Title: More Than Victory
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Slice of Life, Character Study
Pairing: S80-ish, Varia crack interaction, Tsuna and Gokudera.
Summary: Squalo sends Yamamoto tapes of the hundred and one battles securing his title as the Sword Emperor, but it takes more than victory to rip him away from a life-long goal.
When Yamamoto jogs into his house, baseball helmet still on as he grins and sweats, he trips on the threshold of the front door. Next to his smashed face is a brown wrapped package on the floor, and from around the corner of the wall he hears his dad's voice yell to him.
"Takeshi! I made some maki rolls for you! Come into the kitchen after you shower."
"Okay!" Yamamoto swipes up the package, the bold black lines of marker denoting his name in crooked kanji. Jogging up the stairs, he takes off his hat and tucks it and the brown parcel under his arm, throwing them both haphazard onto his bed as he enters his room. He peels off his dirt caked uniform quickly with practice, shoving all the clothes into a pile on the floor next to his closet.
When he finally steps into the tub, the satisfying aches of the day catch up to him and he smiles to himself through the feeling. Today's practice had been exhilarating, their coach had rented out a speedometer to clock their batting and he'd definitely improved from the last time he'd practiced at the cages. Koroshita-san had said that at this rate, he could actually get scouted during official games and maybe make it to a minor league.
Yamamoto sinks further into the tub, grin growing wider as he thinks of the future, the strained muscles in his back and legs slowly limbering in the hot water as he splashes. Of course he couldn't get ahead of himself, get a big head, and drop the ball. Besides, there was still something even more important than baseball, he had decided, and that was Tsuna and his friends. Just doing things day by day, practicing hard and having fun was the most important thing.
Scrubbing away the dirt sunk into the crevices of his skin was a lot of work, and by the time Yamamoto had finished, the water was starting to go from luke-warm to cool. Lifting up one hand to the halogen light of the bathroom, he sees his fingers pruning up.
"Did you drown in there, Takeshi?" He hears echoing from below, the impatient bellow of his dad questioning.
"I'm coming down soon! Don't put it away!"
He splashes out of the tub in hurried movements, water trailing all over the tile as he makes his way still wet into his room, toweling down in quick strokes. Yamamoto stumbles across to his closet, tugging on clothes as fast as possible, half-laughing at himself as he hops on one foot while pulling a leg through his jeans. He spies the package from across the room, thinking how strange it is that anyone would send him anything through the mail since he sees Tsuna and Gokudera and everyone else at school almost everyday, before tumbling out the door.
By the time he gets to the kitchen a plate is laid out for him on the table. Sitting down when his stomach does a flip in hunger, he asks "Did you know who sent that package?"
"Hmm? No, I just picked up the mail and it was in the box…the return address wasn't written. Maybe it's a secret admirer, eh, Takeshi?" His dad ribs him in the side, winking as he jokes.
Yamamoto laughs the teasing off and eats his snack, still day-dreaming about his batting speed, running in the sun, and diving so hard the stains on his pants won't ever quite fade away. Over the course of eating he slowly comes out of his baseball daze and curiosity consumes him about what was in the package, so when he's finished he rushes back up the stairs with little finesse.
Pouncing on his bed and ripping open the parcel, the large letters of his name on paper peel away to reveal a videotape liberally applied with sparkling purple and pink heart stickers. Yamamoto blinks, this has got to be the oddest thing anyone has ever sent him. Maybe it was a secret admirer? Flipping it aside, he reads the label of the tape, looking for clues.
"'Voooooooiiiii! Katana-brat, watch this!'"
A grin breaks out across his face, instantly knowing who sent it…though he doesn't know why there are sparkly heart stickers since he can't imagine Squalo ever decorating anything with sparkly heart stickers, but Yamamoto's suddenly so hyped he doesn't think about it too much. He doesn't wonder about what's possibly on the tape, already springing into action as he takes the steps down the stairs three at a time. He shoves the video into the VCR, grabbing the remote and flipping the channel as he settles down cross-legged on the floor, mind blanking at what in the world could possibly be on the film.
The static clears a bit and suddenly Lussuria's face pops up, purple hair flashing green glitter in the light before he smacks his hand onto his face in surprise, mouth a perfectly shaped "o". Words slam themselves excitedly on screen in red and yellow bursts, 'The first opponent! Superbi Squalo vs. Liu Yun!" from a dialogue bubble.
