36 Realms of Influence [set 4]
Here's the next set of stories for this week! I really tried to crank out these four but I was feeling so fic-lazy. Hopefully the level of writing is just as good as the previous weeks despite my failed inspiration this time.
Title: 36 Realms of Influence
Author: ember_alda
Rating: R
Characters: Yamamoto, Squalo, various other people form KHR as each story demands.
Words: 7, 981
Summary: 36 alternate universes, 36 different layers of relation.
Previous Parts:
I-VI
VII-XI
XII
This week:
Part XIII.
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Midnight Slayers of Good and Evil
25. Yamamoto kills Tsuyoshi's killer on a regular mission, and it's only months after the fact that he finds out who the man was. Squalo starts seeing a visible change in him.
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There’s nothing left to do but watch the gurgle in the dark. Yamamoto is not merciless, but he paused, just a second before slamming the edge of his blade into the trembling throat.
Is that what it was like? Was it like this, when he killed him? The gigantic slash across the torso is so deep it is almost cleaved in two, the dark shine of organs only peeking up through the shredded edges of a shirt cut down the middle, like a grotesque casing of a slab of meat. Everything is wet, bile from the body spilling out the mouth and on the floor, the wells of blood pooling into the sagged skin crevices and slicking his shoes that stood too near.
He’d never really looked at his hits, before. It hadn’t seemed necessary, after all he held no grudges, but now he stared and sucked in his own despicable act, and inside, it doesn’t satisfy him. He can’t claw out the answer or the small, tight feeling that clogs his lungs. How does he change it, how does he go back to the past and change it, that calm pool in his stomach when he swept his blade across the board, how does he fill that natural void with the sick, disgusting need he feels now, and bleed himself of his own bitterness?
-0-
Usually Squalo would wait in his office, still busy with the mounds of paperwork and mission evaluations to be filed, but lately it had been slow. All his normal work was cut in half as the assassination missions had started trickling in less and less for the Varia.
He hates spending time idle more than waiting on someone else, so instead he switches with Levi, checking all the cameras and traps on the first floor of their security system while the other man does the top. Occasionally he kicks the legs of the less alert subordinates that guard every other window and entrance and yells at them about their incompetence, their looks, and their mothers.
When the lobby door opens Squalo drops the collar of one poor unfortunate who was being shaken an inch from his life for having a skewed tie.
“In a good mood today, Squalo?”
“You’re late, even though you’re the one who set up the time.”
A careless laugh rolls out. “I don’t know, you seem to be enjoying yourself despite the fact. Maybe I should come in late more, your security performance could go up.”
Squalo watches as his poor subordinate tries to straighten his tie and get out the room as fast as he could without running or seeming hasty. He shoves Yamamoto aside, stalking out to the front foyer where he grabs up his coat and drapes it on his shoulder before turning the knob outside.
“Stop being so slow. For this you’re going to be the one who pays this time.”
His companion dogs his steps as fast as he can, catching the edge of the open door and propping it open for Squalo who walks outside to the car parked in the courtyard. Yamamoto had been prepared to pay anyway, so it doesn’t in any way change his mood. It doesn’t stop him from saying what comes next, though.
“Haha, but, didn’t I do that the last time, too?”
“You should be happy I’m coming out with you to do anything! If I’d left it up to you we’d probably be sitting on a fountain in the piazza listening to accordion music at a festival! Tch. You wanted to spend time with me so this is what’s going to happen.”
Despite the abrasive words Yamamoto can already tell from the relaxed lines of Squalo’s face and the looseness in his limbs that the older man had been looking forward to leaving the mansion.
“Glad you’re going to go somewhere, huh? It’s been pretty hectic being stuck at headquarters doing work all the time. Sorry I couldn’t make it sooner.”
“One more day of sitting idle I would’ve defected just so there would be something going on. Half the time there’s nothing to do because the roster is almost wiped clean! I refuse to believe there’s not one person who’s ass doesn’t need to be kicked after the Black Spell ascension.”
Yamamoto laughs. It was so like Squalo to be up in arms about getting a break. “Getting restless? Why don’t you take some other missions then?”
His eyebrows shoot to the sky in incredulity at those words. “Are you fucking insane? The Varia is an assassination squad, not third rate diplomats! If they wanted negotiations they should shove them onto someone else. Demolition, infiltration, and killing are what we’re used for.”
The click of the door opening alerts Yamamoto that he should get in. Squalo shoves the key into the wheel as soon as the other guardian puts on his seatbelt.
“Maybe Tsuna delegated all your work out, the Varia have been going non-stop for the last five months. You shouldn’t worry about it.”
Squalo scowls as he turns the engine on and drives out the courtyard.
“Not everyone is as carefree as you.”
-0-
It wasn’t like Squalo missed him or anything, but it was strange. Usually in a week or so, when they weren’t busy, he would see Yamamoto drop by as breezily as ever and pester him to come out and do something. The other man would set up times and dates and appointments as meticulously as he could, knowing Squalo’s impatience for unorganized and inconvenient things.
The string of cancelled meetings and sheepish apologies grated on Squalo more than he thought they would. It didn’t help that even after a week the Varia were getting close to no assassinations doled out to them. Tsunayoshi had long ago abandoned the idea of leaving the Varia’s specialized skills be, so Squalo doesn’t understand why the roster is so empty. There were betrayals in the family and uprisings everywhere; this was not fucking peace time! Where the hell were all their jobs?
It had been driving him insane for the better part of the week. Finally, because he had nothing else he could do and he was cancelled on again with a haha death-wish, Squalo went to the administration office. Storming into headquaters, he demanded, (shouted them deaf, actually), to see who it was that had been taking up the roster. He was convinced someone was purposefully blocking Xanxus from participating in anything important, and Squalo was tired of waiting around like an impotent fuck.
“WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN?!”
The secretary at the desk tries not to cringe back at the slam of Squalo’s fist on the table, the mission reports that were thrown back onto her table flying out everywhere. On top of the filed reports was Yamamoto’s messy scrawl all about the pages, garnering Squalo’s rage just by looking at them.
“W-we don’t have restrictions on the roster if they have proper clearance to take them.”
“This is the entire roster taken up by the immediate Vongola family two weeks ago while the Varia were busy twiddling their thumbs around the mansion like fucking sitting ducks. What the hell gave them the idea that this was using their resources properly? Weren’t there regular infiltration and information gathering duties too?! Why would that stupid Tenth waste his time like this?”
The string of rhetorical questions thrown at the woman went unanswered. She simply gathered the sheaf on her desk and straightened out all the filed repots and tried not to look into Squalo’s eyes as she talked.
“You’ll have to take it up with the Vongola Head. The secretarial department doesn’t have anything to do with those sorts of decisions.”
Squalo snatches the roster from her hand and leaves the poor woman to straighten the mess he made on her own.
-0-
“I have business with the Tenth. I’m going in to see him.”
“The Tenth already has a packed schedule. If this isn’t an official appointment you have no right to interrupt him, Varia.”
The way the other man spat out Varia twisted his lips into a mocking grin. Squalo comes right up to Gokudera face to face, and one step nearer to the door. Neither of them back away.
“Your precious Tenth should be careful of what he’s doing. The boss could get unpleasant if he keeps delegating away our assassination missions to Yamamoto. We’re the fucking Varia and blocking us from doing our job is the same as a death wish.”
There’s a flicker in the storm guardian’s eyes when Squalo speaks, despite the way Gokudera’s clenching his teeth around his cigarette like he wanted to punch him in the face right there.
“Don’t talk about the tenth that way, you miserable worm! I don’t know what sort of lies you’re trying to pin on him but if you’re trying to use an excuse to break away from the Vongola right now I will personally hunt you down and kill you.”
“Lies?! LIES?! LOOK AT THE MISSION REPORTS AND TELL ME IF THEY’RE LYING YOU IGNORANT PUNK. IF TSUNAYOSHI WANTS TO CUT AWAY THE VARIA THEN HE SHOULD GET SOME FUCKING BALLS AND GET RID OF US HIMSELF FACE TO FACE!”
The flap of papers being slapped into Gokudera’s chest rings in the corridor, the other agents who had been tensely watching the show down finally fleeing their immediate surroundings. The younger man violently shoves Squalo away from his face as he crunches the papers handed to him in his fist, staring down at the words typed neatly across the page. The flicker that had shone in his eyes earlier grew into a deep furrow beneath his brows as Gokudera read more and more. He flips through the pages stuck in the manila folder until he shuts it completely and swings his head up to look at an indignant Squalo.
“I don’t know what that stupid guy has been doing but Tsuna and I didn’t know he was taking up extra missions from the roster. NOT that it’s wrong for him to do it but if you have a problem with it ask him, not the Tenth.”
Suddenly Squalo doesn’t understand what’s going on. First, he thought that Yamamoto had lied to him because he didn’t want Squalo to be angry with the Tenth assigning away their work, but now it turns out the Vongola head didn’t even know about them? What the fuck was going on?! That would mean that Yamamoto was voluntarily taking up the assassinations on his own. Squalo drops the files that had been handed back to him by the waiting storm guardian. He needed explanations, now.
-0-
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
A clueless blink and blank look later leaves Squalo still uninformed. The pasta rolled around Yamamoto’s fork droops into his sad, untouched plate while his mouth fails to capture the trailing noodle.
“I’m eating a noodle? Or, I was?”
He figures out that wasn’t the answer Squalo wanted when the other man slams his fist down onto the table, ruching the pristine cloth around his clenched hand. The three other parties around their table jump at the clattering bang, and Yamamoto decides that this is a good time to put down his fork. Knowing from experience that a furious outburst from Squalo involves the need to be free to dodge flying tables and objects, Yamamoto readies himself for a screaming assault just in case.
“No. Just tell me, brat.”
It’s been a long time since Squalo’d called him that. The nostalgia jolts him as he looks at the tense set around the other man’s eyes, and his mouth just blurts out the first thing he can think of.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you’re the one who’s taking up all our missions! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me when I was ranting about it earlier?”
He blinks as the subject to their conversation was revealed to him. “Oh, that. I didn’t think it would be such a problem. Aren’t you getting more time to relax? I mean, this is the first time we had time to go out and do something together.”
It doesn’t dim the suspicious doubt in Squalo’s eyes in the least. It’s frustrating, trying to pry out answers from this man who usually is so direct Squalo doesn’t even want to hear him half the time. He feels like he’s circumnavigating the heart of the issue and Yamamoto is too clueless or too clever to let him get there. If he knew the other man well, it was a skilled combination of both and that pisses him off.
“I don’t let anyone mess with me. If you’re not going to tell me why you’re doing all this ridiculous shit even though you hate assassination missions then why am I fucking here?” Squalo didn’t come here for a heart to heart with kissy faces and wine, he came here to talk with the fucking idiot and squeeze out the reason for Yamamoto’s off behavior. Squalo hated being lied to even more than being denied something he’d asked for.
Amber eyes drift off to the side, looking at an invisibly fixed point on the carpet as if in thought before flicking back to confront an angry gaze. Creases bunch around his eyes as a regretful, self-directed smile accents the apology he’s about to make. “I’m sorry. If you’d like I can take up less of the roster, it’s just that Tsuna let me choose first so I didn’t think about it.”
The uneasy pressure that’s been mounting during the last few weeks can’t be dodged. Squalo’s past the point of consolation, he’d been trying to be nice. After that incident with Gokudera in the hall he’d asked and shouted at the rain guardian for possible answers only to get vague replies. He’d been circumventing all of Yamamoto’s stupid blocks, and he’d been considerate, going to his dumb friends and Squalo was fed up with playing this all out on Yamamoto’s whims. What the fuck did he have to do to get this imbecile to talk?! He was never going to beg for an explanation and why was it so hard to get anything straight out of him anymore?
“Stop missing the point on purpose. Do you think I’m stupid? That I can’t figure it out? Fuck you!”
The table almost falls over at the splintering kick, wine glasses rattling and falling over as food from their plates tumbles to the floor. In one smooth, hasty movement Squalo is standing up and stalking out the door, making his noisy exit as the other restaurant goers shift out of the way and watch in gawking amazement.
Yamamoto’s hand drifts back to the table, eyes looking mournfully at his ruined plate. He sat for a while, staring at the shine of congealing food mixed unevenly with dark red wine, before pushing himself up to get the check. He still had something to do tomorrow, after all.
