Rated: G to NC-17 for language, violence, and sexual situations
Steve's Notes: These drabbles were written for pectus_pectoris' 8059 Meme and KHR Meme on LiveJournal. Each prompt was supposed to be answered in a sentence or a drabble. I really stretched some pairing muscles on this one. Hopefully, you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!
Disclaimer: Katekyou Hitman Reborn! © Amano Akira

l'agnello || Reborn/Lambo || curiosity of the curious

He smooths the skirts with his damp palms; he adjusts the lace bow around his throat; he teeters on the needle-like heels of his red stilettos. He chews on his baby pink nails and hopes against hope that he won't cry and smear his make-up.

Nothing goes the way it is supposed to.

His skirts are hiked around his hips; the lace bow is a noose that allows him barely enough air; he's fucked against a wall with little regard to how his thighs tremble with the effort of keeping his body still on six extra inches. He cries because it hurts as much as it doesn't and he smudges his make-up.

Nothing goes the way it is supposed to.

(Then Reborn murmurs, "Pretty thing.")

the pain || Gokudera/Hibari ||any way you want it, that's the way you need it

The last three fingers on his left hand are sprained, more likely broken; blood is sharp on his tongue from the cuts in his mouth, made by his own teeth, and from the blood of his broken nose; his ribs are bruised and he cannot draw a full breath. The world swims around him and the spots of color are flashes of silver fish in it. Even the curse that drops from Gokudera's lips warbles.

Hibari gnashes his teeth to try and taste that, too.

rex || Tsuna/Xanxus || it's good to be king

Xanxus does not like the lion he sees in the small shell of Sawada Tsunayoshi's body; it is something he can respect.

("Xanxus?" the boy chokes as Xanxus straddles his waist. "Xanxus, what are you—")

when the world was our sandbox || Julie/Chrome || the dreams of our past

Before Nagi was Chrome and Julie was a boy, two little girls sat alone in sandbox and watched the sky twist slowly above them. Chrome would dream of this moment in the years to come—the stick-thin cirrus clouds, the heat of the sun, the scowl on Julie's dirty face as her young fingers twisted angrily in the dress her mother had forced her to wear—but she will never wake up and remember.

"I think I've always..." Chrome-once-Nagi murmurs as Julie-once-a-girl slips his fingers into her hand.

cancer || Coyote/Ganauche || hey teacher

Coyote is a stubborn old man with a foul mouth and a fondness for foul cigarettes. Ganauche is only seventeen when his father, Ganauche II, dies during the Cradle Affair; it is Coyote who shows up at the villa to break the news. Ganauche merely steals the tobacco from Coyote's thin lips and takes a liberal drag.

"How did he die?" Ganauche asks as the smoke burns in his lungs, more bearable than the grief in his chest.

"Badly," Coyote replies, and thinks of the way Xanxus pointed his gun in the Lightning Guardian's face. Xanxus would have known Ganauche, Coyote remembers, as Ganauche was only a year older and had gone to the same boarding school. Coyote wonders if the brat thought of that before he pulled the trigger, but dismisses it because it never would have made the difference. "The Varia attempted a coup d'état."

Ganauche takes another drag, and another, and another. When the cigarette is gone, Coyote lights him a second, a third, and more.

.

Timoteo says kindly, "I think it would be best if you taught the boy."

"You're fuckin' nuts," Coyote replies. At sixty-three, he's lost an arm, had many affairs, and never learned patience. "Wouldn't Nie or Brabanters be better?"

Timoteo just smiles.

.

It goes like this: Ganauche proves to be capable, ambitious, and sly, Coyote tries not be impressed, Ganauche never carries cigarettes by always steals Coyote's, and Coyote cuffs the silly boy around the head.

"You little bastard," Coyote snarls as Ganauche's fingers flicker between his own and snatch the lightly held stick away. Like any good mafioso, he is nimble and delicate enough to be a pickpocket. "Can't you just—"

Ganauche opens his mouth and he places the cigarette on his lips. He inhales, his dark eyelashes fluttering against the youthful rise of his cheeks, and he holds the smoke long. When he exhales, he returns the cigarette with a cocky, curling grin.

"You can have it back," Ganauche quips.

The filter is slightly damp between Coyote's lips. It is, Coyote thinks, the most lewd kiss he's ever had.

.

