Chapter Text
Life in Namimori, you think, is comparable to a compassionate state of limbo; all disguised as an out-of-the-way city lookalike in the middle of nowhere.
The adults were simple-minded in the best way, well-meaning gossipers and humble family stores. It was a sleepy city reminiscent of a town in the way everyone at least heard of each other. Headlines in newspapers were mostly about technological advances in the world and, oddly enough, weather patterns around the sphere.
This was the sort of place, you slowly realized over time, where the rich were most likely to buy a vacation house. It explained the overabundance of western-oriented shops that were commonplace here, but none of the ads on TV channels seemed to take advantage of.
You had no problem with this.
The kids were something else though. You gave the ongoing crowd of wrinkled, white button-ups and black slacks a hard stare from your spot by the corner wall. It was a mystery why they were are they all so…
…
…
With a sigh, you gave up after several minutes of trying to find the ever elusive word that you have searched for years yet again, else you might end up nursing a migraine for half the day.
Never has it been so difficult to describe something as off-putting as the collective subconscious that were the teenagers of Namimori. Every day since elementary school, odd occurrences kept acting up; from the prodigy at baseball with a cheerful grin but eerily sharp eyes no one seemed to find creepy (or notice at all), to the wild, destructive older classmen duo who never stopped fighting, to the strange obsession the overall alumni had with idols.
(In your late elementary days you realized that was more of a Japan thing you weren’t quite aware of, because of your severe lack of interest in TV to the exception of Featherman Rider, but your point still stood. Idol personalities were one thing, kids rumoring about other kids as if the school was a beauty pageant was just… Ugly.)
'Demon Prefect', 'Baseball star', 'School angel', 'No-good Tsuna'. All of these titles were nonsensical and silly to you. All but the last one, the last one was rude more so than just ‘silly’, but it still held the melodramatic theme Namimori upheld like a tradition. They never sat quite right with you, always in the back of your mind like a rock in your shoe, or a splinter caught in your sock.
The bell rang.
The shrill tone signified the start of classes and a countdown of a narrow five-minute mark until Hibari came to deliver punishment. You tried to slow down your frantic heartbeat and the sense of dread the thought of Hibari Kyouya chasing you down with no easy success. Eventually, you manage, but time was still running.
Another look around and you see students rushing to their classrooms, silent from all but a handful of curses and hurried footsteps. A barely-there shriek has you turning away from the masses, smile well on its way as you spot a bedhead of uncoordinated spikes approaching.
Your best friend's impressive set of lungs fail him just about as he reaches for-- grapples for, really -- onto your awaiting extended arm. His wheezing fit turns into a shriek once more as you give him half a spin like a mediocre scene of shoujo manga, before letting go of his hand just as abruptly. Tsuna braces himself against the wall with a hack as you try not to laugh at him.
"Why do you always do that..." He sobs to the wall.
You shrug, plucking away a curl from your bangs that was in the way. There’s no time to explain to Tsuna the intricacies of centrifugal force, so instead, you give him a moment of respite before inspiring the fear of Namimori's not-quite deity onto him, telling him that according to your wristwatch it's been three minutes already.
He doesn't make that fun screech of his again but instead takes on a sick complexion that makes his freckles stand out. This time he’s the one who drags you away into the building, sweaty hand around your shaking wrist, your body still trembling with the force of holding the laughter back.
The two of you aren’t on time for the first lecture, but at least manage to avoid Hibari by the strategic use of taking a bathroom break for the entirety of the first period.
"I could’ve stayed in bed..." Tsuna mourns rather loudly from his spot at the stall next door.
Well, at the end of the morning, he did not stay in bed. Which was what got them where they were in the first place. You tell him that.
"We didn't even get to class!" He barks back. You can hear him sulking all the way over from your seat.
If you weren’t at the entryway, you knew he would have skipped the entire day.
"We aren't even doing anything!" Tsuna continues wailing as if he heard your thoughts. Knowing his occasional streak of sass, he probably guessed it was something along those lines.
Finally, you remind him amidst his fit of despair that Hibari did not act alone. He’s the head of the Disciplinary Committee.
Then there’s that sweet, vindictive silence.