There's a sudden punch he feels in his gut when he sees Squalo charging towards him from the television, almost like he was going to pop out of the video and start fighting him in the living room. In that instant, he was hooked, eyes frozen on the pixels before them.
His limbs start out frozen still, but as the fight goes on, they slowly start to fidget. His leg jiggles, his hands twist in the carpet. He shifts positions four times- sprawling across the floor, curling up, sitting straight again, each time just as unsatisfying as the last. His eyes never disconnected from the video, but Yamamoto suddenly feels restless just from watching Squalo move. It's so disturbing that he suddenly wants to shut off the VCR, uncomfortable with how easily it sapped control from his body.
Instead he watches the long, graceful arc of a sword, supersonic and harsh as it cleaves Squalo's opponent open, slicing meat from bone in a horrifically fascinating way. The spray of blood is wide, shattering the air in crimson streaks, and in Squalo's eyes there's something bitterly satisfied that shines through the superficial screen and straight into Yamamoto's gut. It's almost as if Squalo was looking right at him, drilling into his thoughts a subconscious message. Yamamoto clutches the short nap of the carpet, teeth slightly gritted with eyes fixed on the glare of the TV. Words rip surrealistically onto the screen, "Winner: Superbi Squalo!" in grotesquely bold yellow text as a star-fade dulls the monitor.
The blank buzz of a snowy screen breaks his hypnosis. Yamamoto turns off the power and gathers his legs and arms about him, slow to rise, as if they'd been paralyzed. Wobbling in instability as he gets his bearings, Yamamoto remembers to take the tape from the VCR and snatches the packaging before heading up the stairs before preparing for bed, mind blank, electrified.
When he sleeps that night, he doesn't dream of baseball.
He figures out a strange pattern for those packages. They coincide very well (or oddly) with the baseball season. Whenever a game was coming up, at moments when practice was the most grueling, another tape would appear at his doorstep like a talisman. No matter how tired Yamamoto was, or how much homework he had to make-up, he would always, always be drawn by that rectangular package, strangely forced to watch by his own insubordinate will.
He never really thought through about anything much before, but somehow Yamamoto thinks that Squalo is trying to tell him something...the sharp cuts, edged looks, and harsh breaths telegraph things into him he didn't yet know about. This is something beyond the fact that there is another world out there that was tailored for him, one he'd never dreamed of before Tsuna and Gokudera and the ring battles.
It's like the two futures ran side by side, competing yet parallel to each other as after every hard practice or victorious game a new tape of Squalo's swordfights arrives. The videos are a strange current that runs through his life, pulling almost nonchalantly at his instincts. Soon at night the two swirl together in dream collective- the exhaustion, the overspent muscles and scrapes of practice bleed over to the adrenaline rush and shaking hands of watching Squalo cut and blast and kill. Each feeling blurs and blurs until it seems as if Yamamoto was the one who had held the sword and battled his way to victory.
He isn't sure if he likes these tense, exciting, and restless nights. When he gets up the sleep had healed him well from the previous day's exertion, but the aftertaste in the back of his mind roils uncertain, fading only when he gets up to do his morning routine. The dreams peel back and he sinks himself into the day as hard as he can; brushing his teeth with fervor, running as fast as he can to get to school in time, laughing extra hard when Gokudera calls him an idiot. He rubs this daily life onto himself like an ointment, unease ticking away the time for him spent carefree, living a little harder than he used to before those videos had been sent.
Squalo needs to find a more convincing medium before Yamamoto throws something as precious as a life-long dream away. There needs to be a better reason for him to just stop. There needs to be a better reason than just victory.
It's weird because sometimes at the end of the tapes there's more. When the star fade pulls out on the 28th battle instead of a buzzing screen the camera angle whirls and Lussuria's face smashes close to the lens, a penciled brow leaping upward while he talks.
"Squalo there's a spot of dried blood on the corner of this thing."
Behind the incredibly close zoom of Lussuria's face there's a tiny space in the background where Squalo is sitting at the edge of a desk, hunched over a computer with his hair pinned up by a giant, plastic green barrette. The tiny face looks irritated and disgruntled at even being in the same room with the other Varia member. Yamamoto is mesmerized by that small corner.
