[KHR!][31_Days] Drift
Title: Drift
Author: kayono (ffn) / mecomptane (lj)
Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Verse: Strange World
Day/Prompt: January 18 / "Warm strangers"
Rating: T / PG-13
Characters: Tsuna, Gokudera, Yamamoto, 802759, Haru, and other... people.
Warnings: Um... nothing too much. Hints of 802759 if you squint and spin around ten times really fast?
Notes: AU, because we all know that there's no way Reborn would NOT find a way to bring Tsuna into the Vongola
Summary: Welcome to the world, bouya. It's a cruel and strange place.
Another day in a foreign country; another day of a monotonous job that's barely earning enough to keep him alive. The money he's saving up for his plane ticket back home is barely enough to get his luggage on board, so he knows that it will be a long while before he'll get to see his home country again.
It's evening. The only lights are the florescents and neons on the streets and the strobe or dusky yellow inside, depending on the establishment. He prefers buildings with the yellow lighting: bars and pubs and restaurants and later-night diners. Strobe lights are flashy, made for dancing and careless drinking and loud music and clubs, and none of that really suits his tastes. You don't go clubbing by yourself, after all, not if you want to really have fun and be safe, so someone without friends isn't found at places like that unless they're more interested in what happens after clubbing instead of during.
He was at a bar, before, the one he normally haunts on lonely Friday nights. But he knows the local gang, and the local gang apparently likes that bar now, and as soon as he saw them he was out the back door.
Now he's at a late-night-all-night diner; the waitress is sweet but far too perky for 11 pm, the cook sounds bored, singing off-tune Libretto, and the only other patron is a silver-haired man dressed either like a punk or a businessman, clacking away on a laptop that looks shiny and brand new and very much like something he would never be able to afford. He, as in the one who was at the bar and is now sitting in a booth as far from the window as possible and trying to decide whether to eat, drink, or just go home. The he as in the one who owns the laptop in question looks the type to have the newest and best of everything.
So the silver-haired man types, and he watches the silver-haired man type in between glancing at the menu and staring at the clock. He thinks of his little apartment, the couch that doubles as a bed and the crates and wooden boxes he's using as tables and chairs and shelves, and the kitchen filled with cracked plates and a leaky faucet and rotting cabinets, the bathroom with chipped tiles and what he's hoping is just mildew and not mold in the piecemeal shower stall. It's not much, not at all, and the silver-haired man would probably scoff at it... but right now, all he wants to do is go back there and sleep-, and maybe, possibly, never wake up again.
And then the bell over the door rings, and the tall black-haired man who enters looks just like the waitress: far too happy for... 11:30, now, at night. Unlike the silver-haired man he's dressed in purely casual clothes; like the man, he seems rather well off and not the type you'd expect to find in a lonesome all-night diner at half to midnight instead of out with friends at a party or the like.
He sighs and signals for the waitress, deciding on food and then heading off to bed. It would be nice to have friends, he thinks, or even just some people to lean on when you're at the bottom of every well of energy and confidence you have left, but he's really not the type of person to have friends. Apparently, he's also not the type of person to have a proper family, his father always working abroad and his mother a little more than a tiny bit scatterbrained.
"Can I just have some kind of breakfast special?" Asks he pleadingly, handing over the menu. "It really doesn't matter what it is, miss."
"Of course, sir," and her perkiness is toned down when she finally notices the weariness in his eyes, the slump of his shoulders. "Would you like anything else, sir? A pick-me-up, maybe?"
He tries to smile at her thoughtfulness and, by the look on her face, fails. "I don't know... what do you have?"
"I'll ask Cheffie," she replies, and hurries off to do as she says.
He looks over and notices that the black-haired man has taken a seat at the same table as the silver-haired one, directly across from him and still with that impossibly bright smile on his face. He notices them noticing him staring at them; he turns with a blush and a frown. Of course, he thinks, it would turn out that the two would know each other. Isn't that the way the world always works?.
