(warnings: dramatic children)
Tsuna's sister is ridiculous.
This is nothing new. Tsuna cottoned on at a young age that for all that she likes to act like one of the Big Kids, Nami is kind of a huge, dramatic dork. He catches her gazing off into the middle distance like some kind of of anime protagonist a whole lot, and even though home is warm and safe and normal, she sometimes clams up and looks around like she's waiting for a monster to crawl out from under the bed and take her away.
Tsuna is seven and thus too old to believe in the boogey man anymore, but he remembers what it was like. The shadows in the room he shares with his sister had always seemed so much longer and deeper at night. Tsuna would curl into Nami's back (or stomach, or side, or leg— he is an unapologetic bed hog and she is warm) and try to pretend like all the darkness in the room was as soft and safe as the one he found when he buried his face into her shirt.
Inevitably, something downstairs would creak or there'd be a weird noise and Tsuna wouldn't be able to ignore the creeping fear anymore. The worst of it all would be when Nami got too hot or too crowded and would wriggle out from under his deadweight. She could never roll away very far, constrained by the size of the bed, but the inches between them felt like a chasm when every shift of the house meant some unknown creature coming to gobble him up.
Every night, he shivered and cried and bulldozed over his sister's attempts to find her own space until, finally, she'd snapped. The only tip-off he'd had was the way she suddenly went still against his grasping hand, and then she'd shot straight up and ripped the covers off of them both.
"What're you doing?!" Tsuna had screeched quietly, trying not to wake their mother. Even babies knew that the only thing between the Boogey Man and a tasty child-snack were the blankets. He couldn't get you as long as you were under them, that was just common sense.
Nami had hopped out of bed and planted her feet firmly in the carpet, hands anchored to her hips. She'd squeezed her eyes shut tight and blinked a few times to clear the sleep, slipping into Big Kid Mode before he could demand she get back up where it was safe.
"Tsuna," she'd huffed. "Who d'you think would win in a fight, me or some stupid monster?"
"Monster," he had answered without hesitation. Nami was and is braver than him and could deadlift an entire dog without breaking a sweat, but monsters had teeth and claws twice her size and they used them to eat people.
"...Okay." Nami sighed. Tsuna had been immediately wary of her next move, since Nami never ever let him get away with suggesting she was anything less than, as she put it, 'The Alpha Twin'.
Nami turned and walked to the end of the room, coming to a stop in front of the closed closet door. She'd taken a long, tense moment to size it up. Tsuna remembered the feeling of his stomach clenching with anxiety, completely convinced that something was about to break the door down and go on the attack. His sister had remained unaffected and turned her back on the closet in favor of staring him down.
"I don't agree, though," she said simply. This was surprising to no one. "I think that if I saw a monster, I would punch it right in the face." She'd jabbed at the empty air to demonstrate.
"Nuh-uh, no way!" Tsuna had disagreed immediately, leaning forward in the bed. "It'd eat you and then it'd come an' eat me an' then it'd go find Mama—"
"Nope," she interrupted. "I'd punch it and it'd explode." Her tone left no room for disagreement even though Tsuna had been nowhere near done doing just that, fully convinced his sister was crazy and going to get herself digested. He almost jumped out of his skin when she whirled back around and kicked the closet door. "Hear that? If you bother us, I'll make you explode."
"Nami-nee," he'd whined, shuffling back as far as the bed would allow. His sister may be intent on provoking all the big scary things that lived in there, but Tsuna didn't want any part of it.
Then she'd reached out and flung the door wide open with no warning and Tsuna had felt a little piece of his soul give up and flee for safer country.
"See," she'd grinned triumphantly. "Nothing there. I'm so scary it ran away!"
They both waited a few long seconds to be totally sure nothing was going to jump out of the darkness. When Nami had been able to dance a jig around the room uneaten, his mind had been blown.
She'd been insufferably smug for ages, even after he figured out that monsters were fake anyways and she'd probably just been messing with him.
