1.

Takeshi isn't good with numbers.

That's really Hayato's thing, words and numbers and dates and statistics and all those tricky fiddly things that make him happy, because Hayato is the kind of person who believes fiercely that given enough data he can put it all together and force the world to make sense.

Takeshi might be smarter than Hayato, though, because he knows the world doesn't work that way. The world doesn't make sense.

But he won't say anything to Hayato about it, not even to poke him into that hilarious frothy mass of pure boiling rage that always makes him laugh and Tsuna panic and give him that scrunched-up pleading please stop doing that to Gokudera-kun or I'm going to have to start grinding up blood pressure pills into his morning coffee look.

He won't say anything, because everyone needs something to hold onto, and even though Hayato never believes anything Takeshi says anyway even the smallest seed of doubt might be enough to break him.

Hayato is weird like that. Fragile, almost.

But then, so is Takeshi.

2.

Takeshi isn't good at a lot of things. His grades are pretty bad, for one thing, almost as bad as Tsuna's, except the teachers tend to go easier on Takeshi because he's pretty good at baseball and he can't play baseball if he fails. One time Hayato sat him and Tsuna down to try to figure out what grades they'd need to get on their tests to pull up their averages, except Hayato's standards are kind of unreasonable and then he got all mad at Takeshi for laughing when his calculations turned up figures like a hundred sixty-eight and two hundred and three, but he shouldn't have been surprised, because Takeshi isn't good with numbers.

(2+10).

(Takeshi isn't good with numbers, except for the ones that tell him he's not good enough.

Batting averages. RBI. Bases stolen. Runs scored. Home runs.

False swings. Runs lost. Fouls. Strikeouts.

Red tallies scored into his skin. Tsuna's scars. Hayato's burns.

The lines in his father's face. Tsuna's tears.

One coffin full of flowers in the middle of the woods.)

(80-59).

Takeshi isn't good with numbers, except for the ones that tell him he's not good enough.

Those he knows even better than Hayato does, and he thinks Hayato might know that, too, because sometimes he gets this weird pinched face when he looks at Takeshi, and it isn't like the funny furious-constipated one he gets when he thinks Takeshi is being too familiar with Tsuna, or the unfunny quiet shattered one he gets when he's trying really hard to resign himself to the fact that he will never, ever come first for Tsuna the way Tsuna does for him.

When Hayato does the weird pinched face he looks at Takeshi like he might be about to ask him about it, and Takeshi goes all cold inside, because if Hayato asks—if anybody asks (but especially Hayato), then Takeshi might break wide open, and inside Takeshi is full of sharp things and Takeshi can never, ever hurt Hayato the way he hurt Tsuna when Tsuna broke him open the first time.

0.

What would you know, Dame-Tsuna?

(80-27).

Just because Tsuna forgave him doesn't make it okay. Just because Tsuna smiles at Takeshi like he doesn't remember, like Takeshi never once tore through him just because he was angry and Tsuna was standing there when nobody else would—it doesn't make it okay.

Because Tsuna forgives everyone, and if he forgives Takeshi too then that just makes him exactly like all the rest, and Takeshi needs to be more than that for Tsuna. He needs to be more than one more person who had to hurt him to decide they liked him. Tsuna deserves better than that.

Tsuna deserves so much more than he ever gets.

(80-59)+1.

Takeshi is so grateful to Tsuna, always but especially in those moments, because Tsuna somehow always knows what it is that Takeshi needs from him, always always and maybe it's Hyper Intuition and maybe it's just Tsuna, because Tsuna is Tsuna and Tsuna loves like he fights, like standing on a rooftop pouring your heart out just for the slightest chance of getting through to fucking selfish coward Yamamoto Takeshi who never did a thing to help you unless it was convenient—like two strikes bases empty no one in his dugout but everyone waiting on him to win and nothing less than a home run will do—Tsuna always knows, and Tsuna never fails, and nobody handles Hayato like Tsuna can.

