The second time Tsuna got stuck in the future, he was almost expecting it. The Ten-Year Bazooka went off, hit him square in the chest, and the last thing he wondered before it all went black is what terrible fate was in store for him this time. Oh, well; if he was on the wrong track, at least he'd know. Then, when he got back, he could find out what he fucked up and make sure he never did it again.

He kept his eyes screwed shut for what felt like five minutes, just to make sure he really wasn't going back, and when he opened them again, he was staring up at a ceiling made gray by age and tangled nets of cobwebs. Whoever lived there- and he had no reason to assume it wasn't him, so apparently he'll a slob in the future -is obviously adverse to cleaning. The room he was in was half-dark; it was afternoon, but the sky was covered in thick purple clouds, and the light that leaked in through the one grubby window was muted and dull.

Sitting up, Tsuna realized he was lying on a bed- ratty and low class like the rest of the space, there was stuffing poking out of the mattress and the sheets had been haphazardly patched up by clumsy hands. It would be endearing if Tsuna wasn't wondering how his future self had gotten here. This wasn't the sort of place Mafia bosses were supposed to live. Had he been kidnapped? Held for ransom? Most importantly, who did he have to kill to get back to his own time?

Then his eye fell on a small framed picture, resting against the old brass lamp on the nightstand. The edges were torn and crumpled, and it looked like it had been folded many times before being shoved in the frame. There was a stain in the lower lefthand corner that Tsuna sincerely hoped was ketchup. But more important than what it looked like was what it was of- a slightly older, slightly tenser Takeshi Yamamoto, with a muscled arm thrown arould an older Tsuna's shoulders. It was the only decoration in the apartment. 'Do I live here?' Tsuna thought. 'What happened to the Mafia?'

As thunder rumbled and the first drops of rain splashed against the windowpane, Tsuna heard the creak of stairs and braced himself for the worst- but the door creaked open and it was just Yamamoto, arms laden with grocery bags. He grinned broadly and Tsuna was dismayed to see that he still bore the scar on his chin- he'd definately done something wrong to cause this. "Hey, Tsuna!" Yamamoto said, and Tsuna noticed that he hadn't seen the difference in his old friend yet. "I'm back. Where's my welcome home kiss?"

He'd been locking the door behind him, and when he turned around, it was to see a mortified, red-flushed, and much smaller Tsuna than he'd expected. He blinked in surprise for a moment before the grin returned, and he scratched his head in embarrassment. "Mou, Tsuna. When did you get so small?"

"Ten-Year Bazooka," Tsuna groaned, flopping back on the bed.

Seemingly unconcerned, Yamamoto moved to put his shopping away, and Tsuna saw that the apartment was smaller than he'd assumed; the kitchen was melded into the far wall, and the room's only proper table was set up adjacent to it. "Lambo still a little trigger-happy with that thing, huh?" he laughed, turning to scrutinize Tsuna. Tsuna wasn't quite sure he liked the way he was being looked at. Like he was a piece of meat.

"Y-yeah," he stammered, trying to avoid eye contact. "Hey, Yamamoto, you ah- you wouldn't mind filling me in on what's been going on the last ten years, would you? I mean, this isn't really where I expected to wind up..." Admittedly, anything was an improvement over an open grave, but still.

"Well," Yamamoto began, moving away from him again to attend to the refrigerator, "we're in Venice, for starters."

"Wait," Tsuna broke in, startled. "Venice as in Italy Venice?"

"Yep. Reborn moved us here undercover when things got a little... rough back at home."

"Rough? How? Are the Millefiore involved?"

Yamamoto chuckled, running a hand through his hair, though he looked a shade worried, as well. "Ah, well, they're not a problem. We stamped them out before they could do any serious harm."

"Then what's the problem?" Tsuna asked, annoyed. Yamamoto had never been indirect, and he wasn't quite sure he was enjoying the abrupt change in personality.

"People weren't exactly thrilled when they found out about us," Yamamoto told him, shrugging. "The Mafia are a singularly closed-minded people, Tsuna. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

Tsuna had been merely confused before- now he was completely lost. "Found out about what?"

"That we were sleeping together," Yamamoto said, shrugging again like it was no big deal.

It was at that point that Tsuna fainted dead away.

---

When he woke up, Yamamoto was leaning over him, a look of deep concern furrowing his brow. "You okay?" he asked as Tsuna regained conciousness, passing him a cup of hot, bitter tea.

"I-I think so," Tsuna stuttered, taking the tea gratefully. "It's just... I'm having a little trouble picturing how this... how we..."