-0-
It doesn’t matter how many times he does it, it’s still the same. It’s kind of funny to him that no matter how many people he rips open, no matter who they are, they all look the same. Coils of shiny flesh and fountains of blood can only be scrambled so many times before it makes him sick, sick to his stomach to know that everyone is the same, that he’s the one who cut them down into clones of one another.
The hair is spread out thinly, long blonde strands curling into a hug around the dead woman’s face. Yamamoto toes her side with his foot and can only feel the inert mass push itself sluggish against his own movements. He doesn’t get it anymore, he doesn’t know the point, why he’s even doing this. Why can’t he stop himself? Was this really what he was supposed to be doing? It hadn’t bothered him before but suddenly Squalo’s hard, tense eyes as he tried to pry this out of him flashed into his head.
Along the glittering lights of a warm lit restaurant and the harsh, lean face that screamed at him to answer, Yamamoto had shut down his mind and longed for that connection. What was he supposed to say? The words, the thoughts, just spilled from him, a slip in thinking that somehow, was the root of all his problems. His mental pauses are things that are uncontrollable and Squalo- he only wants to best in him for Squalo and the only way was to shunt what was meaningless to the other swordsman aside. How was he going to explain this when he didn’t know if he would even remember it when he left this site, today?
Yamamoto can only hold his core together for so long under the pressure of his own guilt.
-0-
Even with the missions slowly trickling back to the Varia, everyone at the mansion was on tenterhooks. The remaining guards at the palazzo assiduously avoid Squalo all week. He’d yelled about the curtains being shut incorrectly. The flicker of an eye was blown into full inattention, a hand in the pocket became carelessness and every detail erupted into a grievous mistake. Beaten, thrown out into the forest, cut up and bruised, the lower level subordinates drew lots now to avoid duty when Squalo was at the house and tried not to look into the hard, tense set of his eyes.
Levi, Fran, and Lussuria left all the pending missions to Belphagor and Squalo. They teased him mildly about his PMS which had only further enraged him, escalating into full out deadly fights between him and the other Varia members. Every demolition job handed to him he goes wild, moving about and slashing everything in its path at full power, no matter the skills of his opponents. He needs to unleash something before he explodes and whenever the edge of his blade touches the enemies’ skin and splits open their secrets for all to see, Squalo can only think of one other man, doing the same thing, in some other corner of Italy at a different time.
This, this trail of guts and gore that was somehow voluntary, it undercut everything he knew about Yamamoto and he was confused, which pissed him off because it means Squalo cared enough to be confused. This unwelcome revelation was only one more weight to the piling discontent inside him, and soon enough not even those assassinations were enough to slake him.
“Trash like you isn’t even worth wasting these bottles on.”
Squalo tried to stay as still as he could, despite the pent up screams he was choking down after two bullets grazed by his head right after he stepped into the study to report.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON I JUST STEPPED IN HERE, ARE YOU MORE DRUNK THAN USUAL?!”
Another one nearly hits his eye and smashes through the oak doors behind him, opening up a hole into the hallway.
“Stay out of my sight you useless piece of garbage. I don’t know why you’re like this and I don’t care but if you keep on fucking over our security detail I will come and shoot you down, got it?”
Squalo drops the stack of surveillance videos straight on the boss’s desk where his feet propped up in lazy stance. He has no clue what the hell the boss is talking about.
“Our security detail are getting lazy. They’re never around and-”
The glass in Xanxus' hand shatters all over the floor and whiskey drips down onto the carpet as the broken shards stab into his hand.
“Don’t talk back to me. Whatever the hell is wrong with you, fix it. Those shitty subordinates are taking bets to avoid you whenever you’re in the mansion so until this is fixed, stay away from the fucking mansion.”
Squalo stalks out the door, looking back at his furious boss and for one moment, he loathes Yamamoto so much he wants to crush the man for making this happen.
-0-
When he breaks down the study door Tsunayoshi simply cowers in his seat while Squalo slams down the manila folder onto his desk. The papers spill out everywhere and for he was going to get answers, it didn’t matter that this was the Tenth who defeated the boss.
“What the fuck is going on? You tell me, you’re the one who saw him before these rosters started being depleted.”
Tsuna is frozen wide eyed before slowly, with one hand glued at the edge of his desk, he takes up the folder and flips through. With each second he reads the small trembling in his limbs calms down. Eventually the Tenth looks up at him, and that incapable looks becomes tired. Tsuna sighs and clutches his sleeve as he tries to find the words.
“I didn’t know about this. After I told him I kept a watch on Yamamoto but everything he was doing was fine-”
Squalo tries to keep himself in check, the curiosity and build up of frustration almost makes him scream again his first question. The Tenth seems to sense the tension in the air so he tries to explain, even though really Tsuna shouldn’t be the one explaining it at all to Squalo. Sometimes he really wonders if Yamamoto is the most honest and open out of all of them.
“Three weeks ago we found out who Tsuyoshi’s killer was. By that time though, he was already dead. Yamamoto’d killed him in an infiltration mission gone wrong with Chrome a long time ago. He didn’t know it was even him.”
-0-
There’s more of them, this time. Yamamoto had purposely tripped the alarm and now while they were on alert, it was harder for him to take them down. His fingers are gripped tight and numb around the hilt as he swings so rapidly to counter the bullets shot at him, Yamamoto can barely tell his hand is moving. Black and blue and flashes of red are a blur, he can only focus one man at a time as they poured out en mass.
Throwing himself across the concrete floor, dodging the mess of shots and cutting down their guns with the force of his flame, everything around Yamamoto is speeding up. His katana cleaves faster and faster, lodging only for a second in bone and flesh, and no matter how deep the cut the slide free is quick. It’s hysterical, everything around him collides and he can’t tell now if the enemies are running into him or he’s running into them or what direction they’re coming from. The walls are stained with splashes of blood and holes, his body is keyed up so far he can’t tell if he’s moving at all. The sounds of shouting and bangs of guns are disconnected and put of synch with every movement Yamamoto makes and his body simply moves on it’s own.
His arm goes out to fan out a sheet of flame to block the loud shots he heard coming from the corner, and in that instance a third man cuts up close, right into his side. Twisting back his shoulder he doesn’t even see the man’s face as a gleam of a knife whirling up to his eye an inch away doesn’t faze him as he simply tilts in closer and swipes up his sword in one ripping motioned cut. The gash drips like crazy on his chin and floods his shirt black with the stain of blood, the knife clatters to the floor from the slumped body against him and when Yamamoto looks around at everyone in the room, they’re all lying on the floor.
All of a sudden things start pouring into him. The loud, harsh pants echo abrasive and rough in his ears. There’s a deep throbbing heat where his chin was sliced, and a wave of dark, hysterical fervor still lapping in his head. The immediacy of everything is grinded to a halt and he’s stiff. He can’t see the gray walls or the dull beams of the scopes scattered about him on the floor. His eyes are wide and frozen still, they can only focus on that phantom point, aimed straight at his head of a silver knife that almost killed him.
Yamamoto’s arm is trembling, but for a long time he doesn’t notice.
-0-
As soon as the door opens Squalo looks at him and punches him in the eye. Yamamoto braces his arms out behind him at the impact, head snapping back as his vision blurs and a thin crack on his eyebrow starts slowly seeping down blood. A tense, awkward laugh tumbles out his lips and Yamamoto can’t bring himself to turn that burning defeat in his eyes into the cheerfulness that came so easily before.
“Heh, I guess I deserved that.”
Squalo is still as a pillar of salt, white and glittering with the expression of a blank tundra gathering up it’s will to freeze.
“You aren’t supposed to get hit. I know the missions and if you wanted to you didn’t even have to let them know you were coming. WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT CUT NO ONE SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN THAT CLOSE TO YOUR HEAD!”
Yamamoto’s arm clutches at the open door frame, one hand clawing his eye as the red line from his brow runs thinly to the gauze covering his chin. He still can’t look Squalo in the eye. How were words so hard to form when he so easily poured himself out to everyone before?
“You aren’t the best person to talk to this about.”
Dead silence rings around them. He hears the shift of cloth as Squalo, in one motion, jerks him inside the tiny back foyer. Yamamoto stumbles inside, hitting the opposing wall with his hands from the force of the pull. Air whirs by as Squalo spins around to stare at the odd, pathetic man who seems so unconfident he might as well be another being entirely.
“You’re right I’m not the fucking best to sob your damn eyes on. That’s why I already know, brat. Don’t need to tell me a damn thing, I found it on my own because it was necessary, but you! Your stupid brain can’t even dish out this shit when clearly you can’t handle it!”
“I thought I was over it. It was a long time ago…I’d already, I’m still- there’s no more dreaming about it every night. I don’t think everyday about it no matter what I’m doing. Not anymore.”
He stares down at the wooden floor, the odd pinch in his own voice creating this unstoppable flood in his own head. Somehow, Yamamoto can’t block the vague, aching pain that he hadn’t felt in years.
“Obviously you weren’t. It was about revenge, and whether you liked it or not, you got it.”
“I didn’t. It was a slip on a mission. A fucking slip and I just cut him down like I did everything else, one thing less on a list. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know.”
He lifts his head up to look at the utter distain that altered Squalo’s normal loose stance to a stiffened board, his face from that oblique tolerance reserved just for him into cragged lines of disgust. Yamamoto knows that Squalo was the absolute worst person to say this to but he was here, and no one else could pry it out of him because as much as he loved Tsuna, the last thing he wanted to do was to show his friend this side of him.
The difference between Squalo and him was so thin, but also great. The assassin had no morals in killing, it was a job he enjoyed and reveled in. For Yamamoto to mutely seek salvation from this man was like squeezing blood from a rock.
“You aren’t a kid anymore. You want me to tell you to stop doing this shit? You want me to tell you you were wrong? Stop being such a child and figure it out yourself. You can’t go back and kill thirty people to try and undo one hit. I’m not going to choose for you what way you should go. Either be one way or the other, you can’t have everything in the world be easy for you.”
It was his curse, or blessing, as a natural killer. Yamamoto’d heard it so many times in his life from so many different lips, in either praise or denial, but he feels like until this moment he didn’t realize what it’d meant. All those times and all those people who fell under him…in those moments he never felt regret, he never held grudges against them as they attacked. It was a state of mind unique to him and Yamamoto had come to the brink, yesterday, of breaking his one gift. That desperation flooding his core, that cultivated pain inside him, it rose up and moved his arms and legs for him as he destroyed everything around with a clear mind full of need. A relish that was more personal and cumbersome than Squalo’s raging tinted his vision and for a second, he didn’t care about who it was as long as the feeling kept surging in his veins.
Squalo feels a fist clutch the front of his buttoned shirt, Yamamoto’s knuckles white and holding on so hard the shaking in the arm feels still. The guardian’s voice comes out tired and small as his face, hidden in the crook of Squalo’s neck, rasps out a breath he'd been holding in for too long.
“I just came to explain it to you. After yesterday I don’t deserve to take those missions anymore. Heh, I tried to be like you and it was too hard for me to change. Don’t be angry at me…I just thought how much easier it would have been to live like you, at that time. I could have forgiven myself if I was angry when I did it.”
Quietly, a hand raises to pat the younger man on the head. Squalo stares out at the tiring yellow of an afternoon sun through the open doorway.
“You aren’t suited to be like me. I would have gotten bored of you long ago if you were my clone.”
A silent rumble shakes Squalo’s frame as pressed next to him, Yamamoto gives a silent, weary laugh.
“Dad, he would’ve wanted me to stay the same, right?”
Squalo wasn’t prone to comfort and coddling. He was the exact opposite of what the other man needed and there was no room in him for empty affection, but even so he lies and gives him the words Yamamoto wants to hear.
“Even if it breaks you in half, you shouldn’t change.”
Part XIV.
Notes: The holes in Trajan’s column (a Roman artifact) are actually from a real mafia shoot out involving the Frangipani family.
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Bohemian Men
15. Squalo is an artist who passes or meets Yamamoto as an assassin.
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As soon as the bell rung at “Bella Vita” and the door opened with one forceful, loud swing, Squalo rushed into the store. Hair flying, pants still dirty, and shirt torn in four different places, he brusquely made his way to the back.
At the counter the man at the register isn’t even fazed as he continues to avidly watch the news, eyes glued to the line of grainy faces arranged on the screen. The newscaster’s voice drones on unexcitedly about the numerous evacuations made in hotels and piazzas in the city after breakouts of violence. A voice shouts deafeningly from the back, long after the trail of silver hair left the clerk’s sight.
