[Fic]: All Summer In A Day. Part 2.
'I want you to look at me.'
Then.
They began driving to Salerno, and from there, to Vietri sul Mare on a long, winding road stretched around enormous mountains, overlooking a blue sea glittered with gold. The lane division was ambiguous, and the curve of the road dangerous, but Tsuna trusted Hibari's driving ability, seeing it first hand in many car chases. Tsuna knew that Hibari secretly loved driving, even more so if Hibari was by himself, and only tolerable when he was with Tsuna.
Tolerance was enough for Tsuna.
It was a fairly hot day, and Tsuna was beginning to feel the heat and the sweat that glued the fabrics of his suit to his skin despite the air conditioning in the car. His armpits and his back were damp and uncomfortable, and Tsuna wanted to peel off the suit jacket and the tie and the nicely pressed shirt, but felt shy at Hibari's presence. Hibari was still wearing all of his clothes, and he wasn't complaining, so Tsuna felt obligated to keep it on.
Tsuna kept his eyes on the scenery outside his window, but there wasn't much except for large, white rocks and the occasional plants that clung on the side of the mountain. The sea was on Hibari's side of the car, and Tsuna was scared that if he looked through Hibari's window, Hibari would mistakenly think that Tsuna was looking at him instead of the scenery. Although, if Tsuna was honest with himself, he wasn't sure if he would sacrifice a chance to study Hibari up close for a view of the sea.
"You're annoying me."
"HIIEEE!" Tsuna jumped in his seat, but then mentally hit himself for overreacting again. He thought he had outgrown this habit, but being within Hibari's presence never failed to revert Tsuna back. Tsuna turned to look at Hibari, swallowing a lump in his throat.
"I'm sorry, Hibari-san."
"Take off your jacket," Hibari ordered, eyes still on the road.
"Wha-what?"
"Take off your jacket if you can't handle the heat. Your fidgeting is annoying me," Hibari said.
"R-right," Tsuna said, relieved for the permission, glad to know that Hibari wouldn't be too annoyed with his low tolerance for the extreme. He honestly thought that Hibari would scoff and then bite him to death for being so weak.
Tsuna unbuttoned his suit jacket first, but was reluctant to take it off, even though he could feel the sweat on his skin cooling with the opening of the jacket. Taking a deep breath, he shrugged the jacket off his shoulders and tossed it to the backseat, sighing in relief. The tie came off next, and he kept the first three buttons on his shirt undone.
Even though Hibari was not looking at him directly, Tsuna could feel his skin prickling from the edge of Hibari's attention, as if Hibari was peering at Tsuna from the corner of his eyes. But when Tsuna turned to look at him, Hibari seemed to keep all of his attention on the road ahead.
Perhaps it was his wishful imagination.
Tsuna felt bare and vulnerable, as if he was shirtless rather than having only three buttons of his shirt undone.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," Tsuna replied hastily, turning away in embarrassment.
They fell back into a terse silence. Tsuna forced his gaze to the view outside his car window, which wasn't much because all he saw were more rocks and more bushes, but he didn't dare to glance in Hibari's side of the car. Yet, he could feel the side of his face burning from Hibari's presence alone.
The car entered a tunnel that cut through the mountain, and immediately the scene of rocks and bushes melted away to a faint reflection of Hibari on the glass, etching on Tsuna's own pale face. Tsuna's eyes latches on to Hibari's reflection, tracing the dark bangs delicately hugging the curve of his forehead to the bridge of his nose, following the tilt of his lips, the dark glint in his eyes, the line of his neck.
Tsuna imagined a bead of sweat trailing down Hibari's neck and his own lips reaching to catch it, brushing underneath Hibari's jaw to his collarbone, inhaling Hibari's musty scent. Tsuna's throat went dry at the image, and he shifted a little in his seat, his body feeling too warm. Tsuna licked his dry lips, his mind racing with guilt at the direction of his thoughts.
And then he saw it.
Hibari peered at Tsuna from the corner of his eyes, his gaze seemed to follow the brush of Tsuna's tongue across his lips. Tsuna felt his face burning, unable to look away from Hibari's reflection and afraid of turning around and catching Hibari's eyes dead on. He wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs, swallowing heavily when the weight of Hibari's attention grew with every passing second.
Then there was a flash of white light cutting across the glass, and Hibari's reflection melted away as the car reached the end of the tunnel.
'She is a lovely girl. I'm not in love with her, but I think I can be.'
Now.
