Chapter 8: Partner

Hibari slowly opened his eyes and looked at the clock. It read 7:53am. It was still kind of early. He lifted a hand to his forehead to examine himself. To his satisfaction, his fever had gone down a lot. It was almost all gone now.

Yesterday, after giving Yamamoto the beating the guy deserves, the three of them stayed a while longer until Hibari was well enough to walk home. Well, to Hibari the guy deserved more of a beating, but since Yamamoto had great reflexes and he was not in perfect shape to fight properly, Hibari had to leave (un)satisfied with just an indirect blow to the other male's chest. At least it caused the said male to tumble into the stack of boxes that were laid outside the teacher's lounge. Of course, Yamamoto had to be the one to clean up the mess since none of the teachers wanted to mess around with Hibari.

Knocking can be heard from the door. Hibari stepped out of bed and went to open it. He found Miki standing in front of his room, already dressed in her school uniform.

"I made some porridge for you. It's on the stove," she told him. When she didn't receive an answer from him, she continued, "I'm going to head off now. See you after school then. Get lots of rest and don't forget about your medicine okay?"

Hibari watched as Miki started walking back down the hall.

"She was worried about you, you know. Miki I mean."

"Thanks…"

Hearing that word said in Hibari's voice, Miki immediately came to a complete halt and spun around to face the male. Her eyes were wide with shock.

Hibari slapped his own forehead. The word came out before he realized it. He went back inside the room and closed the door behind him. What made him say that? This was ridiculous. Since when did Hibari Kyouya ever said thanks to anyone? Since when did he had to have someone help him? Since when did he own someone anything? The answer was simple. Never. So, what was that all about? He didn't understand what was wrong.

Maybe it was the sickness.

Upon reaching that conclusion, Hibari laid himself back on his bed, pulled the covers up and went back to sleep.

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Miki walked out of the house, still not believing what she just heard.

Hibari said thank you to her…How was that possible? Maybe he was sicker than she thought. Maybe the fever ended up damaging his brain. However, hearing him say that made her felt…good? Like very good…Which was odd…

"Yo, Miki! Morning!" a cheerful voice broke through her thoughts.

Miki turned to see Yamamoto walking up to her. The guy always seemed cheerful. Unlike Hibari, who was the complete opposite.

"Morning, Yamamoto," she said in returned.

"Guess since we met, let's walk to school together," Yamamoto said, giving her a friendly smile.

"Sure thing," Miki accepted the offer. It would be nice to walk to school with someone and Yamamoto was harmless right?

"How's Hibari by the way?" Yamamoto asked about the head prefect.

"He's fever has gone down a lot. He should be able to come back to school next week at the latest," she answered.

Yamamoto smiled. "Looks like you took good care of him."

"I guess so."

As the two walked side by side Miki couldn't help but take a peek at Yamamoto. He was just as handsome as Hibari, but Hibari's looks were sharper than his. The major different was their personality. Yamamoto was cheerful and can always be seen smiling. Even if she had only known him for less than a week, she already knew that it would be very abnormal to see him downcast. From what she observed, the baseball player's brain seemed to be naturally rewired in a way that makes him think almost everything is positive, which wasn't a bad thing at all. Miki herself wish that she could be more like that.

Yamamoto seemed to also be a fun loving person. Not only that, he was also very athletic. It's no wonder he's so popular with the girls. She had realized that since day one when she was cornered by a couple of his fangirls. Of course, Hibari was popular too…just not in the same way. She had to admit that Yamamoto had a lot of the traits that a girl would want. He was handsome, cheerful, friendly, fun loving. Traits that she had to admit she would look for in a guy.

Miki came to a halt in her thoughts. Wait…What was she saying? Saying that means that she was interested in Yamamoto. That can't be! She knew him for less than a week and besides…She stopped in her thoughts again when Hibari's face flashed into her mind. What the heck was he doing in her mind!?

"You okay Miki?"

Miki snapped her head in Yamamoto's direction. "Eh? Oh, I'm fine. Everything's fine." 'Not'

Yamamoto gave her a strange look. "You were staring at me at first and then suddenly you just starting hitting your own head as if to knock something out of your mind."

Miki stared at the person next to her. 'What happened to being dense!?'

"Really? Well, maybe you're just reading into it too much," Miki stated, quickening her pace. "Let's hurry up or we'll be late."

