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Title: Auguri di Natale
Notes: written for minanaru4ever-8027forever, 2012 fuckyeah8027 Secret Santa
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5286
Characters: Tsuna, Yamamoto
Warnings: N/A, mild spoilers for future arc.
Summary: Christmas in Japan is a romantic holiday; Christmas in Italy is a family occasion. For the Vongola Family, inevitably, Christmas is a little of both.
Their first Christmas together in Italy, Tsuna would remember afterward, was—like so many of the Christmases that would follow—a complete disaster. Twenty-two and still entangled in the last months of university, Tsuna had only one meager ambition for the winter vacation: to spend it at home with his friends. Graduation was impending in the spring, probable but by no means certain, and Reborn’s dark hints at a fate worse than death awaiting him should he fail to meet requirements in time for April’s ceremony were beginning to give Tsuna something of a nervous tic. By the time December rolled around all Tsuna wanted was a quiet vacation. A nice Christmas Eve dinner with Yamamoto; an extremely average and typical Christmas cake; gifts exchanged at midnight before they fell into bed together and eventually to sleep; that sort of holiday.
He already knew his faint hopes (dashed every year, only to spring up again in the first early chill of December that this year would be the one) were doomed the instant Reborn appeared in his doorway bearing an aggressively festive red-and-green trimmed letter sealed with a familiar crest. “Tell the Ninth we appreciate it but there’s no need,” he told Reborn preemptively, pushing things aside on his desk in an effort to look discouragingly busy. Not that Reborn was the type to be discouraged, but it was always worth the attempt. Tsuna had spent years now building up resistance to the Ninth’s gentle, grandfatherly, always-more-than-they-seemed requests. Ninety-two more years of tomatoes served as a constant reminder of what happened when he let his guard down.
“What a pity that I’ve already gotten the tickets. I gave Yamamoto and Gokudera theirs this afternoon.” Reborn gave his most deeply smug smile, flicked out the invitation between two fingers, and waited.
Tsuna was doomed from those words, in retrospect. A quiet vacation, he thought wistfully as he stumbled down the ramp into the terminal at Trapini Birgi after fifteen hours on a plane that felt like eternity, trying to shake feeling back into his legs as he went. Fifteen hours on a plane with four guardians—Hibari having taken his helicopter, according to Reborn, and Chrome and Mukuro having found their own means of transportation that he profoundly hoped involved MM rather than liberating one of the Varia’s personal jets, as he really couldn’t deal with spending his vacation fielding Squalo’s lengthy, loud complaints—but fifteen hours on a plane with the remaining jumble of strange, eccentric, energetic personalities that had somehow become his Family was hopefully exhausting enough to have given him some kind of greater cosmic karma for the vacation. At the very least he had ten more days without having to deal with “extreme turbulence”.
Somewhere behind him Kyoko-chan and Haru exclaimed in cheerful appreciation at the bright airport decorations, the towering panes of glass offering views of other planes awaiting takeoff. It all seemed very peaceful. Yamamoto’s steadying hand on Tsuna’s arm made that small hope for an uneventful holiday burn just a little brighter. None of their luggage had even been lost in the flight, an unprecedented streak of good luck that made Tsuna approach customs with a wary sort of optimism that he was only just beginning to cherish.
Then airport security found the (neatly wrapped) grenade Lambo had somehow gotten through in his oversized and overflowing suitcase. His loud protests of “It’s a present!” appeased no one, but did eventually draw the attention of, in no particular order: several disreputable-looking suited men that Fuuta informed him were (highly ranked) local Mafia, a small squadron of people in neat military uniforms, and an unfortunately large number of extremely disgruntled customs officials. Customs officials who managed to find, while ducking behind an overturned desk to dodge the ensuing chaos as the local Mafia and the military took loud and explosive exception to each other, that Tsuna’s passport was apparently a very shoddy forgery. He was still in the middle of a tongue-tangled attempt at extricating himself when a closer blast sent up billowing clouds of dust, paperwork, and a burnt-hair sort of smell, diverting the official for just long enough for Yamamoto to sidle up and grab Tsuna’s wrist in one hand and a bag in the other, pulling him away into a dead run.
“I don’t understand,” Tsuna yelped as they dashed for the exit, luggage and children in tow. Gokudera’s idea of ‘cover’ left tears streaming from the corners of his eyes at the acrid, stinging smoke—or maybe that was the smell of Bianchi’s cake, fusing the door locks into a molten mess behind them as they barreled en masse towards the cable cars they were supposed to board. “We did all the paperwork for those passports.”
Reborn pulled his hat down over his eyes and smiled secretively, earning himself a sidelong glare from Tsuna that made Tsuna trip over his own sneakers in distraction but was deeply satisfying just the same. "This is practice,” Reborn assured him. “Mafia infiltration. You can’t count on having a legitimate passport when you’re traveling in a hurry—”
“He switched them,” Yamamoto added helpfully, smile undiminished. As well it might be, since everyone else’s full dashing speed was barely a light jog for him, leaving him unruffled and looking deeply amused at the whole enterprise. Torn between wheeling on Yamamoto with a betrayed “you knew?” and finishing his thorough chastisement of Reborn, Tsuna settled for an indignant little squawk which only gave Reborn the opening to add, “you failed, by the way. Think of the return trip as your make-up exam.” Before Tsuna could make any retort to that at all he was pushed into a cable car and the door closed firmly behind them, leaving Reborn smiling seraphically at him through the window.
Which was, in short, how Tsuna found himself spending his winter vacation at a sprawling villa in Erice generously lent him by the Ninth for the span of ten days. Even with the looming, nagging certainty that there was a catch somewhere in the arrangement, ten days of relaxation and spending time with his friends—as much as the two ideas were even vaguely compatible—and ten days without assignments or baseball practice or assassin crises and the relative privacy of a room shared with Yamamoto were an exciting prospect. Vaguely private. As much as privacy existed at all between such a close-knit and haphazard family.
He had never honestly considered the possibility that it would somehow be even more difficult than ever to get time alone with Yamamoto during the vacation. Not when they were sharing a bed. Yet somehow he found himself waking up the first morning in Erice from a profoundly deep sleep with a Yamamoto-shaped impression in the bed beside him and the lingering traces of Yamamoto’s scent in the sheets—and nothing else. Later, he told himself firmly, letting Reborn explain to him how Yamamoto and big brother had left early together for a specially concocted beachfront training regimen. Later is okay too.