"Again? Wow, can’t even pull his own weight."
“You’d think [-X-X-X] would stop dragging him here.”
“Yeah, just let him sink- ”
Classes went as per usual once both of you got out of the bathroom, barely slipping inside in time as your Homeroom and Math teachers changed places. You nudge Tsuna to wave back at his crush, who spotted you waving after her faithful companion beside her pointed you out.
“She even smiled and everything.” You stage a fake-whisper to him on the way to the window seats. Tsuna, predictably, glares feebly back at you and lights up like a flame, but doesn't say anything in fear of making a scene.
The highlight of your day comes in the shape of poking at Tsuna’s back through classes to keep him awake, you make little cat doodles on his blazer to pass the time. He grumbles more often than not but gets a few scribbles on his notebook through each lecture. You still take a few notes here and there, more for his benefit than your own, in hopes later on your study sessions things won’t be as dire nearing finals week.
On recess, you had to change your lunch spot from the stairs to somewhere behind the gym building to avoid bumping into Hibari. No one’s usually there, but it's close enough to notice when the chatter of lunch dies down and it’s time to leave again. There was no way he'd pay enough attention to two students skipping the first period to go after you, but the unanimous decision was better to be safe than beaten to a pulp.
In place of the head disciplinarian, you had an encounter with Kyoko Sasagawa on the way downstairs, the school's sweetheart and Tsuna's aforementioned crush, and therefore had a standstill stare contest with one Hana Kurokawa. It was your duty to keep your awkward best friend from becoming a stuttering mess, and thus declined their invitation to have lunch together.
Kurokawa gave both of you a rendition of her disdainful sneer as you dragged Tsuna away, while Sasagawa looked slightly disappointed in a way you couldn’t tell if she was just being polite or not. The walk to your spot gives Tsuna's brain just enough time to regress from a gooey pot of honey from swooning over the girl of his dreams.
He still has a faraway look on his eyes when he gets his lunch out of his bag. You immediately notice Tsuna’s mother gave him two bento again, so you waste no time in whisking your portion away from his hands.
“Thank you!” You chirp, tugging your chopsticks open.
Your amusement starts its daily trek up mountains as he haunches over his own food, as if you were to take it too if given the opportunity. Not a bad move, you concede. You might start picking off from his bento if your stomach so demanded it.
“What if it wasn’t even yours?” He grumbles, wearing a frown as if it was enough to dissuade your appetite.
Up to the mountains, the entertainment continues, climbing a beanstalk to the skies for greater heights. “You don’t eat that much, Tsuna.” You tease, swishing a tako sausage from your box in front of him like a pendulum, before popping it inside your mouth.
“I-I’m still growing!” He refutes with just as much force as a wallflower. His face turns a darker hue before spitting a hasty ‘freeloader’ at you, as if the quicker it was out of his mouth the less time you would have to react to it, and then ducks hastily to pick at his lunch.
I pay you back with my presence. You fire back in your mind. It’s a thought without malice, but you still hold it back. You know his self-esteem is a fragile thing, even after all these years of trying to get him to grow a backbone. You smile at him instead, carefully sidelining the spark of pride blooming inside your chest and the gentle urge to encourage him. With your abysmal conversational skills, it'd sound too condescending, like you were praising a dog or something equally as demeaning when you sincerely meant it. “You sure? the only thing I see growing from over here is your hair, Tsunayoshi.”
Tsuna squints down at his bento, and then vehemently tries to ignore you for the rest of the meal.
Entertainment dies down after that. You go to class again, take notes, and think briefly of joining some sort of extracurricular before shrugging it away. Tsuna wouldn’t want to unless it was some sort of geek club, and so it’d cut your time to hang out. You fall to match his pace on the walk back to his house, watching as the lazy clouds pass by.
There’s a flicker from your side vision, the bright flames surrounding him like a blanket picking up a slightly different rhythm than usual. You can't tell if he’s troubled or thoughtful, either way, it doesn’t bode well. It doesn’t take long for him to speak.
