances from Hayato to Shamal, then makes a fake smile. "I'll stay down here with Sawada Nana-san. We can talk about Italian noodle making techniques."
This time, Tsuna accepts the answer, and he leads the party of four up to his room.
Hayato glances around Sawada's room curiously as he leans against the wall beside the door. It looks . . . almost sterile, more like a guest bedroom than somewhere a person actually lived. There wasn't anything hanging on the walls - no posters or paintings, though there were parts of the walls that were darker than the wall around them and thumbtack holes all over that suggested that tsuna used to have posters up. The neatly made western-style bed with mecha themed sheets were the only spot of personality against the sea of blandness.
Hayato's eyes flicker back to Tsuna as Shamal starts setting up his instruments on Sawada's desk, then back around the room, spotting a couple cardboard boxes like the ones used for moving peeking out from the partially open closet door.
The moving boxes . . . the emptiness of the room . . . it reminds him of what Lambo had hinted at and what Reborn had taken him aside to talk about. He remembers living out of packed cardboard boxes back at his father's house after he'd been so sick from eating Buanchi's food for what felt like forever that he'd been sure he was going to die. He'd kept his things all packed up so they would be easy to throw away or donate or whatever when he died.
His eyes narrow, and he makes a note to himself to bring something for Sawada next time he comes.
"Alright, first things first," Shamal says finally. Hayato gags reflexively when he glances at him, but without food, there's mostly just a bitter taste in his mouth, like he's going to throw up, that he can ignore easily enough. "How much do you weigh? Do you have a scale around here to check?"
"I . . . don't remember my weight. I'll go use the scale," Sawada says.
He comes back in a minute, and Shamal just keeps going down the list of things a doctor does during a normal checkup; getting Sawada's height, his blood pressure, checking his breathing with the stethoscope.
He checks Sawada's wrist too, flexing it gently and massaging the tendons in his wrist around the scar.
"You're recovering well," Shamal mutters as he sits back and turns to the desk to write in the file. "You're a little stiff, and that might not go away, but the scar formation looks alright and you don't have as much swelling as described in your file. Are you having any trouble with numbness still? Or has that changed since your last checkup?"
"It hasn't changed much," Sawada says, his hands loosely clasped in his lap. "My palm still doesn't pick up any sensation. I can feel my ring finger most of the time."
"Hmm." Shamal writes a little more. "Alright. Now that you're mostly healed you should get that looked at. I'm going to have to see if the local hospital has the correct equipment and get you scheduled for that."
He finishes writing, reads over what he'd written down, tapping the pen on his chin unconsciously, then he nods. He turns to the side and opens the case that he'd set there while doing the examination earlier.
He pulls out something that looks like a thick, bulky pen with an orange cap. Hayato squints suspiciously at it, but then he catches what Shamal is muttering under his breath and he has to stop himself from laughing.
"-your patent means nothing to the mafia-"
Shamal takes the cap off of the epi pen or pseudo-epi pen, then nods to Reborn.
"Alright. Now we're ready for the main reason I'm here," Shamal says as Reborn pulls his chameleon down from his hat.
"My reaction to Reborn's Dying Will bullet," Sawada says, nodding. Hayato's honestly a little surprised. He knew there had to be some reason Reborn wasn't doing everything he could to get Sawada to spark his own Dying Will Flames, but he wasn't sure how much Sawada actually knew.
"Exactly," Shamal says. "Luckily for you, I've been around quite a few people with adverse reactions to their own Dying Will Flames recently, so we finally found a sedative that doesn't just immediately get chewed up when your body's ignoring all limits. It's usually enough to knock people out of Dying Will Mode."
"Do you really think it will work on-what did you call it again, Reborn?" Sawada asks. "Hynos Dying Will Mode?"
"Hyper Dying Will mode," Reborn says. The click-click of his gun as he chambers a round gives his words a more ominous tone.
"Right," Sawada says, as if there wasn't someone preparing to shoot at him. "Will it work on that?"
"Honestly kid? I don't know," Shamal says. "I've never heard of anyone reacting that way before. I've never heard of someone managing Hyper Dying Will Mode without first getting their bodies accustomed to Dying Will Mode. It's supposed to be too great a strain. But in theory? It should work. Hyper Dying Will Mode doesn't boost your body any more than regular Dying Will Mode, so this should ground you well enough. Who knows though, you might not lose the Hyper part."
"Right. You know, calling this Dying Will Mode is really ominous," Tsuna says. "I know you're mafia and all, but really . . ."
Shamal's face is blank when Hayato glances at him, and Reborn had the rim of his fedora tilted down, hiding his face.
"It is what it's called," Hayato says after a moment of silence. He forces himself not to flinch when Tsuna's gaze swings to him, entirely too calm for the situation, like he already knew the information and was just punishing Reborn for not telling him.
"What do you want?" Hayato asks. He can't stop his eyes from flickering to Sawada's wrist before he drags his back up to meet Tsuna's again. "What would you die for? What would you do if you thought you were dying?"
"Hmm." Sawada tilts his head thoughtfully. "Gokudera-kun, do you mind-"
"Yeah, don't worry," Hayato says, pushing off the wall. He's only here on invitation, and if Tsuna doesn't want him to see what he truly wants, Hayato's fine with
"Stop."
Hayato jerks to a halt, and half turns in the doorway.
"I was going to ask if you would mind if I hugged you," Sawada says.
Hayato is reminded of their first fight. His talk with Sawada beforehand had made him think that if it was up to Sawada, he wouldn't be dying. But it wasn't up to Sawada, it was up to Reborn.
He's reminded of afterwards, of holding two inhalers, of Lambo's frantic attempts to help, and of Lambo's accusation.
Sawada said his name. He'd protested, and he'd called him Hayato, ingrained Japanese politeness dropping away entirely-
So Hayato had lied.
He's reminded of that scene now. There's something unsaid going on here, something that makes Sawada think that what he would do, if he could do only one thing before he died right now, is hug Hayato.
So Hayato lies.
"Don't worry about it," he says moving back to stand next to the door again.
Hey! I've got the next chapter mostly written, I just need to work on it a bit more. I actually wrote it as part of this chapter before I realized that together they were too long for one chapter. I've been doing this a lot lately, apparently I'm at that stage of writing, which is kind of fun.