"Ganauche is a very capable young man," Timoteo tells Coyote, outside their favorite café in Palermo. The moon hangs a heavy waxing gibbous above them and though it is too bright to see all but the evening star, the iron rails and thin potted trees are coiled in white Christmas lights.

Coyote grunts and swallows more red wine than necessary. The cigarette between his ring and middle finger of his hand is unlit. Ganauche stole his lighter the day before and used the last of his lighter fluid, the little bastard.

"He would make a good addition to our famiglia as our new Lightening Guardian, don't you think?" Timoteo continues.

Coyote grunts again. He knew Ganauche was going to succeed his father the moment Timoteo sent him to break the news to the kid, when Nie would have been a better choice.

"It's settled, then," Timoteo declares. Coyote thinks it is rather self-congratulatory, and clamps down on the unkind thought. "Tell him tomorrow, would you?"

-.

The truth about Ganauche III is this: when he was three, he took his father's large hand with his tiny pair and demanded to have his ring.

"He wouldn't give it to me," Ganauche laughs. "I've wanted it ever since."

Coyote doesn't say anything. He has seen Ganauche charm uncharmable men, win fights that were certain defeats, and pull information out of rocks. Ganauche could make the world eat from the palm of his hand, if he wanted, and the world would be helpless to stop him.

"And do you know what?" Ganauche continues steadily as he nonchalantly plucks the slow-burning cigarette from Coyote's naked, gnarled fingers. "I got it."

to the quick || Squalo/Dino || don't be scared to be human

A fist to his jaw, a knee to his gut. Squalo does not allow these blows nor does he take them out of some sort of misplaced affection; they occur because Dino is sure and strong in his rage and Squalo is too weak to block them.

"You were already better than him!" Dino roars. His fingers are cruel in the short hairs at the nape of Squalo's neck. It is almost too painful and Squalo lets out a hiss. "What were you trying to prove?"

Squalo brings his hand up to scratch—but where there was once a hand, there is only a gauze-ended stump. It gives him pause even though he was the one who removed it, hours ago, without a second thought and the short wakizashi he had picked up. Dino snarls and breaks his knuckles across Squalo's cheek. Dino's grip is the only thing that keeps him from crumpling back onto the bed.

"You are so fucking stupid!" Dino yells, his throat raw. Wetness glitters on his light eyelashes, clumping them together. "There had to be another way!"

"There was no other way," Squalo hisses, tilting his head back to alleviate the sting, and keeps the stub of his arm close to his chest, where the wound throbs in time with his heart. "Sometimes, Cavallone, there is only one way to achieve one's goals."

"At the cost of self-mutilation?" Dino snarls, his honey-colored eyes inches from Squalo's, his breath hot and damp on Squalo's cheek.

"A price," Squalo mocks. Dino creeps closer, and Squalo thinks about sinking his teeth into his lower lip, breaking the skin and inviting blood onto his tongue. "What would you do, brat, if you had no choice?"

Dino's eyes flicker to Squalo's mouth. "If I had no choice, I would make my own. If I had no choice, I would make the sacrifices I would be willing to make, not what someone was willing to make for me. If I had not choice, I would not accept fate—and I wouldn't cut off my own hand."

Squalo licks his lips and when Dino catches his gaze, he suddenly knows that his chest is heaving, his cheeks are flushed, and his pupils are blown wide in their irises. His arm, his jaw, everything hurts, but it feels so terribly exquisite. Dino knows it, too, because his breath hitches.

Then he says, so calmly, "No, Squalo. Not like this." He releases his hand—his fingers are bloodless—steps back, and walks from room without looking back.

The door snicks shut quietly. Abandoned, Squalo screams, "Pathetic!"—but the accusation echoes in his ears alone.

last request || Xanxus/Tsuna || restless

The muscles in his naked thighs bunch tight beneath the veneer of his flesh as he stalks around the room; in the pre-dawn light his olive skin is a mellow gold. Tsuna watches him stalk from the warmth of the ostentatious bed they've shared and wonders if he should voice his dearest wish, Come back to me one more time.

He doesn't. He can't.

Instead, he lets Xanxus pace back and forth, back and forth.

a natural progression || Ryouhei/Tsuna || penny on the tracks

His supple spine a bow, he arches from his childhood bed. The tip of his pink tongue escapes the maw of his open mouth and his small, perfect toes dig white into the old and worn robot-patterned sheets. Ryouhei's hands—so big and heavy and strong—are the only thing that keeps his undulating body together.

