Just a Lucky Hit!
Author's Note: I've been wanting to write a Takao x Max fic for a while now, so here it is in all its sugary, tooth-rotting fluffiness! Inspired by the World Tour subplot from Digimon Adventure 02, during which the international characters speak Japanese into the camera, but in-universe they speak their own native languages to each other. Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Beyblade series.
Pairing: Pre-slash Takao x Max.
Summary:
Since they met, Kinomiya Takao has been trying to decipher the meaning behind Mizuhara Max's first words to him. Today, he may finally unravel the enigma.
From the moment their fates crossed, Kinomiya Takao knew befriending Mizuhara Max would be an uphill climb.
You are so funny! I like you!
Even in his memories, and even after all they'd experienced together as BBA teammates, Takao had yet to decode the full breadth of Max's first words to him.
Takao wasn't completely uneducated when it came to foreignspeak. He picked up some of the stranger's gibberish that cloudless day, namely his self-introduction of "My name is Max," but the rest was Greek to him. Okay, it was English. Same difference. Takao didn't understand, all right!
Lucky Takao had the Professor close by to translate for him. He wasn't always that fortunate. You'd think Max would go easy on the Anglicisms and vague turns of phrase, seeing how hard Takao struggled to get his meaning sometimes. Savagely, the blue-haired boy's confusion only seemed to tickle the blond's taste for linguistic acrobatics.
It was a recursive tilt-a-whirl of incomprehension. A not-so-innocent game of cat and mouse, where the mouse darted ten steps ahead of his predator, and the cat could never catch his prey if he tried. By the end of it, the wires in Takao's brain ended up tied in a larger number of knots than Max's tongue twisters.
Inevitably, Takao's jumbled meditations always brought him back to those seven confounding words: You are so funny! I like you!
"You" obviously referred to him, to Takao, who Max deemed "funny." Not "strange" funny, as Takao initially perceived. "Ha-ha" funny. Max considered him a genuinely comical person and riot to be around.
Far more abstruse were the hieroglyphics that followed. "I like you" carried with it loaded connotations, no matter the language you spoke it in. The Prof's academic assessment of the statement didn't define it any better either, removing little of the doubt surrounding it.
Of course Max liked him! What wasn't there to like?
It was important they find common ground. As much as Takao laboured to learn the second lect and Max kept mainly to Japanese for his sake, the language barrier between them existed as surely as Rei nagged Takao to use a fork while eating.
Blading was their language, and unlike standard, fallible communication, here in the Beystadium, garbled conversation seldom reigned.
No hinted nuances or hidden implications. Just raw, irrefutable directness. An elegant dance. Bodies wheeling in harmony. Freaking art.
For once, Takao refrained from gloating or screaming commands at Dragoon. He simply observed the Sacred Dragon's spiral descent, the arc it created as his Beyblade spun wildly against Draciel's impenetrable iron defence in the center of the dish, and listened to the metallic clinks his and Max's beasts produced when they collided.
However, blading had its limitations.
Like a dolt, Takao made the same rookie mistake he made during their premier match in Max's thick-bearded dad's hobby shop's training room. Dragoon relying on one-pattern brute force alone, Draciel absorbed and deflected the damage until Takao's Beyblade ran out of stamina and fell over.
"Yay! Good play!" Max flashed the peace sign.
Sidestepping Max's well-deserved win, Takao ignored the dryness in his throat to reformulate a hopefully decent, cogent sentence based on the scraps he plumbed from the Japanese-to-English dictionary Hiromi lent him. "Maxie, what means I like you?"
"Maxie?" he laughed, also sticking to English. "Why the sudden nickname?"
Takao declined a response. Correction, he couldn't respond. His aptitude in this area was mostly restricted to voicing the question that he asked a jiffy ago. The question he painstakingly constructed and practiced, night after night, when he should have been sharpening his kendo skills.
"What means I like you?" Takao repeated, hoping he sounded less dimwitted.
Despite his friend's choppy attempt, Max deduced Takao's underlying message, which he reckoned the lefty may not have intimately grasped on his own. "I like you, Takao! You're fun!"
"Funny guy?" Takao pointed to himself.
Max nodded a bit too enthusiastically. "Funny guy."
Proud of his willfully imposed accomplishment, Takao showed off his perfectly straight teeth.
"Hey, let's dating, Takao!"
Now Takao was positive Max was messing with him. His English sucked, but even he could intuit the verb tense mismanagement.
Wait. Did Max just say what he thought he said?
Takao whipped out the dictionary stuffed in his jeans pocket, and leafed through its pages of minuscule text as though it were a flipbook. In answer, Max cupped his hands over the front and back covers, Takao's hands enshrined within.
"Kiss?"
That Takao understood. Conjugating the action into its imperative, he echoed more confidently, "Kiss me."
Max obliged giddily, granting him his request. They really did switch roles! Who was the cat now?
The contact lasted all of five heartbeats, criminally brief. Nonetheless, Takao gained crucial information. Analogous to his Beyblading style, Max preferred his competition do the grunt work. Then, when his rival became lightheaded due to exertion, he'd lean in and repay everything given to him.
His lips conveyed a tinge of mayonnaise.
Dazed, Takao worried Max might glomp him. Not because he rejected the closeness (they glomped constantly). No…He yearned to stretch this twinkle to its fullest. To enjoy each freckle dotting Max's precious, half-American face, and drink in Max's starry, unfiltered exuberance.
There weren't enough words in the English vocabulary – any vocabulary – to express his excitement. So, he settled on three, hands still encircled, still clasping that unpurposed lexicon.
"Takao and Max?"
According him another kiss, Max issued not a peep.
Ah, cool! A language they could both understand.