A Hard Day's Night
A Hard Day’s Night
Pushing paper isn’t as easy as it seems. Of course, Yamamoto− imbecilic baseball idiot that he is−would know if he ever did his share properly.
The thought is laughable. And unfortunately said baseball moron has to walk into his office, without knocking, in time to see him chuckling to himself.
The usual smile on his lips widens as he closes the door behind him. “Yo, Hayato. What’s so funny?”
His laughter dies somewhere around the time Yamamoto steps into the room and is gone altogether before he even asks. “What do you want? And stop calling me by my name, damn it.”
Yamamoto ignores that last demand, opting to circle around his desk to plant his unwelcome ass onto the unoccupied expanse of the table. He beams down at him, a true tribute to how much stock he places on personal space. Which is none, to Gokudera’s irritation.
“Now, now. We’re in Italy now. And as they say, when in Sicily…”
“It’s Rome. Rome, you brainless oaf.”
“That’s what I meant,” he replies easily, handing him a manila folder full of files. “Here’s my report on the scuffle between my Rain team and the Luciano family.”
Gokudera snatches it and eyes him warningly, a look that puts the fear of God in most men. “It better be a good report, baseball for brains. Any onomatopoeia in there and not only will I make you eat it but also write it all over again. Do you understand?
To his credit Yamamoto doesn’t flinch. “Got it,” he replies, still smiling and making no move to get out of his space or away from his office.
He lets it stand for five minutes while he peruses the file, getting steadily more steamed by the second. “…Yamamoto.”
“Yeah?” he asks, watching him amicably.
“Get out.”
Yamamoto’s smile turns into a grin. “Why?” he asks, his tone going from oblivious to knowing. “Am I distracting you?”
The way he says distracting, a slight roll of the tongue lilting the word from mere enunciation to something like teasing, makes the curve of Gokudera’s ears go red.
“Of course not,” he snaps before he really thinks about what he’s saying.
“Then I guess I’ll stay. Since I’m not distracting you,” Yamamoto declares with a bit of triumph. “Hayato.”
The manila folder doesn’t make as satisfying of a smack against the table as he would have liked. And he knows his ears are truly, one hundred percent, red now. Nothing ever follows embarrassment as quickly as anger does in regards to his sequence of emotions.
“Baseball idiot,” he manages to grit out warningly.
“Yeah?” he answers, smiling at him as if he were smiling back and not ten seconds away from shoving a live stick of dynamite down his throat.
“Get out. Now!”
“Hmm,” he murmurs, considering it. Considering it! As if he had the right to a choice. “No. I don’t think I will. I’m not distracting you, remember?” And there it is again. That damn baseball idiot smile that’s been relentlessly slicing into him at all angles for the past ten years.
“Get. Out. Now, before I lose my patience, Yamamoto,” he seethes, glaring at him through narrowed eyes and the quickly fogging lenses of his glasses. “I’ve been doing paperwork for the past six hours! Six freaking hours! And now I have to fix the gyuu gyuus and the guut guuts in your sloppy excuse of a report so that they communicate in human speak before I can hand them over to Juudaime! You being here doesn’t help!”
“Hahaha,” he laughs, albeit a bit sheepishly. “Sorry about that. I can’t really help it. It’s hard to notice it when it comes from your gut.”
“Yeah, well you don’t notice a lot of things do you?” he berates mockingly. “If you did your gut would have told you to get lost a long time ago.”
“Probably,” he replies simply, like shit like that just bounces off his hide without leaving bruises and holes. He’s never been able to figure out how or why he puts up with it. “It’s fine, since you can find all the things I failed to notice. Fix them, and tell me about them over dinner.”
“Dinner?” he sputters after a moment of silence, during which he digests the fact that Yamamoto is okay with being an idiot because he has him to pick up his slack. The fucking nerve of him.
“Dinner,” he affirms with a, so the majority of the female population would testify, charming smile. “You’ve worked hard tonight. Let me treat you.”
“Tch,” he scoffs. “Dinner won’t make up for at least an hour and a half of translating your gibberish, idiot.”
“Then I’ll make you dinner tomorrow too,” he offers offhandedly, almost too casually for it to be natural. He raises an eyebrow to shoot him down when Yamamoto continues. “For the entire week if you want. Maybe a whole month or a year.” Yamamoto regards him with a spark of hope lighting his eyes. “Or the entirety of our lives? …If you want.”
There’s squirming in his belly by the time he finishes. Not the unpleasant kind that’s a side effect of seeing his sister, but the kind that manifests from a seed of anticipation. The kind that’s been spreading and growing roots far beneath the surface of his skin since the day the idiot first confessed to him.
Yamamoto surely knows he won’t get a giddy smile in return for basically promising his life to him. But he looks satisfied anyway when Gokudera can’t help but go red. He doesn’t say no because he knows and Yamamoto knows he’s too deep inside him anyway. Too far in to extract now. Like a parasitic UMA. And damn him, he has no words to express the complexity of his happiness and incredulity at himself for being happy. Just gyuu gyuus and guut guuts swirling in his belly.
“Blue Fin Tuna,” he says after a while, when his color goes down and he can respond with a respectable level of dignity. Yamamoto grins triumphantly, like he just won the World Series.
“Coming right up, Hayato,” Yamamoto answers with an easy air. “….After you fix up my report. The Right Hand Man sure has it hard~”
“Idiot,” he replies, tutting irritably, and picks up his pen to compensate for his slack.