Takeshi wishes that he were better at it, too, so this wouldn't have to be one more thing he relies on Tsuna for. Tsuna has seven guardians and dozens of allies and hundreds of minions he refuses to call minions, and they all want things from him and they're all relying on him and Tsuna's thin shoulders look heavier by the day and the shadows around his eyes are as much as from bruising as from sleeplessness and sometimes his smile strains at the edges and that is just. The worst.

(27-80).

Nothing that makes Tsuna unhappy should be allowed to exist.

(Does Takeshi make Tsuna happy?)

(27/7).

This is what everyone knows: the heart of Vongola's strength is the Guardians' loyalty towards their Sky.

This is what Takeshi suspects: the key to this loyalty lies in seven devastating secrets that Tsuna keeps in his heart, like seven paper airplane wishes disappearing into the sky, like seven bullets straight to the chest and no exit wounds in sight.

This is what Takeshi hopes: Tsuna holds a part of him no one else ever will.

This is what Takeshi knows: Tsuna keeps in his heart something of his that no one ought to have.

(It's maybe a little like a hostage situation, but if it is then Takeshi isn't sure who's got the gun.)

(80+27).

This is the secret only he and Tsuna know: when they were fourteen, Tsuna reached out to the sky and all it gave him was a fistful of pain, jagged wire fencing scoring deep red lines into one small soft palm and Takeshi's blunt nails biting sharp white crescents into the other. Tsuna held onto both, dizzy with his own desperate resolve, and Takeshi felt the world move. The ground fell away and for an impossible second the whole world held its breath and all Takeshi could see was Tsuna, Tsuna holding up the sky for him, and nonsensically he thought, is this for me, is this my sky, are you my sky

When they bounced to safety Tsuna let the crumpled metal tumble from his numb grip and asked, are you hurt?, eyes looking at him soft and endless and brown and brown and cut hand dripping onto the pavement soft and endless and red and red. And Takeshi had been, but not the way Tsuna meant. Not the way Tsuna bled—unnoticed, undemanding, on the outside.

So Takeshi picked it up, the wires tacky with blood and rust, and he looked at Tsuna with his wide helpless eyes and remembered the feeling of falling without fear and he thought, no one will ever hurt you again, and he folded it up and tucked it deep inside himself, the first sharp thing, so he would never forget.

(He hadn't answered the question.)

(He hadn't kept his promise, either.)

(80+27)+10.

This is what the greatest hitman in the world once told Yamamoto Takeshi.

Some say that when you save a man's life, his life is yours, and therefore he owes you a debt he must strive to repay for the remainder of his days. Others say that when you save a man's life, his life is yours, and that you are thus responsible for it, forever.

…So which is this, Tsuna?

(80+10).

There's no point in being angry with Tsuna for leaving them behind.

There's no point in being angry with Tsuna for leaving them behind.

There's no point in being absolutely, incandescently furious with Tsuna for leaving him behind.

But—

But.

(80+10-27).

Tsuna dies.

Tsuna dies and it's the worst thing anyone has ever done to him.

Tsuna dies, and Takeshi breaks wide open.

(And just as he has always known, he is full of sharp things.)

(true story: main text originally included the note [NEEDS MORE SILLY HAPPY MAGIC FRIENDSHIP TIMES] right smack in the middle)

Honestly it's been years and years since I first read Reborn, and I've taken liberties with canon, but I've always kind of assumed that Yamamoto went on a mindless killing spree after Tsuna's death. As in, sometimes I forget it didn't actually happen (as far as we know!). Yamamoto is full of sharp things on the inside, and then everybody he doesn't like is full of sharp things on the outside, and this is called "gap moe". (jk, Yanderemoto is the stuff of nightmares)

Anyway if anyone is at all interested the way this came about is I woke up with no plans and laid in bed playing Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey for about two hours while periodically making note of interesting demon fusions, and then I found an old post-it with one scribbled line—Takeshi isn't good with numbers, except for the ones that tell him he's not good enough—and then suddenly I had three sticky notes full of stream-of-consciousness Yamamoto angst and I had to turn on my laptop because the cramped writing was hurting my hand. I feel like I didn't write this so much as it rode me.