Reborn drabbles.
Five, I think. We'll see. Digging 'em outta chat as I go. They're all short.
Hibari is always cold.
Dino/Hibari and, uh, vague plays on words. And vague allusions to sex. And broken fingers, LOL. Kyouya's not a ray of sunshine. D:
Untitled Sunshine
Hibari is always cold. His blood is thin, and his skin is pale, and he wears scarves in the winter, fingers shoved deep into his pockets. He's always cold, cold fingertips and cold ears and cold eyes, staring at Dino impassively.
"Your hands are so cold, Kyouya!" He breathes, puffs of warm breaths, and cups his hands, tan and big and calloused, from the strain and stretch of leather, around Hibari's. Hibari's hands look frail and delicate in comparison, and they're cold in Dino's hands.
"You're cold," Dino says, fits his hands over Hibari's cheeks, so that he can warm Hibari's ears. Hibari snorts, pulls a bit away, and Dino follows him, stepping further into his space.
"You're cold," he says again, and Hibari's snapping his teeth next to Dino's neck warningly.
"Let go." Hibari's fingers are thin and cold when they wrap around Dino's hands, and they twist Dino's fingers painfully, until Dino lets go with a grunt.
"Not exactly a ray of sunshine, are you?" Dino asks, pulling his hands back, curling them inwards. Hibari's smile is bigger, sharper, and Dino frowns.
Hibari leans forward, murmurs, "you're just too hot," and his mouth is cold on Dino's jaw, but his breath is hot near Dino's ear.
When Hibari grabs Dino's hand out of his pants, snaps Dino's fingers, Dino's pretty sure it was worth it.
"Tsuna-chan," he says, coos it like a lullaby.
Byakuran/Tsuna, rape, death. Uh, Byakuran being all kinds of creepy. 'cause he's creepy. Pretty, but creepy.
Bleeding Disciples
"Tsuna-chan," he says, coos it like a lullaby. He rests his hands on Tsuna's hips, thin and boyish and twisting underneath him, and presses his mouth against Tsuna's neck, a kiss. Tsuna makes a sound, like crying, and Byakuran laughs, a bubbling feeling like delight.
"Tsuna-chan," he coos again, and licks the blood splashed across the boy's cheek. It's still warm, tastes of bitter iron, and Tsuna shudders, makings the crying sound again.
There are scratches around Tsuna's wrist, where the bomb-brat had grabbed the boy, tried to drag him down and away, before the bomb-brat had his brains blown out, splattering across Tsuna's face and shirt. Byakuran drags a finger across Tsuna's chest, through bloody matter, and opens his mouth wider against Tsuna's neck.
"No, God," Tsuna groans, shaking, and Byakuran digs his fingers in tighter, until there are spots of blood, Tsuna's blood, Tsuna's first blood in compound, welling up, drops on every pore.
"Christ," Byakuran says, like the priests at mass, "bled for his disciples." He drags his fingers along, digs his nails in, and watches more blood, brighter and hotter and more pure than that of the others, who died with their brains splattering the walls and their hearts beating one-two in his hands. "You should bleed, Tsuna-chan, for your disciples."
The phone is small in his hand, and Kyouya's breath from the other side is smaller.
Dino/Hibari, names, and what love really means. Or doesn't mean. Because you can't pluck the one you love. Shameless use (and subsequent destruction) of folktales and folksongs. Gyahahah.
Plucking Feathers
"What does your name mean?" Kyouya asks once, sitting on the edge of the carseat, his fingertips resting against the window. Dino laughs, shrugs, looks away.
"Bernardino? It means bear."
Kyouya laughs, long and loud, and when he crawls over the car seat, he laughs into Dino's mouth, and bites Dino until they're both bleeding, and sweating, and coming, stinking of sweat and exhaustion and sex.
"Your name?" Dino asks days later, when he's coiling his whip and Kyouya's retying a shoelace with long, thin fingers. "What does it mean, Kyuouya?"
"Hibari--" Kyouya's fingers twists the laces, knots them once more, then drag over the shoe, brush the ground. "It's a bird. A skylark."