Yamamoto stared with a confused expression on his face at the girl who was now walking in front of him. She was acting a bit strange. No matter how dense people might say he was, Yamamoto always seemed to be able to sense if something was wrong with any of his friends. Miki was someone who was easy to spot if there was something wrong with her. Although he could sense problems, he could never quite figure out what's causing them. Miki was no exception. He just hope that it wasn't because of him.

"Morning, Yamamoto and Miki," a new voice greeted.

Yamamoto and Miki spotted Tsuna and Gokudera approaching from a fork in the road.

"Morning you two," Yamamoto said, smiling to his other friends.

"How's Hibari-san?" Tsuna turned to ask Miki, anxious to find out how his Cloud Guardian was doing.

"He's doing a lot better now. No need to worry," Miki reassured.

"Yokatta," Tsuna said, letting out a sigh of relief.

"There's no need for you to wear yourself out worrying about that guy, Juudaime. He won't die that easily," Gokudera pointed out. "Even if he did, it doesn't trouble us."

Tsuna sweatdropped at Gokudera's statement. 'What a great friend…'

So, the foursome ended up walking to school together.

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It was almost time for lunch, but the teacher had one more thing to explain to the students. There was a project that they had to do about China. This would include researching about ancient times, history during communist rule, present time, economics and politics. The explanation left the class groaning and cursing the teacher inside their heads.

"Don't complain. You will have a whole month to complete this. However, it also means that I'm looking for excellent quality work since you'll have so much time to work on it. Also, you will all be assigned partners for this project. I have already chosen them for you," the teacher announced. "Gokudera Hayato will be paired up with Kurosawa Hana…"

"What!? I'm not with Juudaime!?" Gokudera exclaimed, clearly displeased with the teacher's decision.

The teacher glared at Gokudera. "You can't always be with Sawada, Gokudera. You need learn to get along with other students in the class too."

"I won't accept this! I'm Juudaime's right-hand man! I have to be with him!" Gokudera yelled back.

"Gokudera-kun, please calm down. I want you to do your best as Kurosawa-san's partner okay?" Tsuna, who was already starting to have a headache from all of this said, trying to calm Gokudera down.

Gokudera looked at Tsuna and bit his lip in frustration. "If Juudaime says so..."

Hana let out an exasperated sigh. "I don't believe that I'm going to be stuck with this monkey," she said with a disgusted tone of voice.

"Who are you calling a monkey!?"

"Gokudera-kun!" Tsuna pleaded, grabbing the Storm Guardian's waist and trying to stop him from lunging himself at Hana.

Gokudera stared down at his boss who was grabbing onto his waist and forced himself to sit back down at this desk. No matter how much he hated the decision, if it was his boss's wish, he would oblige by it no matter what.

The teacher tried his best to hold in his rising anger. He coughed and moved on once things have calmed down. "Sawada, you are with Sasagawa."

Tsuna's face immediately lit up brighter than any light bulb. He turned to look at Kyoko, who gave him a smile. He can feel himself blushing. He was so happy that now he couldn't stop smiling. At first he was extremely worried about the project, but now maybe it won't be as bad as he thought.

"Kimura you will be partners with Yamamoto."

Miki turned to face Yamamoto next to her and he flashed her that signature smile of his in return. Miki quickly face the front, blushing slightly.

Yamamoto blinked, perplexed by her action. She was acting strange again. Was it really because of him?

After the teacher announced the rest of the pairings, she passed out the grading rubric for the assignment before the bell rang for lunch.

For lunch this time, the group stayed inside the classroom to discuss about what to do for the project.

"I have something to do with Onii-san today, so do you want to go to the library tomorrow after school?" Kyoko asked Tsuna.

"Y-Yeah! That's a good idea!" Tsuna immediately agreed. 'I don't believe this…I get to work closely with Kyoko-chan!'

"Want to go too, Yamamoto? Want to go today?" Miki turned to ask her partner.

"I'm afraid that I can't today. I have baseball practice after school and with a game coming up, I can't skip," he replied. "How about tomorrow?"

"Well, I guess that's fine then."

"What about you Gokudera-kun? What are you going to do?" Tsuna turned to ask the silver haired male.

Gokudera snorted. "Don't know, don't care."

Nobody dare to question him any further.

The rest of the day went by as usual until it was finally the last period. Time seemed to drone on longer than usual. Miki laid her head on her desk and stared out the window. Heavey raindrops splattered onto the glass window, distorting her reflection. Would Yamamoto still have baseball practice today in this kind of weather? She got her answer five minutes before the end of class. An announcement was made saying that all sports were canceled due to the rain.