"Here you go," the waitress tells him, setting down both a plate of pemeal bacon and sausage and eggs and hashbrowns and toast, and beside it is set a tall glass of what looks suspiciously like pure whisky. "Cheffie took that out of his private stash for you," she tells him with a pat to his shoulder, "so don't forget to thank him on the way out, alright?"
"Alright," he agrees slowly. "Thank you for asking him in the first place."
"No problem. We grunge workers have to keep each other's spirits up, right?"
He's never heard the term 'grunge worker' before, but thinks he might understand what that means, and he's pretty sure he fits right in. "Right," he nods. "Thanks again."
"Of course. Eat on up," she tells him, and goes to see if the two friends (oh, friendship!) wanted anything. From the corner of his eye he sees silver-hair scowling and muttering something, and black-hair smiling and saying something else. The waitress disappears back into the kitchen and he feels two sets of eyes on him, studying him. It's pretty damn unnerving, so he stands up and heads towards the kitchen, sticking his head in to thank 'Cheffie' and to pay for his meal and, maybe, get it wrapped up to go. The waitress is quick to help him out, and 'Cheffie' seems pleased that he not only has manners, but left most of the glass for 'Cheffie' himself to finish off.
He pays, leaves a fair-sized tip for the two of them (something he can't really afford, but oh well--they were both pretty kind to him, unlike the rest of the world), and walks out into brisk now-morning air. It's not too far from here to his apartment, small and useless as it might be for anything but sleeping; he walks quickly, enjoying being outside but too afraid of the kind of people he knows likes to hang around the area.
Oddly, he doesn't get any trouble--in fact, there's no suspicious characters whatsoever around. He thinks that's a good thing, doesn't question it, and lets himself into his apartment without a second thought. The door gets immediately locked, the food shoved into a fridge that only works occasionally, and he throws himself, still dressed, onto the couch-bed. He hadn't bothered to fold up the couch, so the double mattress is already out and made and still-messy and taking up practically the entirety of the living area. He curls up on it and falls asleep, dreaming of friends and the life he might have lived back in Namimori if only things had worked out differently.
He wakes up late the next morning--much later than normal, too late to get to work on time. He thinks he might be fired for that, and groans and buries his head into the scrap of cotton-and-fluff that functions as his pillow. It's obviously past sunrise, or so says the light coming in through the windows, and therefore he's missed almost every bus that could get him to work before noon... and at that point, there's no real reason to head in. So, he thinks, he's probably already fired, anyways, might as well get over that and start job-hunting.
...not that anyone would honestly hire him, but it's worth a shot.
And now he's curious about why he didn't wake up earlier, because really, his blanket (sheet, not even a proper comforter) is threadbare and he's normally freezing and has no problem getting up on time because his bed is not that comfortable. At all. So he pulls his head out of his pillow, looks around and at the rest of the bed, and freezes.
There are two people laying in bed with him, one on his left and one on his right. One is propped up on his side, head in hand and supported by an elbow-to-bed, the other hand resting easily on the bed between them. The other man is sitting up against the back of the couch, somehow shirtless, and clacking away at a laptop that looks oddly shiny and new and familiar.
The first one grins and laughs and reaches out to ruffle his hair. "Yo, you're awake! Sleep good?"
...that, he thinks, is the worst thing to say in a situation like this. Then the other grunts and shuts the laptop, silver hair falling into silver-green eyes, and rolls over and onto his stomach, shuffling down the bed so that he's actually laying down and has an arm drapped over his supposed host's body. "You need a new lock for your door, by the way."
...okay, nevermind, that's the worst thing one could say in this situation. (Actually, there's probably a thousand other things they could say that would be worse, but he doesn't want to push it.) Instead, he simply lays there, sometime having flipped onto his back from his stomach, and is looking between the two other men, wide-eyed and more than just a little bit scared.