"Skylark," Dino echoes back, and he says, looking up, "it's pretty."
When Kyouya's backing him against an alley wall, blood glinting on his chin, fingers brushing against Dino's neck, he murmurs, against Dino's mouth, "pretty's not needed."
"There's a song," Dino says one night, leaning against a wall. The phone is small in his hand, and Kyouya's breath from the other side is smaller. "About a skylark."
Kyouya's breath changes, listening, and Dino blinks, says, "you pluck it, its head, its eyes, its heart."
"And that's love?" Kyouya sounds as though he's laughing, his breath quick and light. Dino grins, lets his head roll back against the wall.
"It's French, they're mad. Italians, much better."
"We," Kyouya says, with the strange pride he always has when he's speaking of his Japanese, of Namimori and his family and his name, with all its fucked up rules and regulations that hold Kyouya to the earth tighter than anything else, "pluck the sparrows' children, and cut out their tongues."
"Love?" Dino asks, confused and intrigued all at once, and Kyouya's laughter is brighter, harsher.
"You don't love birds," Kyouya says, "because in the end, they always fly away."
"There was a crane wife," Kyouya says one day, standing behind Dino. His hands brush down the center of Dino's coat, heavy enough for Dino to feel it, shiver away. "Her husband heard her clattering in the closet, and he looked inside. She was a crane, and when he startled her, she flew away."
"Kyouya," Dino says, and Kyouya's skittering away, blood on his face and his teeth in a bright smile.
"You don't love birds, Cavallone. They don't come when you call, not like your dogs. Can't pluck their feathers forever."
"Kyouya," Dino snaps, and his hand wraps around Kyouya's wrist, and Kyouya's fingers, long and thin, wrap around his throat. Kyouya's mouth is close, closing on his ear, and Kyouya's words are in Italian, harsh and panting.
"What do you pluck, when there's nothing left?"
Kyouya falls from the building, arms spread, and he doesn't fly. He falls, and Dino stands, and the world spins on love, lopsided and cut, with no one left to pluck.
"Where," she asks, and her hair is plastered down, her clothes soaked through and splashed with mud, and she is terrifying in her rage. "Where is Hayato?"
Bianchi-fic! Hell hath no fury like a Bianchi with a brother-complex. Umm. Vague Bianchi/Gokudera, if you want to see it that way, AND I THINK YOU DO. :D Obligatory zomg-death-and-revenge fic, 'cause it's not like I write A BAJILLION OF THEM.
Mother's Kisses
Bianchi's flushed when she comes through the door, her hair dripping rain water on the floor. She tears off her goggles, grabs the front of Tsuna's shirt, and pulls.
"Where is he?" she barks, and Yamamoto's grabbing her, pulling her back. Her hand doesn't let go of Tsuna's shirt, just tightens, and Tsuna lets her pull him with her. "Where's Hayato?"
Tsuna feels his throat go dry, and he puts his hands over Bianchi's. Her hands are cold and wet, and his feel hot, like all his body. "Bianchi-san--"
She lets go of him, pushing him away with a look of disgust, and then she's rounding on Yamamoto, grabbing his collar to pull him down. "Where," she asks, and her hair is plastered down, her clothes soaked through and splashed with mud, and as small as she might be, and as big as Yamamoto and Tsuna might have grown, she's terrifying in her rage. "Where is Hayato?"
"He's not here," Yamamoto says, and the sound of Bianchi's hand hitting Yamamoto's face is loud in the quiet room. Bianchi's face is pale now, and her hands, one still against Yamamoto's cheek, the other curled in his collar, are shaking.
"Bianchi-san," Tsuna says, shuffling forward, and she jerks away from them both. Mud splatters across the floor, and she slaps away his hand when he reaches out.
"You," she says, and her voice is tight, and sharp, "were never his family."
x
She holds the gun against his head, and when he moves, takes too rough a breath, she fires. His body falls to the ground with a muffled thump, and she turns, heading for the next room.
