Written for a friend on LJ. She requested the prompt 'baseball'. :3

Hope you have a good read – and reviews are much loved. X

-

Title: Crunch

Rated: T

Pairing: 8018

Word Count: 1454

Summary: Hibari knows one thing for sure: Yamamoto Takeshi will never be a teacher. 8018.

-

"Get out of the school."

"Yo, Hibari!"

"I'm going to shut you in, herbivore."

"Let's play baseball! You've never done it before, right?"

"Out."

The baseball herbivore continues to stand there, bat in hand, a grimy ball in the other, shamelessly flaunting his freakish, megawatt grin. Nobody with some semblance of sanity does sports in winter (skiing, etc., Hibari understands, but – baseball?). The herbivore must be deranged; his ludicrous proposal the result of a missed appointment with his psychiatrist. Generalising all herbivores as weaklings with muddy slush for brains is almost justified, Hibari thinks. Where are his tonfas? He is going to beat the bloody pulp out of Yamamoto Takeshi, that'll teach him – ohh, he left them in the reception room, damn, and–

Yamamoto Takeshi's hand is bigger than his. A lot bigger. Coarse, slender fingers are wrapped around Hibari's hand, the blood bubbling beneath tanned skin, emanating gentle warmth. For a short, fleeting moment, the heat is soothing, comforting in the ungodly weather, but is somebody holding Hibari Kyouya's hand?

"Let go. Now, herbivore."

The fucking nerve.

"I'm not crowding," Yamamoto Takeshi points out helpfully.

"Don't touch me. I don't care," Hibari growls, flicking his wrist free of the monstrously large hand. "Don't touch me," he repeats, when Yamamoto Takeshi holds on, his glare scathing.

"Baseball," Yamamoto Takeshi states, in all seriousness, "is a very fun game."

"I don't care," Hibari snaps, his patience stretched dangerously thin, briskly striding back to the classroom block; he has to finish his patrol. A hard blast of freezing air blows into his face, Hibari shivers, – he cannot tolerate low temperatures – and instinctively pulls his black school jacket tighter around his shivering body. He should never have checked the grounds. He walks faster, the thick shelter of the familiar whitewashed building his goal.

Hasty footsteps, the light crunch of fragile snowflakes on grass, and Hibari knows Yamamoto Takeshi is on his tail again, chattering away like an elementary school kid – pointlessly clamouring, amicably persuading him to play, and Hibari mourns the absence of his weapons. He wants to shove those tonfas down Yamamoto Takeshi's throat, and then some – "I hope you gag, suffocate, and die a blood-curdling death, herbivore."

"Don't run away!" Yamamoto laughs amusedly, grabbing Hibari's hand again, pulling the shorter boy back to the pitch (that is frosting – "Herbivore, are you blind?").

Frustrated, Hibari tugs. Yamamoto does not let go.

Yamamoto tightens his grip, and Hibari wonders if the boy can feel his fingers trembling with the sheer cold, wonders if Yamamoto is going to say anything about it–

"If you do some sports," Yamamoto is smiling, ingenuous, artless like a child, "you won't feel so cold."

The white flakes are breaking, cracking beneath the soles of his shoes, and there is the incessant gusting of chilly wind numbing his skin, and so Hibari Kyouya will convince himself later, when he is sitting by himself in reception room with the low humming of the heater in the background, that he let Yamamoto Takeshi drag him to the pitch only because the cold had taken its toll on his logical thinking.

"…so I throw the ball?"

"Yes, you throw it to me. With a sort of swooshy feeling, y'know? A dut, eeesh, and you hit with a thack kind of feeling!" his oh-so-professional instructions are accompanied by boisterous gesturing.

Hibari decides that it is for the sake of his now-turned-fragile mental stability that he ignores the unintelligible garble, and relies on his elementary knowledge of baseball.

"In a game, the batter is from the opposite team," Hibari points out dryly.

"We're not playing an official game! But this is the same, too, anyway! You have to feel the phoooosh!"

The ball is heavy in his hands, the material thick, and coarse, white, laced with bright red. Yamamoto stands some ten metres away, a bat held casually in position, looking expectantly at Hibari, the sharp glint in his eyes reminding the prefect that Yamamoto Takeshi is no amateur, that the black-and-white print of newspaper headlines, large, laminated certificates, and bronze, silver, and gold trophies are a testimony to Yamamoto Takeshi's talent.

"Throw your hardest!" he shouts enthusiastically. "With a great tooooooooooosxch!"

