#((Iemitsu's way of hiding Flames is 100% not recommended))

[recilarotten]

Title: Insatiable (working title, will be changed) Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn In short: Inspired by @cheshiresense​ ‘s Hungerverse. Flames are everywhere, in everyone; weak, flickering things to be cared for as any other part of their health. For Skies, however, things are a little different. A little more dangerous. Word Count: 4000

Tsuna is seven when he finds out what his Flame is. It’s not a surprise, exactly, when his body explodes in an orange so bright and warm it’s almost an actual fire, but it’s startling enough that he yells and Mama peeks her head into her room.

It’s a lot more of a surprise when she waves blue Flames over him, shot through by gold, and pushes Tsuna’s Flames back in. Mama sighs in relief as the orange disappears, tells him she loves him, and reaches for her phone with shaking hands. When it’s pushed into Tsuna’s little hands, awkward and heavy, Mama tells him listen, okay Tsu-kun? This is important.

Sky, Papa says, in the same way he’s told Tsuna that he won’t be coming home today, or tomorrow, or in another year. Frank and sad. You’re a Sky, Tsuna, do you know what that is?

All Tsuna knows is Skies are home, because that’s all he’s ever heard of it. Papa laughs, agrees, but – that’s not all it is, that is not all you are, Tsuna.

Tsuna is four when he finds out about Guardians, and bonds, and what happens to Skies. Papa can’t come home to help, not yet – next week, he promises, I’ll be back then. Okay? – but one more phone call and a meeting later in the day with an orange corona still flickering around Tsuna. The brunet is led to a new doctor, is told he’s a thermatician and works with Flames (stabilizing, mitigating, improving, he’s here to help), and in moments a freezing band is curled over his wrist. Tsuna can’t bring himself to do much more than simply pick at it, even as the chill seeps into all of him.

“It’ll keep you safe until we figure out something more long term,” the thermatician says. It sounds like he’s speaking to Tsuna, but his eyes are on Mama. “I’m sure you can feel it, Tsuna-kun? That cold is just the bracelet keeping your Flames down. It will eventually fall off, and when it does, you’ll need to put another one on. Here; take these. Don’t put them on now! Keep them with you, okay? I’ll give some more to your Mama. When one starts to fray, then you can wear another. Never take them off unless you have to, okay?”

Tsuna doesn’t know how to explain the way his insides curdle at the idea anyway. He can’t see orange flickering over his skin, which is almost as bad, but what Papa said – that makes him even more scared than the emptiness. So this is okay.

Anything is better than that, right?

The thermatician looks at Tsuna at last, and smiles. “Don’t worry. I know you probably want to show off your Flames, but this is just temporary. Sky Flames are a wonderful thing to have.”

“… Papa said Skies get eaten,” Tsuna mumbles. The thermatician locks up like he’s the one freezing. “I don’t want to get eaten. What if my classmates notice anyway?”

“I’m not sure what your Papa said, exactly, but they won’t be eating you.” The doctor hums for a moment, before standing to pick out a note book. He flips through most of it before landing on a blank page, and a pen the thermatician wasn’t holding before – with multi-colored tabs on the end – is suddenly in hand. “Okay. So, there are seven elements, right? Sky, Sun, Mist, Cloud, Rain, Storm, Lightning. And they all have their own abilities.” The doctor draws out the elements, clicking on tabs to color them in appropriately – in the center of the other six is Sky. “Most elements are… Limited. While every element is capable of fueling themselves, the outer six, here, struggle with it; they can only spare so much energy gotten by eating and sleeping. So, they don’t have enough Flames to feel – to be healthy, even if they’re otherwise doing very well.”

The thermatician draws in little flames in the middle of the circles, then pauses, looking at Tsuna expectantly. The brunet blinks. He nods.

“Skies don’t have this deficit – this lacking. In fact, even when they’re going hungry, or staying up much, much longer than most people even can, they’re doing just fine! They produce plenty of Flames, which helps keep the Sky energized and healthy no matter what – sometimes meaning they can do amazing things, if they’re trained! – and this energy can be spread to other Flames, to make up for what those elements don’t have.” He punctuates this with a large flame around the Sky circle, then draws arrows out to the other elements.

