Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/142828.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Katekyou_Hitman_Reborn!
  Relationship:
      Yamamoto/Bianchi
  Character:
      Yamamoto_Takeshi, Bianchi
  Additional Tags:
      Smut, Community:_khrfest, shameless_fluff, Women_Being_Awesome
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-12-22 Words: 7210
****** A Culinary Campaign ******
by Lys_ap_Adin_(lysapadin)
Summary
     The best way to get to the heart is between the ribs and up. But
     there are other routes, too.
Notes
     A hopelessly belated entry for round four of
     [[livejournal.com profile] ]
khrfest, prompt III-26: Yamamoto/Bianchi cooking rivalry; "s/he'd gone too far
this time; this was now war". Adult for smut. Shamelessly fluffy. Diverges from
canon at ch. 282. 7201 words.
     Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not
     at all. – Harriet Van Horne
Bianchi had been amused by the tray of onigiri, with its neatly shaped
triangles of rice with perfectly aligned pieces of nori and precisely placed
umeboshi, and had made the mistake of telling Yamamoto so when he showed up on
her doorstep with them. She'd been less amused and more puzzled by his
subsequent efforts—a salad whose every piece of cucumber was uniformly shredded
and perfectly dressed, then a tiny bento full of croquettes nestled against
each other, their crisp outsides a crunchy contrast to the creamy interiors.
When she asked what on earth he thought he was doing, he explained that he was
learning to cook, and added (with a proud grin and one of the laughs that she
knew drove Hayato up the wall) that she knew cooking, so she'd been the best
person to judge his efforts, right?
Which she was, of course. Bianchi was the Poison Scorpion and knew from food if
anyone did. Better still, they were in a lull between attempts to kill Tsuna or
otherwise interfere with the Vongola, so it wasn't like she had anything better
to do than let Yamamoto come by every few days with some new dish for her to
sample. His initial efforts were simple enough, but he started branching out
quickly and was bringing her boxes filled with more complicated meals, proper
bentos as best as she understood the practice, in short order. The food was
good, anyway, and came nestled into the little partitions of the bentos and cut
into fanciful patterns—flowers and cute animal faces, and once a not-bad
attempt at a scorpion.
Bianchi's initial amusement faded into something like disquiet as Yamamoto
progressed to more complicated things—soups and marinated beef and little stir-
fries that balanced the crunch of the vegetables against salty-sweet glazes and
the richness of caramelized meat on the tongue. It wasn't that Yamamoto had
plunged into cooking like he'd plunged into the mafia game and learning the
sword, head-first and no looking back, that bothered her. It was that he did it
with the same élan as any of his other skills, showing every bit as much
natural aptitude in the kitchen as he had with the sword. Yamamoto was, she had
to admit while she nibbled on his first careful efforts at sushi (a tidy little
set of cucumber rolls), not entirely untalented in the kitchen.
It was only to be expected, she told herself. He'd grown up under his father's
feet, watching him handle his restaurant—he'd said as much, when she'd asked.
It was only natural that he had a knack for cooking, just from watching.
She was a lot less amused the day Yamamoto brought her something that was best
described as some kind of fusion cooking, a tuna steak that had been seared and
then dressed with ginger and lime, with silky noodles to go with it. "Branching
out?" she asked him, after she'd told him there was too much lime in the
dressing.
Yamamoto laughed cheerfully at the criticism, the way he always did, and
shrugged at the question. "Way I figure it, why limit yourself?"
Bianchi thought, later, that she should have seen it coming then. But she'd
never much good at seeing things coming, so she watched Yamamoto's efforts at
getting creative cautiously at first, then a little nervously, perhaps even
enviously—he really was pretty good in the kitchen, at least when it came to
figuring out what flavors would go together and sing on the tongue, even if he
did have too heavy a hand with the sauces sometimes.
But she didn't worry about it, not least because there were always more
important things to think about, like the batch of yakuza twerps who'd decided
they weren't adverse to being subcontractors for the Cetrulli. Keeping Tsuna in
one piece and pointing out what a bad idea tangling with the Vongola was kept
them all busy for a little while. Yamamoto didn't bring her any samples of his
cooking until well after the dust settled, but when he did, it was with a
bright grin as he offered her a thermos and said, "Try this."
Unwary, Bianchi accepted the thermos and unscrewed the cap, and was immediately
assaulted by the scent of home, tomatoes and onion and Jesus Christ—"What the
hell?" she demanded, staring into the thermos of soup.
There was one thing Yamamoto wasn't good at, and that was parsing warning
signs. His grin just got wider. "Go on, try it," he urged. "I want to know if I
got it right."
