#cavallone famiglia

[justkhrstuff]

Happy Birthday, Cavallone Decimo!

[vongola-renaissance]

A compilation of my adult Gen 10 Vongola Guardians headcanons of all time:

Tsuna does become the Vongola boss. He does it with the purpose of being the last one, tho.

Tsuna got Mukuro to go along with his plans by promising Mukuro would be the one to kill him one day. He was dead serious about it.

Reborn hates Mukuro's guts and thinks Tsuna is a fool for trusting him. Mukuro knows that Tsuna was serious, so he follows his lead, as long as their deal stands. Tsuna plans to let Mukuro kill him when he's an older man and burn his own body to the ground with flames, so Mukuro can't possess him.

The older they get, the more rebellious the guardians grow towards Reborn. They start maturing and following more Tsuna per se, his ideals, his plans.

Gokudera in particular has a very (!!) tense relationship with Reborn. With age, Gokudera stops idolizing Reborn and engages more and more in open arguments in Tsuna's behalf.

At least once Yamamoto pointed his blade at Reborn seriously. Solving that situation was a nightmare.

Most of them go to university or get a minor degree as Tsuna's requirement to "join" the family. Tsuna might hate studying, but he does not fuck around about getting proper education for all of them.

He hates the Vongola mansion. He buys the ruined property of a poor family for an tbh exaggerate sum and makes them build a proper complex there. It's close enough to the Vongola mansion that he can walk (fly?) to it, so he has all his official meetings there and reserves the complex for the informal reunions with friends and family.

Dino and Tsuna had one (1) major fight. It was about the expectations on Tsuna, the reality of the mafia world and the of course, Reborn. They agreed to go all in only once and then never fight again. Dino promised that if Tsuna was the last of the Vongolas, he'd be the last of the Cavallones. Tsuna promises to give a chance to the mafia world and see what they could make out of it together.

Fuuta, I-Pin and Lambo graduated from middle school in Namimori. Bianchi stayed with them during those years and everyone would visit them regularly.

In that time Lambo realized he'd miss Tsuna too much, so be begged Tsuna to let him go to a high school in Italy, closer to him. They all ended up studying there.

Kyoko stayed in Japan with the kids at first and started studying there. She missed her brother a lot, tho. Haru went to a different university. She was brilliant, but after the adventures with the guardians, common life was a bit boring. They ended up moving to Italy to finish their studies, which means even more shenanigans of Tsuna trying to cover the mafia life and the fact he's rich now.

Yamamoto went pro for a few years. First in Japan, then some seasons in the US. He got an insane network connection lol. He then made an excuse about salary to move to Italy to "play there". The Vongolas own the team as an effort to get kids from poverty into a proper lifestyle.

Part of the Vongola income now comes from sports bets. Nothing illegal. In fact, Ryohei scouts impressive athletes and checks to see if other mafias are interfering in the match. Some athletes and organizations actually pay them to check and eliminate any cheating agents.

They send Hibari lmao. He hates weak people and no one is weaker than those who need to cheat in order to win.

Gokudera unironically takes into cooking and decoration. Is he a malewife? Sort of. If you were Tsuna's right hand man, forced to watch him through the tightest schedule ever while he tries to solve at least 9 generations of Vongola mistakes... He personally prepares the food to guarantee they are not poisoned and arranges most rooms so there's always at least one seat Tsuna can comfortably nap in.

The next trip to Mafialandia is even worse. Either Tsuna is treated like a celebrity so he has not a moment of peace or Reborn sends him on another training.

Tsuna is a champ in human relationships.

The complex is rarely quiet or empty. At the same time, the guardians aren't all reunited as often. They make sure that Tsuna doesn't feel alone and create excuses to show Tsuna the progress of all his effort.

Omg I didn't plan for this to be such a long post. I'd have to do a series at this point 😂😂

[squalodinoappreciationsquad]

Headcanons: Dino Cavallone’s entire family tree - Pt. 5

So, fifth generation, we are now talking about Dino's great-grandfather!

UNDER CUT!

Proceeding from here: CLICKETY CLICK!

The First World War and the 7th generation / The Second World War and the 8th generation

So, Duchess Gemma Cavallone and her husband had a total of four children, whilst Duchess Perla Cavallone never married or had any children.

The four children are:

Emanuele: third born, named after the king, he will be a key man in directing the spies at the service of the king during the war.

Marino: first born, he will serve as a captain during the war. He will tragically die during the 1917 battle of Caporetto. His family has a memorial tomb in the local cemetery for him.

Norma fourth born, she will be the one smuggling goods and necessities for the people affected by the war.

Fancesco: second born, he will be the one inheriting the title and the will of his mother Gemma and aunt Perla. He will show the flames as he is defending his home and his people against the invaders, and will be the one present at the various treaties that will be made after the war, securing his position as head of the Cavallone family and lord of the land at the service of the king and the royal house.

The three sons will obtain the Silver Medal of Military Valor, whilst the daughter will obtain the War Merit Cross for their services during the war.

After the war they all took separate paths.

Francesco took the title of Duke and became the seventh boss of the Cavallone family, thus introducing the family into a new era.

Emanuele permanently joined the Servizi Segreti and whilst he really never came back home, he was quite the successful agent.

Marino unfortunately died tragically during the battle of Caporetto (a notorious debacle for Italy), but his family treated him with all the honours anyway. His gravestone reads "To the one who put freedom above all".

Norma married Duke Francesco's second in command, a gentleman called Alberto Sanna, moved to Sardinia with him and went on with a peaceful life.

Duke Francesco Cavallone married a lady called Clelia Fabbri and whilst their marriage was a very happy one, they managed to have only one child, a boy they called Giorgio.

The Great Depression had its effects on Italy as well, it was the period where that fascist piece of shit that was Mussolini was starting to conduct his populist campaigns which would eventually lead him to become Italy's dictator.

In any case, the people suffered and the noble families tried to stay afloat. Duke Francesco Cavallone passed away due to poor health issues, but in the meantime his son Giorgio had shown the signs of legitimacy whilst trying his best in his father's stead to keep the people in his area somehow fed and fighting off the jackals who would try and take advantage of the situation.

The Cavallone family became very antifa and later on Duke Giorgio Cavallone would do everything in his power to save Jews from concentration camps, from paying to forge fake documents, to hiring them among the men who worked for him, to bribing the guards at the borders so that they could safely get to Switzerland, or east Europe.

And ofc the fascists were pissed, as these shitheads do, and for nwly appointed Duke Giorgio Cavallone that meant downsizing considerably.

He sold the castle that had been the home of the Cavallone since 1200 and purchased a villa - what would become later on Villa Cavallone.

Due to the merits obtained by the family during World War I, it was a little less taxing, but the Cavallone family was indeed very targeted by the fascist government, who would try to do everything to erase them from the face of the earth. When Nazist piece of shit Hitler himself came to Italy in 1943 the family risked a lot more - cue the SS gunpointing at him and his family, raiding their resources, etc - and here they received a LOT of help from the Vongola family, who protected the Cavallone family. After that the Cavallone family became one of the main supporters of the Vongola family to pay off the life debt they had with them.

Eventually the war ended in 1945, the Nazists were sent back to Germany to die/be trialed/be condemned, same happened with the Fascists, Mussolini was killed and hanged upside down rightfully so.

The Cavallone family could breathe again.

After the war they let go of their noble title - the Savoy were exiled, the Republic was born and they felt that a noble title would just be a burden. So they let it go.

So Duke Cavallone became "Onorevole" Giorgio Cavallone in legal documents.

Giorgio Cavallone, eighth boss, eventually married a lady called Lucia Pavan, with whom he had three children:

Tommaso: first born, he would become a discretely famous writer. He will not marry, but he would have a life long companionship (read: queer) with his best friend Furio Barbieri.

Marta: second born, she would be a very smart and pragmatical lady. She would eventually marry a gentleman called Donato Gallo and have a son called Marco.

Cosimo: third born, Dino's dad. I talk about him here: CLICK!

And ofc here's the family tree (including people I mentioned in my previous post).

[lunanovakat]

A project that's been taking up my brain space.

A little sneak peek of a KHR (Katekyo Hitman Reborn)/ Tomb Raider fic that'll have its first chapter done soon if it doesn't stop plaguing me.

Renato Sinclair, a dirty little secret in the underworld for being very good at his job of shooting people dead. A hitman for hire by some of the elite that ruled the underworld, and several government officials who kept paying him to keep their deeds secret. Bought by the worst, used on the worst, playing a role as anything from a flight attendant to a police officer to get close to his targets.

Though, as killing people became more and more routine — less interesting, less challenging — he took up odd jobs that paid well. Jobs that ranged from being a bodyguard, to kidnapping, to theft. As long as they piqued his interest enough he wasn't bored, he did them.

It's this, mostly likely asinine, line of thinking that lead him to the Cavallone famiglia. Or, rather, the famiglia's lackluster heir.

A cowardly little idiot that was too spoiled for his own good, unknowing how tough the world was until his old man was about to kick the bucket and leave him alone. Not that the Cavallone Don planned to leave his weak and defenseless son to the hawks and vultures that hid in the undergrowth of their own famiglia, not without being able to defend himself.

And that's where Renato came in.

Turning a shapeless lump of clay, ugly and muddy, into a sculpture both beautiful and able to withstand damage of any kind had been… Exhilarating. A weak and useless child into a man that ruled his family fairly, yet with an iron fist. Watching as his student cleaned the corruption out of his famiglia, and strengthened the loyalty that had been faltering…

Then the Vongola Famiglia came to him next with an even more challenging offer.

They wanted to hire him for some 'tutoring' as well — though it had been CEDEF's Sawada Iemitsu and Vongola's Timoteo Romano making the offer, it was really just Timoteo Romano's request as the famiglia's Don — with the completely unaware civilian son of Sawada Iemitsu. It had been a fascinating idea — full of potential to keep Renato interested, to satisfy him when he succeeded, and to arouse his curiosity when Sawada Tsunayoshi was fully grown and controlling the Vongola Famiglia like a good little heir.

Renato had almost agreed the second the old Don created the offer, nearly forgoing pay entirely just to get onto teaching his fourteen-year-old student to become a respected mafia don.

(And if he was fond — somewhat attached — of the students he ended up teaching, he kept that to himself. It wasn't odd for a hitman to have allies in the underworld, even if Renato was a part of a fabled group that existed for generations and was nearly untouchable. Making allies was a great way to hide affection in the underbelly of crime. Timoteo was a too knowing bastard, though.)

(How much of him hiring Renato was for Sawada Tsunayoshi's insert into the role of Don, and how much of it was to become an ally of the Vongola famiglia?)

But he was, of course, a professional and didn't let himself be swayed so easily. So he made sure the contract was well in his favor, disdained Sawada Iemitsu for what pitiful information he had about his own son — from an outside source of all things, too — and on recon work to compile his own report on the boy before shaping him up. He had the boy's address, where he lived along with his civilian mother, and his school to stake out before deciding on just how he planned on 'tutoring' him.

And then, because Sawada Iemitsu really was a useless fool through and through, he discovered that the address he'd been given hadn't belonged to Sawada Nana or Sawada Tsunayoshi for almost ten years.

That Sawada Tsunayoshi hadn't gone to any of the school Sawada Iemitsu listed, since his mother's half cousin came and claimed him when he was six. Came and claimed him as his only living family after no one could get in contact with his father, since his mother died. A funeral for her paid by the same cousin Renato can't find anything on, a woman who 'looked like the non-Asian sister of Sawada Nana' from what he could find.

Renato didn't even offer Sawada Iemitsu sympathy when he returned and dropped off his report of, “Your son was taken in my his mother's half cousin after her death. Cancer, by the way, before you think she was murdered. No name of who her half-cousin is, or proof they're actually related.”

For years — for eight, almost nine, years — Sawada Iemitsu hadn't checked in on his wife or son at all. Renato didn't pity or sympathize with fools or idiots, and Sawada Iemitsu happened to be both.

It did get him two jobs for the price of four, though, so Renato didn't complain in the end. All he had to do was find and recover Sawada Tsunayoshi, and then tutor him into becoming the new Vongola Don.

Except five years later, when Sawada Tsunayoshi would've been nineteen, he still hadn't found the brat.

It was a bit mocking, if Renato was to be honest, unable to find a civilian with a very specific name and an appearance that stands out, considering his flames were strong enough to make his eyes noticeably orange. But the teen had remained elusive, Renato not even sure what country he'd been moved to after his mother's death and unable to narrow down a search because of it. Constantly expected to write reports on his search month after month, especially the older Timoteo became.

Luckily, as the years passed and Renato had nothing to go off of, he was able to take other jobs on the side. As long as he told Timoteo and Iemitsu how his search was going, not that the answer ever really changed. (But, hey, at least Renato was given a challenge.)