Tsuna nods again, slowly. He… thinks he gets it. “So Skies share their Flames?”

“Yes! That is part of a Sky’s natural ability, Harmony. As Skies share with an element, it helps to stabilize – to calm – that element’s Flames, as well as allow them to interact freely. Both Flames adjust to suit the other, and Skies are capable of adjusting to many Flames at once, giving Sky Flames to fill up other elements so they have enough of their own Flames, and Harmonizing with them naturally.”

“Then why do they eat Skies?”

The thermatician sighs. “You see, elements, when they find a Sky, tend to get… excited. Elements that don’t already have a Sky are – it’s a bit like starving, forever. They aren’t really hurt for it, and they can live their lives without ever gaining more. The only thing that would be a real problem, would be a perpetual want. Putting a Sky in front of a lot of elements – especially elements that are just becoming active – is like placing a very large meal in front of a starving person, and you just happen to be in their way. They don’t want to eat you; they want to eat your Flames. Since Flames are capable of manifesting, and Sky Flames in particularly are permanently exposed unless interfered with – such as by those bracelets. Faced with that, those more desperate or unused to their Flames would…” He hesitates, running a hand over his head again. “Well, they would take those manifested Flames from you, and physically eat them, just like you’d eat anything else. If they’re hungry enough, they won’t stop either; not until they’re removed, they’re full, or… there’s no more Flames for them to eat.”

Tsuna stares. He stares, and stares, and then: “So they would eat me. Papa was right.”

The doctor nods.

Mama ends the meeting not long after; with a few more warnings about the bracelets, and keeping in contact, they’re going back home and Mama’s talking about school tomorrow.

Tsuna can’t bring himself to say, or think, or do much of anything for the rest of the day; but tomorrow, when none of his Flame-active classmates notice, and his teachers don’t acknowledge his Sky Flames, the worries whisk away. Tsuna’s okay; that’s what’s important.

—  —  —  —  —

Tsuna finds out a week later that Sky Flames are rare, but not the reason. The churning in his tummy begs him not to find out.

Tsuna also finds out that even now, his Papa is a liar. He won’t be coming this week; he won’t be coming the next week, or month. Papa has no idea when he can come by, no matter how much Mama tells Tsuna that he’ll be coming ‘soon.’ He’s been saying ‘soon’ since Mama told Papa about the bracelets, and Tsuna wonders if ‘soon’ means ‘never.’

—  —  —  —  — 

Three months and seven bracelets later, Tsuna’s class briefly falls apart.

(All seven bracelets that Tsuna is still wearing. The first is hanging on by a single thread and the other six are so ratty that it’s nearly impossible to tell what they were in the first place. They still chill his skin where they touch, though, so he leaves them on. He’s got two new ones on besides, because just one leaves him with Flames that even Mama looks at, sometimes.

His classmates too, are becoming Flame-active; most have a colorful halo, and everyone is alive with new energy. Tsuna’s favorite is still Misty Rain Flames, who have blue with darker bursts of indigo, because those are Mama’s Flames and he’ll always love those – but there are many, some mixed, and Tsuna thinks they’re all so pretty. He wants to touch. His bracelets remind him not to.)

It was a normal morning for a little while; Tsuna’s trying not to nap because he’s so cold and so sleepy from the bracelets. It’s hard for him to remember lessons, too. He’s teased as being no-good because of how often he slips up, and it’s almost in good fun. Even now, Tsuna’s deskmate is grinning and prodding him, whispering “Da~me-Tsu~na! Wake up!”

It doesn’t make Tsuna any less tired, but the poking and teasing keeps him from falling asleep. Tsuna nudges back with an elbow, sticking out his tongue as the teacher isn’t looking. His classmate sparks – something Tsuna recognizes, knows to jerk away from because someone else in class had activated and their deskmates had been burned. She sparks again, chest flickering white, then explodes into color. Muddled, a mess, then a deep nearly-brown orange, racing to cover all of her. Tsuna blinks once, twice – the classroom is silent.

Sky, he realizes. Orange is Sky.