"No, what the hell, this is—" There was something weird seething inside her
gut, something outraged.
Yamamoto nodded. "Italian," he said, clearly beyond proud of himself. "I
thought I should learn that next." He waved his hands at her. "Go on, try it!"
This time he'd gone too far. In her hands, the contents of the thermos glooped
and began to fizz.
Yamamoto blinked as his smile turned puzzled. "I don't think it's supposed to
do that." He took a prudent step back as the thermos began to overflow.
"Bianchi-san, is everything—"
"Go away," Bianchi said.
Yamamoto opened his mouth, looked at her face, shut it again with a quick nod,
and went.
The thermos was going to be a loss; the poison cooking was already warping the
metal and eating through the plastic. Bianchi felt distantly embarrassed by
that; she hadn't had a spontaneous conversion so bad since she'd first started
getting a grip on her skills. But it was hard for the embarrassment to
penetrate through her outrage.
How dare he!
This, she resolved, dumping the thermos and its erstwhile contents into a
trashcan, was going to mean war.
===============================================================================
She'd listened to Hayato's bitching about how Yamamoto Takeshi just didn't know
when to fucking quit on more than one occasion, and had always had an abstract
appreciation for the accuracy of that assessment. Knowing it and experiencing
it were two different things, however. Bianchi stared at Yamamoto in disbelief
when he showed up again before she'd managed to come to grips with what,
precisely, she was going to do to him. His amiable grin was firmly in place and
he was carrying another thermos. "So I guess I didn't get the last one right,"
he announced. "I asked around a little. This one should be better."
"No chance," Bianchi told him, hands folded together behind her back. "You're
not even Italian, you're Japanese—"
He was still holding the thermos out, smile not wavering one iota. "Doesn't
mean I can't try." And he didn't budge, not until she finally took the thermos
out of his hands and unscrewed the cap.
"You spiced it all wrong," she told him, irrationally annoyed by the things she
could smell in the steam—basil, not fresh, for one, and maybe oregano too. "You
have to let the flavors of the vegetables show through. The herbs should be an
accent."
Yamamoto looked briefly crestfallen. "Maybe I translated the recipe wrong?" he
hazarded, rubbing the back of his neck. "My English isn't great..."
Bianchi turned away from the door and rummaged up a spoon. "You can't learn
cooking like this from a recipe." She tasted the soup and made a face.
"Especially not recipes in English." Far too many of them had been adjusted to
suit other palates. God love the States (someone had to).
He drooped like a disappointed puppy. "Really? What if I found a better
recipe?"
"Not even then," Bianchi told him, screwing the cap back onto the thermos and
dropping it back into his hands. "It has to come from the heart—" She stopped
herself, knowing that she'd just managed to say exactly the wrong thing.
Yamamoto was practically sparkling at her. "From the heart? That sounds like
your specialty, Bianchi-san!"
Oh, fuck. Fuck, no. "Maybe," she said, sensing doom looming ahead. "So what's
your point?"
Yamamoto gave her a look that was appallingly earnest. "Do you think you could
give me a few tips?" he asked, eyes big and brown and pleading. "Please?"
Bianchi hardened her heart against him and shoved him towards the door.
"Absolutely not," she told him, and shut the door in his face.
===============================================================================
Her apartment's little kitchenette was way too small for two people, so Bianchi
dragged the table over and made Yamamoto do his prep work there as she stood
over him, wondering just how the Yamamoto Reality Deflection Field worked,
anyway. She was willing to bet Hayato had theories and diagrams to explain it,
and made a mental note to ask him sometime, because she hadn't had the least
intention of giving in to Yamamoto's pleas for cooking lessons.
And yet here he was, cheerfully dicing vegetables and talking about baseball as
his fingers flew.
Bianchi was going to make him do all the dishes; it seemed like just
compensation for her time and aggravation. At least he already knew what he was
doing with the knife, she thought, keeping a close eye on the vegetables he was
dicing almost as fast as he was talking.
When he was done, he grinned up at her. "Now what?"
It was a good thing they were friendly, was all she could say about the process
of cramming herself into the kitchenette with him, supervising as he sweated
the onions in a little olive oil and then seasoned them before adding the stock
and the vegetables. Some of them had to come out of cans—no other way for it,
really, with home half the world away—but it still hurt her soul a little bit
to do it. "Now taste that," she ordered him, and he did. "How does it taste?"
He wrinkled his nose. "Needs a little salt."
"Then add some."
She kept a close eye on him, but he knew better than to just dump a whole
handful in. He tasted it again, too, after he had, and nodded. "Better," he
pronounced.