It's how he got here, seated at a quaint little café in Rome and checking the burner phone Iemitsu had given him for this month. Waiting on his new temporary employer to meet him, and to complete their vetting of him to see if he fits the 'hired muscle' they needed. At least the espresso was delightful, even if the idea of being vetted by a bunch of civilian grated on his nerves.

Though, when a mass of SUNSKYMIST suddenly diverges onto him, his nerves turn tense until two — civilian looking — individuals, dressed like his soon-to-be employers, take the seats across from him.

The female — a mature woman with long, dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, and enough muscles to show she could stop whatever shit Renato started — was dressed like any other ex-military Renato had dealt with in the last ten years. A well-fitted muscle shirt without sleeves, cargo pants likely filled to the brim with various tools, and a combat boots with enough slip resistance built into them, he was genuinely impressed. There was a necklace that dipped down to her chest, some sort of blocky knife-looking thing, and a tan coat that covered most of her outfit.

If not for the way she held herself, he'd had assumed with was American.

(She introduced them as Lara Croft, for the woman, and her nephew Thomas Croft. Both obviously English names, though only the woman had a proper English accent when she spoke.)

It's the boy with her — a teenager, if he had to guess — that really steals Renato's attention. He's well-built, like his aunt, slim and lithe but with muscles from weight lifting in his thighs and shoulders. Where 'Lara' was obviously English or American, the boy had Asian descent not only in his face but the way his body grew.

He was wearing a muscle shirt too, though long sleeved — long enough it even went to his hands, and his thumb went through holes — padded on his elbows like he was used to falling onto them, and needed the protection. A matching pair of cargo pants, though more sweatpants-like than 'Lara's', and steel toe black boots.

Like 'Lara', 'Thomas' had brown hair kept out of his face. Mostly just his bangs, with a bandana, since his hair wasn't nearly as long. But his jaw, surprisingly, was similar enough to her that he could believe it genetic.

He just had orange eyes, instead of brown like hers.

And looked so much like Iemitsu's ancestor, Giotto, that it took Renato's breath away.

Sawada Tsunayoshi was sitting across from him, using a new name he didn't seem unfamiliar with and friendly with the woman who claimed to be his aunt.

Renato planned on accepting the job, whatever it may entail, solely because his missing soon-to-be student was here.

When he meets Sawada Tsunayoshi's Sky Flame eyes, having not heard a single word from the woman's mouth, he smiles and finds himself amused when the nineteen-year-old looks unimpressed.

[leftnotright]

A TEXTBOOK EDUCATION

"This will be a skill-building experience. You've had it too easy. You've had your Family name to back you, and your Right Hand at your every call. It's time you learn to carry yourself, to build from the ground up." Dino Cavallone, the Cavallone Don, fresh out of high school.

Reborn, the deadliest hitman of the modern era, has a special kind of torture up his sleeve for his dear struggling student. Dino will have to see how well he handles alienation, isolation, and worst of all, class participation. “Now, go on, my useless student Dino. Let’s continue your education.” (Or: Reborn sends Dino to Australia. It goes better than he could have ever hoped.)

Parings: N/A Characters: Dino (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Vic Hunt (OC - Original Character), Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Romario (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Cavallone Famiglia, Enzo (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Original Characters Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, University, Pre-Canon, Financial Issues, Fluff And Angst

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

CHAPTER 6: I'VE ALREADY HID THE BODY

Dino patted his face dry gingerly, looking every bit the drowned rat he felt like. 

Hot water had all but reignited the powder the man had thrown at him, and as soon as Dino had stepped into what he had hoped to be a relaxing, warm shower, he had immediately regretted it. So, Dino had subjected himself to a speedrun of a freezing shower to get as much of the powder, old water and soil off of him.

The soil had been the hardest. It had been in every one of his sweaty nooks and crannies. 

Dino had only dug a grave himself once before. He hoped he remembered all the steps.

Dino continued to pat his red, blotchy face as he slumped into some clothes and, finally, looked at the state of his dorm. 

Powdery handprints, footsteps and drag marks covered the place. There was water on his papers and soaking both his textbooks and carpet, and so many things had been knocked over and pulled down in the fight. It was going to take forever to clean.

Dino sighed and looked at the clock, already 11PM. At least he didn’t have class tomorrow. 

He moved to the coffee table and gently pulled at his papers. Thankfully, none of the Mafia-related ones were damp, but Dino was going to have to reprint that spreadsheet handed out at his last tutorial. He packed away the sensitive documents in their hidden cubbyhole.  

Enzo plodded out from Dino’s bedroom, finally deciding to leave his sunlamp and sand bath. 

“Some help you were,” Dino pouted.

Enzo peered up at him with beady eyes, then made a b-line for the water spill. 

“Hey! Hey! No!” Dino shouted and scooped up the turtle who continued to wiggle his legs in his insatiable water-lust.

Then Dino froze and listened.

The crunch of boots against pavement and leaves. The rustle of fabric against skin. The jangle of metal. Laboured breaths and a sigh through clenched teeth. The knock of knuckles against a door.

Dino blinked. Knocking?

Carefully, Dino peered through the slits of his blinds and spotted the figure at his door. Their head snapped around.

“Dino! Show me the baby damn it!”

Dino sputtered. What was Vic doing here at 11PM!?

“Let me see the little babyman!” Vic whined again.

Dino didn’t know if it was his anxiety-induced people pleasing, or the fact that Dino all but had a death grip on the knowledge that Vic was his friend who liked Dino and his company, but before he could think, Dino’s mouth had happily said: “Of course!”

Then Dino choked and shouted, “No!”  

But Vic had already marched through his door. 

Dino looked at Vic, then at the state of his dorm, then back at the frightening still girl. 

Slowly, Dino extended Enzo towards Vic and said in a small voice, “Do you want to hold the baby?”

Vic turned her head to look at Dino, and Dino saw the moment her temper snapped.

“What the fuck happened!?”

Dino’s face must have been worse than he thought, because the moment Vic laid eyes on him, she lost her head. Vic crossed the room in long, heavy strides and grabbed him by the head so she could see the chapped, red skin. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, his nose was crusty and peeling, and Dino was still damp.

Vic looked upon Dino and the state of his dorm, and it all pieced together. Vic could hear that familiar rumble in her ears, and the pressure in her throat — but as she moved Dino’s head to see if there was any more damage to him, she saw a tear track down his cheek and Vic did everything she could to stomp down that anger. 

The pressure eased, but that rumble remained, a constant background noise that made it hard for her to hear, to think. Vic gritted her teeth and bore it.

Her baby boy Dino had just been robbed, and possibly attacked! He had been alone and crying, for who knew how long — and of course this had to happen on a night when there were two house parties going on, so no one was aware of the world, or too piss drunk to care.

“Are you okay?” She asked, and let go of Dino’s head, circling around Dino and nudging at his body.

Dino flinched with a sharp hiss when Vic prodded his shoulder and he quickly spun around, “I’m fine! Promise! No lies!”

“Yes lies,” Vic snapped and poked him in the shoulder again, “How the fuck did you get hurt? Did they jump you? Where are they, I’m gonna beat their ass—”

“No, no, no,” Dino rambled and grabbed Vic by her arm to redirect her deeper into the dorm, kicking his door shut behind them. “Far away, they are far away now. They will not come back, I am sure.”

They paused as something crunched under Vic’s foot, and they both looked down to see shattered glass underneath her boots. Vic looked at Dino over her shoulder with eyes sharp enough to cut, and Dino continued to push her over to the dining table.

He thinned his lips when he saw the state of the back porch door, the way the hitman had entered. 

“Your fucking deck door is smashed—”

“It can be replaced—”

“Dino!” Vic shouted, sounding appalled and she spun around to grab Dino back. “Why are you so calm about this!?”

“It is over,” Dino said slowly, and let her grip him by the forearms, her nails digging in and grip so tight she was shaking. “It is over.”

Vic was not calm at the moment, but Dino could see she was trying. Trying so hard to keep it together, but she was slipping constantly. Everything she saw was something to set off the tripwire in her brain — Dino knew that feeling well.

Then Vic stared at him, her nails still biting his skin, and she uttered, “You’re used to this.”

 Dino winced but nodded and gave what he hoped was a comforting smile, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m used to this. It is not the first time.”

Vic swallowed hard and squeezed Dino’s arms again. She wasn’t satisfied. But her anger had gone quiet, a rolling boil just under her skin that she could keep a careful lid on.

“Okay, fine,” she said, taking slow, deep breaths through her teeth. Her voice was low, like she was trying not to wake what was left. “Fine. We’ll— for a few hours— we’ll act like this is fine.”

“For a few hours,” Dino agreed but didn’t pull away.

Vic puffed out a sigh, “But are you okay? Like, actually. Other than your shoulder, I mean.”

“Yes, I am well,” he assured, and she gave him a short look. “I promise.”

“...Okay. Okay, that’s good,” she relented, and then looked at the state of Dino’s dormhouse. “Fuck, they made a mess.”

“Yeah, it will take a while to clean up.”

Vic let go of Dino’s arms and rubbed her face, before she clapped her hands loudly. 

“Let’s get cracking, then,” she said, and set into the mess.

Dino blinked at Vic, then put Enzo down and rushed to join her. He brought over a dustpan from under the sink and swept up the spilt pot soil as Vic picked up the shattered plastic terracotta bits with her gloves.

Dino looked over at Vic and took in what she was wearing: beige, steel-capped boots, jeans and a red polo shirt. She had a bulky carabiner clipped to her belt, cluttered with an arrangement of keys, glove clips and some kind of yellow tool with small blades. 

“Where were you?” Dino asked, looking her over and Vic paused dropping those shards in the dustpan.

“Work,” she answered, “I do the closing shift on Friday.”

Dino blinked slowly, “Oh. That is all work items?”

Vic looked down at her carabiner and bounced in her squat to make it give a little jangle, “Yeah. Locker key, mover key, bat knife, mini measuring tape. Other ring is car and the dorm key though.”

“You came from work then?” Dino asked as he pulled over his kitchen bin to dump everything.

Vic stared at the limp, blackened succulent on the floor and tossed it in the trash as well. She rose from the floor with a groan and punched at her lower back as she moved over to the next mess.

“Yeah. Wanted to see Enzo. And you too, I guess, you’re here.”

“Thanks,” Dino said flatly, and heard Vic snicker as she inspected the handprints on the walls and floor. “But it is so late, why did you come now?”

Vic glanced at Dino before she shifted on the spot, and carefully touched the powder with her gloved finger, trying to see if it would wipe off easily.

“Had a bit of a shit shift, is all,” she said.

Vic moved to the dustpan and beat off any remaining soil, before she moved to the walls.

“I, uh, I will do that,” Dino insisted and dashed over to take the brush from her hands. He had felt what that powder was like, and he didn’t want Vic getting any of that in her eyes or lungs. “I do not know what the powder is.”

Vic’s frown returned with a vengeance and the grinding of teeth. She turned on her heel and opened the front door and every available window, channelling her temper into fighting with the stubborn bathroom windows.

Dino smiled at Vic as she started scooping up the back porch door’s glass while muttering under her breath. He pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth before he started brushing that capcaissum-like dust off the walls. 

By the time they were done, it was well past midnight, and Dino had a lot of laundry to do come the morning after stripping his bed and couch of their covers. Vic had managed to use trash bags and a mini stapler to wrap Dino’s porch - deck - door and keep out the bugs.

Dino came inside from putting out the bins and locked the flyscreen door to the front, still airing out that powder. He stopped when he saw Vic standing in his, thankfully untouched, kitchen. 

“They stole your food too!?” 

She opened one cabinet after another, nary a scrap or packet in sight. All that was there were plates and haphazardly stacked pots. Dino blinked slowly, the clock blurry in the corner of his vision.

“I suppose?” He said, “I did not have much food. Cooking is not strong.”

Vic looked at him, “How much is not much.”

Dino thinned his lips. Vic continued to stare at him. 

“...I did not have any stored there.”

“Dino,” she said shortly, then she pinched her brow and looked around, “Then where do you store your stuff?”

Dino moved to the fridge and opened it. Kebabs and various pastas from the student Ubar took up the top shelf, a jug of water and a half-drunk Pepsi in the door. There was nothing else. 

Vic looked at him.

“I am one man,” he reasoned in response to that flat stare.

Vic thought about it for a moment, before nodding in her head in defeat, “Okay, fair.” 

Then Vic went about looking at those cabinets again, all hauntingly empty. She seemed to count them, then count the five shelves in the fridge, with only one in use. Ample storage, far too much for ‘one man’ with little to no guests. Dino watched as she sized up the space, wondering what was going on.

“Have you had dinner yet?” Vic asked, looking over her shoulder. 

“No,” Dino admitted slowly, “I have not had time.”