“The Vongola?! I don’t even want to hear about those fucking bastards. Turn that thing down, Bel!”
With his chin still resting on his hand, elbow propped on the wooden counter, Bel simply tunes it down two notches on the screen, not bothering to comply more than that.
“Eh? It’s interesting news. There’s been a shoot out in the street! They say it’s the escalating fight between the Millefiore and the Vongola heads, and they have their best assassins ready to expose themselves for just one chance at victory in the confrontation.”
Rattles of things being thrown aside and others being pushed on metal shelves ring through the tiny paint shop, Squalo’s impatience manifesting itself in disordered products and knocked over inventory. When he finally finds the last thing he needs, he drops a collection of paints in front of the younger man, digging in a splattered pocket for his wallet.
Bel lazily rings them up, fishing out a plastic bag as he watches the one foot television while taking care of his most moody customer.
“Fucking mafia, they’re an affront to Italy. I don’t care if they shoot each other’s skulls open, but out in Rome is despicable. Those trash don’t appreciate anything. This is going to be another Frangipani incident and that time Trajan’s Column ended up with permanent bullet holes the size of oranges.”
“Artifacts kept out into the open should be expected to be damaged. If they wanted to preserve it they should have taken it to a museum.”
He can’t help the noise of utter disgust that crawls out of his throat. “Unappreciative brat. What the hell is wrong with Italy nowadays? Your fucking culture’s here and all you want to do is glaze your eyes over watching trash news about trash mafiosos.” Not that it surprised him, anything remotely hinting of gore and bloodshed would immediately draw Bel’s attention like the morbid freak he was.
A wave of the hand dismisses the artist who now has his products packed in a bag. “Ciao, see you next month.”
Squalo kicks open the door, bell dinging twice from the sheer force of the blow.
“See ya later.”
-0-
The one thing he didn’t expect when he got back was the vague form of a man standing inside the front display window of the gallery. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone here today, Squalo swore he locked up the studio when he went to the store and Oregano wasn’t on the schedule so she couldn’t have let him in.
He bangs open the foyer door and stalks inside, boots clunking in reverberating echoes in the mostly empty space.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing in here? We’re closed today.”
The suit turns around and Squalo is greeted by a startled face, the man’s younger features pinching into a sheepish look, not at all threatened by his presence.
“I’m sorry, the door was open so I thought it was ok to come inside.”
Squalo abruptly drops the plastic bags in his hand on the pristine wood floors, arm shooting out to point to the entrance he just came in.
“Well it’s not so there’s the door. Come back when we’re actually open.” The older man doesn’t even consider that this stranger might be a potential client, not diluting his normally harsh personality. This was why Xanxus and Oregano forced him to stay behind the scenes all the time (NOT because he was loud!), but if someone wasn’t here when they shouldn’t, clogging up his space, he wasn’t going to make exceptions.
“Ah, sorry again. I didn’t have any other chance to come so I walked in.” The stranger scratches the back of his head in an anxious gesture while his body dips in apologetic tone. His head turns to look at the large scale molded canvas tacked to the back display wall.
“I was just really impressed by that mural size work.”
Squalo scowls as he looks the suit up and down, pretty sure that the business man didn’t know a Rothko from a Benjamin Moore paint sample. The crisp shoes, the straight edge of his spine and the carefully folded pocket square were tell-tale signs of a pretender. Squalo suddenly feels the need to be entirely contrary to this irritating man that bursts into innocent artist’s studios on closing days and disrupted people’s schedules.
“There’s nothing impressive about it. Fucking paint on canvas, any man can do it.”
An arm drops as the man turns away from the back wall to look at him, the unnervingly warm light in his eye seeming to pierce through Squalo’s argumentative comments. The odd, close aura the man had was now focused on the canvas he’d tacked up, the huge work comprising almost the entire east wall of the studio.
“I don’t know, despite the large violent strokes, it’s very controlled. You make such straight lines; it only looks out of control because you want it to.”
Squalo stands back, not to look at this large scale canvas, but at the simple man who, despite his rigid attire, seemed to have a glaringly good intuition.
“It’s not art if it isn’t calculated. If an elephant splashed paint on a piece of paper it isn’t the same if I did it. I will not be a fucking elephant for some jack-off who wants to impress people.”
Yamamoto laughs at the comparison. “You have surprising principles for a man who still sells his work. Isn’t that the same?”
A snarl erupts from the older man’s face, his hands gripping the edges of his jeans as the cold gleam in his eye widens at the accusation. “I’ll over charge and mark up whatever the hell I want, I’m popular and I want money, that’s nothing new in the world. But no one, no one can tell me what to do. If it’s fucking genius then they better be able to pay for it because Superbi Squalo is not cheap.”
Yamamoto feels like he understands, now, where this cutting energy comes from in the painting. He had come inside on a whim, but once he’d seen that piece swallowing the entire room, he was forced to pause. Yamamoto’s pretty sure he’d pay whatever Squalo asked, for a slice of that vicious aspiration that colored the artist’s face right now. Looking at the stark colorless wall, bars of hasty, thick lines slashing across the faded, worn canvas, Yamamoto feels something sink into him from the message in the piece.
“I don’t think anything I’ve seen here today feels cheap at all.”
Squalo’s off-put by the sincere smile that creases the stranger’s eyes into soft crescents. Usually people are off-put by the way he speaks about anything, but the younger man doesn’t seem to be offended.
“It’s good that you like to live. Money, things, people, they’re all necessary to stay alive. I think it’s admirable.”
The artist shifts uneasily on his feet, somehow made uncomfortable by the warmth residing in the other man’s tone. Instead, he walks over to the sleek counter where the receptionist usually sat and plucked out at card from a clear plastic holder. Squalo flicks it to the businessman across from him, scowling.
“It’s more admirable if you buy it and hang it on the wall.”
There’s a pause as Yamamoto takes the card by the fingertips, their hands connecting for a brief moment through the slim paper wedged between them.
“Superbi Squalo, huh? Maybe I’ll come back sometime.”
He leaves without ceremony, Squalo left to watch a smooth exit standing by his dropped paints. When he finally turns to grab his bag from the floor there’s a small, dotted trail leading from where the stranger stood to the open glass doors. He bends in close, and from the swipe of his finger he rubs out the deep red of fresh blood.
Later that night, Squalo sees that man’s face on the news, and despite his initial dislike, wonder’s if the man will be able to come back and make a bid.
Part XV.
Notes: The Carabinieri that Squalo mentions are an armed, military police force in Italy. One of the branches, the ROS (Raggruppamento Operative Speciale), deals specifically with organized crimes and things like drug trafficking arms smuggling. They do include undercover operations as one of their investigative tactics, so I’m not just making this up.
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Cops and Robbers
2. Yamamoto is a police detective and Squalo is a don’s second hand man. No swords, just guns.
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“…now. No, no…already moved all the relevant…ok. I can keep…here.”
Squalo pushes open the dully painted door despite the one sided conversation that floated out from the enclosed room. Inside, a suited back is turned towards the battered but expensive coffee maker sitting on the counter in the room. The upper pantry was utilized by all the members who had to stay on for late nights and red-eye shifts. Yamamoto had been raking up the long days these past few weeks so Squalo wasn’t surprised to see him brewing up a cup and using the time alone to chat on the phone.
At the sound of the entrance creaking open the younger man turns around, raising a hand minutely in greeting, gesturing that he was going to wrap up his conversation.
“Yeah, it’s ok. Just don’t forget, I don’t want you to leave anything behind like last time. Alright. Bye.”
A snap sounds out in the room as Yamamoto sighs and closes his phone, slipping it into his pant’s pocket to gather up the plastic stirrer on the table and his packet of sugar.
“Can’t fucking believe you’re here again.”
A sheepish smile is the only response as he rips open the sugar packet. “You say that like you’re not here just as long and just as often. I guess I shouldn’t be complaining, after all if this goes through everyone will be rolling in it.”
He doesn’t even jerk at the sound of the chair in Squalo’s way being kicked across the room, the older assassin stalking up to the counter and leaning on it, flopping his elbows to either side of him as he stares up distastefully into the ceiling. Yamamoto is used to the other man’s abruptness by now.
“Bastard boss is overworking us because he knows everyone wants this deal to go through and it’s not like we get an hourly wage. Bet you’re biting at the bit for more money to get the rest of that down payment for your new apartment.”
“Haha, you heard that?” Yamamoto sips at his coffee again, warming his hands on the hot ceramic. He supposed it was obvious what the conversation was about, after he’d mentioned it to Squalo last week.
“It’ll be nice to be in the clear once this is over and me and Haru get settled into the new place.”
Squalo pushes himself up and, grabbing another cup on the metal rack, tosses it to his fellow family member.
“I don’t want to hear you harp any more on your stupid broad, I hear enough of it every week. Just get me a cup, I’m parched and you’re the errand boy around here.”
Yamamoto turns around, laughing as he gets the pot and starts pouring it in the mug. He hears Squalo shifting around, pressing up next to him trying to rummage through the cupboards for the dry creamer. When he turns to tell him they’re on the right side, there’s a gun an inch away from his head. His eyes go wide and his muscles cramp, stiffening in shock as he wills himself not to panic.
“W-wha-”
“Drop the fucking act, besides the fact that ‘Haru’ and you live in an abandoned cleaners shop, how you got your nose all up into this weapons deal these past few months so easily clued me in, Carabinieri.”
“I don’t know wha-”
Squalo doesn’t even hesitate as he grinds his gun in closer to the traitor’s temple, finger about to shoot his gun without hesitation.
The rigid press of gunmetal against his back is what stops him from squeezing that thin sheeted trigger. Yamamoto doesn’t move his hand from the coffee cup on the counter, he knows for a fact that his gun is aimed straight at Squalo’s heart even from behind, well versed in the deadly vocabulary of vital hits. When they both acknowledge the end game check, Yamamoto slowly turns his head from the coffee maker and looks into the assassin’s eyes, hand lifting from the warm cup to drop quietly by his side.
Slowly, a small, vicious smile paints its way across Squalo’s lips, pearl white teeth peeking out from a thin cut of lips as if ready to free the mocking laughter within.
“I could tell by that cold, careless way you held your gun that you’d killed someone before. Like you’re not afraid to take someone’s life if you had to- just rip it out from them if they get in the way and shoot them dead. You’ve got a soul of a killer, even on the other side.”
The dead on gleam in Yamamoto’s eyes isn’t fazed, he knows exactly what kind of game is being played and those words sprouted from this vicious, mindless killer don’t thrill him, not even with the cold metal pressed right against his temple. He feels nothing in his veins but supreme calm. Yamamoto is not a man to fear something when it’s staring him straight in the eye.
“I’m not the same. You think you see something similar in me to you, but you and I are two completely different sides. There’s no purpose for you, there’s no reason beyond money and orders, and loyalty to a man without any morals or reason behind his actions is not loyalty to anything but your own selfishness.”
“Don’t play this fucking game. Semantics is all you vermin ROS dogs ever know. Allowing exceptions for death and playing at nice, what’s the difference if in the end there’s one dead body for money, and one dead body for the job? You might as well be an assassin for all you played the part.”
The grind against his temple is insistent; Yamamoto stays stock still and simply edges his gun closer into Squalo’s spine as the other man leans in close, ends of his mouth tugging wider as the long hair drifts forward and brushes into the detective’s sleeve.
“Don’t tell me blood doesn’t burst into your heart faster when someone slips the edge and a bullet flies near your face, don’t tell me your hand doesn’t itch for the trigger and you can’t hear anything but the pulse inside you ripping into your skull, that your body isn’t ready to split into a thousand pieces if it doesn’t move, right now.”
It’s hard to deny the theme being drilled into his bones when Squalo is inches away from him, when they’re pressed this close and they’re about to blow each other’s brains out and Yamamoto for all his famed calm in infiltration, can’t help but feel the press of adrenaline spiking up in his vessels in a fake high. Despite this, he smiles with eyes clear and painless as he leans into the dig of metal at his temple, lowly mouthing the words that were at the core of him.
“See, I’m not a person who can live without motivation. One fight at a time, Squalo, is all you can handle. That’s pretty pathetic, that the only time you’re going to live is those few minutes you get to fight. I’m living every day of my life just fine. Cheap thrills can’t move me.”