His hand is in his bag, digging, but it’s too late already. Someone shoves Tsuna out of the way and that’s all the warning he gets before his classmates – a rainbow of colors and bodies and warmth – crowd around her, into her, hands digging and scraping what little Tsuna can even see anymore. He hears yelling and sees dark orange fire cupped and dripping like magma between so many hands, swallowed whole before they reach again and Tsuna’s classmates block his view entirely – he’s seen enough. Enough to fight, try to scramble away from the mess and drag his bag with him (are his bracelets in place? Some have ripped off, but he can’t see any orange, there isn’t any Flame, not his—) too panicked to cry or shriek and his deskmate was doing enough of that on her own anyway. He breaks out of the pile to find the teacher prying students away, grabbing them by whatever she can and all but tossing them aside, golden-green Sun Flames boiling as she fights through the kids. Tsuna sees his deskmate in the teacher’s arms after a moment, clothes and hair ruffled and torn, covered in scrapes and red marks as she sobs.

Tsuna realizes that her Flames are little more than sparks now, and still– still the teacher is hefting her up above grasping hands with orange palms and red nails

Papa was right, Tsuna thinks. His stomach churns. His hands find his bracelets, which feel very, very thin suddenly. Still, his classmates fight after the teacher until she leaves – escapes – the room. Things get very quiet after that.

Orange stains lips and cheeks. The majority of the class lingers, blinking, like they don’t know what they’ve done. At the door, their hands, each other. Tsuna, and every Flame-inactive in their class – three students total – stare. I don’t want to be here, he doesn’t say. I shouldn’t be here.

Tsuna instead reaches into his backpack and pulls another bracelet on. Ice rushes up his arm and settles around his core. It feels safer, though. A little less like his classmates are glancing at him, like they know, they see it, and just want his bracelets off before they go for him instead.

I don’t have Flames, Tsuna tells himself. If he says it enough, maybe it’ll come true. Maybe he’ll never have to worry about this again. I don’t have Flames.

A moment later, another teacher comes in – he’s less ruffled but his voice shakes as he says “we’ll be calling parents; your class is over, for today. Pack up.”

No one is steady enough to celebrate – maybe no one wants to. Tsuna certainly doesn’t, not when he thinks about being swarmed, yelling and punching and getting eaten. That train of thought sends his eyes watering, and while Tsuna is the first to start crying, he’s not the only one. By the time parents start coming in, all worry and reassurance, most of his classmates are in tears too, shaking and clutching at their parents and sobbing. When Mama comes in, Tsuna’s right among them, and she holds onto him like she thought Tsuna got eaten.

Tsuna tightens his hold on her skirt and buries his face in her. His bracelets are heavy.

—  —  —  —  — 

“You need to come home,” Mama says into the phone, that same night. She isn’t yelling (Tsuna doesn’t think she’s able to), but her voice is sharp and desperate. Tsuna’s quiet and holds his bracelets tight. He hasn’t stopped since leaving school. “There was an accident in Tsu-kun’s class– no, it wasn’t him but… Please, come back. He needs you. We need you.”

—  —  —  —  — 

Papa is home in two days to arrive on a Sunday. He sweeps up Mama and Tsuna and holds them tight, but that doesn’t last long – it never does. For the rest of the week, he teaches Tsuna how to take his Flames and tuck them away. He shows Tsuna, the way Flames can be twined into bone and blood instead of dancing on his skin. When that doesn’t work, because there’s so much, and Tsuna is so small, he teaches Tsuna something else.

He teaches Tsuna how to take his orange Flames, bright and burning, and so warm they fill the whole room, and break them into something else. How to pry off a piece and swallow it and find the regrown parts to smear over the rest of his Flames. Hide them all under an ugly non-Flame and say that is me.

Tsuna gags on it every time, feels the brownish, oil-slick Flame dig in like thorns (reversed Sky Flames, Papa calls them. He doesn’t explain further, and Tsuna doesn’t want him to). Still, it works. Tsuna can take off two of his bracelets and feel closer to warm than he has since getting them in the first place, and Mama can look at Tsuna and not his Flames. She can hold him without her own Flames trying to snap up Tsuna’s, and the brunet takes every second of cuddling he can get. Papa stays just long enough to make sure Tsuna can keep his Flames hidden, and then he’s gone again.