"Oh, ahaha, I guess we haven't introduced ourselves, have we? My name is Yamamoto Takeshi, and that's my partner, Gokudera Hayato." Well, he thinks, at least they're a tiny bit polite. "We were just so surprised to see someone else who looks like they're from Japan that we couldn't help ourselves. We all need to stick together, right?"
He desperately wants to point out that these two, dressed immaculately and obviously owning many various expensive things, are not similar to him at all, but it's the mention of Japan that gets him. "You... you're from Japan too?"
"Yup!" The first one--Yamamoto Takeshi--answers with a grin. "Sorry for barging in like this, but it was too late for us to get a hotel room, so...."
It's only now that he recognizes them as the two from the diner, and he's not sure whether to laugh or cry, and he's not sure why he'd do either. Instead he tries to remain silent, think about what this would mean, and hopefully not go crazy.
"Hope you don't mind if we crash here for a while," the silver-haired one speaks again, voice having a scratchy, low, gravelly tone to it that makes it pretty clear he's a chronic smoker, "it's better than anywhere else."
"Eh, what's your name?" Yamamoto Takeshi asks, sending a half-smile half-glare to his partner (Gokudera Hayato, was it?).
"Eh? Um, uh... Sawada Tsunayoshi." And then, because he really can't wrap his mind around the situation, "What are you two doing in my apartment again?" He's surprised by how calm he's being, but the other two are acting like this is entirely normal (which, really, should make him even more paniced).
"Well, we were sleeping," Gokudera answers with some derission, "and now we're awake. Got anything for breakfast?" Before Tsuna can say anything to that Gokudera has rolled himself over, off the bed, and is already opening the fridge and pulling out the white styrofoam box that contains practically an entire meal from the diner.
He walks back to the bed and sits, leaning against the back of the couch and opening the container. He pulls out a piece of pemeal bacon and begins to gnaw on it as he pulls out his laptop again, passing the box to Tsuna. Tsuna stares at his univited guests, not even twitching when Yamamoto leans over and snags some sausage. Finally, he manages, "do you to do this... often?"
"Do what?" Yamamoto asks around a piece of toast.
"Um... invite yourselves into a stranger's apartment to sleep and then eat their food on them?"
"Nope," Yamamoto replies, grabbing some eggs between his fingers and eyeing them, eventually lifting the egg with some toast and shoving it into Tsuna's mouth. "This is the first time."
'Then why now and why me?' would be an appropriate question, but Tsuna's chewing the food and finding it delicious, even though it's cold, so he ends up sharing breakfast with Yamamoto and Gokudera and completely forgetting about work and job-hunting and any of his worries. Yamamoto has a talent for making people feel comfortable, like they're best friends and have been since before they could talk. Gokudera is silent and intense, but a strong, secure, solid wall of comfort, and what little he does say is either profoundly deep or profoundly loud (usually with an insult or curse or reprimand against his partner). But they're both warm, both somehow welcoming, and Tsuna (unwittingly) finds himself enjoying talking with them.
He learns that the two work for an apparently unnamed company that specializes in various technologies and the like; that Yamamoto loves baseball and Gokudera loves the occult; that, somehow, both of those loves made them prime candidates to join this organization and maybe Tsuna has something like that, too? But Tsuna doesn't, and Yamamoto seems genuinely saddened by that, and Gokudera looks a bit thoughtful. He, in turn, tells them of his family: of the absent father and the doting, if dense, mother; his "No-Good"-ness and his job offer here, which was rescinded the moment he set foot on foreign soil, and how he's not been back to Japan and won't be back for a long while yet. Yamamoto and Gokudera encourage him immediately, Yamamoto a bit kinder and laid back than the other, and Tsuna thinks that, maybe, he'd manage to find a way to get home, and soon. It makes him smile, the first genuine smile he's smiled in years now, and the echoing smile on both their faces makes his grow wider.