The building is big, and the men are big, and the Family is big, but Bianchi's love, and Bianchi's pain, and Bianchi's hate, oh, her hate, is so much bigger than all of them. Because Hayato was always her brother, and she was the first one to love him, and the last one, too, and she loved him more than anyone else.
She runs out of bullets, and so she slits their throats, one at a time. Some of them die slowly, and some of they die quickly, and she feels like she's dying inside, little by little. There's blood flecked over her goggles, and to see life through such rose-colored lenses is addicting, makes her feel powerful and immortal, and she wonders, as the man bleeds out at her feet, if she could raise the dead, and wake Hayato with the kiss his mother never gave him.
"Giovanni's bastard," the baby says, and the sound of his father's name feels like a hit in Hayato's stomach. "Useless."
Hayato-fic. A "what if his mom hadn't died?" fic. Or, In Which Hayato is a Pansy Pianist. Hayato/Piano, sorta, and really vague, if you squint and look sideways, Hayato/Tsuna.
Prestissimo
His mother gives him pajamas for his fourth birthday, a blanket with trains on it, a stuffed elephant. She kisses his cheek, holds him tight, and tells him, "happy birthday, Hayato."
When he's seven, she sends a thick folder through the mail, sheet music and piano books with notes and fingerings carefully written in pencil. He plays the piano that night, and his foot can nearly reach the pedals. By the time she comes for his eighth birthday, he can reach the pedal, and she sits beside him as he plays the piano.
When he's eleven, she's in England, sending postcards every week. She sends him a little box, a model car like Shamal's, and billfolds signed by composers and conductors, with notes to Italia's little pianist.
He plays for his father's friends, and his father pulls him close, rests a hand on Hayato's shoulders.
"My son," his father says, "is Italy's greatest pianist," and he is. He leaves two months later for Vienna, where he lives and sleeps and eats and plays the piano night and day, until his fingernails rip off, and blood drips on the keys.
He plays longer, and harder, and faster, and he's better, and better, and he's the best, rising faster than anyone else. His mother's postcards gather on his bedside table, written to Europe's pianist, and his father sends gifts of money and food and beautiful people, all who stand near the piano and listen to Hayato play. And play Hayato does, faster and faster, spinning and falling and with fingers spread wide over the keys, foot upon the pedal.
At nineteen he's playing with his mother, in concert halls and studios, and she's faster, always faster, but he's catching up, and his father will never catch them by the heel. His mother's fingers are small and bruised, wrapped carefully in bandages, and his fingernails are black, blood crusted along the sides. The keys, though, are white, and spotless, and the music is bright and clear, and his birthday is a beautiful one.
"Japan," his teacher says, "loves your mother. They'll love you even more."
He flies into Japan in the early morning, sleepy and hungry, and Japan takes him at arms' length, proclaims him and declaims him. He plays upon their stages, his name written in kanji, in his mother's family name, and they call to him in Japanese.
He calls back, words awkward in his mouth, and when he sleeps, he dreams in Italian.
They slam into him backstage, as he's pulling at the bandages on his fingers, feeling hot and sweaty and still on his rush, high and shaky after the concert. The murmur of voices from the audience is a buzz in his ears, and the voices back stage are laughing.
"You," he picks out, and "music," and there's a man standing in front of him, shorter than he is, and entirely unremarkable.
The man's mouth moves again, and Hayato shakes his head, says, "No, no Japanese," and the man's frowning, looking around.
"You," the man says, and his Italian is as painful as Hayato's Japanese, "very good."
"Thank you," Hayato says in his stupid Japanese, feeling ridiculous, and happy, and still so high up, fucking flying on it. "Your name?"
"Sawada Tsuna," the man says, and then there's another wash of performers, and they're grabbing Hayato, shouting, and they're taking him drinking, and he lets them drag him along, laughing and feeling so adrift, so empty and high, like he'll never touch earth again.
Sawada's sitting in Hayato's dressing room after the next concert, and there's another man with him, carrying a sword, and Hayato's already turning to go back out the door, because he didn't come for this, never came for this, because this is what he's been running from for all his life, running with his mother, and his father will never catch their heels.
