Two Pair
Element: Water
Silence reigned over the two boys as they sat in the bathroom. Nozaru was sat on the closed toilet seat, Lambo squatting in front of him, and staring at the wall with a vacant look on his face. Lambo was scrubbing at Nozaru's hands with a washcloth, wringing the red from it every few moments.
"I don't know how you do this all the time," Nozaru murmured. Lambo's chest throbbed at how broken his best friend's voice sounded. "I thought I was ready for an assassination mission. I thought I could handle it but..."
"There's nothing wrong with not being able to kill someone," Lambo assured, dipping the clothe back into the filled sink and wringing the blood from it before returning to trying to wash the substance from Nozaru's hands. "Most people would consider that a good trait."
"We're mafioso. It's a horrible trait."
"Maybe..." Lambo's fingers tightened around Nozaru's. "You know, Tsu-nii doesn't really have the stomach for this sort of stuff either and he's the leader of the world's largest mafia."
"But Tsuna doesn't completely shut down afterwards."
"Not anymore," Lambo agreed. "I was still little but...the first time Tsuna really truly killed someone, Kyo-nii found him sitting in one of the hallways shaking with bloodstained hands and had to carry him back to their room. I wasn't allowed to see him because hew as such a mess, but apparently he threw everything they tried to feed him up for days. I mean, he got back on his feet after a few days but the night terrors went on for weeks." He looked away from their hands, the last of the blood finally washed away, "So don't worry about being a sixteen year old who has trouble killing, Nozaru. The things it's done to me and Ipin...to everyone in our family...they aren't good things but we do it so that we can protect each other. You may get to that point eventually, and you may not but that doesn't mean you won't still be a member of the Giglio Nero family, that you won't still be Gamma and Yuni's brother, that you won't still be my closest friend, and a pink haired prick."
Nozaru's eyes focused back on the wall for a moment before he murmured, "At least no one in my family had gray hair when they were born."
E/n: Little peek of the old Nozaru at the end there and an expansion of something involving Tsuna that I wrote in 64 Reasons Why I Love You a bajilion years ago.