Maybe Mukuro-sama is something wretched. What other things could be born, down there, in the pits of the Estraneo? It is not only the ghosts of adults which are there, wailing about on Mukuro-sama's entire existence. There are quieter ghosts, too, the ghosts that are more invisible than invisible, and Chikusa knows all of them well. He can do nothing but know them well, because knowing is the only thing he has ever been good for, and so he knows them well.

Gokudera looks upon the stupid shitshow of a scene that’s right there before him in front of his very eyes, and recalls the promise he once made to Director Tsuna once upon a time on how he really would quit smoking. Bad for the health, for starters, and he wanted his cameraman to be doing films with him for a long time. And anyway, they’d probably get complaints from enough big wigs in the industry if someone or enough someones complained about it. It’s just that he thinks that the lead actress for this stupid movie and one half of their costume team might be about to throw down in some sort of stupid sumo match, both their hands locked together and feet digging into the ground. Fucking god damn, he regrets giving up smoking. And liquor. And never associating with fucking morons like this. Feeling a headache coming on, if it hasn’t already set up shop in his skull already, he whirls onto the other remaining half of their costume team. “You,” he hisses at the lead makeup artist. “What the fuck are you doing just sitting there when those morons look like they’re going to cause a paparazzi incident!?" 

Chrome isn’t sure if she wants to ask about how many bones he’s actually broken. “He’s still sleeping soundly,” is all that she comments in the end. “Ah, but he’s quite easy to wake, you know,” Mukuro drawls, and steps up onto thin air. He walks without looking, bending reality around him once again until he’s able to reach it to the corner that Chikusa has squeeze himself into. It’s not even a proper beam of any sort;  it’s just some sort of crown molding with ambition. Chrome doesn’t know how he got up there. And she doesn’t know how he stays asleep, either, with the way that Mukuro moves his hands underneath that far too thin body of his, pulling him into his arms even despite the fact that Chikusa bumps his head into the wall. She waits, patiently, for Mukuro to walk back down the stairs which disappear behind his feet with each step he takes, before she says anything. “He’s still asleep." 

“Your nerd is being weird,” M.M. says when she decides to bother them one day with her presence instead of staying in some stupid fancy hotel. This is enough to make Ken pause, eyeing her from where he’s hunched over on a couch in Kokuyo Land. Usually, it’s Chikusa being told his “dog” is being weird. Having the reverse be turned on him is… way weirder, in Ken’s estimate. “Everything about Kakipii is weird,” he grumbles, although he knows well enough that isn’t something that would have M.M. speak up about the matter. M.M. sighs and rolls her eyes, puff out an exhale that makes her stupid bangs flutter even with the hairpin anchoring some of it. “Your whole little garbage den is weird,” she says bluntly, which is probably right but still makes Ken scowl to hear. “I meant that he’s acting out of character weird.” She might be able to see the way that Ken is rolling his eyes right back at her, opening his mouth to tell her to cut to the stupid chase already, because she cuts him off before he can begin. “He was asking me about the kind of things a girl with taste would like.”

Can two such individuals be lead to anywhere else but their own miserable design? Can they all balance each other out to something greater, or all combine their weights until they sink together? These are the sort of things that he watches for, in the end. The things he watches to see what will become of them, combined with such a neverending abyss as such that he belongs to. It may not solve anything, especially in the long term, but he is not necessarily asking for any sort of solution. More than anything, he is curious to see if Chikusa can manage to pull his companions from the depths. If him emerging from his eel hole will result not only in prey being snagged into two different sets of jaws, but if he can slide out into more open waters, find a freedom for all of them that is not reliant on so much blood soaking their shoes like the flood waters rose up in an effort to claim them.

That’s probably the best thing about the zombie apocalypse that’s fallen over Namimori, Mukuro considers as he taps his shoe against concrete to get some of the extra brains off. It feels as though it’s really been too long for him to, well, revel in everything. His power, the despair over everything else… After getting stuffed into an owl for too long - something he both thinks back to and aggressively doesn’t think about as he makes his way down the street - he’s needed a win of sorts. A win all his own, not forged together with Sawada Tsunayoshi. If a win is gotten alongside him, does it really count as any kind of win at all? Mukuro certainly doesn’t think so. His graffiti attempts aren’t going to get him a win either, because, in roughly the same amount of time, his latest work also gets an addition right beneath it:

         HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT OPENING A CHURCH?      

“What, are you gay?” he asks, and it’s not an insult like it might be from other people’s mouth, but just a dazed and genuine question. Sasagawa manages to snap him out of it in record time when he just blankly blinks and goes, “Am I what?” …God. He’s so tired. But then, Chikusa guesses it makes sense that someone who apparently thinks about boxing and literally nothing else would have no idea about sexuality. He decides to go for the simpler approach. “Do you like men?” “Of course!” Sasagawa cocks his head to the side, crossing his arms along the rope. “Doesn’t everyone like men? And muscles! They’re the greatest things in the world!” Some sort of thought finally seems to form in his head, and he perks up almost immediately in concern. “Do you not like men, Kakimoto?” Normally, he would just ignore most other people who’d ask him that sort of question, on the basis that the vast majority will never affect his life… but in this case, Chikusa finds himself leaning back in his chair and answering. “Mm… No, I like men too.” While he’s never been a person to care if he pleases other people or not… It’s still not entirely bad to see the way Ryohei happily grins at that.

