Metamorphosis [Prince of Tennis: Niou/Yagyuu]
title: Metamorphosis
fandom: Prince of Tennis
pairing: Niou/Yagyuu, slight references to Yagyuu/girls.
inspiration: We would be living together apart.
We wouldn't go far.
We would never be able to cope with,
the ones that we are.
- "Forever", Beborn Beton
notes: r-rated. Sexual references, swearing. 5062 words. That is long for me! ...And of course I couldn't stop Yukimura sticking his nose in, I never can. For you, Cyn ;)
-
Metamorphosis
-
What most people don't know is that Niou actually does need glasses. It's just that he prefers contact lenses for most everything, especially playing tennis. Though sometimes he'll have a weird eye day and just feel like not sticking his finger in either of his eyes and forgo the contacts altogether. It is habit for him to lean closer to his books on those days, especially his maths book, though there is no difference in the prescription strength between the contacts and the glasses.
Yagyuu picks up Niou's glasses by mistake one time and discovers that Niou's sight is in fact worse than his own, in one eye at least. It's a sensation somewhat alike to being blinded he assumes; wearing lenses too high a strength for you, intensifying everything beyond your general perceptions.
Sometimes when he looks Niou's way, when Niou isn't looking back and is too busy to notice the eyes on him, Yagyuu gets that same sort of feeling, and more than once has reached to his face and felt the frames of his glasses to reassure himself they are in fact his own.
-
"What's Niou-sempai doing?" Kirihara asks far too loudly for the abrupt rudeness of the question. He directs his question, as most tend to do, to Yanagi.
"He is simply indulging his split personality again." Yanagi shrugs, and turns away. He has seen it all before.
Niou stands with his back to them for a little while longer, refusing to grope at the back of his neck at the abscence of tied back hair that really should be there. Yanagi thinks he understands everything, but really he doesn't know what he's talking about in regards to this at all.
-
"You can't do that anymore." Niou says as primly as he can, swatting at Yagyuu's clasped hands in front of him on the desk.
"You'll have to refrain from doing that, then." Yagyuu says, inclining his head to indicate the way Niou pushes the front legs of his chair off the floor, slings an arm over the back of the chair and slouches across the seat.
"Fine." Niou says. "Easy." He pulls himself into an upright position, tucks his legs under the desk and straightens his back. Mimicks Yagyuu's clasped hands in the centre of the desk.
Slides his eyes to the side in Yagyuu's direction to see what he thinks. His expression doesn't change.
"I think this is going to be harder for you than it is for me." Niou smirks.
"Care to bet on that?" Yagyuu replies, grinning a familiar wicked grin, and lapsing into Niou's speech patterns perfectly.
-
They had first had sex not long after meeting one another. And it wasn't because Niou preferred to think of himself as free-spirited, rather than a slut, and it had nothing to do with Yagyuu's clandestine way of seducing all-too-willing (usually) girls who pretended to be virgins and thought he wouldn't know, taking them from behind to minimize the mindless babbling from their mouths about the risk of getting pregnant.
The first time something had happened, it had been in a very cliche sort of place; in the tennis club locker-room. It had involved a hand-job reciprocated by a rather sloppy blow-job, which would improve over time, but since it was the first time Niou had ever experienced one there was really just no way it couldn't have felt incredibly fucking awesome, no matter what.
-
The sex had happened after an afternoon spent picnicking (for lack of a better word to describe it) under a tree, poking at one another's culinary creations and daring one another to bite into them to discover what had been baked or sandwiched inside. Niou had challenged the masonry-screw-in-the-cupcake with library-card-in-a-roll, and eventually won by convincing Yagyuu that he had swallowed the tranquilizer when really he had it tucked well under his tongue.
If he had to say so himself, he did a damn good impression of himself knocked completely unconscious.
And to his credit, Yagyuu didn't completely freak out or cry like a girl, and when he realised he'd been tricked the light slaps to face attempting to rouse Niou became punches attempting to mask his blush. One fight in the grass, two bruised faces and three attempts to start the fight all over again later, they had degenerated to a staring contest.
In hindsight, it was pretty damn easy to see that spending an entire afternoon staring at someone's face intently could easily lead to a strange sort of obsession.