"Sawada—" Ryouhei grunts, his face twisted as though in great pain, his voice rough and so low. "Sawada—"

old men, old tricks || Shamal/Tsuyoshi || the start of the storm

Okay, Shamal thinks deliriously as the bullet drills into his shoulder, that stings a little.

With the adrenaline coursing through him, Shamal grits his teeth, switches hands, and fires a returning bullet into the bastard's head. Beside him, Tsuyoshi cuts down the last two men, cleans his blade on their black uniforms.

"I don't have a mosquito for this," Shamal when he crumples to his knees, panting hard and his vision doubling, swimming. He laughs weakly, and even that throbs. "I should work on that."

Tsuyoshi says something after that, like it's too dangerous to go back now and the old-fashioned way. Tsuyoshi must also drag him to his feet by his good arm and lead him away from the ambush-turned-carnage, because when Tsuyoshi cuts him out of his shirt and suit-coat, they're back at Takezushi. Tsuyoshi lays him flat across one of the longer tables and puts a cool hand against his pounding jugular, his thumb unconsciously smoothing circles into Shamal's sweaty skin. It is almost enough to distract Shamal from the pain and the poured saké and the knife when it goes in.

Shamal bites down. There is something wooden there—chopsticks?—and he feels it give slightly beneath the force of his jaw. He screams because he has never liked pain, and he feels his throat convulse around the noise. The knife is long and sharp, Tsuyoshi's hands are steady and skilled, and the bullet comes out with a sick sucking noise that Shamal hasn't heard since the cadavers in medical school. Am I dead? he wants to ask, but there is another splash of burning saké and Shamal wonders if he'll even remember the intense pain.

"Almost done," Tsuyoshi murmurs above him, and the rest is easy. Sterile cotton pads, rolls upon rolls of gauze, and medical tape to keep it together. It will hold for the few hours they have to stay until someone comes to gets them.

And it is an eternity of pain that becomes less sharp but no less painful, a pain that pulses with his heartbeat, as Tsuyoshi cleans the blood from Shamal's shaking body. It is an eternity when Tsuyoshi helps him sit and redress in an old, spare button-up, then a blanket to help with the cold. It is an eternity as they share the last bit of saké, the good saké, and it is an eternity before Tsuyoshi steps into the acute angle of Shamal's thighs and joins him.

"Just this once," Shamal tells him as he presses his scraggly face into the warm curve of Tsuyoshi's neck. He smells like sweat and blood and fish. "We can blame it on the shock."

Tsuyoshi laughs weakly and whispers non sequitur, "Anything."

the pillar || Enma/Tsuna || won't rush to your arms when the thunder strikes

Being brave does not mean being incapable of fear; being in love does not mean being incapable of hate. Enma understands this, more than he understands geometry or battle of personal pride or breaking into the Vendicare prison, so when Tsuna—no good and eyes burning with Dying Will—reaches for him, Enma takes a step back and shakes his head.

But he does say, "Thank you."

the sins || Shamal/Tsuyoshi || (mis)understanding your world

If Shamal had a son, he wouldn't be a snot-nosed brat like Gokudera Hayato, who is intelligent but too stubborn and too impatient. If Shamal had a son, he wouldn't be like Tsuyoshi's kid either, who gives Shamal the willies when he drops his smile and cuts his gaze into everything with his hawk-colored eyes.

A glass of warm saké in front of him, Shamal shares this revelation with Tsuyoshi, who tilts his long face back in laughter and exposes his long neck.

"We cannot know what fate may bring us, my friend," he says with playful mirth, and touches the small lacquer cup to his lips. "I wanted a son who would inherit this shop. Get married. Have sons who would inherit the shop after them."

"Disappointments, the lot of them," Shamal mutters into the night air. He thinks of Gokudera, who copied his haircut and his bombs, who surpassed in many ways and will never surpass him in others. Disappointment is not the only word for it; pride may be the other.

"Yes," Tsuyoshi replies, his smile wrinkling his not-very-handsome face. "But not so much."

