[khr] reel around the fountain

[gigantomachy]

more tumblr dumping; this one's ancient (like, 2012 ancient), but never found a home anywhere else.  Yamamoto as an actual active member of an actual goddamn mafia family fascinated me a lot when I was balls deep in this series!  I'll give it a generous M for a little bit of Dino/Yama at the end and also, y'know, murder.

 one.

(then I could remember to breathe)

See, you were a normal kid, with normal, unextraordinary dreams.  Sure, some of your classmates wanted to be JDF heroes, and some wanted to whaler captains, and some wanted to be rock stars, and you certainly weren’t the only kid that wanted to play in the big leagues.

The only remarkable thing was the fact that everyone thought you had a chance.

You remember those days, curled up on one end of the sofa while your father sipped Kirin, lazy and content and you’d talk about the shop or baseball or classes during commercial breaks.  (He was rarely straight-forward enough to tell you how proud he was, or how much he believed in you, but he never needed to, did he?  The way his eyes shone every time he said your name was enough.  When he mentioned his boy to a customer or to your friends.  When he handed you Shigure Kintoki.  It was always more than enough.)

That day, standing high above Namimori – the first and only time you ever cursed your luck and your fragile body, you’d known your life was over.  There had only been space for one great love inside you, and you’d never learned to say goodbye.  You’d never needed to before.

You’d never needed to accustom yourself to betrayal either, much less betrayal when the traitor was inside your bones.

It was never that you were melodramatic, only that you you simply couldn’t imagine a life without that love that you knew kept your heart beating.

And then there was Tsuna. Weird, scrawny, no-good Tsuna, wild and frightened and reaching out to you despite that, the strangest lifeline, glittering and golden in the sunlight.  It was a whole new feeling, just enough to give you pause, a moment to reconsider.  You weren’t familiar with this sort of gesture, either.  It was usually you with a hand outstretched – you’d simply never needed it.  You wondered, then, what it must be like to have a difficult life –

– and you knew the entire thing was laughable.  Bones break, hearts break, but only the most hopeless break with them.

Not people like Tsuna.

Not people, you decided, like you.

.

two.
(you could change my world.)

It’s been a year since you all came back from that terrifying future.  Your head has hurt for weeks as your life shifts around, memories of that time slipping away like waking dreams, gauzy and vague, just beyond your reach.

It’s left a mark on each of you, left you wiser, harder, more willing to believe in the things that you hear will carve places in your life.  Stronger, no matter how often Squalo insists otherwise.

If you return from missions and nervous green eyes survey your face just a little too quickly before finding something to complain about, what’s it to you?

And if, in those quiet moments, you remember the sensation of silver-sheathed fingers where once only your own had been, what is there to say?

.

three.
(allow this year before the world starts to end.)

When you were twelve, there was a grey tabby tomcat that lived in the alley behind your father’s shop.  Mangy and skinny beyond belief, you’d taken to it immediately, stopping each morning to leave out gifts; a can of tuna, a saucer of milk, a handful tuna skin left over from the sushi party the night before.

It seemed obvious the tattered old tom was unused to affection.  He hid in the shadows and hissed each time you left your offerings, but they were always gone by the time you returned, cans and dishes licked clean and scattered across the concrete like afterthoughts.

.

four.
(born and raised for the job.)

There’s a hand on your shoulder, but your eyes are locked on the obscene slash of blood across your knuckles, your nose stinging from the acrid stench of gunpowder, your ears ringing in the aftermath of the shot.

You have fought men before.  You have faced and toppled toppled impossible foes.  You have injured, you have dealt grievous wounds on your opponents … you have defeated, but you have never killed.

It’s two fifteen a.m; you are crouched in the shadows of an alley in Palermo, just streets away from the storied Vucciria.  It’s strange, you think, that now the gunpowder reek has lessened you can clearly sense the phantom odors of strawberries and tomatoes and swordfish, as if centuries of market smells have somehow permeated the walls of this grand, ancient city.