But then it's almost night again, and instead of heading out or the like, Yamamoto raids Tsuna's fridge and cupboards and somehow pulls together a grand dinner for all three of them (shared on the bed, of course), and then it's dark and normally time to sleep, but Yamamoto and Gokudera want to stay up a bit later, and Tsuna's happy to join them in the moonlight and darkness. And when it actually is time to sleep, Tsuna finds his bed more comfortable than he's ever noticed it being before, all warm and soft and welcoming.
The next morning Tsuna wakes long before the sunrise to an empty bed, a clean and restocked kitchen, and fresh linen folded at the foot of the bed. Yamamoto and Gokudera are nowhere to be seen; the faint lingerng scent of cigarettes and sweat is all that's left to mark that those two -had- been there, that it hadn't just been some crazy dream. But the linen and food argue otherwise, too, as does the cleaned bathroom and kitchen and the letter on what counts as the sole table in the entire apartment.
A letter, Tsuna openly gapes, and a whole whack of money.
He fingers the letter more than the money. The money is great, enough to survive on and buy some new clothes and possibly get him the edge to get a better job so that he might be able to eventually be able to buy a ticket back to Japan(!), but it's the letter that gets him. It's the letter that warms his heart and gives him hope; it's the letter that really slams it home that he sort-of now has two friends somewhere in the world.
He thinks that today will be a good day, and decides to call his boss, Sunday or not, just to see if he still has a job or if he really does need to go job-hunting. Turns out his job is fine, it was a slow Saturday anyways, just next time call in if you're sick?
Tsuna agrees, and hangs up, and laughs, and decides to go for a walk outside. His luck is starting to look up, now. Surely something else good might happen?
(And when he promptly trips over his own feet and falls down two flights of stairs, he thinks that no, it's not his luck that's improving: a good deed is a good deed, and now it's time to pay it forward.)
And because the author is a dork, there will probably be a continuation to this. Eventually. RAWR. Ha... turns out there is one? It will be posted... later. Yes. Later.
Author: kayono (ffn) / mecomptane (lj)
Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Verse: Strange World
Day/Prompt: January 18 / "Warm strangers"
Rating: T / PG-13
Characters: Tsuna, Gokudera, Yamamoto, 802759, Haru, and other... people.
Warnings: Um... nothing too much. Hints of 802759 if you squint and spin around ten times really fast?
Notes: AU, because we all know that there's no way Reborn would NOT find a way to bring Tsuna into the Vongola
Summary: Welcome to the world, bouya. It's a cruel and strange place.
Another day in a foreign country; another day of a monotonous job that's barely earning enough to keep him alive. The money he's saving up for his plane ticket back home is barely enough to get his luggage on board, so he knows that it will be a long while before he'll get to see his home country again.
It's evening. The only lights are the florescents and neons on the streets and the strobe or dusky yellow inside, depending on the establishment. He prefers buildings with the yellow lighting: bars and pubs and restaurants and later-night diners. Strobe lights are flashy, made for dancing and careless drinking and loud music and clubs, and none of that really suits his tastes. You don't go clubbing by yourself, after all, not if you want to really have fun and be safe, so someone without friends isn't found at places like that unless they're more interested in what happens after clubbing instead of during.
He was at a bar, before, the one he normally haunts on lonely Friday nights. But he knows the local gang, and the local gang apparently likes that bar now, and as soon as he saw them he was out the back door.
Now he's at a late-night-all-night diner; the waitress is sweet but far too perky for 11 pm, the cook sounds bored, singing off-tune Libretto, and the only other patron is a silver-haired man dressed either like a punk or a businessman, clacking away on a laptop that looks shiny and brand new and very much like something he would never be able to afford. He, as in the one who was at the bar and is now sitting in a booth as far from the window as possible and trying to decide whether to eat, drink, or just go home. The he as in the one who owns the laptop in question looks the type to have the newest and best of everything.
