Disentangling himself from his mother's delighted embrace was hard, but getting Yamamoto to shut up during her subsequent interrogation of him was even harder. It was all he could do to keep Nana from figuring out Yamamoto's ultimate goal (i.e. willing(?) sex slavery).
Tsuna had to physically slap his hand over Yamamoto's mouth at one point, but all he did was to pointedly kiss his fingers while his mother cooed over how adorable they were. Tsuna supposed he should just count himself lucky that Yamamoto hadn't started sucking his fingers, instead.
Then his loving mother decided to torment him further by brightly asking if the pair of them needed any condoms, because of course they were at that age and she remembered how it felt to be eighteen and in love! Tsuna had only managed to cut off a graphic trip down memory lane featuring his absentee father by starting to squeal at the exact same time and pitch as the teakettle. When Nana turned to get it, Reborn took the opportunity to literally drown out the noise by shoving his face into another bowl of miso soup.
Nana saw him out the door with an ecstatic, "I'm so proud of you, Tsu-kun! Such a cute boyfriend, and so soon after meeting him! We're having red rice tonight!" All of the neighbors within earshot (which was many — Nana's voice always carried whenever she was saying something humiliating about her son, though she was under the impression that the stories she told about him were absolutely precious) took double takes, more surprised that the Sawada boy managed to con anyone into a relationship with him than by the fact that it was a boy, and apparently a handsome one.
Tsuna buried his crimson face in his hands and power walked in the general direction of his school. He was so busy marinating in misery that it took him a few minutes to realize that someone was walking beside him and picking tofu out of his hair.
"Why are you here?" he wailed, face wet with either tears or the remains of his breakfast.
"I'm your boyfriend now, remember?" Yamamoto said, one hand still fiddling with his hair. Tsuna was a little impressed that he had brought what seemed to be a full meal along on his head, going by how long it was taking his companion to fix it. Granted, it felt more like petting now than picking, but Tsuna was sure that he was either brushing the smallest bits out or further emphasizing how much shorter Tsuna was by comparison. (His power walk was equivalent to Yamamoto's normal pace, and he was starting to get put out about it.)
"Well, I guess you do need someone to show you around the school," he said, pushing Yamamoto's hand away.
Yamamoto allowed himself to be pushed, then settled his arm around Tsuna's shoulder, instead. "...Maa, I guess so."
Tsuna chose to ignore the blatant attempt to intimidate him (his bullies pulled it all the time when they were taking his lunch money) at the note of tension in the taller boy's voice. When he looked up, Yamamoto was scanning the streets around them with sharp amber eyes, his jaw tense.
They continued walking for a few uncomfortable minutes, practically glued together from shoulder to hip, and then there was a flash of heat and a loud boom and Tsuna was sprawled across the concrete with Yamamoto on top of him, one large hand gently cradling the back of his head to keep it from striking the ground.
Black combat boots came into his field of vision a moment later, and Tsuna felt Yamamoto's body tense where it was pressed against him. But his voice, when he spoke, still had that bright plastic sheen to it.
"Hey, Gokudera! How've you been?"
"Shut up, baseball freak," a familiar raspy voice snarled, and Tsuna swallowed convulsively. "Get off the little pervert and let me kill him already."
"Ahaha, why would I do that?" Yamamoto asked, letting Tsuna's head thump against the pavement as he rose to straddle his legs, hands planted on either side of his torso.
"Are you an idiot? So we can stay here, asshole," Gokudera snapped.
Is that dynamite he's holding?!
Yamamoto's voice stayed light as ever, but Tsuna could see and feel the minute flexing of his muscles as he spoke, like a cat getting ready to pounce. "Not till he conquers me."
"This isn't the game, you idiot," Gokudera growled. "This is reality. This is our opportunity to escape, and I'm not gonna let you fuck it up."
"But I like games," Yamamoto said, and for a moment Tsuna was overwhelmed with the sensation of being a small prey animal being fought over by two predators who didn't particularly care how banged up he got in the process. Oh, and one was literally pinning him to the ground, and the other used explosives.
Then he was being hauled to his feet and dragged behind a wildly grinning Yamamoto as Gokudera screamed with rage and gave chase.
"Get back here, baseball idiot! I'm gonna kill you as soon as I'm done with him!"