Shamal pauses. Then he refills his cup, knocks it back, and waits for Tsuyoshi to scold him into enjoying it for a little longer.

cold blood || Cozart/Giotto, G/Giotto || rebound

In this dim, pre-dawn light, you can squint and it would almost be the same. Almost, because his hair is a shade darker and bit longer; almost, because his skin is pale, just a flush lighter; almost, because his body is broader and rangier. Like you almost want him, like you almost love him, like you almost wish he were the one who was dead.

"Giotto?" he yawns, his voice still rough and heavy with sleep. Then, "The sun isn't even up."

"It's nothing," you reply, and remove your fingers from his—not his—skin. "Go back to sleep, my dear friend."

the offer || Mukuro/Fran || the real hell inside of you

Fourteen and spreading his candy-stick thighs with a pretty sigh, he lets you touch his naked skin with your leather-clad hand.

(It is an illusion, of course, this calm he pretends to have; inside, his heart skitters and his lungs seize. You could rip that serenity to shreds with your teeth or your tongue, but you are a benevolent and patient master. You can wait.)

"Shishou," the boy murmurs as he pushes his too-long hair out of his disinterested eyes—another illusion. "Is that all there is?"

(You can wait, but he is so impatient. Your mouth curls, sly and indulgent.)

"Do be quiet," you reply, and touch him with your leather-clad hand. He gasps in sweet surprise and arches his young spine, his scapulae tight against the wispy sheets. "I cannot teach when you interrupt me."

to die || Yamamoto/Gokudera || wake up

When the nurse leaves, Hayato lights a cigarette and watches the smoke curl against the ceiling. He stays long after it is gone and long after the sun has settled into the horizon to sleep. He stays even when the nurse tells him to go home and get some rest. He stays and stays and stays, withering slow like the curl of burning tobacco and paper, like the boy he crawls next to and stretches out beside. He stays and matches his inhales to inhales, his exhales to exhales, his atrophy to atrophy.

But he does not sleep.

and found lacking || Yamamoto/Gokudera/Hibari || polamory

There was that girl back in middle school, who wore sticky lip gloss that almost tasted like cherries and left adolescent smears against his skin. Then there was that boy who hit with such fluidity that it took his breath away—that boy took his breath away again as he sunk to his knees and looked up from underneath the sooty smear of his lashes. There was a woman, Italian, who wore slinky black dresses and diamonds in the hollow of her throat; there was a silly thing who smoked Lucky Sevens; there was a man whose biceps strained as he picked Takeshi up and fucked him into the wall.

None were firsts. All the firsts came in the tight and uneasy bundle of Gokudera Hayato, who snarled, "This doesn't mean shit," though both of them knew that was a terrible lie. The "we're not exclusive, either," was not the truth either, but it was not a lie of the flesh. The real lie comes when Takeshi's lips linger against the swell of bone behind Gokudera's pierced ear, slick with sweat. The devotion Takeshi feels is caged behind his teeth; it was easy to swallow at first, but one day he will choke on it.

"Only herbivores do not take what they want," Hibari tells him when he is close to choking. Takeshi feels Hibari's sharp eyes take in the askew of his collar, the stubble on his cheeks. Then he goads, "I thought too highly of you."

Takeshi has had his fair share—girls and boys, men and women—but he never gave them more than his body. He never shared. But when Hibari slinks away, a coil of triumph in the tension of his swagger, Takeshi realizes that maybe he always has.

alone, but not alone || Yamamoto/Gokudera || a little bit of sunshine

Their first apartment in Tokyo consists of a main room large enough to fit a couch, a television, and occasionally Takeshi's duffel bag, a kitchen filled with more chemistry glassware than a high school laboratory and a nearly empty fridge (empty, if one did not include the opened bottle of red wine and tub of marinara sauce with green-white fuzz on it), a bathroom with a closet-sized shower, and a bedroom that only fit the bed. It is all they can afford on Takeshi's meager earnings as a minor league baseball player and Hayato's minimum wage night job. It isn't glamorous—it is a far cry from the marble villas and extravagant space of Hayato's childhood, and even a house above a sushi shop for Takeshi—but it is theirs. In this tiny space, Hayato can smoke as many cheap Lucky Sevens as he wants and sit around all day in little more than his boxers and his cherry red reading glasses. In this tiny space, Takeshi can let his smile fall into a neutral line and boil water over the Bunsen burner, just enough for two cups of instant ramen. In this tiny space, Hayato and Takeshi can touch and kiss and fuck and—finally—be unafraid of the world beyond.