Somehow later never quite seemed to get there. He would cross paths with Yamamoto in the hallway, juggling several armloads of groceries and trying to find which bag had peanut butter to get the grape gum out of his hair—bump elbows with him briefly at meals before they were tugged in separate directions—tumble into bed beside Yamamoto to find him already asleep and wake again too late to catch him in the mornings—
It seemed to Tsuna to be coincidence verging on the impossible that they never managed to get a minute alone where both of them were fully awake. Only the occasional stray moment together at family outings, Yamamoto’s fingers twined with his as they mounted yet another set of ancient stairs at the second or third castle. Almost peaceful, Tsuna thought as Yamamoto sidestepped neatly, pulling Tsuna against his side to dodge effortlessly as Lambo dashed up the stairs through the space they had just vacated. I-Pin followed more sedately after, giggling and offering brief apology; Reborn brought up the rear. “When the temple this castle was built over still stood, record has it that sacrificial calves would walk up to the altar themselves to the slaughter,” Reborn commented casually as he passed. “Isn’t that interesting?” Yamamoto and Tsuna exchanged glances of mutual understanding, Yamamoto’s grin barely restraining his laughter, Tsuna’s expression warmly resigned.
“Do you think he needs help?”
Yamamoto shrugged and began to laugh in earnest. “Reborn can’t kill him or there wouldn’t be a future version,” he offered philosophically, but lengthened his strides with evident amusement anyway as Tsuna hurried after the trio.
They spent days like that, often close enough to touch but so seldom more than Yamamoto’s hand in his or Yamamoto’s cheek resting against his hair for a few moments, Yamamoto’s lean body curving against his from behind as he reached over Tsuna’s head for something on a higher shelf. A thousand tiny moments that somehow never really summed up to anything, waiting on an elusive later.
Their fourth day in Erice, thwarted by Yamamoto’s continuing early morning absences, Tsuna took matters into his own hands and armed the room’s alarm clock for what looked to him to be an absolutely unholy hour. For sure, this time, he’d catch Yamamoto before he left for his run and was subsequently sucked into the whirlwind of chaos that was a Vongola family holiday. This time...
Waking up at six AM to a blaring alarm clock and an empty bed was, Tsuna thought groggily, more or less the worst experience in the world. The clock made a feeble little crunching sound as he patted around grumpily in the dark for its off switch, beeping trailing off into a sad muffled squeak. Tsuna struggled not to feel guilty. Propping himself up against the pillows he settled in with the drowsily confused hope that Yamamoto might be coming back from wherever anyone could even go before dawn and promptly fell back asleep.
When he woke again he had no idea what time it was—only that sun was streaming through the gaps between the curtains, the alarm clock still read an accusatory ‘6 AM,’ and his bed was still empty. He was turned away at the entrance of the kitchen by an apologetic Gokudera, who handed him a plain roll and a cup of coffee that Tsuna eyed with deep misgivings. Then again, he probably looked like he needed it. “They’re making dinner in there already,” Gokudera told him, forehead wrinkled as if torn between disapproval at this imposition on the Tenth’s routine and grudging acceptance that they were, in fact, working on something for Tsuna. At least in part. “That idiot decided that festa dei sette pesci needed sushi.” Again, the mixed disapproval, with only the brightening expression in his eyes betraying the fact that Gokudera generally regarded that idiot’s sushi the same way his cat regarded any plate of fish whatsoever. Tsuna smiled his acceptance and took one extremely cautious pull at the mug of coffee, steering Gokudera away with him to round up the other exiles from the kitchens to explore the villa grounds for a day.
Dinner, in the end, was more than worth the wait. The entire family piled into the formal dining room that had lain untouched the entire vacation. Lit by candles and a huge fireplace in addition to the overhead electric lights, the entire room felt warm and welcoming: strangely, not too big for them at all. Tsuna felt as though he were the only thing out of place, too small for the heavy old seat that dominated the head of the table. There had been a brief scuffle for the two closest spots, Gokudera unwisely agreeing to an arm wrestling contest with Yamamoto to settle the matter of who would sit at the Tenth’s right hand. Tsuna thought it was more or less self-evident that Yamamoto was physically stronger—then Yamamoto shot Tsuna a sidelong glance as he sat pushing a flushed and sweating Gokudera’s hand inexorably towards the table surface, smiled, and somehow improbably proceeded to lose. He took Gokudera’s victorious crowing with such good grace that Tsuna, who knew intimately the strained look of frustration that tightened the corners of Yamamoto’s mouth when he was disappointed over a loss, was certain that Yamamoto had just given Gokudera a very small but warmly received Christmas gift. Tsuna’s hand found Yamamoto’s under the table, squeezed gentle thanks, and was rewarded with the same in return. Left hand was just as good as right as long as Yamamoto was beside him.
The food was unsurprisingly excellent; Tsuna was no judge whatsoever of wine, but from Gokudera’s enthused exclamations, that was just as good. By the time they were clearing away the meal to make room for what Reborn informed him with deadpan solemnity were the Vongola seasonal traditional activities Haru and Kyoko-chan were both deeply flushed and giggling quietly with their heads bent low together, close enough to almost be sharing a seat. Big brother’s volume had increased impressively; Gokudera was listing so thoroughly in his seat that he’d given up altogether and had settled himself against Tsuna’s shoulder instead. Even Yamamoto, clear-eyed and apparently otherwise unaffected, was endearingly pink all over in a way that made Tsuna wonder just how far down the blush went.
“Vongola seasonal traditions” turned out to consist of drawing presents from an enormous pot and performing tasks of Reborn’s devising if they picked one that wasn’t theirs. Tsuna privately doubted that the Ninth had ever been made to run in a three-legged race with a thoroughly tipsy Dino, Reborn threatening dire retribution on both of his students if their performance disappointed him, but he wisely kept this opinion to himself. Yamamoto, naturally, drew his own present on the first round and smiled in genial bemusement at the room at large; Tsuna was beginning to despair before he finally pulled his own on the fifth attempt. Despite the fact that the number of presents were dwindling as successful draws were made, big brother’s bad luck held steady past his sixth or seventh failure, pushing Reborn’s punishment games to heights of alarming creativity. The wine and the presents were depleted more or less at the same time, apparently signaling the next stage of the dinner. Bianchi slid from her seat with fluid, boneless grace and announced to the room at large, in the tones of a vague threat, “it’s time for dessert.” A vaguely ominous silence fell as Bianchi pivoted on the ball of her foot and glided towards the kitchen.
“Might be a good time to make an exit,” Yamamoto murmured softly in his ear, making Tsuna startle slightly.
“Um...” Tsuna eyed the remaining dinner guests with mild guilt as he stalled—but Yamamoto’s fingers were hot on his wrist, leaving Tsuna achingly aware of his proximity, of Yamamoto’s breath gently stirring his hair and brushing past his ear. The door nearest to the kitchen opened again and an alarming, strangely purplish cloud of smoke wafted in, deciding the matter. “Yeah,” Tsuna agreed hurriedly, sliding out of his chair and letting Yamamoto tug him, laughing, through the far door and back to their room. He didn’t truly relax until the door closed behind them.
“I thought I’d never get you alone,” Tsuna confided almost sheepishly, twining his fingers with Yamamoto as he pulled him further into the room, towards safety and temporary privacy.