Considering all of that, he'd sort of expected her to take beating up a real life bully a little better than she was? Tsuna knows that his sister liked to talk herself up to be a lot stronger than her noodle arms allowed, he isn't blind. There was a spider in the downstairs bathroom once and she'd refused to go anywhere near the room for days, even after it had been removed. She also has this thing about cats and hoards hair accessories and sometimes, when he says really nice things to her face, she gets all red and actually stands up to physically run away from him.
(Tsuna always chases after her because it's his job as her little brother to tease her until she explodes. Also, being the Alpha Twin for a change is super duper fun and he isn't about to pass up a chance to be the stronger sibling for once.)
Anyways, the point is that he is well aware that his sister is a big weenie under all her bluster.
This, however, is ridiculous.
After the incident, Nami is suspended from school for three days. He wants to stay home with her, but Mama won't let him and if he's gone, then Hana might get lonely and find new friends and then it'd just be he and Nami all alone again. Tsuna loves his sister, but he also really likes having another friend to play with.
The first night is quiet. Mama had scolded the both of them for a while after dinner and in the end they'd both been sent upstairs without dessert. Tsuna's a little put out about this because it's not like he's the one who got in a fight, but Mama is already angry and he's got more sense than to make an issue out of it.
At first, Tsuna doesn't know how to handle his sister. He's seen Nami when she's scared, he's seen her when she's mad, and he's even seen her when she's… empty, for lack of better word.
(He hate hate hates it when she goes empty. Her face goes slack and she stops seeing him even when he's right in front of her. He has to grab her hand sometimes just so he can be sure she won't suddenly start floating away.)
Tsuna has never seen Tsunami get sad.
She curls up in the corner of their bed, knees up to her chest. She's staring off into the middle distance again, like how she does when Tsuna knows she's thinking about something really hard. She only looks at him once, when he carefully moves to sit at the edge of the bed, before averting her eyes almost immediately.
"...Um," Tsuna says. He doesn't know what he wants to say but the silence is too heavy for him to stand. "Do you… Do you wanna talk about it?"
"Um," she echoes, voice small and scratchy. "...Later?"
He hates this. It's never been awkward between them, not even when she'd accidentally hip-checked him so hard he'd fallen to the sidewalk and scraped up both his hands and knees so bad there was blood. Or when he'd tripped into her in the living room and she'd banged the side of her head into the couch and spent half an hour with an icepack pressed to her skull.
He opens his mouth to say okay, to say no, not later, tell me what's wrong, but before he can get a word out he sees her body go lax and her eyes go flat and he knows his sister won't hear him anyways.
(He hates it when she does this.)
The first day back at school without Tsunami is weird.
He can't remember a single time in his life that he's been so far away from his sister. His earliest memories all involve her in one way or another, whether it's of her trailing behind him on some house-wide game of make believe or of her back while she stood between him and some unknown danger, like an animal or the vacuum cleaner.
"Doesn't that get annoying?" Hana asks when he confides in her, nose scrunching slightly at the very thought. "I can't imagine being around someone all the time like that."
Frankly, Tsuna can't imagine not having someone around all the time. Or, well, he couldn't. He is doing a great deal more than just imagining at the moment and he is already sick to death of it.
"No. Don't you ever get lonely when you're by yourself?" He asks, head propped on his folded arms and legs swinging under the table. Hana takes a moment to honestly consider the question, unconsciously mirroring Tsuna's pendulum legs at a more sedate pace.
"Sometimes, I guess. I usually just read a book or something, I don't know. Being alone doesn't bug me that much."
Tsuna whines and buries his face in his arms. The books Hana reads are dry and boring. From time to time, she'll break out a fantasy novel that looks kind of interesting and even read a paragraph out loud, but some of the words she comes across are so long or weird-sounding that Tsuna suspects she's making them up just to mess with him. Her comics are okay, but she takes them really seriously and gets twitchy when other people try to read them. At any rate, all her suggestions for keeping himself distracted while his sister is suspended aren't proving all that useful to him.