Her name was Francesca, and Tsuna could sense a tint of her German descent in her voice despite her Southern Italian sun-kissed skin and dark eyes. The folds of her bright yellow dress fluttered like wings when she bowed to Tsuna, and, as Tsuna expected, a soft but strong voice, in accented Japanese, "Good morning, Sawada-san."
She was to be his fiancé, if things went well.
Her brother, the head of the Morreti family, frowned in confusion, and Tsuna would laugh if this was not a formal meeting. "Good morning, Morreti-san. You don't have to be so formal."
Francesca lifted her head, wearing an identical expression as her brother's. "I apologize if I have made a mistake. I don't know much about Japanese culture, I'm afraid."
"Oh no," Tsuna said, reverting to Italian. "We're in Italy. It's only fair if I speak Italian, right? Besides, there's no need for formality."
"Oh," Francesca smiled. She wasn't as pretty as Kyoko or Bianchi, but her openness made up for it. "Umm-"
"Just Tsuna is fine."
Tsuna could sense her brother's disapproval before meeting his gaze. He had spoken to Armando once, and the man was not as pleasant as his sister.
It was alright. Tsuna didn't like him much either. There wasn't much to say about a man who was willing to sacrifice his sister because he couldn't protect his family himself. Not that Tsuna was going to hurt Francesca in anyway, but Tsuna couldn't imagine using any of his friends and sacrificing their happiness for his own gain.
Behind Tsuna, his guardians remained silent until Tsuna introduced them to the Morretis, and in turn, he waited for an introduction of the Morreti guardians. Surprisingly, it was Francesca and not Armando who spoke first.
"This is Alfonso, who is-" Francesca began, but then her brother interrupted.
"My right hand man, the second in command," Armando finished.
There was a tense silence where the siblings gave each other significant looks, but Francesca turned away first, the line of her shoulders slightly lower than it was before. Armando continued on the introduction as if Francesca never spoke. Behind him, Alfonso, the man who was introduced, tightened his fists by his side, his eyes fleetingly turned to Francesca momentarily before darting back to Armando.
Tsuna knew that there was an internal conflict within the Morreti family without his Hyper Intuition. His guardians were behind him, so he couldn't read their expressions. He wondered if any of them could see what he saw.
Tsuna had several guesses as to what was going on in the Morreti family. He did a background check first, and what little he found was enough for him to understand that the Vongola had the upper hand in this deal. If he and Francesca got married, the Morreti family would gain a sense of stability from the alliance after the tumultuous internal fighting resulted from the death of their leader last year. The alliance would benefit the Vongola as well, strengthening its hold in Italy.
"I thought the Vongola family had one more guardian?" Armando said, startling Tsuna out of his thoughts.
"Armando," Francesca said warningly.
It was kind of Francesca to interfere, but Tsuna could handle this himself, and besides, he could guess that she had little authority over her brother. Tsuna knew Armando probably did a background check to see if there was any weakness within the Vongola, and this seemingly harmless question was his way of testing that crack. Armando wanted to know if there was an internal conflict within the Vongola.
Suddenly, Tsuna felt a familiar presence. A gaze burned Tsuna's back, making the hair at the back of his neck stood on ends.
No one seemed to realize it, but someone was watching them.
Tsuna knew this gaze.
Hibari-san.
Tsuna thought Hibari didn't want to come. He thought Hibari didn't want to watch.
Yet, despite his words in the hallway, Hibari was here.
Tsuna felt a relieved but sad smile threatening to break over his face.
"He is here," Tsuna said without looking back at Hibari. Behind him, a soft murmuring rose before Reborn cleared his throat, effectively halting his guardians in their confused whispering. "But our Cloud Guardian prefers to watch and protect our family from afar."
Tsuna didn't need to turn around to know that Hibari was standing at the upper right balcony overlooking the room. He could imagine Hibari now, in his black suit and purple dress shirt, arms crossed, chilly eyes glaring at the crowd below him.
Tsuna looked at Armando's frown and Francesca's unreadable expression. Somehow, his inability to read Francesca's considerate look worried him more than Armando's irritation.
Francesca was looking at something high up, behind Tsuna, and Tsuna knew that if he followed the direction of her gaze, he would find Hibari.
Francesca returned her gaze back to Tsuna, something sad and indescribable in her eyes.
"You have a lovely handkerchief," she said cryptically.
Tsuna could still feel Hibari's phantom touch as he tucked the purple handkerchief in Tsuna's left breast pocket.