Hibari aims for the idiot's beaming, expectant face, because it is, plainly speaking, an eye-searing mess. And, Hibari considers it his duty as the upstanding leader of Namimori to purge the quaint little town of moronic idiots.

He solemnly watches the ball go sailing for its target, "Break his nose, break his jaw, break his nose, break his jaw, break something –" an unending, sadistic mantra in his head. Ahh, if only baseballs could dislodge appendages…

A loud thwack, and, to Hibari's severe disappointment, the ball goes hurtling for the other end of the pitch.

"Woah!" Yamamoto exclaims, amazed, using a hand to shadow his eyes as he earnestly looked for the ball, "Was that your first time pitching?"

You cannot even call that a pitch. Pitching meant a series of complicated, purposeful stances and styles that affect the ball's velocity, and hand-signals with the (in this case, non-existent) catcher for the strike.

"I prefer it'd hit your face," Hibari tells him impassively.

Yamamoto laughs. Hibari looks at him queerly.

"Wanna have a go at batting?" Yamamoto asks, proffering the filthy old bat to Hibari.

"No," Hibari says, snappish, well and thoroughly agitated by now. "I want to leave. I want you to die of hypothermia."

"What's that?" Yamamoto Takeshi – the fucking illiterate – blinks, genuine interest in his eyes.

"Goodbye, Yamamoto Takeshi," Hibari says acidly.

"W-wait!"

Yamamoto Takeshi's gritty fingers are almost scalding on his skin. Hibari turns around abruptly, eyes smouldering, and he sinks his nails into Yamamoto's forearm, indifferent to the small rivulets of blood seeping from the broken surface of skin, trickling down to his elbow, dripping onto white-tipped blades of grass.

"Stop touching me," he hisses, "Stop touching me. Just stop –"

And Yamamoto Takeshi is suddenly so very close, there is something soft, and hot pressing against his cracking lips, warm, warm hands pressing against either sides of his face, there is something long, and wet pushing its way tenderly into his mouth, and–

Hibari bites down hard, shoving Yamamoto away as he does so. His head is light and hazy, there is a faint, coppery tang in his mouth, his legs are wobbling beneath him, and suddenly everything feels so numb. Yamamoto Takeshi stands a few feet away, perfectly still, a hand pressed against his bleeding lips.

"Hibari," he murmurs, "Hibari. Hibari. Kyouya."

"Shut up," Hibari says, barely a whisper. "Shut up."

He rushes for the gates – to hell with everything – almost running, the lingering, burning sensation of the kiss burning on his lips, and his legs won't stop shaking, and he thinks he's going to trip, but–

Yamamoto Takeshi's fingers close around his wrist, and Hibari is seething with rage, and indignation, and herbivores really don't learn, do they,

"I'll bite you to –"

But Yamamoto Takeshi kisses him again, harsher this time. His arms encircle Hibari's small, thin frame, pulling their bodies close together, hot against cold. Hibari struggles, and kicks, and thrashes, but Yamamoto Takeshi does not let go, ignoring the bruises forming on his legs, the bleeding cuts formed by Hibari scraping his nails along the length of his arm, the bleeding teeth marks on his neck, his shoulder.

The taste of blood is strong; Yamamoto Takeshi is still bleeding, but he does not relinquish his hold on Hibari, not even when the prefect is starting to gasp for his breath, his windpipe constricted to a straw.

"Sto–" his voice is muffled, raspy, weak.

"Hibari," Yamamoto whispers breathily, allowing Hibari a moment to relieve the increasingly noticeable pain in his chest, before mashing their lips together again.

When they are apart, and Yamamoto's cheeks are flushed, and Hibari's are a pinkish-white, Yamamoto's smile returns, bright, and sunny as day, as if nothing happened, and that is what infuriates Hibari the most.

"Hibari," Yamamoto bends down slowly, grasping the handle of the bat (he dropped it while they–), "…so, batting?"

Hibari is speechless, because he has never met anyone as stupid as Yamamoto Takeshi is, because there probably will never be anybody as idiotic as he is anyway, because the world has become warped, disoriented, upturned in a span of three (maybe, four, five? – Hibari isn't so sure) minutes, and Hibari cannot understand, but there goes Yamamoto Takeshi, asking if they should continue this ridiculous baseball crash-course conducted by a mentally unsound instructor–

"After that, wanna have sushi at my place? We own a sushi restaurant, y'know? It isn't anything high-classy-like, but the locals around here kinda like my dad's cooking!"

What. What.

FUCKING HERBIVORE.