He and Hana elect to stay inside for recess that day. Neither one of them really feels the loss. Hana would much rather stay away from all the screaming and roughhousing and Tsuna was only ever really interested in the sandpit, which is now Ruined Forever, capital letters for maximum importance. The only reason either one of them really bothered to go outside for recess in the first place was because Nami liked to wander around and burn off energy so she could nap more comfortably during class.
There are a few other people lingering in the classroom, but the duo pointedly does not pay them any mind. Gossip travels fast when no one has developed a sense of shame. Tsuna's heard more takes on the actual story than he ever thought possible, ranging in believability from 'Kurokawa Hana is part of the yakuza and Sawada Tsunami is her bodyguard' (ridiculous, if not understandable) to 'Sawada Tsunami is an alien and she killed Ryoma-san with her laser eyes for talking to her brother' (blatantly incorrect).
"Ignore them," Hana had grumbled after the third or fourth or ninth time Tsuna had pulled a face at one overheard conversation or another. "They're all idiot monkeys and they'll forget about it soon anyways."
(Hana thinks she's being sneaky, but Tsuna knows she's actually incredibly pleased that people seem to think she could merit a bodyguard.)
"Bluh," he whines, sinking low into his seat. Two more days. He can hold out two more days.
Class can't let out fast enough.
After school ends, Tsuna finds his sister shut in their room with all the lights off, face down in the carpet and limbs akimbo.
"Um," he says softly because he'd had a whole speech prepared when he'd walked in the door but he hasn't made contingencies for Nami just straight up not being awake. It wouldn't be the first time that she'd fallen asleep pancaked to the carpet. He nudges her with a toe to check.
"Nng," she whines, batting a hand vaguely in his direction. Conscious, then, if only just. Tsuna scoots a wide perimeter around her, pausing once to toss his school bag in the general direction of his bed before gingerly squatting down a few feet away from her, his back to the closet.
There's a little bit of afternoon sun coming in through a slit in the curtains and it cuts across the floor, illuminating a diagonal stripe of light through Nami's hair and across her back. Tsuna thinks she looks kind of like a cat, drowsy and sunbathing and laid out in strange and inconvenient places. Cats make her weird though, so it's a comparison he's probably going to keep to himself.
They sit quietly in the dark for a while. Tsuna is itching to pull his sister up, to share about his day and make her help with his homework or just to make her say something, but he isn't sure where to start. He shifts a little, antsy and uncomfortable.
He almost jumps when Nami releases an explosive sigh and painstakingly rolls herself onto her back like it's the most physically taxing thing she's ever done in her life. Feeling well enough to be a drama queen, then.
"I'm sorry," she quietly, turning to look at him. The light paints a glowing line across her bangs and illuminates the rest of her face, which is set into something sad and sleepy and maybe even a little scared.
Tsuna blinks.
"What for?"
Nami makes a face and gestures vaguely into the open air, looking for her words.
"You… got hurt. And I couldn't stop it. And, um, I'm also really sorry you had to see… y'know. That."
'That' referring to the way she'd bulldozed Tatsuzo Ryoma, he assumes. There's some kind of misunderstanding happening here, he can feel it like an itch at the back of his neck.
"I'm not… mad." No, wrong word, try again. "I'm not scared, either," he corrects.
Nami's eyes widen a fraction and Tsuna knows he's hit the nail on the head.
"I mean," he adds quickly, "That was really, um, Tatsuzo-san is really big and I was definitely scared, just, you know. Not of you," he finishes lamely. "I know you're not gonna hurt me or anything, that's dumb. You don't have to apologize to me."
"...Right." Nami agrees. She pulls herself up into a crouch that mirrors his own, heavy-limbed exhaustion giving way to an energy that buzzes in her bones. "I'd never. Hurt you, I mean. Never, ever, not like that, not even if you asked me to."
Tsuna doesn't know why he'd ever ask his sister to seriously beat him up, he values his life and safety, but she looks so earnest that he just rolls with it.
"Are you… well, yesterday, when we got home…" he begins, but Nami cuts him off.