They can hear the sounds now, of people banging up the stairs and random shouts. Feet moving in unison and shots ringing out in the air around them come muffled to their ears from the floors below. The noises rise in crescendo as the heavily armored detail gets closer to this hidden, vacuum filled space where two men are paused at a stand-still. They both know that it’s going to be close, this time. This near Yamamoto, Squalo can hear the fast pitch of soft breathing as thud by thud, the contingent of faceless men fly nearer to their space.
“Is it a cheap thrill? I’m hearing different, dog. It’s end game- who’s going to take out who first?”
A laugh escapes the detective’s lips despite the drama of this last meeting, it bubbles out of him unwarranted and Yamamoto can’t help the alert shine in his eyes as he stares death in the face. “I don’t know, I don’t think either of us are going to win.”
Bangs ring out in deafening tones as the door arches centimeter by centimeter inward, the force of a group trying to tear it down warping the frame. Neither of them knows who it is, the Carabinieri or the mafiosos, and for a split second, both of them tilt their eyes to stare at the door that seals their fate.
Darkly dressed men burst inward wearing flak jackets marked with the ROS acronym on the back, flooding the room and swinging the tips of their Beretta assault rifles at the center where Squalo and Yamamoto were pressed in stalemate.
“Step away from Officer Yamamoto, now!”
There’s nothing but a smile in the detective’s face of supreme confidence as Squalo, with a small lift in the corner of his lips, acknowledges the end game. It was as if there was no doubt in the detective’s mind that the unpredictable would fall to his side. The clack of a gun being dropped from the assassin’s hand is all the signal the officers need before swarming on Squalo and forcing him down to the ground, where he still, with cold unrepentant eyes, stares Yamamoto in the face.
Even hours after the take down concluded, Yamamoto could still feel the blood pumping fast as the wind in his veins. If anything, the mafioso sliced the difference thinner than it was before.
Part XVI.
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THIS IS ABOUT TENNIS
11. Yamamoto and Squalo play tennis with or against each other in middle school. (Guess the fandom rip off!)
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“Haha, so um…how about after practice we go out to eat or something, senpai?”
Squalo hates all his kouhai, people younger than him were weaker, more uncool, had bad skills in tennis, and Squalo didn’t have the patience for that kind of trash. This one was more clingy than usual. Couldn’t the kid tell that he was busy playing a fucking match?
The hard swing at his opponent returned the ball twice as fast as normal, a slice giving the ball quite the velocity as Squalo sprints to the far corner to catch it, arm stretching out in a long, sinuous line to hit it in his racket’s sweet spot. The ongoing rally ends quickly when the ball speeds to the left corner in an impossible to return rebound. A hard, mocking grin spreads on Squalo’s face as he breathes in harsh, panted breaths while sweat drips from every inch of his body.
Showed fucking Levi he was ten times the player that suck up was.
His hand automatically snatches the towel and water bottle extended to him, flopping back onto the bench as he tilts his head, immediately recognizing the face that gave him his things.
“That was an amazing return, senpai.”
Squalo almost chucks the towel across his face back just because it was the younger kid who gave it to him.
“Are you a fucking stalker or what?”
“Haha, but we’re on the same team! You guys train up the underclassmen all the time. It’s natural to want to do something after the club, right?”
“That’s because that bastard Xanxus said he doesn’t want to graduate and leave his tennis club to crumble like loser trash. It’s NOT because I feel responsible for you little shits!”
Yamamoto rubs his arm, wincing as he smiled. The pains from the five hundred swing reps they had to do today were starting to settle in. Their current captain was a really Spartan man despite how much he lounged around on the bench yelling about how lazy trash should practice harder while he sipped his Pocari, though he shouldn’t complain considering how much harder Tsuna had it with their coach Reborn.
“But that’s what a good captain wants, right? I’m glad you care so much about the team.”
Squalo was not about to explain to him the pull-pull and more fucking pull dynamics of his and Xanxus’ relationship. The captain wanted something done, the captain would punch his face in as many times as it took to make Squalo do something he loathes.
“Whatever.” The vice-captain thrust back the now empty bottle into Yamamoto’s gut, who doubles over from the force and tries not to wince too hard but failed.
“Get me some more water.”
As Yamamoto turned around to fill it at the fountain, that abrasive, friendly smile came back.
“Sure thing!”
-0-
Gokudera took one look at the way Yamamoto was rubbing his eye and scowled.
“I don’t know why you keep going back to that fucking sadist. It’s not like he’s actually showing you anything.”
Yamamoto laughs, switching out his lunch for a juice box as he swings his feet on the bench. The gauze taped over his eye was kind of itchy, but the throbbing pain from yesterday had died down a lot, and really Shamal-sensei had said it was a superficial cut and that it didn’t need to be treated.
“It’s not that bad, Gokudera. It doesn’t hurt at all now and Squalo-senpai said he was sorry after the accident.”
His best friend gives another one of his patented scoffs, toeing his racket bag on the ground. “That’s cause you have the sensitivity of a cockroach and our senpai,” he spits out, “don’t have a fucking threshold. He only apologized after coach Reborn shot the ball machine at him for two hours.”
It wasn’t like Yamamoto to hold a grudge, especially after that spectacular practice match. Squalo and him had generated a buzz all through practice, Reborn even stopping to watch them drag out each set to the full limit of time. It was nice that Gokudera was concerned about him, though.
“I dunno, I think it was fun, even after I was hit in the eye.”
Gokudera glances at him as Yamamoto stares out at the green pith of the court, a rare serious and fervent shine in his eyes while he watches a doubles team practice under the sun. A day after the accident and the idiot isn’t resting but comes out with Gokudera for their weekly meeting at the park like nothing happened.
“Whatever. Tennis freak.”
Yamamoto laughs, getting up and blocking the bright sparkle of the sun with his hand. “I know you’re one too. I saw how hard you were working to defeat Bel-senpai’s buggy whip shot.”
Tsuna had been sitting on the side watching them, trying to gulp in the world’s supply of air after Xanxus had a match with him just after Reborn made him do sixty laps around the courts.
The faint blush in Gokudera’s cheeks can’t be explained away by exertion this time. “Well yeah, i-if Tsuna is going to be captain next year I have to be twice as strong to be vice-captain.”
Stretching out his back, Yamamoto looks down at his friend who gathered up his racket to start on their match. “Haha, you can be his other vice-captain.”
“What?! I’m going to be Tsuna’s only vice-captain, and we’re going to take him to nationals! He can’t count on a stupid guy who lets loud mouths injure him on the courts all the time!”
The almost affectionate way Yamamoto touches the gauze on his face reinforces Gokudera’s insight on his friend’s sanity.
“He’s not all that bad. His tennis- it’s really electrifying. Guess I just got caught up in it.”
An elbow to his side jerks Yamamoto’s stance. “You better be a good opponent this time, even with your stupid eye. I need to practice up for regionals.”
He smiles at the subtle prompt to get better and sharpen his skills.
“Let’s play.”
-0-
The stupid kid was up and about pestering him perfectly fine after four days of recovery. Squalo thought that Yamamoto’s eye injury would have curbed his enthusiasm but if anything, the kid seemed to be in high spirits, running around fetching the balls like it was a game instead of menial labor.
“Watching your admirer huh? Is this finally requited love?~”
Squalo shoves Lussuria’s face into the chain links without even turning his head.
“Shut the fuck up you okama wanna be. Stop talking about disgusting things, the kid’s just being more hyper than usual and it’s annoying.”
Face smashing against the wires, the sunglasses always present on Lussuria’s face skew as he leans in to watch their kouhai do warm ups on the practice court.
“It really must be love, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get so serious about tennis with anyone before. You really let loose that time without meaning to.”
Automatically Squalo’s mind winds back to that practice set where for once, his muscles burned with the hard ache that came from stretching himself to the limit. He’d dominated in the first three sets but that kid, he really had some amazing instincts in him. Even after Squalo had whipped a power serve that should have numbed the kid’s arm for a good while, he kept going. The way Yamamoto caught that high lob and faked his smash into a drop-shot…something switched on in Squalo. He’d been pissed off at the turn in the game, outsmarted by an underclassman, excited and agitated. For a whole hour he had thought of nothing else but tennis.
His senses had sharpened, eyes catching every twist of Yamamoto’s arm, the trajectory of the ball flying in the air, the ticks in his muscles from the short sprints across the court magnified by ten, and the hard itch of his hair tie on his neck filtered through in twenty twenty clarity. The beat of the sun and the beat of his shoes against the court was all that mattered and that kid, with the way he was totally dedicated to the game, was completely undeniable.
“It was fucking tennis, Lussuria. That brat beat me and it was fucking great tennis.”
Lussuria smiles. He knows how Squalo feels; after all, their underclassman power player had set off that same spark. “It’s going to be a good team next year, don’t you think?”
Despite the fondness that colored his tone earlier, a hard, sharp grin cuts across Squalo’s face.
“Those little shits better be prepared, I’m going to beat them down to a bloody pulp with practice. Their eyes’ll ring with tennis balls their backs will hurt so much they can’t get up in the morning and whenever they sweat Gatorade better pour out from their arm pits or else I’ll be on them like a mother fucking rainstorm.”
Lussuria smiles too, eyes gazing across at the equally enthusiastic Ryohei feeding the ball machines. He really doesn’t know how their kouhai are going to survive Xanxus’ and their expectations for next year.
-0-
Squalo berated himself for even remotely thinking the stupid brat was halfway decent. After their recent practice match, where Yamamoto had somehow managed to copy his specialty numbing serve, however weakly, Squalo had been in a relatively mellow mood. His kouhai stalked up to him as usual and tossed him his towel and bottle, asking him again this time to go eat somewhere after club activities. Looking up at the warm, expectant face, Squalo’s mouth opened and answered on its own.
What the hell had possessed him to say ok to Yamamoto’s stupid request?
“Why are we in a McDonald’s?”
“It’s the only place closest to where me and you live, right? I don’t get to eat out a lot.”
There’s nothing else to do but take a bite out of his hamburger. Maybe if he eats fast enough they can leave soon and Squalo won’t have to stand being in this awkward situation for any longer the necessary. What the hell were they supposed to talk about? He didn’t care and Yamamoto was a bumbling clueless idiot like he always was.
“Eat your food and let’s split.”
The younger kid takes a sip of his drink, beaming like he hadn’t just rudely told him he was a nuisance.
“Ok. But let’s talk while we eat. How did you learn that awesome serve, senpai?”
“I went around the street courts and challenged every guy I saw and stole all their skills until that stupid Tyr. After he defeated me I came up with my new serve and beat the shit out of him.”
Ahhh, those were the good old days, before Xanxus was snatched up by coach Reborn and they did whatever the hell they wanted, terrorizing the other middle schoolers around them. Squalo was a tennis genius and if he got bored he could easily find opponents to smash into the court, but now they were regulated. If anything, he should be surprised at how much Yamamoto had picked up in such a short time, the kid had copied his serve pretty well for the first time. He asks the question that’d been working up in his head the past few weeks.
“What about you? You were never this motivated before. I saw you last year with the other snots and your skills were pathetic. How did you improve so much?”
“I don’t know, whenever I face you it all just comes pouring out of me. I can’t help myself, I couldn’t disappoint you. I want to be stronger, I want to return everything you throw at me and more, I want to laugh because it’s the most fun I’ve ever had. You’re a really great senpai, I can’t help but want to be better around you.”
The words came out on their own to himself. “Are we talking about tennis?”
“I don’t know, are we talking about tennis?”
There’s a transparent look to his kouhai’s eyes that invited him to read the obvious message beneath the kid’s words, and Squalo can’t stop staring at him. What the fuck was going on if it wasn’t tennis? He didn’t care and he didn’t want to know, but somehow Yamamoto makes him almost acknowledge the other meaning in their conversation. That kid had a habit of making Squalo pay attention no matter how much he didn’t want to.
A hand jabs out with a french fry to emphasize his point. “It doesn’t matter, tennis or not you’re still the most annoying person I know.”
“Haha, I’m glad you think I’m memorable.”
Yamamoto snatches him by the wrist, and with that breezy smile he always had at practice despite the torn muscles and fatigue, eats the fry perched between Squalo’s frozen fingers.
“I’ll come and watch your matches in high school after graduation. Maybe we can come out again and celebrate your wins, sometime.”
The laugh that bursts out at this kid’s audaciousness is harsh and rough and everything Squalo is in tennis and life. “You better pay me for those fries next time.”
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So that's it! Soon I'm going to run out of ideas for these thirty-six. I'm almost through all the ones I have now. I still need like, nine more storylines. I'm afraid my writing's degenerating each passing week lol. The first story was really choppily pieced together >_< Hopefully I can keep this up!