"So fucking what?! I'm not gonna change my fighting style just so that pansy-ass camera isn't sprayed with blood. In fact, you should be honored to have this crap camera covered with blood from one of my sword fights! I shouldn't have to hinder my movements in battle for you."
Lussuria makes a regretful-yet not-regretful pout; from this close up Yamamoto can see the sharp narrowing of offended eyes behind his tinted shades. "I'm just telling you that next time it could get on the lens and then I'll have to spend four more hours editing out the blot on the tape. You know since I'm spending so much time on it, I could, in a fit of fatigue, accidentally filter in falling roses and peonies while the background shows you battling at Candy Mountain with a peppermint stick and sounds of happily squealing children cheering you on."
A loud crash resounds as a nightstand is flipped over ramen-cup and all, Squalo no longer visible but probably standing enraged.
"VOOOOOOIIIIII! YOU ALREADY HAVE YOUR STUPID STAR-FADE AND SPARKLY VIDEO LABELS! If you edit ANYMORE of my tapes I will SMASH that camera over your head you TASTELESS SELF-SERVING OKAMA!"
Here the picture tumbles about as if the camera had been dropped. Yamamoto gets a very nice view of a carpeted floor while yelling and sounds of breaking furniture permeate the background. A grin breaks out across his face, and suddenly, he can't stop laughing as he clutches the floor in the living room when he can't even breathe anymore. It was just so strange, thinking about the Varia like that, Squalo video editing with Lussuria on some cheap computer program and spending way to long on it while eating ramen, and oh God that was where those hideously colorful stickers came from along with the gaudy pre-battle font. Yamamoto holds his sides in stitches as he cries from laughing too hard.
Tape 28 gets stored at the beginning of his shelf before the other 27 videos that preceded it. Yamamoto grins to himself as he tidies the order.
He'd forgotten all about baseball or swordfights that night.
"…right Yamamoto?"
"Huh?" He looks up from his vacant stare at the sheaf of poorly written notes on his desk. Expectant gazes from Tsuna and Gokudera make him wonder what they possibly could have been talking about. He'd been pretty tired from the laps he had to do during training. Elimination rounds for the championship were in two weeks and he'd spaced during class from fatigue.
"You idiot, we're talking about the future! The tenth's future! Pay more attention, you're a guardian now."
"Eh, I'm sure Yamamoto's been busy and all preparing for the next game." Tsuna smiled apologetically at him and Yamamoto gives him a tiny thumbs up before seeing the scowl erupting from Gokudera's lips.
"Haha, but Gokudera, the future's pretty far away, right? Shouldn't we just worry about what's happening now before we think about what happens next?"
Despite the pleasant weather filtering through the open window and Tsuna's attention, the bomber promptly explodes into a loud, angry lecture.
"Does the tenth matter so little to you, you baseball idiot?! When he moves to Italy we have to think about transferring from here. If you study for the international exams as much as you do for math class we won't be able to stay with the tenth when he transfers in high school!"
Yamamoto blinks, surprised as he turns to face his friend, who right now is sheepishly hiding behind a desk talking to Gokudera trying to calm him down. He hadn't known that Tsuna was planning to move out of country for school, although he should have guessed.
"You're going to Europe for school?" Then the implication hit that Gokudera was going to leave Japan for school too. The two of them seemed to already have the plan straightened out, and they'd turned to him to see what he was going to do.
"Um…well, Reborn told me about the plan, and I c-couldn't really refuse. Even if I wanted to." The last words were muttered to himself in hopelessness and exasperation. The baby could be very…persuasive when he wanted to be. "I know that you were thinking about playing baseball in school here, maybe even be professional, so I didn't really want it to seem like there's pressure."
"I…never even thought of it."
A small noise of annoyance came from Gokudera as he sharply turned his head away from looking at the baseball freak. His voice was surprisingly clam, though. "That's why you have to think about it now, moron."
A hand on Yamamoto's arm startles him, the small, warm smile that steadies across Tsuna's lips somehow making the sluggish, panicking confusion in his mind quiet down.
"It's just a thought. I don't know if I'm moving for sure, and my dad said that I could finish high school here if I wanted, it'd just take more time to acclimate then when I did move. You know, Yamamoto…it's ok if you don't want to follow me. I'll understand if you want to stay."
