"God." Gokudera lets himself collapse in over the table, drops his forehead to rest against his arms. "Your accent is appalling."

"Sorry." Yamamoto sounds truly contrite, underneath the laughter that always lingers in his throat. "You can understand what I'm saying, now, right?"

Gokudera groans without lifting his head. "No one else could. It's only because I'm becoming used to the horrible sounds you're making."

There's the laugh, just in advance of the idle touch at Gokudera's shoulder, fingers skimming in over the inch of skin bared by the ponytail holding his hair mostly off his face. "If you understand I can speak Italian with you."

"No, you can't." Gokudera reaches up to pull Yamamoto's hand away - the friction of his fingertips is distracting, is running ticklish sensation all down Gokudera's spine - but he ends up just closing his fingers of the other's wrist instead, his grip going gentle of its own accord without checking with his brain to see if he intends it to. "You can't speak Italian at all, idiot, not with an accent like that."

"I could write you notes," Yamamoto suggests. "It doesn't matter how I sound when it's written down. It'd be like a secret just between us."

Gokudera huffs against the table, turns his head to look up at the other boy's smile. "Yeah, you, and me, and Dino, and Reborn, and any number of other people who are better at Italian than you." He sits up entirely, dragging his gaze away from Yamamoto's lips as his cheeks start to flush warm. "Didn't you say you wanted to learn Italian for the sake of the Family?"

"I did," Yamamoto admits. His fingers slide away from Gokudera's neck, he tips in to rest his elbow on the table and lean his chin against his hand. Gokudera carefully doesn't whine at the loss of the contact. "But you always sound so nice when you speak it. It's fun just to listen to you."

"You're listening to the sound instead of paying attention to the meaning," Gokudera snaps, because his cheeks are flushing dark enough Yamamoto will notice his blush and they're supposed to be being productive. "You really are an idiot, you'll never get anywhere like this."

"But I thought it was the sound that I was bad at," Yamamoto points out, and he's sliding in closer, Gokudera can feel the warmth of his leg a moment before the other's knee bumps against his thigh. "Shouldn't I be listening to that?"

"Stop it," Gokudera growls without looking up at the smile he knows Yamamoto is giving him, his mouth just far enough away to be reasonable but close enough to be irresistible. "If you don't want to practice, fine, but I have other things to do, you know, I only agreed to this because I-"

"Ti amo," Yamamoto says, and everything in Gokudera shudders to a halt. His words die on his tongue, his train of thought derails utterly. When he says "What?" it falls direct from the blankness in his head, formed from the impossibility of the smooth-accented words sliding over Yamamoto's tongue like he's spoken Italian all his life.

"Ti amo," he says again, slower this time, and the pace doesn't make it any better. Gokudera doesn't look up but Yamamoto must be reading something of his reaction off his face because he leans in closer, bumps his forehead against Gokudera's hair. "Is my accent okay?"

Gokudera shouldn't be this floored. Yamamoto has expressed this sentiment before, regularly drops it into conversation in what Gokudera is sure is a deliberate attempt to distract him. He's gotten better at handling it, but between the smooth flow of the words on Yamamoto's tongue and the depth of the meaning behind them it takes conscious effort to make himself look up at the other boy's face.

"You're close," he lies, as if there is anything at all wrong with the sound of those words in the other's throat. "It's." He has to swallow, take a careful breath, and even with the buffer of a constructed excuse it's hard to push the sound past his lips. "Ti amo." He can taste the difference on his tongue, the weight of sincerity granted by the language itself, and the self-consciousness crests high and burning across his cheeks, turns him crimson under the focus of Yamamoto's gaze.

"I don't hear a difference," Yamamoto says. His gaze skims over Gokudera's features, along the color in his cheeks and across the embarrassment in his eyes before landing back on his lips. He leans in, just slightly; Gokudera doesn't even think its intentional. "Tell me again."

"Ti amo tanto," Gokudera says, and there's not even a shred of pretense on his tongue this time. "Idiota."

Yamamoto laughs, delight shivering out into the corners of his mouth as he leans in closer. "I know that last part."

"Shut up," Gokudera snaps, or tries to snap. It comes out soft and shaky, melted into warmth by the sound of his language on Yamamoto's tongue, and they're pressing in closer, Gokudera's fingers finding their way into their favorite spot at the back of Yamamoto's neck and Yamamoto's hands fitting into the front pocket of Gokudera's sweatshirt. Their foreheads bump, their breath comes warm over the other's lips, and in the drifting haze of anticipation Gokudera thinks to ask, "How did you know that?"

"I looked it up," Yamamoto says, turns his head up to catch Gokudera's mouth for a kiss that is warm and soft and far too brief. "Reborn helped with the pronunciation."

"You told Reborn?" Gokudera chokes, starts to pull back, but Yamamoto tugs at the front of his sweater, keeps him in place while the other leans in to trail Gokudera's motion.

"I wanted it to be a surprise for you," he says. His eyes flicker up to Gokudera's, back down to his mouth, and that's not fair, Gokudera can feel his resistance melting under that considering gaze.

"You are in trouble," he insists anyway, just to make his point clear. Yamamoto laughs in a way that says he doesn't believe Gokudera, or maybe just doesn't care, and Gokudera growls "Later," and rocks in to crush his lips against the unthought pleasure of Yamamoto's smile.

'Later' never materializes, as it often doesn't. By the time Gokudera is in a state to think rationally again, he's entirely forgotten why he was irritated in the first place. All he can remember is the warmth of Yamamoto's skin, and the glow of his eyes, and the sound of Italian sliding easy and unthought from his tongue.