Chapter Text
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Shouta sighed as he melted at a table, “they voted in favour and are integrating the hostage situation in the next Entrance Exam.”
Tsuna brightly smiled at him from the corner where Katsuki and Izuku were babbling. “I guess you’re so tiredly happy.”
“Shut up…”
But he was smiling into the coffee cup. The brunet turned to the babies and showed them a new toy about farm animals. There were buttons shaped as a cow, a pig, a horse, a dog and a chicken. Katsuki immediately focused on the dog, Izuku on the cow. Tsuna was happy they had learned how to properly share a toy and their teamwork was very impressive.
“You know, I think they will cause you so many troubles,” he chuckled, wiping Izuku’s nose after he sneezed.
“… the fact that your eyes were golden for a split second is what terrifies me the most. Heroes, both of them?”
Tsuna tilted his head, ruffling Katsuki’s hair when he kept staring at the other boy’s nose. “Uhm… yes, if you don’t prefer more vigilantes?”
“God, no, spare me.”
He giggled, “things won’t be… easy.” Tsuna patted Izuku’s head, who smiled at him shyly. “Not one bit, but they will have good teachers, good guidance… I wonder how many things my arrival here has changed, how many are changing, how many will change… Was it truly a good thing?”
“Tsuna-san!” A student slammed the door from the study room, panting, “the cats! A mess!”
The brunet sighed, unimpressed, then turned to Shouta. “Do you mind checking on the babies? I’ll be right back.”
The hero waved him off and stood to take his place, “take your time.”
“You wouldn’t have said that some months ago…” Tsuna fled after his mutter, knowing his lover was digging holes through the door thanks to heated gaze alone – but there was sure to be a blush, too.
The mess turned out to be massive. Reborn and Byakuran, for once, were not the culprits, else they would be trying to take credit. Three stacks of blank papers Akuro had put there for free use were in complete disarray, torn, on the floor, chairs, tables, under the sofa, there was a couple on the ceiling.
“Well, I don’t want to know how this happened.” Two twin ginger cats were meowing from a corner, the obvious culprits. “At least they haven’t managed to paint a girl in black ink, this time.”
The only student squeaked at his side. He got to work after scolding the cats – in through one ear, out through the other, thus useless. It took him a good twenty minutes, then he returned to the shop and checked there were no customers. Shouta was still in front of the baby-proofed corner and Tsuna smiled.
“Thank you.”
There was the flash of a smirk that made his heart flutter. Shouta looked at the kids, that were intensely focused on his lifted hand. It went to Izuku first, that said something, then to Katsuki.
“Sssu…”
“Naaa!”
Tsuna froze, eyes going to the two grinning kids, then to his lover. He brought his two hands over his mouth, cupping them around it, and knew he was blushing like never before. Shouta was smirking like a devil, looking like a cat that had caught the most delicious canary after a very satisfying chase.
The brunet dove to the floor, grabbed a fistful of his lover’s dark grey jacket and smashed their lips together, holding one hand between the exchange and the kids, that just blinked in confusion. He kept it very short, but the blush he saw when he licked the other’s lips before leaning back was all the reward he needed.
“Thank you.”
Shouta totally started passing more time with the kids, from that point on. And if Tsuna noticed how he did his best to not be caught in the action by two nosy mothers and his own Boss, he made sure to not mention it, because he understood. Also, his lover had given him such a wonderful present, and that he would never forget, that he deserved a bit of consideration… And another reward was brought later into the night.
“I admit I thought this would have happened sooner.”
Tsuna hummed, crouching down on the roof’s edge and analysing the trails his Intuitions was painting. “It’s fine, this way Tsukauchi has a new protocol to follow if we find the location.”
“Which we will, according to what you said.”
He shrugged, “something will happen, and we may be able to gather precious intel. If,” he looked at Shouta, who was standing at his side, with a smirk shadowed by his comforting hoodie, “you can keep up with me.”
Tsuna angled his body forward and sprung to a lower roof, not bothering to wait but testing his lover’s speed by not holding back on his own. He knew Shouta was fast, he had to for his job, and very swift in his almost cat-like moves when prowling his turf, so he didn’t make an effort to check he was only a few steps behind and focused on a sequence of velvet steps and moves that he had thought of to warm up at the beginning of his vigilante patrols, all the while following a boldened and sparkling golden trail.
He parkoured from roof to roof for a whole hour, checking that they did not overlook any ongoing crime. He could feel the pull of sore muscles from the exercise, he’d not trained for months and he was paying for it. Shouta seemed in the same condition, but more because of the rhythm Tsuna had kept. He stood on the roof he’d stopped at, sure he could be clearly seen, half-turning to the underground hero to not lose sight of a ruined and abandoned park.
“Really?” He asked in a whisper, “you should train, Eraser, if a troublesome kid like me managed to tire you out like this.”
The hero sighed. “You’re not a kid. But, yes, we should start training.”
Tsuna narrowed his golden eyes, “when? Because I’d say our days are already full at the moment.”