"Wait your turn, Gokudera!" Yamamoto called. His answer was an explosion that singed Tsuna's heels and gave him the motivation to start fleeing even faster than Yamamoto, pulling him along by the sudden death grip he had on his hand. Yamamoto's fingers went slack with surprise at the sudden reversal. Tsuna just gripped harder, shrieking for him to hurry up.
Despite the screaming pedestrians and smoking rubble left in their wake, it didn't take them very long to reach the school gates. Tsuna realized belatedly that underpaid public school teachers who all hated his guts would probably sacrifice him to far lesser threats than a crazed yankee terrorist, but then the creative epithets their pursuer had been spouting were abruptly cut off.
Reborn stood there in a tracksuit and his customary fedora, looking like he'd just been on a refreshing jog rather than a deadly high-speed chase that had covered what was usually a twenty minute commute in five. He was holding a struggling, hissing Gokudera by the collar, and Tsuna was bizarrely reminded of an angry kitten.
"Reborn!" he said. Or tried to. It came out more as a pathetic wheeze, and Tsuna's knees abruptly turned into jello. He was saved from losing a few teeth to the asphalt by Yamamoto, who helpfully hauled him up by their joined hands. Tsuna belatedly tried to let go, lest he pull Yamamoto down with him, but Yamamoto only held on tighter.
Reborn observed him with immense disgust, halting Gokudera's complaints with a tooth-rattling shake. "I didn't think it was possible, but I might have actually overestimated your chances of survival. Five minutes of running and you collapse? Pathetic."
"Well, it was a couple kilometers," Yamamoto pointed out with an indulgent smile, looking as put-together and non-sweaty as Reborn. Tsuna, filled with sudden and irrational resentment of stupid eroge ikemen and their perfect physiques, attempted to tug away his hand and failed. Again. Yamamoto didn't even seem to notice.
"Narrator, please let go of me," Gokudera said, meek tone at odds with his murderous glare, still fixed on Tsuna.
Unexpectedly, he still had enough energy to tremble in terror! Neat. If he had to die, might as well do it with all the dignity of a distressed gerbil.
"Wow, Gokudera, you should really exercise more!" Yamamoto said loudly, shifting his stance and incidentally shielding Tsuna from Gokudera's line of sight. He gave Tsuna's hand a squeeze, probably to remind him that he could break all his fingers if he exerted a little more pressure. "You could barely keep up with us, ahaha!"
"YOU TRY RUNNING IN JEANS THIS TIGHT, YOU PIECE OF—"
"Knock it off," Reborn said sourly, shaking him again. "You're making my ears bleed. Besides, you three are late for homeroom, and I still need to get Gokudera registered with the school."
"Roger!" Yamamoto chirped, and slung a still-wheezing Tsuna over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "See you in class, Gokudera! Try to find pants that fit!"
This time the stream of blistering invective was easier to ignore.
By third period, Tsuna's lungs had finally stopped hurting, so he could finally focus on the continuing damage to his pride, instead.
Yamamoto had completed a textbook school idol self introduction that was marred only by the fact that he was still carrying Tsuna on his shoulder like a dead boar or a particularly comatose parrot. Then he swung him into a princess carry (giving Tsuna whiplash along the way) and solicitously asked him where his desk was, so that he could bring him to it. Tsuna had been too physically and emotionally exhausted to do more than flap a hand in its general direction, determined to ignore the disbelieving, occasionally envious faces of his peers. Yamamoto plopped him into his seat and grinned so charmingly (and threateningly) at Tsuna's neighbor that she'd immediately volunteered her own desk and sat on the ground beside it, instead. (She seemed perfectly happy with the view, though she couldn't see the chalkboard.)
Then Nezu-sensei walked into the room, and Tsuna realized that he would prefer having two popped lungs over the certain public shaming he was about to experience in front of Yamamoto. He sank lower in his seat when the other students started passing forward the homework that he had completely forgotten to do.
Well, at least he can't make fun of how poorly I did this time, he thought.
Sure enough, when Nezu flipped through the stack of math problems, his eyes lit up with anticipation even as his mouth curled into a sneer. He barked, "Sawada!" and Tsuna jumped despite himself.
"Y-yes?"
"Where is your homework? Granted, your grades can't get much lower than they are already, but that's no excuse for laziness." Nezu preened under the cascade of giggles and whispers even as Tsuna wilted beneath them.
"I forgot it at home. I'm sorry, sensei," Tsuna said, wringing his hands beneath his desk. The temperature to his right seemed to drop a couple degrees, and a number of snickers abruptly froze in a number of throats.