The breadth of what his friend was saying numbed him. As he looked into Tsuna's eyes when he spoke, Yamamoto felt a weight, small and infinite somehow grab his throat. This went beyond just school, and from the look in Tsuna's eyes he knew exactly what he had said. Yamamoto couldn't say thanks, he couldn't say anything, not when he didn't know how to feel about that declaration. Whether the choice that was given to him was good or bad, Yamamoto didn't care. Tsuna would never judge him. The responsibility that suddenly fell onto him suddenly felt too great, but he couldn't help being glad.
He was lucky to have his friends here, right now, no matter how long they would be together. Smiling to himself, the soft expression was the first thing remotely contemplative either Tsuna or Gokudera had seen on Yamamoto's face.
A razor cut sharp and pointed thrust into a black clad abdomen, ripping open the leather coat and gushing from that pierced hole ran a fountain of blood. On the screen, though it was unfocused and shaken, there was a clear view of a desiccated side, the looping coils of intestine bulging out grotesquely between iron clenched fingers and the shine of cleaved bone wetly coming through the dark folds of cloth.
The opponent rushes again before Squalo coughs and staggers, collapsing to the ground, the sudden movement unexpected as the man who cut him open runs past and stumbles. From his clattered, kneeling body, Yamamoto sees Squalo gather up his will, and with his sword he twists around and throws it, gunpowder explosion propelling his weapon javelin-like into the man's exposed back.
The force of the blow pierces the sword through the enemy's torso, pinning the opponent to the ground with widened eyes, the wild beat of life slowly fading from a twitching body. The camera shakes as it's set on the ground. From the close angle Yamamoto can see every detail.
In the aftermath Squalo keeps coughing up blood, innards heaving and roiling with his open torso, a flood of bile and various liquids spilling onto a muddy plain. Dirt and grit press painfully into raw flesh and the exposed bones of his ribs are stark white against the dull colors of his clothes. Squalo's face is plastered with more blood, sweat, and tears; his hair is tangled and filthy as he heaves and heaves, fierceness in his eyes as he desperately, furiously clings for life as if in a fever dream.
What was this? What was this thing here…was it victory? For what? To win was only one small step, and look at Squalo now. He was crying, puking, bleeding, and still in it all he claws his life out from impending death. This thing here, in this desperate struggle Squalo was having, was it victory?
It cuts at Yamamoto. He doesn't want to see this. How could Squalo ask this of him? He did not want this to be the end of the road of battle, this was not what he wanted when he took up his father's sword. A clinging, petty wish fueled by some unknown anger to live- was this the goal of the road Squalo wants him to take?
Yamamoto swallows as in the fading battery flashing in the corner of the TV screen his view is engulfed by the fervent glare of Squalo's eye, body supine in the grass, screaming at him through each pixel of something too desperate to be called living.
The TV blanks and Yamamoto takes out this disturbing tape, puts it back into the box, and lies down for bed. Silent in his room, his eyes refuse to close as his body, somehow lax, will not succumb to fatigue.
He doesn't know how to sleep anymore.
Time goes on and the baseball season is in full swing. Yamamoto even thinks they could make the district playoffs and Squalo keeps sending him tapes. This time though, the package he gets isn't quite what he expects. He rips the paper off impatiently as always, this time the tape is liberally decorated with spangled shark stickers and pink lips with gold stars and…cakes? Lussuria really was a strange one.
Yamamoto had moved the small, portable TV downstairs up to his room, after his father found out he'd been watching practice tapes downstairs every night. He stationed it in a small corner of his room, piled on top of school textbooks unused and often unopened. It's with a strange sense of ceremony that he takes the tape and turns it in his hand, curious as that what was on it. For once he has no clue what this is about.
The videos had clearly marked that these were the hundred and one fights securing Squalo's title, but on his shelf were already all the videos stacked neatly in order. Yamamoto slowly rises from his bed and puts it in, turning on the TV with a strange sense of anticipation.
From the screen floods up a quaint looking street, cobbled with stone and drenched in what looked like humid rays from a too warm sun. People milled about, but not very many. Whoever was out on the street was sweltering and it was visible form the beat of the sun on their backs this was noon-time.