Yamamoto grinned and ruffled Tsuna's hair. "How we got together?"

Tsuna knew he was blushing again, and felt stupid. It must be hard for Yamamoto, having to start over from square one with a clueless- gulp -lover. "I'm sorry!" he squeaked, concentrating very hard on his tea. It was amazing what could be interesting when you were avoiding someone's gaze like the Black Death. "But I'm not gay-"

"Not yet," Yamamoto corrected amiably.

Tsuna pressed on nobly, ignoring him. "-and I love Kyoko-chan. You must be mistaken." Tsuna ran what he'd just said through the logic center of his brain, and groaned to himself. Of all the stupid, nonsensical, insane things to say-

But Yamamoto took it in stride, moving to sit next to Tsuna on the bed. "I know it's hard for you to believe me now," Yamamoto reconciled tiredly, snaking a thick arm around Tsuna's waist. "It'd be easier if we were back home; I could get Gokudera to tell you about that one time he walked in on us-"

Tsuna squeaked again and clapped a hand over Yamamoto's mouth before he could reveal what they'd been doing. "Enough! I believe you!"

Yamamoto smiled underneath Tsuna hand, and gently made to remove it. "Well, as long as you don't think I'm a rapist in the future, or something," he said, his voice low with teasing mirth. "Anyway, we don't know how long you're going to be stuck here, so for the next couple of days, you can take the bed, and I'll have the floor. How does that sound?"

"Honestly?" Tsuna said, sighing, wishing he could close his eyes and make this all go away. "Honestly, it sounds incredibly awkward."

---

Tsuna landed with a thump on the floor of the bedroom of a teenage boy, hit his head on the floor, and lay there for a long minute, staring at the ceiling.

It was plastered with baseball posters.

Tsuna groaned, burying his face in his palms. "Lambo?" he groaned, feeling the ridged handle of a baseball bat digging into his lower back. "You can come out now."

Lambo sqeaked out and apology and Tsuna sent him on his way, still refusing to open his eyes. 'Okay,' he reasoned, 'it's just the Ten-Year Bazooka. This has happened before. Give it five minutes, and you'll be back on your way. Yeah. That's right. This will all go away... now! ...Now! ...Now?'

The door swung open, smacking Tsuna square in the hip, and he felt like dying. He didn't even have to open his eyes to know who it was. "Hello, Yamamoto."

"Heeey, Tsuna! Dad said you were up here. What're you doing on the floor?"

"Yamamoto?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you notice anything... different about me?"

Tsuna didn't need to see him to picture his expression of good-natured befuddlement. "That's an... interesting shirt?"

"No, not the shirt," Tsuna moaned, feeling that perhaps today had not been the best day to wear his 'Out and Proud!' t-shirt. Damn future Lambo and his 'amusing' joke gifts...

"Um. You changed your hair?"

Tsuna smacked his head against the floor a couple of times, wondering how he'd ever fallen for this dunce. "Try. Again."

Yamamoto laughed and stepped over him, squatting down next to his head. "Hey, come on. I'm just messing with you- I saw Lambo run by a minute ago. Ten-Year Bazooka went off?"

Oh, good, he wasn't practically married to a moron, after all. "Yes. Is it just me, or did your room get messier than I remembered it being?"

"I haven't cleaned in a while," Yamamoto explained, a teasing note in his voice. "But if I'd known I'd have company coming..."

"Oh, stuff it," Tsuna muttered, carefully getting to his feet. "So. What's going on around here?"

"You should know," Yamamoto said, still half-grinning. "You've lived it once, haven't you?"

"Well, yes. But I don't remember what happened exactly ten years from when I got sent back."

"Yeah, right! How silly of me." He titled his head to the side, thinking. "You know, there hasn't actually been much going on lately. It's been pretty quiet since we got back from the future-" Something seemed to dawn on him then, and he smiled happily. "Hey! If you're here, then that means you're not dead!"

Tsuna nodded. "Yes. My future is... significantly different from the one you visited," he said, looking Yamamoto over. 'If only you knew by how much...' Yamamoto really hadn't changed much in ten years, he realized- he hadn't even gotten significantly taller. He was clueless, though, as was Tsuna's younger self in the future. He laughed out loud, thinking of how his younger self was going to react to certain revelations...

"Hey, what's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing. Say, does your father still run that wonderful sushi restaurant?"