"Wait," Sawada says, and like hell Hayato's going to wait. He has the door open, is already taking a step into the hallway, when the hilt of the sword taps his chest, and second man is smiling at him.
"What," he asks a few minutes later, sitting in his chair, rewrapping his fingers furiously, "do you want?"
"Nothing, nothing," Sawada says, and then, "your music is very good." It sounds rehearsed, like a phrase from a language book, and Hayato hates the way he's already feeling mollified.
"Then why?" he starts to ask, but then someone's talking in quick Italian, and it's a baby, and while Hayato's trying to wrap his head around that, around two Japanese men with a sword carrying around an Italian baby, the baby's jumping onto the counter to look closely at Hayato.
"Giovanni's bastard," the baby says, and the sound of his father's name feels like a hit in Hayato's stomach. "Useless."
"Reborn!" Sawada says sharply, and Hayato's already standing up, clenching his fists until his fingers feel like they're burning.
"I'm leaving," he says sharply, and this time they let him go, the baby already turning to talk to the men in Japanese.
He doesn't see Sawada for half a week, and it's his last concert. The curtain has already been drawn twice, and the violinists are mulling around him, waiting to see if the conductor will call them for another encore. Hayato's impatient because his plane leaves for Italy in only a few hours, a midnight flight home. He wants to sit at his mother's piano, listen to his sister complain about her flaky boyfriend, watch his father's men stand at the doorways.
He's turning for the stage, the conductor calling for another song, when he catches Sawada in the corner of his eye, standing just backstage, nearly in the stagelights. Hayato stares at him, and Sawada looks back, gives a strange smile, and Hayato stumbles to the piano, clattering against the piano bench. He misses a note halfway through the piece, finger slipping from the sharp to the natural, and Hayato wants, more than anything, to just go home.
Hayato's slipping his rings onto his fingers when Sawada comes into his dressing room, leans back against the closed door. Sawada's alone this time, no swords or babies or men with scars down their chins, and Sawada looks so average. It's always been the average ones, Hayato's learned, that are the most dangerous.
"What?" he asks, twisting the last ring so the skull's facing upward. He checks, all seven rings, and grabs his coat. He's ready to leave, to be done, and this is all too much for him. He's always been best at running away.
"You," Sawada says, and says something in Japanese, too fast for Hayato to catch it. Hayato shakes his head, starts to put on his coat. Sawada says it again, slower, and Hayato catches, "are you?"
"Am I?" Hayato repeats back. Sawada shakes his head, looking frustrated, and says, "are you happy?"
Hayato smiles, confused but polite, always polite, because he's had a gun to his head, and men screaming in the next room over, all his life, and the boss's bastards are always polite, waiting for someone to blow their heads off. "I'm happy. Excuse me."
Sawada catches him before he gets out the door, grabbing Hayato's coat, and then Sawada's saying, in that same practiced, phrase-book tone, "you have very nice hands."
Hayato's frozen, scared and confused and wanting to kick and scream, when Sawada touches his hand, says, "you have very beautiful hands."
The plane reaches Italy in the early morning, just before dawn, and his hands still feel cold, fingers numb. He breathes on his fingers, bites the tips and tastes iron. One of his father's men is waiting for him just outside the terminal, and another is waiting with a car, and they nod at him, nod in the rearview mirror as he dozes, leaning against the car's window. They touch him when he gets home, calloused hands on his shoulders, helping him up and out of the car, and he shakes them off, stumbles to his room.
Bianchi's sitting at his piano, her hair twisted up, and she takes his kiss with a murmur, her fingers spreading over the keys. He kneels beside her, lies his head in her lap, and listens to her play, her fingers sounding like his mother. The music is slow, and light, a lullaby to trap him here, and he'll sleep here today, and tonight, and in the morning he'll run away, back to his mother and Vienna.
Hayato plays faster by faster, and runs harder by harder, and is happier each day. Hayato is his mother's son, and his father will never catch them by the heel.