The recording is shaky, and tilted funny, but ends up focusing on a pair of boots walking steadily across the pavement, newly shined and black. It goes up along plain black pants, touching on strands of loose silver hair, scans up a white shirted chest and onto Squalo's face, tilted to the side in profile, scowling.
Yamamoto is struck just by seeing him, still, even when he expected it. He leans closer to the screen, curious since Squalo wasn't wearing his normal uniform.
"I don't understand why I fucking have to be out here with you when I should be able to do whatever the hell I want."
A disembodied voice "tsks" and happily answers. "You shouldn't be alone. Do you know how ridiculous it would be if someone as important as a Varia member just sits alone like an old, boring no-lifer on their birthday? We're gonna eat, go celebrate, and get shitty wasted. Not necessarily in that order."
Slowly the crease in Squalo's brow grows, his face scrunching in mounting anger before he burst out screeching. "I don't need any of you around for my fucking…birthday!"
Mammon waddles into view from the right of the screen, now closest to Squalo. "Oh ho…sounding embarrassed? Getting old finally sinking in?"
"What?! I don't need this today. I'm leaving right now and I'm going to slice open the next stray dog or happily grinning runt I see!"
The open piazza, grainily pictured behind the group through the narrow gap in the streets, seemed to be holding a festival despite the sweltering weather. Families and tourists flooded the square, and knowing Squalo's short fuse the Varia must have steered away to the more secluded side streets. However, people had started spilling over into the smaller areas and now the swordsman was preparing to storm off before he committed mass killings on the streets of Turin.
Yamamoto choked back laughter and had to turn away to clutch his side from the difficulty of holding it in. Squalo didn't have birthdays, or ramen in hotels. He had fights and fights and fights, the Varia, and he had Yamamoto. The boy didn't know anything else about the Italian. He almost wants to turn it off, sure that if Squalo ever knew he'd watched this he'd be buried six feet under ground, but his hand freezes on the remote, clutching the rectangle as if it were a part of his arm.
Suddenly, Squalo froze in midstep, tripping to the ground on some invisible chord, a clumsy spill of limbs and hair flying across the uneven pavement.
"I already made reservations today and the money is not going to waste."
The baleful glare of an infuriated eye swept from Mammon up to the camera holder, who evoked a small noise of amusement.
"This is your doing you stupid bat-shit crazy tranny." The words, hissed between clenched teeth simply oozed silent threats about what Squalo was going to do to Lussuria once he could move.
"I already paid Mammon to arrange it all so you might as well come along willingly or dragged along strung up by vines."
The cheeriness of the voice crackled as the camera shifted to the side where Belphagor ran up the small group, hands liberally stained with a reddish brown. His mouth is covered too. Squalo is too busy getting up and brushing himself off to notice the other assassin sidle up to him, smearing one dirty hand across the swordsman's face.
"VOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT YOU UNDISCIPLINED BRAT?!"
"It's the chocolate festival. Princesses always like chocolate for their birthday. The prince always gives a princess the appropriate gift. Happy birthday!"
Images wobble uncontrollably as Lussuria laughs and wheezes. The camera abruptly drops to the pavement, zooming in on individual pebbles of stone as the man collapses to the ground, shaking the screen so hard only scratching noises of the mic being rubbed on cloth are heard from the recording.
Squalo whips his head around to snarl at Lussuria, about to rub at his face with one gloved hand before pausing and dropping it, as if in after thought of ruining such fine leather. His face swallows the entire center of the TV screen, white strands still mussed from his fall, sweat dampening his forehead from an impossibly hot spring, an incongruent smudge of chocolate over his cheek as his face flushes with uncontrollable anger.
Despite the humor, Yamamoto stops laughing when he looks into that face so strangely alien to him without any emotion resembling deadly intent. He's simply captivated- and a little uneasy. He doesn't understand why in the world this was sent to him. What could possibly be the point? He can't imagine any connection between this, and those sickeningly thrilling fights to the death. The thread was the same, but other than the connecting point of Squalo it might as well have been the moon and the sun.
His eyes are magnetized back to the scene where the swordsman runs into the piazza after a prancing and delighted Belphagor, drawing his blade before yelling back to his other companions. "YOU BETTER GET ME SOME FUCKING STIFF DRINKS AFTER THIS!"
A few hoots of laughter sound out before the screen blanks completely again.