concessions || Yamamoto/Gokudera || the way he laughs

Takeshi knows the remark is silly and stupid and terribly adolescent, but he says it regardless. It is a moment of humiliation soothed by Gokudera as he snarls, idiota!—then he hunches his bony shoulders inward and clamps down on his cigarette, so that the burn of tobacco smoke will smother the laughter tight in his lungs.

death do we part || Yamamoto/Gokudera || Hibari Kyouya

"I'm not him—" Takeshi tries to reason, but the bitter kiss bitten into his mouth and the hand curled cruel in his hair are hard demands to disobey. "He would—"

Kyouya pulls back just far enough for Takeshi to see the distaste and anger in his slanted eyes. "The dead have no opinions, Yamamoto Takeshi," he whispers before he descends once more, teeth bared and sharp.

Takeshi would say, I loved him too, but the kiss he returns screams, I loved him more than you.

one and two and three || Yamamoto/Gokudera || three little words

The first word Hayato utters most is a swift curse he would never say in front of his mother, and only under his breath in front of his sister. The second word Hayato says most is a reverential "Tenth!", because he's believes in titles and the power they have. The third word Hayato gives most use to is idiot—in no less than seven languages—even though there is only one person who makes it sound like something else entirely.

the glass of Amarone || Yamamoto/Gokudera || Dino Cavallone

Takeshi has always liked Dino, with his easy smile and his devotion to his famiglia—things Takeshi knows are mirrored in him. He admires, too, the way Dino's expressive eyes flatten as his fist tightens around the heaviness of his whip, how Dino's voice remains even when he threatens another man's life, how he goes into a fight with his head high and a smile across his mouth. Takeshi has always thought he understood Dino, and not just as one mafia man to another, but as two kind men who sometimes did cruel things.

Cruel things, like press another glass of Amarone into Gokudera's hands.

"You're far too sober for this, Hayato," Dino purrs into Hayato's hair, close only because Gokudera is too drunk to notice. Then, softly, something in musical Italian that makes Gokudera bark in drunken laughter. Takeshi's fingers curl tightly around the stem of his own wineglass.

It goes slowly. Dino is patient—Takeshi has always valued Dino's infallible patience—and calculating. He brings expensive wines to tempt Gokudera's refined palate, waits for the hesitation in Gokudera's body, and drags out answers with his fingers. They linger on Gokudera's wrist, his elbow, his shoulder, the exposed region of his neck, and once, his hip. Gokudera does not notice the progression of the touches as he does not notice the progression of his intoxication, as Takeshi notices, as Takeshi seethes.

"Segui," Dino murmurs when the crowd begins to disperse, as he gently pries the wine from Gokudera's hand. "Segui, Hayato."

Takeshi is not sure if he has ever seen Gokudera acquiesce so demurely; he has never seen Gokudera look down and touch his tongue to the swell of his lip, such an insecure and provocative gesture that it can be nothing but unconscious. Dino smiles, easy, and threads his fingers into the short hairs of Gokudera's temple. "Soon, baby, soon," he croons, and Takeshi cannot help the swell of arousal and anger that pushes through him as Gokudera's mouth parts for a low, pleading moan.

"He's ready," Dino says, too loudly, and Takeshi nearly swallows his tongue when Dino's golden eyes pin him. Understanding slams into Takeshi like a bullet and he lets his anger bleed away; admiration for Dino replaces the hollows let behind. "Are you coming?"

Takeshi smiles and sets down his wine glass. "Of course," he replies smoothly, allows his hand to find the small of Gokudera's back. Gokudera arches into the touch with a faint hiss, and over his head Dino and Takeshi exchange a private secret.

After all, he and Dino are not so different.

Luciano || Yamamoto/fem!Gokudera || pregnant

Underneath the clean lines of her suit a bump emerges, unnoticeable at first but soon unmistakable. It grows beside a Beretta, a few explosives, and a menagerie of boxes that will one day be the Sistema C.A.I. The baby is not Takeshi's—Gokudera is tight-lipped about the real father, only snarling fucking bastard and picking at the edges of a nicotine patch when someone tries to ask—but in the private recesses of his brain, he calls the bump theirs.