Hibari is always cold.
Dino/Hibari and, uh, vague plays on words. And vague allusions to sex. And broken fingers, LOL. Kyouya's not a ray of sunshine. D:
Untitled Sunshine
Hibari is always cold. His blood is thin, and his skin is pale, and he wears scarves in the winter, fingers shoved deep into his pockets. He's always cold, cold fingertips and cold ears and cold eyes, staring at Dino impassively.
"Your hands are so cold, Kyouya!" He breathes, puffs of warm breaths, and cups his hands, tan and big and calloused, from the strain and stretch of leather, around Hibari's. Hibari's hands look frail and delicate in comparison, and they're cold in Dino's hands.
"You're cold," Dino says, fits his hands over Hibari's cheeks, so that he can warm Hibari's ears. Hibari snorts, pulls a bit away, and Dino follows him, stepping further into his space.
"You're cold," he says again, and Hibari's snapping his teeth next to Dino's neck warningly.
"Let go." Hibari's fingers are thin and cold when they wrap around Dino's hands, and they twist Dino's fingers painfully, until Dino lets go with a grunt.
"Not exactly a ray of sunshine, are you?" Dino asks, pulling his hands back, curling them inwards. Hibari's smile is bigger, sharper, and Dino frowns.
Hibari leans forward, murmurs, "you're just too hot," and his mouth is cold on Dino's jaw, but his breath is hot near Dino's ear.
When Hibari grabs Dino's hand out of his pants, snaps Dino's fingers, Dino's pretty sure it was worth it.
"Tsuna-chan," he says, coos it like a lullaby.
Byakuran/Tsuna, rape, death. Uh, Byakuran being all kinds of creepy. 'cause he's creepy. Pretty, but creepy.
Bleeding Disciples
"Tsuna-chan," he says, coos it like a lullaby. He rests his hands on Tsuna's hips, thin and boyish and twisting underneath him, and presses his mouth against Tsuna's neck, a kiss. Tsuna makes a sound, like crying, and Byakuran laughs, a bubbling feeling like delight.
"Tsuna-chan," he coos again, and licks the blood splashed across the boy's cheek. It's still warm, tastes of bitter iron, and Tsuna shudders, makings the crying sound again.
There are scratches around Tsuna's wrist, where the bomb-brat had grabbed the boy, tried to drag him down and away, before the bomb-brat had his brains blown out, splattering across Tsuna's face and shirt. Byakuran drags a finger across Tsuna's chest, through bloody matter, and opens his mouth wider against Tsuna's neck.
"No, God," Tsuna groans, shaking, and Byakuran digs his fingers in tighter, until there are spots of blood, Tsuna's blood, Tsuna's first blood in compound, welling up, drops on every pore.
"Christ," Byakuran says, like the priests at mass, "bled for his disciples." He drags his fingers along, digs his nails in, and watches more blood, brighter and hotter and more pure than that of the others, who died with their brains splattering the walls and their hearts beating one-two in his hands. "You should bleed, Tsuna-chan, for your disciples."
The phone is small in his hand, and Kyouya's breath from the other side is smaller.
Dino/Hibari, names, and what love really means. Or doesn't mean. Because you can't pluck the one you love. Shameless use (and subsequent destruction) of folktales and folksongs. Gyahahah.
Plucking Feathers
"What does your name mean?" Kyouya asks once, sitting on the edge of the carseat, his fingertips resting against the window. Dino laughs, shrugs, looks away.
"Bernardino? It means bear."
Kyouya laughs, long and loud, and when he crawls over the car seat, he laughs into Dino's mouth, and bites Dino until they're both bleeding, and sweating, and coming, stinking of sweat and exhaustion and sex.
"Your name?" Dino asks days later, when he's coiling his whip and Kyouya's retying a shoelace with long, thin fingers. "What does it mean, Kyuouya?"
"Hibari--" Kyouya's fingers twists the laces, knots them once more, then drag over the shoe, brush the ground. "It's a bird. A skylark."