He had been too nervous to eat before the meeting, save that cookie Vic had given him, and too busy afterwards. His usual shop in the Ubar for a hot meal would be long closed by now — besides, Dino rarely had an appetite after handling a corpse. 

Dino suddenly wondered if his lightheadedness was from that powder, or over 12 hours without a proper meal. He needed to eat soon.

“Proposal!” Vic announced and Dino snapped to attention just as a cup of cool water was shoved into his hands. “You lemme store my foodstuffs in your capacious cupboards, and I’ll help you learn to cook! Life skills, My Little Pony, life skills!”

“But, you have a kitchen in your dormhouse? Do you not use it?”

Vic’s smile twitched and became the baring of teeth. 

“I would, but roommates,” she said, voice strained. “They kept using my stuff without asking, and they didn’t even replace it!” Vic took a large breath and crossed her arms, “I just keep everything in eskies now.”

Dino blinked. He remembered those three coolers stacked up on top of each other in the corner of Vic’s bedroom. Vic was hoarding her food in her room to protect it.

Dino sipped at his water and glanced at his storage. More than one man, one university student, could fill. Again, Dino’s anxious need to please reared its head. The idea of Vic, his friend, having to all but resource guard in her own dormhouse only fanned those flames. Dino fought it as best he could.

“Yeah!”

Which wasn’t much. At all. But he tried!

Then Dino remembered what was shoved into his underwear drawer, and what was coiled up in his back pocket. What was stored away in a cubby hole, what was cooling deep in the dirt outside. Mafia shit. 

“But, uh, please be careful of my items,” he pressed, imagining the chaos of Vic finding any of his files.

“Of course,” Vic nodded, not an inch of humour or sarcasm in her tone. “Your dorm, your stuff. I won’t touch anything unless I have the go from you.”

Dino relaxed a bit. 

“Anyway, gimme a sec and I’ll grab us some dinner. Be right back!” And Vic was out the door with the vicious jangle of her keys.

Dino resisted the urge to rub his face lest he irritate his still-red skin, and instead went about fitting the sheets back onto his bed so he had somewhere to sleep all of this off. 

Dino sat on the floor of his living room, not willing to use the bare couch, especially with that suspicious stain that they had exposed. He gave a glance to the washing baskets full of laundry for tomorrow and tried not to think about how his lazy day was no longer looking any sort of lazy.

Enzo took that moment to appear, rounding the side of the couch and chomped Dino’s socked toes.

“Ouch!” Dino hissed and yanked his foot away. “Damn it Enzo!”

“Is that the baby I hear!?” Dino heard from outside and looked over to see Vic hauling two eskies down Dino’s path, dressed down into her usual garb.

Dino stood and let her in, the girl hoisting the eskies up over the step and into his living room. 

“I’ve got butter chicken leftovers that need to be eaten soon and naan bread for a quick and dirty dinner,” she offered, taking off her shoe next to the door where Dino’s were.

“Okay,” Dino agreed and went about getting out the few plates he had, running them under the tap just in case. 

“Is there anywhere in particular you’d want me to stay out of?” Vic asked, crouched in front of Dino’s fridge.

Dino shrugged as he briefly tried to read the instructions of microwaved rice. He didn’t really use more than the top shelf by himself. Divvying up a fridge had never been a pressing matter. 

Dino shrugged and put the rice in the microwave, punching in the numbers he saw on the packaging. 

Vic hummed unsurely up at Dino, before she slipped a bottle of almond milk into the second bottom shelf. Dino stared at the bottle and remembered suddenly: Vic is lactose intolerant. 

“Top two can be yours, and we can discuss the door shelves when you’re not ready to pass out.”

“How are you so alive?” Dino asked, still fighting the need to rub his eyes. 

Or, well, as ‘alive’ as someone as lethargic as Vic could be. It hadn’t been quick, like coming down a steep slope, but Vic had returned to her lazy state as she stocked up Dino’s fridge.

“Night shift, baby,” Vic sang flat, and put her esky aside as she closed the fridge. “And I didn’t get broken into.”

Dino huffed and Vic gave a short laugh that had to all but crawl from her throat. Then she stopped, sniffed and snapped her head around, “How long did you put that in for?”

Dino looked over his shoulder and smelt melting plastic. Dino yelped and scrambled for the cancel button, the microwave door popped open and steam and white smoke came pouring out. Vic hacked and couched, and Dino slammed the door shut again.

Dino glanced at Vic. Vic looked at Dino.

Vic put the container of butter chicken into the fridge, middle shelf.

“Let’s just eat cereal tonight.”

A bowl of almost-chocolate milk sat in Dino’s lap as he and Vic watched videos of silly cats on her laptop, the girl herself munching through her share of Milo cereal. Enzo peaked up and over Vic’s thigh, happily cradled in the nest of her crossed legs.

“How’s your shoulder?” Vic asked out of the blue, and Dino glanced at her.

She looked drowsy, all but slumped against the baseboard of his couch. Her bowl tipped dangerously. Each breath she took was long and paced. 

“It’s okay,” Dino said, moving his murky cereal soup around. “They did not hurt me. I did not even see them.”

Vic breathed out, long and slow. A cat fell into a bathtub. Another got scared by a piano. Vic ate a heaped spoonful.

“Do you want me to stay over tonight?” 

Dino blinked, “Pardon?”

Vic watched a cat run headlong into a glass door. 

“You had someone break in. People usually don’t wanna be alone after that, ya know?” she huffed, “I don’t particularly want to leave you alone, either. They might get cocky and come back.”

Dino looked at the dots of black dirt under his nails, the last remnants he couldn’t scrub out. He doubted they would be coming back. 

Dino glanced at Vic. A civilian would be shaken by a break-in. Right. Already, this breach had put Vic on edge. Hypervigilance. She would be watching Dino, and everything around him. Dino had to act civilian. 

“I would like that, yes,” Dino nodded gently, and Vic nodded back. 

Then she tipped back the last of her almond milk and got to her feet, Enzo wheezing at the abandonment. 

“I’ll go grab my nighties and shit then. Be right back.”

Dino watched Vic go, before he reached for his phone and texted Romario.

Dino Cav Vic is staying the night in my dormhouse.

Romario did not respond for at least ten minutes. Then Dino’s phone started to shake on the countertop as ‘Romario’ became ‘Romario (15)’ and ‘Zio Croix (7)’. 

Dino paused rinsing the bowls and looked at his phone, wondering about the frenzy — and how Zio Croix was caught up in it. He put the bowls on the drying rack Vic had found deep in his cupboards, but before he could reach to address those texts, Vic was once again knocking on his screen door.

Dino let her in and was immediately faced with felt teeth. 

Vic’s head peered from around the large, nearly life-sized, toy shark. She grinned with teeth, nearly the spitting image.

“Meet Nip,” she introduced, shaking that shark at Dino. “My cuddle shark.”

“...Hello Nip,” Dino uttered and made way as the girl shuffled into the dorm. “Why?”

“I need to hug something to fall asleep,” she said as she put down a tote bag against the side of Dino’s couch. “Hence: cuddle shark, Nip.” Vic looked around and said, “So uh, where do you want me to sleep?”

Dino paused and looked at the couch, stripped bare and with newly exposed, suspicious stains. He looked at the laundry basket, the only spare sheets in the dorm, and in danger of holding that powder residue.

“Did not think about it,” Dino said slowly.

He had towels, but he couldn’t ask Vic, his guest, to sleep on towels. All of the Cavallone would have his head! 

“I will sleep in this room,” Dino offered, thinking of laying towels on the couch. “And you may have my bed.”

Vic tilted her head, “But you’re the one who needs the better sleep. I can sleep on the couch.”

“Please, my Family would kill me,” Dino nearly pleaded.

Vic let out a short bark of a laugh and hiked up her shark onto her shoulder. She looked down the hall into Dino’s bedroom and hummed before she turned to Dino and said, “Mate, you’ve got a queen size. We can share if you’re comfy?”

Dino stared at Vic, “You would like to share?”

Vic shrugged, “Up to you, I’m good for it though.” 

Dino looked at his bed, then at the couch, then at Vic and her life-sized shark. Immediately, Dino was rushed with a nervous excitement. He felt his face split into a shaky smile and rocked on his heels, full of elated jitters.

“I am okay!” He agreed, “We can share, yes!”

Dino had taken a while to get used to the bed at the dormhouse. It wasn’t especially soft or hard, but it was different. He sorely missed his own pillow; this one made his neck hurt for the first few weeks. 

So Dino understood as he watched Vic pull the slip off his spare pillow and replaced it with her own. She folded the slip up and laid it on the chair in the corner. Then she stood in front of Enzo’s suitcase, full of topsoil and sticks.

“They stole his fucking enclosure,” she whispered staring down at it and the way Enzo slowly rubbed himself into his sandpit.

Dino decided it was an investment in his personal safety to let her believe that. 

She squatted down and gently petted Enzo’s shell with the soft utterance of ‘red-eared slider, my ass’ before she clambered up into the bed, Nip in arms. Dino fisted his sheets in his hands, sat on ‘his side’ of the bed, a clear divide down the middle. 

Vic sat on her side, lamp the only light in the room. 

Dino smiled at Vic, “I have never had a sleepover before.”

Dino could barely contain himself. Sure, it was under less-than-ideal circumstances, but Dino was having his first sleepover with his friend! He couldn’t wait to tell Romario.  

Vic blinked, “Me neither.”

All the movies Dino had seen showed people at sleepover playing games and consuming an array of foods — none of which he had on hand. Especially with his microwave out of commission until it stopped smelling of something toxic. He remembered his classmates back in Italy discussing sleepovers, well ‘rendezvous’ or ‘meetings’, as they called it at the time. Dino didn’t think Vic would much like it if their sleepover activity was an impromptu helicopter ride like the Tomaso Family did. 

Dino tugged at his blankets a bit, “What do we want to do?”

Vic flopped back into the bed and bodily wrapped herself around her shark, pulling the duvet all the way up to her chin. 

“Sleep,” she decided, and God that sounded utterly sublime.

Dino didn’t hesitate to curl up like a little comfort crustacean. His head hit the pillow and all those dopamine jitters were sapped straight from his bones for melatonin mugginess.

 “Good idea,” Dino grumbled and Vic turned out the lights.

☁ ☁ ☁

“Hey Romario?” Dino asked as he held the phone to his ear, watching on as Vic stubbornly piled the straps of several hefty shopping bags onto her hands and waddled into his dorm. “Would you be able to send me some, uh, cooking stuff?”

“Cooking stuff,” Romario echoed slowly.

“Yeah,” he said, as Vic organised their food in the cupboards and fridge, following some sort of system Dino had no clue about. “Stuff that I’d need for cooking. Cooking stuff.”

“Very well, Boss. I’ll ask the chef to organise a basic package.”

“Perfect! Thanks a lot, Romario,” Dino said, before wheezing as Vic shoved a bag of flatbread in his chest.

“Come on, ponyboy, we’re making wraps for lunch,” Vic announced, waving the bag of roasted chicken. “No way we can mess this up.”

Later, Dino choked on a bone. Vic now knew the correct spelling for ‘heimlich’.

 ☁ ☁ ☁

Sunday morning, Vic sat on the couch, still smelling fresh from the laundry, and bodily wrapped around Nip as she watched Dino haul a box into the living room. He wheezed and heaved, dragging the box as it clanged and banged with whatever was inside.

“Doing good there buddy?” Vic asked, but made no move to help. 

“Good,” Dino said, before his socked feet slipped out from under him and he fell on his ass. “Still good!”

Vic snorted and leant over the edge of the couch to rummage through her bag. She pulled out a box knife from her balled-up work apron and tossed it at Dino who was haplessly picking at the taped-up box.

Dino fumbled with the knife for a bit, before he managed to open the box. Vic peered over his shoulder.

“The hell is this?” She asked as Dino pulled out one smaller box after another, carefully packaged and wrapped in scrunched-up newspaper. She snagged a page and squinted; Italian. “This from home?”

“Yeah! I asked Romario to send some tools!” 

“Ah, Romario,” Vic uttered. Her rival for custody of Dino.

Dino grinned at Vic, happy she knew so many of his Family by name. He really should have thought it dangerous, negligent even, that he was letting a civilian know so many of the pieces that made the Cavallone’s top level — but really, Dino reasoned, when would it come up again? Vic was going to be a teacher in Australia, after all. 

Dino huffed as Vic batted at him with Nip to get him to hurry up and show her what he had been sent. 

A pasta machine, made of black cast iron and polished wood, came out first. It was heavy and Dino wheezed as he tried to raise it up to show Vic. On the bottom, Dino could read VillaWare Manufacturing Co. 1908. The head chef had always found it a bit annoying that the first pasta maker had been built in Cleveland, USA of all places.

Dino gave it a testing crank. It was old, but it turned without so much a creak. 