-
They ended up in Yagyuu's room, on Yagyuu's bed, but Niou was the one on top. But there were hands all the way down inside the back of his pants, and he was nowhere near as accomplished in front, neither in the area of unzipping zips, nor the area of having a whole lot of bare skin at his fingertips. Niou was just looking, staring, again.
He was very carefully and delicately contemplating running a single finger across Yagyuu's bottom lip to see how the flesh would give beneath it. Thinking about making Yagyuu close his eyes (but for the fact that Niou would no longer be able to see his eyes, it was a good idea), and blow on his face to see what his small and fine eyelashes did about it. He was considering taking lessons in the contours of Yagyuu's face, and learning them by means of only his tongue.
The word that sort of came to mind first was worship.
-
It was when Yagyuu deigned to break the silence that they both realised he was behaving the same way.
Niou had opened up his shirt and way nipping at the skin that drifted up and down across Yagyuu's ribs, making him squirm and causing his shirt to crease up in the back in an unexplainable manner. Perhaps he would just bury deep down in the laundry basket and have his mother assume that was how it had gotten so crumpled.
"Niou," Yagyuu said, reaching vaguely for him and finding his shoulder, which quickly swept into the back of his hair and jerked on it just enough to convince Niou to lift his head. "Say it."
"Say what?"
"Niou." Yagyuu said again, and, "say your name."
Niou looked a little perturbed.
"I thought that was your job." He said. He lowered his head again to go about making Yagyuu want to say his name, repeatedly, if he were really as much of an over-achiever as everyone liked to accuse.
"I want," Yagyuu hissed as the teeth came back out, "to hear it in your voice."
"So, say it yourself." Niou replied. "You do a great impression of my voice."
There was a noteable silence, wherein Yagyuu was considering the idea, trying out how it might sound inside his head as Niou's fingers dug into his hips and pushed him down harder into the mattress.
"Niou," he said again in a voice that definitely wasn't his own. Niou himself froze up.
And began silently praying thanks to every deity he had ever even heard of for the miracle it had surely been that he hadn't just come prematurely in his own pants.
-
School was a bitch. Sometimes it seemed like for everyone else, it came easily. And that somehow, in a sense of unspoken alignment, only those on the tennis team had it difficult, and had come together to beat the crap out of each other in matches instead of wallow in their own mutual misery.
Niou suspected Yukimura's issue was that he had been bullied before entering junior high, not that it was hard to guess the primary reason why, but he had taken one hell of a lot of pent up anger and directed it into being a ruthless captain who had shown everyone exactly what he was capable of, seemingly so easily too.
That was why he had the final say in everything, why he was in charge. He had found a way to conquer his demons. Everyone else was still sort of struggling.
Soon after Niou met Yagyuu, he wondered in his amused kind of way, that if he too overcame his problems and conquered his issues, would he be promoted to vice-captain? As far as he knew, Sanada hadn't yet discovered a way to prise that huge, great, hulking stick out of his butt, after all.
-
Niou had a seat right by the classroom door, which hadn't been his decision, but the teacher's. Within about five minutes of teaching him, she had decided it would be best if he were near the exit so that when she asked him to get out during the course of lesson, he would disturb as few people as possible in leaving.
These days Niou was mostly sent out for arriving late, which he did because he had learnt quickly that if he turned up before even just one of the guys, they would always elbow, knock with their books, and find some way to otherwise smack him in the head as they passed by his seat to their own chairs towards the back of the room.
Whether it was because Niou was quick-minded or quick-witted, he couldn't begin to fathom. He wasn't lacking in attention from a few select girls, either. Giving up doing well in class was easy since he wasn't a fan of it himself anyway, and girls were of no importance once Yagyuu came around.
The only thing he wasn't willing to give up were his tricks. He learned to make himself content with knowing that in getting to class early he always had plenty of time to plant stink bombs in desks, and once, an incriminating photo of one of the guy's girlfriends looking pretty friendly with the guy's best friend.
-
Yagyuu was in the same class, but his distractions were a little different. For a start, when he had to leave the room it was his own choice, and through his own devising. He had contacts, and code-words, and kids in lower years willing to risk skipping out on their own classes to deliver fake messages. Yagyuu always compensated.
When Yagyuu found ways to get himself out of class, he would cause a commotion upon leaving. He smirked at so many girls in passing that half of them lost their place in the page they had been reading, and the others blushed so furiously they couldn't answer even one question between them for the rest of the lesson.