“Well, we could cut on the sleep.” At the following, tense, heavy silence, Shouta relented. “Fine, ok, no cutting sleep. What about your weekends off?”
“Sounds good. Ready?”
Just as Shouta nodded while looking down towards where Tsuna was tilting his head to, two cars screeched to a halt in the middle of the abandoned park beneath them and more than five men tumbled out, drivers included, embracing modified weapons that were promptly aimed at the two heroes. The brunet took a step into the void, falling on the road in front of the foes with a flip and darting behind a dumpster. He was aware of his lover manoeuvring in his peripheral vision to circle the mob so that they could not escape. There were no civilians around, so Tsuna grabbed a pebble and moulded it into an Illusion of himself, lightly throwing it aside so that the gunshots of bullets and quirks followed its lazy, illusionary walk away from him. He peeked beside the dumpster to assess the current situation when the illusion fell apart a couple of seconds later as it landed on the asphalt, unluckily not long enough to disappear behind the wall without giving away that something was off, making the gunshots stop.
The confused men of the car nearest to him quickly shook their heads and started unloading their bullets of metal, rock and compressed fire against the wall anyway, probably convinced that the Illusion was the disappearance, not the moving image of Sora. With their attention diverted, however, only the men of the other car were focusing on Shouta, who was using the shadows of the night to disengage or confuse the villains. Not wanting to use his Flames on them yet, Tsuna silently shrouded himself in a camouflage and creeped behind the men while avoiding the path of the bullets, unnoticed, sneakily hitting them into unconsciousness before the other three could feel something was wrong, before they could hear there was less sound of gunpower. Being hidden behind the car, the other group of villains going for Shouta didn’t see a thing and he was able to repeat the process, dispelling his Illusion and leaving one conscious for interrogation – the man whose golden trail was brighter, circling the right wrist in a vice and yet unfelt grip.
The other hero landed near him, eyeing the fallen men with a mixture of tiredness and acceptance. “I’ll leave him to you and get them tied, Tsukauchi is on his way.”
Tsuna just hummed, hovering over the man that had been de-weaponized and was crawling backward into a corner, almost shitting himself at that point. The brunet didn’t give him time, calming him down through Rain Flames before cocooning him into Mist Flames. Though calmer, he paled instantly as if he was bleeding from an artery, eyes lost into nothing.
“Who sent you?”
The man gasped and started panting as if he’d been holding his breath for an eternity. “Ka-Kazuha-sama…”
That was a new one. “Full name.”
“Kazuha Yoshim-mune…”
“Where is he?”
“Fukuoka…”
“Where.”
“I-I don’t kn-now…”
“How are you supposed to tell him you succeeded?”
The man, eyes still unfocused with tears freely leaking, grasped at his grey jacket a few times, then fished a phone from a pocket. “A number, in here… a text, and then I… w-we have to bring y-your head-ds…”
Tsuna hummed, taking the unlocked phone and passing it to Shouta, that had finished tying the others. “And what about his criminal activities?”
“Drug-gs, human traf-fic…”
“Is he trying to rebuild what heroes destroyed?”
“… yes…”
Tsuna knocked him out and stood at his lover’s side. “Well, that’s expected.”
“And worrying, protocol?”
“Imperatively,” he sighed, massaging his forehead, “I doubt this will ever end.”
One hand softly grabbed the back of his arm, supportive. “We’re in this together, remember?”
“That’s not very reassuring, what would I do if something happened to you?” His tone was light, almost joking, but there was an undertone of sad desperation that Tsuna himself noticed, so he sighed. “Sorry, it’s just… I’m used to things going very bad.”
“But then, they go very well, right?”
The brunet scoffed, looking up at Shouta’s uncovered, stormy eyes. “I’m saying this only once: if to save you I’ll need to kill, there’d be no choosing.”
The hero sighed, a small smile gracing his kissable lips. “I have no chance changing your mind, I know… but promise me you’ll search for another way, first.”
“… It’s not like I haven’t killed before,” he whispered, looking at his palms.
“You want to do that no more.”
“If it’s to protect–”
“I’m totally on board with protecting family… Sora.” Police cars appeared in the distance. “But not everything is solved by killing, there are other ways. You just need to search for them. You’re a hero, your job is to save...” Shouta hesitated with a grimace, then sighed. “It’s to save whatever the cost, not to kill.”
Tsuna smiled sadly at that, “I think I’ve told you I admire you… You’re everything I’ve never been.”
Shouta obviously couldn’t resist anymore and just hugged him briefly but tightly. “You can be all that, Tsuna, and I’ll be here to cheer you on this new path.”
The brunet melted for a moment in the embrace before knowing the police was too near for them to not be seen. They let each other go and Tsukauchi was instantly on them, checking all over for injuries.
“We’re fine, don’t worry.”
“Yeah, I was almost a decoration,” Shouta snorted.
“He’s exaggerating,” Tsuna waves him off, “anyway, we have news, ready for our first joint raid?”
Going by the detective’s expression, he dreaded it.