He’s a picky eater. Has been since that old bastard took him in and adopted him. Before that, before the flame and the scarf and the castle and the servants, food was something Xanxus got from wherever he could steal it. That bitch hadn’t been interested in feeding him. She was barely interested in feeding herself. Food wasn’t what she liked to put into her mouth.

Now, it’s different.

He doesn’t smoke, he hates the taste and the smell. He buys the best wines, drinks a glass or two and throws the bottle away. He still doesn’t eat much, but now there’s always food left on the plate when he’s done. Sometimes he orders a meal for the sake of a mouthful, and throws the rest away. Makes sure no one else can eat it either.

He wastes things. That’s something he can do now. One of the few small things that make him less angry.

Not happy. Just… just less angry. Because that’s what he is, was, is. He’s angry, and he knows that the others don’t really understand it. Even that shitty shark who thinks he knows Xanxus like the back of his fucking hand – yeah, the hand he cut off, maybe.

Xanxus is angry, and that makes him care for very little aside from himself. He resents people for reasons that never end, similar and different and all valid in his eyes. He hopes his mother died in some ditch after years of agony. He doesn’t want peace for anyone in the Vongola either. Sawada’s naivety only reminds him of how fucking sheltered the fucking scum has been. What right does he have—–

Xanxus is angry, and he doesn’t want to let go of that. Because angry means not sad. Angry means not weak. Angry means ready to tear someone’s fucking throat open.

Some days he sits in his chair, in his dark room, remembering the dirty pavements beneath his bare feet, the people who’d look at him and see nothing, and the constant hunger he used to feel. He rememers the taste of food so horrible he’d throw it up, remembers the sleepless nights where he’d listen to the shrieks and moans of his mother and whoever she dragged in with her. He remembers the thin mattress and how he could feel the floor through it, the crack in the window of his tiny room and the lamp that was taped together and barely worked.

He knows that very few in the Vongola had ever experienced that. Sawada would never understand how far people could go, because he had never been forced into a life where keeping your morals meant losing your life. Now Xanxus doesn’t bother with a solid concept of morals anymore, but sticks to a code only he knows fully. He burns what stands in his way and indulges in the things that make him less angry.

Xanxus wastes things, deliberately and without remorse, because it keeps him anchored to where he is today, and that’s something he needs. Because despite the ice and fire and betrayal, what he hates the most is the time before it all happened.