“Well--” Yamamoto glanced over at the clock, eyebrows rising precipitously at the accusatory ‘6 AM,’ and darted a quick look down at his watch instead. “Well,” he resumed with relief, “it’s still Christmas Eve for now.” Laughing, he disentangled from Tsuna and crossed the room to his luggage, returning to press a thin package about the size of a notebook into Tsuna’s hands and lean down to kiss him lightly. “Glad I caught you before midnight.” The previous days’ frustration melting away instantaneously, Tsuna smiled up at Yamamoto and let him steer him back towards the bed to sit.
“Should I open it now?”
“Yeah, go ahead.” Yamamoto waved one hand casually at the package, grinning. “It’ll keep, but it’s only Christmas Eve a little bit longer.”
Neither he nor Yamamoto were the most expert of gift wrappers; Yamamoto had a tendency to optimistically cut the paper too small, covering the remaining holes with patchwork bits haphazardly mashed together with clear tape. Tsuna laughed as he worked his way through the tangle of paper, finally shedding it over the side of the bed in bright strips and leaving himself holding a large framed photo and an envelope of the same dimensions. He recognized the picture—another relatively rare gathering of the whole family in one place, this time at Takesushi. The memory made him smile, fingertips tracing each familiar figure through the glass. “I didn’t know you had a picture from then.” He glanced up, meeting Yamamoto’s eyes with a question in his. Yamamoto shrugged. “My dad got a pretty good one when we were all eating.”
Not that eating really adequately described the scene in the picture. Some of them were, to be fair. Gokudera was caught in the act sneaking a piece of fatty tuna off of Yamamoto’s plate. Lambo had his mouth stuffed to overflowing, with Haru leaning over in mid-scold. Hibari, seated with exacting and unforgiving posture at a table in the corner, glowered at them all with his food apparently untouched. Only in the picture could Tsuna see Reborn’s long legs sprawled under the table brushing Hibari’s as if holding him in check. Mukuro lounged at another table, contemplating a piece of fish skewered on the end of a fork while Chrome watched him with a single indulgent eye, smiling at something known only to herself. Everyone there, together, relatively happy and at rest—big brother and Kyoko-chan, Yamamoto and Tsuna himself, I-Pin and Fuuta. Tsuna put the picture down on his lap and pressed his fingers into the corners of the frame as though committing it to memory before reaching for the envelope.
“It felt kind of wrong leaving people out, but there’s no way everyone fits in one picture,” Yamamoto explained as Tsuna shook the contents out onto his palm. “You’ve made a lot of friends.” Large, glossy photos poured out of the envelope, spilling from his grip and onto his lap in a haphazard fan of startling color. Byakuran caught his eye immediately, lounging smugly at a small table with Uni, Gamma standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder and the rest of her family and the Wreaths arrayed around them. Yamamoto only laughed at Tsuna’s faintly reproachful look. “They’re friends too, right?”
The others were more normal: Enma, smiling warmly with the Shimon family, Julie’s fingers suspiciously close to the hem of Adelheid’s skirt and his wrist caught in her iron grip; the Arcobaleno in a rare state of relative peace, sans Uni, giving Tsuna a fairly clear idea who had taken that particular picture; Kokuyo, with an insistent MM doing her level best to block Chrome out of the frame; Lanchia and the children; Longchamp and his latest girlfriend; Dino and at least a dozen and a half of his closest men; Hibari surrounded by his disciplinary committee; CEDEF; Bianchi and his mother; the Varia—that one earned Yamamoto another sidelong look, Tsuna’s eyebrows raised. Yamamoto only laughed.
“I wrote everyone asking them for whatever. Lussuria takes a lot of pictures, so…”
That, Tsuna decided, was an opening he wasn’t going to pursue. As he gathered the photos back up, stacking the edges neatly together so they’d fit back in the envelope again, a smaller piece of paper slipped between the others and tumbled onto the bed beside him. Not paper, he realized as he picked it up. Cloth. Yamamoto shifted in anticipation, grinning in a particularly sheepish way as Tsuna traced his fingers over the painstaking, slightly crooked stitches of the omamori. “Seems like you were worrying a little about finals already. I thought it always used to help, when Sasagawa made you stuff like that…”
Yamamoto’s needlework wasn’t even close to what Kyoko-chan’s had been at thirteen. There was a vaguely lopsided look to some of the stitches despite the obvious care—a strange reminder that even Yamamoto had things he didn’t excel at. The thought made Tsuna laugh softly as he curled his fingers around the little charm, impressing the texture of the fabric against his palm. “That way we’ll graduate together,” Yamamoto added, his smile soft and his eyes intense in that quiet, warm way they had sometimes.
“Together. Thanks, Yamamoto. It’s really great.” Tsuna smiled warmly over at him, putting the photos and the good luck charm very carefully aside on the nighttable and reaching under the bed to reemerge with his own offering.
“Now yours, here.”
Tsuna tried to hide the anxious hope in his eyes as he pressed the box into Yamamoto’s hands. Maybe forty centimeters long but only ten or so deep, it wasn’t a terribly impressive-looking box and Tsuna’s best efforts at covering it in wrapping paper hadn’t helped very much. He’d carefully turned the side of the paper Nuts had walked all over, wrinkling, to the bottom of the box where Yamamoto might not see it. Apparently to no avail; naturally, Yamamoto flipped it over to open it. Tsuna caught the way Yamamoto’s grin widened at the paw-shaped impressions, but Yamamoto didn’t say anything and Tsuna was maybe a little grateful. They were long past the point of making excuses for their pets.
Under the wrapping the box was plain, marked with a simply printed label at the top scrawled in Tsuna’s best handwriting: Making of the Baseball Emperor. Enough to make Tsuna flush a little sheepishly, belatedly, at his own weak joke; enough to make Yamamoto laugh his most honest laugh, head thrown back a little and eyes all but closed in pleasure, the warm kind of laugh that somehow left Tsuna with no doubts that he wasn’t being laughed at but with. “You made videos?” Yamamoto asked as he slid the outer case away, revealing the neat rows of DVD cases inside. Tsuna suppressed the urge to wince and willed himself not to think of a few of Bianchi’s more deadpan suggestions for acceptable Christmas presents for a lover. She’d used that particular word often and with great relish. “Not like that,” he corrected hastily, the back of his neck and ears reddening despite his best efforts. Yamamoto’s eyebrows rose slightly in amused contemplation, his lips parted as if to ask what, exactly, it wasn’t like. Tsuna ‘s blush deepened and Yamamoto subsided with another short laugh.
“Right.”
Each case was neatly labeled with a timespan, the earliest from when they were only five. Yamamoto’s smile went just a little wry and thoughtful as he touched this first one with callused fingertips. “Your dad let me borrow his old tapes to copy over,” Tsuna said, inexplicably nervous at Yamamoto’s suddenly intense regard. “And then some of them from the old school journalism club…” Yamamoto nodded, fingers taking meticulous tally of each case, ticking off years with his fingertips. Elementary school, middle school where they’d met, high school and then college—then his fingers dipped into the empty space at the end of the box, marked with a little piece of cardboard holding the spacing. Wordlessly, Yamamoto lifted one eyebrow and cocked his head at Tsuna, smile gentle and inquisitive.