Bianchi tried it, too—it wasn't too bad, anyway. "Yeah, okay," she said, and
pointed at the sink. "Now get to work on the clean-up while this simmers."
And he did, without a breath of complaint. Well, Reborn had said he was a good
student, she thought, leaning in the door and watching him scrub the cutting
board. He'd followed her directions scrupulously, and had asked a couple of
reasonably intelligent questions about the order of the steps, and had a knack
for the kitchen... "So why Italian?"
Yamamoto leaned over and gave the soup a stir before he answered, and then
smiled over his shoulder at her. "Well, mafia game. Seemed like I ought to
learn. And food is important. Lots of things in food. Tells you a lot about
people."
Then he went back to the dishes, without bothering to complain that he was
doing the dishes from her breakfast and last night's dinner, too.
Bianchi watched him, thoughtful, and decided that he was a lot more dangerous
than anyone other than Reborn, and maybe Squalo, gave him credit for. And no
matter what those two thought, it wasn't because of that sword of his by any
means.
"Just remember that I'm only teaching you how to make this soup," she said,
because she had to draw the line somewhere.
Yamamoto laughed and nodded over the sink. "Sure, Bianchi-san, anything you
say!"
===============================================================================
"Okay, seriously, stop getting your recipes off the internet," Bianchi told
Yamamoto the day he showed up with something that purported to be pasta and was
mostly a mess of cheese and noodles and way too much meat and tomatoes. "This
is ridiculous."
"Well, if I don't get my recipes from the internet, where can I get them?"
His smile was disingenuous; Bianchi saw that and recognized it for what it was
and still fell for it. "I'll teach you," she said, grimly, because that was
better than letting him foist pseudo-Italian on the world, even if he did have
the potential to maybe someday become as good a cook as she was (if there could
be such a thing).
"It's no wonder you drive Hayato crazy," she said, a few lessons in, watching
him crush tomatoes against the side of the pan. When Yamamoto looked up,
eyebrows raised and forehead crinkled in what probably was honest puzzlement,
Bianchi shrugged at him. "You make it look like everything you do comes
naturally to you." Surely it didn't, however easy he made it look. After all,
she was teaching him just now, even if all he really needed was for her to
point him in the right direction and then stand by to pull him back from the
edge of regrettable enthusiasm. He was still looking perplexed. "Hayato has to
work hard for everything he does," she explained. "But he never sees you trying
to figure stuff out." Let alone failing, when if there was anything Hayato knew
how to do, it was fail, pick himself back up off the ground, and then try
again.
Yamamoto looked back down at the saucepan, tracing figure eights in it with the
spoon. "He just doesn't know where to look." His smile was wry. "He should try
training with me. Then he'd see."
And Hayato was as likely to do that as he was to swallow a live eel. Pity,
that. "Just an observation," Bianchi told him.
"Mm. Come here and taste this and tell me what you think."
Bianchi did, criticized it, and then let him change the subject into a
discussion of why it was called putanesca.
===============================================================================
The thing was, Bianchi didn't exactly know what it was that made giving
Yamamoto cooking lessons something she'd gone along with so easily. Part of it
was that there was no letting him run around cooking mediocre Italian and
proclaiming that he knew what he was doing, of course. But really, he picked up
the basics after a few lessons, and could have gone his own way without too
much trouble. Sometimes Bianchi wished that he would have, especially when he
made one of his intuitive leaps and came up with something ingenious—a sauce
with just the right twist of salty capers and bright lemon and pepper that
tasted so much like home that it made her heart ache, for example. She'd sent
him away early that evening, claiming a headache, and had done the dishes
herself.
But he didn't say anything about stopping and neither did she, even after that,
and they learned how to negotiate the cramped space of her kitchenette
together, fitting themselves around each other as they cooked and talked.
Yamamoto asked a lot of questions about Italy. Bianchi supposed he was right to
be curious, since that was where the course of his life was going to take him,
and that he was preparing himself accordingly.
Then one afternoon he looked up from checking on the soup to say, "You really
miss it, huh?"
"...it's home," Bianchi told him, caught off-guard.
Yamamoto took that with a nod. "You don't get to go back till Tsuna does, huh?"
Bianchi knew she was staring. "How do you figure that?"
His grin was cheeky. "You stopped talking about killing Tsuna and rescuing
Reborn about the time Mukuro showed up, you know? So I kind of figured all that
must have been an excuse."
"Brat," Bianchi told him, neither confirming his guess nor denying it.