"I'm okay now. There's, uh, not really a lot to do when you're grounded other than think a lot and get over yourself, so…" Nami giggles, nervous and self-deprecating.
"Tell me about it anyways," he asks. Demands, really, because this has probably been one of the slowest days of his life and all he didn't realize how much he'd miss being around his sister while she talks with her hands and bumps him affectionately until he had to sit through a whole day without it. There's also the hope that maybe, just maybe, if he can get her to actually talk about what she's feeling for once, then he can figure out what makes her go empty and make it go far, far away.
She's twisting her fingers around in knots, uncomfortable, but he can see her start to give in. Tsuna shuffles forwards until the gap between them is closed and gently bats Nami's hands apart, tangling them in his own instead.
"Tell meeeee." He draws his words out into a fourteen syllable phrase like she does when she's at her most annoying. She chokes down a snicker and knocks her knees against his with enough force to tip him over out of his crouch. She primly crosses her legs and settles down beside him, smiling faintly.
She tells him.
Sawada Tsunami is fucking bored.
She is also fucking upset. Fucking disappointed in herself for hurting a kid who was still learning better, fucking mad at herself for being disappointed in herself because she'd been helping her baby brother and her best friend, and fucking annoyed above all that she can't seem to get her emotions straight.
Predominantly, though, she is fucking bored. Three days is actually an incredibly long time to spend thinking about something with no distractions, especially for someone who would rather die than spend more than fifteen minutes alone with her own thoughts.
As someone who has actually died, Tsunami thinks she's entitled to the feeling.
The first day is the hardest. After seven years, Tsunami has forgotten what it feels like to be well and truly alone. Nana's idea of a solid grounding is to put a blanket ban on books and television, so Tsunami spends the afternoon facedown on the carpet in the middle of the floor because she is a goddamn mess and acting the part makes her feel a little better.
Tsunami buries her nose into the shag and breathes deep. Then she rolls over and wheezes a little bit because shit, that carpet smells like feet and ass and she's just gone and rubbed her face all over it, what the hell is her problem—
And, hello, isn't that just the crux of all her issues lately. She knows exactly what her problem is, and it's herself.
She'd overreacted. Badly. A shove or two from a kid on a playground should not have warranted one, two, three knees to the solar plexus and what could possibly be construed as a death threat. Tsunami feels slimy and guilty and completely unrepentant and, of everything, that's her biggest hang-up.
Given half an opportunity, she would do it all over again. Maybe a little differently, a little less hesitantly, but if the situation called for her to suplex a seven-year-old into a block of concrete she thinks she would've done it.
Elizabeth Milo was a 5'10" blonde white girl with a cat and a love for tiny shorts. She was allergic to almonds, afraid of spiders, and the most violent action she'd ever taken was an overly enthusiastic booty bump that ended with four different people head-over-ass in her front yard. Lizzie Milo died because she would rather break her own neck than mildly inconvenience an animal.
Sawada Tsunami has yet to clear four feet tall. Her hair is pin-straight and honey brown and her eyes can glow like a jack-o-lantern. She doesn't have any pets because her baby brother is afraid of most things with more than two legs, and she hasn't worn anything shorter than a sundress since she graduated diapers. She loves nuts, has a little brother she adores so much it scares her, and... is still fucking terrified of spiders, actually.
The point is, Sawada Tsunami does not want to hurt anybody. Sawada Tsunami wants to protect the people she loves.
Sawada Tsunami flips right back over on her face and takes a big open-mouthed inhale against the carpet because whether she likes it or not, her life is shonen anime now and if binge-watching Naruto at 3 AM has taught her anything, it is that protection and violence go hand in hand. She doesn't like it, she actively fucking hates it, but if she wants to be worth anything to anyone in this life she's going to have to put on her Big Girl panties and adapt. The sour taste of sweaty feet and butts curling in her mouth feels like a kind of penance, so Tsunami breathes in long and deep and makes a mental note to vacuum more often.