“I wanted to leave space for the rest of it. Since you aren’t done yet...” There was more he could still say, half-formed thoughts that died before they reached his lips. I watched all of them, he thought for one fleeting moment as Yamamoto’s lips covered his and Yamamoto’s tongue delved into his mouth, tasting of wine. I understood a little better, that rooftop eight years ago—
But he didn’t say that, only moaned softly as Yamamoto’s tongue coaxed his forward with playful swipes, as Yamamoto pushed him back on the bed and rolled both of them carefully away from the box. I’m not afraid of those empty spaces, he thought too, as the familiar weight of Yamamoto’s body settled over his and bore him gently down into the sheets. I know you’ll come back.
There was an unspoken understanding spun out between them about the truth of those videos. Squalo had already begun to send his own, undeterred by the knowledge that in at least one future it hadn’t been his bait that had lured Yamamoto back to the way of the sword; it had been Tsuna’s need.
This was Tsuna’s answer.
Yamamoto always kissed as though he were promising something, with full and perfect concentration, eyes closed and fingers wound through Tsuna’s hair to pull him in at just the right angle. It was an easy thing to get lost in. When they finally parted for air, Yamamoto was breathing hard against Tsuna’s lips; he always did, and Tsuna felt the same swell of justifiable smugness that he had since the very first time.
“Seems like a good time to try out my Christmas present,” Yamamoto murmured against his skin. For a brief (not all that irrational, given shared history) moment Tsuna thought Yamamoto meant to play one of the videos of his baseball exploits and almost groaned, but then Yamamoto leaned over the bed he came up instead with the box he had drawn from the pot earlier in the night. Tsuna wondered briefly if he should be worried by Yamamoto’s laughter now, but sprawled in their shared bed and thoroughly kissed, undisturbed for the first time in days, he couldn’t quite muster up the effort of concern. “Was it something nice?” he asked hazily instead, only making Yamamoto laugh harder.
It was, it turned out, very nice. Firmly resolving not to think about who had enough of a vested interest in his and Yamamoto’s sex life to gift them with a bottle of massage oil, Tsuna allowed Yamamoto to work his clothes off and roll him onto his stomach on the bed to dig dexterous oily fingers into the knots of tension on his back. His quiet groans of approval seemed to only encourage Yamamoto to greater heights of intent attention, hands framing Tsuna’s back and tracing the old x-shaped scar crisscrossing his skin with gentle fingertips. There was a slight pause, then Yamamoto blew gently over his back in a way that made the hair raise on the back of his neck and drew a shiver out of him. “That tickles,” Tsuna protested with a quiet laugh before the words faded into a gasp as his entire back began to prickle with heat.
Yamamoto hummed with quiet, pleased enlightenment from behind him. “So that’s what it meant about warming. Seems like it works?” Catching Tsuna halfway as he turned to give Yamamoto an appropriately fond-exasperated response, Yamamoto stilled his mouth with one smiling kiss and fitted himself comfortably against Tsuna’s side. The week or so since Yamamoto had last touched him like this felt like years. He groaned softly when Yamamoto’s fingers finally curled around his cock, startling guiltily and glancing towards the door even as his hips shifted eagerly against Yamamoto’s touch. It wasn’t often they had the luxury of privacy, of getting loud—wryly he thought back to one of their earliest times in university, a flustered Gokudera bursting into his room with dynamite alight and a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, sure that Tsuna’s soft exclamations meant he was being murdered. The interruption had hardly been the worst part. It had been getting him to leave again that had verged on impossible—
As if sharing the same memory Yamamoto traded a knowing glance with him, silencing him with another kiss that slipped into a quiet grin. “Everyone else should still be at the party...”
“Maybe.” Tsuna’s voice was more dubious, but he wasn’t about to squander the opportunity. It was so easy to let Yamamoto ease him onto his back again, let him kiss a path down his chest and lower, take Tsuna’s heated erection in his mouth and work him open slowly with long, agile fingers that knew Tsuna’s every weakness. This old familiar territory between them was almost new again after the long dry spell brought on by travelling and the schedule conflicts of the last few days. Mindful of the quiet in the hallway and the stillness he disrupted with each soft breathless gasps, Tsuna brought one arm up, muffling his own noises with his forearm and clenching the fingers of his other hand in Yamamoto’s hair as Yamamoto’s tongue flicked knowingly over the head of his cock. His brain was too scrambled with pleasure to remember coordination—biting down on his arm instead of pulling it back, he made a stifled noise of warning and climaxed abruptly into Yamamoto’s mouth, shuddering at the feel of Yamamoto’s throat moving as he swallowed around him.
“Please?” he asked once Yamamoto pulled up and away, rubbing at the corner of his mouth with his thumb to catch the last of Tsuna’s release and lick it away. Yamamoto’s laugh was soft and warm, with a little eager catch in it that Tsuna knew intimately. “We’ve got all night,” Yamamoto chided, but his teasing dismissal faded into a moan as Tsuna’s fingers wrapped around his cock and stroked him in return. “Or at least until they notice we’re gone…” Tsuna, who very much doubted that even alcohol and festivities could buy them as much time as all that, made a faint noise of negation and hauled Yamamoto up for a kiss with his arm locked behind his neck. “Alright,” Yamamoto mumbled against his lips, and chuckled when Tsuna smiled in triumph. “Alright, alright.”
They had, it turned out, slightly more time than they’d both feared. The first time was rushed and a little urgent, Yamamoto’s hips jerking in an irregular rhythm as he hitched Tsuna’s legs up higher and came much too quickly. Tsuna wasn’t the only one out of practice. The second time was slower, almost apologetically so, Yamamoto sprawled at Tsuna’s side and stroking him slowly as he moved inside him, lips pressed against Tsuna’s neck, eyes closed in perfect concentration. The third time...
Around the third time, Tsuna started to lose count—and to suspect, with quiet gratitude, that someone, probably the same unknown someone who’d wrapped Yamamoto’s Christmas gift, was buying them time alone. He wasn’t about to question the good luck. The clock still read, unerringly, 6 AM when he collapsed tiredly at Yamamoto’s side and felt Yamamoto’s arm settle over him with a comforting sort of weight. “Merry Christmas?” Tsuna hazarded, not nearly invested enough in the question to pull away and dig through the pile of discarded clothing for his watch. Yamamoto’s arm tightening around him only settled the matter. “Merry Christmas,” Yamamoto agreed, dragged him up for another kiss, and rolled them lazily on the bed to appropriately celebrate this pronouncement.
In the morning when Tsuna woke up to the sunlight streaming through the curtains again and the alarm clock telling the now-familiar lie, the blankets were on the floor and Yamamoto was sprawled under him with his head tossed back and his mouth open in a silent snore. Everything exactly as it should be. Not peaceful, he thought drily as small footsteps thundered in the hallway outside their door, followed quickly by the sound of a not-very-distant explosion shaking the walls. But somehow, just the same, he’d gotten everything he could have wanted for Christmas.