Once the bell rang, Yamamoto scooted his chair over to her desk.

"Guess I can go today," he said.

Miki nodded and stuffed her things into her bag. After the both of them finished gathering their belongings, they head to the library.

"So, where should we start?" Yamamoto asked, settling his bag down on the table.

"Um…I guess we could split the list of things up," Miki suggested, looking at the rubric the teacher gave them.

Yamamoto bent down to look at the sheet in Miki's hands. He reached for a pencil and drew a line right in the middle of the list of requirements. "I'll work my way from the bottom and you can go down from the top."

Miki nodded. "Let's get to work then."

The two split up and started on their portion of the work load. Yamamoto went on the internet to start searching for some facts while Miki went to see if she could find anything in the books first.

Making her way down the isles, Miki started grabbing some books that she thought might be useful. When she got a decent stack, she headed over to one of the tables and started flipping through them, taking notes when she found something that was of use.

When she was finished with her first stack, she got up with the books in order to put them back into place and searched for a new stack to go through. On her way back to the table, she stopped by the computer to check up on how her partner was doing.

On Yamamoto's computer screen were…baseball pictures and description and also scores of the past seasons.

"Yamamoto…"

Hearing Miki call his name, Yamamoto turned to face her with a guilty smile. "I guess that I got a bit distracted…Haha."

Miki sighed. "Got anything yet?"

"I only found two out of the five current events that the teacher wanted. The first two were easy, but I can't seem to find the third one," Yamamoto explained.

"I'll help. I got quite a bit on Ancient China already," Miki said, taking a seat in front of the computer next to the one Yamamoto was on.

Yamamoto smiled. "Thanks!"

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"You're right…This is hard," Miki stated, slumping in her seat. Thirty minutes had past and the both of them still couldn't find anything. "Maybe we should move onto the next one and come back to this one later, so we don't waste time."

"I guess we should," Yamamoto agreed.

Miki decided to check one other site out before giving up on the topic for the time being.

"Hey, I found something!" she exclaimed.

Yamamoto got up and made his way to Miki's computer.

"Right here in this paragraph," she said, scrolling down to a particular paragraph in the article.

After briefly scanning the paragraph, Yamamoto brightly smiled. "That's it alright. Good girl!" he said, reaching out a hand to ruffle his partner's hair affectionately.

A blush raced across Miki's face as Yamamoto's warm large hands moved around on top of her head.

Yamamoto, who seemed to noticed this, stopped playing with her hair. "Are you alright? You look a bit red."

Miki only managed to nod.

Yamamoto stared at her for a few seconds trying to figure out what was wrong, before coming to a logical conclusion. "Did you catch Hibari's cold?"

"N-No, I di-" Miki was cut off when Yamamoto placed a hand on her forehead.

"You are kind of warm," Yamamoto remarked with concern. "Maybe we should go home."

"Ya-Ya-Ya…" she was so flustered that she couldn't even get his name out.

Yamamoto gave her a strange look. "Hn?"

"C-Can you remove your hand?"

"Eh? Oh, um...sorry," Yamamoto said, not quite understanding things at all. "Did I do something wrong?"

"N-No! It wasn't you at all!" Miki quickly waved her hands in front of her, trying to prove his thoughts wrong. His tone of voice sounded so guilty, that it actually made her feel bad. Even if she did think that it was partial his fault for why she was so jumpy, though she couldn't really understand why.

Okay, he was a guy. A very good looking guy at that. Just as good looking as Hibari…And why on earth was she tying Hibari into this?...Anyways, he was a handsome guy and she was a girl and he was having physical contacts with her. It was normal for a girl like her act up when around guys right? Her mom did once say, 'You're a growing teen with growing hormones. You will start noticing guys and eventually find one that catches your interest soon. Oh, I can't wait to meet the one man for my lovely daughter!'

Yeah…So everything was normal. It was all nature's doing right?

Somehow Yamamoto still didn't look convinced.

Miki went over to him and shoved him into the chair that she was sitting in before.

"Let's just finished this part and call it a day," Miki said. "Hibari won't like me going home late and I don't want you getting back late either cause you're going to have to walk me home," she added, hoping that allowing him to walk her home will persuade him that it wasn't his fault.

Yamamoto stared at her in confusion at first, but then his lips curved up into a smile. "Sure thing."

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After finishing up the last bit of the project for the day, the two teens made their way out of the library and to the front of the school.

"Darn it, I forgot my umbrella again," Miki muttered in annoyance, as she opened up her locker.

