Sawada Kiyohiko

For Gokudera, Plan B for a relaxing afternoon involved the library—the location of numerous volumes and the second-comfiest couch in the entire compound. He would have been out of the reach of Haruhi and would still be able to get in that nap he wanted; maybe with a little reading on the side (it felt like ages since he picked up a decent book).

The library itself was enormous, possessing the floor space of a large city library with four extended stories upwards. The shelves contained everything from modern texts to books from before the unification of the Italian Kingdom and legend held that there was an original printing of the Divina Commedia somewhere on the higher shelves.

Grabbing the nearest pulp western novel (his most recent guilty pleasure), Gokudera climbed the stairs until he reached the third floor of the library. Here sat a glorious couch tucked away in the corner, basking in the sunlight and accompanied by fluffy pillows of only the highest quality. The Storm allowed himself to fall into the couch and flipped open his book to be lit by the sun.

A few short chapters later, Gokudera began to hear a sniffling sound coming from behind the couch. He put the book in his breast pocket and investigated, only to find the future Eleventh Vongola, sobbing into his sleeves.

“What are you doing?” Gokudera asked, rather bluntly. The little boy, near an exact physical replica of his mother, looked up at him with puffy red eyes that normally would have belonged to his father.

“I went to go hide in the ballroom when you were chasing us and suddenly I couldn’t find anyone anymore and I tried looking and everyone was gone!” Snot began dripping from the kid’s nose as he sat there and let out horrific little squirt-like squeaks that made Gokudera wonder if this was even Tsuna’s son.

“Come on Eleventh,” Gokudera sighed. “I know that if you go into the kitchen and wait, Haruhi will come.”

“Really?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Kiyohiko crawled out from behind the couch and sat on the floor next to Gokudera. The boy was a sad and pathetic excuse for someone brought up in the mafia. Gokudera could now understand how when he had first met the Tenth that he wasn’t really prepared for his future lifestyle, let alone knew about it beforehand. The Eleventh though, this boy was Mafia-born and bred; he had to know the standards he was required to live by! It just made no sense… unless Kyoko was coddling the kid.

“Goku-oji! I thought you were going to stay in the kitchen!” scolded Haruhi. Gokudera winced and turned to see the Rain’s brat standing adamantly by the railing, decked out in a ball cap and brandishing the necessary equipment for baseball.

“I, uh, was getting the Eleventh to come join us…?” Gokudera lied. “Baseball’s more fun if you play with more than two people, right?”

“You were, Gokudera-san?” Kiyohiko sniffled. Gokudera twitched a little, but—lucky for him—Haruhi was just as oblivious as both her parents.

“Hahi… that’s true…” the girl mused. “We’ll need a catcher in the outfield so we all don’t have to go out there all the time for the balls.

“…but I don’t know about baseball…” Kiyohiko whimpered. “I’m not that good at sports…”

“That’s alright! I’ll teach both of you about baseball! This’ll be great!”

“I don’t know about this Haruhi-san…”

“Come on Yohi-kun! It’ll be fun!”

“I told you I’m no good!”

“That’s why I’m here to teach you!” Haruhi let off a million-watt smile that could have melted even the iciest of hearts. “Don’t worry about it Yohi-kun! I’ll make sure that by the time I have to go back home, you will play just as well as the other kids in Japan. It’ll be like you never left.”

Kiyohiko glanced up at Haruhi and wiped away a tear with his sleeve. He allowed her to help him up and they both smiled at one another.

“Come on Goku-oji! Let’s go teach Yohi-kun how to play baseball!”

“…but we don’t have a proper field…” Try to get out of it… try to get out of it…

“No problem! We can just try batting for now; we don’t need to work on base running until Daddy comes back and he can mark off some pretend bases for us.”

“Goodie,” Gokudera sighed, allowing himself to be drug from the couch by the children.

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A/N: -san = Mr./Mrs./Ms./Miss
-kun = (often) masculine term of endearment