The next item Dino pulled wasn't exactly heavy but had a heft to it that made his fingers hurt as he clutched the edge. A circular slab of stone, flat as a tack and thick with little handles on either side; a pizza stone. Accompanied by a pizza paddle that Vic used as a rather dangerous choice of fan.

The last large piece was a large pan, at least a finger in depth. Dino had seen the chefs use this kind of pan to make sauces before.

Aside from that, the box was full of miscellaneous bits and bobs, some coming in multiples in a way that made Dino think they were important — did he really need that many wooden spoons? Why were they different shapes? 

At the bottom, sat a few small folded paper packages. Dino reached in and read that familiar handwriting on the backs: basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano. Seeds, sent from home.

“You got a letter,” Vic hummed from over Dino’s shoulder and he jumped to attention and saw an envelope wedged beneath the folds of the box. “What’s it say?” 

Dino leant back into the couch as he read Romario’s clean and precise handwriting, always a stickler for clarity and precision, down to the penmanship. 

“Instructions to look after the pasta machine,” he said, before getting to the bottom of the letter. “They are going to send more later. A, uh, ‘care package’?”

“More!?” Vic asked, looking at what was already spread across the coffee table, stacked on top of each other and nearly toppling off the edge. 

“Yeah, my Family tends to over-give sometimes,” Dino chuckled, still trying to figure out why there was a random, gritty block packaged with the knives. “A lot of us live in one household under the head, so we use quite a bit.”

Vic blinked, “You all live in one big house?”

“Yes! After induction, you are to live in the house until deemed ready!” 

Dino's smile froze. Vic stared at him with a particular look on her face that somehow told Dino that something he had said was not a social norm. 

“What?” Vic uttered, and squinted even as her eyebrows shot up. 

Dino wheezed and started waving his hands frantically, “I, uh, mean — the new members of the Family come to live in the house! It is safe there and tradition and uh— Please do not focus on it—!”

Vic lurched to sit up on the couch, Nip the shark all but flung across the living room as she gaped at Dino’s spluttering self. 

He fucked up!

“Wait, are you in a cult?”

Oh, he fucked up!

“Dino? Are you? In a cult?” she pressed, both fascinated and concerned. “Like, you can tell me, I won’t judge. My uncle believes that a secret race of people called the ‘True Earthlings’ run the world.”

“No, I’m not in a cul— your uncle believes what?” Dino squinted. “How? Why does he think that?”

“Beats me,” Vic shrugged as she crossed her legs, feet pressed flat against one another. “But he talks about it at pretty much every family gathering. We usually change the topic.” Then she rocked forward on the couch and loomed over Dino. “But you. Cult?”

“No,” Dino stressed, “We are not a cult. We are a Family.”

“Sounds like a cult, not gonna lie,” Vic muttered, scratching at the piercing hole in her ear.

“Not a cult!” 

“Okay, okay,” Vic laughed and backed off. “But fuck mate, that must be a big house you’ve got.”

Dino smiled, remembering those long halls and polished floors, perfecting the sliding on socks and being dragged on blankets. “Yes, enough room for everyone.”

Vic huffed and groaned as she got to her feet. 

“Okay, let’s get that machine cranking! Pasta time!” She paused and looked down at Dino. “You know how to make pasta noodles right? You’re Italian.”

“Did you remember to park your koala?” Dino shot back. “And I’m Sicilian.”

Vic stuck her tongue out at Dino and flipped him off, “The stereotype is ‘kangaroo’, you Sicilian piece of shit. Now get up, we’re gonna Youtube it.”

Vic was glad they had started preparing their dinner early, as the next half an hour resulted in a rather frantic back and forth of more egg yolk, more flour, more egg, more flour, more egg, more flour, more—

“I don’t think we can eat all of this,” Dino murmured as the two looked down at the ball of rested dough the size of a small toddler.

“Speak for yourself, coward,” Vic huffed and grabbed handfuls.

True to her words, Vic ate her whole serving of five large bowls. Dino had to rub her belly as she laid on the couch in pasta-ey regret. 

At least, now Dino had plenty of pasta in the fridge. He would be eating it for a while.

☁ ☁ ☁

Dino laid on his couch, a sheet of paper draped across his face. Enzo gently gnawed on his shin through his pyjama pants. 

He was bored. And lonely. 

Semester break had set in. Dino had meant to go home over the mid-year break, spend the semester's end on Sicilian soil. Instead, when Winter crawled into the southern hemisphere and Dino had reached for the plane tickets home— 

“I’m sorry Boss, Reborn’s instructions were clear. You can’t come back this time, not yet.”

Dino had damn near broken into tears. 

Instead, after much bed-rotting, Dino had thrown himself into the familiar stress of number crunching, creating pages of cramped value tables and highlighted budget summaries. On the floor sat a bin full of tear-soggy tissues. 

Vic had gone upstate to New Castle for the mid-year break, but Dino hadn’t had the time to miss her company as she made sure to text her ‘poor, lonesome boy’ at least once a day. Dino’s phone was full of photos of ‘blobfish babies’ and some kind of mixed mutt that looked like it could win a bullfight called Pepper. Or, as Vic liked to call her: ‘Pepe my sweet little girl, so beautiful!’

Dino did have to admit, her baby cousin, Ant, did look a bit like a blobfish. A cute one. A cute blobfish.

He still wished she was here, though. Dino had never liked the quiet, it never brought good things. For Dino, a quiet house was a house in mourning.

Dino tried to play some old Italian music to help the homesickness. He found he couldn’t stand it without the sound of Romario snoring in his armchair, or Brutus heckling at the football. 

Dino crossed his arms over his eyes, the sheet wrinkled under the weight.

“I wanna go home, Enzo,” he murmured, muffled.

Enzo made another bite at his shin.

“I wanna see Vic.”

☁ ☁ ☁

It had been months since Dino had struck a deal with the rest of the Cavallone: Bet everything on one last race. Bet everything on the Cavallone horses.

And yet, he had made minimal progress. 

The search for jockeys had been difficult, he hadn’t even known where to start. But as he paged through the list of names and backgrounds Romario had sent, Dino could see his options wearing thin. 

There were jockeys, young upstarts and disgraced retirees. But Dino needed a specific brand of person. 

He didn’t have the money to pay them lavishly, nor buy their silence, so he needed someone low budget, low maintenance. Young, maybe. Inexperienced and unaware of their worth. Skilled enough to handle a horse of Cavallone’s breeding. Loyalty easily fostered. They couldn’t ask questions. And they couldn’t be Mafia.

One jockey per horse.

The Stable Master had given him seven horses to work with, Madam Celeste, Buttercup Pop, Today Junior, Red Riding, Bottle Top, the best of the Cavallone’s renowned Snortle line and, of course, Glory herself. 

One jockey per horse. Dino needed to find at least seven jockeys. And then he had to pray that the horses accepted their riders.

Dino grimaced at the concept of trying to introduce a jockey to Glory. He made a note to have a medic on scene.

Dino sighed and dropped his head onto the dining table, articles and handwritten notes of half thoughts stacked high enough to cushion his dismay. Dino was tired.

Enzo bit his little toe through his sock. Dino screeched. He shot up with a gasp — he saw Vic pressed against the window. 

“Show me the boy.”

Dino screeched. He fell off his chair into the sweet embrace of his cold, tile floor. 

“Careful! You could have hurt Enzo!” Vic scolded as she banged on the window. 

Dino gaped at her from the floor, offended. 

“What!? No sympathy for Dino!?”

“Shut up and let me in! I’m freezing my tits off!”

Dino resisted rolling his eyes as he heaved himself up off the ground. It was only 17 degrees, barely coat weather, but Vic was whining like she was up on Etna. Dino opened his door and Vic came barreling past, honed on his couch.

Dino laughed when he saw the mass of blankets on the couch, each one brought by Vic every time she couldn’t resist the knick-knackery of Kmart. Two grumpy eyes peered out, and the tell-tale sound of Enzo’s disgruntled wheeze.

“You’re back?” Dino smiled as he came and sat by Vic’s head, those eyes glaring up at him. 

“Nah, I’m astral projecting — yes I’m back!” Vic huffed and Dino grinned.

He leant over and threw his arms around the mass that was Vic bundled within her blankets, squeezing tight even when the girl gave a wheeze. One of Vic’s hands wriggled its way out of the hold and gently patted Dino’s shoulder with an obligatory “there, there.”

“You were away for so long,” Dino grumbled.

Vic huffed, “I was gone for three weeks.”

“Three weeks much too long!” He whined and Vic let out a laugh that jostled both of them.

Dino let out an indignant sound as he slumped into Vic and felt the twang in his back and the ache in his eyes. He had been looking at documents for so long, done so much close-up work, that he could barely make out the clock face on the wall. 

“You look like shit,” Vic grumbled from within her blanket mount.

Dino smiled weakly and rubbed his nape. He felt like shit too. A bit sweaty. Cooped up. 

But he had work to do. So many relied on this one last gamble. 

Dino tried not to let the stress show. That stone in his stomach and pressure in his chest.

Vic stared at him.

“Dino?” She asked and sat up, Enzo slid down a blanket and tottered off into the distance. “Dino?”

‘What’s wrong?’ she wanted to ask, but as Vic looked at Dino, she couldn’t quite get the words out. Because she could see that whatever was festering under his skin, was far too large to unpack. It had too many layers. One lone issue didn’t make someone’s face that dark and pale.

“Do you…Do you want to call home? I can give you some space?” Vic offered gently. “Call your dad or something?”

Dino flinched. Hard.

Vic snapped her mouth shut. 

Then her mind swarmed with memory, scanning every instance she had with Dino, every mention of his family, every giggle of his past. Not once had Dino mentioned his father. Or his mother.

Fuck. Vic had fucked up.

“Or—” she scrambled, nearly biting her tongue in the rush.

“He is, uh…passed,” Dino said, barely above a whisper. 

Vic paused. She pulled the blankets around her tighter. 

“Oh,” she uttered.

“Last February,” he continued, his hands plucked at the edge of the blanket, pulling the loose tassels. “He got hurt. He didn’t get better.”

“Oh,” Vic whispered. That was recent. “You’re…mum?”

She looked at him carefully. Dino’s nose had started to blush, his fingers worked to untangle stylised knots in the blanket. His voice croaked.

“I was seven,” Dino whispered, and that was all Vic needed to know. 

“Dino,” Vic murmured, and Dino shrugged. 

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

“Dino, your dad was last year,” Vic said, not at all convinced. Maybe Dino had come to peace with his mother’s passing, but his fathers? She didn’t think he was ‘okay’ as he said he was.

“I am busy. There’s much to do. The Family needs me now that I am in charge.”

Vic held her breath for a moment until she was sure she could let it out without a sound. Her Dino was in charge? Of a whole family? Her Dino, who choked on rice, who cut his lip on his toothbrush, who tripped on shoelaces. Had been put in charge of a whole family — an extensive one if ‘induction’ meant anything (not a cult, totally not a cult unless it is). 

“When did you take over?” Vic asked and closed her eyes, bracing for the worst.

“...Last February,” Dino uttered.

He had taken the reigns out of cold hands. No time to mourn.

Vic felt her heart lurch in her chest, and a rumble in her ears. Anger and indignity yanked at her naval as she looked at the papers on the dining table, laptop open, fan spinning fast to cool down after days of almost non-stop use. Her Dino was doing all this. Practically alone, so far from home. And he hadn’t even had the time to properly mourn.

Vic turned her gaze onto Dino. 

“Last February,” she echoed out to him. “Fifteen months.”

Dino smiled at Vic, full of teeth and wrinkled eyes. Eyes that started to swim as she stared at him. Brown eyes going blurry until one, then two, fat tears rolled down his cheeks. Dino sniffed, loud and full of snot. 

Vic pulled her feet up onto the couch, leant back against the armrest and opened her arms to Dino. Dino’s face pinched, his breath shook, and slowly, Dino crawled until he laid himself on her chest. 

Vic lifted her chin to breathe around his hair and felt her shirt go soggy as Dino hiccuped and rattled.

Vic liked to think she knew Dino well. At times like this, though, Vic was reminded that she knew very little. 

Dino’s dad had died last year. His mother, long before that. And now he was here, alone, the rest of his family in another hemisphere. And there was that whole issue of finances that she knew she wouldn’t ever fully understand the gravity of. 

Arms wriggled under her back and Vic felt Dino clutch at her like a lifeline, his watch dug into her ribs and she felt snot, spit and tears smear along her collar. 

“I miss him,” Dino wheezed. “I don’t want to be the Boss yet. There’s so much I could do wrong.”

Vic gritted her teeth and pulled the blankets over Dino, the weight pressing down on his back. She looked at the list sitting on Dino’s dining table. A criterion for employment. A jockey selection. 

Dino needed jockeys. At least seven.