"Skylark," Dino echoes back, and he says, looking up, "it's pretty."
When Kyouya's backing him against an alley wall, blood glinting on his chin, fingers brushing against Dino's neck, he murmurs, against Dino's mouth, "pretty's not needed."
"There's a song," Dino says one night, leaning against a wall. The phone is small in his hand, and Kyouya's breath from the other side is smaller. "About a skylark."
Kyouya's breath changes, listening, and Dino blinks, says, "you pluck it, its head, its eyes, its heart."
"And that's love?" Kyouya sounds as though he's laughing, his breath quick and light. Dino grins, lets his head roll back against the wall.
"It's French, they're mad. Italians, much better."
"We," Kyouya says, with the strange pride he always has when he's speaking of his Japanese, of Namimori and his family and his name, with all its fucked up rules and regulations that hold Kyouya to the earth tighter than anything else, "pluck the sparrows' children, and cut out their tongues."
"Love?" Dino asks, confused and intrigued all at once, and Kyouya's laughter is brighter, harsher.
"You don't love birds," Kyouya says, "because in the end, they always fly away."
"There was a crane wife," Kyouya says one day, standing behind Dino. His hands brush down the center of Dino's coat, heavy enough for Dino to feel it, shiver away. "Her husband heard her clattering in the closet, and he looked inside. She was a crane, and when he startled her, she flew away."
"Kyouya," Dino says, and Kyouya's skittering away, blood on his face and his teeth in a bright smile.
"You don't love birds, Cavallone. They don't come when you call, not like your dogs. Can't pluck their feathers forever."
"Kyouya," Dino snaps, and his hand wraps around Kyouya's wrist, and Kyouya's fingers, long and thin, wrap around his throat. Kyouya's mouth is close, closing on his ear, and Kyouya's words are in Italian, harsh and panting.
"What do you pluck, when there's nothing left?"
Kyouya falls from the building, arms spread, and he doesn't fly. He falls, and Dino stands, and the world spins on love, lopsided and cut, with no one left to pluck.
"Where," she asks, and her hair is plastered down, her clothes soaked through and splashed with mud, and she is terrifying in her rage. "Where is Hayato?"
Bianchi-fic! Hell hath no fury like a Bianchi with a brother-complex. Umm. Vague Bianchi/Gokudera, if you want to see it that way, AND I THINK YOU DO. :D Obligatory zomg-death-and-revenge fic, 'cause it's not like I write A BAJILLION OF THEM.
Mother's Kisses
Bianchi's flushed when she comes through the door, her hair dripping rain water on the floor. She tears off her goggles, grabs the front of Tsuna's shirt, and pulls.
"Where is he?" she barks, and Yamamoto's grabbing her, pulling her back. Her hand doesn't let go of Tsuna's shirt, just tightens, and Tsuna lets her pull him with her. "Where's Hayato?"
Tsuna feels his throat go dry, and he puts his hands over Bianchi's. Her hands are cold and wet, and his feel hot, like all his body. "Bianchi-san--"
She lets go of him, pushing him away with a look of disgust, and then she's rounding on Yamamoto, grabbing his collar to pull him down. "Where," she asks, and her hair is plastered down, her clothes soaked through and splashed with mud, and as small as she might be, and as big as Yamamoto and Tsuna might have grown, she's terrifying in her rage. "Where is Hayato?"
"He's not here," Yamamoto says, and the sound of Bianchi's hand hitting Yamamoto's face is loud in the quiet room. Bianchi's face is pale now, and her hands, one still against Yamamoto's cheek, the other curled in his collar, are shaking.
"Bianchi-san," Tsuna says, shuffling forward, and she jerks away from them both. Mud splatters across the floor, and she slaps away his hand when he reaches out.
"You," she says, and her voice is tight, and sharp, "were never his family."
x
She holds the gun against his head, and when he moves, takes too rough a breath, she fires. His body falls to the ground with a muffled thump, and she turns, heading for the next room.