"Thank you," Tsuna said, wondering how much Francesca was able to find out. He wondered if she would tell Armando.
Behind him, Hibari's presence felt reassuring and dangerous at the same time.
‘Love is confinement.’
Then.
They made a pit stop because the sun was bright, and Tsuna wanted to dip his feet in the water. Hibari wanted to stay with the car, but with enough prompting by Tsuna, he decided to walk along the beach too, although he refused Tsuna’s suggestion to take his shoes off.
Tsuna rolled his dress pants up to his knee, ignoring the fact that they would probably be ruined later. He walked along the wet sand, a trail of small footprints at his heels.
When Tsuna was eight, his mother had taken him to Hokkaido after his father left for another three year trip, so Hokkaido was just for the two of them; perhaps his mother had hoped that the bright sun and the blue water and the vastness of the ocean would fill the void his father left behind. Tsuna remembered getting angry at his mother because he wanted ice cream and she wouldn’t take him and why wasn’t dad here? and he remembered stomping furiously at the wet sand, eyes and nose stinging because he was crying so much. What burned in his mind the most, however, was when his mother tear up, and Tsuna stopped, looking with shame at his feet and realizing how small he was, how small of an imprint he left in the sand, how the coming wave easily washed his angry footprints away.
Tsuna stopped in his track and looked at the trail he had left behind. His footprints were bigger now, for a bigger man. A wave crashed against shore and his footprints grew fainter and fainter, washing away slowly, just like they did fifteen years ago, no matter how much bigger they had become.
“What is it?” Hibari’s voice startled Tsuna from his thoughts.
“Nothing much,” Tsuna said, walking up to the drier sand by Hibari’s side. “I was just thinking of how small I am.”
“Everyone is small in this world,” Hibari said, and Tsuna was amused.
“I didn’t think that Hibari-san of all people would say that,” Tsuna laughed.
“I am strong,” Hibari said, and Tsuna noticed that sturdy line of his back, stiffer than when he was in his teens. “But that does not mean I am not small. There is always something bigger than me.”
Tsuna remembered seeing many of Hibari’s wounds. He imagined that he could see those scars even now, even though they were all covered.
“That’s true,” Tsuna agreed, suddenly thinking of how Hibari protected Namimori with a fierce determination. Tsuna had something like that too, something that was bigger than him, something that he had to protect. Something that he had to put before his selfishness.
“Do you ever feel confined, Hibari-san?” Tsuna asked out of curiosity. “Trapped by this force that is bigger than you?” Hibari was Cloud. He had the whole horizon to him; he could float where he liked, go where he pleased.
Hibari stopped walking, and Tsuna almost went on without him, but it only took Tsuna one second to feel the chilliness of Hibari’s absence by his side. He turned back to Hibari, only to find Hibari staring intently at him.
“I will never be confined for long” was Hibari’s answer, and that was true, but there was something about Hibari’s words that made Tsuna felt cold. Hibari’s gaze had Tsuna shivering to his bone, not quite from fear, but from an acute awareness of who Hibari was. It was difficult to forget, but sometimes Tsuna wanted to. Sometimes, Tsuna had hopes that Hibari was different, was more than his pride, was more than the killing intent that he displayed in battles, but Tsuna wondered if he was lying to himself.
But then Hibari would arrive at his side, and Tsuna would remember why he had those hopes in the first place.
“No one would try to confine you, Hibari-san,” said Tsuna, half-joking, half-truthful. “Not without you choosing to be.”
Hibari looked furious, and Tsuna wondered what he had said to anger him. “Why would I choose to be confined?”
Tsuna had once asked his mother why would anyone want to be confined? and his mother had smiled sadly, the same tilt of the lips that she had when she thought of his father. It was the first time that Tsuna realized that love was something that confined people, and a poisonous thought stained his mind, if his mother didn’t had his father, didn’t had Tsuna, didn’t remained confined by love, would she be happier?
Tsuna jerked slightly in surprise when he realized where his thoughts were heading, and he mentally slapped himself. There was no way that he was suggesting that Hibari could be confined by love, and there was no way that deep within his heart, he was hoping that it was because of him.
“I’m sorry,” Tsuna said, for lack of anything better to say.
Hibari looked past Tsuna’s shoulders and continued walking. They stayed side by side, but the silence between them was stifled. Tsuna felt how fragile and unsteady the ground underneath his feet was. He almost bumped into Hibari when Hibari slowed to a stop.
