Hey, y'all! It's been a while. You probably never expected me to update, if you're still reading, and tbh for a while neither did I. But KHR will always be an extremely important fandom to me, and I recently received a reminder of that when one of my favorite authors on here deleted their account. So I want to do my part to keep the fandom alive.
Dedicated to lunaerum. If you're still reading, please know that I absolutely love your writing and that it helped me through a rough time in my life. Thank you for being an inspiration to me.
The next morning was, impossibly, even worse than the night before.
Tsuna woke up to someone gnawing on his ear. Normally, this would have merited a squeal of some kind, but his head was pounding so badly that all he could muster was a displeased whine. This made the iron band around his chest tighten to the point that he could barely breathe, and for a moment he contemplated just accepting his fate and suffocating until he passed out again.
Then sharp little teeth decided to try biting off his earlobe and he let out an involuntary (and earsplitting) shriek of pain. A foot planted itself in his ribs and he went flying, hit the wall, and faceplanted on the carpet. He opened his mouth to complain and inhaled a whole dust bunny (wow, he really needed to let his mom vacuum in here).
"Heeeeh… where'd Lambo-san's candy go…" Lambo mumbled, still half asleep on Tsuna's pillow. Next to him, Reborn was propped on his elbow and giving Tsuna a look that promised death. The effect was slightly diminished by his cute little sleeping cap and Tsuna was preoccupied with doing his best imitation of a cat coughing up a hairball, but it still did an excellent job of reminding him of his own mortality.
In fact, it did such a great job that he completely forgot that his bed mate might have been spooning with him.
"G'mornin', Reborn," Tsuna croaked. His ear and and the side of his neck were covered in something wet and sticky, which was most likely Lambo's drool but might possibly be Tsuna's blood. That kid's teeth were sharp.
"Well, I was planning on waking you at 6, but if you prefer dawn that can be arranged," Reborn said, voice still husky with sleep. He tugged the night cap off and ran a hand through his ink black hair, which had fallen over his forehead during the night. (His curly sideburns, however, remained immaculate.)
Tsuna faceplanted in the carpet of his own volition this time. Maybe if he pretended to have passed out Reborn might let him get more sleep.
Shockingly, his ploy didn't work. A hand fisted in his collar and pulled him off the ground as easily as someone might lift a kitten, and Reborn started dragging him into the bathroom. Tsuna, trying his best not to choke, did not succeed in getting his feet under him before Reborn was turning on the shower and hurling him bodily into it.
Tsuna made a strange, breathy gasp, most likely the result of still being winded and then suddenly doused in ice-cold water.
Reborn snorted. "Save the seduction for your targets, Idiot-Tsuna."
"I'm n-not seducing anyone, I'm f-freezing!" Tsuna hissed.
Reborn pretended not to hear him. "Rule number one of being a successful honeypot: always be well-groomed. You never know when you'll have the opportunity to… display your wares." He gave Tsuna an up-and-down that was at once mocking and heated.
Tsuna made an extremely undignified noise and attempted to shield his "wares" with a pose strikingly similar to the Capitoline Venus. Reborn breathed out hard through his nose, but it turned into an amused snort by the end.
"I'm not gonna be a honeypot!" Tsuna insisted, doing his best to look dignified while also posing like a blushing maiden and feeling like a drowned rat.
"So, you gonna wash yourself or do you need my help?" Reborn asked, ignoring him completely. Tsuna sputtered incoherently until he got into the shower with him and reached for his clothes.
What followed was a frantic struggle that was only interrupted by the bathroom door slamming open. "Haha, Tsuna, you oka—"
Yamamoto cut himself off, staring wide-eyed at the pair of them, and it was only then that Tsuna realized exactly what this looked like.
His old, worn, white pajama top was see-through and clinging to his torso, and the cold had ensured that his headlights were at full power. His boxers were sodden and riding dangerously low on his hips. Reborn's hand was fisted in his hair to keep him from head-butting him in the face. Operating under eroge logic, Tsuna had somehow managed to rip all the buttons off his shirt at some point, and wow was he suddenly excruciatingly aware of the droplets slowly rolling down Reborn's olive abs —
This tableau was broken by his boxers giving up the ghost and falling to the floor of the tub with a splat.
Reborn looked to the heavens and sighed, while Yamamoto's eyes were glued decidedly elsewhere. "Well, that's one way to do it."
After everyone but Tsuna had been convinced to leave the bathroom (shrieks didn't work, but tears of abject humiliation seemed to do the trick), and everyone's respective morning routines had concluded, Tsuna endured the most awkward breakfast of his life, even more than the last time his dad had bothered to visit after forgetting his son's birthday 4 years in a row. (To Nana's credit, she had never forgotten multiple years in a row.)
Nana, delighted to have guests to feed, remained cheerfully oblivious, and Lambo just straight-up did not care, but the air between the three men in the household was charged with horrendous discomfort, at least on Tsuna's end. He wasn't sure what the other two were feeling. Disgust? Sadistic amusement? Pity?
...That water was cold, okay. Besides, normal anatomy was anathema to eroge! Tsuna was perfectly average, dammit! Average!
"Uh, Yamamoto-san, can I ask you a question?" Tsuna mumbled, staring intently into his rice bowl.
"Sure, Tsuna, what did you want to ass?" Yamamoto replied, and then paused. "...Ask. I said ask."
Reborn snorted into his coffee.
Tsuna graciously ignored the Freudian slip, if only because he was certain that Yamamoto only said it to torment him.
"What are you going to do until you…" he glanced at his mother, "...go back to Italy? Just hang out here?"
"Haha, Italy? Why would I go to Italy?"
Tsuna threw a frantic SOS signal to Reborn with his eyes. Reborn chose that moment to stop reading his mind, just to be an asshole.
"Because, Yamamoto-san, you're an exchange student," Tsuna stressed, in both senses of the word.
"I am?" Yamamoto said, because he was either a sadist or just that unable to read the air. Tsuna would bet on both.
"As your tutor, I took the liberty of enrolling you in Namimori High School for the semester," Reborn cut in. "Once I hunt down… I mean greet my other students, they'll be joining you there. And here, too."
Tsuna winced. He was not looking forward to that. Plus, that slip of the tongue was definitely intentional. Reborn chose this moment to send him a conspiratorial wink, which made him visibly shudder.
"Ahaha, Tsuna and I can look for them together," Yamamoto cut in, throwing an arm around Tsuna's shoulders and pulling him close. This had the unfortunate side-effect of pulling Tsuna halfway into his breakfast, because Yamamoto was on the opposite side of the table. "Right, Tsuna?"
"Ah, I'm so glad Tsu-kun's already so close with his new friend!" Nana said, pressing a hand to her cheek and giving the pair of them a pleased smile.
Tsuna felt a frisson of unease shoot up his spine, and lunged to cover Yamamoto's mouth before —
"Boyfriend," he cheerfully corrected.
"Ara?"
"I'm Tsuna's new boyfriend."
Tsuna fell into his mother's miso soup.
If you're still here, please let me know what you think! If you're new, welcome! Sorry for the shortness, I'm just trying to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully my writing hasn't changed enough to be jarring, though I hope it's improved a bit since 2016.