Therein lay the reason more often than not he would go home with hidden bruises and painful aches. Pure jealousy, and it wasn't like there was anything to be jealous of, considering Yagyuu had kept every last one of his conquests secret, and it had been unfaithful girlfriends who had tearfully leaked everything out.
-
"I'm here," Yagyuu says, slipping into his seat and trying to look appropriately shame-faced when it's rather obvious, to Niou if no-one else, that he has just let down some girl and had to stand soberly and watch her cry when all he wanted to do the entire time was laugh.
No-one else seems to know about any of this, or seems to care.
"You're five seconds late." Yukimura says, hand round Yanagi's wrist looking at the seconds and milliseconds on his digital watch.
"My apologies." Yagyuu says, ducking his head down and still holding in the laugh. Niou wants to poke Yagyuu with his finger and make him loose it, just to see if he can.
"Since it's only five seconds, I suppose you can make do with only five laps." Yukimura shrugs. "I must say I like the idea of assigning laps by seconds. From now on, if you're over a minute late that's automatically sixty laps."
"That's how many seconds are in a minute, Marui." Niou whispers helpfully.
"Oh, shut up." Marui hisses back, elbowing Niou in the side.
No-one seems to blame Yagyuu for this change in the rules, but Niou considers that nothing that seems to be Yagyuu's fault actually ever finds its way back to him.
-
Yagyuu finds it easy to really hate Niou sometimes, in a way that is completely separate from how much he likes Niou as a friend, and how much Yagyuu enjoys him in his bed.
Like when they are at practice and Niou pulls off the kind of trick that has Sanada frowning, but Yukimura laughing so hard there are tears in his eyes, so nobody says anything. Yukimura really smiling is something they all want to see all the time. In those moments, when Niou is touching the hearts of everyone who really matters and forging real ties of friendship, Yagyuu hates him because he is envious.
Yagyuu sees himself as the most distant person of the entire group. Even Sanada with his discipline and refusal to get involved in anything 'immature', is drawn in by the warmth of Yukimura's words and the need to coerce Kirihara with a firm hand and firmer words. Even Yanagi with his clinical facts and figures knows how to befriend people, and has answers to emotional problems as well as homework related ones.
-
"Hiroshi, are you coming with us tonight?"
"Sorry Yukimura, no, my parents need me at home."
"So polite and proper!"
"Must be such a joy to his parents."
"Unlike most of you."
"Oh Sanada, practice is over now, give us a break."
"I suppose we can still rely on you, however?"
"Of course you can, Yukimura! Don't doubt that."
"I don't. I was only teasing." Yukimura's last glance before Yagyuu leaves cuts through him swift and sure. "If I had ever doubted you for even a moment, you wouldn't be here now."
-
Niou is quite prone to illness, when he gets close enough to anyone to actually catch anything. Yagyuu is quite often the one to pass infections on without suffering the symptoms himself. And therefore can never be surely pinned down as the culprit.
Even though it isn't his fault, Yagyuu notes the way the team act. It's Niou, Niou is unreliable sometimes. Oh sure, not in the moments that really count, no he's a good guy, a brilliant guy, but he can be a little flakey. You know, sometimes he doesn't go home, and sometimes his parents don't actually know whereabouts he is. He has this scary sort of freedom you have to watch out for, stay on your guard.
He always comes through for the team, but they've heard words. Whispers, rumours. They don't take it as Gospel, but they do keep it in the back of their minds.
Yagyuu half wonders what they say about him when he is not there, until he gets home, dumps down his possessions and realises there's never been a time when he wasn't there to hear every single exact thing that was said.
-
"You shouldn't come in," Niou says, standing in his pyjamas and some ratty old bunny slippers and sniffling. "You'll get sick. Can't have it happen to both of us, that'd wreck the team."
"I won't get sick." Yagyuu says. He knows his sister has been suffering the exact same symptoms as Niou, just six days earlier, and he hasn't caught it yet. Niou doesn't know that though.
Niou has to take his word for it five minutes later when they're on Niou's bed and Yagyuu's tongue is down his throat. He's no longer really in the mood to protest it anyway. Yagyuu's hand is rubbing all over the front of his pyjama bottoms, bunching up the fabric and curving his lips into a smile at Niou's frustration.