Vic scanned the criteria, doing her damnedest to burn every detail and refinement into her memory. Cheap, talented, foolish. She felt her stomach roll with heat and discomfort. 

Someone to be taken advantage of. 

Dino coughed between quiet sobs. His nails dug into her shirt, just short of her skin. Vic pushed her cheek into his hair and squeezed him back, just as tight. 

Dino needed jockeys. 

“It’ll be okay, Dino,” Vic murmured. 

Dino needed jockeys. Dino needed help. 

She couldn’t do much, had no idea where to even start. But she could at least look. For her ponyboy Dino.

[moonlit-mystery-writer]

May I ask 🍁 for Celeste and 🌹for Delphino? Thanks!

Soft OC Questions

🍁 Where does your OC go when they need to have some time to themself? Would they ever have their own “comfort corner” filled with all the things they like? Do they have a favourite spot outside that feels like it’s theirs and theirs alone?

When Celeste wants alone time she goes to two different places. Either she’s in the Giglio Nero Garden (more commonly called the Nero Garden) and spends times around the statues of Luce and other past bosses of the Giglio Nero Famiglia. Or she goes directly to Luce’s grave and just solemnly rests there, sometimes even leaning her head against it.

————

🌹 Where in the world does your OC feel most at home? Is there any reason why? If it’s not the place they were born, where were they born? Is there a certain somebody that makes them feel at home where ever they may be? What does home mean to them?

Delfino feels the most at home on the Cavallone Famiglia’s island. The place she was born and raised just never fully felt like home. There was practically no warmth there outside of her aunt’s visits and it’s where her rivalry against Squalo started.

Meanwhile the Cavallone Island not only has the family she works for who treat her with such kindness, the people who live there do too. So it’s infinitely more like home than anywhere else.

[carcassamania]

an oc masterlist

banner by @\wethairjoel, from [this] post

⚠️ still under construction! But these are all my OCs for khr <33

Carcassa Famiglia

Seora

Alexandros

Esmerelda

Ricardo

Cavallone Famiglia

Amara, [intro post]

Black Rat Famiglia

Seiji Sato

Valarie Valley

[naluwalker]

Somehow I managed to get them all related

Headcanon:

Well, I really like Katekyo Hitman Reborn. I really like Byakuran, Mukuro, Hibari and Tsuna, especially Byakuran. Now, I was playing with headcanons and thought it wouldn't be unusual for many mafia families to be related to each other if they wanted to maintain "purity" of blood. I thought that if you searched your family trees, you would find members of different families, including the Vongola. So I said to myself, I want the Tri-ni-sette skies to be related and I started to see how they could.

Since we have the Sawada family tree more or less complete and I could see more or less how many generations there were, I decided to expand it a little.

Ambrogio Fabbri, later known as Giotto di Vongola, would move to Japan, taking three of his guardians with him: Luigi "G" Sorrentino, Ugetsu Asari and Carlo "Knuckle" Corazza. Alaude le Tellier would leave with them, but would eventually find his way to China where he would meet his wife, Míngxiá Wǔ, member of the ancient Wǔ clan. Damian "Daemon" Spade would stay in the mafia, becoming Secondo's Mist, and Lamberto "Lampow" Balzarini would escape to Liguria where he would marry Danila Bovino, a farmer's daughter.

Giotto would take with him Daemon and Elena Weatherington's biological daughter, Helen, who would have been no more than 4 years old at the time.

In Japan, Giotto would meet and marry Ayako Urushisako, and together they would have Yoshimune Sawada. Yoshimune Sawada would in turn marry Sakuya Uryūhara, and have twins Yoshinobu and Nobuyasu Sawada. From here the divergence of the canon begins.

Yoshinobu would marry Nogiku Kohinoki, and continue the family line until reaching Iemitsu Sawada, who would marry Nana Hitogi and they would have Tsunayoshi Sawada.

Nobuyasu Sawada (OC) would leave Japan to return to his Italian roots, because he felt it was "calling" him. He would meet and fall in love with Fiammetta Gesso, the only daughter of a landowner who was slowly becoming a mafia family. After marrying, he would adopt his wife's surname and would also have twins, Raffaello and Michele Gesso, of whom Michele, the youngest, would become the heir of the family because Raffaello would fall in love with the Sixth Chief of the Giglio Nero famiglia, Sibilla Giglio Nero and would become the father of Marcella Giglio Nero, who would give birth to Luciana "Luce" Giglio Nero, making him the great-great-grandfather of Eunice "Uni" Giglio Nero.

Michele Gesso and Iolanda Passantino would have Uriele Gesso. Uriele Gesso in turn would marry Romina Cavallone, and from their marriage Gabriele Gesso would be born. Gabriele Gesso would marry Maria Sole Scicolone, but she would turn out to be sterile, so he would look for a child in the Japanese fashion designer, Setsuka Nishikiori, who came from Namimori. Setsuka was unaware that her lover was married and a mafia member, and by the time she discovered it, she was already pregnant. In desperation, she fled to the United States with her unborn child and would change her identity to Selina Nield, giving her son two names at birth: Barnaby Nield and Byakuran Nishikiori. But despite her efforts, Gabriele would finally find her seven years later and order her murder. After that, he took custody of his son.

That's more or less what I have of the Giglio Nero and Gesso families. He has many OCs (if you can say that), but remember that there is no information on the family life of Giotto and his guardians after leaving the mafia, and asexual reproduction in humans is currently impossible so the children had to come from somewhere. From my point of view, for such a great resemblance, the boys should at least descend from the guardians.

Maybe if I get up to it, I'll do something with the families of G, Knuckles, Daemon and his daughter mentioned here, who is Mukuro and Chrome's ancestor

PS: Fon belongs to the Wǔ clan, in fact he is the younger brother of the current matriarch. The Wǔ clan is a Chinese clan of martial artists who have existed for at least a thousand years and are capable of using dying will flames. The Hibari family is a secondary branch that descends from some of them who left China for Japan, and it is not strange that every few generations some members get together.

[justkhrstuff]

[sorugao-bandgeek]

Tsuna didn’t know how to react to the stranger in his room.

“Hi, who are you?”

The blond leveled him with an unimpressed look, “Dino Cavallone, Don of the Cavallone Famiglia.”

“D-don?”

“And you’re Sawada Tsunayoshi, Don to be of the Vongola,” Tsuna could feel the way blond looked him up at down, could feel the instant disapproval. “I’m unimpressed, don’t you think you’re wasting your time here Reborn?”

Tsuna swallowed, a burning feeling beginning to bloom in his chest at Dino’s words. Tsuna didn’t let his gaze fall away from Dino’s, head tilting slightly to the side as he started talking, “Kind of bold of you, don’t you think? Being rude to me in my own room, with my sister right across the hall from me.”

“Are you using your sister as a threat?” Dino asked, brow quirking up, “I met her already and kid, she doesn’t seem like much.”

Reborn sipped his drink, watching as Tsuna seemed to just stop breathing at Dino’s insult.

Oh this was new.

Tsuna crouched down, elbows resting on his knees, in a similar position that Natsume had gotten down yesterday to speak to Dino, “I don’t know who you are Dino-san, which is sad don’t you think?”

“Reborn’s been teaching me about the mafia, you would think he would tell me about your family….but he didn’t,” Tsuna shook his head. “Must mean you’re not that important.”

“Now, children, no fighting,” Reborn tried to make his tone sound chastising. Dino actually looked offended, maybe a touch hurt because he had just been prodding Tsuna, teasing him in a way.

But Tsuna actually meant to insult.

+++

Probably going to rewrite this, but I’m just amused. Also this

“That doesn’t seem right,” Kawahira murmured to himself when the shaking started.

“Earthquake!”

“No, it’s something else.”

He missed the way Natsume’s face stared at him, fear crossing her features, “If not earthquake then what? Godzilla?”

“No, no, that was a joke,” she started at the slight shift in Kawahira’s face that possibly suggested there were possible monsters that existed. Flames, fine, flames that kind of acted like magic, sure. Possible rebirth? Okay.

Fictional monsters?

Absolutely not.

“I’m joking,” Kawahira deadpanned as he made his way to the front door, and stood in the doorway. “But that is a giant turtle.”

Natsume ran up, peeking over Kawahira’s shoulder and stared at the giant turtle that appeared in the mountains. “Nose goes.”

The pair both put their fingers on their nose at the same time, just in time for the giant turtle to just disappear.

“Huh, I’m choosing to ignore that.”

“Agreed.”

[squalodinoappreciationsquad]

Headcanons: Dino Cavallone's entire family tree - Pt. 3

I am going off from this post here: CLICKETY CLICK!

So, as usual everything is under cut. I am having A LOT of fun figuring out this family tree!

Also, I kind of feel like those storytime youtubers lol

The Fourth Generation Succession Mess

Virginia and Amedeo, in proper twin fashion, died a few days apart from each other, literally leaving a void. Some chronicles say that they were taken by illnesses, some others that they died in a shooting. No one to this day can agree on this.

In any case, they were gone and there was no written will to abide to. No one of the children, legitimate or not, had yet shown any sign of legitimacy, and no relative was as ruthless and strong as Virginia and her mother, or as clever and diplomatic as Amedeo and his father.

Therefore all of the children, both legitimate and not, potentially were all heir to the title. The problem was that there was no written will and in these instances, by law, only the immediate kin inherits.

As in the wife and the legitimate children, the rest can go away.

But the thing was, Amedeo was only the FIGURATIVE boss, not the boss himself, the ACTUAL boss was Virginia and whilst Amedeo DID have legitimate children, Virginia NEVER DID.

And none of the children, now pretty much teens to young adults, had shown any sign of legitimacy.

It was going to be a bloodbath.

We have now a total of NINE possible heirs:

Costanza: Amedeo's eldest daughter, as beautiful as her father, but with a very strict and uptight personality. She has opinions about what a wedding should look like and it's not what her father and mother have.

Giorgio: Amedeo's second child, very capable and expert in dealing with battles of any kind. He is a no-nonsense kind of guy.

Ludovico: Amedeo's third child, not the sharpest tool in the box, but when he focuses on something he is hellbent in getting it no matter what.

Marisa: Amedeo's first child out of wedlock, a nasty piece of work to deal with and backstabber extraordinaire. She will eventually find her peace.

Letizia: Amedeo's fourth child out of wedlock. She is not much of a fighter, but she is the best dressed in the room. She will eventually go on with her life and open a fashion atelier in Paris.

Mariano: Amedeo's third child out of wedlock. He is an artist, he loves painting. This doesn't mean he will not put down the brushes if someone threatens him, quite the contrary.

Renato: Amedeo's second child out of wedlock. He is the diplomatic one, always treating any threat like a business transaction.

Donato: Virginia's second child. He is his mother's son, ruthless and always straight to the point.

Margherita: Virginia's first child. Whilst she looks a lot like her mother in appearance, her personality is very mellow and hates confrontation a lot.

None of them can exactly be defined "legitimate" in the true sense of the word and each one has to 1) prove that they are the legitimate heir and 2) convince the Cavallone army of subordinates that they are the boss.

It is an all out war, particularly difficult in such a small territory and with so much going on politically speaking in the rest of Italy.

The populace suffers in seeing such a usually united family tear each other down. Things come to a stall - the Cavallone army decides to trap the nine heirs inside their house, put them under siege and force them to come to an agreement.

The siege lasts a month.

At the end of it not one, but TWO of the heirs come out showing signs of legitimacy: they are Giorgio, legitimate son of Amedeo, and Renato, illegitimate son of Virginia.

By all laws this should be impossible.

And yet it happened.

The rest of the siblings do look somewhat at peace, even though slightly disappointed, but if something was learned from this siege it was how to properly get along.

Everyone goes back to their previous role in the family, they eventually all get married, slowly diluting the Cavallone blood and surname through the next generations, but still very part of the family.

All of them except Giorgio and Renato. Renato is given the Cavallone surname officially and together with Giorgio they finally take over the Cavallone family - after the literal bloodbath they had witnessed, no one was about to complain about two male heirs.

They both get the title of Duke and divide their tasks according to what they are best at. Renato is the diplomat, the one conducting treaties and business. Giorgio is the Commander, the one taking charge of the army and transforming it in what will look like the 5K men at the service of the Cavallone family.

Both Dukes marry, but only one of them will have an heir.

Giorgio is very much gay and he lavender marries a lady called Giulia Ferrari, first daughter of a quite influential family, very much rumoured of being a lesbian. They never have children, but at least the lavender marriage shuts down all official rumours. What happens unofficiially is off any chronicle.

Renato marries too eventually to a lady called Anita Reggiani and decided he will have only one heir to avoid any further blood bath.

Luckily for him his wife will give birth to a boy who will be called Stefano, somwhat a spoiled brat and a competent leaader, but mostly a spoiled brat. Stefano will be the one showing signs of legitimacy, but this is for a different post :D

And as usual, some visuals.