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Set 5 here
Title: 36 Realms of Influence
Author: ember_alda
Rating: R
Characters: Yamamoto, Squalo, various other people form KHR as each story demands.
Words: 7, 981
Summary: 36 alternate universes, 36 different layers of relation.
Previous Parts:
I-VI
VII-XI
XII
This week:
Part XIII.
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Midnight Slayers of Good and Evil
25. Yamamoto kills Tsuyoshi's killer on a regular mission, and it's only months after the fact that he finds out who the man was. Squalo starts seeing a visible change in him.
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There’s nothing left to do but watch the gurgle in the dark. Yamamoto is not merciless, but he paused, just a second before slamming the edge of his blade into the trembling throat.
Is that what it was like? Was it like this, when he killed him? The gigantic slash across the torso is so deep it is almost cleaved in two, the dark shine of organs only peeking up through the shredded edges of a shirt cut down the middle, like a grotesque casing of a slab of meat. Everything is wet, bile from the body spilling out the mouth and on the floor, the wells of blood pooling into the sagged skin crevices and slicking his shoes that stood too near.
He’d never really looked at his hits, before. It hadn’t seemed necessary, after all he held no grudges, but now he stared and sucked in his own despicable act, and inside, it doesn’t satisfy him. He can’t claw out the answer or the small, tight feeling that clogs his lungs. How does he change it, how does he go back to the past and change it, that calm pool in his stomach when he swept his blade across the board, how does he fill that natural void with the sick, disgusting need he feels now, and bleed himself of his own bitterness?
-0-
Usually Squalo would wait in his office, still busy with the mounds of paperwork and mission evaluations to be filed, but lately it had been slow. All his normal work was cut in half as the assassination missions had started trickling in less and less for the Varia.
He hates spending time idle more than waiting on someone else, so instead he switches with Levi, checking all the cameras and traps on the first floor of their security system while the other man does the top. Occasionally he kicks the legs of the less alert subordinates that guard every other window and entrance and yells at them about their incompetence, their looks, and their mothers.
When the lobby door opens Squalo drops the collar of one poor unfortunate who was being shaken an inch from his life for having a skewed tie.
“In a good mood today, Squalo?”
“You’re late, even though you’re the one who set up the time.”
A careless laugh rolls out. “I don’t know, you seem to be enjoying yourself despite the fact. Maybe I should come in late more, your security performance could go up.”
Squalo watches as his poor subordinate tries to straighten his tie and get out the room as fast as he could without running or seeming hasty. He shoves Yamamoto aside, stalking out to the front foyer where he grabs up his coat and drapes it on his shoulder before turning the knob outside.
“Stop being so slow. For this you’re going to be the one who pays this time.”
His companion dogs his steps as fast as he can, catching the edge of the open door and propping it open for Squalo who walks outside to the car parked in the courtyard. Yamamoto had been prepared to pay anyway, so it doesn’t in any way change his mood. It doesn’t stop him from saying what comes next, though.
“Haha, but, didn’t I do that the last time, too?”
“You should be happy I’m coming out with you to do anything! If I’d left it up to you we’d probably be sitting on a fountain in the piazza listening to accordion music at a festival! Tch. You wanted to spend time with me so this is what’s going to happen.”
Despite the abrasive words Yamamoto can already tell from the relaxed lines of Squalo’s face and the looseness in his limbs that the older man had been looking forward to leaving the mansion.
“Glad you’re going to go somewhere, huh? It’s been pretty hectic being stuck at headquarters doing work all the time. Sorry I couldn’t make it sooner.”
“One more day of sitting idle I would’ve defected just so there would be something going on. Half the time there’s nothing to do because the roster is almost wiped clean! I refuse to believe there’s not one person who’s ass doesn’t need to be kicked after the Black Spell ascension.”
Yamamoto laughs. It was so like Squalo to be up in arms about getting a break. “Getting restless? Why don’t you take some other missions then?”
His eyebrows shoot to the sky in incredulity at those words. “Are you fucking insane? The Varia is an assassination squad, not third rate diplomats! If they wanted negotiations they should shove them onto someone else. Demolition, infiltration, and killing are what we’re used for.”
The click of the door opening alerts Yamamoto that he should get in. Squalo shoves the key into the wheel as soon as the other guardian puts on his seatbelt.
“Maybe Tsuna delegated all your work out, the Varia have been going non-stop for the last five months. You shouldn’t worry about it.”
Squalo scowls as he turns the engine on and drives out the courtyard.
“Not everyone is as carefree as you.”
-0-
It wasn’t like Squalo missed him or anything, but it was strange. Usually in a week or so, when they weren’t busy, he would see Yamamoto drop by as breezily as ever and pester him to come out and do something. The other man would set up times and dates and appointments as meticulously as he could, knowing Squalo’s impatience for unorganized and inconvenient things.
The string of cancelled meetings and sheepish apologies grated on Squalo more than he thought they would. It didn’t help that even after a week the Varia were getting close to no assassinations doled out to them. Tsunayoshi had long ago abandoned the idea of leaving the Varia’s specialized skills be, so Squalo doesn’t understand why the roster is so empty. There were betrayals in the family and uprisings everywhere; this was not fucking peace time! Where the hell were all their jobs?
It had been driving him insane for the better part of the week. Finally, because he had nothing else he could do and he was cancelled on again with a haha death-wish, Squalo went to the administration office. Storming into headquaters, he demanded, (shouted them deaf, actually), to see who it was that had been taking up the roster. He was convinced someone was purposefully blocking Xanxus from participating in anything important, and Squalo was tired of waiting around like an impotent fuck.
“WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN?!”
The secretary at the desk tries not to cringe back at the slam of Squalo’s fist on the table, the mission reports that were thrown back onto her table flying out everywhere. On top of the filed reports was Yamamoto’s messy scrawl all about the pages, garnering Squalo’s rage just by looking at them.
“W-we don’t have restrictions on the roster if they have proper clearance to take them.”
“This is the entire roster taken up by the immediate Vongola family two weeks ago while the Varia were busy twiddling their thumbs around the mansion like fucking sitting ducks. What the hell gave them the idea that this was using their resources properly? Weren’t there regular infiltration and information gathering duties too?! Why would that stupid Tenth waste his time like this?”
The string of rhetorical questions thrown at the woman went unanswered. She simply gathered the sheaf on her desk and straightened out all the filed repots and tried not to look into Squalo’s eyes as she talked.
“You’ll have to take it up with the Vongola Head. The secretarial department doesn’t have anything to do with those sorts of decisions.”
Squalo snatches the roster from her hand and leaves the poor woman to straighten the mess he made on her own.
-0-
“I have business with the Tenth. I’m going in to see him.”
“The Tenth already has a packed schedule. If this isn’t an official appointment you have no right to interrupt him, Varia.”
The way the other man spat out Varia twisted his lips into a mocking grin. Squalo comes right up to Gokudera face to face, and one step nearer to the door. Neither of them back away.
“Your precious Tenth should be careful of what he’s doing. The boss could get unpleasant if he keeps delegating away our assassination missions to Yamamoto. We’re the fucking Varia and blocking us from doing our job is the same as a death wish.”
There’s a flicker in the storm guardian’s eyes when Squalo speaks, despite the way Gokudera’s clenching his teeth around his cigarette like he wanted to punch him in the face right there.
“Don’t talk about the tenth that way, you miserable worm! I don’t know what sort of lies you’re trying to pin on him but if you’re trying to use an excuse to break away from the Vongola right now I will personally hunt you down and kill you.”
“Lies?! LIES?! LOOK AT THE MISSION REPORTS AND TELL ME IF THEY’RE LYING YOU IGNORANT PUNK. IF TSUNAYOSHI WANTS TO CUT AWAY THE VARIA THEN HE SHOULD GET SOME FUCKING BALLS AND GET RID OF US HIMSELF FACE TO FACE!”
The flap of papers being slapped into Gokudera’s chest rings in the corridor, the other agents who had been tensely watching the show down finally fleeing their immediate surroundings. The younger man violently shoves Squalo away from his face as he crunches the papers handed to him in his fist, staring down at the words typed neatly across the page. The flicker that had shone in his eyes earlier grew into a deep furrow beneath his brows as Gokudera read more and more. He flips through the pages stuck in the manila folder until he shuts it completely and swings his head up to look at an indignant Squalo.
“I don’t know what that stupid guy has been doing but Tsuna and I didn’t know he was taking up extra missions from the roster. NOT that it’s wrong for him to do it but if you have a problem with it ask him, not the Tenth.”
Suddenly Squalo doesn’t understand what’s going on. First, he thought that Yamamoto had lied to him because he didn’t want Squalo to be angry with the Tenth assigning away their work, but now it turns out the Vongola head didn’t even know about them? What the fuck was going on?! That would mean that Yamamoto was voluntarily taking up the assassinations on his own. Squalo drops the files that had been handed back to him by the waiting storm guardian. He needed explanations, now.
-0-
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
A clueless blink and blank look later leaves Squalo still uninformed. The pasta rolled around Yamamoto’s fork droops into his sad, untouched plate while his mouth fails to capture the trailing noodle.
“I’m eating a noodle? Or, I was?”
He figures out that wasn’t the answer Squalo wanted when the other man slams his fist down onto the table, ruching the pristine cloth around his clenched hand. The three other parties around their table jump at the clattering bang, and Yamamoto decides that this is a good time to put down his fork. Knowing from experience that a furious outburst from Squalo involves the need to be free to dodge flying tables and objects, Yamamoto readies himself for a screaming assault just in case.
“No. Just tell me, brat.”
It’s been a long time since Squalo’d called him that. The nostalgia jolts him as he looks at the tense set around the other man’s eyes, and his mouth just blurts out the first thing he can think of.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you’re the one who’s taking up all our missions! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me when I was ranting about it earlier?”
He blinks as the subject to their conversation was revealed to him. “Oh, that. I didn’t think it would be such a problem. Aren’t you getting more time to relax? I mean, this is the first time we had time to go out and do something together.”
It doesn’t dim the suspicious doubt in Squalo’s eyes in the least. It’s frustrating, trying to pry out answers from this man who usually is so direct Squalo doesn’t even want to hear him half the time. He feels like he’s circumnavigating the heart of the issue and Yamamoto is too clueless or too clever to let him get there. If he knew the other man well, it was a skilled combination of both and that pisses him off.
“I don’t let anyone mess with me. If you’re not going to tell me why you’re doing all this ridiculous shit even though you hate assassination missions then why am I fucking here?” Squalo didn’t come here for a heart to heart with kissy faces and wine, he came here to talk with the fucking idiot and squeeze out the reason for Yamamoto’s off behavior. Squalo hated being lied to even more than being denied something he’d asked for.
Amber eyes drift off to the side, looking at an invisibly fixed point on the carpet as if in thought before flicking back to confront an angry gaze. Creases bunch around his eyes as a regretful, self-directed smile accents the apology he’s about to make. “I’m sorry. If you’d like I can take up less of the roster, it’s just that Tsuna let me choose first so I didn’t think about it.”
The uneasy pressure that’s been mounting during the last few weeks can’t be dodged. Squalo’s past the point of consolation, he’d been trying to be nice. After that incident with Gokudera in the hall he’d asked and shouted at the rain guardian for possible answers only to get vague replies. He’d been circumventing all of Yamamoto’s stupid blocks, and he’d been considerate, going to his dumb friends and Squalo was fed up with playing this all out on Yamamoto’s whims. What the fuck did he have to do to get this imbecile to talk?! He was never going to beg for an explanation and why was it so hard to get anything straight out of him anymore?
“Stop missing the point on purpose. Do you think I’m stupid? That I can’t figure it out? Fuck you!”
The table almost falls over at the splintering kick, wine glasses rattling and falling over as food from their plates tumbles to the floor. In one smooth, hasty movement Squalo is standing up and stalking out the door, making his noisy exit as the other restaurant goers shift out of the way and watch in gawking amazement.
Yamamoto’s hand drifts back to the table, eyes looking mournfully at his ruined plate. He sat for a while, staring at the shine of congealing food mixed unevenly with dark red wine, before pushing himself up to get the check. He still had something to do tomorrow, after all.
-0-
It doesn’t matter how many times he does it, it’s still the same. It’s kind of funny to him that no matter how many people he rips open, no matter who they are, they all look the same. Coils of shiny flesh and fountains of blood can only be scrambled so many times before it makes him sick, sick to his stomach to know that everyone is the same, that he’s the one who cut them down into clones of one another.