Notes: written for minanaru4ever-8027forever, 2012 fuckyeah8027 Secret Santa
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5286
Characters: Tsuna, Yamamoto
Warnings: N/A, mild spoilers for future arc.
Summary: Christmas in Japan is a romantic holiday; Christmas in Italy is a family occasion. For the Vongola Family, inevitably, Christmas is a little of both.
Their first Christmas together in Italy, Tsuna would remember afterward, was—like so many of the Christmases that would follow—a complete disaster. Twenty-two and still entangled in the last months of university, Tsuna had only one meager ambition for the winter vacation: to spend it at home with his friends. Graduation was impending in the spring, probable but by no means certain, and Reborn’s dark hints at a fate worse than death awaiting him should he fail to meet requirements in time for April’s ceremony were beginning to give Tsuna something of a nervous tic. By the time December rolled around all Tsuna wanted was a quiet vacation. A nice Christmas Eve dinner with Yamamoto; an extremely average and typical Christmas cake; gifts exchanged at midnight before they fell into bed together and eventually to sleep; that sort of holiday.
He already knew his faint hopes (dashed every year, only to spring up again in the first early chill of December that this year would be the one) were doomed the instant Reborn appeared in his doorway bearing an aggressively festive red-and-green trimmed letter sealed with a familiar crest. “Tell the Ninth we appreciate it but there’s no need,” he told Reborn preemptively, pushing things aside on his desk in an effort to look discouragingly busy. Not that Reborn was the type to be discouraged, but it was always worth the attempt. Tsuna had spent years now building up resistance to the Ninth’s gentle, grandfatherly, always-more-than-they-seemed requests. Ninety-two more years of tomatoes served as a constant reminder of what happened when he let his guard down.
“What a pity that I’ve already gotten the tickets. I gave Yamamoto and Gokudera theirs this afternoon.” Reborn gave his most deeply smug smile, flicked out the invitation between two fingers, and waited.
Tsuna was doomed from those words, in retrospect. A quiet vacation, he thought wistfully as he stumbled down the ramp into the terminal at Trapini Birgi after fifteen hours on a plane that felt like eternity, trying to shake feeling back into his legs as he went. Fifteen hours on a plane with four guardians—Hibari having taken his helicopter, according to Reborn, and Chrome and Mukuro having found their own means of transportation that he profoundly hoped involved MM rather than liberating one of the Varia’s personal jets, as he really couldn’t deal with spending his vacation fielding Squalo’s lengthy, loud complaints—but fifteen hours on a plane with the remaining jumble of strange, eccentric, energetic personalities that had somehow become his Family was hopefully exhausting enough to have given him some kind of greater cosmic karma for the vacation. At the very least he had ten more days without having to deal with “extreme turbulence”.
Somewhere behind him Kyoko-chan and Haru exclaimed in cheerful appreciation at the bright airport decorations, the towering panes of glass offering views of other planes awaiting takeoff. It all seemed very peaceful. Yamamoto’s steadying hand on Tsuna’s arm made that small hope for an uneventful holiday burn just a little brighter. None of their luggage had even been lost in the flight, an unprecedented streak of good luck that made Tsuna approach customs with a wary sort of optimism that he was only just beginning to cherish.
Then airport security found the (neatly wrapped) grenade Lambo had somehow gotten through in his oversized and overflowing suitcase. His loud protests of “It’s a present!” appeased no one, but did eventually draw the attention of, in no particular order: several disreputable-looking suited men that Fuuta informed him were (highly ranked) local Mafia, a small squadron of people in neat military uniforms, and an unfortunately large number of extremely disgruntled customs officials. Customs officials who managed to find, while ducking behind an overturned desk to dodge the ensuing chaos as the local Mafia and the military took loud and explosive exception to each other, that Tsuna’s passport was apparently a very shoddy forgery. He was still in the middle of a tongue-tangled attempt at extricating himself when a closer blast sent up billowing clouds of dust, paperwork, and a burnt-hair sort of smell, diverting the official for just long enough for Yamamoto to sidle up and grab Tsuna’s wrist in one hand and a bag in the other, pulling him away into a dead run.
“I don’t understand,” Tsuna yelped as they dashed for the exit, luggage and children in tow. Gokudera’s idea of ‘cover’ left tears streaming from the corners of his eyes at the acrid, stinging smoke—or maybe that was the smell of Bianchi’s cake, fusing the door locks into a molten mess behind them as they barreled en masse towards the cable cars they were supposed to board. “We did all the paperwork for those passports.”
Reborn pulled his hat down over his eyes and smiled secretively, earning himself a sidelong glare from Tsuna that made Tsuna trip over his own sneakers in distraction but was deeply satisfying just the same. "This is practice,” Reborn assured him. “Mafia infiltration. You can’t count on having a legitimate passport when you’re traveling in a hurry—”
“He switched them,” Yamamoto added helpfully, smile undiminished. As well it might be, since everyone else’s full dashing speed was barely a light jog for him, leaving him unruffled and looking deeply amused at the whole enterprise. Torn between wheeling on Yamamoto with a betrayed “you knew?” and finishing his thorough chastisement of Reborn, Tsuna settled for an indignant little squawk which only gave Reborn the opening to add, “you failed, by the way. Think of the return trip as your make-up exam.” Before Tsuna could make any retort to that at all he was pushed into a cable car and the door closed firmly behind them, leaving Reborn smiling seraphically at him through the window.
Which was, in short, how Tsuna found himself spending his winter vacation at a sprawling villa in Erice generously lent him by the Ninth for the span of ten days. Even with the looming, nagging certainty that there was a catch somewhere in the arrangement, ten days of relaxation and spending time with his friends—as much as the two ideas were even vaguely compatible—and ten days without assignments or baseball practice or assassin crises and the relative privacy of a room shared with Yamamoto were an exciting prospect. Vaguely private. As much as privacy existed at all between such a close-knit and haphazard family.
He had never honestly considered the possibility that it would somehow be even more difficult than ever to get time alone with Yamamoto during the vacation. Not when they were sharing a bed. Yet somehow he found himself waking up the first morning in Erice from a profoundly deep sleep with a Yamamoto-shaped impression in the bed beside him and the lingering traces of Yamamoto’s scent in the sheets—and nothing else. Later, he told himself firmly, letting Reborn explain to him how Yamamoto and big brother had left early together for a specially concocted beachfront training regimen. Later is okay too.
