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One night, Reborn tells Skull his name, the one he had before he was Reborn.
They're in Reborn's bed when he says it, in one of his various residences scattered across Europe. Safehouses, he calls them, but Skull had privately thought they'd looked more like summer homes than anything else — Reborn had certainly put in enough effort into their interior decorating for them to qualify. Most safehouses, as far as Skull is aware, don't have plush carpets in their living rooms, or original Renaissance art pieces hanging on their walls.
They sleep under separate duvets, because Reborn is an incorrigible blanket stealer (not that Skull will ever say that to his face) and Skull has the tendency to sleep like he's a WWII soldier fighting for his life. Some time in the middle of the night, he has gravitated towards Reborn, plastering his back against Reborn's chest in an unconscious bid for warmth, and tonight is one of the rare occasions where Reborn allows it, arm draped loosely around Skull's waist. This is also when he says it, breathing the words into the nape of Skull's neck, so quiet it sounds like a casual afterthought.
For a single, delusional moment, Skull almost thinks he's talking in his sleep…but the silence that stretches is too quiet, too still, to be anything other than wholly deliberate. Reborn doesn't freeze — his control over himself is far too ironclad for that —, but Skull hears his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest so perfectly measured that he knows, suddenly, that Reborn hadn't meant to say it.
Skull…doesn't know how to react.
The Arcobaleno do not often talk about their pasts. To some, it is a weakness. To others, it is simply unnecessary, something to be left behind in the footfalls of history. Perhaps unsurprisingly, politics also plays a hand in their secrecy — the I Prescelti Sette are urban myths, legends spread within the most prestigious of criminal communes. Possessing power and influence beyond compare, it has been said that they exist outside the sphere of mafia society, untethered by its rules yet perpetually present in every area of consequence; history has quite literally been made around their whims and disputes, wars won and lost according to whomever they chose to grant their favour.
Consequently, the Arcobaleno have a vested interest in maintaining the clandestine nature of their identities. Myths are to be idolised, admired, feared; to be spoken of but never named. By concealing their origins, they are also, in part, maintaining their reputations.
Like most of them, Reborn always speaks of his early life as if it is a separate being, something to be sliced away and removed cleanly like a malignant tumour. The only difference is how they run from it — they have all buried their pasts, in some way, but in Skull's eyes, Reborn's shovel has always dug the deepest.
"It's a good name," Skull says, slowly, but no less genuine. He feels Reborn's eyes on his back, and abruptly feels like he's been tossed into the middle of the ocean, lost without any mode of navigation.
Fon would know what to say, with his serene eloquence and wise words. Lal, too, with her experience in the CEDEF, would probably understand. Hell, even Mammon would be a better option, what with their obsession with keeping their personal affairs under lock and key. Though having long been assimilated into the mafia, Skull had lived the first twenty years of his life as a civilian — he doesn't understand the need to leave the Before behind to the extent the other Arcobaleno do, to bury his real name so thoroughly that it exists only in the distant past.
He isn't sure what that says of him, that he's willing to try regardless. But then again, he's not a stuntman for nothing. He tap-dances on the line between life and death with every new performance, and he lives for it, for the thrill in his blood and the roaring applause of the adoring crowd, would die for it — has died for it, once, twice, a hundred times. All in all, this isn't much different from that.
At his reply, Reborn huffs a laugh tinged in derision, but says nothing. His lips brush across the nape of Skull's neck, and Skull resists the instinctual urge to shiver when he feels the scrape of blunt teeth on the soft skin of his jugular. He wishes he could turn over to see Reborn's face, but knows that Reborn would never allow it, not in this moment.
No one alive today knows Reborn's original name. Even back in the 1960s, his first known appearance in the mafia, he'd already been operating under the title of Reborn, and just like most of the Arcobaleno, any potential documentation pertaining to his early life has long since been lost to time. Perhaps Vongola Nono had known, but if he had, that was a secret he'd taken with him to the grave.
No one knows Skull's original name either. But that's only natural, seeing as even he himself doesn't. In contrast, every single person who had once known Reborn before he was Reborn is now dead, either from old age, external interferences, or by Reborn's own hand.
And now, Skull is the only person in the world with this knowledge. He wonders if Reborn is going to kill him for it, too.
Outside, the moon shines softly through the curtained window, spinning gossamer beams of silver across the floor.
"I left that name behind a long time ago," Reborn says, finally.
Skull isn't surprised. His alias itself proves it: Reborn. Reborn from what, Skull had wondered, the first time they had met. Had voiced it, in fact, and had ended up getting shot at for his troubles. Turns out, the answer had been right there all along.
Slowly, he turns to his other side.
He's mildly astonished when Reborn lets him, his arm adjusting around Skull's waist to allow him room to move. Now, Skull can finally see him. But if he's displaying any emotion on his face, Skull can't see it; the liquid darkness of the room softens his features and blurs his expression. It makes him look gentle, like his silence is anything other than the calm before the storm, the tsunami, the moment of quiet before the eruption that devastates everything in its wake.
(He and Fon are similar, in this way. It's why they both get along so well and yet end up antagonising each other so often.)
"Senpai," Skull starts.
"Don't call me that," Reborn interrupts, before stilling. Even he seems surprised at the vehemence in his voice.
Skull pauses. "...Reborn?" The name feels strange in his mouth without the added Japanese honourific (something that had started off as a joke but grew to become part of their relationship), clunky like speaking around a bag of marbles.
Silence. It extends into a hushed stillness that rings deafeningly through the room.
Skull blinks. He thinks for one, two, three moments.
He says Reborn's original name.
Reborn stares back at him. In his dark eyes is the flat silence of the ocean waters before a tidal wave, the slow, ponderous rotation of a burgeoning typhoon. The unnatural stillness in a clear sky as a storm bears down on the coast beyond, thunder crackling in a spear of sound.
"Say it again," he says.
Skull does.
A moment passes, before suddenly, that silent feeling of oppression disappears. Reborn blinks languidly, like a satisfied house cat, and tightens his hold on Skull's waist. Skull doesn't know the reason behind this most recent mood swing, but he has the distinct feeling that he's passed something. Passed what, he doesn't know, but maybe he'll find out later.
"Go to sleep, Skull," Reborn orders, "it's late."
"And whose fault is that?" Skull grouses, but ultimately doesn't argue; it is late, and he's tired. He can barely keep his eyes open at his point, sleep tugging at his senses.
Reborn hums low in his throat. "Yours, of course."
Skull huffs, rolling his eyes, but does give into the desire to close them. He sighs, pulling his duvet tighter around himself. "Night, Reborn."
When sleep welcomes him, he doesn't resist.
"Good night, Skull," he thinks he hears Reborn murmur, before he falls asleep.