[khr-guilded-cage]

None of them know what to expect of the new civilian heir

Maybe she would be soft and kind like Tsuna? A calm female sky how prefers words and diplomacy like Donna Aria? Surely someone that needed protectipn and guidance from her Famiglia. Daniela di Vongola had been a force of nature, but she was raised a Mafia Princess for all she wasnt the heir, that was a exception. The girl is a normal civilian after all

They are nothing alike

Its like comparing a candle to a wildfire

Sawada Yuka was like a tempest and a whirpool all into one, furious like a Storm, eerie and clever and sharp like Mist, bright and burning like a vast Sky. A perfect mix of all her flames.

No matter how much Timoteo attempted to pacify his new heir, it only made her angrier, more hateful of them all, her Guardians tried to spend time with their new boss and bond, just to be threatened begin cut open with a sword and constantly insulted as 'a butch of useless fake bastards'.

The girl have plently of cousins and a father, who were in equal standing about their hatred of the Vongola. They didn't make Timoteo's life easier, backing her actions and words without hesitation and refusing to let her out of their sight, even within the safety of the Iron Fort.

The beautiful dark-haired girl only stared at them with pure distrust and anger even after they tried to reasure her they only desire to aid her in her journey to be a great and powerful Vongola Decima, turning up her nose at the countless offers of family.

That particular conversation led to a yelling match where Yuka casually called them "a bunch of manipulative, false snakes" and "mindless sheep who can’t even think for themselves," before threatening to burn them all if they didn’t leave her the hell alone.

No, Sawada Yuka was not what they were prepared for

Vongola Nono had thought, perhaps naively, that bringing her into the fold would be as simple as offering guidance and family in form of Reborn, give her the right motivation and loyality to become the next boss of the Vongola Famiglia, as it had been with Tsunayoshi and even young Dino Cavallone. But where he had been a reluctant but ultimately kind child who warmed to the new family he never knew, Yuka was something else entirely. She was fire and fury, biting cold and sly cunningness. Always sneering and hissing and smiling like she is barring teeth like a wild animal.

Furious as a Fox-Devil

She refused their friendship, spat on their assurances of loyalty, and mocked their attempts to bridge the gap between them and cooperate. They could not understand why she would not soften, why she would not simply accept the hand extended to her.

The Vongola Guardians, too, were lost. They had expected to meet a new boss who would be the heart of their family, someone they could follow and protect. Instead, they found a ruthless girl who made it clear she didn’t want them, who regarded them as little more than strangers with titles they hadn’t earned. She insulted them at every turn, calling them useless, false, and incapable. She dismissed their attempts at camaraderie with scorn and, when they tried to prove themselves, pushed them away harder.

Young Sawada Yuka reminded Timoteo of his rebellious son, Xanxus - who still stubborn in his refusal of a attempt reconciliation - in ways that unsettled the old Don. His youngest had always been blinded by his own anger—a wrathful Sky who lashed out rather than understand and be grateful to the family he had been given. None of them had never truly grasped why he carried such hatred, why he choose such violent Elements to stand at his side to enable the ranging inferno he became.

If the Varia Boss was a Inferno, the equally dark-haired, red-blooded-eyed (and from where had those Triad members even got this blastled name? Her eyes were a shade of raven-black often. Maybe a effect of a strong secondary Storm?) fair young lady was like a willdfire, taking over everything in her way and making it hers, a ember fire dancing both playful and wicked over their skins, hungry and unforgiving.

The young Vongola started to carefully cultivate her own power and reputation much like Xanxus when younger, but it was pointless as she grew even more distant of the perfectly loyal chosen Guardians she refused to even pay attention to. Timoteo couldn't help but feel a growing concern over her paternal family's influence. His own adopted son's wildness, his unrefined passion, matched with his undisciplined Guardians, only seemed to fuel his bitterness, creating more chaos than unity. What the Vongola Decima needed were guardians who could guide her with steadiness, ones who could mold her potential without provoking such volatility.

They didn’t understand her hatred, not fully. They thought it unreasonable, excessive. Much in likeness to Xanxus and his wrath for the father who raised and sheltered him. They were trying to help her, after all. Nono asured them she was just upset at the changes in her life and would warm up to her new family soon.

But as the days turned into weeks, a gnawing unease began to settle among them. Yuka wasn’t like Tsuna. She wasn’t a reluctant boy thrust into a role he couldn’t refuse. She was something far more dangerous. She wasn’t their lamb to shepherd and send the slaughter. She was a wild feral fox, and she had no intention of letting them dictate her path.

[vanaglorie]

❛ is it really you? ❜ ( shoichi :))) )

This exact moment is something Byakuran has imagined again and again in their head, replaying every possible thing he could say or do to Shoichi if he ever got the chance to, but his mind goes blank because Shoichi is standing right there, in front of him. His voice that he hasn’t heard in so long echoes in his ears like a broken record. His eyes that look at him with shock, relief, and that guilt that haunts him even now.

“It’s me, in the flesh.” Byakuran spreads his arms out, showing that it’s him, just him, before letting them fall back to his side. “Did Sho-chan miss me~?” It’s a poor attempt at lightening the mood, he’ll admit. To poor Shoichi, he’s been dead for a year and more, until now.

Still, he manages a smile for him. It’s a weak one, but it’s genuine, and sad. The silence between them becomes awfully awkward, at least for Byakuran.

He wants nothing more than to go back to those halcyon days, like staying up late playing video games together and coming up with new gadgets to play around with. But Shoichi did always worry too much, and it was always so hard to get him to say what was on his mind. It only took almost dying for him to admit that he felt, of all things, guilty for what Byakuran had become. In fact, he had always been grateful to Shoichi for bringing out his true potential and allowing him to see the world – every world – for what it truly is.

The betrayal hurt, for sure. It angered him and at the peak of his power, blinded by apathy, he wouldn’t have cared if Shoichi died. That sense of apathy followed him for a very long time. Experiencing the pain of death only to be dragged back into life could do that. But his time with the Cavallone famiglia had given him the opportunity to do a lot of introspection, and Byakuran no longer feels like something is wrong with the world, like something is wrong with himself.

Just as he sees Shoichi start to open his mouth to say something, Byakuran closes the distance between them and pulls him into his embrace. The hug is warm, tight and comforting, finally bridging this wide gap that had formed between them so long ago. Oh, how he’s missed this. Missed him.

“You don’t have to feel guilty, you know. I never blamed you for anything.”

[leftnotright]

A TEXTBOOK EDUCATION

"This will be a skill-building experience. You've had it too easy. You've had your Family name to back you, and your Right Hand at your every call. It's time you learn to carry yourself, to build from the ground up." Dino Cavallone, the Cavallone Don, fresh out of high school.

Reborn, the deadliest hitman of the modern era, has a special kind of torture up his sleeve for his dear struggling student. Dino will have to see how well he handles alienation, isolation, and worst of all, class participation. “Now, go on, my useless student Dino. Let’s continue your education.” (Or: Reborn sends Dino to Australia. It goes better than he could have ever hoped.)

Parings: N/A Characters: Dino (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Vic Hunt (OC - Original Character), Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Romario (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!)Cavallone Famiglia, Enzo (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Original Characters Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, University, Pre-Canon, Financial Issues, Fluff And Angst

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

CHAPTER 4: AND THEY COME UNSTUCK

The TV - ‘’tele’ as they called it - was playing the morning news on channel 7. Dino had been listening to it since he had rolled out of bed, too sweaty and stressed to get any decent sleep. Fittingly, the news show was called ‘Sunrise’ and Dino had been watching since then, listening to the news and how they spoke about everything. 

There is a fire - ‘bushfire’ - in Penrith, firefighters were trying to keep it under control. Up in New Castle, there was a surfing event. Parliament was discussing the pensioner retirement age. Fundraisers were being held at multiple Bunnings for the NSW Regional Firefighting Service after a particularly bad fire season.

“I think I might pop down for a sausage sizzle,” the blond woman chimed in after the segment, “Been a while since I’ve had one’a those.”

“One’a those,” Dino echoed absently as he moved his pen along a line of text.

Calendar reminder: EDST1001 LECTURE 11:30AM

Dino paused his ledgers and looked at his phone as it beeped on the table. He had spent the whole morning pouring over the few documents he had left from the Cavallone offices, trying to quell that anxiety that bubbled in his stomach and made sleep hard. He only had a few documents left, most of them were copies of the original documents back at the Cavallone. Receipts, mostly, and barters for the last bits of furniture and assets the Cavallone could afford to sell off. 

Everything, spare what was bolted down or irreplaceable, had been sold already. It had left the halls of his home barren. Gone were the antique paintings, gilded statues and handwoven carpets. And gone was much of the Cavallone’s prestige with it. 

A Family selling off their history. 

He sighed and rubbed his nape, free of sweat for the first time since he had landed in this ‘sunburnt land’. That air conditioning truly was his saviour.

Calendar reminder: Meet Vic U-Bar Courtyard 3PM

Dino blinked. Then he gave a sharp heave of panic as he remembered that, yes, he had indeed promised to meet up with Vic today.

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, he was just meeting a friend it was going to be okay he didn’t need to panic like this it was just his only peer friend in years and he wasn’t going to screw this up he promised-

Enzo snapped at Dino’s toe and make him jump out of his minor mental breakdown. 

“Ow!” Dino yelped and yanked his foot away from the turtle. “I’ll go to the grocer’s today, so stop!”

Enzo wheezed at him accusingly before slowly turning and began the long plod to his newly found sunbathing patch. 

Dino frowned at Enzo’s back while cradling his toe until his phone buzzed again, warning him he only had an hour until his lecture. He grappled with his drawers and pulled on his most civilian of clothes, feeling blessedly comfortable in a white shirt and cargo shorts.

One thing Dino loved about university was the lack of uniforms. He didn’t think he’d survive this heat with the blazer, vest and tie he wore in high school. He had barely survived yesterday in that suit-

Dino clapped his hands loudly as if to scare off that memory and the incredulous looks of his classmates. He hadn’t had time to change for his Econ class either, but without a tutorial, he had managed to hide in the back rows of his lecture’s amphitheatre without drawing too much attention.

But he had learnt his lesson: No mafia suits in civilian classes.

Dino rubbed his stomach absently as he made his way back to the living room. He hadn’t been eating well since coming to Australia. Hell, the largest meal he had so far was that KFC with Vic and, as she said, it had enough salt to season the sea. He really needed to go to a grocer.

He hated to admit it, but he was procrastinating going to that ‘Woolies’ Vic had mentioned before. He didn’t feel confident in his English enough to go alone, and Dino had - well, he had never bought something in person before. Everything was done by middlemen, through order or pre-emptively in bulk. He’d never bought a carrot before! Could you buy a single carrot? Or did they only come in 20-kilogram packages? Dino didn’t know what he’d do with 20 kilograms of carrots!

Dino filled up a cup with water and took a long drink to calm his nerves before he thought himself into yet another panic attack on this fine, totally normal morning. He took his pills and proceeded to drink another glass of water to fill his stomach until lunch. 

Dino checked the clock on the wall and quickly shoved the last of his schoolwork into his briefcase. He needed a more civilian bag damn it, he stood out too much with this thing since it was from his high school days.

White tee-shirt, cargo shorts, joggers and a briefcase. What a sight Dino must be.

Before Dino walked out the door, his anxiety beckoned him to apply another layer of antiperspirant deodorant. Sweating so much yesterday had kind of traumatised him. He needed to figure out how to clean his suit.

Enzo wheezed when Dino picked him up off the floor but slid into the cargo short’s thigh pocket without fuss. For good measure, Dino tossed a few of his pellets in too before pressing the velcro shut. 

The trees of Wally’s Walk did little to block the swelter of midday Summer, and Dino pulled at his collar to air out his shirt. He checked his phone again to find his classroom, Building 27, the Lotus Theatre. 

“Fancy,” Dino muttered to himself and moved towards the cul-de-sac end of the Walk. 

There was a crowd of students loitering outside building 27, and Dino was quick to join them, standing off to the side to allow the traffic to flow between. He let his eyes scan the crowd, feeling much more at ease with how he blended in. No one was staring this time. Excellent. 

Dino pulled his briefcase closer and pulled out his phone, content to just scroll on the news apps for the next fifteen minutes or so. He was halfway through an article about something called the Powerhouse Museum of Science being moved to a Parramatta location when he felt eyes on him.

Carefully, Dino flicked his eyes to the side, using his peripherals to see who was watching him so intently. If they were a hitman, they were doing one hell of a bad job. What kind of assassin allowed their presence to be so obvious- Oh .

He lifted his head and waved, smiling with a sheepish relief. Vic stood at the edge of the crowd, and came over when she was acknowledged.

Reborn must really have done a number on him. 