---

Tsuna was sitting in some cramped Venitian cafe, at Yamamoto's insistance- he had to have nourishment, and Yamamoto said guests should be taken out to dinner. No ifs ands or buts- and no pointing out that technically, Tsuna wasn't a guest at all. "You're a guest to my time," Yamamoto had said, shutting the door on Tsuna's protests before dragging him out the door, down two flights of stairs, and down the street to a place called the Cat's Eye Cafe. The waiter was tall, blond, and Italian, which put Tsuna at a disadvantage, since the only things he knew how to say in Italian were 'help', 'I'm calling my lawyer', and 'please do not put that there, you dirty pervert', all picked up from the world's most alarmist 'Learn Italian in 20 Minutes a Day!!!!' pamphlet. (Tsuna was never buying something with that many exclamation points again.)

Not to worry, Yamamoto ordered for him; Tsuna ended up with some variety of shellfish pasta and a sort of sticky, creme-covered pastry for dessert. It was absolutly sublime, and Tsuna wondered briefly how Yamamoto knew his tastes so well, before remembering that the man had probably had the better part of ten years to learn. Swallowing a bite of pasta, Tsuna hammered the tell-tale waver out of his voice long enough to ask, "How long have you and my future self been... seeing each other?" That was a relatively safe term. It was ambiguous. 'Seeing' could imply anything. Why, Tsuna had seen the younger Yamamoto just the other day.

Yamamoto took a sip of his bright neon soft drink and contemplated. "Oh, a while now. We were sleeping toge-" he noticed the look on Tsuna's face and amended, "-I mean dating for about a year before we moved here, so... six years?"

Six years... Tsuna did the mental math. He would have been 18 when they started dating- that was barely out of high school!  "That's- that's a long time."

Yamamoto chuckled warmly. "I'm just surprised you managed to put up with me for that long."

Tsuna giggled along dutifully, though he didn't feel much like laughing. "I don't understand," he muttered, staring out the cafe window at the dark, rain-slick streets. "I thought I loved Kyoko. What happened?"

Yamamoto shrugged. "It was a crush, I guess. Time passed, you went your separate ways. I used to think that what I felt about you was just a crush, too."

Tsuna smiled at him shyly, not quite comfortable with the situation, but falling back into his old role as best friend. Yamamoto was still Yamamoto after all. Even if the details of their relationship had changed. "But it wasn't?"

"Not at all. You really saved me that day on the roof, Tsuna," he said suddenly, snapping into serious mode. "In more ways than one."

Tsuna nearly choked on his pastry. "Wait- you loved me for that long?"

"Yeah. I fell for you that day you saved me. You're really a swell guy, Tsuna- you always have been. I always kinda wanted to tell your future self that, but hey- maybe he'll find out, anyway."

"You think that what I know now will filter back to him?"

"Could be. Flexable nature of time, and all that."

"Huh." Tsuna stared down at his second cup of tea of the day. "What do you know about that."

---

Meanwhile, the younger Yamamoto was making his new companion comfortable in his room. Tsuna had insisted on a bento box from the restaurant, so Yamamoto had snuck downstairs and made one up for him- it was hurried and not his best work, but he got the feeling Tsuna wasn't too worried about presentation as he wolfed down the food gratefully. "Boy," Tsuna remarked, licking his lips in appreciation, "I really missed Japanese food."

"Why?" Yamamoto asked, genuinely interested. "Did you move away?"

"Oh, yeah," Tsuna said guardedly, and Yamamoto noticed that he was choosing his words carefully. What was he leaving out? It didn't matter- Yamamoto would find out eventually, anyway. "We moved to Italy a while back." Funny, seeing as this was all the way back.

"The whole family went?"

Tsuna stared a second. "Family?" Damn, Yamamoto had slipped and forgotten about the Mafia Game. Luckily, Tsuna must have chalked it up to a bad memory, because he went on, "Well, it was... just a couple of us, you know. Keeping a low profile."

Yamamoto grinned. "Like a secret spy mission?"

"You could... say that. Mostly to keep us away from the spies, though."

Frowning, Yamamoto scrutinized Tsuna. He didn't like the idea of being left behind; it'd probably been Gokudera who accompanied Tsuna to Italy, ever the high-and-mighty right hand man. "Was I there?"

"Yes, yes," Tsuna said, and Yamamoto watched as he smiled lazily, slipping off into thought.

"Hey! Earth to Tsuna! What's up?"

Eyes widening, Tsuna shook his head and went back to eating, avoidng Yamamoto's speculative gaze. "Nothing, nothing. I was just reminiscing."

"About things that haven't happened yet?"

"You know, I envy you," Tsuna sighed, poking a shrimp roll with the tip of a chopstick. "All these things- they're just nice memories for me. But you've got it to look forward to."

