un regalo per atanih88 (original) (raw)

you are my sweetest downfall
by ? // for atanih88

characters/pairings: Mukuro/Tsuna
rating: PG
warnings: A bit all over the place.
wordcount: 1,138

summary: Snapshots of a snapshot; Mukuro spirits Tsuna away to an imaginary place.
notes: I interpreted liberally.

It’s very cold, Mukuro thinks.

So very cold.

“What is this place?” Tsuna asks, squints against the midday sun. White sand shines blindingly, and palms bend in the ocean breeze.

“This,” Mukuro says, and he opens his arms wide, “Is everywhere and nowhere, Tsunayoshi. The inside of a snow globe, the rings on Saturn. We have travelled far, but not moved an inch.”

“Oh,” Tsuna says. And then, a little stupidly, “It looks like a beach.”

Mukuro gives him a look. “It is a beach.”

“Oh,” Tsuna says again. He picks up a seashell and holds it up to the light. It’s pinkish and delicate-looking. “A beach…in your mind?” he hazards.

This seemingly irritates Mukuro, because he scoffs and says, “Do I have to explain to you the difference between illusions and ‘in my mind?”

Yes, Tsuna thinks, yes, you probably do, but out loud he says, reasonably, “Yeah, well, the images have to come from somewhere right? I thought it might be somewhere special to you.” He kicks off his shoes and walks past Mukuro, over the non-existent burning sand into the cold imaginary water.

Mukuro doesn’t look at him at all; just turns his face to the fantasy sun and says, “It’s nowhere special.”

He’d said “Thank-you”, you know, and he’d looked at him with those great brown eyes all sincere. Well now; such a young boy, such an innocent thing.

It’d be trite to say that he’d reminded Mukuro of himself -of a younger, purer Mukuro- but no – he’d never been anything like that at all.

No, nothing alike at all – but maybe that’s where the fascination began.

“I know you hate the mafia,” Tsuna says without preamble. He steeples his fingers, and tries to look austere. “I’m not asking you to throw out your beliefs.”

“I’m asking you to help me destroy the mafia.”

And Mukuro looks startled, genuinely surprised for once. He blinks at Tsuna once, twice, and then throws back his head and laughs.

“Oh, Tsunayoshi,” he says, voice thick with mirth, “You would take on the cause of every orphan in the world if you could,” like it’s an insult.

Tsuna frowns and struggles to suppress his embarrassed flush – years of practicing to ask out Kyoko help. He waits patiently until Mukuro’s laughter subsides.

“Well?” he asks.

With a smirk and a bow, Mukuro takes Tsuna’s hand and gently kisses his fingertips. He glances up and positively leers. “As long as it’s convenient for me.”

And, with a grin and a shiver, Tsuna replies: “I wouldn’t expect any less.”

In that (this) dark and lonely place, eyes taped closed, no amount of artificial sun could (can) warm his bones.

In this (that) dark and cold and lonely place, the oxygen burns (burned) his lungs, and his heart beats (beat) sluggishly in his chest.

“There aren’t any fish.”

Mukuro turns to him with a clear ‘what’ expression, so Tsuna repeats himself. “In your sea. There aren’t any fish.”

His answer is a scowl and a terse “I don’t like fish” -which is probably meant as a kind of jibe- but Tsuna shrugs it off. He can see his feet through the water, resting on white rippled sand and multitudes of unbroken pink seashells. Despite the heat of the sun prickling sweat on the back of Tsuna’s neck, his submerged feet are dead, dead cold.

He doubts Mukuro would swim in it.

“There should be fish,” he says after a while. “Otherwise it’s lonely, in the ocean.”’

Tsuna glances sidelong at Mukuro to find him watching, hair whipping about in the breeze.

He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t need to.

Tsuna feels himself start to smile.

“Shall we go together?”

The trident was a heavy, foreign weight in his palm, and his feet were sticky with blood (he thinks he can taste it still). It had been easy, you know, so very easy.

He’d been through all six paths to hell, but he had brothers, now.

Chrome is a tender smile and a fragile breath; that’s how he remembers her best.

“Boss,” she says, stands patiently on the other side of his desk. “Boss, it’s getting harder.”

Tsuna reaches across his desk and presses his hand against her cold ones, curled around her trident. He watches as her eyes flutter shut, squeeze; her shirt buckles around her abdomen. He wants to say something comforting, something to let her know that it’ll be all right.

He wants to be able to lie to her. But the words seize up in his throat and all he can do is watch, watch as she flakes away into Rokudo Mukuro.

Somewhere (nowhere), there’s a beach where the sand is a little too white, the sky a little too blue and the water a little too clear. There’s a beach that’s kinda flat and over-saturated like a photo from some newsagent postcard printed with ‘wish you were here’s and the name of some pacific island; a beach that looks like a pastiche of vague and childish fantasies, perfect and glossy and blurred at the edges.

Somewhere, there’s a beach where the sun is always shining but the little boy who lives there still feels the cold in his bones.

His face is pale and waxy when he appears, sweat shine and dark eyes. This is how Tsuna will forget him best.

Mukuro splays his hand, stark against the dark wood of the desk and pulls himself up and over, clambering across to wrestle a fist in Tsuna’s shirt. He grins his most luxuriant; licks his lips.

“What are you doing,” Tsuna says, willing himself calm, “Mukuro?” He reaches up to press a hand to Mukuro’s throat: but he doesn’t push, just leaves it there as a warning. Beneath his palm, Mukuro’s pulse beats, slow.

“You should keep yourself better protected, Tsunayoshi.”

Tsuna merely raises an eyebrow and leaves his hand where it is. They should both know who’s in control here. Tsuna opens his mouth to tell him to back off, when he thinks he catches something in Mukuro’s expression, a crack, something breaking, some shiver of truth. Mukuro releases Tsuna’s shirt and slowly moves his hand to Tsuna’s cheek.

Tsuna’s mind races blank. He doesn’t understand at all. Mukuro tips his forehead to touch Tsuna’s.

Whispers against his mouth, “Shall we go together?”

Then he kisses Tsuna, and the world explodes in blue.

On a beach, in an illusion, in someone’s mind, there’s a boy who stands ankle deep in the too-clear water on the too-white sand and complains about the lack of fish.

And on a beach, in an illusion, in Mukuro’s mind, Tsuna turns to him and grins so blindingly that Mukuro can feel it in his bones — can feel it in his distant heart, beat longingly in his chest.