The building is big, and the men are big, and the Family is big, but Bianchi's love, and Bianchi's pain, and Bianchi's hate, oh, her hate, is so much bigger than all of them. Because Hayato was always her brother, and she was the first one to love him, and the last one, too, and she loved him more than anyone else.
She runs out of bullets, and so she slits their throats, one at a time. Some of them die slowly, and some of they die quickly, and she feels like she's dying inside, little by little. There's blood flecked over her goggles, and to see life through such rose-colored lenses is addicting, makes her feel powerful and immortal, and she wonders, as the man bleeds out at her feet, if she could raise the dead, and wake Hayato with the kiss his mother never gave him.
"Giovanni's bastard," the baby says, and the sound of his father's name feels like a hit in Hayato's stomach. "Useless."
Hayato-fic. A "what if his mom hadn't died?" fic. Or, In Which Hayato is a Pansy Pianist. Hayato/Piano, sorta, and really vague, if you squint and look sideways, Hayato/Tsuna.
Prestissimo
His mother gives him pajamas for his fourth birthday, a blanket with trains on it, a stuffed elephant. She kisses his cheek, holds him tight, and tells him, "happy birthday, Hayato."
When he's seven, she sends a thick folder through the mail, sheet music and piano books with notes and fingerings carefully written in pencil. He plays the piano that night, and his foot can nearly reach the pedals. By the time she comes for his eighth birthday, he can reach the pedal, and she sits beside him as he plays the piano.
When he's eleven, she's in England, sending postcards every week. She sends him a little box, a model car like Shamal's, and billfolds signed by composers and conductors, with notes to Italia's little pianist.
He plays for his father's friends, and his father pulls him close, rests a hand on Hayato's shoulders.
"My son," his father says, "is Italy's greatest pianist," and he is. He leaves two months later for Vienna, where he lives and sleeps and eats and plays the piano night and day, until his fingernails rip off, and blood drips on the keys.
He plays longer, and harder, and faster, and he's better, and better, and he's the best, rising faster than anyone else. His mother's postcards gather on his bedside table, written to Europe's pianist, and his father sends gifts of money and food and beautiful people, all who stand near the piano and listen to Hayato play. And play Hayato does, faster and faster, spinning and falling and with fingers spread wide over the keys, foot upon the pedal.
At nineteen he's playing with his mother, in concert halls and studios, and she's faster, always faster, but he's catching up, and his father will never catch them by the heel. His mother's fingers are small and bruised, wrapped carefully in bandages, and his fingernails are black, blood crusted along the sides. The keys, though, are white, and spotless, and the music is bright and clear, and his birthday is a beautiful one.
"Japan," his teacher says, "loves your mother. They'll love you even more."
He flies into Japan in the early morning, sleepy and hungry, and Japan takes him at arms' length, proclaims him and declaims him. He plays upon their stages, his name written in kanji, in his mother's family name, and they call to him in Japanese.
He calls back, words awkward in his mouth, and when he sleeps, he dreams in Italian.
They slam into him backstage, as he's pulling at the bandages on his fingers, feeling hot and sweaty and still on his rush, high and shaky after the concert. The murmur of voices from the audience is a buzz in his ears, and the voices back stage are laughing.
"You," he picks out, and "music," and there's a man standing in front of him, shorter than he is, and entirely unremarkable.
The man's mouth moves again, and Hayato shakes his head, says, "No, no Japanese," and the man's frowning, looking around.
"You," the man says, and his Italian is as painful as Hayato's Japanese, "very good."
"Thank you," Hayato says in his stupid Japanese, feeling ridiculous, and happy, and still so high up, fucking flying on it. "Your name?"
"Sawada Tsuna," the man says, and then there's another wash of performers, and they're grabbing Hayato, shouting, and they're taking him drinking, and he lets them drag him along, laughing and feeling so adrift, so empty and high, like he'll never touch earth again.
Sawada's sitting in Hayato's dressing room after the next concert, and there's another man with him, carrying a sword, and Hayato's already turning to go back out the door, because he didn't come for this, never came for this, because this is what he's been running from for all his life, running with his mother, and his father will never catch their heels.