Going back to his school – because the whole school was out for that week, to make sure families knew what happened and recovered, the teachers knew to keep an eye because some kids were still inactive, and those white sparks were just moments of warning. – the first thing those newly informed teachers did was say, she’s alright, and she is not a Sky. There was an inactive Sky in the room, she latched onto that.

The teacher looks at him, at Tsuna, too pointedly to be accidental. Tsuna fiddles with his three bracelets, the other seven finally gone after that week, too frayed or torn or simply worn to stay on. Later, after announcement and class has started, she circles to his desk and says, quietly, “stay after during recess. I want to talk to you about your Flames. You’re not in trouble; I just need to make sure you’re safe, okay? I’ll be meeting with your parents afterward, too. Don’t worry, Tsuna-kun.”

Tsuna nods jerkily, clutching his pencil. The teacher hums quietly, then walks off again. If possible, he feels less safe. He drops the pencil to hold his bracelets again, reassuring himself – they are still here, and so is he. His Flames are gone, ice clinking along his veins instead of blood. I should eat some later, Tsuna thinks. Orange flickers in his mind’s eye – not on him, no, no, no, but bright enough that he imagines it. What it would look like, if he let it.

The idea sends nausea burbling up his throat, tears pricking his eyes. He’d glow in lovely orange and then there would be– hands over his throat, his clothes, and now matter how he shrieked all of them, all of them would pile on top of him, until his teacher broke apart the mob and—

Tsuna swallows, clutches his bracelets, and bunkers down.

He can’t tell if the eyes on him, that have been on him ever since the teacher silently pointed out he was a Sky, are real or imagined.

—  —  —  —  — 

“Tsuna-kun–”

Tsuna flinches away from the hand before it lands on his shoulder, curls into himself. His teacher hesitates. Steps away.

“I know what happened last week was scary. That’s why we’re having this talk now. Your deskmate, Hinari-chan… She was a Rain. But because you were right next to her when her Flames became active, she picked up on your element. That happens sometimes; it happened to me when I was little, and she’s doing just fine now. Tsuna, I haven’t noticed any active Flames from you at all, but if they weren’t active, she shouldn’t have picked them up. I need you to answer me honestly. Are you a Flame-active Sky?”

Helplessly, he tugs and pulls at his bracelets. “Yes,” and as he sees his teacher start to sigh, Tsuna barrels onwards. “B-but! Mama took me to a doctor to keep them hidden! My- my bracelets, that I wear, they hide it.” Tsuna lifted his arm, showing off the colorful bands. “I have spares, so if they start to fall off, I can put on another one and it’ll be okay. And, Papa – he was here, and he taught me how to… He’s a Sky Flame too, and Papa taught me how to hide my Sky Flames, so I’m not – I don’t get eaten. I can – I can show you!” Tsuna drops his arm now, hand holding so tight over his bracelets he thinks he’s going to bruise. No, he knows he’ll bruise, but Tsuna can’t bring himself to let go. The cold spreads over his hand too, and that feels good – feels reassuring.

“… Alright. Are you sure? I’m sure we can figure something else out.”

Tsuna shakes his head violently. Carefully – so carefully – Tsuna pulls his bracelets off. The first is fraying, he notes. Dread curdles in his tummy, thick and sour. The second looks fine, as does the third. With the bracelets gone, Tsuna sighs softly. Warmth pulses gently in his ribs. Soft and small and relieved. Then it grows. He explodes in orange flames, shuddering as his body turns to static in shock. Tsuna grabs a desk as feeling returns to him, tries not to sob in relief because this is what being warm feels like? His teacher sits heavily on a desk, blinking.

“You are Flame-active,” she says, numbly. Tsuna doesn’t like the blank expression on her face. It takes several moments before she looks normal again. Tsuna, though, doesn’t feel normal; he feels like dropping to the ground or  crying or running until his legs fall off. He’s so warm. “Tsuna-kun, you said your Papa taught you how to hide your Sky Flames?”