This is how Tsuna finds her however many hours later, sprawled on the floor with her nose shoved in the fibers like she's dead or possibly crazy. She's dozing off just a tad, emotional exhaustion only exacerbating her constant desire to nap.
Her brother, forever charming, solves this for her by toeing her in the side like she's roadkill.
When he carefully stays out of arm's reach and chooses instead to crouch a healthy distance away from her, her throat closes just a little.
Suddenly, Tsunami recalls why it was so impossible to look anyone in the eye yesterday. She is making her peace with her actions and her morals, justifying them by reminding herself of the world she lives in, but Tsuna and Nana and Hana have no concept of the future she's seen. As far as they know, she genuinely just lost it and went apeshit on some random playground pest.
No one moves for a long time. Tsunami doesn't know what to say, how to make things better, so she just lays perfectly still in the ass-carpet and hopes for divine intervention. When a few minutes pass without any sign of a higher power, Tsunami sighs in resignation and flips herself over. Time to face the music.
In the end, the music is maybe less discordant and awful than she'd anticipated. Although, to be fair, she'd been psyching herself up for some kind of dramatic meltdown in which her brother declared that he hated her and was choosing to disown her.
(Tsunami's life is shonen anime. Ruling out the ridiculous would've been foolish.)
Tsuna somehow manages to wrestle an entire summary of her twenty-four hour emotional rollercoaster from her. He was there for most of it, she reminds him, but he shrugs and grins so bright and wide that she actually has to take a moment to let her heart unmelt. Tsuna seems perfectly content just playing with her hands and listening to her describe first her fear, then her regret-but-not, and then her resolution to do better.
"Uh," he interjects when she gets to that part. "About that. Can you maybe not get suspended again? School sucks when you're gone and Mama got really mad..."
Tsunami pauses. He raises a good point— repeated public performances of yesterday's incident is going to create way more problems than it'll solve. In the short term, Nana will roast her ass like a turkey. In the long term, she is going to end up dead in a ditch on the side of the road because if magic fire and time travel are real, chances are that Hibari Kyoya is, too. She's fairly certain that unauthorized fighting counts as rule-breaking and she has no intention of poking that beast… well, ever.
Tsunami pouts, because this means she's either going to have to let the issue go the next time someone harrasses her people, or, more likely, she's going to have to figure out a way to get sneaky about it.
The second day of Tsunami's suspension begins when she wakes up with her little brothers elbow jammed so firmly into her cheek that when she tries to move away the entire left side of her face lights up with pins and needles as blood resumes its normal circulation. He's stolen most of the blankets and her right foot is ice cold from exposure.
"You have your own bed, doofus," she mutters, digging her own elbow mercilessly into his ribs. Tsuna emits a noise closer to bovine than human and sluggishly slaps back, burying his face in the pillow like it will save him from being awake. Tsunami rather likes that idea and is sorely tempted to try it out herself, but she can see sunlight coming in through the curtains. One of them still has school, and it's not her.
"Don' wanna," Tsuna slurs as she begins shaking him, burrowing deeper into his pillow. Tsunami lets up and just squints at him for a while, sleep-addled brain trying to process her next move. After long moments, she nods to herself and pulls her legs all the way up to her chest.
The scream Tsuna releases when her frozen toes slip under his shirt and dig into his stomach makes getting shoved off the bed absolutely worth it.
Tsunami goes about her morning routine while Tsuna sluggishly drags himself to the closet. She is still incredibly grounded, but she'd spent all of yesterday moping about on the floor and she feels kind of gross for it. Tsunami is nothing if not a creature of habit and putting herself back onto a routine will probably help the ennui. Also, her hair is a tangled mess and that cannot be allowed to stand.
Tsunami has been blessed with a cute, round face free of blemishes and thick brown hair that doesn't frizz. She'll be vain about them if she damn well pleases.
By the time she finally makes it out of the shower (just this side of lukewarm because as much as she loves scalding hot showers, she loves her hair even more) Tsuna has already eaten and dressed. Hair still wrapped in a towel, she pokes her head out of the bathroom and cups her hands around her mouth.
