It's not that Squalo minds the rest of the Varia, exactly. They are uniformly irritating, certainly, and there are times (usually multiple times a day) when he sincerely considers strangling Lussuria or actually punching Xanxus in the face like he deserves. But he hasn't yet, and after a decade he thinks that's probably as good an argument as any other for the likelihood that things will stay that way for the foreseeable future. Still, however accustomed to constant irritation he has become, he's been looking forward to a few days of quiet with just a single student to look after and a dramatic decrease in the constant babble of chatter that accompanies his usual life in Italy.
In hindsight, he probably should have known better.
It's true the kid isn't as shrill as Lussuria, nor as all-around demanding as Xanxus. He lacks the constant edge of danger that Bel carries with him and the irritatingly vocal dedication Levi insists on flaunting. But Yamamoto seems to be prone instead to conversation, sharing in a way Squalo never asked for and never wanted, and he seems to have a knack for doing so at the least opportune moments.
This time it's halfway through dinner, when the quiet has stretched long enough Squalo is just starting to hope that perhaps a miracle will occur and it will persist all the way through to sleep. The fire between them is still crackling a flurry of light and color into the air, and Yamamoto stopped eating a while ago, seems to be absorbed in watching the flames while Squalo continues to decimate the structure of the fish he caught by way of a meal.
"What about devotion to a person?" Yamamoto asks with absolutely no lead-in, and Squalo nearly inhales a bite of fish just from the shock of sound in the forest's silence.
"What?" he snaps after he's managed to cough his lungs clear and fixed the kid with a glare Yamamoto doesn't look up to see. "What the shit are you talking about now?"
"Like you said about the sword and baseball," Yamamoto says, and has he been thinking about this all this time? He frowns into the flames, the expression bringing his childish features into something a little closer to the maturity he showed flashes of years hence for Squalo, months ago for Yamamoto himself. "And how I have to devote myself to just one to become a master." He sits up, still looking into the fire while Squalo eyes him askance and tries to figure out what the fuck he's getting at. "But what about people?"
"You," Squalo growls, a low sustained note of irritation. "Make sense."
Yamamoto looks up, his concentration shattering, and he's a brat again, smiling all over his face and waving a hand in apology. "Ah, sorry!" Squalo scowls at him, keeps glaring irritation while Yamamoto ruffles a hand through his hair and looks up to consider the smoke rising from the fire to the stars overhead. "I mean, you're devoted to just the sword, right?"
"Of course I am," Squalo snaps. "I told you, being a master requires complete devotion."
"Haha," Yamamoto laughs pointlessly. "Yeah, but you're devoted to Xanxus too, right?"
"That's different," Squalo snaps, a lash of sudden rage to fight off the heat of Xanxus's name, the way it makes his spine tense and his skin tingle with unwarranted heat.
"So it's not the same thing," Yamamoto declares, like he's solved a problem, kicks his leg out to the side. "That's a relief."
Squalo's eyes narrow, his chin tipping down until his hair falls into a curtain in front of his face. "Xanxus isn't like your stupid Sawada Tsunayoshi," he growls, already resenting the implied parallel. "He's worth following."
"Tsuna?" Yamamoto repeats, the tone wide-open and foolish in his throat. He blinks for a moment, looking completely at a loss; then that laugh again, so bright and soft it grates in Squalo's ears worse than Xanxus's growling insults ever do. "I'm not talking about Tsuna."
"Well then who-" Squalo starts, snapping the words before he can decide if he wants the answer, before the answer falls into place in his mind like a gear slotting into a machine. "Oh." He can feel his forehead crease, distaste making itself clear in his expression. "The storm brat."
"Gokudera," Yamamoto says, the harsh sound of the kid's name turning syrup-sweet on his tongue and dreamy in his gaze. Squalo rolls his eyes, refrains from commentary on lovestruck idiots who don't even have the good sense to try to hide their attachments.
"Yeah, okay," he sighs. "Do whatever you want, if it doesn't affect your focus I don't care."
"I want to be able to protect him," Yamamoto offers, completely unasked and apparently determined to continue this conversation well beyond Squalo's own comfort with it. "Isn't that why you followed Xanxus?"
"Xanxus doesn't need protecting," Squalo says, defensive pride flaring like fire into his veins. "I follow him because I chose to, not because he asked for my help."
He's not expecting Yamamoto to laugh. It's utterly sincere, smooth as polished steel, and when the boy pulls himself back into control his eyes are soft and almost apologetic with the lingering dregs of amusement.
"Gokudera didn't ask for my help," he says, his mouth catching into a smile again like he doesn't know he's doing it. It's a relief when he looks into the fire again; there's something unsettling about seeing that much softness in someone's eyes, Squalo thinks, to see so much vulnerability displayed so clearly to the world. "I think he would have preferred if I had left him alone, actually."
"Why didn't you?" Squalo asks, not so much from curiosity as from a sense of obligation, to the conversation, to the shadows of the night, to the creeping sense of kinship sticking against his thoughts.
Yamamoto doesn't shrug, doesn't offer the vague "I don't know" Squalo is expecting. He looks up instead, his mouth still cradling affection in its curve and his eyes so clear looking at them is like staring into a pool of still water.
"I couldn't," he says, simple and easy like it's an obvious fact he's stating and not something verging on a confession. "I'd follow him anywhere." His mouth dips into a line, his eyes tighten at the corners, and for a moment Squalo can see the shape of his old friend's face in this brat's features, the focus across his forehead and absolute determination in his jaw aging him up over the gap of years. "I will follow him."
There is something that climbs up Squalo's spine, something cool as water and steady as a downpour. It's not anger, not the electricity of irritation that usually thrums in his veins, and it's not the burn of heat that Xanxus lights in him, his blood made fire by the other's gaze.
"Fine," is what he says, retreating behind a frown as he turns back to what's left of his dinner. "Master the sword and you can follow whoever you damn well please."
It's not until much later, after the fire has died to embers and Yamamoto has long since fallen into the heavy sleep of physical exertion, that Squalo can think back, can pull apart that weird cool comfort into the shape of what he can identify as the pride he's only ever felt for himself before.
Then again, he and Yamamoto have always been more similar than he admits.