Somehow later never quite seemed to get there. He would cross paths with Yamamoto in the hallway, juggling several armloads of groceries and trying to find which bag had peanut butter to get the grape gum out of his hair—bump elbows with him briefly at meals before they were tugged in separate directions—tumble into bed beside Yamamoto to find him already asleep and wake again too late to catch him in the mornings—
It seemed to Tsuna to be coincidence verging on the impossible that they never managed to get a minute alone where both of them were fully awake. Only the occasional stray moment together at family outings, Yamamoto’s fingers twined with his as they mounted yet another set of ancient stairs at the second or third castle. Almost peaceful, Tsuna thought as Yamamoto sidestepped neatly, pulling Tsuna against his side to dodge effortlessly as Lambo dashed up the stairs through the space they had just vacated. I-Pin followed more sedately after, giggling and offering brief apology; Reborn brought up the rear. “When the temple this castle was built over still stood, record has it that sacrificial calves would walk up to the altar themselves to the slaughter,” Reborn commented casually as he passed. “Isn’t that interesting?” Yamamoto and Tsuna exchanged glances of mutual understanding, Yamamoto’s grin barely restraining his laughter, Tsuna’s expression warmly resigned.
“Do you think he needs help?”
Yamamoto shrugged and began to laugh in earnest. “Reborn can’t kill him or there wouldn’t be a future version,” he offered philosophically, but lengthened his strides with evident amusement anyway as Tsuna hurried after the trio.
They spent days like that, often close enough to touch but so seldom more than Yamamoto’s hand in his or Yamamoto’s cheek resting against his hair for a few moments, Yamamoto’s lean body curving against his from behind as he reached over Tsuna’s head for something on a higher shelf. A thousand tiny moments that somehow never really summed up to anything, waiting on an elusive later.
Their fourth day in Erice, thwarted by Yamamoto’s continuing early morning absences, Tsuna took matters into his own hands and armed the room’s alarm clock for what looked to him to be an absolutely unholy hour. For sure, this time, he’d catch Yamamoto before he left for his run and was subsequently sucked into the whirlwind of chaos that was a Vongola family holiday. This time...
Waking up at six AM to a blaring alarm clock and an empty bed was, Tsuna thought groggily, more or less the worst experience in the world. The clock made a feeble little crunching sound as he patted around grumpily in the dark for its off switch, beeping trailing off into a sad muffled squeak. Tsuna struggled not to feel guilty. Propping himself up against the pillows he settled in with the drowsily confused hope that Yamamoto might be coming back from wherever anyone could even go before dawn and promptly fell back asleep.
When he woke again he had no idea what time it was—only that sun was streaming through the gaps between the curtains, the alarm clock still read an accusatory ‘6 AM,’ and his bed was still empty. He was turned away at the entrance of the kitchen by an apologetic Gokudera, who handed him a plain roll and a cup of coffee that Tsuna eyed with deep misgivings. Then again, he probably looked like he needed it. “They’re making dinner in there already,” Gokudera told him, forehead wrinkled as if torn between disapproval at this imposition on the Tenth’s routine and grudging acceptance that they were, in fact, working on something for Tsuna. At least in part. “That idiot decided that festa dei sette pesci needed sushi.” Again, the mixed disapproval, with only the brightening expression in his eyes betraying the fact that Gokudera generally regarded that idiot’s sushi the same way his cat regarded any plate of fish whatsoever. Tsuna smiled his acceptance and took one extremely cautious pull at the mug of coffee, steering Gokudera away with him to round up the other exiles from the kitchens to explore the villa grounds for a day.
Dinner, in the end, was more than worth the wait. The entire family piled into the formal dining room that had lain untouched the entire vacation. Lit by candles and a huge fireplace in addition to the overhead electric lights, the entire room felt warm and welcoming: strangely, not too big for them at all. Tsuna felt as though he were the only thing out of place, too small for the heavy old seat that dominated the head of the table. There had been a brief scuffle for the two closest spots, Gokudera unwisely agreeing to an arm wrestling contest with Yamamoto to settle the matter of who would sit at the Tenth’s right hand. Tsuna thought it was more or less self-evident that Yamamoto was physically stronger—then Yamamoto shot Tsuna a sidelong glance as he sat pushing a flushed and sweating Gokudera’s hand inexorably towards the table surface, smiled, and somehow improbably proceeded to lose. He took Gokudera’s victorious crowing with such good grace that Tsuna, who knew intimately the strained look of frustration that tightened the corners of Yamamoto’s mouth when he was disappointed over a loss, was certain that Yamamoto had just given Gokudera a very small but warmly received Christmas gift. Tsuna’s hand found Yamamoto’s under the table, squeezed gentle thanks, and was rewarded with the same in return. Left hand was just as good as right as long as Yamamoto was beside him.
The food was unsurprisingly excellent; Tsuna was no judge whatsoever of wine, but from Gokudera’s enthused exclamations, that was just as good. By the time they were clearing away the meal to make room for what Reborn informed him with deadpan solemnity were the Vongola seasonal traditional activities Haru and Kyoko-chan were both deeply flushed and giggling quietly with their heads bent low together, close enough to almost be sharing a seat. Big brother’s volume had increased impressively; Gokudera was listing so thoroughly in his seat that he’d given up altogether and had settled himself against Tsuna’s shoulder instead. Even Yamamoto, clear-eyed and apparently otherwise unaffected, was endearingly pink all over in a way that made Tsuna wonder just how far down the blush went.
“Vongola seasonal traditions” turned out to consist of drawing presents from an enormous pot and performing tasks of Reborn’s devising if they picked one that wasn’t theirs. Tsuna privately doubted that the Ninth had ever been made to run in a three-legged race with a thoroughly tipsy Dino, Reborn threatening dire retribution on both of his students if their performance disappointed him, but he wisely kept this opinion to himself. Yamamoto, naturally, drew his own present on the first round and smiled in genial bemusement at the room at large; Tsuna was beginning to despair before he finally pulled his own on the fifth attempt. Despite the fact that the number of presents were dwindling as successful draws were made, big brother’s bad luck held steady past his sixth or seventh failure, pushing Reborn’s punishment games to heights of alarming creativity. The wine and the presents were depleted more or less at the same time, apparently signaling the next stage of the dinner. Bianchi slid from her seat with fluid, boneless grace and announced to the room at large, in the tones of a vague threat, “it’s time for dessert.” A vaguely ominous silence fell as Bianchi pivoted on the ball of her foot and glided towards the kitchen.
“Might be a good time to make an exit,” Yamamoto murmured softly in his ear, making Tsuna startle slightly.
“Um...” Tsuna eyed the remaining dinner guests with mild guilt as he stalled—but Yamamoto’s fingers were hot on his wrist, leaving Tsuna achingly aware of his proximity, of Yamamoto’s breath gently stirring his hair and brushing past his ear. The door nearest to the kitchen opened again and an alarming, strangely purplish cloud of smoke wafted in, deciding the matter. “Yeah,” Tsuna agreed hurriedly, sliding out of his chair and letting Yamamoto tug him, laughing, through the far door and back to their room. He didn’t truly relax until the door closed behind them.
“I thought I’d never get you alone,” Tsuna confided almost sheepishly, twining his fingers with Yamamoto as he pulled him further into the room, towards safety and temporary privacy.