So the silver-haired man types, and he watches the silver-haired man type in between glancing at the menu and staring at the clock. He thinks of his little apartment, the couch that doubles as a bed and the crates and wooden boxes he's using as tables and chairs and shelves, and the kitchen filled with cracked plates and a leaky faucet and rotting cabinets, the bathroom with chipped tiles and what he's hoping is just mildew and not mold in the piecemeal shower stall. It's not much, not at all, and the silver-haired man would probably scoff at it... but right now, all he wants to do is go back there and sleep-, and maybe, possibly, never wake up again.
And then the bell over the door rings, and the tall black-haired man who enters looks just like the waitress: far too happy for... 11:30, now, at night. Unlike the silver-haired man he's dressed in purely casual clothes; like the man, he seems rather well off and not the type you'd expect to find in a lonesome all-night diner at half to midnight instead of out with friends at a party or the like.
He sighs and signals for the waitress, deciding on food and then heading off to bed. It would be nice to have friends, he thinks, or even just some people to lean on when you're at the bottom of every well of energy and confidence you have left, but he's really not the type of person to have friends. Apparently, he's also not the type of person to have a proper family, his father always working abroad and his mother a little more than a tiny bit scatterbrained.
"Can I just have some kind of breakfast special?" Asks he pleadingly, handing over the menu. "It really doesn't matter what it is, miss."
"Of course, sir," and her perkiness is toned down when she finally notices the weariness in his eyes, the slump of his shoulders. "Would you like anything else, sir? A pick-me-up, maybe?"
He tries to smile at her thoughtfulness and, by the look on her face, fails. "I don't know... what do you have?"
"I'll ask Cheffie," she replies, and hurries off to do as she says.
He looks over and notices that the black-haired man has taken a seat at the same table as the silver-haired one, directly across from him and still with that impossibly bright smile on his face. He notices them noticing him staring at them; he turns with a blush and a frown. Of course, he thinks, it would turn out that the two would know each other. Isn't that the way the world always works?.
"Here you go," the waitress tells him, setting down both a plate of pemeal bacon and sausage and eggs and hashbrowns and toast, and beside it is set a tall glass of what looks suspiciously like pure whisky. "Cheffie took that out of his private stash for you," she tells him with a pat to his shoulder, "so don't forget to thank him on the way out, alright?"
"Alright," he agrees slowly. "Thank you for asking him in the first place."
"No problem. We grunge workers have to keep each other's spirits up, right?"
He's never heard the term 'grunge worker' before, but thinks he might understand what that means, and he's pretty sure he fits right in. "Right," he nods. "Thanks again."
"Of course. Eat on up," she tells him, and goes to see if the two friends (oh, friendship!) wanted anything. From the corner of his eye he sees silver-hair scowling and muttering something, and black-hair smiling and saying something else. The waitress disappears back into the kitchen and he feels two sets of eyes on him, studying him. It's pretty damn unnerving, so he stands up and heads towards the kitchen, sticking his head in to thank 'Cheffie' and to pay for his meal and, maybe, get it wrapped up to go. The waitress is quick to help him out, and 'Cheffie' seems pleased that he not only has manners, but left most of the glass for 'Cheffie' himself to finish off.
He pays, leaves a fair-sized tip for the two of them (something he can't really afford, but oh well--they were both pretty kind to him, unlike the rest of the world), and walks out into brisk now-morning air. It's not too far from here to his apartment, small and useless as it might be for anything but sleeping; he walks quickly, enjoying being outside but too afraid of the kind of people he knows likes to hang around the area.
Oddly, he doesn't get any trouble--in fact, there's no suspicious characters whatsoever around. He thinks that's a good thing, doesn't question it, and lets himself into his apartment without a second thought. The door gets immediately locked, the food shoved into a fridge that only works occasionally, and he throws himself, still dressed, onto the couch-bed. He hadn't bothered to fold up the couch, so the double mattress is already out and made and still-messy and taking up practically the entirety of the living area. He curls up on it and falls asleep, dreaming of friends and the life he might have lived back in Namimori if only things had worked out differently.