"Wait," Sawada says, and like hell Hayato's going to wait. He has the door open, is already taking a step into the hallway, when the hilt of the sword taps his chest, and second man is smiling at him.
"What," he asks a few minutes later, sitting in his chair, rewrapping his fingers furiously, "do you want?"
"Nothing, nothing," Sawada says, and then, "your music is very good." It sounds rehearsed, like a phrase from a language book, and Hayato hates the way he's already feeling mollified.
"Then why?" he starts to ask, but then someone's talking in quick Italian, and it's a baby, and while Hayato's trying to wrap his head around that, around two Japanese men with a sword carrying around an Italian baby, the baby's jumping onto the counter to look closely at Hayato.
"Giovanni's bastard," the baby says, and the sound of his father's name feels like a hit in Hayato's stomach. "Useless."
"Reborn!" Sawada says sharply, and Hayato's already standing up, clenching his fists until his fingers feel like they're burning.
"I'm leaving," he says sharply, and this time they let him go, the baby already turning to talk to the men in Japanese.
He doesn't see Sawada for half a week, and it's his last concert. The curtain has already been drawn twice, and the violinists are mulling around him, waiting to see if the conductor will call them for another encore. Hayato's impatient because his plane leaves for Italy in only a few hours, a midnight flight home. He wants to sit at his mother's piano, listen to his sister complain about her flaky boyfriend, watch his father's men stand at the doorways.
He's turning for the stage, the conductor calling for another song, when he catches Sawada in the corner of his eye, standing just backstage, nearly in the stagelights. Hayato stares at him, and Sawada looks back, gives a strange smile, and Hayato stumbles to the piano, clattering against the piano bench. He misses a note halfway through the piece, finger slipping from the sharp to the natural, and Hayato wants, more than anything, to just go home.
Hayato's slipping his rings onto his fingers when Sawada comes into his dressing room, leans back against the closed door. Sawada's alone this time, no swords or babies or men with scars down their chins, and Sawada looks so average. It's always been the average ones, Hayato's learned, that are the most dangerous.
"What?" he asks, twisting the last ring so the skull's facing upward. He checks, all seven rings, and grabs his coat. He's ready to leave, to be done, and this is all too much for him. He's always been best at running away.
"You," Sawada says, and says something in Japanese, too fast for Hayato to catch it. Hayato shakes his head, starts to put on his coat. Sawada says it again, slower, and Hayato catches, "are you?"
"Am I?" Hayato repeats back. Sawada shakes his head, looking frustrated, and says, "are you happy?"
Hayato smiles, confused but polite, always polite, because he's had a gun to his head, and men screaming in the next room over, all his life, and the boss's bastards are always polite, waiting for someone to blow their heads off. "I'm happy. Excuse me."
Sawada catches him before he gets out the door, grabbing Hayato's coat, and then Sawada's saying, in that same practiced, phrase-book tone, "you have very nice hands."
Hayato's frozen, scared and confused and wanting to kick and scream, when Sawada touches his hand, says, "you have very beautiful hands."
The plane reaches Italy in the early morning, just before dawn, and his hands still feel cold, fingers numb. He breathes on his fingers, bites the tips and tastes iron. One of his father's men is waiting for him just outside the terminal, and another is waiting with a car, and they nod at him, nod in the rearview mirror as he dozes, leaning against the car's window. They touch him when he gets home, calloused hands on his shoulders, helping him up and out of the car, and he shakes them off, stumbles to his room.
Bianchi's sitting at his piano, her hair twisted up, and she takes his kiss with a murmur, her fingers spreading over the keys. He kneels beside her, lies his head in her lap, and listens to her play, her fingers sounding like his mother. The music is slow, and light, a lullaby to trap him here, and he'll sleep here today, and tonight, and in the morning he'll run away, back to his mother and Vienna.
Hayato plays faster by faster, and runs harder by harder, and is happier each day. Hayato is his mother's son, and his father will never catch them by the heel.