(Because what is a father, exactly? Is it the man who had the pleasure of Gokudera's body but not the pleasure of the consequences? Is it the man who gave twenty-three chromosomes or the man who smiles as he presses his face against the warm swell of a once-flat belly? Is it some asshole with a dick and no face, or is it Takeshi, who loves Gokudera and her son and would die for either of them, both of them?)

Eventually, the inevitable happens. It's a cold day in December, just after La Festa di Santa Lucia, and Takeshi is haggling with a vendor on the street. His phone vibrates and before he can even chirp a greeting, Gokudera is snarling, "—just fucking broke in the middle of a conversation with that fucking Cavallone bastard, and if you're not fucking there I'm going to name him something ridiculously sentimental, like Takemaru or whatever the fuck names your dad likes and—ahhh, fuck!—Takeshi, get your ass to the base right fucking now—"

Takeshi knows his smile is ridiculous as he pulls the phone from his ear, Gokudera's cussing spilling faintly from the receiver. "I'm sorry," he tells the vendor, and hands him a few euros for the simple daises Takeshi was going to give Gokudera when he told her he loved her. "My son is apparently as impatient as his mother."

(But Takeshi knows that maybe Gokudera has known all along.)

the three step program || Gokudera || something gentle

He can barely afford rent. He can barely afford the cheap Lucky Sevens he smokes. He can barely afford food.

But he can hardly afford to let those three kittens die there—two already dead—soaked and cold and mewling pathetically in their cardboard box.

Sighing, he picks up them up.

Looks like he's going to have to stop smoking, after all.

we broke more than one tradition (so why stop now?) || Yamamoto/Gokudera || Sawada Tsunayoshi (as a friend)

"—support you completely," Tsuna tells his right- and left-hand men, his Dying Will burning behind his eyes. "I will never abandon my friends."

distillation, or removing impurities || Gokudera/Yamamoto || chemistry lab

"Organic chemistry lab is ten percent hard work, ninety percent sitting with our thumbs up our asses," Gokudera tells him as he makes sure the distillation tubes are hooked together properly. He clicks his tongue as he tightens something, and Takeshi sees the flash of silver.

"So, I just wait?" Takeshi says distractedly.

"Basically," Gokudera grumbles as he lights the Bunsen burner, adjusting the gas until the flame is perfectly blue at the bottom. Then he pins Takeshi with eyes as green as copper in fire and says, "This is your second time taking this lab, Shamal said."

Takeshi lets his smile stretch—he would never tell Gokudera that he purposefully failed last semester to get him as a TA—and rolls his shoulders in an easy shrug. "I didn't get it," he replies.

"You passed the class with an 87," Gokudera snaps, and Takeshi pictures Gokudera sneaking into Shamal's office and digging through the records. "Lab only cements the concepts. I bet you skipped to go to the batting cages, or some shit like that."

Takeshi just shrugs again; it is better for Gokudera to think that than to know that Takeshi came to every class, but daydreamed of him, outside the third story lab on the fire escape, smoking his way steadily through his Lucky Sevens.

"I'm only doing this because Shamal asked me to," Gokudera continues, and steps into Takeshi's personal space. He smells like ash, sharp chemicals, and a subtle cologne. "If you waste my time, I will kill you and put your body in a tub of hydrochloric acid."

Gokudera is so close, if Takeshi just tilted his head—

"I won't," Takeshi replies, and shifts back on his stool. Gokudera steps back and smoothes his vintage print t-shirt.

"Good," Gokudera snaps. "Now, let's work on the lab questions while this distills. I don't want to be stuck here all night with a dumb jock."

Takeshi merely smiles.

make like a tree (and stay rooted) || Ryouhei/Koyo || i don't like asking for help

"Be still," Ryouhei snarls as Koyo tries to twist away. Ryouhei's ribs are broken; it isn't easy to hold Koyo down.

"Like hell I'm going to listen to you!" Koyo snaps back, but the harshness he aims for is lost in the rapid flutter of his heart and the lightness in his head as too much blood spills from his side. "I don't need your—ahhh—"

Ryouhei digs his fingers into the bullet wound and almost feels bad as Koyo's green, green eyes roll back into his head. The digits make a sick suctioning noise as he pulls them back out, sticky with Koyo's thick and viscous blood; he's heard and seen worse. He wipes it off on his pant leg.

"Hold extremely still, alright?" Ryouhei repeats, slow in contrast to the ignition of his ring that blazes white in the middle and yellow on the periphery. Koyo's mouth opens to protest, but there is a wet gurgle and a bubble of blood bursts out instead of a curse.

