Warnings: R27 and a little bit of YamamotoBianchi if you squint. shameless fluff. also pointlessness. swear words?

Disclaimer: KHR is not and never will be mine.

In a way, it had come to them naturally.

Because it was clear that, no matter what Tsuna did, Reborn would always be at his side (or in the shadows, watching, or in front of him as a holographic image when he couldn't exactly follow him to a battle that had only place for two - Tsuna, and whatever guy tried taking over the world this time, God, they were innumerable, where does this endless supply of antagonists come from and why have they never thought of attacking him all at once, Tsuna wondered at that...)

The point is, Reborn was there. Always.

Tsuna would never be ready for the day that Reborn left him, and he wouldn't even have thought of having to include this precaution in his future plans had there not been that incident that pounded into Tsuna's head so heavily just what he would be without Reborn.

We're talking, of course, about the short but meaningful disappearance of Reborn just before the future decided to explode in Tsuna's face.

Tsuna wondered what he would have done had he not been teleported so timely into ten years' later world. He decided that he would have probably continued to run around and search after Reborn like a lunatic teenage girl who lost her vampire lover, finally collapsing on the spot from sheer exhaustion. And nobody would have been able to calm him down, because the only person that could was gone. Reborn had always been the one which Tsuna relied on the most, and only after he had been reunited with his home tutor, albeit in a strange world that he could by no means call comforting, was Tsuna aware of how heavy the amount of responsibility and trust was that he burdened Reborn with, a burden that was much too heavy for himself to shoulder.

When Tsuna finally defeated Byakuran and caved in where he stood, despite his victory grand relief being the last thing on his mind...

When he seemingly accepted the title of Vongola's Tenth to lure out a perpetrator, tensely standing in front of the large group of people he didn't even want to know about, just trying to put things right now that Yamamoto was laying gravely injured inside the hospital...

When he finally and for real accepted his position as the mafia famiglia's boss, in a situation much too dire to allow him to think twice about accepting something that would gain him more power and the right to decide over his friends' life; thus allowing him to ensure that they are faced with missions they would not senselessly die on (and everything else that came with this job he would have to throw out of the window at the moment, because, thank God, the Ninth was still there and would look over things for a while)...

When he exhaustedly came to rest in the midst of a battlefield, with the knowledge that his family would soon be here to pick him up and celebrate the defeat of their foe and, more importantly, the fact that everyone had come out of it alive...

...it was Reborn he looked for, Reborn's eyes he searched for acceptance, Reborn's simple smirk that allowed him to be calm instead of freaking the fuck out.

Even three years into his foray into the mafia world, it was natural for Tsuna that Reborn was there to berate (and annoy) him whenever something - anything - happened, be it the unexpected arrival of a new foe, a type of document he was not familiar with, or even on the accumulating occasions of his rain guardian's shallow disputes with the Scorpion (and what it was about Yamamoto's weird grins and Gokudera choking every time that matter came up in dialogue Tsuna would never understand).

Reborn was there.

That didn't even change when he (after a long and nerve-wracking battle that Tsuna fought out for him, let's not forget that, dear ladies and gentlemen) finally got his real body back.

Granted, conversation had been a killer after that particular change and Tsuna tried and failed to remember how the hell he managed to stare Reborn down all those times before, because every time he stood before this very tall, very intimidating ideal of a hitman now he subsequently lost any and all ability to speak, gulp or even keep his gaze straight. But things were solved by Reborn being Reborn and Tsuna imperceptibly falling back into his daily pattern of arguing back and forth with him.

And it had only taken him three months to achieve that, too.

So when in the early hours of the day after his twenty-first birthday Reborn came in soundlessly through the door of his office and taunted him for appearing despite obviously suffering from a hang-over and lack of sleep (even though he'd be the first one to knock down his door and beat him out of his bed had Tsuna decided to over-sleep, birthday or not), all Tsuna did was hum annoyed, and even that resonated painfully inside of his heavy head. When after half an hour of unsuccessfully diving into the paperwork that was loaded onto his table and moaning about how recent painkillers don't do crap Reborn was still there and unusually quiet, Tsuna had tuned his existence out because all that dealing with Reborn brought was a shitload of pain and Tsuna was just not in the mood for that now. Or ever.

When Tsuna finally gave up and rose from his seat, ready to confront Reborn about his head being as heavy as lead and at the same time, ready to being sat down again, he found, to his surprise, that not only was Reborn looming behind him, but he also pushed him down on his desk and started to explain to him how and why Tsuna should lose his virginity with his number one hitman - Tsuna blinked, shrieked, pushed him off and all the while couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.

Reborn only smirked and backed off slowly, finally turning around and walking out of the room confidently.

And that was that.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Reborn was nowhere to be seen. Tsuna first had been mildly annoyed, then concerned, and finally flat-out panicked. Moreover, he felt weird.

It was not normal that Reborn wasn't there in the mornings to greet him with a smirk and an insult.

It was not normal that Reborn wasn't there when he simply didn't know what to do with the rebellions in the upper echelons of an allied family. It was not normal that he had to go bother the Ninth to be given advice on this.

It was not normal that Reborn wasn't there.

And he continued waving off Yamamoto telling him not to worry every time he saw him coming back from another day of fruitlessly searching for his mentor - because Reborn was still his mentor, even if he had given up the title of home tutor long ago and lived simply as the Vongola's most trusted hitman, even if he had said, eyes mysteriously twinkling, that there was nothing more he could teach Tsuna; because Tsuna still needed him, oh God, in any manner possible, because, as weird and fucked-up as it sounded seeing how Reborn was the one that got him involved with all of this batshit insane mafia stuff, but Reborn was the one who represented Tsuna's normality and peace of mind. Nothing was as bad as it could be if only Reborn was there.

And Tsuna thought he would start to hyperventilate if his peace of mind wasn't restored quickly.

After two months, Tsuna returned deadbeat and slightly injured from a fight with drug-dealers and immediately sought out his bed.

Which was occupied.

By Reborn.

...

So after that whole shouting issue, Tsuna learnt once again that Reborn was even more of a jerk than he thought for apparently disappearing and reappearing like that just because (even though Tsuna did believe later-on that it was quite obvious what it was meant to achieve and that it had fulfilled its task brilliantly), and as Tsuna's heavy, too-tired head settled into the cushions of his bed and his eyes stared into deep black ones he thought that he might kind of fervently love him for it.

Not like this was anything new.

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Fin.

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Omake (because Colonello can't not appear in a fic when Reborn does):

"So you knew him since he was - what? Fucking fourteen? And now you're his lover."

"Hm."

"...With sex."

"With sex."

"That's sick."

"Shut the fuck up."

.

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So, how was it? Might add something later.

This is only my second English fic, so I'm sure I've made a mistake with something here. I'm especially anxious about the tenses :x

Seeing how English isn't my native language, please don't be too hard. I'd be really happy about ConCrit, though :) And if you find any slip-ups (yes, even the typos which I'm sure to have missed despite reading through it trice) feel free and encouraged to report them to me. I want to improve my English as fast as possible :)

Btw, sorry for the Twilight reference ;) I ... couldn't resist.