He wakes up late the next morning--much later than normal, too late to get to work on time. He thinks he might be fired for that, and groans and buries his head into the scrap of cotton-and-fluff that functions as his pillow. It's obviously past sunrise, or so says the light coming in through the windows, and therefore he's missed almost every bus that could get him to work before noon... and at that point, there's no real reason to head in. So, he thinks, he's probably already fired, anyways, might as well get over that and start job-hunting.
...not that anyone would honestly hire him, but it's worth a shot.
And now he's curious about why he didn't wake up earlier, because really, his blanket (sheet, not even a proper comforter) is threadbare and he's normally freezing and has no problem getting up on time because his bed is not that comfortable. At all. So he pulls his head out of his pillow, looks around and at the rest of the bed, and freezes.
There are two people laying in bed with him, one on his left and one on his right. One is propped up on his side, head in hand and supported by an elbow-to-bed, the other hand resting easily on the bed between them. The other man is sitting up against the back of the couch, somehow shirtless, and clacking away at a laptop that looks oddly shiny and new and familiar.
The first one grins and laughs and reaches out to ruffle his hair. "Yo, you're awake! Sleep good?"
...that, he thinks, is the worst thing to say in a situation like this. Then the other grunts and shuts the laptop, silver hair falling into silver-green eyes, and rolls over and onto his stomach, shuffling down the bed so that he's actually laying down and has an arm drapped over his supposed host's body. "You need a new lock for your door, by the way."
...okay, nevermind, that's the worst thing one could say in this situation. (Actually, there's probably a thousand other things they could say that would be worse, but he doesn't want to push it.) Instead, he simply lays there, sometime having flipped onto his back from his stomach, and is looking between the two other men, wide-eyed and more than just a little bit scared.
"Oh, ahaha, I guess we haven't introduced ourselves, have we? My name is Yamamoto Takeshi, and that's my partner, Gokudera Hayato." Well, he thinks, at least they're a tiny bit polite. "We were just so surprised to see someone else who looks like they're from Japan that we couldn't help ourselves. We all need to stick together, right?"
He desperately wants to point out that these two, dressed immaculately and obviously owning many various expensive things, are not similar to him at all, but it's the mention of Japan that gets him. "You... you're from Japan too?"
"Yup!" The first one--Yamamoto Takeshi--answers with a grin. "Sorry for barging in like this, but it was too late for us to get a hotel room, so...."
It's only now that he recognizes them as the two from the diner, and he's not sure whether to laugh or cry, and he's not sure why he'd do either. Instead he tries to remain silent, think about what this would mean, and hopefully not go crazy.
"Hope you don't mind if we crash here for a while," the silver-haired one speaks again, voice having a scratchy, low, gravelly tone to it that makes it pretty clear he's a chronic smoker, "it's better than anywhere else."
"Eh, what's your name?" Yamamoto Takeshi asks, sending a half-smile half-glare to his partner (Gokudera Hayato, was it?).
"Eh? Um, uh... Sawada Tsunayoshi." And then, because he really can't wrap his mind around the situation, "What are you two doing in my apartment again?" He's surprised by how calm he's being, but the other two are acting like this is entirely normal (which, really, should make him even more paniced).
"Well, we were sleeping," Gokudera answers with some derission, "and now we're awake. Got anything for breakfast?" Before Tsuna can say anything to that Gokudera has rolled himself over, off the bed, and is already opening the fridge and pulling out the white styrofoam box that contains practically an entire meal from the diner.
He walks back to the bed and sits, leaning against the back of the couch and opening the container. He pulls out a piece of pemeal bacon and begins to gnaw on it as he pulls out his laptop again, passing the box to Tsuna. Tsuna stares at his univited guests, not even twitching when Yamamoto leans over and snags some sausage. Finally, he manages, "do you to do this... often?"