“Hibari-san?”
Hibari turned to Tsuna, and Tsuna lifted his gaze to Hibari’s face, but the sun was directly behind Hibari’s head, shrouding his face in shadow. Tsuna shielded his eyes and tried to peek through his fingers at the expression on Hibari’s face, but he couldn’t see well with the scorching light.
“What about you?”
There was something strange in Hibari’s voice. Tsuna didn’t know what to think of it at first, and he didn’t know what Hibari wanted to hear because the answer was obvious. Hibari’s face was close, too close, so close that Tsuna could sense, among the strong scent the salty sea, the faint, sharp smell of Hibari’s sweat that scarfed around his neck. Tsuna had an urge to undo the first button of Hibari’s shirt to see the damp collarbone, and then another button, peeling the wet shirt from Hibari’s skin slowly, and then another button, if Hibari would let him.
Hibari’s face was so close that Tsuna could feel the warm breath brushing against his cheek. Tsuna wondered if Hibari had been leaning down, or he had been reaching up.
But he must have been imagining that Hibari was moving closer to him because he could feel his balance tilting dangerously at the tip of his toes, and Hibari’s face became farther and farther away as he drew away from Tsuna, probably because Tsuna was too close.
It was only me, Tsuna thought with a cold drop in his stomach. Hibari didn’t feel the same. His attraction was one-sided.
But that was good that nothing was ever going to happen between them because Tsuna was Vongola Decimo and Hibari his cloud guardian. Tsuna had responsibilities, just as Hibari had his, and Tsuna couldn’t afford to be selfish. It was dangerous, whatever this feeling he had for Hibari was, and he needed to back off. One day, he was to be married, and it wouldn’t be to Hibari. One day, he was going to have an heir to the Vongola family.
“I belong to everyone, Hibari-san,” Tsuna replied, and that was the truth. The Sky belonged to everyone and was confined to no one. But even though he was Sky, Tsuna felt more constricted than any of his other guardians.
A rush of cold air brushed past, and Hibari jerked away from him to walk on ahead, and Tsuna didn’t have the opportunity to read the expression on his face. When Tsuna finally returned to his senses, the feeling of Hibari’s warm breath still lingered across his skin, he rushed to catch up to Hibari, but Hibari’s face was blank, as if Tsuna had never answered him, and he wouldn’t care if Tsuna did.
Tsuna felt like he should apologize and explained himself, but there was nothing to apologize for and nothing else to explain. He didn’t owe Hibari anything, and Hibari didn’t owe him anything, but Tsuna had a feeling that Hibari was upset by his words.
“Did I upset you, Hibari-san?”
“I belong to no one.”
Tsuna was startled. Hibari’s words seemed like retaliation.
“I know that,” Tsuna said, but felt a little discomfited by this truth for reasons that he didn’t quite understand.
“Remember it,” Hibari said curtly, and Tsuna wondered if they were having two different conversations because Tsuna didn’t know why Hibari had to state the obvious. Tsuna already knew that no one could ever bind Hibari, and nothing could ever confine him.
“I will,” Tsuna promised, and although the command came from Hibari, Tsuna felt as if Hibari might be more upset by Tsuna’s agreement.
But that was probably his wishful thinking.
“Let’s head back,” Hibari said, but Tsuna suddenly had a strong urge to rebel.
“I’d like to stay for a bit longer,” Tsuna said.
Hibari said nothing, just gave Tsuna a nod and walked back to where they had packed the car. Tsuna watched his retreating back and almost regretted that he didn’t head back with Hibari, that he had let Hibari left, but a part of him said that he needed to do this for himself. The hollow feeling at the loss of Hibari’s presence scared him because he didn’t know he could feel this way about a person, and Tsuna was glad then, even though he still regretted it, that he could make the choice of parting with Hibari. It was liberating, in a way.
Tsuna didn’t head back to the car until late afternoon, wet sand caking his legs and dress pants, all of his clothes soaked because his shoes fell in the water and was swept away by the waves, and he had jumped in after them.
Hibari was frowning when he returned.
“I’m sorry for staying out for so long and making you worried,” Tsuna said.
“You didn’t make me worried,” Hibari said, starting the ignition of the car and not meeting Tsuna’s eyes. “You could take care of yourself. You can’t make me do anything, don’t be so full of yourself.”
Tsuna didn’t say anything after that. The chilly ocean air still numbed his bones, so he just felt exhausted by Hibari’s confusing presence.
They drove off in cold silence.
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