Silently, Yamamoto turns off the T.V, sitting still for a moment in the dark before flopping onto bed. For a long time he wonders what in the hell he just watched. It's no after note to a grueling battle, there's no punch in Squalo's eye directed at the screen before he stabs someone. It's just there, floating on it's own in space, a cut out of Squalo's life that Yamamoto knew wasn't a part of what Squalo was trying to bore into his soul. Squalo was never the sentimental sort, but somehow this tape edges into him deep. He thinks back to all the tapes he's had, and how many of those extra reels there were attached to each one. Counting them up in his head, Yamamoto realizes he'd memorized them all.
Inside his mind right now there's a loop of sun-drenched cobblestones and that unexpected look on Squalo's comically smudged face. He can only trace the image after it was seen, and memorize it. Too small to fathom the reason for this tape, Yamamoto can only do what he did with the other ones; suck it in and hold it inside, like all those other lessons and messages he had learned by tracing one man's actions.
There's no more thinking to be done- Yamamoto can only take what was given to him and store it in his mind.
He breathes a sigh, and accepts his fate.
It wasn't always swords and fighting and Voooooooooiiiiii's.
And while those things were exhilarating, thrilling to watch and stirred up something deep in the pit of his stomach he couldn't name…it still wasn't as fantastic as baseball. Yamamoto knew that it took more than those things to shake a dream he clutched so long there'd been a time he didn't know how to go on living without it. His hands had grabbed that dream so hard sometimes it felt as if it had melted into his fingers, into his skin, into his blood. Swords and kills and thrills could move him but they never were him.
Lined up on his shelf were more than a hundred and one videos. Those extra moments are precious, almost secretive, and Yamamoto feels sometimes that he shouldn't even be witnessing them, but it's what makes him hold off. He's told Squalo before what he's wanted to become, but he's never thrown away a single tape. Over and over he watches them, and the rush of the fight can rile him up, but it's that gut wrenching thing in Squalo's eyes that hypnotizes his soul. That strange, piercing light that seems to be reaching for some insurmountable peak beyond the fight calls to him. That is something Yamamoto wants, something inexplicable that he wishes would glint in his own eye, one day.
When the swordsman is standing there starkly in his room, facing the shelf, he seemed almost entranced at the order. Twenty eight, thirty four, sixty two, eighty nine, ninety five, and one extra followed by the rest in chronological order. Jumbled at first and orderly in all the rest, those precious moments are stocked up front, almost accusing Squalo in their form. An irritated burst comes out his mouth.
"Hey. Why the fuck are all these messed up?"
Yamamoto drops his helmet and bat to the floor, stupefied and yet unsurprised at the length of silver hair in front of him. Sweat is still pouring from his temple at the stifling day as he stares a familiar back, and all that comes out of his mouth is, "I watch the ones in front the most."
Only fleetingly does he see the twisted corner of a slight smile, as suddenly, Yamamoto feels his time is up. There're no more days left to idle away, either for his dream or for Squalo to wait. He feels anxious. He needs to tell Squalo something before his future warps again.
"You're going to come with me, brat. There's something you still need to learn before you fritter yourself away on a stupid game."
It's here that he suddenly recognizes the point. Tsuna and Gokudera had been considering going abroad to study, and he knew the meaning behind those subtle looks the baby had been giving him. If they were going, was he?
"It's not frittering away, it's serious. It's a serious thing, and I don't think it's any less important."
And this is what makes Squalo angry, this is what makes him whirl around to shake the foolish brat who doesn't understand that to cull what's in his blood is to burn away years Squalo had waited, for a moment in time, to face someone who could be worthy. The mounting frustration of time just wants to explode in his veins and he can't hold off any longer. When he sees this young man's too calm face, there's something in his eyes that mutely pleads for him to understand but he just can't.
"I want you to understand. Please." Please, like the short afterward on the end of a picnic lunch.
Here, Squalo, for all his vocalistic talent, could not open his mouth to persuade, or draw the thing at his side which had helped him to persuade others in a more timely fashion. He drew himself up, and anchored himself to study. The boy wants him to see something, so if one moment's concentration is all it takes for his patient waiting to pay off, he will do it.