"Have a nice day at school!" she hollers down the staircase, radiating smugness. Getting suspended fucking blows, but at least she gets another two days away from the noisy hellscape that is the Namimori Public School system.
"Have a nice day cleaning the house!" Tsuna fires back, voice muffled with distance. Tsunami's face drops into a scowl and she resists the urge to flip him off. She's already on thin ice with Nana and that's the sort of shit mother's can sense.
He's right, though. As part of her punishment for being a violent little hellion, Nana had tasked her with cleaning the entire second floor by herself, bathroom and all.
Jokes on him, though. Tsunami actually enjoys cleaning up— or, she enjoys finding all the shit she'd thought she'd lost years ago tucked away behind a shelf or under the bed. Odds were, she'd get sidetracked part-way through looking at Tsuna's old vocabulary quizzes.
The door clicks shut behind Nana and Tsuna and Tsunami stands up a little straighter. She's going to brush her hair, put on real-people clothes, and get something done today.
Moping time is over.
It is day two of Nami's suspension and Tsuna's passive-aggressive scowl at every wildly inaccurate rumor he overhears is giving her a migraine, so Hana decides it's time to try her hand at some damage control.
"I am not part of the yakuza," she interjects blandly, stepping in between two startled girls. Tsuna had looked a little perplexed at her insistence that they spend recess outside today but, as she'd expected, hadn't offered much resistance.
("Just sit by this tree and look really pathetic," Hana had instructed, guiding him firmly by the arm. She had nothing but confidence in his ability to pull off looking like someone had just stolen his lunch money, and by the way Tsuna's shoulders slumped, neither did he.)
"Nami isn't an alien, either," and Hana isn't actually one-hundred percent on that one, but saying so out loud would not help her case. "She was just trying to help me."
The girl on the left is still gaping and a little pale for being caught gossiping but her friend on the right leans in a little closer, clearly interested.
"I heard she almost broke Ryoma-kun's ribs," she whispers almost gleefully and, wow, that's news to Hana. She'd seen Tatsuzo hit the floor and stay down, sure, but Nami and Tsuna both had little toothpick legs that looked like they'd snap under a stiff breeze. Then again, this same girl had been contemplating Hana's own involvement in a crime ring just seconds before so she would take her words with a grain of salt.
"He pushed me really hard." Hana looks down and away, hunching her shoulders the barest amount to make herself seem smaller, more meek. "And he was picking on us. He called Nami a," and here Hana leans in, only mostly pretending to scan their immediate surroundings for adults. "A bitch."
Both girls let out scandalized gasps. Hana feels a little thrill run through her as well. She reads a lot and she's definitely come across harsher language, but it's the first time that she's said any of it out loud herself.
"Thats a bad word!" The quieter girl says, alarmed and a little in awe. Hana nods sagely and motions over to Tsuna, who is doing a wonderful job of looking harmless and sweet.
"Tsuna tried to help me too but he's really small. Tatsuzo-san shoved him and when Nami tried to make him stop, he almost hit her. She was just t-trying to help,"
Hana winces internally at her poor attempt at acting cowed. She's trying to channel Tsuna but his nervous tics don't feel quite right on her body, more used to confidence and control. The two girls don't seem to notice or care, lapping up her story with wide eyes.
"Ryoma-kun is kind of mean," the girl on the left hedges, and Hana knows she's succeeded. "He put a worm in my backpack once!"
"Yeah, and I heard he's the one who put gum in Shiori-chan's chair last month! Remember how mad she got when it left that weird stain on her butt?"
Hana shuffles backwards slowly until she's sure the two girls aren't paying her any mind and then she makes her escape, returning to the tree she's left Tsuna to pout under like a wayward puppy and tugging him to his feet.
"...What's wrong with your face?" Tsuna asks with genuine concern. Hana drops her attempt at demure puppy eyes and scowls.
"Shut up, what's wrong with your face."