"Hey, Niou," Yagyuu says, and gets nothing but squirming and keening in reply. "Niou." He says again, in Niou's own voice. He stops promptly, eyes wide and a little angry seeming. Probably pissed that Yagyuu knows a way to really get to him now.
If he'd been paying attention instead of getting off, he would've noticed more than that.
"Why do we do this?" Yagyuu asks, punctuating his words with squeezing fingers. Niou has to groan before he can choke out coherent words and answer.
"Don't get all introspective and girly on me." He says, gritting his teeth.
"Oh, I already know the answer." Yagyuu says. "I just wanted to see if you knew."
-
There's one night when Niou's still off school sick and Yagyuu has no-one to walk home with when he runs into a guy whose girlfriend he screwed a few weeks ago; plenty enough time to build up some high frustration over the whole deal. Strange the number of these guys who have had these girls on their arms for weeks and months even, and still haven't managed to devirginise them. Yagyuu barely ever even needs a second date.
Though he is slight, his constant tennis practice (not quite Spartan, but close; Yukimurian) gives him enough muscle to rely upon. Fact is, when someone is bigger and heavier than you, they tend to have a slight edge in a fight.
Yagyuu acts for the first time in his life not like a perfect gentlemen in the eyes of his parents. Phones home, lies about spur-of-the-moment plans with a friend who can't make decisions more than five minutes ahead of time.
It would all be true, if Niou were beside him.
-
Niou licks the blood right off his face, speckles of dirt mixed in and all.
"I'm already sick," he says, "a little dirt won't do much worse damage."
It kind of tickles, in a stingy, wet, saliva-coated sort of way, so Yagyuu doesn't say anything. Figures it's Niou's funeral.
And just like he'd figured, hoped mostly, Niou doesn't ask questions. Doesn't say much of anything that he wouldn't normally. Even makes an odd joke about it all, just like he would if anyone else had had the shit ripped out of them.
Just because it's Yagyuu, he still has to be himself, or things won't be normal. They'll be different, and weird, and concerned, or something.
"Is it a relief?" Niou asks, and Yagyuu has to admit he doesn't have a clue what the fuck Niou's talking about.
"When someone punches you," Niou elaborates. "Knocks you clean out on the floor, whack. Is it a relief to just give up and let go?"
Yagyuu just stares at him with a look he hopes is still disgust even though it's a little warped by a bruised lip.
"Look, I spend all day every day waiting for petty little kicks and hits and pinches." Niou says, shrugging and leaning back on the bed, away from Yagyuu, who he figures all of a sudden seems to need the space. "I have to hold my breath everyday and wonder what will come next, if this is the day they'll finally get a bit bolder. And I don't even know what for; their issue with you is pretty damn obvious! I think that sometimes it'd be a relief if they'd just punch my lights out and get it over with."
Yagyuu takes the clean tissue Niou's been holding out of his fist roughly and holds it to the cut under his eye. Doesn't say anything.
-
"Some days," Niou says, leaning on his side and looking down at Yagyuu on his back. "I think I'd really like to be you."
"I know." Yagyuu says, and says it so it sounds like, yeah, me too with you.
-
It is just little touches at first, and only certain members of the team notice.
"Nice tie," Yukimura smirks, though Yagyuu's wearing the same standard school uniform they all are. It's just that today it isn't right up under his chin ready to choke him. It's a little loose, and a lot shorter, dangling around his neck like a fashion accessory as opposed to a flash of colour in his very sober and correct uniform.
"You changed your hair." Yanagi notes, and Niou wonders if he's only playing dumb, if he really sees the significance.
-
"I need glasses the same as this," Niou says, holding out Yagyuu's glasses while Yagyuu pretends to stare intently at a display he can't really even see. "But with this prescription." He holds out his own eye tests results.
"You couldn't have just borrowed mine?" Yagyuu asks when they leave. They have to walk four blocks out of sight before Niou will let him put his glasses back on, and the world swims outside his head. His fingers are clutching Niou's arm tightly, but not so anyone would notice, but for Niou's grimace. He deserves it.
"Yours aren't strong enough." Niou says, making Yagyuu's educated assumption about Niou's eyesight an actual fact.