Yamamoto was thoroughly confused, but scrabbling to keep up with the thread of the conversation. "What is it I'm supposed to be looking forward to again?"

"You'll see. Now, let me eat my sushi in peace."

---

True to his word, Yamamoto took the floor that night, and every night afterward, with nothing but a pillow and a ragged, thread-bare blanket. Tsuna felt guilty, but determined to keep him at arm's length until he was sure Yamamoto wasn't going to try to molest him.

In the morning, Yamamoto fixed Tsuna a huge plate of buttery pancakes, then left for work- whatever that was. Tsuna wasn't even going to ask. He'd been given the spare key to the apartment, so around midday, he ventured forth into the world, armed with his three disturbing phrases and a cowardly streak a mile wide. Despite the run-down state of the apartment, the neighborhood was fairly nice; quiet, lots of trees, a fair number of quaint little shops. The owner of the Cat's Eye waved to him as he passed, and Tsuna waved back, hoping the man wouldn't try to engaged him in conversation.

And in the evening, they talked again, and Tsuna tried to fight off the growing suspicion that maybe he was falling in love with Yamamoto, too."

---

"So, let me get this straight. You're twenty-four, and you still don't even have a girlfriend?"

"Perfectly happy without one."

"What about Kyoko?" Tsuna could almost swear he detected a touch of resentment in Yamamoto's voice. Cute.  "Everyone knows she likes you. You just haven't seen it yet."

"We decided we were better off as friends." Not exactly not true.

"Haru, then? She's clingy, but she's hot."

"Nah. Not my type."

"Then what is?"

"Nuh-uh. That's all I'm giving you."

"Why?"

"Anything I say or do could potentially change the future."

"And?"

"And it's a good future. That's all I'm saying."

"How could I screw it up?"

"Oh, look, a seagull!"

---

A week turned into two, and Tsuna felt himself growing overly familiar with the future Yamamoto, which was absurd. The man was his best friend. And to his credit, he hadn't attempted to bad-touch Tsuna once since his arrival. Tsuna listened to him rolling around on the floor, and felt a stab of pity.

Sighing, he leaned over the side of the bed, poking Yamamoto in the chest. He awoke with a snort, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "Wha? Whozzat? Tsuna? What time is it?"

"Midnight. Come on, get up here. That can't possibly be comfortable.

Yamamoto grinned at him. "You sure? I could use this time to take advantage of you."

"Look, as long as you let me sleep, I don't care if you hump me into the mattress. Just, I'm feeling really uncomfortable with the current situation. Do me a favor and get in bed, already."

And Yamamoto did.

---

The next morning, after breakfast, Tsuna felt a sharp pull, as if a rug had been tugged out from under him. "Looks like you're going back," Yamamoto said calmly into a bite of Raisin Bran.

"It's been... interesting," Tsuna said in place of a goodbye. He'd see his own version of Yamamoto soon enough, anyway.

"Oh, and Tsuna?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember when I said we started dating after high school?" The grin had become manic, and Tsuna was suspicious.

"Yes?"

"I lied."

---

Tsuna was catapulted into his own time and straight into the arms of his old, familiar, scar-less Yamamoto, who had his lips pressed to Tsuna's and his hands wandering where they distinctly shouldn't have been, and Tsuna yelped and tried to pull away. Yamamoto opened his eyes, looking surprised, then grinned sheepishly as he realized his mistake. "Sorry," he explained, noting how while Tsuna was struggling, he wasn't actually trying to get away. "I thought... well, if I kissed your future self, who would ever know?"

"I would," Tsuna said dryly, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, but that's in the future. The future doesn't count." Tsuna looked up at him incredulously. Those kind, gorgeous brown eyes, the warm smile, the handsome face- goddammit, what had the future done to him? This was... nice. Just standing like this. No worries. No obligations. No commitments. Just an innocent hug between two more-than-friends.

Closing his eyes, Tsuna leaned against Yamamoto's chest, feeling the arms tighten around his back. Yeah, real nice. "Hey," he said after a minute. "Is what your future self true?"

"What'd he say?"

"That you fell in love with me when I saved you that day on the roof."

Yamamoto rested his chin on Tsuna's forehead, and Tsuna was sure he never wanted to move. He was so comfortable like this- why hadn't he embraced the idea before? How stupid he'd been, pushing away this pleasure, this happiness. "Yeah," Yamamoto rumbled in his deep, spine-tingling voice. Then: "You know, you're pretty hot ten years from now."

"You're not bad looking yourself," Tsuna chuckled. 'Even if you haven't changed a bit.'

It was with some surprise that Tsuna realized he hadn't, either.