“Well--” Yamamoto glanced over at the clock, eyebrows rising precipitously at the accusatory ‘6 AM,’ and darted a quick look down at his watch instead. “Well,” he resumed with relief, “it’s still Christmas Eve for now.” Laughing, he disentangled from Tsuna and crossed the room to his luggage, returning to press a thin package about the size of a notebook into Tsuna’s hands and lean down to kiss him lightly. “Glad I caught you before midnight.” The previous days’ frustration melting away instantaneously, Tsuna smiled up at Yamamoto and let him steer him back towards the bed to sit.
“Should I open it now?”
“Yeah, go ahead.” Yamamoto waved one hand casually at the package, grinning. “It’ll keep, but it’s only Christmas Eve a little bit longer.”
Neither he nor Yamamoto were the most expert of gift wrappers; Yamamoto had a tendency to optimistically cut the paper too small, covering the remaining holes with patchwork bits haphazardly mashed together with clear tape. Tsuna laughed as he worked his way through the tangle of paper, finally shedding it over the side of the bed in bright strips and leaving himself holding a large framed photo and an envelope of the same dimensions. He recognized the picture—another relatively rare gathering of the whole family in one place, this time at Takesushi. The memory made him smile, fingertips tracing each familiar figure through the glass. “I didn’t know you had a picture from then.” He glanced up, meeting Yamamoto’s eyes with a question in his. Yamamoto shrugged. “My dad got a pretty good one when we were all eating.”
Not that eating really adequately described the scene in the picture. Some of them were, to be fair. Gokudera was caught in the act sneaking a piece of fatty tuna off of Yamamoto’s plate. Lambo had his mouth stuffed to overflowing, with Haru leaning over in mid-scold. Hibari, seated with exacting and unforgiving posture at a table in the corner, glowered at them all with his food apparently untouched. Only in the picture could Tsuna see Reborn’s long legs sprawled under the table brushing Hibari’s as if holding him in check. Mukuro lounged at another table, contemplating a piece of fish skewered on the end of a fork while Chrome watched him with a single indulgent eye, smiling at something known only to herself. Everyone there, together, relatively happy and at rest—big brother and Kyoko-chan, Yamamoto and Tsuna himself, I-Pin and Fuuta. Tsuna put the picture down on his lap and pressed his fingers into the corners of the frame as though committing it to memory before reaching for the envelope.
“It felt kind of wrong leaving people out, but there’s no way everyone fits in one picture,” Yamamoto explained as Tsuna shook the contents out onto his palm. “You’ve made a lot of friends.” Large, glossy photos poured out of the envelope, spilling from his grip and onto his lap in a haphazard fan of startling color. Byakuran caught his eye immediately, lounging smugly at a small table with Uni, Gamma standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder and the rest of her family and the Wreaths arrayed around them. Yamamoto only laughed at Tsuna’s faintly reproachful look. “They’re friends too, right?”
The others were more normal: Enma, smiling warmly with the Shimon family, Julie’s fingers suspiciously close to the hem of Adelheid’s skirt and his wrist caught in her iron grip; the Arcobaleno in a rare state of relative peace, sans Uni, giving Tsuna a fairly clear idea who had taken that particular picture; Kokuyo, with an insistent MM doing her level best to block Chrome out of the frame; Lanchia and the children; Longchamp and his latest girlfriend; Dino and at least a dozen and a half of his closest men; Hibari surrounded by his disciplinary committee; CEDEF; Bianchi and his mother; the Varia—that one earned Yamamoto another sidelong look, Tsuna’s eyebrows raised. Yamamoto only laughed.
“I wrote everyone asking them for whatever. Lussuria takes a lot of pictures, so…”
That, Tsuna decided, was an opening he wasn’t going to pursue. As he gathered the photos back up, stacking the edges neatly together so they’d fit back in the envelope again, a smaller piece of paper slipped between the others and tumbled onto the bed beside him. Not paper, he realized as he picked it up. Cloth. Yamamoto shifted in anticipation, grinning in a particularly sheepish way as Tsuna traced his fingers over the painstaking, slightly crooked stitches of the omamori. “Seems like you were worrying a little about finals already. I thought it always used to help, when Sasagawa made you stuff like that…”
Yamamoto’s needlework wasn’t even close to what Kyoko-chan’s had been at thirteen. There was a vaguely lopsided look to some of the stitches despite the obvious care—a strange reminder that even Yamamoto had things he didn’t excel at. The thought made Tsuna laugh softly as he curled his fingers around the little charm, impressing the texture of the fabric against his palm. “That way we’ll graduate together,” Yamamoto added, his smile soft and his eyes intense in that quiet, warm way they had sometimes.
“Together. Thanks, Yamamoto. It’s really great.” Tsuna smiled warmly over at him, putting the photos and the good luck charm very carefully aside on the nighttable and reaching under the bed to reemerge with his own offering.
“Now yours, here.”
Tsuna tried to hide the anxious hope in his eyes as he pressed the box into Yamamoto’s hands. Maybe forty centimeters long but only ten or so deep, it wasn’t a terribly impressive-looking box and Tsuna’s best efforts at covering it in wrapping paper hadn’t helped very much. He’d carefully turned the side of the paper Nuts had walked all over, wrinkling, to the bottom of the box where Yamamoto might not see it. Apparently to no avail; naturally, Yamamoto flipped it over to open it. Tsuna caught the way Yamamoto’s grin widened at the paw-shaped impressions, but Yamamoto didn’t say anything and Tsuna was maybe a little grateful. They were long past the point of making excuses for their pets.
Under the wrapping the box was plain, marked with a simply printed label at the top scrawled in Tsuna’s best handwriting: Making of the Baseball Emperor. Enough to make Tsuna flush a little sheepishly, belatedly, at his own weak joke; enough to make Yamamoto laugh his most honest laugh, head thrown back a little and eyes all but closed in pleasure, the warm kind of laugh that somehow left Tsuna with no doubts that he wasn’t being laughed at but with. “You made videos?” Yamamoto asked as he slid the outer case away, revealing the neat rows of DVD cases inside. Tsuna suppressed the urge to wince and willed himself not to think of a few of Bianchi’s more deadpan suggestions for acceptable Christmas presents for a lover. She’d used that particular word often and with great relish. “Not like that,” he corrected hastily, the back of his neck and ears reddening despite his best efforts. Yamamoto’s eyebrows rose slightly in amused contemplation, his lips parted as if to ask what, exactly, it wasn’t like. Tsuna ‘s blush deepened and Yamamoto subsided with another short laugh.
“Right.”
Each case was neatly labeled with a timespan, the earliest from when they were only five. Yamamoto’s smile went just a little wry and thoughtful as he touched this first one with callused fingertips. “Your dad let me borrow his old tapes to copy over,” Tsuna said, inexplicably nervous at Yamamoto’s suddenly intense regard. “And then some of them from the old school journalism club…” Yamamoto nodded, fingers taking meticulous tally of each case, ticking off years with his fingertips. Elementary school, middle school where they’d met, high school and then college—then his fingers dipped into the empty space at the end of the box, marked with a little piece of cardboard holding the spacing. Wordlessly, Yamamoto lifted one eyebrow and cocked his head at Tsuna, smile gentle and inquisitive.