Hana chances a glance back at the two girls, who are now standing so close together that their shoulders are touching as they debate fiercely. Hana fudged the truth there just a little, she admits. She's conveniently left out the part where she herself called Tatsuzo an idiot and the bit where Nami had slammed him in the junk, but all the important stuff is there. If her understanding of the rumor mill is any good at all, come the end of the day half the grade will know that Nami's suspension is because she's fought off a bully and not because she spontaneously mauled someone for the heck of it.
"Alright, next." Hana flips her hair imperiously, nearly catching Tsuna straight in the face. "Who else has been talking trash?"
He waffles for a moment, caught off guard. Hana gives him time to process and is rewarded when his posture straightens out, something like mischief settling behind his eyes.
"That guy who sits across from me, y'know, with the lunchbox? He said you paid Nami ten bucks to punch Ryoma because he wouldn't be your boyfriend."
Hana's grin is mostly teeth. She knew there was a spine in there somewhere.
Tsunami doesn't mean to, at first.
She's been half of a whole for seven years now and even if she fancies herself above childish attachment (self-delusion), she's not too proud to admit that she misses her twin when he isn't around.
She is cleaning her room when it first hits. Most of what she is picking up is detritus from Tsuna's habit of putting things like games or worksheets down and then forgetting about them, but there's a fair amount of loose knickknacks of her own. Tsunami has found what has to amount to at least three packs of hair ties and a couple of bow clips she's forgotten she owns.
She shoves them in her hair for safekeeping, making a neat little rainbow of patterns and pastels down the side of her head. It's partly to keep her long hair out of her face while she works and partly so she doesn't have to keep walking to the bathroom drawer every time she finds a new one. If she looks a little ridiculous, well. There's no one around to judge.
Tsunami twists a little of her hair out of the way to make room for her third tiny rose clip, scowling a little when her pin straight hair just slips through teeth without catching. Lizzie, with her temperamental frizz and waves, had always wanted to take a metaphorical weedwhacker to those people who complained that their hair was too straight and silky for styling, but Tsunami was beginning to understand the struggle. She looks down at her accessory, contemplating.
The pin itself is a little out of alignment, which is doubtless part of the problem. Tsuna had probably stepped on it, which was a fate shared by most if not all of her wayward hair clips. Its part of the reason he complains about them so much, she supposes.
"You look weird," she can imagine him whining. "Just put them away before they end up on the floor again."
Tsunami breathes out slowly through her nose, squeezes her eyes shut, and lets herself Slip to try and regain her equilibrium.
The cool darkness of her Slipspace is a welcome comfort as she sinks to floor. Well, she assumes its the floor. The inky darkness is so pervasive that, save for the dim glimmers of the star balls she knows are scattered around her, the ceiling and the ground are completely indistinguishable from each other.
Tsunami tilts her chin to what she guesses is the sky and moves to lean backwards so she can flop onto her back like the incredibly lazy starfish she is, but she only makes it halfway down before her skull collides with something cold and smooth.
Tsuna's star ball, she realizes. Of course it's Tsuna's star ball. It is literally always Tsuna's star ball and she can't move five fucking inches without nearly braining herself on it every damn time. She knocks her head against it again in annoyance before shuffling around so her back can press against it.
The cool of the glass seeps through her shirt and she whines through her nose.
She misses her brother. It has to be around lunchtime by now, right? He and Hana probably stayed inside for recess, considering what had happened the last time they were on the playground. Imagining the big brown puppy eyes he's probably making at the sandpit, now ruined by a shitty experience, is enough to make her gut twist just a little. He's a sweet kid and he deserves to be able to play outside without assholes ruining things for him every time.
Twirling her hair around her index finger idly, she wonders if Tsuna is
blue sky peeking through the branches cotton candy clouds brisk fall breeze grass is dying what is she doing roots digging deep deep deep
under the tree, next to the slides, in the playground, Namimori Elementary, Namimori, Japan.
…
What.
What the fuck.
:^)
inb4 someone accuses me of making up a new flame or smth: nah, try again
whole story done got edited and crossposted to ao3, for those of you who prefer reading things there.
Review at your own leisure and thanks for reading!