Title: In Praise of Shadows

Author: PhantomsDaughter13

Beta: Iwaveatyou87

Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn belongs to Akira Amano. "In Praise of Shadows" belongs to Junichirou Tanizaki.

Rating: M

Warning(s): Implied Slash, Injury/Blood

Pairing(s): Hibari/Dino

A/N:So, it's been a while since I've written something worth posting! I'm studying in Osaka, Japan for the year, and I recently read the essay "In Praise of Shadows" by Junichirou Tanizaki, which he published in the 1930's, and I was completely inspired. I took only a section of one of his ideas and then skewed it, but it worked so well for Hibari/Dino I couldn't let it go. It's a rather complexly written piece, with lots of metaphors and subtext. I hope you enjoy, and I would love to have your feedback!

The man swept into his life like a furious and golden tsunami. In merely an instant he shattered the stability of the world around him until he clutched at the seams of it with bleeding hands, desperate to keep it together and untouched.

The Cavallone exuded brightness from his very pores, encroaching steadily into Hibari's personal boundaries and illuminating the corners, laying them bare and empty to the white brilliance of his smile.

Hibari was repulsed by and unappreciative of the foreigner's flashiness, his glaringly clumsy Western charms.

The Italian was incongruous against the landscape of his home, the subtle hush that blanketed the beauty of Japan and muted it into fleeting moments of splendor amidst the gloom.

There was nothing more gratifying to Hibari than walking the silent grounds of Namimori Middle School as the sun began to rise over the horizon, the shadows adding depth and brilliance to the visage of the brick walls, the curves of the stairwells, the reaching lines and shapes creeping life-like along the concrete.

There was something humming through the air, a secret, whispered over and over again in a language that Hibari breathed in quietly as he took account of his school, the power of the land he walked upon teeming within his very veins.

Yet the ground beneath his feet seemed to tremble as another pair crossed its surface, the scuff of rubber sneakers traveling grotesquely through the peaceful atmosphere and shattering it like weak ceramic.

Hibari glared through dark eyes as the sun itself seemed to draw close with unruly hair the color of gold, shining ink of a multitude of colors staining skin and shining in the morning glow.

He was completely exposed as heat touched every inch of his bare skin, fleeing gleefully underneath into his bloodstream and burning him from the inside out. He clenched his jaw in annoyance.

"You have no right to be here, Cavallone. Why do you keep insisting on coming back?"

The audacity of the man never ceased to astound him. Here the Cavallone stood, wide open with eyes shining and a smile adorning his lips, emotions of such a private, secret caliber divulged so easily it was absolutely profane.

That he dare come here, to be so damning in his oblivious European countenance within the place he held so sacred…

The tonfa were extensions of Hibari's very body, his arms and hands sheathed in steel, and in an instant he struck out in dizzying anger at the one poisoning his reality with crystal clear clarity, casting light upon his opaque and purposefully hidden self without permission.

Within his mind, Hibari growled and raged at the invasion, as the warmth of the other began to melt deeper than his skin and past his muscles.

Cavallone parried his initial blow, stepping back and snapping his whip, white shining upon its dark surface, this polished Western tool of vulgar make.

It became a primal dance, one that Hibari knew since his birth. It came from his very bones, hitsmashdestroy the mantra in his marrow and the chorus ringing in tandem with the cadence of his pulse.

His heart was pounding a deep, resonating drumbeat against the bones of his skull, his body moving faster than his conscious brain could keep track of, though he trusted it implicitly to not fail.

Then the other changed the rules, as he often was wont to do, the blundering fool who decided that the world molded itself to him and did as he pleased.

The whip sharply wrapped around the base of the tonfa in Hibari's left hand, and the other pulled, his bulk able to wrench Hibari out of his unyielding stance and into the unholy heat of the other's form.

Hibari snarled and twisted, intent on breakshatterKILL, but the sun was in his eyes and he couldn't see, the poison it brought through its splendor weighing down his limbs until he felt the infection infuse his entire core. It was all he could do to stay upright and breathe.

The arms wrapped around him were tight, the fingers of one hand weaving through his sweat-damped, black hair and stroking lightly against his scalp.

He was shaking, with rage or hatred or sickness, he couldn't distinguish against the whitewash in his head.

They stood as the world itself stopped and gazed with astonishment at their embrace, highlighted and conspicuous to the day and all who awoke with the dawn.

When he finally gained control of himself again, reasserting the physical strength to push the other away, Hibari fled into the cool darkness of his campus with a curse.

He allowed the shadows to swallow him whole, the dark a salve to the wounds burned into him by white-hot rays, of which he had no protection from.

So it continued, years slipping by while the other's ardor never dimmed, regardless of the rebukes it yielded.

Hibari abhorred how transparent the other was, how vividly bold the Cavallone was against everything he had ever known, a stain of garish proportion that wouldn't fade into the order of the world Hibari ruled over.

Cold rejections were his response to the passionate pleas, harsh blows to gentle caresses, anger and confusion-induced hate to affection; a cycle that remained unbroken for so long, it seemed as natural as breathing by the end.

How the Cavallone found him that night, he never did ask.

It was many years after he had grown into manhood, living in a traditionally built Japanese home, pure and simple and filled with the atmosphere so attuned to his taste, only the basic necessities of modern technology discretely installed against the aesthetic.

When he wasn't working for the Vongola and needed at his base, he returned here, where only faithful and silently loyal Kusakabe Tetsuya knew how to reach him.

Hibari was wrapped in a simple dark yukata on this warm summer's night, and was intent on returning inside from the garden when he sensed the presence of the Italian in his home.

