Handle with Care

Yamamoto is the kind of person you don't trust with a knife, let alone a sword. It can't be blamed on bias - or pure, unrelenting spite - either, because Gokudera witnessed him in his father's kitchen brandishing the utensil with dangerous enthusiasm and almost losing a thumb. Gokudera had warned him; just hadn't been sure why.

"It was lucky you did," Yamamoto tells him a year later, with a great, ridiculous smile. "Can you imagine? I couldn't fight or - or even play baseball. Haha, can you imagine?"

Gokudera has to silently command himself not to sob at this missed opportunity.

So he makes a second attempt. Dynamite. A shitload. He's certain Yamamoto won't be as cheerful without a foot. In all honesty, he'd have settled for a toe. The vaguest limp would have done wonders for Gokudera's self-esteem but, alas - all he gets for his valiant effort is a great, ridiculous smile, and a lot of half-hugging he is in no way comfortable with, but the skip in the other's step proves this is not a returned feeling.

"Fireworks aren't for daylight, Gokudera," he says, then proceeds to laugh close enough to Gokudera's face that it is taken as grievous offence.

Then he has to pay the school because Yamamoto stumbled out of his aim - and there was suddenly no cafeteria. Just one explosion. And to top it off, it was so loud Gokudera has trouble hearing the no doubt epic anecdote the Tenth was telling him on the walk home. Half-day due to delinquency; Gokudera blames this on Yamamoto, and Yamamoto blames this on his laces for being undone - then he says something stupid like, "Haha, I'll stay still next time, honest!" and Gokudera just tells him to please never talk. They decide on Tsuna's house to spend the rest of the day in, which means no more potential dismembering or bombing for him. An idiot was one thing, but the Tenth's bedroom? He wasn't a monster. Something like that was purely unacceptable.

Until he explains the fact he can't hear a fucking thing five times and Yamamoto keeps talking as though he can, by which time, he's bordering on fucking the whole house up. When Gokudera tells him again with patience only present in the Tenth's mothers company while she dawdles around the kitchen, Yamamoto says through cupped hands, "OH, YOU CAN'T? SORRY."

Tsuna catches him trying to force feed the idiot bleach.

Bunk beds are the arrangement on the trip.

Four thirty in the morning: Yamamoto is snoring from below with a mouth open and all the volume of a four train pile up, and Gokudera is awake above, losing his goddamn mind. He thinks he could make it look like an accident. Maybe he sleep-suffocated him. Maybe it was self-defence for severe ear molestation.

It's the morning after. Yamamoto's staring at him with concern.

"Wow Gokudera, you look tired."

And that's how he breaks Yamamoto's nose. (The first time, anyway.)

Sitting in the waiting room for screwing up Yamamoto's face doesn't make him feel as victorious as he thought it would. Something nags at the back of his head. Conscience, he thinks. He sighs. He'd really dreaded this.

"He better look really fucking stupid," he says to the empty room, then he lies his head back and feels shitty for another five minutes.

Yamamoto waltzes out, bandaged, the blood on his face gone, some of it still drying on his shirt and hands. "How do I look?" he asks with a smile on the way to the car-park, like it's a big joke and Gokudera didn't just sock him in the face an hour ago, like it was a totally normal occurrence and didn't matter anyway since they were so obviously friends.

Gokudera wants to punch him again. "Fucking stupid." He doesn't.

Then Yamamoto snorts and takes out his keys. "Thought as much." He opens the door for Gokudera, who spends the rest of the car-ride trying to figure him out all over again.

It occurs to him one day that he has to get over it already. He's sick of the baseball idiot. It's like a phobia, and this is his chance to overcome it, and be stronger for it. He vows honesty.

"Yamamoto," he starts when he finds him, waiting to walk with him to school, "I loathe the absolute fuck out of you."

The idiot chokes on his milk at this, because it's apparently hilarious.

He wipes his chin after, still looking extremely - annoyingly - amused. "Did you do your math homework?"

Gokudera is understandably angry. He walks off without him. "Yes. And you aren't copying it."

A month or two passes. Nothing. Not one attempt at assassination, or even disablement. Gokudera hardly speaks a word to him, and when he does it's something snide, with an optional remark about his idiocy and, sometimes, his mother.

By the time they have another real conversation, it's been roughly five weeks since Yamamoto kissed him.

The 'real conversation' is amidst explosions and the generic soundtrack of war. People are yelling. Uri is pounding his huge paws, making the rubble on the floor shake and beat. Yamamoto is breathing loud, ragged.

Yamamoto says, "Hey. Hey, are we okay yet?"

Gokudera is crouched, flicking hair out of his face, fidgeting with his boxes. "A few more guys."

"No. I mean us."

There's an exasperated moan. More fidgeting. He can't find the right ring. "I know, okay? I don't want to talk about it."

There's a snicker, the distant sound of a sword piercing the air, the torso of a stranger. "We have to," Yamamoto calls to him, and he wants to ignore it, but then Yamamoto goes and does the unexpected.

The shock paralyzes him for a moment, a cold, frightening moment.

He saves Gokudera's life.

Meaning he shanks the hell out of some poor sucker. For Gokudera. Wearing an expression that was sort of traumatizing and sort of. Well.

Sort of hot.

"Wow," Gokudera says belatedly, heart thudding, gaping comically wide-eyed at the bleeding man lying before them.

"Yeah. Wow." It doesn't look like Yamamoto's taking this as a joke though.

Gokudera stands up, and he wants to start laughing in the idiot's face, because it's just such a weird situation they're in. He does something unexpected. But kind of expected.

He pulls Yamamoto down for a kiss.

A few years later, Yamamoto's saying, "Lucky I did, huh? We wouldn't have kissed if I hadn't seen him."

Gokudera stares at him, blank. "Probably not. Since I'd be dead and all."

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Haha."

And Gokudera simply puts his face in his palm instead of castrating him.

Disclaimer: Not mines.

AN: This new style is obviously not for me.

BUT SHIT WAS IT FUN.

Just something quick, there's not enough YamaGoku around lately and it's been pretty upsetting.