The hair is spread out thinly, long blonde strands curling into a hug around the dead woman’s face. Yamamoto toes her side with his foot and can only feel the inert mass push itself sluggish against his own movements. He doesn’t get it anymore, he doesn’t know the point, why he’s even doing this. Why can’t he stop himself? Was this really what he was supposed to be doing? It hadn’t bothered him before but suddenly Squalo’s hard, tense eyes as he tried to pry this out of him flashed into his head.
Along the glittering lights of a warm lit restaurant and the harsh, lean face that screamed at him to answer, Yamamoto had shut down his mind and longed for that connection. What was he supposed to say? The words, the thoughts, just spilled from him, a slip in thinking that somehow, was the root of all his problems. His mental pauses are things that are uncontrollable and Squalo- he only wants to best in him for Squalo and the only way was to shunt what was meaningless to the other swordsman aside. How was he going to explain this when he didn’t know if he would even remember it when he left this site, today?
Yamamoto can only hold his core together for so long under the pressure of his own guilt.
-0-
Even with the missions slowly trickling back to the Varia, everyone at the mansion was on tenterhooks. The remaining guards at the palazzo assiduously avoid Squalo all week. He’d yelled about the curtains being shut incorrectly. The flicker of an eye was blown into full inattention, a hand in the pocket became carelessness and every detail erupted into a grievous mistake. Beaten, thrown out into the forest, cut up and bruised, the lower level subordinates drew lots now to avoid duty when Squalo was at the house and tried not to look into the hard, tense set of his eyes.
Levi, Fran, and Lussuria left all the pending missions to Belphagor and Squalo. They teased him mildly about his PMS which had only further enraged him, escalating into full out deadly fights between him and the other Varia members. Every demolition job handed to him he goes wild, moving about and slashing everything in its path at full power, no matter the skills of his opponents. He needs to unleash something before he explodes and whenever the edge of his blade touches the enemies’ skin and splits open their secrets for all to see, Squalo can only think of one other man, doing the same thing, in some other corner of Italy at a different time.
This, this trail of guts and gore that was somehow voluntary, it undercut everything he knew about Yamamoto and he was confused, which pissed him off because it means Squalo cared enough to be confused. This unwelcome revelation was only one more weight to the piling discontent inside him, and soon enough not even those assassinations were enough to slake him.
“Trash like you isn’t even worth wasting these bottles on.”
Squalo tried to stay as still as he could, despite the pent up screams he was choking down after two bullets grazed by his head right after he stepped into the study to report.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON I JUST STEPPED IN HERE, ARE YOU MORE DRUNK THAN USUAL?!”
Another one nearly hits his eye and smashes through the oak doors behind him, opening up a hole into the hallway.
“Stay out of my sight you useless piece of garbage. I don’t know why you’re like this and I don’t care but if you keep on fucking over our security detail I will come and shoot you down, got it?”
Squalo drops the stack of surveillance videos straight on the boss’s desk where his feet propped up in lazy stance. He has no clue what the hell the boss is talking about.
“Our security detail are getting lazy. They’re never around and-”
The glass in Xanxus' hand shatters all over the floor and whiskey drips down onto the carpet as the broken shards stab into his hand.
“Don’t talk back to me. Whatever the hell is wrong with you, fix it. Those shitty subordinates are taking bets to avoid you whenever you’re in the mansion so until this is fixed, stay away from the fucking mansion.”
Squalo stalks out the door, looking back at his furious boss and for one moment, he loathes Yamamoto so much he wants to crush the man for making this happen.
-0-
When he breaks down the study door Tsunayoshi simply cowers in his seat while Squalo slams down the manila folder onto his desk. The papers spill out everywhere and for he was going to get answers, it didn’t matter that this was the Tenth who defeated the boss.
“What the fuck is going on? You tell me, you’re the one who saw him before these rosters started being depleted.”
Tsuna is frozen wide eyed before slowly, with one hand glued at the edge of his desk, he takes up the folder and flips through. With each second he reads the small trembling in his limbs calms down. Eventually the Tenth looks up at him, and that incapable looks becomes tired. Tsuna sighs and clutches his sleeve as he tries to find the words.
“I didn’t know about this. After I told him I kept a watch on Yamamoto but everything he was doing was fine-”
Squalo tries to keep himself in check, the curiosity and build up of frustration almost makes him scream again his first question. The Tenth seems to sense the tension in the air so he tries to explain, even though really Tsuna shouldn’t be the one explaining it at all to Squalo. Sometimes he really wonders if Yamamoto is the most honest and open out of all of them.
“Three weeks ago we found out who Tsuyoshi’s killer was. By that time though, he was already dead. Yamamoto’d killed him in an infiltration mission gone wrong with Chrome a long time ago. He didn’t know it was even him.”
-0-
There’s more of them, this time. Yamamoto had purposely tripped the alarm and now while they were on alert, it was harder for him to take them down. His fingers are gripped tight and numb around the hilt as he swings so rapidly to counter the bullets shot at him, Yamamoto can barely tell his hand is moving. Black and blue and flashes of red are a blur, he can only focus one man at a time as they poured out en mass.
Throwing himself across the concrete floor, dodging the mess of shots and cutting down their guns with the force of his flame, everything around Yamamoto is speeding up. His katana cleaves faster and faster, lodging only for a second in bone and flesh, and no matter how deep the cut the slide free is quick. It’s hysterical, everything around him collides and he can’t tell now if the enemies are running into him or he’s running into them or what direction they’re coming from. The walls are stained with splashes of blood and holes, his body is keyed up so far he can’t tell if he’s moving at all. The sounds of shouting and bangs of guns are disconnected and put of synch with every movement Yamamoto makes and his body simply moves on it’s own.
His arm goes out to fan out a sheet of flame to block the loud shots he heard coming from the corner, and in that instance a third man cuts up close, right into his side. Twisting back his shoulder he doesn’t even see the man’s face as a gleam of a knife whirling up to his eye an inch away doesn’t faze him as he simply tilts in closer and swipes up his sword in one ripping motioned cut. The gash drips like crazy on his chin and floods his shirt black with the stain of blood, the knife clatters to the floor from the slumped body against him and when Yamamoto looks around at everyone in the room, they’re all lying on the floor.
All of a sudden things start pouring into him. The loud, harsh pants echo abrasive and rough in his ears. There’s a deep throbbing heat where his chin was sliced, and a wave of dark, hysterical fervor still lapping in his head. The immediacy of everything is grinded to a halt and he’s stiff. He can’t see the gray walls or the dull beams of the scopes scattered about him on the floor. His eyes are wide and frozen still, they can only focus on that phantom point, aimed straight at his head of a silver knife that almost killed him.
Yamamoto’s arm is trembling, but for a long time he doesn’t notice.
-0-
As soon as the door opens Squalo looks at him and punches him in the eye. Yamamoto braces his arms out behind him at the impact, head snapping back as his vision blurs and a thin crack on his eyebrow starts slowly seeping down blood. A tense, awkward laugh tumbles out his lips and Yamamoto can’t bring himself to turn that burning defeat in his eyes into the cheerfulness that came so easily before.
“Heh, I guess I deserved that.”
Squalo is still as a pillar of salt, white and glittering with the expression of a blank tundra gathering up it’s will to freeze.
“You aren’t supposed to get hit. I know the missions and if you wanted to you didn’t even have to let them know you were coming. WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT CUT NO ONE SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN THAT CLOSE TO YOUR HEAD!”
Yamamoto’s arm clutches at the open door frame, one hand clawing his eye as the red line from his brow runs thinly to the gauze covering his chin. He still can’t look Squalo in the eye. How were words so hard to form when he so easily poured himself out to everyone before?
“You aren’t the best person to talk to this about.”
Dead silence rings around them. He hears the shift of cloth as Squalo, in one motion, jerks him inside the tiny back foyer. Yamamoto stumbles inside, hitting the opposing wall with his hands from the force of the pull. Air whirs by as Squalo spins around to stare at the odd, pathetic man who seems so unconfident he might as well be another being entirely.
“You’re right I’m not the fucking best to sob your damn eyes on. That’s why I already know, brat. Don’t need to tell me a damn thing, I found it on my own because it was necessary, but you! Your stupid brain can’t even dish out this shit when clearly you can’t handle it!”
“I thought I was over it. It was a long time ago…I’d already, I’m still- there’s no more dreaming about it every night. I don’t think everyday about it no matter what I’m doing. Not anymore.”
He stares down at the wooden floor, the odd pinch in his own voice creating this unstoppable flood in his own head. Somehow, Yamamoto can’t block the vague, aching pain that he hadn’t felt in years.
“Obviously you weren’t. It was about revenge, and whether you liked it or not, you got it.”
“I didn’t. It was a slip on a mission. A fucking slip and I just cut him down like I did everything else, one thing less on a list. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know.”
He lifts his head up to look at the utter distain that altered Squalo’s normal loose stance to a stiffened board, his face from that oblique tolerance reserved just for him into cragged lines of disgust. Yamamoto knows that Squalo was the absolute worst person to say this to but he was here, and no one else could pry it out of him because as much as he loved Tsuna, the last thing he wanted to do was to show his friend this side of him.
The difference between Squalo and him was so thin, but also great. The assassin had no morals in killing, it was a job he enjoyed and reveled in. For Yamamoto to mutely seek salvation from this man was like squeezing blood from a rock.
“You aren’t a kid anymore. You want me to tell you to stop doing this shit? You want me to tell you you were wrong? Stop being such a child and figure it out yourself. You can’t go back and kill thirty people to try and undo one hit. I’m not going to choose for you what way you should go. Either be one way or the other, you can’t have everything in the world be easy for you.”
It was his curse, or blessing, as a natural killer. Yamamoto’d heard it so many times in his life from so many different lips, in either praise or denial, but he feels like until this moment he didn’t realize what it’d meant. All those times and all those people who fell under him…in those moments he never felt regret, he never held grudges against them as they attacked. It was a state of mind unique to him and Yamamoto had come to the brink, yesterday, of breaking his one gift. That desperation flooding his core, that cultivated pain inside him, it rose up and moved his arms and legs for him as he destroyed everything around with a clear mind full of need. A relish that was more personal and cumbersome than Squalo’s raging tinted his vision and for a second, he didn’t care about who it was as long as the feeling kept surging in his veins.
Squalo feels a fist clutch the front of his buttoned shirt, Yamamoto’s knuckles white and holding on so hard the shaking in the arm feels still. The guardian’s voice comes out tired and small as his face, hidden in the crook of Squalo’s neck, rasps out a breath he'd been holding in for too long.
“I just came to explain it to you. After yesterday I don’t deserve to take those missions anymore. Heh, I tried to be like you and it was too hard for me to change. Don’t be angry at me…I just thought how much easier it would have been to live like you, at that time. I could have forgiven myself if I was angry when I did it.”
Quietly, a hand raises to pat the younger man on the head. Squalo stares out at the tiring yellow of an afternoon sun through the open doorway.
“You aren’t suited to be like me. I would have gotten bored of you long ago if you were my clone.”
A silent rumble shakes Squalo’s frame as pressed next to him, Yamamoto gives a silent, weary laugh.
“Dad, he would’ve wanted me to stay the same, right?”
Squalo wasn’t prone to comfort and coddling. He was the exact opposite of what the other man needed and there was no room in him for empty affection, but even so he lies and gives him the words Yamamoto wants to hear.
“Even if it breaks you in half, you shouldn’t change.”
Part XIV.
Notes: The holes in Trajan’s column (a Roman artifact) are actually from a real mafia shoot out involving the Frangipani family.
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Bohemian Men
15. Squalo is an artist who passes or meets Yamamoto as an assassin.
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As soon as the bell rung at “Bella Vita” and the door opened with one forceful, loud swing, Squalo rushed into the store. Hair flying, pants still dirty, and shirt torn in four different places, he brusquely made his way to the back.
At the counter the man at the register isn’t even fazed as he continues to avidly watch the news, eyes glued to the line of grainy faces arranged on the screen. The newscaster’s voice drones on unexcitedly about the numerous evacuations made in hotels and piazzas in the city after breakouts of violence. A voice shouts deafeningly from the back, long after the trail of silver hair left the clerk’s sight.
“The Vongola?! I don’t even want to hear about those fucking bastards. Turn that thing down, Bel!”