"Well, yeah." His grin stretched a notch wider. "But I also know Reborn's been
an Arcobaleno for years now, and you're only a couple of years older than me. I
can do the math."
He really was a brat. "You haven't shared your math with anyone else, have
you?"
He blinked at her, looking just a little offended. "No, of course not."
"Well, good." Bianchi gave him a look, the most serious she could manage, and
he looked back, steadily enough. "It's an asinine cover story, but it is a
cover story."
Yamamoto nodded, clearly satisfied. "Yeah, I'll keep on keeping my mouth shut."
He gave the soup a stir, tasted it, and turned the heat down a bit. "But you're
basically stuck here, huh?"
"That's putting it a bit strongly." She'd agreed to the mission, had known it
could end up taking a long time. A person couldn't be stuck doing something
she'd gone into with open eyes.
Yamamoto looked at her again, and then his mouth quirked, wry. "Maybe. Here,
tell me what you think about this."
Bianchi did, considering whether to let him get away with trying to change the
subject, and said, "You know you're going to be stuck there whenever Tsuna
finally goes, right?" It'd be another year or two, however long it took Tsuna
to graduate and get himself squared away, but it wasn't going to be too much
longer.
"Yeah, I know." Yamamoto balanced the spoon across the edge of the pot and
leaned himself against the counter opposite her. "But it'll be with friends
who're just as stuck as I am, and I figure I'll get by. Tousan has promised to
visit, too." He grinned, then. "Besides, Reborn makes it sound like I'm going
to be too busy to get homesick."
Lord, had she ever sounded that young? Probably, and wasn't that just a
humbling thought. "It's possible, I suppose."
Yamamoto just nodded, and said, "Hey, if you'll move out of the way, I'll get
started on the dishes."
===============================================================================
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Bianchi said when Yamamoto showed up after the thing
with the Cetrulli, his arm still in a sling and a bag of vegetables in his good
hand. "How the hell are you supposed to do anything without one of your hands?"
Especially when it'd been a near thing whether he'd get to keep that arm after
the Cetrulli's pet assassins had nearly taken it off. Thank goodness for Sun
Flames.
"I thought that maybe you might do the prep work today?" Yamamoto hefted the
bag and gave her a hopeful smile. "Or else all this is going to go to waste."
"Then you shouldn't have bought it, idiot." Bianchi stood aside from the door
anyway, letting him in and taking the bag from him as he exchanged his shoes
for the slippers that she'd given up and started keeping for him. Upon
investigating the bag, she added, "What the hell are we supposed to make out of
this stuff, anyway?"
Yamamoto beamed at her. "I thought that maybe you would like to learn a little
Japanese cooking."
Bianchi stared at him, wondering whether he'd finally lost his excuse for a
mind. "What the hell?"
His smile didn't waver. "Well, like you said, there isn't much I can do with
one hand, so. Seemed like a good time to return the favor."
"What even makes you think I want to learn how to cook Japanese?" There wasn't
any reason to be so irritated by the assumption, no logical reason anyway, but
there it was.
"Nothing, really, but I thought I should probably offer. And I didn't want to
skip our lessons for however long it takes this to heal." Yamamoto patted his
sling, still smiling good-naturedly.
"Then maybe you shouldn't have let yourself get all tangled up with Bruiser
Caraceni like an idiot," Bianchi snapped.
Yamamoto blinked and then laughed. "You sound just like Gokudera when you say
things like that," he marveled.
"Oh, don't you even start the big dumb jock routine with me, mister." Bianchi
brushed past him and dumped the bag on the table. "That was a damn stupid thing
to do and you know it."
"Well, it worked, didn't it?"
The hell of it was that it had, at least long enough for Tsuna to get a shot
in, which Bianchi supposed had been the point. She still shook her head over it
as she ducked into the kitchenette for the cutting board and a knife. Yamamoto
pulled out a chair and sat, looking thoughtful. "I guess I hadn't really
thought about him mangling my arm like that."
"You should have," Bianchi told him, still angry enough to shake the knife at
him to underline the point. "Damn it, you have to start thinking things
through. There are lots of people out there who are plenty capable of killing
you, you idiot, so you need to be more careful."
His smile was rueful. "Yeah. I know. Heard that a lot lately."
Bianchi put the knife down so she could reach over and smack him. "Then start
listening, dumbass, or the next time it'll be your head."
He didn't stop smiling, even as he rubbed his head. "Yes, Bianchi-san."
Bianchi glared at him, but as always, Yamamoto failed to give any sign of
whether the lesson was going to stick. Finally she dumped out the bag of
vegetables. "Okay, so what the fuck am I doing with these?"