-
"You look good." Yagyuu admits reluctantly, standing behind Niou and looking into the full-length mirror.
"This looks accurate, or I look hot?" Niou asks, wears a smirk that looks really foreign on his face now that it isn't his own. Yagyuu doesn't answer, knows he doesn't need to answer. And until he's finished and they've perfected his hair, he won't say anything because it won't be complete.
"Is it wrong that I think I look hot?" Niou asks. "Is it still considered narcissism when this isn't technically me?"
"Technically it is still you under there." Yagyuu points out. "Help me wash this out."
Niou's fingers weave right into his hair and pull strands between them in smooth motions that make Yagyuu bite his lip.
"Is it weird to be planning something like this?" Niou asks, pouring water over Yagyuu's head and beginning again.
"I think," Yagyuu says later, after his hair is dry and tied back out of his way. Then he interrupts himself by covering Niou's mouth with his own, "that the planning of it is the least weird aspect. And I can't find it in myself to care."
-
When he runs a hand up the inside of Niou's thigh, Yagyuu is looking at a body very familiar to him, that aspect hasn't changed. Even when he flicks his eyes upwards and sees the wrong colour hair and the new glasses slipping halfway down Niou's nose, he doesn't so much think to himself, my god I'm about to fuck myself, as he thinks he's Yagyuu so that makes me Niou, and now he feels like he can do anything.
Everything from biting, which he's never even thought of trying before because though it feels good when Niou does it to him, somehow he thinks there must be a way to fuck it up, and if he goes into it assuming it won't be sexy isn't that just asking to fuck it up completely?, to waking up in the morning coiled in blankets and clamping a hand over Niou's mouth when his mother calls up for him to get up, and replying in Niou's voice for him.
-
And fuck, but doesn't it feel good to not have to hang around as close to the classroom as he can get without being in the path of anyone who might smack him in the side or around the head just for being there. Niou sits himself down leisurely in Yagyuu's seat, clasps his hands in front of him just like he told Yagyuu he mustn't do anymore, and breathes in the moudly, musty scent of the classroom he doesn't usually notice because he rushes in all squeaky sneakers and heavy breaths and can only smell cramped space and a hell of a lot of sweat.
He almost bothers to warn Yagyuu about the reason he comes to class late, except his pride prevents him from doing so, even if he knows Yagyuu will pay for it. But he said he wanted to be Niou, and that means everything that comes with it. Thing is, Niou hadn't really thought about the fact that he knows things about Yagyuu no-one else does, or is supposed to, and that it can probably work both ways.
So it comes as somewhat of a shock when Yagyuu rushes into the classroom late and doesn't bow his apology, but shrugs and smiles at the teacher, who rolls her eyes and points back out the door. Niou knows what he sees, but it's a little hard to connect the fact that it's Yagyuu in his head with the sight that it's him in front of everybody acting just like usual.
-
Second class of the day, some spotty-faced kid he never met before in his life hands a note to the teacher and gets him out of class with a smile and an, "I'm sure you've got most of the work done already, Yagyuu-kun, so don't rush that homework will you? You're capable of better than that."
There's this awful sort of pride welling up in him, even if it's Yagyuu's praise he knows that when he hands the work in it'll be his own doing, and whatever grade comes back on it will be his accomplishment. He still doesn't care much for schoolwork, but it's the thrill of someone taking pride in him for once, and believing he can do well.
He is so used to the finger pointing out the door and spending his class time in the library, or just sitting outside the room with his book propped up on his knees, pressing an ear to the door to try and catch the lecture being spoken.
-
"Something's different." Yukimura says, eyeing both Niou and Yagyuu as if he can't figure out which one he should be addressing his words to. He taps his lip with one solitary finger thoughtfully.
Niou doesn't dare to look in Yagyuu's direction, and knows Yagyuu would never say anything in response to this, so he keeps his mouth shut. It's kind of nice to not have to keep up with the effort of snappy comebacks and retorts, and to keep a silent counsel in his own head.
"Well, Niou's here and not out of sight, so perhaps he isn't planning anything stupid today." Sanada shrugs, rummaging through his bag.
"You wish," Yagyuu says, and Niou pulls his lips tight to keep his mouth from falling open. Well yeah, it's fine when he says these kind of things, everyone expects it, and he's used to vague abuse, but for Yagyuu to do it, and take the fall-
-except, except that this time he was the one to say it, and it is his fault, and everyone just thinks he's Niou anyway.
