Come up through the summer rain.

Set sometime in the future, one where Tsuna decided that it was perfectly all right to free Mukuro from the Vendicare Prison and let him roam free.

The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for August 1, 2009.

Rokudo Mukuro always visits her on the days when there is no one in the Vongola Mansion save the servants, the Vongola Tenth himself and his wife, and no other Guardian to protect the boss and his beloved save the Mist Guardian and her continuously questionable loyalties to the Family. He comes in, all long-limbed and languid and soaked right down to the bone, shaking his hair out and complaining lightly of the weather. She smiles at him, greets him in the Italian fashion (greeting, kiss to both cheeks), and promptly steps back to allow him into her rooms, caring little for the fact that he will drip all over the Persian carpet, the expensive furniture.

Their routine never changes. She asks if Mukuro-sama would like a towel and maybe a fresh change of clothes. He replies that it’s quite all right for the moment, my dear, let’s have some tea first. She rings for a maid and asks for the finest Oolong in the house. True enough, when she turns around, he’s willed the wet out of his clothes and spun a towel out of thin air to dry his hair with. She promptly disappears just long enough to fetch her favorite brush from the dresser in her bedroom. The tea arrives, and after setting it in front of her mentor, she rounds behind the couch, pulls up a chair and reaches for the tie holding Mukuro’s hair in place.

They don’t talk about much of anything, mostly pleasantries that neither of them would ever give to anyone else but each other. Occasionally, Chrome mentions the Family – small specifics, nothing but the most important things that might in some way affect them. She does this even though Mukuro does not ask and used to say mildly that he did not particularly care, and it amuses Mukuro, but he does not call her on it. He only smiles, contributes nothing to the conversation, and focuses on the feel of her fingers, deft and light, threading through his hair. Her Italian is improving, he notes, much in the same fashion that an artist would step back from his work and admire the fine lines and blend of colors wrought by his own hand. He wonders if the others have anything to do with it.

Mukuro never stays for longer than an hour after she’s finished with his hair and he’s finished with the tea: there are things moving on the fringes of the mafia game with his name on it, and as much as the two of them are more than friends and lovers, he has pawns to make out of children and a world to rebuild in his image. Chrome understands this, and sees him off without protest, contenting herself with the sight of him walking away from her through the bedroom window, back into the dark and the rain.