At least chopping vegetables was therapeutic enough.
===============================================================================
Eventually it occurred to Bianchi to ask, "Why are we still doing this?" It
wasn't that she minded the fact that Yamamoto kept showing up at her apartment
a couple of times a week to cook and eat dinner with her, but they'd left the
pretense of it being about cooking lessons behind them any number of months
ago.
The look Yamamoto gave her then was bright and uncomprehending; Bianchi
distrusted it immediately. "What do you mean, Bianchi-san?"
Bianchi put her fork down and gave him a long, steady look. After a minute of
that, he began to look a little shifty around the eyes, and she pounced. "I
mean it. Why are we still doing this? Don't you—" Bianchi paused, considering
him "—have things you ought to be doing with Tsuna? Or shouldn't you be
spending time with your dad, or something?" God knew Tsuna was growing like a
weed, and that his high school graduation was just around the corner. And once
that was past, it wouldn't be long before Tsuna would be off to Italy and the
Vongola and everything else that entailed.
"Tsuna doesn't want me around all the time. Kyouko-san, you know? And I spend
plenty of time with Tousan." Yamamoto shrugged. "He says he can't wait to get
me out from underfoot." He scratched his chin. "He says he's going to turn my
bedroom into a studio and take up painting."
She never did stop being impressed by his skills at conversational judo, even
when she wasn't letting him distract her from the subject at hand. "I'm sure
he'll enjoy that." Bianchi folded her arms and kept staring at him. "So of all
the possible people in the world that you could be spending time with, you
choose me?"
Yamamoto blinked at her and said, "Well, yes?"
Bianchi snorted at him. "Good Lord, you really need to find yourself a hobby,
or a girlfriend, or something."
Yamamoto laughed softly and rested his chin in his palm. "The only girls I know
are Kyouko-san, and Haru-chan, and Chrome, and you." He grinned. "Tsuna would
be really sorry about crispifying me if I made a pass at Kyouko-san, but he'd
still crispify me. And Haru-chan is having way too much fun stalking your
brother for me to interfere with that. Chrome is, um, kind of preoccupied with
Mukuro most of the time, and besides, I'm not sure I'd want to date both of
them, and you..." His shrug was elaborate. "I'm pretty sure you're not
interested, or I'd have already asked you out by now." He sighed. "I'm probably
going to have to take up boys, aren't I?"
Bianchi found that she was staring, and not because she wanted to unnerve him.
"Me?" she said, incredulous. "I'm older than you!"
"Not that much older. I asked your brother." Yamamoto shrugged again. "It
wouldn't bother me, and besides, you're my friend and I like you." His smile
turned wry. "But I kind of already figured out that you weren't thinking of me
like that, so it's okay." He waved his hand, dismissing the idea as easily as
that. "But yeah, a girlfriend. Probably not going to happen in the near
future." He wrinkled his nose, thinking. "Not that I have a lot of options if I
decide to try boys, either. What do you think, would Hibari just kill me
outright if I made a pass at him, or would he be surprised enough to hold off
on that while he tried to figure out what I was up to, first?"
"If I hadn't already known you were crazy, this would be all the proof I'd
need," Bianchi told him, pressing her fingers against her forehead to stave off
the headache that dealing with Yamamoto's logic could sometimes induce. "You go
to an entire high school filled with girls and boys. Why not date one of them?"
"...you've never spent a lot of time with people outside the mafia game, huh?"
Yamamoto shook his head. "It doesn't work very well, you know? Most girls don't
understand why you had to break a date because the Cetrulli were trying to kill
Tsuna again. And they don't get Family." His smile was full of regrets. "It's
better not to try, after a while. Doesn't matter how good everything else is,
if they don't understand that." He heaved a sigh that had probably come up all
the way from his toes. "It's too bad. I really liked getting to have sex."
The conversation got more surreal every time he opened his mouth. "I should
have let you change the subject when I had the chance," Bianchi decided,
rubbing her forehead. "You realize that getting a girlfriend—"
"Or a boyfriend!" he interjected, grinning. "I don't think being picky is going
to help me out here."
"—or a boyfriend, right," Bianchi said, a trifle weakly in the face of such a
cheerful espousal of pragmatic bisexuality. "You know that getting a girlfriend
or a boyfriend isn't the same thing as getting laid, right?"
"Of course I know that!" Yamamoto looked indignant. "But you have to admit, the
chances of the one do kind of go up with the other." He leaned back in his
chair, rubbing his chin. "And Reborn did kind of tell us to be careful of one
night stands. Said the Seventh lost a Guardian that way. Besides..." His voice
trailed off and pink finally dusted his cheeks. "Well, never mind."