-
His head bangs against the locker when he slides down to the floor, and through shakey breaths Yagyuu realises why Niou has always insisted there's no point to waiting for him after practice.
Surely this kind of punishment can't happen to him everyday, the lap after lap after lap after cleaning equipment after putting up nets only to take them all down again. All the ball machines... Is it really fair to pit someone against three with no racket to protect them?
Though Yagyuu knows this isn't about fairness. It's about undermining authority, and how Yukimura seems to be so underenthused by it, not even bothering to respond most of the time when Niou is rude directly to Sanada's face, and yet when everyone else is gone he takes the time to point out that really, it does matter.
Niou can do and say whatever the hell he wants, that won't be forced out of him. Because there's always something waiting for him after practice if he still hasn't learned to shut his mouth.
"We do it because we love you," Yukimura says, mouth twisting in an unidentifiable manner, but it's definitely a kind of smile. Sanada, behind him, can't even look Yagyuu in the face afterwards.
-
After all the sly nicks and pinches, the really underhand smirks peppering his day and lurking continually around the next corner, Yagyuu tilts his head back against the lockers again, breathes once, twice, three times, and thinks about what a relief it is just to be punished completely for once.
And he's only had to suffer it for one single day.
-
Niou takes the scenic route home, otherwise he's going to be early for once.
He is enjoying himself too much to hear anything beyond his own tuneless humming, and the hop in his step. A hand clamps down on his shoulder, swings him round to face a guyfrom school built a lot like a brick wall.
When a fist comes swinging at Niou's face he doesn't really have time to think, even though he's wasted so many days imagining what he might do if something were to finally happen to him. He simply dodges faster than he knew how to, and throws a punch of his own that sends the bigger guy to the floor like a bug-zapped fly. Everyone else Niou notices suddenly surrounding them eyes him warily, and he crouches a little like a rabid animal, maybe a cat with its claws out, teeth bared.
"What the fuck?" Someone says, and it's like code for 'let's get the hell out of here'.
Niou brings a hand to his head to stop the strange swirling, the rush of adrenaline jumping up and down inside, tingling like pins and needles.
Somehow he had already known, it was damn obvious, that Yagyuu never usually fought back.
-
Yagyuu almost walks himself home, to his real home, he is that distracted. He forgets even to watch out for anyone lurking in the shadows, following his footsteps. Lucky for him he has nothing to fear; Niou's day always ends on the tennis courts with a resounding thud.
Niou is waiting for him outside. Kicking a stone against the tree and then again when it bounces back. It's not something he would do, well, maybe if he had been waiting a while. He doesn't ask, though.
"Good day?" Niou asks, lifting his head and betraying nothing. But Yagyuu is used to that.
"Yeah," he says, the word falling right out of his mouth while he's still considering. They both break into matching grins.
"Tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
-
"I should've known." Yukimura says, narrowing his eyes at the both of them. Niou looks at Yagyuu. Yagyuu looks at Niou. They don't know who is wearing whose smile anymore.
"I don't really see necessary to point out that you'll both be staying behind tonight." Yukimura says. He waves them away, but neither of them move.
"Renji," Yukimura yells, and turns his back on them. "Get on the phone! We need to borrow a couple more ball machines from somewhere!"
-
fandom: Prince of Tennis
pairing: Niou/Yagyuu, slight references to Yagyuu/girls.
inspiration: We would be living together apart.
We wouldn't go far.
We would never be able to cope with,
the ones that we are.
- "Forever", Beborn Beton
notes: r-rated. Sexual references, swearing. 5062 words. That is long for me! ...And of course I couldn't stop Yukimura sticking his nose in, I never can. For you, Cyn ;)
-
Metamorphosis
-
What most people don't know is that Niou actually does need glasses. It's just that he prefers contact lenses for most everything, especially playing tennis. Though sometimes he'll have a weird eye day and just feel like not sticking his finger in either of his eyes and forgo the contacts altogether. It is habit for him to lean closer to his books on those days, especially his maths book, though there is no difference in the prescription strength between the contacts and the glasses.
