Fumbling with the fucking thing for the eighth time, it fell again into the snow, a barely audible thud as it hit the ground.
"Shit," Gokudera Hayato cursed under his breath, hoping the tenth didn't happen to catch his show of clumsiness. Thankfully, Tsuna was too busy trying to catch a few snowflakes on his tongue before Reborn could rip it out of his mouth, and it seemed to require all of his attention.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Gokudera dropped to his knees, glaring at his hands in frustration. His fingers were frozen, the skin raw and red from exposure to the cold. This goddamned filthy weather was a drag of the worst kind, and a thousand layers of sweaters could never really solve the problem. It just crawled under his clothes and into his flesh, making him tremble like a dumb animal, or like Yamamoto before a definitive baseball game.
Winter wonderland my fucking icicle ass.
The white powder on the floor became the haystack to the proverbial needle of Gokudera's lighter. He searched the ground through touch, hoping he'd brush against something smooth breaking the flow of the rough concrete. He squinted his eyes against the flurries, concentrating on that glint of gunmetal gray, but it was pointless.
There were no colors left to differentiate between what was his and what wasn't. Everything was coated in a dull, monotonous gray, unlike the high contrast black and white of the keys on the piano.
September is his personal hell.
"Oi, what are you doing down there, Gokudera? Making a snow man?"
Cue the baseball idiot, armed with all the tactless charm of a particularly slow six-year-old brat.
"You're blocking my light, idiot. Move." Gokudera said without looking up. It was always best to ignore the lower ranks, and he didn't plan on inflating Yamamoto's ego by acknowledging his (unfortunate) existence.
"Hmmm?" Yamamoto shuffled imperceptibly to the left, but it didn't make any difference. He wore an expression of benign curiosity that Gokudera was determined to quash.
Clenching his teeth and thinking of the tenth's well-being, Gokudera repeated. "Move."
"Okay okay, no need to get hostile! I didn't know you took this so seriously, hehe." Yamamoto held his hands up in mock surrender and backed away, as though from an unfriendly puppy.
Good fucking riddance.
No more than four minutes go by, and he's returned with an impressive? assortment of snowballs cradled in his arms.
"I thought you could use some help - you didn't seem to be getting anywhere," Yamamoto said cheerfully, carefully setting them down beside a very agitated Gokudera. "Say Gokudera, do they even have snow in Italy?"
"Dumbass!" Gokudera snaps, jumping to his feet and straightening up to confront him.
"Who fucking said I was making a snowman? I'm looking for ---"
He was met not with that mindless grin, but with his own lighter. Yamamoto held it up to the limp cigarette hanging from Gokudera's mouth, and lit it after leaving the flame to flicker for a moment in his shocked face.
Gokudera flinched on instinct, but the eloquent scent of the smoke began to fog up his brain before he could tear into Yamamoto for being a generally insufferable dipshit.
"I saw it next to your foot while you were yelling at me," Yamamoto said, only a bit self-satisfied.
"You seemed pretty miserable without it, huh?"
"Yeah," Gokudera answered absentmindedly, lost in the haze of tobacco and ash after a long and slow inhale.
"Did you lose your gloves too?"
"…what?" Gokudera rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes, growing annoyed at Yamamoto's presence. His moment disturbed, he glanced downwards and felt his anger begin to resurface. The warmth on his lips and in his lungs had put his frostbitten hands on the back burner temporarily, but they were still in the same pathetic state as before.
Shoving them into his coat pockets, he narrowed his eyes.
"Figures you wouldn't get it. I don't have as good a handle on my dynamite if I'm wearing some ridiculous gloves. What if we were suddenly ambushed or someone tried a sneak attack on the tenth? What the fuck good would I be if I can't even use my own weapons?" Gokudera threw a scathing look at Yamamoto's hands, as though they were guilty of some unspeakable sin.
"What good is your goddamn sword if you can't even grip it, idiot? That's the way you're supposed to think. Use your fucking head for once."
Yamamoto took a few seconds to process what Gokudera had just told him, but instead of shrugging off Gokudera's paranoia like he usually would have, he looked thoughtful.
"Huh, I guess you're right. I wouldn't be that great with a bat if I couldn't touch it properly…" His eyes grew serious and his tone somber.
"Again with the motherfucking baseball! Give it a rest!" Gokudera spat, exasperated. He took a few swift paces forward and walked past Yamamoto, before he felt a familiar weight on his shoulder trying to turn him back around.
"But you also can't handle dynamite if your hands are popsicles," Yamamoto concluded, thinking himself victorious.
"I think we can compromise on this," he added as he pulled off one of his gloves and handed it to Gokudera.
"For Tsuna's sake?"
"Eh? What the fuck is this for?" Gokudera said with one eyebrow cocked, preparing to either pitch the damn thing over the roof or set it on fire.
"We can each wear one. So only one of your hands will be frozen and only one of my hands will be slippery. Makes sense, right?" Yamamoto beamed, visibly proud of his peace efforts.
Gokudera didn't know whether he should be horrified by such backwards logic or sympathetic for the poor guy's lack of reasoning skills. He turned Yamamoto's glove over in one hand and carefully began to explain, like he had done thousands of times over these past months they'd known each other, though usually with more expletives.
"…You do realize that this won't help, don't you? We're both going to be equally as useless for the same reason?" Gokudera said, an edge of suspicion to his voice.
Can anyone really be that stupid?
"Yeah, but this way you can at least build a snowman with the one hand that isn't frozen solid!" Yamamoto chuckled, not knowing what wrath he had just invited. Or perhaps knowing exactly.
"I'm just trying to help you out, and I didn't want to embarrass you by asking if you've ever built one before."
Gokudera immediately threw the glove at Yamamoto's face, trying with all his right-hand might to keep his fury contained.
Murder of subordinates is not appropriate, murder of subordinates is not appropriate, murder of subordinates is…
"I think I should kill you and save the tenth the trouble of lagging around such a brainless dead-weight."
I'm also feeling merciful and someone should put you out of your misery, jackass.
"He'd probably be a little upset at first, but eventually he'd understand that it had to be done, because he's a magnificent leader and you're just holding him back." Gokudera mused, realizing that it wasn't such a bad idea after all.
"You're always threatening me Gokudera. One of these days I might begin to take you seriously," Yamamoto laughed, his hand resting awkwardly on the back of his tanned neck.
"Alright, I've made my decision. Now or ten years from now, I'm going to kill you, for the good of the Vongola," Gokudera declared, a new finality in his words as he walked away. This was something he could look forward too.
"Come on, it's no big deal if you haven't made one before! Wait up, I'll show you how to do it!"
Feigning deafness and focusing on the back of the tenth's head, Gokudera soon heard Yamamoto following him close behind, from a nearly safe distance, his footsteps a barely audible thud as they hit the ground.