Anon Prompt over on Tumblr

Okay so a bit late maybe? A day, but Tsuna is a former merperson who is now a permanent human. (Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he knew Reborn before hand and wanted to join him.) So, Reborn has to show him the ropes. Problem is, he's... Still kind of new to this whole human thing. He doesn't understand things like forks. ('So you eat it?' "No" 'Then why is it there?' "To eat with" 'Isn't that what hands are for?') Hilarity and Reborn's fond exasperation commence.

So normally I wouldn't have considered this one, just because 90% of the time anything involved with mermaids always ends in tragedy and heartbreak. BUT there isn't any in this prompt so enjoy anon!

Crash!

Reborn woke up to the sound of Tsuna falling out of his bed… again. It was a common occurrence ever since Tsuna had come to live with Reborn.

Placing his shoulder on the door frame, leaning, Reborn peered into the room that Tsuna had claimed in the last six months. As expected, the brunet was on the ground, tangled in his blanket and limbs sticking out everywhere.

"Dame-Tsuna," Reborn drawled. "When are you going remember that you no longer live underwater?"

"S-shut up!" Tsuna snapped, untangling himself. "It's impossible to fall out of your bed when you live under the sea!"

The circumstances in which Tsuna had come to live with Reborn was by no means normal. To start, Tsuna was a merman turn human. A nice little tidbit Reborn had discovered two days after Tsuna showed up at his doorstep, looking for a place to stay. (It was actually a good thing that it came out when it did because Tsuna didn't know what a fork was of all things and Reborn was ready to call the doctors who would have been much better equipped and more patience to deal with the boy that Reborn thought was previously a little slow.) When Reborn asked why, Tsuna simply shrugged and said he wanted to explore the human world and Reborn was the first person whom he saw.

Which was total bullshit because Reborn lived a mile from the shoreline in the middle of a forest, and didn't make a habit of going near the water due to… a childhood trauma that was, in no way, crippling or even worth admitting. Colonnello was telling lies. Lies! The only reason Reborn had bought a house this close to the shoreline was definitely not an attempt to recover from a certain trauma that did not exist, but because it was peaceful and quiet and far away from people.

That was Reborn's story and he was sticking to it.

Tsuna stood up, wobbling before losing his balance and falling forward. Reborn sighed and moved to catch him. "Balance, Dame-Tsuna. Balance."

"It's not as easy as it looks!" Tsuna cried, holding tight to Reborn's arm.

"I am never going to understand why you wanted to be a human, when the basics of walking is beyond you," Reborn mocked, guiding Tsuna carefully out of the room.

Tsuna pouted. "Because, because…" he trailed off, staring at the ground.

Reborn looked at him, inquisitively. However, Tsuna remained silence.

Taking pity on him, Reborn redirected Tsuna to the kitchen. "Go set the table. I'll cook breakfast. And don't forget the forks!"

"You're never going to let me live that down are you?" Tsuna shouted back.

"Of course not."

Tsuna grumbled under his breath. "Why do you even need forks? Isn't that what hands are for?"

Reborn rolled his eyes and turned on the stove to cook some eggs. A quiet but conformable silence filled the room as they settle into their morning routine. Things were going so well, until Tsuna forgot about why stoves were dangerous and why one shouldn't grab a hot pot by its sides without potholders.

Crash!

"Tsuna!"

Tsuna whimpered in pain, his hands a bright red and blistering. Reborn tugged Tsuna towards the sink, running water over the burn to soothe it. Tears prickled at the corner of Tsuna's eyes, threatening to fall. Reborn left the water running to turn off the stove, remove the hot pot elsewhere. The food could be cleaned up later.

Soon, Reborn and Tsuna were sitting on the couch in the living room. The first aid kit laid on the table as Reborn gently applied burn cream to Tsuna's hands and wrapping them loosely with bandages.

"Idiot," Reborn scolded without any real heat.

"Sorry," Tsuna mumbled, wincing in pain.

"Really though," Reborn said. "How do you honestly expect to see the rest of the human world when you're so clumsy?"

"I don't care about the rest of the human world," Tsuna said quietly. "I just want to stay with you."

Reborn paused, looking straight at Tsuna. "Tsuna?"

Tsuna huffed, puffing out his cheeks and looked away. A faint red blush began to appear on his face. "I don't expect you to remember, but you saved me once."

Reborn felt his mouth go dry. No. That couldn't be. Unbidden, a memory that Reborn spent most of his life trying to repress, floated forward in Reborn's head. He was seven and at the docks for the first time in his young life. A group of unruly boys, throwing rocks and nets at something in the water and a cry for help that had Reborn intervening. A struggle that sent Reborn off the dock into the cold water, getting tangled and trapped under the nets.

The panic and fear and the growing realization that he was drowning. A half formed image of orange colored eyes and waking up on the cold sand, wet and coughing. A fear of water formed from the trauma and a promise to never go to the ocean again.

No. Way.

Eyes narrowed, Reborn scowled. "If I'm recalling correctly, you saved me."

Tsuna's eyes flickered orange briefly, tinted with amusement. "Well, yes. I couldn't let you drown after you stopped those idiots from throwing rocks at me. After such a close call though, I should have gone home, but I wanted to see you again. But you never came back."

After such a close call with death, Reborn wouldn't be caught near the ocean. It was only after getting fed up with Colonnello's teasing that Reborn decided to conquer that particular fear. "Then when I showed up at the shoreline years later, you decided to follow me home," Reborn concluded.

"Y-yeah," Tsuna said. "I just… I just wanted to be part of your world."

"Idiot," Reborn said. His tone was fond and warm. The light smile on his face, just the slight upward tilt of his lips, betrayed his feelings.

He supposed he could live with that.