You are half-way through the summer of your seventeenth year, and you have been shepherded here to this strange foreign country to commit your first murder.  The corpse sprawled across the worn cobblestones was once a terrible man, a known trafficker in children for brothels across the sea, who runs a sideline business selling quinine-cut heroin to the city’s most vulnerable.  

His death will affect hundreds of lives – if not thousands – for the better.  Cavallone assured of you of that much with a murmur and a brush of a fur at your wrist as he pressed the Beretta into your hand. Softly.  Quietly.  Solemnly.  

As if you needed assurance at all.

Fingers dig against the black wool of your jacket, and even when you stand Hibari’s hand is a heavy weight, a silent caution – you can’t remember the last time he touched you voluntarily outside of a spar, and for the first time this evening you feel the faintest hint of apprehension.

“Be careful,” he breathes, the words little more than a puff of air against your cheek.   You lift your eyes and study the car that brought you here, the way Cavallone watches you like he’s waiting for the street to swallow you whole, the glint in Reborn’s eye as he tugs his fedora lower.  Oh, you can smell the danger here, as sharp and terrible as the blood and shit stench of the corpse at your feet, and you feel a faint tug at the corner of your mouth.  The moment of uncertainty passes, though you feel touched at even the idea of his concern.

So uncharacteristic of him.

“Hesitate, herbivore.  Or they’ll–”  It’s a snarl now, and this time you look at him, really look at him, and something in your face forces his mouth closed, compels his silence.  That glare is replaced, edged with a certain new sharpness now, and it seems somehow sad.  It is the wary respect of a hunter recognizing another for the first time.

So unnecessary.

You know.

This may be your first murder, but you know there’s a reason why Disney never made cute movies about the mafia.  You’ve known, since that very first time you drew your sword against another human being, when a boy your age with an animal’s face tried to take your life.  You heard the baby, didn’t you, when you stood in defense of the ring you’d been given?

Since the day Tsuna saved your life, your life has been one inexorable march forward, each step matching the shadow of an impossible infant with an equally impossible mission, the conclusion as unremarkable as it is inevitable.

There will be a next time.  And a next.  Outside of Sawada’s sight, the family has molded you into … this.

You close your eyes and offer him a smile as you step away, bending to pick up the bullet casing before you return to the car, where Cavallone accepts the gun, butt-first, in silence.  For the time you are grateful that he offers no platitudes, no scripted words of comfort or congratulations, no arm-around-the-shoulder, welcome-to-the-club sort of camaraderie.  He moves aside, and you take a moment to wipe the blood away before you climb inside.

You may not yet be the perfect assassin Reborn prophesied.

There’s still time, yet.

.

five.
(and lead me through babylon.)

You didn’t think it would be anything like this.  In all those never-quite-remembered dreams, lazy and lucid and teasing, it wasn’t golden hair slipping through your fingers, wasn’t you with your back pressed against the cool stone wall of a vast Italian mansion, wasn’t this man’s fingers tugging aside your tie, slender fingers scrabbling over your collarbones and beneath the fabric of your shirt.  The mouth you half-remember didn’t taste like cinnamon and sugar at all.

The way he watches you, narrow-eyed and sympathetic, feels like he might know that too.

It’s not enough for either of you to say anything, and so you let your doubts sink beneath the surface of your thoughts, offering yourself as you have in so many other things.  And it’s fine, really – you trust him as you trust few others.  It feels like he’s been there, watching, the entire time; it’s his hand that’s guided you through the darkest corridors of your new life, and why not this, too?

In those dreams it was all smooth skin and shared breaths, quiet and intimate, and so you find yourself surprised by the intensity of the real thing, the spicy scent of aftershave and Frangelico, the sudden heat of breath against your ribs, the surprised grunt when he smacks his hand against his desk.  It’s loud and strange and the fact that he doesn’t seem remotely bothered by it only seems to make you more nervous.  But it’s good, too – different but maybe better, you think, as you’re tugged close, held tight against a body all hard curves and secret hollows and he’s laughing, teaching, encouraging even now, even as he’s unraveling you piece by piece.

Hold on, he says, and you do.

That night you dream of green eyes, disappointed, accusing.  

You have trouble sleeping for a week.