“Oh hello,” Vic hummed as she came to a stop next to him, and Dino didn’t miss the quick once-over she gave him with her eyes. “I see we’re going casual this time.”

“Please don’t talk about yesterday,” Dino withered and Vic let out a laugh.

“Kay, got it,” she assured and shifted her weight again. “So we’ve got the same class again today, huh? EDST101?”

“Yeah, I’m happy we are together again,” Dino smiled, putting his phone away to pay full attention to Vic. “What time is your tutorial? Are we together as well?”

“I’m in the 2 o’clock group.”

“Ah, we are not. I am the 1 o’clock group.”

“Fuck,” Vic sighed forlornly and crossed her arms.

Dino tilted his head when he noticed she was wearing another faded band tee, adorning the same logo and name as the last one with a different design. Maybe it was her favourite band? It was a talking point!

“What, uh, song, is that?” Dino asked, pointing to Vic’s shirt.

“Song? Oh,” Vic looked down at her shirt and opened her arms to show the logo splashed across her chest, Smoking Cucumbers. “It’s my cousin’s heavy metal anarchist band. Don’t really know how the anarchist plays into it, but he insists it does. Gives me a shirt for New Years nearly every year.”

“That’s nice of him,” Dino uttered, “Are they good?”

Vic made a noise and rocked her head from side to side, looking off into the distance as she visibly thought about it. 

“Varying quality,” she decided to say.

“I see,” Dino chuckled, then he shifted his weight and reached for the next topic. “Do you have a large family?”

Family, that was a familiar topic. Dino could talk about Family easy! 

“Nah, not really, I’ve only got a brother. But the cousins add up, you know?” She shrugged, “I’ve got like, uh, six cousins from my dad’s side. The youngest is nearly seven months old, I’m going to meet him during semester break.”

Dino smiled as Vic fished around to show a picture from her phone. A child, cute as a button, was cradled in the centre of a mass of pillows, arms and legs askew like it had fallen asleep mid-crawl attempt.

“Ant’s so adorable. He looks like a fucking blobfish,” she cooed and Dino couldn’t help the snort of startled laughter. “What about you? What’s your family like?”

“My Family is large. The house is always busy,” Dino started, recalling all the faces he was so used to waking up to every morning. Oh, he missed those faces. “I have no siblings, but many uncles and brothers.”

Vic blinked at that and Dino smiled sheepishly, wondering if he had misspoken somewhere. She didn’t interrupt, however, so Dino continued. Talking about his Family was cathartic, and made the overbearing sun, innumerable people and unfamiliar terrain, all seem less horrible for a moment.

“Romario looks after me well. I am sure he is the reason I survived so long.” Not that Reborn didn’t try to stop that, with all those bombs and bullets. “My father introduced him to me when I was young, we have been together since.”

He remembered that day, so many years ago. He had clutched the ends of his coat and fought to stand still, surrounded by five of his father’s Guardians as they stood at attendance for the Don’s return. His father arrived with a teen trailing behind him, scuffed up and covered in grass seeds and dust like he had crawled out from the barley fields that surrounded the Cavallone estate. 

“Brutus means well, but he is, uh, a bad influence,” Dino chuckled, recalling how Brutus had ridden a mattress down the spiral staircase and broke through the railing. “He has been with us for a few years now. Growing tall. Too tall.”

That last comment was said with its fair share of bitterness. Brutus liked to use Dino as an armrest in casual settings these days. No respect!

Vic smiled as he grumbled at the memory, another one of her snorted laughs bursting forward.  

“Are you the youngest, or..?”

Dino frowned more, “Brutus is the youngest. Everyone is upset.”

Vic wheezed a laugh and pocketed her phone before rocking back on her heels and asked, “Anyone else of note?”

“Too many,” Dino hummed softly, “I hope to see them soon.” Then he winced and let out a weak laugh, “Ah, but I am sure they will make me pay back all my missed turns in stable work.”

Vic blinked and then squinted a bit, like she was trying to piece together what he had said. Dino watched her for a moment before it dawned on him: Vic didn’t know about the Cavallone Family’s main stock.

“My family breed horses. I will be missing my turns to help in the horse stables. We rotate.”

Vic’s face twitched, then she snorted out, “So, you’re like an equestrian?”

“Uh, I was part of my high school’s equestrian club, yes?” 

The girl sighed through her nose and reached up to massage her forehead as she muttered out, “My God, he’s a horse girl too.”

“Horse girl?” Dino echoed.

“Have you ever watched something called The Saddle Club?”

Dino shook his head and Vic made a dismissing wave of her hand, before turning her head as the crowd began to move, a slow and steady flow of students pouring into the amphitheatre. 

“Time to move,” she uttered and the two of them wriggled their way through the mass of sweaty students. 

Dino winced as a girl's tote bag poked into his arm, and then nearly fumbled his walk as the first step of an incline surprised him. He wheezed and gave a sheepish smile as someone in the crowd gave him a withering glance.

Vic chose somewhere to sit and Dino trailed after her, eager to get out of the river of slow-moving bodies that shuffled along unsurely. They pulled their chair seats down and spent a good few seconds fighting with their flip-up desks before settling down.

“Wow, yours is a bit fucked,” Vic commented as she looked to the hazardous angle Dino’s laptop was teetering on, no doubt only held there by the non-slip pads. 

“It’s…a bit weak. But it will hold,” Dino agreed feebly, trying to realign his desk.

“Nah, nah, mate, not with your luck. Move before that thing snaps.”

Dino fiddled with his desk for a moment longer before making the short shuffle to Vic’s other side. It felt disconcerting, to be stuck in the aisle now. Vic was blocking an easy exit, whether she intended to or not. Dino could feel that anxiety all the way in the bottom of his feet.

Someone behind Dino coughed loudly, before they gathered their stuff and moved a few seats away, still clearing their throat. Dino noticed Vic watch them out of the corner of her eye, a vague grimace on her face.

“But hey,” she uttered suddenly before Dino could ask what the issue was, turning back to idly click around on her laptop to get an empty Word document up for notes. “This way, you’re less likely to get called on for audience participation!”

Dino blinked, then he gave a relieved smile and rested back into his seat. 

“Yeah, that’s…That’s a good point.”

“Yeah, but fuck we’ve still gotta talk during the tutorials. We’ve gotta talk at least once per session to get that twenty percent.”

Dino dropped his head back with a groan. 

Before either of them could say much more, however, the large screens at the front of the amphitheatre lit up with the introduction slide of a powerpoint and a woman took centre stage. The lecture rolled on with the same amount of ease as the others, just another orientation lesson to get the students used to their first week in university and what would be expected of them in the coming weeks. Dino was starting to get more confident with his English comprehension, since a lot of the classes were repeating similar content and using the same phrases.

They were maybe half an hour in, Dino centring all his focus on breaking down the word ‘pedagogy’ when he heard, in the softest and most bamboozled voice possible: “Dino, is that a fucking turtle in your pocket?” 

Dino’s head snapped around and then looked down to see Enzo’s little head peering out from under the flap of his pant pocket, beady eyes peering back at Vic. Dino wheezed and shoved the flap down, trying to cover up Enzo from prying eyes. 

“Uuh,” Dino uh-ed.

“Dino, why is there a turtle in your pocket?” Vic asked again.

Dino fumbled for an answer, before he just shrugged and said, “Well, I, I couldn’t leave him at home alone.”

“But to a lecture?”

“Hey, could you two stop? It’s really distracting.” A young man sitting ahead of them grumbled and Vic quickly tossed out an apology.

Enzo let out a wheeze and wriggled his way to freedom again, head poking out into the fresh air of the air-conditioned amphitheatre. Dino rushed to hide Enzo again, but Vic quickly bent at the waist and cooed in delight.

“No wait, lemme see the baby,” she whispered and pushed the flap away to get a good look at the small tortoise that squinted back at her. “Oh, hello little man!”

Dino watched as Vic reached out and gently pet Enzo’s head with her pointer, grinning like some kind of loon as she did. He thinned his lips in a moment of thought, before Dino reached into his other pocket and produced a small handful of pellets.

“Do you,” he began slowly, unsure but hopeful. “Do you want to feed Enzo, Vic?”

Vic looked up at Dino and utterly beamed. 

Dino kept that in mind: Vic likes feeding Enzo. Good, good, he had a way to socialise now. Enzo truly was the best wingman. 

Dino smiled down at Enzo who was quietly crunching on his pellets. The little turtle squinted up at him. 

  ☁ ☁ ☁

Vic Hunt Class done

Vic Hunt Do you still have Enzo?

Dino Cav Yes

Vic Hunt On my way!!

Dino snorted into his hand and sent a quick laughing emoticon in response. He had already chosen a table for them to sit at for their meeting, a shaded table outside one of the courtyard’s student cafes, off to the side and more isolated than the others. It was most likely for studying, Dino liked the privacy. 

Enzo sat snugly in his pocket happily fed after all those snacks from Vic during their lecture. Dino smiled to himself and patted his pocket, feeling that hard shell. The most secure weight.

“Show me the baby,” Vic demanded as she rounded the corner and dropped herself in the chair across from Dino. 

Not even a hello? Dino couldn’t blame her though, no one could resist Enzo. Spoilt rotten that little turtle was. 

Dino huffed and glanced around, before sliding Enzo out of his pocket and onto the table between them. He stretched his arm out on the exposed side of the table, covering Enzo up just in case.

Immediately, Vic dropped down to Enzo’s height and started cooing, murmuring unintelligible little noises at the turtle. She grinned and giggled as she watched Enzo plod about the table, quietly exploring the area with his usual squint of suspicion. 

“Look at his little feets!” Vic nearly gasped and Dino couldn’t help the snort of laughter. “Oh shut it, Dino. All that talk of horses, why didn’t you mention the turtle in your pocket! ”

“I don’t know… Enzo didn’t come to mind?” Dino offered unsurely. He hadn’t meant to not mention Enzo, it was just that Enzo was such a constant for Dino that he honestly didn’t realise that someone wouldn’t know about Enzo at this point. 

“How did you even get the allowance to bring him?”

…Allowance? Dino blinked. He didn’t know anything about an allowance.

The silence stretched on until finally, Vic looked up, a smile creeping onto her face. 

“Dino, did you smuggle your turtle into the village?” She asked.

Dino thinned his lips before he slowly murmured, “No one told me I couldn’t .” Vic grinned then, something vicious and joyful with so many teeth. “That is to say,” Dino continued, trying to explain himself for breaching university rules. “I need Enzo. I go nowhere without him. I need him.”

Vic let out a soft hum of acknowledgement, before giving a shrug and leant back in her chair. 

“Hey, no skin off my back. It’s not like lil’ Enzo here’s gonna damage the room for the next student. Not like some dog or cat.”

Dino relaxed a bit when she said that, a tension in his shoulders seeping out. Dino admitted it, he hadn’t met many civilians in his time. Most of his social circle consisted of Mafia and their middlemen, the people he knew were utterly steeped in the criminal underworld. 

Maybe it was his naivete getting the better of him, an opinion from childhood he had never had the chance to rectify -- Dino thought of civilians as a rather pure existence. Morally right, law-abiding citizens of the world to counterbalance the presence of the Mafia. 

Dino had broken university policy. A horrified little part of him was sure that Vic would be appalled by his blatant disregard for the established order-

Dino let a long breath out through his nose, slow and steady. It was fine, though. Vic didn’t care. The rules weren’t so cut and dry in the civilian world. Within limitations, of course. 

Vic shifted in her seat, and pulled her computer up onto the table just aside of Enzo. She booped him on the nose for good measure, unaware of the stress Dino had gone through. 

“Anyway, I did a bit of work last night and I think I know what I’m going to be talking about.” She said, and opened a tab to start scribing ideas. “But I kinda wanna talk about your activity. The resources one.”

Dino tried his best to join the discussion as the two began to finally dig into their assessment. Vic scrolled through her document and showed Dino what she had scraped together the night before, which was honestly an obscene amount.

“Uniforms?” Dino asked, seeing how the word was bolded as a heading.

“Yeah, in Australia uniforms are mandatory for Primary and High schools,” Vic explained, “It’s to more of less, stop students from seeing the difference in status. Like if one kid came in fucking Gucci, and another comes in second-hand Kmart. Uniforms stop that shit.”

Dino hummed and thought back to his school, they had worn uniforms too. And they were right, you couldn’t really tell who was from a better Family -- if you were using clothes as a tell. Posture, presence and poise. Those all could tell just how large a gap there was between Families. And the Dons who led them.

Vic continued to scroll to her next point, and Dino scooped Enzo into his hands, thumbing at the edge of his shell to try and soothe himself. 

“I’ve also got ‘homework assistance’ and tutoring.”

Dino’s eyes snapped up from Enzo at the word. ‘Tutor’. God, that sent chills to his very core. 