He nods – everything is tinted orange, and Tsuna can feel his teacher’s Sun Flames, light and scattering like sparks, recoiling from his own inbetween moments where they reach and try to dig and grab and steal. Tsuna doesn’t see it, but he feels his teacher grip the desk. Hard.

Tsuna shakes off the giddiness, remembers his feet are on the ground and his body is wreathed in Flame. He coats his hand in the orange fire, feels it sing from his ribs to his hands through his veins. It coalesces there, coiling into and through itself to form a sphere that flickers and coils around his fingers. Harmless.

It feels so much– so much like his insides are being pulled, his lungs and heart dragged inside-out and strangled by his intestines, bones digging in to pry his body apart– still, still, his Flames taste like Mama’s cooking, warm and wonderful and so much like home. Thoughtlessly, agonized – it feels like comfort as he swallows and Tsuna drags out more, body (is that just him?) shuddering in sobs as he eats, and eats, and eats, until something sticky and icy gutters through his chest. It seeps out with every exhale and swallows up orange Sky Flames. Painless, yes, but covering his skin in a way that’s almost worse than the bracelet’s icy cold. Hideous Flames – are they still Flames? – oil-slicked and sickly, drift off his body in fumes. Inside, safely locked under the fake Flames, his Sky Flames flicker and roil. If he was warm earlier, Tsuna feels like his insides might be boiling now – but is that so bad? He slides on a bracelet, just one – that boiling fades to an unfamiliar, soothing warmth, and nothing else.

His teacher shifts.

Tusna flinches, coils into himself, and waits.

“… I can’t sense them at all,” she says eventually. Her voice is trembling. When Tsuna dares to look, she’s gone pale. “You eat your Flames?”

“That’s how it works,” Tsuna whispers. “Skies get eaten no matter what. Papa says it’s better to eat my own Flames than let anyone I don’t want to do it, and… and it’s not too bad.”

His teacher lurches; she swallows hard enough to be seen – to be heard – then stands upright again. “Alright. I… I’ll still have to talk to your Mama, but this is – this will work. You’re free to go.”

Tsuna sighs in relief, only to immediately wince as the bell signaling the end of recess chimes. He retreats to his desk, hand already fiddling with his bracelet. The brunet feels sick with the fake Flames and his real Flames, like his bones and blood will light up and Tsuna won’t be anything but ashes. The first classmates to come in, nudging and laughing and pushing each other don’t notice him – but it doesn’t last. That kind of thing never lasts. Someone glances over, and that’s the end of it. He nudges a friend, and soon the class is looking – staring – eyes tracing over Flames like factory smoke, black and roiling and heavy.

It’s not Tsuna that breaks the silence – no matter how much he wants to throw himself under his desk and cry. He still hurts. The stares are worse. It’s not the teacher either, who still looks pale and sick and unsure, no matter how she tries to hide it.

“What’s wrong with your Flames?!” Someone demands, and the room explodes into noise. Tsuna can’t pick out any one phrase, hears Flames and “wrong” and “strange” and “he really is no-good-” and no matter how the teacher calls over the class, they won’t settle. They start pressing in, curious and worried and unsettled, hands coming to press and brush through his Flames—

Tsuna bolts, pushing through bodies as his Flames begin to roil in his insides, as the reverse Flames start dripping up and down, flooding the air with a stench that chokes Tsuna and follows him out the door, to the bathroom as he locks himself in a stall and gasps for air through tears and choking. The tile floor is cool, seeps into his skin when Tsuna drops to the ground to hold himself, to cry.

With only his sobs echoing back, it’s easier to calm down – when he’s not being swarmed, when there isn’t noise pressing in at every angle. He breathes deep, ignores the smell of rot, sighs his fear out and leaves hollow spaces instead. Even when that gripping fear lets go, Tsuna doesn’t leave. Brown-black fire, dregs of something gentler, coat his skin in a mockery of comfort. Of Flames.

To hate them because he had to eat his own fire to make them– because they hurt, that was one thing. His classmates staring and whispering and yelling, reaching to touch in fearful interest that—

Tsuna buries his head in his arms and shivers.