“Hey,” he begins and doesn’t even bother pretending to be startled when his eyes meet yours. Maybe you had been too obvious with your staring, but what’s surprising about this, however, is the fact he doesn’t look away this time. It only happens for a moment, but his eyes meet yours long enough to see a flash of something you can't quite recognize.
That's definitively odd, you muse, feeling curiosity already taking hold of you as you try to get a better look at his face. Whatever look was on his face before was gone now, but what's clear as day was his hesitation to tell you something. You lean forward, and Tsuna doesn't step back but he does look away from you.
“Wasn’t today…" Tsuna says, clearing his throat and looking at you head-on for a second time, as if trying to communicate some sort of message by expression alone. It's not a talent of yours to read minds, certainly, but you do know him best out of anyone.
All you see is him grasping at straws, so you don't say anything back and let him sit on it.
He deflates, shoulders drooping "Something feels off, is all." Is what he settles for, at the end.
The snail-like pace you two had been walking comes to a stop and he follows suit. Thinking back on the day, nothing struck you as different, but by now you have keyed on the fact that Tsuna was better at telling when something fell on the weirdness-o-meter between the two of you. If today was a boring day…
“It was quiet,” you agree with some caution, the little hamster inside its cage picking up the pace. “And other than escaping Hibari-” you halt, throat suddenly parched. By now he probably had the attendance records. He knew you didn't attend class.
Tsuna catches on, paling an accurate grey along with the monochromatic background. The flames follow to match in a similarly hurried tandem.
“Tomorrow won’t be a good day. Not a good day at all.” You shrug with ease you have no business even trying to emulate.
Tsuna winces right after, he isn't fooled either. “Maybe… We can skip it?” He suggests.
Either way, you’d be punished, it was a matter of how long you wanted to delay it. There really wasn’t much of a choice.
“You know what, Tsuna? That’s a great idea.” You lie through your teeth and Tsuna cracks a smile. “Let’s do that.” You say.
“...D-do you want to sleep over?”
That at least, makes you smile for real.
“We can do that too.”
Nana’s welcoming smile washes away some of the impending doom looming over your heads for a bit. You eat her amazing cooking tonight and show off to your parents by sending as much of a stylish photo as you could with the crappy camera on your slide phone. Your father sends back an 'OK' and you snap your phone shut.
There’s something particular about tonight that makes it feel like the calm before the storm. Like this might be the last day you might be able to have such a casual sleepover like this.
For old times sake, you race Tsuna up to his room and snatch away the first controller to beat him at Alleyway Fisticuffs III.
You win once by shoving him away on a crucial combo and then he bodies you for the rest of the matches.
Tonight you were having your first sleepover.
It began as one of your special hangouts, where the planets aligned and Sawada's mother managed to placate her skittish son enough to invite you inside. This time you remembered your house phone correctly, so your parents let you stay with a reminder to call on the morning right after saying the magical word that was 'sleepover'.
You ate dinner with them. It tasted just a little better than the take-out at home; you didn’t eat much because miss Sawada was staring and prompting conversation the whole time.
Sometimes when you came by, Sawada let you look at his manga, always anxiously awaiting a verdict. He read slice of life and bishounen hop. He always got flustered you got upstairs first and turned on the last game on his console too, it was usually a fighting game or a dating sim. Everything was so new to you that there wasn’t much you could say other than they were ‘okay’ or ‘interesting’.
This time you were on his balcony because out of the million things you read on the internet, stargazing was one of the few that didn't involve make-up or ghost stories or some game that didn't involve more than two people. Now the both of you were sitting on the floor and looking outside.
You couldn’t think of much to say, the air was warm and the sky mesmerizing-- it was making you sleepy. You liked the nighttime best.
(Daytime was okay, but the sun was too bright to look at the sky. The moon always shone in a way that didn’t hurt your eyes, lukewarm and soothing. The night sky both terrified and dazed you, it looked like you could get sucked in with the stars at any moment if you looked at it for too long.)
Quiet as creaking glass, Sawada cleared his throat. You turned to find him looking just as lonely as you had first found him huddled under a tree at the schoolyard. Sawada was folding into himself, tense as a coiled spring. It gave you the impression he was bracing himself for something.
"Why are you friends with me?" He mumbled to his knees.