"Don't worry, I brought mine. We can share," Yamamoto said, opening his umbrella and walked right next to her, so that it covered them both. "Let's go."

Walking home in the rain with Yamamoto reminded her of two days ago, when she was with Hibari. Only the situation was different and this time there would be no keys to be forgotten.

The umbrella was barely wide enough to completely cover the both of them. It was a bit of a tight squeeze and Yamamoto's arm brushed against hers as they walked. It felt kind of awkward. Well, at least not as awkward as yesterday's incident with Hibari. Now, that was something. She could still even remember how it felt when his breath touched her skin.

Miki looked up at Yamamoto. He came in and saw them yesterday in that position. She wondered what he thought of it. Did he knew that it was just and accident or did he really think that something was up between Hibari and her.

"I may have to start charging you for every time you stare at me, you know," Yamamoto laughed when he realized that Miki was staring at him again.

"I wasn't staring at you! I was just…staring at the sky and your head just happened to be blocking my view!"

'Wow, what a lame excuse…'

Yamamoto cocked his head to the side as if thinking over her explanation. He then chuckled. "Okay then."

Miki gawked at him. Did he actually buy that or was he just making fun of her?

The two of them didn't talk much after that. The silence felt a bit uncomfortable, but Miki didn't know what else to say while Yamamoto started humming a catchy tune. He seemed to be enjoying the little stroll in the rain.

It wasn't long before the two were in front of Hibari's place. Miki told him to just drop her off at the front gate, but Yamamoto insisted on bringing her up to the porch.

"Thanks for walking me home," Miki said once they were out of the rain.

Yamamoto smiled. "It was nothing." He then paused for a second before adding, "Can I see Hibari?"

Miki hesitated a moment, not sure if Hibari was in the mood for guests, especially if it was Yamamoto, whom he wanted to beat the life out of him just the day before. "I guess it's alright," she finally answered, opening the door.

Taking off their shoes at the doorway and hanging up Yamamoto's umbrella, the teens made their way into the house and found Hibari walking up the stairs. When he saw Miki and the guest she brought in, his already grumpy looking face became even sourer.

"I don't remember giving you permission to bring any herbivores into the house," he scrawled.

"It wasn't Miki's fault. I invited myself in," Yamamoto said.

"Then as the owner of this house, I shall invite you back outside," Hibari said, pulling out his tonfas.

"Hang on a second Hibari! Don't start a fight now!" Miki shouted, running up to the advancing Hibari and stretched her arms out to try and stop him.

Hibari glared at the girl. "You dare order me around? Know your place."

'Ouch…That actually hurts…'

Sensing that things weren't looking good at all, Yamamoto's instincts told him to get himself out of the house before someone ended up getting hurt.

"Well, it looks like you're doing a lot better now, Hibari. I'll be going like you said then. See the both of you at school!" he said, dashing for the door.

Once the sound of the closing door that indicated Yamamoto's departure echoed throughout the house, Hibari slammed his tonfa on Miki's head.

Miki let out a loud yelp of pain as she clutched her head with her hands.

"Next time, don't you dare bring anyone in the house unless I give you permission," Hibari said, glaring down at the girl crouching at his feet.

Miki glared back at her 'master' with a displeased look on her face. So basically no matter what she did, everything had to be approved by him first. Was this still her life? "Fine!" she shouted, getting up and started to head off to her room with her hands still clutching her painfully throbbing head.

"I never said that you could leave."

Miki gritted her teeth and turned back to face Hibari. "What?" She was now starting to get very annoyed.

"Go make dinner and bring it up to my room when it's done," Hibari ordered.

"Fine…" Miki muttered, beginning to walk away.

"Is that how you accept your master's orders?"

"Hai, Hibari-sama!" Miki turned back to shout at Hibari before stomping off into the kitchen. This was the first time Miki got this irritated since she had met Hibari. Maybe she'll call Anya to let off some steam before going to bed tonight.

Hibari watched the obviously annoyed girl stomping off into the kitchen and smirked.

A/N: I didn't really like this chapter a whole lot. May go back and rewrite a bit of it if I get the chance. Hope you guys enjoyed it though.

This will probably be my last chapter before the reopening of the dreadful place called school. Not that school's bad itself. It's just the workload that comes with it...So, my updates will be slower from now on. I'll try to update at least every two weeks or so. But if it takes a whole month for an update, I'm sorry in advance.

Thanks for all of your reveiws! They are encouraging and very much appriciated!