He almost manages it. He almost makes it. Chikusa can tell in the pit of his stomach that he almost makes it, with no hubris attached to the thought. Yet the second he’s only a couple of steps away, church bells seem to go ringing in alarm in his head. Without waiting to think or confirm, Chikusa whirls around. He has long legs, a kick could buy him just a quick second and a little bit of space- Yet he doesn’t have a chance to so much as lift his foot off of the floor before his back is up against the wall right besides the door and there’s a fencing foil pressed one of his arms, keeping it pinned where he had tried to reach around the doorframe. Kyoya Hibari presses flush against him, knee slid inbetween Chikusa’s legs and their heartbeats nearly colliding against one another. In comparison to the all encompassing darkness that had resided in his eyes last night, that impossible to read shade, his gaze now is as brilliantly silver as his weapon, and filled to the brim with excitement. “Caught.” It’s been a long time since he was manhandled so roughly; Chikusa is usually quick enough to avoid such fights until Ken can clean them up. So when he has, well, let’s just say it was for more personal reasons. It’s impossible to ignore the faint stirrings of heat in the pit of his stomach, right beneath his pounding heart. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying, and more than a little inopportune. This really isn’t the time to be turned on by anything. “Caught,” Chikusa agrees mildly, since there’s no real getting out of this one. In the back of his head, he wonders how on earth Mukuro is going to take this news, and just how much he’ll laugh at him for the whole tale he’ll need to give context.

Takeshi can’t help laughing, even as he makes sure to carefully lock the door behind himself. “Wow! You move really quickly! Did you break in like you always do, or did you figure something else out? I don’t think you could have made it in through the windows like you did that other time.” With an earbud hanging out of one ear, Chikusa just slowly opens one eye to glance over at him. He always seems out of place in hotels like this, where only the most extravagant kinds of furniture have been picked out. You know, the kind that seem like they belong in some sort of movie or a painting, all extravagant curves and cushions more art than comfort, things which don’t seem like they should be lived on so much as admired from afar. They’re lavish. Chikusa, with his worn out pants and shoes that almost seem to be falling apart, doesn’t belong in such opulent surroundings. Takeshi loves him for that.

When they’re in their twenties, they drift back into the habit fully, but… still different. Always still different, whenever they look back on their lives. Now, these days, they don’t really go to sleep with one another because they need the other’s warmth, or their stillness, or because there’s nothing to do. Instead… They just do it because they want to. Because they have lived their whole lives together, and can think of no other life to live. Neither of them say it’s love. Neither of them say it’s anything else, either. All they know is that, when they curl in on one another, warm and safe and at an age neither of them really ever thought they’d reach… The world feels right. They feel right.

“Have you considered… that… maybe you’re just cursed…?” Gokudera has met a lot of fucking god-awful annoying people in his lifetime. Even those among his own Family, something he’s complained about more than once to the Tenth although he does have to grudgingly admit that everyone has managed to pull their weight for the most part throughout all of the challenges that have been thrown their way. It’s just - how the hell is he supposed to be the Tenth’s amazing right hand if he’s babysitting some stupid cow all the time? And is that meatheaded jock really someone that they can rely on? Don’t even get him started on Yamamoto Takeshi… Frankly, in his own family alone, Gokudera is fairly sure he could write dissertations on all their own unique annoyances one by one. Going outside of his Family can sometimes be even worse. So it’s kind of impressive, honestly, that some two-bit pain in the ass like Kakimoto Chikusa gets on his nerves so easily with the least amount of work.

Once every year, the Goddess of Foam and Fate takes her retinue down to the mortal plains. She brings with her the two guardians of the dead, her raven and her wolf As well as her mirror image, he of Pain and Pestilence. It is a checking of the harvest A glimpse to the souls of earth which are still developing And will soon return to her gentle hands and warm embrace to be strung along for the next life. For those souls which have lived a kind and pure life One that has done only good and lived with well wishes towards their fellow humans Our good Goddess rewards them with small gifts that may brighten their short lives if but a moment And for those who are heading down towards the wrong path Her compatriots nip at their exposed feet in the night To guide them back to a path of righteousness. On this day, and the night which follows it We thank our beloved Goddess And pray that she treats us kindly in that which follows this life.

There is no argument from Ciro. There is, in fact, anything but. At first, Mercurio thinks he will get nothing but the same stare as usual… but then Ciro leans in close, some sort of brightness within those dark and dull eyes of his. Something sparking like flint to stone. “If you’re going to be better than me,” he says softly, “then that means you aren’t going anywhere, does it? If you’re going to be our leader, then that means you’ll be staying with us. Isn’t that right?” Somehow, Mercurio feels as though he’s missed something. A vital piece, or an obvious tidbit that he’s happened to overlook. He won’t dare show that on his face, however. Instead, he tilts his head up imperiously. “Always,” he says, as though there’s not a single bit of doubt. “I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth, slaughtering every human in my way if that’s what I need to do. Well, it was always in my plans anyway.” That last sentence has an air of dismissiveness to it as he tries to play it off as though Ciro is just a side effect of his real goal.

“We’re on the edge of mer territory. You paid attention when we were all talking about that, weren’t you? So I am going to need you to not accidentally fuck any of them, purposefully fuck any of them, accidentally seduce any of them, or purposefully seduce any of them. Literally any of them, but especially anything poisonous. Got that?”

“Ha ha. So, it might be a little late for that.”