With his chin still resting on his hand, elbow propped on the wooden counter, Bel simply tunes it down two notches on the screen, not bothering to comply more than that.
“Eh? It’s interesting news. There’s been a shoot out in the street! They say it’s the escalating fight between the Millefiore and the Vongola heads, and they have their best assassins ready to expose themselves for just one chance at victory in the confrontation.”
Rattles of things being thrown aside and others being pushed on metal shelves ring through the tiny paint shop, Squalo’s impatience manifesting itself in disordered products and knocked over inventory. When he finally finds the last thing he needs, he drops a collection of paints in front of the younger man, digging in a splattered pocket for his wallet.
Bel lazily rings them up, fishing out a plastic bag as he watches the one foot television while taking care of his most moody customer.
“Fucking mafia, they’re an affront to Italy. I don’t care if they shoot each other’s skulls open, but out in Rome is despicable. Those trash don’t appreciate anything. This is going to be another Frangipani incident and that time Trajan’s Column ended up with permanent bullet holes the size of oranges.”
“Artifacts kept out into the open should be expected to be damaged. If they wanted to preserve it they should have taken it to a museum.”
He can’t help the noise of utter disgust that crawls out of his throat. “Unappreciative brat. What the hell is wrong with Italy nowadays? Your fucking culture’s here and all you want to do is glaze your eyes over watching trash news about trash mafiosos.” Not that it surprised him, anything remotely hinting of gore and bloodshed would immediately draw Bel’s attention like the morbid freak he was.
A wave of the hand dismisses the artist who now has his products packed in a bag. “Ciao, see you next month.”
Squalo kicks open the door, bell dinging twice from the sheer force of the blow.
“See ya later.”
-0-
The one thing he didn’t expect when he got back was the vague form of a man standing inside the front display window of the gallery. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone here today, Squalo swore he locked up the studio when he went to the store and Oregano wasn’t on the schedule so she couldn’t have let him in.
He bangs open the foyer door and stalks inside, boots clunking in reverberating echoes in the mostly empty space.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing in here? We’re closed today.”
The suit turns around and Squalo is greeted by a startled face, the man’s younger features pinching into a sheepish look, not at all threatened by his presence.
“I’m sorry, the door was open so I thought it was ok to come inside.”
Squalo abruptly drops the plastic bags in his hand on the pristine wood floors, arm shooting out to point to the entrance he just came in.
“Well it’s not so there’s the door. Come back when we’re actually open.” The older man doesn’t even consider that this stranger might be a potential client, not diluting his normally harsh personality. This was why Xanxus and Oregano forced him to stay behind the scenes all the time (NOT because he was loud!), but if someone wasn’t here when they shouldn’t, clogging up his space, he wasn’t going to make exceptions.
“Ah, sorry again. I didn’t have any other chance to come so I walked in.” The stranger scratches the back of his head in an anxious gesture while his body dips in apologetic tone. His head turns to look at the large scale molded canvas tacked to the back display wall.
“I was just really impressed by that mural size work.”
Squalo scowls as he looks the suit up and down, pretty sure that the business man didn’t know a Rothko from a Benjamin Moore paint sample. The crisp shoes, the straight edge of his spine and the carefully folded pocket square were tell-tale signs of a pretender. Squalo suddenly feels the need to be entirely contrary to this irritating man that bursts into innocent artist’s studios on closing days and disrupted people’s schedules.
“There’s nothing impressive about it. Fucking paint on canvas, any man can do it.”
An arm drops as the man turns away from the back wall to look at him, the unnervingly warm light in his eye seeming to pierce through Squalo’s argumentative comments. The odd, close aura the man had was now focused on the canvas he’d tacked up, the huge work comprising almost the entire east wall of the studio.
“I don’t know, despite the large violent strokes, it’s very controlled. You make such straight lines; it only looks out of control because you want it to.”
Squalo stands back, not to look at this large scale canvas, but at the simple man who, despite his rigid attire, seemed to have a glaringly good intuition.
“It’s not art if it isn’t calculated. If an elephant splashed paint on a piece of paper it isn’t the same if I did it. I will not be a fucking elephant for some jack-off who wants to impress people.”
Yamamoto laughs at the comparison. “You have surprising principles for a man who still sells his work. Isn’t that the same?”
A snarl erupts from the older man’s face, his hands gripping the edges of his jeans as the cold gleam in his eye widens at the accusation. “I’ll over charge and mark up whatever the hell I want, I’m popular and I want money, that’s nothing new in the world. But no one, no one can tell me what to do. If it’s fucking genius then they better be able to pay for it because Superbi Squalo is not cheap.”
Yamamoto feels like he understands, now, where this cutting energy comes from in the painting. He had come inside on a whim, but once he’d seen that piece swallowing the entire room, he was forced to pause. Yamamoto’s pretty sure he’d pay whatever Squalo asked, for a slice of that vicious aspiration that colored the artist’s face right now. Looking at the stark colorless wall, bars of hasty, thick lines slashing across the faded, worn canvas, Yamamoto feels something sink into him from the message in the piece.
“I don’t think anything I’ve seen here today feels cheap at all.”
Squalo’s off-put by the sincere smile that creases the stranger’s eyes into soft crescents. Usually people are off-put by the way he speaks about anything, but the younger man doesn’t seem to be offended.
“It’s good that you like to live. Money, things, people, they’re all necessary to stay alive. I think it’s admirable.”
The artist shifts uneasily on his feet, somehow made uncomfortable by the warmth residing in the other man’s tone. Instead, he walks over to the sleek counter where the receptionist usually sat and plucked out at card from a clear plastic holder. Squalo flicks it to the businessman across from him, scowling.
“It’s more admirable if you buy it and hang it on the wall.”
There’s a pause as Yamamoto takes the card by the fingertips, their hands connecting for a brief moment through the slim paper wedged between them.
“Superbi Squalo, huh? Maybe I’ll come back sometime.”
He leaves without ceremony, Squalo left to watch a smooth exit standing by his dropped paints. When he finally turns to grab his bag from the floor there’s a small, dotted trail leading from where the stranger stood to the open glass doors. He bends in close, and from the swipe of his finger he rubs out the deep red of fresh blood.
Later that night, Squalo sees that man’s face on the news, and despite his initial dislike, wonder’s if the man will be able to come back and make a bid.
Part XV.
Notes: The Carabinieri that Squalo mentions are an armed, military police force in Italy. One of the branches, the ROS (Raggruppamento Operative Speciale), deals specifically with organized crimes and things like drug trafficking arms smuggling. They do include undercover operations as one of their investigative tactics, so I’m not just making this up.
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Cops and Robbers
2. Yamamoto is a police detective and Squalo is a don’s second hand man. No swords, just guns.
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“…now. No, no…already moved all the relevant…ok. I can keep…here.”
Squalo pushes open the dully painted door despite the one sided conversation that floated out from the enclosed room. Inside, a suited back is turned towards the battered but expensive coffee maker sitting on the counter in the room. The upper pantry was utilized by all the members who had to stay on for late nights and red-eye shifts. Yamamoto had been raking up the long days these past few weeks so Squalo wasn’t surprised to see him brewing up a cup and using the time alone to chat on the phone.
At the sound of the entrance creaking open the younger man turns around, raising a hand minutely in greeting, gesturing that he was going to wrap up his conversation.
“Yeah, it’s ok. Just don’t forget, I don’t want you to leave anything behind like last time. Alright. Bye.”
A snap sounds out in the room as Yamamoto sighs and closes his phone, slipping it into his pant’s pocket to gather up the plastic stirrer on the table and his packet of sugar.
“Can’t fucking believe you’re here again.”
A sheepish smile is the only response as he rips open the sugar packet. “You say that like you’re not here just as long and just as often. I guess I shouldn’t be complaining, after all if this goes through everyone will be rolling in it.”
He doesn’t even jerk at the sound of the chair in Squalo’s way being kicked across the room, the older assassin stalking up to the counter and leaning on it, flopping his elbows to either side of him as he stares up distastefully into the ceiling. Yamamoto is used to the other man’s abruptness by now.
“Bastard boss is overworking us because he knows everyone wants this deal to go through and it’s not like we get an hourly wage. Bet you’re biting at the bit for more money to get the rest of that down payment for your new apartment.”
“Haha, you heard that?” Yamamoto sips at his coffee again, warming his hands on the hot ceramic. He supposed it was obvious what the conversation was about, after he’d mentioned it to Squalo last week.
“It’ll be nice to be in the clear once this is over and me and Haru get settled into the new place.”
Squalo pushes himself up and, grabbing another cup on the metal rack, tosses it to his fellow family member.
“I don’t want to hear you harp any more on your stupid broad, I hear enough of it every week. Just get me a cup, I’m parched and you’re the errand boy around here.”
Yamamoto turns around, laughing as he gets the pot and starts pouring it in the mug. He hears Squalo shifting around, pressing up next to him trying to rummage through the cupboards for the dry creamer. When he turns to tell him they’re on the right side, there’s a gun an inch away from his head. His eyes go wide and his muscles cramp, stiffening in shock as he wills himself not to panic.
“W-wha-”
“Drop the fucking act, besides the fact that ‘Haru’ and you live in an abandoned cleaners shop, how you got your nose all up into this weapons deal these past few months so easily clued me in, Carabinieri.”
“I don’t know wha-”
Squalo doesn’t even hesitate as he grinds his gun in closer to the traitor’s temple, finger about to shoot his gun without hesitation.
The rigid press of gunmetal against his back is what stops him from squeezing that thin sheeted trigger. Yamamoto doesn’t move his hand from the coffee cup on the counter, he knows for a fact that his gun is aimed straight at Squalo’s heart even from behind, well versed in the deadly vocabulary of vital hits. When they both acknowledge the end game check, Yamamoto slowly turns his head from the coffee maker and looks into the assassin’s eyes, hand lifting from the warm cup to drop quietly by his side.
Slowly, a small, vicious smile paints its way across Squalo’s lips, pearl white teeth peeking out from a thin cut of lips as if ready to free the mocking laughter within.
“I could tell by that cold, careless way you held your gun that you’d killed someone before. Like you’re not afraid to take someone’s life if you had to- just rip it out from them if they get in the way and shoot them dead. You’ve got a soul of a killer, even on the other side.”
The dead on gleam in Yamamoto’s eyes isn’t fazed, he knows exactly what kind of game is being played and those words sprouted from this vicious, mindless killer don’t thrill him, not even with the cold metal pressed right against his temple. He feels nothing in his veins but supreme calm. Yamamoto is not a man to fear something when it’s staring him straight in the eye.
“I’m not the same. You think you see something similar in me to you, but you and I are two completely different sides. There’s no purpose for you, there’s no reason beyond money and orders, and loyalty to a man without any morals or reason behind his actions is not loyalty to anything but your own selfishness.”
“Don’t play this fucking game. Semantics is all you vermin ROS dogs ever know. Allowing exceptions for death and playing at nice, what’s the difference if in the end there’s one dead body for money, and one dead body for the job? You might as well be an assassin for all you played the part.”
The grind against his temple is insistent; Yamamoto stays stock still and simply edges his gun closer into Squalo’s spine as the other man leans in close, ends of his mouth tugging wider as the long hair drifts forward and brushes into the detective’s sleeve.
“Don’t tell me blood doesn’t burst into your heart faster when someone slips the edge and a bullet flies near your face, don’t tell me your hand doesn’t itch for the trigger and you can’t hear anything but the pulse inside you ripping into your skull, that your body isn’t ready to split into a thousand pieces if it doesn’t move, right now.”
It’s hard to deny the theme being drilled into his bones when Squalo is inches away from him, when they’re pressed this close and they’re about to blow each other’s brains out and Yamamoto for all his famed calm in infiltration, can’t help but feel the press of adrenaline spiking up in his vessels in a fake high. Despite this, he smiles with eyes clear and painless as he leans into the dig of metal at his temple, lowly mouthing the words that were at the core of him.
“See, I’m not a person who can live without motivation. One fight at a time, Squalo, is all you can handle. That’s pretty pathetic, that the only time you’re going to live is those few minutes you get to fight. I’m living every day of my life just fine. Cheap thrills can’t move me.”
They can hear the sounds now, of people banging up the stairs and random shouts. Feet moving in unison and shots ringing out in the air around them come muffled to their ears from the floors below. The noises rise in crescendo as the heavily armored detail gets closer to this hidden, vacuum filled space where two men are paused at a stand-still. They both know that it’s going to be close, this time. This near Yamamoto, Squalo can hear the fast pitch of soft breathing as thud by thud, the contingent of faceless men fly nearer to their space.