“I wanted to leave space for the rest of it. Since you aren’t done yet...” There was more he could still say, half-formed thoughts that died before they reached his lips. I watched all of them, he thought for one fleeting moment as Yamamoto’s lips covered his and Yamamoto’s tongue delved into his mouth, tasting of wine. I understood a little better, that rooftop eight years ago—
But he didn’t say that, only moaned softly as Yamamoto’s tongue coaxed his forward with playful swipes, as Yamamoto pushed him back on the bed and rolled both of them carefully away from the box. I’m not afraid of those empty spaces, he thought too, as the familiar weight of Yamamoto’s body settled over his and bore him gently down into the sheets. I know you’ll come back.
There was an unspoken understanding spun out between them about the truth of those videos. Squalo had already begun to send his own, undeterred by the knowledge that in at least one future it hadn’t been his bait that had lured Yamamoto back to the way of the sword; it had been Tsuna’s need.
This was Tsuna’s answer.
Yamamoto always kissed as though he were promising something, with full and perfect concentration, eyes closed and fingers wound through Tsuna’s hair to pull him in at just the right angle. It was an easy thing to get lost in. When they finally parted for air, Yamamoto was breathing hard against Tsuna’s lips; he always did, and Tsuna felt the same swell of justifiable smugness that he had since the very first time.
“Seems like a good time to try out my Christmas present,” Yamamoto murmured against his skin. For a brief (not all that irrational, given shared history) moment Tsuna thought Yamamoto meant to play one of the videos of his baseball exploits and almost groaned, but then Yamamoto leaned over the bed he came up instead with the box he had drawn from the pot earlier in the night. Tsuna wondered briefly if he should be worried by Yamamoto’s laughter now, but sprawled in their shared bed and thoroughly kissed, undisturbed for the first time in days, he couldn’t quite muster up the effort of concern. “Was it something nice?” he asked hazily instead, only making Yamamoto laugh harder.
It was, it turned out, very nice. Firmly resolving not to think about who had enough of a vested interest in his and Yamamoto’s sex life to gift them with a bottle of massage oil, Tsuna allowed Yamamoto to work his clothes off and roll him onto his stomach on the bed to dig dexterous oily fingers into the knots of tension on his back. His quiet groans of approval seemed to only encourage Yamamoto to greater heights of intent attention, hands framing Tsuna’s back and tracing the old x-shaped scar crisscrossing his skin with gentle fingertips. There was a slight pause, then Yamamoto blew gently over his back in a way that made the hair raise on the back of his neck and drew a shiver out of him. “That tickles,” Tsuna protested with a quiet laugh before the words faded into a gasp as his entire back began to prickle with heat.
Yamamoto hummed with quiet, pleased enlightenment from behind him. “So that’s what it meant about warming. Seems like it works?” Catching Tsuna halfway as he turned to give Yamamoto an appropriately fond-exasperated response, Yamamoto stilled his mouth with one smiling kiss and fitted himself comfortably against Tsuna’s side. The week or so since Yamamoto had last touched him like this felt like years. He groaned softly when Yamamoto’s fingers finally curled around his cock, startling guiltily and glancing towards the door even as his hips shifted eagerly against Yamamoto’s touch. It wasn’t often they had the luxury of privacy, of getting loud—wryly he thought back to one of their earliest times in university, a flustered Gokudera bursting into his room with dynamite alight and a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, sure that Tsuna’s soft exclamations meant he was being murdered. The interruption had hardly been the worst part. It had been getting him to leave again that had verged on impossible—
As if sharing the same memory Yamamoto traded a knowing glance with him, silencing him with another kiss that slipped into a quiet grin. “Everyone else should still be at the party...”
“Maybe.” Tsuna’s voice was more dubious, but he wasn’t about to squander the opportunity. It was so easy to let Yamamoto ease him onto his back again, let him kiss a path down his chest and lower, take Tsuna’s heated erection in his mouth and work him open slowly with long, agile fingers that knew Tsuna’s every weakness. This old familiar territory between them was almost new again after the long dry spell brought on by travelling and the schedule conflicts of the last few days. Mindful of the quiet in the hallway and the stillness he disrupted with each soft breathless gasps, Tsuna brought one arm up, muffling his own noises with his forearm and clenching the fingers of his other hand in Yamamoto’s hair as Yamamoto’s tongue flicked knowingly over the head of his cock. His brain was too scrambled with pleasure to remember coordination—biting down on his arm instead of pulling it back, he made a stifled noise of warning and climaxed abruptly into Yamamoto’s mouth, shuddering at the feel of Yamamoto’s throat moving as he swallowed around him.
“Please?” he asked once Yamamoto pulled up and away, rubbing at the corner of his mouth with his thumb to catch the last of Tsuna’s release and lick it away. Yamamoto’s laugh was soft and warm, with a little eager catch in it that Tsuna knew intimately. “We’ve got all night,” Yamamoto chided, but his teasing dismissal faded into a moan as Tsuna’s fingers wrapped around his cock and stroked him in return. “Or at least until they notice we’re gone…” Tsuna, who very much doubted that even alcohol and festivities could buy them as much time as all that, made a faint noise of negation and hauled Yamamoto up for a kiss with his arm locked behind his neck. “Alright,” Yamamoto mumbled against his lips, and chuckled when Tsuna smiled in triumph. “Alright, alright.”
They had, it turned out, slightly more time than they’d both feared. The first time was rushed and a little urgent, Yamamoto’s hips jerking in an irregular rhythm as he hitched Tsuna’s legs up higher and came much too quickly. Tsuna wasn’t the only one out of practice. The second time was slower, almost apologetically so, Yamamoto sprawled at Tsuna’s side and stroking him slowly as he moved inside him, lips pressed against Tsuna’s neck, eyes closed in perfect concentration. The third time...
Around the third time, Tsuna started to lose count—and to suspect, with quiet gratitude, that someone, probably the same unknown someone who’d wrapped Yamamoto’s Christmas gift, was buying them time alone. He wasn’t about to question the good luck. The clock still read, unerringly, 6 AM when he collapsed tiredly at Yamamoto’s side and felt Yamamoto’s arm settle over him with a comforting sort of weight. “Merry Christmas?” Tsuna hazarded, not nearly invested enough in the question to pull away and dig through the pile of discarded clothing for his watch. Yamamoto’s arm tightening around him only settled the matter. “Merry Christmas,” Yamamoto agreed, dragged him up for another kiss, and rolled them lazily on the bed to appropriately celebrate this pronouncement.
In the morning when Tsuna woke up to the sunlight streaming through the curtains again and the alarm clock telling the now-familiar lie, the blankets were on the floor and Yamamoto was sprawled under him with his head tossed back and his mouth open in a silent snore. Everything exactly as it should be. Not peaceful, he thought drily as small footsteps thundered in the hallway outside their door, followed quickly by the sound of a not-very-distant explosion shaking the walls. But somehow, just the same, he’d gotten everything he could have wanted for Christmas.