Enma stares at the ground, trying to stay as still as possible in the hopes of avoiding Hibari-san's gaze. It shouldn't be too hard, since Kyoko-san had invited several friends over, and Kurokawa-san had gotten into an armwrestling contest with Ryohei-san, with Kyoko-san and Miura-san cheering them on from the sidelines. But then, maybe that's the whole problem - Enma's the only other quiet person in the room.
"I'm going to win this for all of my incoming cousins!" Kurokawa-san yells.
"Your family reunion has extremely nothing to do with this!" Ryohei yells back, struggling to keep his arm up.
The doorbell rings, and Enma goes rigid as the room goes quiet, Ryohei-san and Hibari-san both turning at the sound, Ryohei-san seeming not to notice as Kurokawa-san finally manages to slam his hand down.
"Ah, that would be Tsuna," Kyoko-san says cheerfully, standing up and moving towards the entryway
Kurokawa-san sighs and lets go of Ryohei-san's arm. "Right, the monkey. Ryohei, didn't you say that you had a kimono you'd outgrown for my baby cousin to try on?"
"Right!" Ryohei-san says, standing and marching over to Hibari-san. "Hibari-san, if you'd come with me?"
Hibari-san's eyes light up, and Enma is genuinely terrified by the look he exchanges with Ryohei before standing.
"Oh, and I finished some costumes that you and Kyoko need to try on!" Miurua-san says to Kurokawa-san, clapping her hands before she grabs Kurokawa-san's arm and starts tugging her towards the entryway, where the stairs are.
And just like that, the room Enma is in is empty, leaving him to watch the doorway apprehensively.
"You can just go into the living room!" Kyoko-san says, her voice drifting in. "I'll be down in a second, and you can tell me how the costume looks!"
"Of course."
And then he's here, standing in the doorway, already frowning a little as he glances around the empty room before his eyes land on Enma
Enma's heart sinks at the looks that cross Tsuna's face - recognition, longing, pain - before he goes blank.
"Hello?" Tsuna asks.
"Hello," Enma replies before his courage deserts him and his eyes go back to his hands in his lap.
There's a moment of silence, then Enma hears Tsuna sigh and the soft sound of slippers on carpet before Tsuna's feet appear, and Tsuna sits down next to him.
"So, Kyoko-chan roped you into this gathering too?" Tsuna asks.
Enma feels his mind kick into overdrive, trying to analyze Tsuna's words.
The look he'd had when he saw Enma had been - not promising, but - but Tsuna wouldn't have so many emotions about a stranger would he?
But his words . . . he could have said them to a stranger for all that they say.
"Yeah," Enma says. Then he screws up his courage because if nothing else, if this is another beginning, then he can at least be truthful. "She's been bugging me about this for months. She set this whole thing up so we'd meet again."
Enma feels like he's hyper aware of Tsuna's gaze, burning into the side of his face as he stares at his hands.
"You didn't visit me at the hospital," Tsuna says, and Enma can't help but turn to look at him again because he recognizes that tone of voice. There's a sinking feeling in his stomach as Tsuna continues. "You didn't call, you didn't write."
"I'm sorry," Enma says miserably hunching his shoulders. "I tried but when I tried to visit they always asked who I was visiting. And I know I'd stopped being quite so strict about phones, but you - you tried to kill yourself. And Iemitsu came back and he was actually paying attention to you for once - I couldn't risk it. Julie and Kaoru can't support all of us on their own." Enma gives into the urge to pull his knees up to his chest and wrap his arms around them. "I was going to try, but then you didn't do anything once you left the hospital. And I thought- I thought-"
Tsuna sighs again, and then he's settling down next to Enma and wrapping an arm around him to pull him close.
"Oh Enma. I'm sorry," Tsuna says softly. "I thought you wouldn't want to see me. I- I was terrified you would hate me. And I forgot about the thing with my dad. Though," Tsuna pauses, and Enma looks at him, then follows his gaze to the little kid in a suit standing in the doorway of the living room, "it might be a bit late to worry about that now."
Enma tenses involuntarily, his hand coming up to clutch Tsuna's arm, not daring to look away as the kid glares at him.
"Tsuna?"
"This is my tutor, Reborn," Tsuna says. "My father sent him."
Enma stares at the kid.
For a moment, the world feels distant. It's not his hands that's trembling. It's not his breath he hears getting faster, that's not his heart he can feel beating faster and faster against his lungs. He's the one choking.
Enma puts the pieces together. The kid. The suit. Sawada Iemitsu.
Then the world slams back into him and it feels like he'd been injected with liquid fear, heat seeping through his limbs and locking them into place as he pants, trying to breathe - his hands coming up to his throat to ug at his collar-
"Enma? Enma it- Reborn get the fuck out of here you're scaring him. Enma it's okay-"
"I'm going to die, I'm going to die," Enma gasps out. "Iemitsu found out and he finally sent a hitman for me and I'm going to die-"
"Fuck Iemitsu, if he wants to kill you he'll have to go through me first Enma, you're going to be alright-"
"He sent a hitman here!" Enma exclaims.
"He sent Reborn to tutor me and nothing else," Tsuna says, and then he says nothing else, and even though Enma didn't think it was possible, his fear spikes even higher and he forces his eyes open, frantically turning to where Tsuna was last time he say him, reaching out for him-
Tsuna catches his hands and squeezes them.
"Tsuna- Tsuna are you alright?" Enma asks, tugging his hands out of Tsuna's grasp so he can reach for him, frantically patting at his clothes, trying to see if he's injured.
"I'm alright Enma - you're alright. You're safe. I'm right here, we're both at Kyoko's house, waiting for her and her friends to come down and show us their new clothes before dinner. Do you mind if I touch you?" Tsuna asks.