"No, do go on," Bianchi urged him, fascinated by this turn of events. What
could he possibly find to be embarrassed about when they were already this far
down the rabbit hole? "Besides, what?"
He cleared his throat and went a little pinker as he looked aside. "I kind of
figure it should be more special than that."
Bianchi blinked and forced her giggle to come out as a cough. "So you're a
romantic, is what you're saying."
"Yeah, kind of, I guess." He rubbed the back of his neck, definitely red now.
"That's not a bad thing."
He said it so defensively that Bianchi could tell that he'd taken some grief
for it. "No," she said, the urge to laugh ebbing. "It's not a bad thing at all.
Somebody is going to be lucky to get you, one of these days. And, remember
this. There'll be plenty of people who understand Family where you're going."
Yamamoto brightened at that. "Yeah, I was kind of counting on that. Anyway, so
that's why I don't think finding a girlfriend or a boyfriend is going to happen
soon. And besides, I like making dinner with you." He stopped and gave her an
uncertain look. "But if you're tired of doing this, I guess—"
Right, time to head that off before he could get too far along and drown in his
own good intentions. "I'm not tired, I was just curious, that's all, so don't
be stupid."
His eyes cleared. "Oh, well, okay. Good." He beamed across the table at her.
"So, I think it's my turn to do the dishes?"
"Yeah," Bianchi said, shoving her plate across the table to him and watching
him take it up.
As he did, a sudden thought emerged from her amusement to catch her unawares:
was she really not interested?
===============================================================================
Hayato had suggested, more than once, that Yamamoto's brand of insanity was
communicable; Bianchi had always been entertained by his frustration. Now that
Yamamoto had managed to plant a bug in her head, she sympathized with her
brother far more than she'd done before.
Either she hadn't noticed the way Yamamoto had grown and filled out over the
past few years, or she just hadn't let herself be aware of it—whichever it was,
she was paying attention now and finding that she rather liked what she was
seeing. He was always going to be lean, but it was the leanness of long muscles
and a swordsman's grace, and it looked good on him. So did the economical way
he moved, every motion controlled and precise, like he was perfectly aware of
his surroundings and in charge of his response to them.
What was really tripping her up, though, was his hands. He had amazing hands,
Bianchi discovered, and was appalled at herself. They were graceful and long-
fingered, and watching him wield a knife in the kitchen with deft precision
gave her a shivery, squirming feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Maybe Hayato was right, she thought distantly, watching Yamamoto lick a spatter
of sauce off his fingers and nod over it. Maybe Yamamoto could make people
crazy through exposure.
God knew that she'd had plenty of exposure.
Crazy or not, the next question was whether she actually cared.
Yamamoto turned the flame down. "That's going to need to simmer for a while,"
he pronounced, smiling at her over his shoulder. "Guess we could start the
cleanup while we wait—"
No, Bianchi decided, she didn't really care whether this was crazy or not.
"Maybe," she said, and reached over to lay her fingers against the back of his
hand. "Do you remember what we talked about a couple of weeks ago?" He froze
and looked at her, eyebrows climbing. "Who says I'm not interested?"
His eyes went wide. "Bianchi-san...?" he said, more hesitant than she'd ever
seen him.
"I'm willing to give it a shot if you are," she told him. God only knew that
she'd made plenty worse decisions.
He still looked flummoxed. "I—but—why now?"
"Because I never thought about it before, but now that I have, I like the
idea." Bianchi looked at him, studying his surprise. "Or did you not mean it
when you said you would have asked me, if it had seemed like I would have said
yes?" And if that were the case, she was going to have to explain just why it
was not a good idea to tease a hitman.
"No, I meant it...!" he protested. He shook his head, vigorously, like he was
trying to clear it, and then gave her a smile that was purely delighted. "I
just—you caught me by surprise, you know?" He turned his hand under hers and
gripped it. "Really? You mean it?"
"Lesson for life, Takeshi." That seemed right, and so did stepping closer to
edge him back against the counter. "Always take a lady at her word."
"Huh, yeah, okay, I can do that." Surprised or not, he was quick to catch on.
He dropped his free hand to her waist and used it to draw her against him,
smiling down at her with a sort of wonder that Bianchi realized meant that she
was going to have to kiss him first.
Bianchi supposed she'd have been tentative too, in his place, and didn't mind
it, anyway. Better that than over-eager and presumptuous. She slid a hand up
his chest to hook around the nape of his neck, guiding him down to her and
holding him still for a kiss. Takeshi's mouth was shy against hers at first, or
maybe he was just being careful not to presume too much. Either way, Bianchi
stroked her mouth against his, coaxing him into relaxing and kissing back, and
murmured encouragement to him when he slid his arms around her to hold her
properly and his lips parted for hers.