He tilted his head and listened before opening the sliding door, the lack of the Don's inane chatter and clamoring for his attention intriguing in its peculiarity. The fact that a servant had not alerted him to the arrival of his guest also drew his notice and curiosity.

The door opened in a whisper against the palm of his hand, his feet sliding silently out of his shoes and into the slippers placed at the mouth of the entrance.

It was very dark and silent throughout the house, all of his staff suddenly absent while the tatami breathed slowly under his feet.

There was a single light lit within his bedroom, a tiny bulb installed atop a dresser at the corner farthest from the door covered by a dark shade

The man was sitting cross-legged at the end of his unrolled futon, hair matted with sweat and blood, smatters of red, green, and blue littering his tanned skin with a deep-purple of the lack of sleep adorning his eyes, suddenly deep and endless as they caught his.

The rays of the dim bulb outlined the lines around his eyes, deepened the crease between his brows, the outline of his muscles as his shoulders hunched forward, the strength still hidden in his sinew.

In this moment, in the pain of an unidentified suffering that had brought the high-flickering flame of enthusiasm into a dimmed and somber hue, Hibari stood silently and observed the other like he had never seen him before.

The gold of his hair, hidden and defiled by filth, still shone in minute sections, tiny iridescent flecks of gold that he could never before appreciate in its usual state.

The seemingly smooth skin now was rendered a darker hue that highlighted its imperfections, its scars and bruises and lacerations, as multicolored as his darkened tattoos, just as meaningful and more expressive.

He was wearing a torn and bloodied button-up shirt, color indistinguishable and unimportant, the top three buttons torn from the top and the sleeves rolled up around his forearms.

"I sent your staff away. I should say I'm sorry, but I'm not."

The Cavallone's eyes appeared almost black, the expression in them much more serious and weighted than he had ever borne witness to before.

In this state, in a tarnishing of his usual spotless persona, the one of too-bright smiles and loud words, he was striking in his vulnerability.

Hibari let out a silent sigh and stepped forward, not deigning to respond to the other's lowly voiced proclamation.

He stopped close before him, forcing the Westerner to tilt back his head to look him in the face, the lines of his throat being deepened and shaded in the half-light.

Raising one precise hand, Hibari skimmed down the line of his face, brushing against the dimmed skin with a feather-light touch.

The other breathed out shakily, blinking unsteadily as he turned his face against his fingers.

"Kyouya, please," he whispered, so softly it was almost lost in the exhalation of his lungs.

His hand moved down against the other's throat, brushing down into the hollow, eyes closely tracking his fingers' progress.

Dark irises flickered back up as he rested his fingers against the warm, beating pulse in the other's neck, letting his fingertips lightly pick back up again as he took in the toll of the injuries adorning the flesh before him.

He knelt down onto his knees and dexterously unbuttoned the shirt the rest of the way, Dino shrugging gingerly from the saturated fabric and tossing it onto the floor.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hibari saw a smear of blood swipe across the tatami, but left it, even knowing it would leave a dark stain that could only be removed by replacing the entire mat.

The lines of the other's body were saturated with soft shading and subtle highlights, beautiful in its hidden qualities and its obvious damage.

He allowed his fingers and eyes to follow along, to discover and find new abrasions and blemishes and drink them in.

This was the truth of beauty, in what was hidden and displayed by the darkness, the mystery and the uncovering of true depth through the magic of shadows, in the imperfections they reveal as earned strength and durability.

No gloss, no façade; just a highlighting of reality through the brush of obscurity. The creation the ambiguous makes with the barest flicker of illumination, the true story it tells about something when laid bare in the smallest hint of moonlight.

Dino was pliant beneath his hands, chest heaving quietly as he was pushed lightly onto his back.

He painfully pulled himself all the way back onto the futon cover, straightening his legs as Hibari tossed away his slippers and threw one pale limb across his hips, leaning over and drenching him in yet more shadow.

Dino tasted of blood, metal, and the adrenaline of a fight gone on too long. Of desperation and pain, the flavors different for both emotional and physical distress.

Of murder and chaos and the dark itself, winding around a sweet tang of Dino's true essence, the sun and all its golden rays, overwhelmed and muted, yet still thriving, unable to be fully smothered.

Hibari smoothed his hands down the other's chest, feeling the Italian's breath hitch as he brushed over his darkened nipples and scraped his nails lightly over fresh bruises.

He bit at the other's throat, moving down to lave at the darkened crease between neck and shoulder, relishing the saltiness of the blood on his tongue while Dino moaned and bucked against him.

Hibari reached and untied his obi, allowing the material of his yukata to fall around them, blocking them entirely from the room at large, from all but each other, close enough to breathe in the other's air as they panted and groaned softly, skin against skin and hearts racing as nerves were lit on fire.

They lost themselves in the dusk, in each other, in the secret of a house not known on the night of an unknown tragedy, and found instead something never before seen, and never uttered beyond the cover of the night.

The dark headiness of their passion was intoxicating, surreal even as the shadows danced and writhed around them in a pantomime, silent and preternatural.

When the tiny bulb was later extinguished, and the complete blanket of black surrounded them, the sweet smell of tatami filled the warm room as they lay tangled together.

They were unseen by all but the dark itself, breathing together in their sheltered exposure, warm and fulfilled and unguarded in the cover of the darkness.

In this manner, the sun was never able to touch them and lay them bare to the world at large. They were a secret kept by forces of obscurity, never to be touched except by each other and the shades protecting them.