Title: Lovers' Quarrels
Characters/Pairings: Gokudera/Haru
Summary: Gokudera and Haru argue a lot, but that's not actually a bad thing.
Notes: Teen. For Round III of KHRfest, prompt I-81. Gokudera/Haru – spark; "let's conspire to ignite." Pretty much shameless fluff. 1344 words.

Lovers' Quarrels

She's stubborn and he's worse.

It's impressive, actually: the two of them manage to have fights that are epic in scope, that begin over who even knows what and escalate to the point that Hayato finds himself shouting in a veritable medley of languages. Haru shouts right back; if her range of languages isn't as broad as his, she makes up for it with the sharpness of her tongue. That's why she usually wins their fights, or at least gets the last word in. She's remarkably good at rendering Hayato actually incapable of speaking, which even he is willing to admit is an impressive skill (though generally not at the point when he is sputtering, rendered inarticulate by his sheer mind-numbing outrage because she'd just accused him of harboring unnatural passions for barnyard animals; that had been a particularly memorable fight).

Everyone thinks they're crazy.

When he's in the mood to be fair about it, Hayato can see the justice of that point, especially from the perspective of just about anyone who isn't him or Haru. The thing of it is, none of the people he works with, none of the other guardians and not even the Tenth, get what's so satisfying about working up a truly righteous rage. Yamamoto sublimates the hell out of whatever anger he feels; Hibari pretty much has no filters at all and vents all his rage directly through his fists or tonfa or whatever else is at hand and can be conceivably used as a weapon. Ryouhei's moments of anger come and go like clouds passing over the face of the sun and Lambo pretty much just has moments of teenaged pique. Mukuro gets angry, but it's the poisonous, cold sort of anger, the kind that condenses to a sharp edge. Hayato suspects Chrome's anger is the same as Mukuro's, only even better hidden. And the Tenth... he turns his anger into action, into Flame and Will, and uses it to change things, to burn away what's wrong and set things right.

Haru, though. Haru gets the same sort of satisfaction he does out of having an argument with someone and knows exactly what sorts of catharsis can come out of being flamingly angry. It was actually a relief when he figured that out, because trying to pick a fight with Yamamoto is an exercise in frustration, and one simply does not argue with the Tenth. (And there was no point in trying to argue with Bianchi when he couldn't even hold his lunch down when he was around her, at that point.) But Haru had been plenty happy to pick fights with him, over points of the Tenth's honor at first, and then about other topics as they'd come up: she has reasonably good taste in literature, for example, but she spins absolutely the weirdest fucking interpretations out of the stuff she reads sometimes. (He's willing to swear on a whole stack of Bibles that half of her ideas come straight from bad BL doujinshi, but is waiting to deploy that accusation until just the right moment comes along, because Haru, being Haru, will pounce on the fact that he knows enough about schlocky BL doujinshi to have an opinion on them. Hayato isn't entirely sure that's a conversation he'll ever be ready to have, to be honest.) (And the only reason he knows anything about BL doujinshi is all his sister's fault; that's his story and he is sticking to it.)

Actually, weird literary theories notwithstanding, Haru is really smart. And Hayato is willing to admit that the fact that she is dawned on him pretty slowly. (Being able to admit that other people could be as smart as, or smarter than him was a lesson that was hard to learn, in more ways than one; he has the scars to prove it, too, and not all of them are metaphorical.) But she is smart in a whole lot of directions, which took him even longer to notice. It was during high school, at least, or maybe even during those first couple of years in Italy when the Tenth was transitioning into the job and the Ninth and his men were stepping back and letting them get on with it, before Hayato even noticed that there were some things that Haru never threw in his face during an argument, no matter how angry she was.

Hayato doesn't even know how she figured out where his most vulnerable places are, but she's too honorable to aim for them deliberately. He's seen her decide not to do it, even, though it took him a while to recognize that the moments when she opens her mouth and then pauses, checking herself, before she plunges down some elaborate insult for what they really are. It freaked him out when he finally got that that was what she was doing, because how the hell had she learned that much about him? And then it had made him angry, that she thought he needed protecting like that. Now he's mostly just grateful that they've managed to figure out how to argue themselves hoarse for the fun of it without actually hurting each other in the process.

Which he wishes was something that he'd learned faster than he actually did, to be honest. But the fact is, he's not perceptive the way Haru is and it took him what was really a stupidly long time to realize that there are things that actually can--and do--hurt Haru when he shouts them, things that he knows (when he's calm and thinking clearly) are injustices against her character. The stupid thing about that is that the woman never let on about those things, either, really. He only really got that first clue that he'd overstepped himself the day he'd caught her crying after the fight when he'd accused her of only settling for him because he was the next best thing to having the Tenth. Which, yeah, had been a pretty shitty thing for him to have said, looking back at it. Hayato's never claimed to be a saint, but he apologized for that one pretty fast and learned better than to say things like that to her, even when he's feeling his most insecure.

That's the other thing about the way they argue, though: they don't generally apologize to each other after all the shouting is done. Not as such, anyway, not unless they've managed to say something really hurtful. For the most part, they fight for the sake of fighting, for the sheer excess of it. Half the time, once Hayato has stormed out and cooled off, he can't even remember what the hell they were arguing about in the first place. When he wanders back home, they generally pick up right where they left off before plunging into their argument.

Half the time, anyway. Other times, the making up part takes a different tack altogether, one that ends up in the bedroom. (Or a bedroom-like direction: sometimes the couch is handier. Or the kitchen table. Or, on one particularly memorable occasion, the wall in the hallway.) If Hayato is honest, he'll admit that sometimes that's the only reason he has for picking a fight in the first place. He's pretty sure Haru sees it the same way; there's a certain quirk to her mouth right before the yelling starts that he swears has to mean something.

So that part's all right. (Better than all right, really; Haru gives as good as she gets no matter what the circumstances, and never more so than after a really good screaming match. It's one of the reasons that Hayato really doesn't mind that she's usually the one who gets the last word. It usually leaves her so pleased with herself that it just kind of... spills over to other things. Which is pretty awesome, when he thinks about it.) Even if everyone else is convinced they're crazy, it works for them. And the way Hayato figures it, that's the only thing that really matters.

end

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