#2759

Little Gabriel Falco is nothing without the piano. His pretty teacher comes to him every day to teach. He loves it, his hands mastering the keys. Little Gabriel also likes his pretty teacher who smiles and brushes his hair. It’s his time with her, his only time where he is more than just the annoying second child, where he matters.

(Hayato isn’t sure what killed his mother, but he’s damn certain his father’s hands were involved when he uncovers evidence she was going to take him with assistance from his stepmother.)

Little Gabriel loses his pretty teacher and is put into a show a few weeks later, his tears ignored as his sister Bianchi hands him cookies.

He nearly dies. His father laughs and presses more cookies into his hands as people say the freestyle was amazing, and that Bianchi’s work shines.

Little Gabriel loses the piano. He loses the time when he is himself, when he can choose.

He is nothing, because no one will let him be more.

(Hayato runs a year later, hands shaking as he tries to fucking breathe through the tension in his throat. He chokes on the cookies he still feels slowly sliding down his gullet.)

-

Little Sawada Tsunayoshi has nothing of his own. His Mama doesn’t see him, his papa isn’t around. He gets things, but bullies lurk and take.

They take, take and take. Tsuna has nothing.

(Mama doesn’t notice because Papa never wants her to see bad things. Her mind is wrapped up in failed images, only showing the good. She can’t see the truth.)

He remembers something once. A warmth, a feeling slowly filling him. His. All his.

Then it was gone.

Nothing.

Nothing but a cold, heavy feeling deep inside, dragging him down and down.

(Tsuna stops smiling a year after his warmth went away. No one notices.)

-

You get the name of your soulmate when you’re ten. It appears on your body in different colours, though only a small portion of the world knows what they mean.

Hayato (once known as Gabriel, but he has shaken the name of a boy owned by his family from his shoulders as a coat torn to pieces by the wind) wakes up with Sawada Tsunayoshi scrawled across his throat in orange lettering.

Tsuna awakens with Gokudera Hayato across his right hand in red.

Both boys cherish the names. One, because perhaps he has something of His. That no one can take away from him, the other is because he sees the Orange and knows he will have a place. He will. He has to.

They just had to find each other first.

-

Hayato knows the name, Sawada. He knows it like any other mafia child knows it. Connected to the Vongola. The Young Lion.

Hayato needs more information before he goes to find His Soulmate, His Sky. So he stalks Iemitsu Sawada.

He plants a bomb in the man’s condo, where he takes his girlfriends a month later. It doesn’t kill him, his Flames protecting him, but it does ruin the condo.

Good.

Hayato hates the man from his stalking. Too much bragging, careless words. His distance from his son, a son Iemitsu seems to sneer at the name of.

Hayato does have something, though.

Namimori.

-

Tsuna meets Hayato on a Wednesday. He’s walking home from school, shoulders hunched as bullies follow him, laughing.

They’re always laughing.

Hayato comes then, a boy with silver hair and a snarl. He appears as if from a dream, standing right in front of Tsuna.

It’s nerve-wracking at first, until Tsuna sees the orange around Hayato’s throat.

His name.

Tsuna’s breath catches.

“Oh? Dame Tsuna’s soulmate is here?” The bullies mock, having reached them when Tsuna froze, staring at His Name on His Soulmate’s throat.

Hayato snarls.

-

Namimori isn’t prepared for a Storm attacking someone who tries to hurt their soulmate. No one truly is.

The Storm kills seven people on its first day in town. The Hibari family comes to clean it up, edging carefully around the snarling Storm with the Orange-

Wait. Orange?

Namimori does a double-take. They study little Tsuna, with his dull eyes and his cold aura.

They call in help.

(Namimori forms around Tsuna as a shield when the bonds holding him back snap.)

-

Hayato lurks by his soulmate’s side at all times. He has found his place by his soulmate’s side. He will not leave it, lurking always right at his heels.

He is the Storm, the Right Hand. Hayato will never leave Tsuna’s side.

His soulmate, his Sky.

Hayato has Tsuna’s name across his own throat, a sign of where he belongs.

(When Tsuna places his own hand on the name, Hayato belongs even more.)

-

Tsuna has a soulmate. He has something that is His.

And he has the Warmth back. His Flames, as the Hibari family calls them. Flames that curl around people, bringing them closer to Tsuna.

Tsuna doesn’t mind it. He likes having more people.

But nothing is like Hayato. Hayato is His. His in ways no one else is. When he had nothing, Hayato was there. Hayato is everything.