He surveys it all, the strange, a wavering look in Yamototo's eyes, the way he carefully clutched his old, worn mitt, the smell of fresh spring grass and deeply rubbed green stains, the way his young face was bathed in filtered sunlight and no doubt those were laugh lines from a rigorous practice he enjoyed. His mind could take it in but his heart could not fathom why. All he could do was stare and somehow he knew the message was right there in front of him but he didn't know why something so trivial was so important. There were other things that mattered more and why was this man- kid- fixating on one insignificant point?
"Come on and sit down, you don't need to stand since you're here." The same slight smile that had been on Squalo's face migrated to Yamamoto's own as he walked across the room to pluck a video off the shelf, wandering easily about as if the swordsman and him were about to play video games and talk about school. It's unbalancing, like everything about Yamamoto is unbalancing- as plain as he is, as stupid as he is.
"Voiiii I've already seen all those…"
But his quasi-disciple had already shoved it into the VCR as he turned to the closet, tugging off the jersey and putting on a shirt as he pressed play on the screen.
"You haven't seen all of it."
The tape had been rewound to a particular spot, the very end of a gruesome battle, and when the star fade came Squalo was getting impatient as well as baffled so he opened his mouth to yell about wasting time before a familiar scene popped up again.
In the corner of a too well known room he sees himself, hair pinned up in that old lime barrette Belphagor had insisted he wear despite the fact that he did not fucking shed; and Lussuria, that great shit on that pixilated screen he was going to beat the fucking daylights out of him when he got back. What the fuck had he been thinking?
"The hell is this, brat?!"
Even though there was a hard, calloused veneer to Squalo's face, Yamamoto could do nothing but ask, silent and subconscious, for him to see.
Squalo breathes in with short, angry breaths while his nostrils scent the smell of earnest sweat and grass. As he watches his own life reel by his eyes, he connects the two to Yamamoto's silent, sincere gaze that seems too wholesome for his good. He gets it, but he still doesn't know why it's so relative to them, to this. "What's this?! I don't know what the fuck you are trying to tell me or what the fuck I'm watching this for. Why won't you just come and stop fooling around? Do you think you have anymore time left? Am I really all that patient to you?! Do I have to drag you there?"
Yamamoto feels himself being jerked close, the fabric of his cotton shirt warped against white knuckled fingers trembling in their hard clench as Yamamoto is this close to Squalo for the second time, now not involving either blood or swords. "Haha…I get it, Squalo."
The sincere laugh and the open face do him in, no one has stood in the face of Squalo's glaring eyes and laughed it off so sheepishly. Instead of rocking away Yamamoto presses inward, head down turned while he strokes the strapped sheathe by his rival's side, gently and fondly as if petting a child or cat, smile still plastered smoothly on his face.
His words skip light and flippant across the swordsman's ears, unbelievably affable in the face of his anger. "Isn't it nice to have some dreams now and then? And hey, baseball is a sport, it's for relaxing and having fun…I'm just glad you had your share."
Squalo thrusts him roughly back onto the floor, expressing nothing with a face as blank as granite while the boy on the floor reposes in gangly youth. The unbelievable words that Yamamoto used and what they implied flew past his mind straight inside him. Who dared to say anything like that to him, of all people? A two man stare-down passes into a stalemate. Hundreds of seconds tick between them flicking back and forth in a diatribe that somehow can't be spoken.
The silence is broken with a loud bark of air. "You better get as much of that stupid sport as you can, brat. And don't! Don't you fucking dare keep these stupid tapes around where anyone can see them! The next time it's spring in Italy I better not have to come looking for your carcass around here. Or else I'll make you a carcass, capisci?"
Nothing changes. The harsh, crinkled brow beneath white bangs, the scratch of a voice too worn by shouting to be smooth, Squalo seems entirely the same as that first time Yamamoto met him those years ago. A rush of wind from his window leaves him surprised. Aloud in his room, Yamamoto laughs at the ridiculous sight of Squalo jumping out the window. Abrupt, but Squalo was always abrupt, he never could abide by sympathy and niceties.
Genuine delight spreads across his face as Yamamoto expels a sigh to an empty window, mumbling his promise to himself, "Next time I'll be there. Don't worry."
There was more to this sequence than simply the end.
Notes: A lot of this was my first time exploring the dynamic between Squalo and Yamamoto, and imagining the effects of the tapes of Yamamoto as he's trying to decide his future. It's more hopeful and a sort of character study about motivations.