“Is it a cheap thrill? I’m hearing different, dog. It’s end game- who’s going to take out who first?”
A laugh escapes the detective’s lips despite the drama of this last meeting, it bubbles out of him unwarranted and Yamamoto can’t help the alert shine in his eyes as he stares death in the face. “I don’t know, I don’t think either of us are going to win.”
Bangs ring out in deafening tones as the door arches centimeter by centimeter inward, the force of a group trying to tear it down warping the frame. Neither of them knows who it is, the Carabinieri or the mafiosos, and for a split second, both of them tilt their eyes to stare at the door that seals their fate.
Darkly dressed men burst inward wearing flak jackets marked with the ROS acronym on the back, flooding the room and swinging the tips of their Beretta assault rifles at the center where Squalo and Yamamoto were pressed in stalemate.
“Step away from Officer Yamamoto, now!”
There’s nothing but a smile in the detective’s face of supreme confidence as Squalo, with a small lift in the corner of his lips, acknowledges the end game. It was as if there was no doubt in the detective’s mind that the unpredictable would fall to his side. The clack of a gun being dropped from the assassin’s hand is all the signal the officers need before swarming on Squalo and forcing him down to the ground, where he still, with cold unrepentant eyes, stares Yamamoto in the face.
Even hours after the take down concluded, Yamamoto could still feel the blood pumping fast as the wind in his veins. If anything, the mafioso sliced the difference thinner than it was before.
Part XVI.
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THIS IS ABOUT TENNIS
11. Yamamoto and Squalo play tennis with or against each other in middle school. (Guess the fandom rip off!)
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“Haha, so um…how about after practice we go out to eat or something, senpai?”
Squalo hates all his kouhai, people younger than him were weaker, more uncool, had bad skills in tennis, and Squalo didn’t have the patience for that kind of trash. This one was more clingy than usual. Couldn’t the kid tell that he was busy playing a fucking match?
The hard swing at his opponent returned the ball twice as fast as normal, a slice giving the ball quite the velocity as Squalo sprints to the far corner to catch it, arm stretching out in a long, sinuous line to hit it in his racket’s sweet spot. The ongoing rally ends quickly when the ball speeds to the left corner in an impossible to return rebound. A hard, mocking grin spreads on Squalo’s face as he breathes in harsh, panted breaths while sweat drips from every inch of his body.
Showed fucking Levi he was ten times the player that suck up was.
His hand automatically snatches the towel and water bottle extended to him, flopping back onto the bench as he tilts his head, immediately recognizing the face that gave him his things.
“That was an amazing return, senpai.”
Squalo almost chucks the towel across his face back just because it was the younger kid who gave it to him.
“Are you a fucking stalker or what?”
“Haha, but we’re on the same team! You guys train up the underclassmen all the time. It’s natural to want to do something after the club, right?”
“That’s because that bastard Xanxus said he doesn’t want to graduate and leave his tennis club to crumble like loser trash. It’s NOT because I feel responsible for you little shits!”
Yamamoto rubs his arm, wincing as he smiled. The pains from the five hundred swing reps they had to do today were starting to settle in. Their current captain was a really Spartan man despite how much he lounged around on the bench yelling about how lazy trash should practice harder while he sipped his Pocari, though he shouldn’t complain considering how much harder Tsuna had it with their coach Reborn.
“But that’s what a good captain wants, right? I’m glad you care so much about the team.”
Squalo was not about to explain to him the pull-pull and more fucking pull dynamics of his and Xanxus’ relationship. The captain wanted something done, the captain would punch his face in as many times as it took to make Squalo do something he loathes.
“Whatever.” The vice-captain thrust back the now empty bottle into Yamamoto’s gut, who doubles over from the force and tries not to wince too hard but failed.
“Get me some more water.”
As Yamamoto turned around to fill it at the fountain, that abrasive, friendly smile came back.
“Sure thing!”
-0-
Gokudera took one look at the way Yamamoto was rubbing his eye and scowled.
“I don’t know why you keep going back to that fucking sadist. It’s not like he’s actually showing you anything.”
Yamamoto laughs, switching out his lunch for a juice box as he swings his feet on the bench. The gauze taped over his eye was kind of itchy, but the throbbing pain from yesterday had died down a lot, and really Shamal-sensei had said it was a superficial cut and that it didn’t need to be treated.
“It’s not that bad, Gokudera. It doesn’t hurt at all now and Squalo-senpai said he was sorry after the accident.”
His best friend gives another one of his patented scoffs, toeing his racket bag on the ground. “That’s cause you have the sensitivity of a cockroach and our senpai,” he spits out, “don’t have a fucking threshold. He only apologized after coach Reborn shot the ball machine at him for two hours.”
It wasn’t like Yamamoto to hold a grudge, especially after that spectacular practice match. Squalo and him had generated a buzz all through practice, Reborn even stopping to watch them drag out each set to the full limit of time. It was nice that Gokudera was concerned about him, though.
“I dunno, I think it was fun, even after I was hit in the eye.”
Gokudera glances at him as Yamamoto stares out at the green pith of the court, a rare serious and fervent shine in his eyes while he watches a doubles team practice under the sun. A day after the accident and the idiot isn’t resting but comes out with Gokudera for their weekly meeting at the park like nothing happened.
“Whatever. Tennis freak.”
Yamamoto laughs, getting up and blocking the bright sparkle of the sun with his hand. “I know you’re one too. I saw how hard you were working to defeat Bel-senpai’s buggy whip shot.”
Tsuna had been sitting on the side watching them, trying to gulp in the world’s supply of air after Xanxus had a match with him just after Reborn made him do sixty laps around the courts.
The faint blush in Gokudera’s cheeks can’t be explained away by exertion this time. “Well yeah, i-if Tsuna is going to be captain next year I have to be twice as strong to be vice-captain.”
Stretching out his back, Yamamoto looks down at his friend who gathered up his racket to start on their match. “Haha, you can be his other vice-captain.”
“What?! I’m going to be Tsuna’s only vice-captain, and we’re going to take him to nationals! He can’t count on a stupid guy who lets loud mouths injure him on the courts all the time!”
The almost affectionate way Yamamoto touches the gauze on his face reinforces Gokudera’s insight on his friend’s sanity.
“He’s not all that bad. His tennis- it’s really electrifying. Guess I just got caught up in it.”
An elbow to his side jerks Yamamoto’s stance. “You better be a good opponent this time, even with your stupid eye. I need to practice up for regionals.”
He smiles at the subtle prompt to get better and sharpen his skills.
“Let’s play.”
-0-
The stupid kid was up and about pestering him perfectly fine after four days of recovery. Squalo thought that Yamamoto’s eye injury would have curbed his enthusiasm but if anything, the kid seemed to be in high spirits, running around fetching the balls like it was a game instead of menial labor.
“Watching your admirer huh? Is this finally requited love?~”
Squalo shoves Lussuria’s face into the chain links without even turning his head.
“Shut the fuck up you okama wanna be. Stop talking about disgusting things, the kid’s just being more hyper than usual and it’s annoying.”
Face smashing against the wires, the sunglasses always present on Lussuria’s face skew as he leans in to watch their kouhai do warm ups on the practice court.
“It really must be love, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get so serious about tennis with anyone before. You really let loose that time without meaning to.”
Automatically Squalo’s mind winds back to that practice set where for once, his muscles burned with the hard ache that came from stretching himself to the limit. He’d dominated in the first three sets but that kid, he really had some amazing instincts in him. Even after Squalo had whipped a power serve that should have numbed the kid’s arm for a good while, he kept going. The way Yamamoto caught that high lob and faked his smash into a drop-shot…something switched on in Squalo. He’d been pissed off at the turn in the game, outsmarted by an underclassman, excited and agitated. For a whole hour he had thought of nothing else but tennis.
His senses had sharpened, eyes catching every twist of Yamamoto’s arm, the trajectory of the ball flying in the air, the ticks in his muscles from the short sprints across the court magnified by ten, and the hard itch of his hair tie on his neck filtered through in twenty twenty clarity. The beat of the sun and the beat of his shoes against the court was all that mattered and that kid, with the way he was totally dedicated to the game, was completely undeniable.
“It was fucking tennis, Lussuria. That brat beat me and it was fucking great tennis.”
Lussuria smiles. He knows how Squalo feels; after all, their underclassman power player had set off that same spark. “It’s going to be a good team next year, don’t you think?”
Despite the fondness that colored his tone earlier, a hard, sharp grin cuts across Squalo’s face.
“Those little shits better be prepared, I’m going to beat them down to a bloody pulp with practice. Their eyes’ll ring with tennis balls their backs will hurt so much they can’t get up in the morning and whenever they sweat Gatorade better pour out from their arm pits or else I’ll be on them like a mother fucking rainstorm.”
Lussuria smiles too, eyes gazing across at the equally enthusiastic Ryohei feeding the ball machines. He really doesn’t know how their kouhai are going to survive Xanxus’ and their expectations for next year.
-0-
Squalo berated himself for even remotely thinking the stupid brat was halfway decent. After their recent practice match, where Yamamoto had somehow managed to copy his specialty numbing serve, however weakly, Squalo had been in a relatively mellow mood. His kouhai stalked up to him as usual and tossed him his towel and bottle, asking him again this time to go eat somewhere after club activities. Looking up at the warm, expectant face, Squalo’s mouth opened and answered on its own.
What the hell had possessed him to say ok to Yamamoto’s stupid request?
“Why are we in a McDonald’s?”
“It’s the only place closest to where me and you live, right? I don’t get to eat out a lot.”
There’s nothing else to do but take a bite out of his hamburger. Maybe if he eats fast enough they can leave soon and Squalo won’t have to stand being in this awkward situation for any longer the necessary. What the hell were they supposed to talk about? He didn’t care and Yamamoto was a bumbling clueless idiot like he always was.
“Eat your food and let’s split.”
The younger kid takes a sip of his drink, beaming like he hadn’t just rudely told him he was a nuisance.
“Ok. But let’s talk while we eat. How did you learn that awesome serve, senpai?”
“I went around the street courts and challenged every guy I saw and stole all their skills until that stupid Tyr. After he defeated me I came up with my new serve and beat the shit out of him.”
Ahhh, those were the good old days, before Xanxus was snatched up by coach Reborn and they did whatever the hell they wanted, terrorizing the other middle schoolers around them. Squalo was a tennis genius and if he got bored he could easily find opponents to smash into the court, but now they were regulated. If anything, he should be surprised at how much Yamamoto had picked up in such a short time, the kid had copied his serve pretty well for the first time. He asks the question that’d been working up in his head the past few weeks.
“What about you? You were never this motivated before. I saw you last year with the other snots and your skills were pathetic. How did you improve so much?”
“I don’t know, whenever I face you it all just comes pouring out of me. I can’t help myself, I couldn’t disappoint you. I want to be stronger, I want to return everything you throw at me and more, I want to laugh because it’s the most fun I’ve ever had. You’re a really great senpai, I can’t help but want to be better around you.”
The words came out on their own to himself. “Are we talking about tennis?”
“I don’t know, are we talking about tennis?”
There’s a transparent look to his kouhai’s eyes that invited him to read the obvious message beneath the kid’s words, and Squalo can’t stop staring at him. What the fuck was going on if it wasn’t tennis? He didn’t care and he didn’t want to know, but somehow Yamamoto makes him almost acknowledge the other meaning in their conversation. That kid had a habit of making Squalo pay attention no matter how much he didn’t want to.
A hand jabs out with a french fry to emphasize his point. “It doesn’t matter, tennis or not you’re still the most annoying person I know.”
“Haha, I’m glad you think I’m memorable.”
Yamamoto snatches him by the wrist, and with that breezy smile he always had at practice despite the torn muscles and fatigue, eats the fry perched between Squalo’s frozen fingers.
“I’ll come and watch your matches in high school after graduation. Maybe we can come out again and celebrate your wins, sometime.”
The laugh that bursts out at this kid’s audaciousness is harsh and rough and everything Squalo is in tennis and life. “You better pay me for those fries next time.”
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So that's it! Soon I'm going to run out of ideas for these thirty-six. I'm almost through all the ones I have now. I still need like, nine more storylines. I'm afraid my writing's degenerating each passing week lol. The first story was really choppily pieced together >_< Hopefully I can keep this up!
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Set 5 here