“People with money can afford to send their kids to better schools, and can afford to support their kids with, ya know, tutoring. Basically, the better off the parents, the better off the kids.”

Dino thinned his lips. It was true, Dino had no doubt that the smaller Families wouldn’t have been even able to dream of having the Reborn as a live-in tutor. He didn’t even want to think about how much of the Cavallone funds must have gone into the little devil-man’s pockets just so he could torture Dino day in and day out for the past year. 

“We got this yesterday,” Dino muttered quietly, almost unwittingly.

Dino could see why Vic wanted to be a teacher, she obviously felt strongly about the imbalances in the education system. Direct action, it seemed very up her alley.

Vic blinked, and then she shrank back in her chair a bit. She gave a huffed little smile and shrugged, sheepishly and kind of drowsy.

“But yeah, that’s just my idea for my part,” she said idly, “And I think it’ll segway nicely into your activity. So, uh, how’re you going with your intro?”

Dino winced, “I have not, ah, started it yet.” Gosh, Vic had already produced all of this and Dino hadn’t even looked over the assessment properly yet. Dino traced the pattern in Enzo’s shell. “English, is, uh, not my strong skill.” 

Vic made a short noise of understanding on the back of her throat, before she gave her own work a look-ver as if to see it in a new light.

“I will have to begin in Italian, and move to English,” Dino said slowly, and Vic waved her hand at him.

“Hey, whatever floats your boat and gets the job done. Do what makes you comfy,” she shifted on her seat and tugged on the end of her shorts before uttering off-handedly, “And, ya know, if you need help, I can lend a hand with those dickish words like ‘pedagogy’ and shit.”

 Vic pointedly looked away from Dino as she said this, eyes fixed on her document that she scrolled through to give her hands something to do. 

Dino blinked, then quickly said, “I don’t want to be a bother!”

“Nah, no, it’s ‘right,” Vic insisted lazily, and took a drink from her thermos. 

Dino could hear ice rattling around inside. God, that was a good idea.

Vic and Dino leant across the table to look at Vic’s computer screen, organising a file for the project. Vic pulled up a powerpoint and wrote ‘SOCIAL CLASS IN EDUCATION by Dino, Jessica and Vic’.  

“Great, that’s enough work. I think we’re due a break,” Vic said and closed her computer.

Dino decided not to point out the fact that they had only been ‘working’ for a total of maybe 10 minutes, and that the most progress had been naming and sharing the group slideshow. 

“Okay,” Vic said suddenly, breaking Dino out of his thoughts as she stood up. “I’mma go get some lunch. You coming?”

Dino grabbed Enzo up off the table and stuffed him into his pocket. Vic stared with wide eyes before she glanced between the pocket and Dino’s face and asked, “Is he, uh, always in there?”

“Usually, I keep Enzo in a breast pocket,” he answered, before patting his chest and added, “Over the heart.”

Enzo’s shell was practically indestructible. Nothing short of Reborn’s Chaos Shots could pierce it. 

“Aw, that’s fuckin’ sweet,” Vic chortled.

By the time Dino and Vic sat down again, they were balancing their chosen meals in their hands. Dino carefully slid his salad and chips plate onto the table, and watched Vic quickly slurp some of the excess butter chicken gravy from the edge of her plate before doing the same. Vic wasted no time in drumming the tabletop with her hands until Dino ‘produced the goods’.

Enzo immediately stole a whole leaf of lettuce from Dino’s salad.  

“ Smettila, Enzo! ” Dino scolded but didn’t try to take the leaf away from the happily munching turtle. 

Vic smiled at the little turtle before using the handle end of her fork to tap on the side of the bottle of water Dino had bought. It was wet with perspiration and creating a puddle on the table with every jolting tap; just as shiny as Dino was.

“Drink, mate, you’re sweating buckets,” Vic urged with a frown. 

She was right. Dino wiped his chin with his arm and grimaced as sweat just smeared on both sides. Dino was as shiny as a newly minted coin, and the back of his shirt clung to his spine, two shades darker than the rest of it. He made an expression of great sensory discomfort as he sat forward to try and peel it off. Australian heat was very different to the Sicilian summers Dino was used to.

“Yes,” Dino murmured and took a sip from his bottle. By the time he put it back down, more than half was gone. 

“You gotta be sun-safe, or I’ll slip-slop-slap a bitch,” Vic warned. Dino stared at Vic for a long moment, before the girl reeled back a bit and asked, “Wait, you know about the slip-slop-slap sun thing yeah? Or is- wait, fuck of course that’s an Aussie thing.” 

Dino smiled as the girl rubbed her face in a mixture of frazzle and embarrassment. 

“I, uh, will be ‘sun-safe’,” he said, “I do not want to be ‘slip-slop-slapped’.”

Vic blinked, and then she grinned with teeth. 

“Okay, but what’s up with the horses?” Vic asked and then spooned a generous helping of rice into her mouth. 

Dino paused halfway through another guzzle of water.

“The horses?”

“Yeah, like, you breed ‘em, right? What for though?” 

Dino quickly swallowed the water that had dammed up in his mouth. He settled back in his chair and smiled a bit, idly spinning his bottle on the table with his fingers.

“Uh, we- we breed them for… Well, every job. Labour, farm, carriage, show. We used to make war horses.”

Vic made a sharp whistle of surprise and leant her cheek against her hand, elbow on the table. Dino stared at it, her elbow on the table, for a moment, before he pulled his eyes up. 

“Warhorses? So, this is like a tradition thing. Family business?” 

‘Family business’. Dino withheld a snort, he smiled weakly and said, “Yes, for at least ten generations.” 

“ Whew, that’s some old blood,” Vic wheezed.

Dino smiled and remembered the history walks down the legacy hall. Walls adorned with past Dons, and those faded faces of the nameless patriarchs who tilled the fields and corralled wild horses long before the time of the Cavallone Famiglia Mafia. 

“We are proud of our horses,” Dino said, an undeniable truth. But it was an undeniable truth also that- “Horses, however, are not very- very, useful. Today.”

Vic winced, “Ah, yeah. With cars and all.” She took a slow bite of her curry and tilted her head. “So with all those horses, surely your family, like, races them? Got any cool ones…” Her voice trailed off as Dino’s face pinched.

Dino ran his thumb along the edge of Enzo’s shell, the little turtle squinted up at him. 

“We are banned. No Cavallone horse may race in Italy.”

Vic thinned her lips and scraped her wooden, disposable spoon along her plate, drawing a random shape with the orange, butter chicken gravy.

“Can I… Can I ask why? Or would you rather just, ya know,” she made a waving motion with her hands. “Not talk about that.”

Dino let out a frail burst of a laugh that was equal parts bitter and vindictive.

“We kept winning.”

Vic paused, and looked at Dino. Looked at the way Dino’s smile had gritted teeth in the corners.

Vic gave a bark of laughter. 

“So instead of beating you fairly, they booted you?” She asked and leaned forward. 

Dino took in a sharp breath. Despite her tone, her smile wasn’t playful. It had an edge to it. Annoyed. Frustrated. Angry. Vic was angry. For some reason. 

But, Dino quickly scanned her over, not at him. Always good, always good!

“Cavallone horses are hard to beat. Very,” Dino explained and Vic scoffed hard enough that Dino thought she hurt her throat.

“Look, unless you’re doping your horses, I don’t see why you should be kicked.”

Dino shrugged, “Our horses are special.”

“I’m not fucking surprised! You’ve been working on them for over ten fucking generations!” 

Vic pinched the bridge of her nose, before Dino watched as Vic clenched her teeth, her biceps, her forearms, her fists, then all the way back up again. Then, like she was suddenly exhausted, Vic slumped back into her chair, shoulders sagging under her loose shirt. She let out a long, slow sigh through her nose. She smiled and started cooing at Enzo.

Dino stared, baffled. What the hell had happened there? Had she gotten so upset that she had to actively calm herself down?

Dino shifted in his seat. He looked down at his salad -- slowly being stolen one leaf at a time by Enzo -- and bit down on the need to smile. 

Vic was upset for him. He didn’t expect that to feel so… Nice. Validating.

“So you can’t race in Italy,” Vic hummed, tone low and almost dragging itself out of her mouth. “Why not race in a -- fuck I don’t know horses,” she tilted her head back and waved her spoon around, “Melbourne Cup is a horse race. Why not race here? Or does the ban keep you?”

Dino reached for his fork and ate a mouthful. He realised what he was doing only halfway through: buying time. 

Did the ban keep the Cavallone from racing outside of Italy? He didn’t know. 

The ban had been his grandfather’s greatest shame. The Eighth Don of the Cavallone hadn’t been able to fight off those little Dons who had climbed on top of each other to seem taller and tip the scales. The beginning of the end for the Cavallone, really.

After that, the Eighth had fallen to illness and Dino’s father had taken the reigns as the sole heir. Everyone knew how that ended.

Dino nudged an olive and watched it roll across his plate. Enzo stole another leaf with a satisfied ‘crunch’ .

Dino had never seen a Cavallone race on a track before. 

Could he? Did he dare? Enter his Cavallone horses into civilian races? How close could he get to the civilians when the Mafia were so careful to keep that strict divide? 

Hell, even their resorts were Mafia and Mafia-adjacent exclusive! It took a whole boat or plane to get to the separate island . 

Dino swallowed the leaf, long gone mushy in his mouth. 

But if it worked? If he dared to start racing their Cavallone-style bred horses -- if it worked? 

Break the tradition, break the rules, break the bonds of debt that tie down the Cavallone. 

“Good idea?” Vic asked, a lazy smile on her face. “You look excited. Practically chomping at the bit.”  

Dino looked up, he hadn’t realised he was grinning.

‘Never race a Cavallone.’ Time to bring that old saying back.

[moonlit-mystery-writer]

How do your OCs spend the holiday/winter season? Do they celebrate? Do they celebrate by proxy because of family? Do they just hole up at home? Do they enjoy the holiday season? Does it make them depressed because it reminds him of painful truths?

Woo! I get to explain this!! Answers under cut!!

Celeste - Celeste's relationship with the holiday/winter season is complicated. She celebrates Yule as her holiday. While she doesn't have many traditions due to information on Yule being rather scarce for the most part; she does what she can though. However!! She also does things for Christmas and decorates certain places in her home for Christmas. She even tells her kids about Santa and gets them Christmas presents.

This is because Christmas was Luce's favorite holiday. And Luce's favorite parts were decorating and getting gifts for her loved ones. Thus in her honor, Celeste does those parts of Christmas for her. She even leaves a photo of Luce facing the Christmas tree every year "so she can see it."

Things like the gift giving wasn't hard for Celeste to adopt into her practice. She already uses gift giving as a love language after all.

Delfino - The Superbia household wasn't large on any holiday really. Outside of what was expect of their family to do by mafia high society for celebrations and what her aunt did for her, Squalo, and their mom; Delfino has never really celebrated anything around the holidays. This changed when she started celebrating with the Cavallone Famiglia. The closeness of everyone there and just how they are means they tend to celebrate just about any holiday someone in the family does. Poor Del is still getting used to it, often juggling different traditions all at once and trying her best to keep up. Sometimes she makes mistakes, but everyone tends to be understanding and patient with her.

Noel - Despite her December birthday and her name literally being Christmas in French, Noel has only semi-recently grown fond of the holiday season. She didn't hate it before or anything, but it always tended to overshadow her. People either just assumed she loved Christmas and ignored her birthday early in the month or used one of the two as an excuse to not get her anything for either one. Then she met the other Arcobaleno and Celeste.

Celeste from the start already adores spoiling her loved ones on their birthdays in general, so of course she went all out for Noel's. And Chirstmas time is a perfect excuse to get her even more gifts. Skull expresses affection similarly, though most of his gifts were on Christmas as he needed more time to finish making them. Luce holds similar feelings too when it comes to birthdays and, as established, she loved giving presents at Christmas. The efforts of these three combined were plenty to get the others to also put effort into Noel's birthday and Christmas for her.

This was a first for Noel and what made her warm up to the holiday more.

Felicia - Felicia honestly doesn't care much for holidays themselves. Obviously she loves spending time with the people she loves and who doesn't enjoy gifts! But, the holidays themselves don't hold much meaning to her. What she really loves doing this time of year is baking. So many holidays and traditions this time of year have different things to bake. Felicia takes it as a fun personal challenge to keep improving her recipes for the things every year.

Hideko - So! Okay, I can't personally verify this lol. But from what I know, Christmas in Japan tends to be seen more as a couple's holiday. As such, Hideko tends to spend it more with Miyu than with her little sister or other guardians. But even then, she's not huge on it. She'll at most splurge on a gift for Miyu, get a strawberry cake, and some convenience store fried chicken (She's not waiting that long for KFC).

That's it for now :3 But!! Feel free to re-ask me this about any other oc!