She'd half-suspected that his talk about other girlfriends and missing sex were
at least one part teenage bravado, but he'd learned how to kiss somewhere. Once
it seemed liked he'd decided that she really did mean it, he responded
enthusiastically, stroking his tongue against hers and sliding a hand up her
back to cradle her head as his lips moved against hers. "Bianchi-san," he said
softly, some breathless span of time later.
"Just Bianchi will do, I think," she told him, taking advantage of the moment
to taste the line of his jaw.
Takeshi's breath hitched as she nuzzled his throat. "What changed?" he asked,
lifting his chin for her. He was running a hand up and down her back, slowly;
it was warm through her shirt.
She'd figured she'd already answered this question, but perhaps he'd been too
surprised to listen. "I started paying attention to what was right beneath my
nose, that's what." Bianchi glanced up at him, but he seemed to be listening
this time. "And I decided I liked what I saw."
"Yeah?" His smile was a little diffident, which charmed her.
"Yeah." Bianchi smoothed her hands down his chest and curved them around his
waist, and stepped back, drawing him away from the counter and out of the
kitchenette. "Now, you're not going to be so rude as to argue with me about
that, are you?"
"No..." He drew the word out, a grin starting to bloom across his face. "I
wouldn't dream of it. Where are we going?"
"Where do you think, silly?" It wasn't a large apartment. Hell, it was
practically an efficiency, and she'd had to screen her bed off from the rest of
the room with a curtain. "I'm not making out in the kitchen when there are more
comfortable places available." She ducked under the curtain, pulling him after
her, and drew him down to the bed with her.
Takeshi laughed softly, though his eyes were starting to turn hot and a little
speculative. "Making out, huh?"
Bianchi grinned at him as she settled herself against the pillows. "Making out,
yeah." She pulled him close and stroked a hand up his chest to cup his cheek.
"To start with, anyway."
"To start with," he echoed, before she kissed him again. He made a soft sound
against her mouth, apparently agreeable enough, and pressed closer, warm and
pleasantly heavy.
Bianchi hummed her approval to him when he settled a hand at her waist and
stroked the place where her shirt had begun to ride up; that was more like it.
His back was pleasingly broad under her hands when she ran them over his
shoulders and down his spine, feeling the solid muscle under his shirt. He made
a sound against her mouth when she found the hem of his t-shirt and slipped her
hands underneath it to stroke her palms against his skin, which jumped and
shivered as he sighed.
It seemed to give him the right kind of idea, though, because he moved his
mouth along her jaw. "May I?" he asked, lips soft against her ear, and edged
his fingertips up her side.
Bianchi had to smile, charmed by that, too. "Of course you may." In fact... She
reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it off herself, tossing it aside.
She shook the hair back from her eyes when she was done and smiled at his wide
eyes. "Well...?" She caught his hand and returned it to her side.
Takeshi swallowed. "You're so gorgeous." He ran his hand up her side, over her
ribs, and surely it was the warmth of it against her skin that made her breath
catch, not the unexpectedly earnest compliment.
She covered it by arching into his hand when he cupped her breast, stroking it
through the satin of her bra. "You're not so bad yourself," she told him,
pulling him close and sliding her hands under his shirt again to touch his
chest, exploring the shape of it.
The sound he made was absent, but she found it hard to care as his touch turned
bolder and his hands smoothed over her breasts, tracing the shape of them
through her bra. He really had done something like this before, Bianchi
decided, because he didn't have to fumble much with the catch of the damn thing
when he was getting it off her. Just as well; she'd been pawed at once or twice
in her time, and this was much nicer.
"Shirt. Off," she told him, before she could get too distracted by how his
fingers felt as they explored her breasts, almost as nimble against her skin as
they were on his sword or in the kitchen. She emphasized her point by catching
his hands and removing them from her chest, and smiled when Takeshi whined in
protest. He gripped his collar and tugged the t-shirt off with an impatient
little gesture that stole her breath with its impatient, careless grace, and
yeah, he really had filled out nicely, hadn't he? "Much better," she told him,
pulling him against her, humming with the slide of skin against skin.
Takeshi murmured something—her name, barely coherent—and kissed her again, open
and hungry and maybe even a little desperate. That wasn't really surprising,
considering the color running high in his cheeks and the hardness pressing
against her hip. But perhaps she had better do something about that.