"I'm not safe, you brought the best hitman in the world with you," Enma hisses, torn for a moment between conflicting desires to grab Tsuna, just for something solid to hold onto, or to get as far away from Tsuna as he can so that Tsuna doesn't get hurt when he dies. In the end, he goes with his more selfish desire and throws himself forwards into Tsuna's arms.
"I did," Tsuna says calmly. "And I promise he's not here to kill you."
"But Iemitsu sent him and I broke my promise-"
"If he were here to kill you you would be dead already," Tsuna says reasonably.
Enma chokes, his mind sputtering to a halt.
"He already saw you, and he's a hitman," Tsuna continues calmly. "So obviously he's got a gun on him, and it's been what, a couple minutes? If Reborn was here for you, you'd already be dead."
Enma's brain clicks over in the silence that follows Tsuna's words, and the logic . . . to be honest, the logic didn't really help much, he can feel the fear still pumping through his veins, his hands trembling from it, but it knocks him out of the state of mind enough that he realizes, "Oh, this is a panic attack."
"That's right, Tsuna says, and Enma can feel him relax a little as he finally lowers his arms so that he's hugging Enma back. "Are you feeling better or do you need a bit still? Is there anything I should do?"
"I'm going to die," Enma mutters into Tsuna's shoulder, because even if Reborn isn't going to shoot him right now, Iemitsu sent him, Tsuna said it himself, and he's going to report back to Iemitsu at some point.
"Oh," he hears Kyoko-san say behind him as he tries to match his breathing to the movement of Tsuna's chest in his arms.
"He's having a panic attack," Tsuna says. "Can you get the others to wait a moment?"
"Of course. This whole dinner was for the sake of getting you two to talk," Kyoko-san says.
"I know, he told me."
"I'm going to die," Enma repeats as Kyoko-san's footsteps die away.
Tsuna doesn't speak for a moment. Then he says, "I found out more about my family magic."
Enma breathes in, out. He knows this technique. Distraction. Tsuna's done this before, when Enma had a panic attack over trying to figure out his family's finances, though he'd usually gone more for talking about popular games than his own life before.
"It turns out that the Hibari family has records on it, like they do on everything else in this town. After the incident, my magic started going crazy. Big outbursts, huge backlash. My therapist pulled out the records and dusted them off."
Enma's world narrows down to the charcoal smoke smell of Tsuna's shirt and the cadence of his voice.
"Do you think- do you think they'll have records on my family?" Enma asks around the fear trying to choke him.
"Maybe," Tsuna says thoughtfully. "How long has your family been here again?"
"Ten generations, remember?" Enma replies.
"The Hibari's definitely have records then," Tsuna says.
They keep talking. After they finish one topic, Tsuna moves onto another one, pausing every once in a while when Enma hasn't said anything for a couple minutes. Enma hears people moving and talking to each other in low voices in the hallway, but Tsuna just keeps talking calmly, and it's easier to concentrate on him.
The feeling of doom passes eventually, and Enma pulls back, wiping his eyes with his sleeve and avoiding Tsuna's gaze.
"How are you feeling?" Tsuna asks quietly.
"Better," Enma says, picking at his sleeve. "I'm sorry you had to-"
"Hey, no," Tsuna interrupts. "What you feel is valid. It's not your fault you had a panic attack."
"You sound like a therapist on a tv show," Enma says, finally actually looking at Tsuna, rather than worrying about what he'll think.
Tsuna looks . . . better than he had the last time Enma saw him this close. He looks like he's been eating well and sleeping and getting enough exercise, or whatever doctors say you need to be healthy. And he's acting better too, not that that's really a high bar, considering. But he acts settled, and . . . almost adult? He hadn't once brought after he'd managed to break Enma's immediate panic, and his conversation had been calm, far calmer than it was last time he'd talked Enma through a panic attack.
"Yeah, well, guess who I've been spending time?" Tsuna says. He looks over Enma again. "Do you still want that dinner that Kyoko promised?"
"Oh! Dinner!" Enma says, sitting bolt upright, glancing at his watch. He slumps a little, seeing that it's been around thirty minutes. "It's probably too late now though."
"Kyoko!" Tsuna calls.
"Yeah?" Kyoko-san asks, poking her head into the doorway after a moment.
"Is the food ready?"
"It'll be ready whenever you're done," Kyoko-san says cheerfully. She glances at Enma. "Are you feeling better now? Or would you rather go home?"
"I-" Enma hesitates, picking at his sleeve again. Then he sets his shoulders. "I think I'm ready to eat."
"Alright!" Kyoko-san says. "We'll start getting things out, just make your way to the kitchen!"
She ducks back around the wall.
"Um," Enma says. "Sorry, but I just want to make sure I'm not understanding anything. You remember me right?"
"I don't know if I remember everything," Tsuna says, frowning slightly. "When I woke up, I had amnesia, uh aoxic? Anoxic? My brain stopped receiving enough oxygen for a while, so I had trouble forming new memories, but that passed in a couple days. Well, at least they think. I still had some form of amnesia, uh dissociative? Stress or trauma based. We thought that was done, but I really didn't remember you until I saw you."
"Hey, it's alright," Enma says quickly, reaching for Tsuna's hand. "It's not your fault."
"I know, I know," Tsuna says. "It's just, really disconcerting. One second you were a stranger friend of Kyoko's, the next you're my best friend and I can't believe that I forgot about you." He sighs, then squeezes Enma's hand. "Come on, let's not keep the others waiting. We can talk more after dinner."
Alright, here's the next chapter! I hope you like it. It doesn't really resolve last chapter's cliffhanger, does it? Chapters are probably going to drop off now, most of the past couple chapters are stuff I've had planned but hadn't had time to write, so I'm probably going to disappear again.