It is an excruciating process. Gokudera had tried to explain it to him once, ages ago when they were still in high school and Gokudera took it upon himself to explore the properties of each Dying Will they possessed. He threw around phrases like accelerated cellular regeneration and mitochondrial stimulation, but the only thing Ryouhei understood was that his flame stitched up even the worst wounds within minutes, even if it did wear him down as a consequence. It would even turn the indecipherable mess in Koyo's side into little more than flesh and a fibrous starburst, even if it hurt as much as the bullet did going in and made a headache unfurl at Ryouhei's temples.

When it is all over, Koyo's body still trembles from the excess adrenaline. His spine is still arched off the ground and the muscles in his thighs are still tense. His pale green eyelashes creep like ivy down his flushed cheeks and his breaths come fast and shallow. Ryouhei is too busy watching Koyo to see Koyo's fist until it is planted between his eyes.

"Argh!" Ryouhei shouts as he feels his nose break under the punch. His ribs blaze as he twists too violently.

"I told you not to bother, but in the end you never fuckin' listen!" Koyo snaps as he hauls himself upright. "Fuckin' moron, you shouldn't use your flame like that when you're too weak to even block a stupid hook."

Ryouhei tries not to think; even thinking hurts.

"Urgh," Koyo groans. He stands, wipes the drying blood on his chin away with his ruined suitcoat. "Stay here. I'm going to go find someone who can put up with your stupidity."

Ryouhei tries not to smile. He tries.

the barber || Dino/Squalo || the words you wouldn't say

His head flung back, his throat exposed, his hair scattered like straw across the cold marble floor—Squalo bent forward, biting into Dino's pulse, the threat stifled against Dino's warm and accepting skin.

Instead, Squalo snarls, "It will never be you."

Dino just laughs.

growing pains || TYL!Kyoko/present!Tsuna || a taste of the future

A flash, a kaleidoscope of color, and the sensation of being spread too thin.

"—in the back, three coming from the hallway entrance, and—Tsu-kun?"

Tsuna looks up at the same moment Kyouko looks down. She is wearing a black dress that barely falls to the middle of her thighs, her thin shoulders exposed to the cool air. All the missing material is gathered in the small of her back, pulled together like an elaborate obi of taffeta. There are strands upon strands of thin gold looped around her neck and falling from her ears; her feet are bare, but her impossibly high stilettos are next to her. Tsuna's mouth goes dry and slack; the noise that crawls out of his throat meant you're gorgeous when it formed in his brain.

Her long eyelashes sweep against her upper cheeks as she mutters Lambo's name like a curse. Only then does Tsuna see the gun in her hands, glinting in the light from the ornate chandelier like her ring.

"Huh?" he says intelligently. "What are you—"

The sound of a bullet ricocheting cuts him off. He freezes, but Kyouko grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him down so quickly he stumbles and scrapes his palms against the floor. She glances at him to make sure he's okay, then rises above the cover of the overturned table to fire three rounds. There is a shout that is violently cut off. Kyouko slumps back down quickly, and there is the crack of a gun and a dull thud as a bullet buries into the heavy wood protecting them.

"Tsu-kun," Kyouko says as Tsuna begins to hyperventilate. What is going on and why does Kyouko have a gun and who is shooting at them and why does Kyouko have a gun? "Tsu-kun, listen to me."

Tsuna looks at Kyouko's gun.

"Tsu-kun," Kyouko says softly. Tsuna almost flinches when her small, soft hand tilts his chin up; instead, he inhales with a sharp and startled hiee. "Tsu-kun, it was bound to happen sooner or later."

A few more rounds lodge themselves into the table. Kyouko doesn't look away from Tsuna, her big brown eyes hardly blinking. Some of her perfectly swept back hair has escaped its confines and brushes against her jawline.

"Will you do me a favor?" Kyouko asks him, then.

"W—what is it?"

Kyouko smiles and, just before he is spread too thin once more, she says, "Tell Lambo to knock it off."

undercover lover || G/Ugetsu || ugetsu dresses as a woman; g is "her" companion

Her make-up is carefully applied, skin painted white, mouth stained red, eyebrows sooted black. This does not hide her strong jaw nor her high forehead; rather, it accents her striking, masculine features and makes them elegant, nearly regal. Her layered kimono, slung so low in the back it reveals her prominent vertebrae and the play of smooth muscle of her shoulders, is folded conservatively, almost prudishly, high in the front. She is almost too tall, but her grace saves her.