"Need some help with this?" she asked him, running her hand over the front of
his jeans.
He shuddered, hips pressing against her palm as she undid his jeans.
"Bianchi... oh... oh, please..."
"Shh, I've got you." Bianchi wrapped her arm around Takeshi, tucking his face
against her shoulder and stroking his hair as she dipped her hand inside his
jeans and found his cock. He groaned against her shoulder, breath hot against
her skin, clinging to her as she ran her fingers over hot, silky skin. She
curled them around him, stroking him as he groaned her name. Then his hips
jerked against hers as he gasped, going tense against her, just about as
quickly as she'd expected him to.
Boys, Bianchi thought, wry, and wiped her fingers clean as Takeshi panted and
shivered against her. She gathered him to her, running her hands over his back,
until he managed to recover some of his equanimity.
"Oh, man," he breathed, lifting his head to give her a hangdog, guilty look. "I
didn't—you—um. Sorry?"
"What for? I knew what I was doing, silly." Better a quick handjob than having
him go off like a shot the second he was inside her. "Now come here and kiss me
again."
He still looked sheepish, but did what he was told. "Yes, Bianchi-san."
His mouth was still eager against hers; Bianchi sighed into it, pleased, and
let herself relax into the warmth of it and the way his fingers were moving
over her skin, stroking her breasts until she was breathless and aching with
how much she wanted more. "You can touch more than that," she told him, when it
was beginning to seem like he was going to be content to play with her breasts
forever. She took one of his hands and set them on the button of her jeans,
just in case he needed a hint.
Takeshi made a sound that didn't really have words in it, but was enthusiastic
nonetheless, and undid her jeans. Bianchi wriggled helpfully as he worked her
jeans and panties down her hips and kicked them off. Then Takeshi stopped,
looking at her with wide eyes. "Wow," he said, hands light on her knees.
"I—wow."
If she wasn't careful, this was going to go straight to her head. Bianchi
shifted, drawing a knee up in invitation. "Come on," she murmured to him.
Takeshi smiled at her, eyes still a little wondering, and ran his hands up her
thighs. Bianchi sighed as he did, eyes sliding shut as he slid his fingers
against her and sensation fired along her nerves. "Oh... oh, yeah..." She
closed a hand on his shoulders as he moved his fingers against her, inexpert
but making up for it by how responsive he was to the sounds she made as he
explored her. "There," she breathed, shuddering when he found her clit and
sparks exploded up her spine. "God, Takeshi..."
The hesitation disappeared from his fingers and she groaned as he began to
stroke her, slow and firm, just the way she liked, until she was panting for
breath with the building pleasure. She opened her eyes and saw that he was
watching her, a little line of concentration drawing itself between his
eyebrows, and that made her shiver, want coiling itself tight, low in her
belly. "Inside me," she breathed, and watched him nod.
Bianchi groaned as he pressed his fingers into her and rocked her hips up
against the pressure of them, trying to find the right angle for them. She
gasped when she did and pleasure flared up her spine. "There, yes, she told
him, clutching his shoulder and squeezing her eyes shut as he followed her lead
and worked his fingers against her, until it was too much to stand and she came
unstrung, shaking herself to pieces against his hand.
When she opened her eyes again, Takeshi was still watching her, but his eyes
had gone soft. "Was that okay?" he asked, when he saw that she was looking.
"Perfect," Bianchi told him, pulling him down and kissing him, feeling as
though she were glowing with satisfaction—well, damn, no wonder, considering
how long it'd been since she'd done this. Jesus. No wonder she'd made up her
mind about Takeshi so damn fast.
Takeshi made a startled sound when she ran her hands down his back and slid
them under his jeans and underwear, pushing them down so she could squeeze his
ass. "Bianchi...!" he said, half-laughing.
"What?" she asked, squeezing it again—it was as nice a handful as it looked,
she decided. God bless athletically-inclined boys. "I told you I liked what I
saw when it actually occurred to me to look."
Takeshi raised his head and looked at her for a moment before he smiled, small
and pleased. "Guess I should have come out and said something a while ago,
huh?"
Bianchi snorted at him. "Yeah, pretty much." She raised her face to his and
kissed him again, lingering. "But this works, too, right?"
He smiled. "Yeah, it does."
"Good," Bianchi said, satisfied, and wound a leg around his hips. "Now shut up
and kiss me again."
"Just kiss you?" Takeshi asked, voice dropping as she pressed against him,
rubbing against the hardness of his cock.
"Well, for starters," Bianchi murmured, running her hands up his back.
"Okay, I can do that," Takeshi said, and did.
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