"Do what?" Yamamoto asks around a piece of toast.
"Um... invite yourselves into a stranger's apartment to sleep and then eat their food on them?"
"Nope," Yamamoto replies, grabbing some eggs between his fingers and eyeing them, eventually lifting the egg with some toast and shoving it into Tsuna's mouth. "This is the first time."
'Then why now and why me?' would be an appropriate question, but Tsuna's chewing the food and finding it delicious, even though it's cold, so he ends up sharing breakfast with Yamamoto and Gokudera and completely forgetting about work and job-hunting and any of his worries. Yamamoto has a talent for making people feel comfortable, like they're best friends and have been since before they could talk. Gokudera is silent and intense, but a strong, secure, solid wall of comfort, and what little he does say is either profoundly deep or profoundly loud (usually with an insult or curse or reprimand against his partner). But they're both warm, both somehow welcoming, and Tsuna (unwittingly) finds himself enjoying talking with them.
He learns that the two work for an apparently unnamed company that specializes in various technologies and the like; that Yamamoto loves baseball and Gokudera loves the occult; that, somehow, both of those loves made them prime candidates to join this organization and maybe Tsuna has something like that, too? But Tsuna doesn't, and Yamamoto seems genuinely saddened by that, and Gokudera looks a bit thoughtful. He, in turn, tells them of his family: of the absent father and the doting, if dense, mother; his "No-Good"-ness and his job offer here, which was rescinded the moment he set foot on foreign soil, and how he's not been back to Japan and won't be back for a long while yet. Yamamoto and Gokudera encourage him immediately, Yamamoto a bit kinder and laid back than the other, and Tsuna thinks that, maybe, he'd manage to find a way to get home, and soon. It makes him smile, the first genuine smile he's smiled in years now, and the echoing smile on both their faces makes his grow wider.
But then it's almost night again, and instead of heading out or the like, Yamamoto raids Tsuna's fridge and cupboards and somehow pulls together a grand dinner for all three of them (shared on the bed, of course), and then it's dark and normally time to sleep, but Yamamoto and Gokudera want to stay up a bit later, and Tsuna's happy to join them in the moonlight and darkness. And when it actually is time to sleep, Tsuna finds his bed more comfortable than he's ever noticed it being before, all warm and soft and welcoming.
The next morning Tsuna wakes long before the sunrise to an empty bed, a clean and restocked kitchen, and fresh linen folded at the foot of the bed. Yamamoto and Gokudera are nowhere to be seen; the faint lingerng scent of cigarettes and sweat is all that's left to mark that those two -had- been there, that it hadn't just been some crazy dream. But the linen and food argue otherwise, too, as does the cleaned bathroom and kitchen and the letter on what counts as the sole table in the entire apartment.
A letter, Tsuna openly gapes, and a whole whack of money.
He fingers the letter more than the money. The money is great, enough to survive on and buy some new clothes and possibly get him the edge to get a better job so that he might be able to eventually be able to buy a ticket back to Japan(!), but it's the letter that gets him. It's the letter that warms his heart and gives him hope; it's the letter that really slams it home that he sort-of now has two friends somewhere in the world.
He thinks that today will be a good day, and decides to call his boss, Sunday or not, just to see if he still has a job or if he really does need to go job-hunting. Turns out his job is fine, it was a slow Saturday anyways, just next time call in if you're sick?
Tsuna agrees, and hangs up, and laughs, and decides to go for a walk outside. His luck is starting to look up, now. Surely something else good might happen?
(And when he promptly trips over his own feet and falls down two flights of stairs, he thinks that no, it's not his luck that's improving: a good deed is a good deed, and now it's time to pay it forward.)
And because the author is a dork, there will probably be a continuation to this. Eventually. RAWR. Ha... turns out there is one? It will be posted... later. Yes. Later.