A chill ran down your spine despite the summer air. I don’t know. Was the immediate response you didn’t answer in a tacit moment of sensibility, suddenly alarmed to find that words were failing you again. You were wise enough not to mention it crossed your mind and instead tried for a smile.
It felt like bending plastic.
“You're a good person, Sawada." You eventually mumbled back, and bit your tongue from saying any more. He didn’t move.
In the time it took you to answer, Sawada had retreated further into himself, forcing you to look away. You wouldn’t want to be seen so vulnerable, so you figured neither would he. "I'm not good at anything, I’m dumb and clumsy and--" he whispered, voice fading away the further he went on. There was a moment where he looked like he was going to say more, but all he could choke out was a hiccup.
There should have been words you could have said to make him feel better, there must have been, and yet none came to you. No pep talk because despite the months you’ve been friends with him, it hasn’t been long enough to know him well, no magic words of friendship because you’ve always been lacking on social points. All you knew was that he had to be wrong somewhere, but you didn’t understand where either. He wasn’t that smart, and he could barely walk straight most days with that haunched back of his. He was right more than he was wrong.
Sawada's also your only friend.
You watched the stars twinkle, uncomfortable in your own skin like every time you were faced with yet another forced conversation. You couldn't avoid this one though, you didn't want to, you wanted to reassure him. Why couldn’t you?
Silence slowly trickled by.
Once it became clear that your mind was conspiring against both of you, you decided that a simple answer is better than none, even if it wasn’t the one he deserved. “Lonely.” You managed to piece together. “I was lonely, we both were.” You admitted slowly. A part of you wished he wasn’t close enough to hear.
You heard the shuffle of his shoes against the floor. "Oh." It hurt a little how nonchalant he sounded. There was nothing to gauge out of it, nothing to tell you if it was the right or the wrong thing to say.
At that moment, fear made your heart skip a beat. Tsunayoshi Sawada was your friend, the only friend that you had, but even for him, you couldn’t lie for. He deserved better than that, better than you, and better than this... But you didn’t want to lie.
Honesty was all you had to offer, it was all you knew. You always had the bad luck of your gut talking before thinking things through, so you continued on; even if it felt like walking barefoot on quicksand. No matter which way you walked, it’d drag you deeper down.
"Whenever I'm alone, I feel really bad and start thinking of things that scare me a little… Like something’s wrong with me.”
(Don’t be so cold dear, they’re just trying to make conversation, won’t you talk with them?
Won't you smile? Come on, don't be so shy.
Say something! People are going to think you're mute.
It’s rude to stare, X-X-X. You’re making me look bad.)
Your fingers curled into your palm, and this time it was you who hid away. “You help, even... Even if you don't know how, and um," You fumbled midway trying to explain, and a soon as you stuttered your mouth clamped down like it was glued shut out of sheer mortification. It didn't matter how comfortable the night air was before, now it had a biting chill to it and all you could think- all you could feel was humiliation burning your face and clogging your throat.
You didn’t think he’d understand if you explained anymore, not after how badly you screwed up. you didn't think you could explain even if you wanted to.
You heard him shuffle closer, but didn't want to look. "I'm... Helping you?" He sniffed, hacked a bit, and overall didn’t sound as embarrassed as he should be for how awed he was coming off with that sentence of his. That’s okay, you could feel embarrassed for the both of you, your cheeks certainly thought so. Why did he sound so amazed?
"Yeah.” You scrubbed your face and sniffed a little to hold the worst of the itch back. “I don't feel lonely with you around, Sawada.”
Somehow, terrible friend as you were, when you looked up you saw Sawada smiling. Big and wobbly, with snot leaking from his nose and teary-eyed, but he was smiling like you just gave him every New Years present he ever asked for. "T-Tsuna is okay..." He whispered, moving close enough to bump his knees onto yours. It almost felt like a hug. "If we're friends, you can call me Tsuna."
In that moment you realized hope felt a lot like the stars up high. Tiny but so, so incredibly bright.
"Okay. You can call me X-X-X too."
This time you didn't notice you were smiling until he hugged you so tight it ended with the both of you flat on the floor.
Laughing, smiling...
That was the first time it ever felt so free.