"What do you think?" she asks her companion, a foreign man in a pinstripe suit and hair as red as persimmons. He looks her head to toe. His slow desire is as obvious as the slow curl of smoke from the end of his cigarette, obvious only to those from a distance.

"You are one ugly broad," he replies.

She cuffs him upside the head with her fan—but laughs too, deep and throaty, as he hides his smile behind his tobacco. They are an odd couple.

It hardly matters.

falling short || Tsuna/Mochida || why

Tsuna thinks of him as the boy he once was, a sempai who sneered and bullied and called him no good, as everyone else called him no good. He thinks of the boy that had loved the same girl; he thinks of how they both yearned for her attention. Back then, neither deserved her respect; when they earned it, they were men and knew enough to never hoard her. There is no resentment for Tsuna; there is only peace.

"I swear myself to you," Mochida murmurs reverently as he kneels, so naked, and presses his lips to Tsuna's heavy ring. "I swear myself to you and only you."

Tsuna waits until Mochida pulls away before he kneels as well. "And I to you," he replies breathlessly. "Only—"

fishpaste || Naruto, I-pin || ramen

"Naruto-san?" I-pin calls from the other side of the door, her eyebrows drawn together in vague worry. "Naruto-san, I have your miso ramen!"

The apartment gives no reply.

"Naruto-san?" I-pin calls again, knocking a little harder on the bright orange door. It's not like the older man to not answer her almost immediately; he loves ramen nearly as much as Kawahira-ji. "Naruto-san?"

There is a soft, human noise inside. If I-pin were just a normal fifteen year old girl, worried about school and her part-time job and one of her regular customers, she might not have heard it. As it is, I-pin is worried about school and her part-time job and one of her regular customers, but she has also been trained in martial arts since she could walk. The old door does not stand a chance.

"Naruto-san!" I-pin cries as she darts into the living room. It is familiar, as she has seen it many times from the door: the tall, healthy plants in the corner by the window, a battered couch with sunken cushions, and a dark-haired man spread naked across the carpet.

Oh, I-pin's normally sharp brain backtracks as she takes in the handsome man pinned by Naruto-san's long, tan body. Oh, I guess I haven't seen that before.

Above the man, Naruto-san turns his head. His normally open and smiling face is replaced with hooded eyes and a twisted mouth; his gold hair sticks to his sweaty skin. Beneath him, the man wriggles, shifts his hips upwards and locks his legs more tightly around Naruto-san's waist. I-pin's eyes are invariably drawn to where they are joined, and she feels something dark, hot, and not entirely unfamiliar race down her spine.

"Ah," Naruto-san grunts, and his voice is a register lower than I-pin remembers it. "I-pin. I'm sorry I didn't answer the door, but I was a little—"

"Preoccupied," the man interjects coldly, his tone at odds with the warm pink spread from the tips of his ears to the center of his chest. He shifts his hips again, subtly, and Naruto-san makes a noise that is between a curse and a snarl. "Leave."

"Sasuke," Naruto-san snaps, bearing down. The dark-haired man's sour, red mouth goes slack and I-pin feels her already wide eyes go wider. "Don't be rude."

The dark-haired man tries to say something, but Naruto-san's reaches between them and covers him with a hand. The man chokes on air and pleasure.

"I-pin," Naruto-san says, an edge to his calm voice. "I-pin, could you leave the ramen on the counter? I'll heat it up later. Just put the price on a tab or something—"

"—make me pay for all of—ahhh—" the man below tries to interject again, but Naruto-san's hand swivels at the wrist and the man's eyes flutter shut, his neck curves sensually.

"The counter, I-pin," Naruto-san tries again, his red-tinged eyes more than a little desperate. "Tab. Please go."

I-pin's brain catches up and her face is on sudden fire. She turns, leaves the ramen on the counter, and even manages to pick the door up and put it back in its frame. Then she runs down the apartment complex's stairs, onto the street, and all the way back to the ramen shop. The owner doesn't even look up from his grill as I-pin collapses on one of the bar stools.

"How was Naruto?" Teuchi-san asks.

I-pin hides her face in her hands in response.

end.