"Ahaha, it was my bad! Tsuna was trying to bring me up to speed on the classes here and I forgot to give it back to him!" Yamamoto said, with a refreshing smile that bared even his molars. Tsuna tried not to shudder.
"Er, yes, well," Nezu said, momentarily stunned by the improbable shine of his teeth, "Sawada's homework is still his responsibility. Whatever he showed you was assuredly incorrect. Let's hope his incompetence doesn't rub off on you, Mr. . . ?"
Tsuna's hand itched to slap over Yamamoto's mouth once more, but the sight of so many teeth made something in his hindbrain scream for mercy. So he just sat there, intimately aware that something disastrous and irreversible was going to come out of his mouth but unable to do anything about it.
"Well, your nastiness hasn't rubbed off on Tsuna, so I think I'm safe on that front," he said cheerily, still wearing that slasher smile. "Besides, I'd rather he rub some other stuff off on me, instead."
For a second it was so quiet that you could hear Nezu's blood pressure rise. Tsuna covered his head with his arms and braced for impact.
"WHAT?" Nezu finally shrieked, his rage spittle transforming the front row into an impromptu splash zone. "Out! Get out of my classroom! You too, Sawada! What kind of slander have you been filling his head with?!"
But I didn't even do anything, Tsuna mentally cried, deciding to ignore Yamamoto's last innuendo for the sake of his mental health.
"C'mon, Tsuna," Yamamoto said, grabbing his hand yet again and pulling him out of his chair. Tsuna could do nothing but scurry in the wake of his confident swagger and pretend not to see the reactions of his classmates, which ranged from shocked to dazzled. (Floor girl appeared to be drooling and caressing the seat of Yamamoto's vacated chair, but that really wasn't his business.)
"What's your name?! I'm going to write you both up!" Nezu spluttered, face a concerning shade of puce.
He paused, back to the teacher, for a long moment. Tsuna spotted a lot of the girls (and more than a few of the boys) leaning eagerly forward in their seats. "I'm Yamamoto Takeshi, Tsuna's boyfriend," he said over his shoulder, flashing a victory sign with the hand not holding Tsuna's, and then slid the door shut behind them.
"Why would you do that," Tsuna moaned into his palm, still being towed behind Yamamoto like a depressed wagon. His ears were approximately the same color, and he was trying to hide his cheeks from the intent gaze of his tormentor.
"What kind of boyfriend would I be if I let him talk to you like that?" Yamamoto laughed, reaching out to pull his other hand away from his face.
"You're not my boyfriend," Tsuna said, face only growing hotter under his warm, amused gaze. Jeez, he's laying this dating sim stuff on thick. "Besides, everyone talks to me that way. Now it's only gonna get worse."
Yamamoto paused at that, then turned his attention to navigating the empty hallways. "I guess I understand why you only play eroge instead of making real friends, if they all treat you like that."
"Gee, thanks," Tsuna grumbled, not even bothering to defend his character anymore. Yamamoto had already seen him at his most pathetic, and Tsuna suspected there were only even lower depths to explore in his future.
They walked in silence for a while. Then Yamamoto said, "By the way, I have no idea where we are, hahaha."
They only barely made it in time for the start of next period, which was in the gym at the opposite side of the school. (Tsuna was seriously considering asking for an exemption, considering that he'd done more running in one day than he usually did in a month.)
He'd shoved Yamamoto out of the changing room, not particularly caring about being late if it meant avoiding a repeat of the events of that morning. Yamamoto's disappointed pout would have been convincing if he didn't know that a) he probably loathed Tsuna, and b) that he wanted to become his sex slave just so that he wouldn't have to put up with living on the same plane of existence as him any longer than necessary.
When Tsuna eventually tripped his way into the gymnasium, his day was already going so horribly that he wasn't even surprised to see a familiar scowling delinquent standing beside a wearing a fedora and an infuriatingly handsome smirk that only grew at the despairing expression on Tsuna's face.
"Students, this is your new physical education teacher, renowned Olympian coach Rebosaki-sensei!" the vice principal gushed. "And another Italian transfer student, Gokudera Hayato!"
"Was Yamamoto supposed to be Italian?" someone whispered, but their voice was lost under the admiring gasps of their lovestruck peers.
Reborn touched the brim of his hat, still smirking wickedly. "Ciaossu."
Howdy! Let me know if you like the chapter :) next couple ones should focus more on our boi 59, but who do you want to show up next? I'm open to almost anyone, really.