Yagyuu picks up Niou's glasses by mistake one time and discovers that Niou's sight is in fact worse than his own, in one eye at least. It's a sensation somewhat alike to being blinded he assumes; wearing lenses too high a strength for you, intensifying everything beyond your general perceptions.
Sometimes when he looks Niou's way, when Niou isn't looking back and is too busy to notice the eyes on him, Yagyuu gets that same sort of feeling, and more than once has reached to his face and felt the frames of his glasses to reassure himself they are in fact his own.
-
"What's Niou-sempai doing?" Kirihara asks far too loudly for the abrupt rudeness of the question. He directs his question, as most tend to do, to Yanagi.
"He is simply indulging his split personality again." Yanagi shrugs, and turns away. He has seen it all before.
Niou stands with his back to them for a little while longer, refusing to grope at the back of his neck at the abscence of tied back hair that really should be there. Yanagi thinks he understands everything, but really he doesn't know what he's talking about in regards to this at all.
-
"You can't do that anymore." Niou says as primly as he can, swatting at Yagyuu's clasped hands in front of him on the desk.
"You'll have to refrain from doing that, then." Yagyuu says, inclining his head to indicate the way Niou pushes the front legs of his chair off the floor, slings an arm over the back of the chair and slouches across the seat.
"Fine." Niou says. "Easy." He pulls himself into an upright position, tucks his legs under the desk and straightens his back. Mimicks Yagyuu's clasped hands in the centre of the desk.
Slides his eyes to the side in Yagyuu's direction to see what he thinks. His expression doesn't change.
"I think this is going to be harder for you than it is for me." Niou smirks.
"Care to bet on that?" Yagyuu replies, grinning a familiar wicked grin, and lapsing into Niou's speech patterns perfectly.
-
They had first had sex not long after meeting one another. And it wasn't because Niou preferred to think of himself as free-spirited, rather than a slut, and it had nothing to do with Yagyuu's clandestine way of seducing all-too-willing (usually) girls who pretended to be virgins and thought he wouldn't know, taking them from behind to minimize the mindless babbling from their mouths about the risk of getting pregnant.
The first time something had happened, it had been in a very cliche sort of place; in the tennis club locker-room. It had involved a hand-job reciprocated by a rather sloppy blow-job, which would improve over time, but since it was the first time Niou had ever experienced one there was really just no way it couldn't have felt incredibly fucking awesome, no matter what.
-
The sex had happened after an afternoon spent picnicking (for lack of a better word to describe it) under a tree, poking at one another's culinary creations and daring one another to bite into them to discover what had been baked or sandwiched inside. Niou had challenged the masonry-screw-in-the-cupcake with library-card-in-a-roll, and eventually won by convincing Yagyuu that he had swallowed the tranquilizer when really he had it tucked well under his tongue.
If he had to say so himself, he did a damn good impression of himself knocked completely unconscious.
And to his credit, Yagyuu didn't completely freak out or cry like a girl, and when he realised he'd been tricked the light slaps to face attempting to rouse Niou became punches attempting to mask his blush. One fight in the grass, two bruised faces and three attempts to start the fight all over again later, they had degenerated to a staring contest.
In hindsight, it was pretty damn easy to see that spending an entire afternoon staring at someone's face intently could easily lead to a strange sort of obsession.
-
They ended up in Yagyuu's room, on Yagyuu's bed, but Niou was the one on top. But there were hands all the way down inside the back of his pants, and he was nowhere near as accomplished in front, neither in the area of unzipping zips, nor the area of having a whole lot of bare skin at his fingertips. Niou was just looking, staring, again.
He was very carefully and delicately contemplating running a single finger across Yagyuu's bottom lip to see how the flesh would give beneath it. Thinking about making Yagyuu close his eyes (but for the fact that Niou would no longer be able to see his eyes, it was a good idea), and blow on his face to see what his small and fine eyelashes did about it. He was considering taking lessons in the contours of Yagyuu's face, and learning them by means of only his tongue.
The word that sort of came to mind first was worship.
-
It was when Yagyuu deigned to break the silence that they both realised he was behaving the same way.
Niou had opened up his shirt and way nipping at the skin that drifted up and down across Yagyuu's ribs, making him squirm and causing his shirt to crease up in the back in an unexplainable manner. Perhaps he would just bury deep down in the laundry basket and have his mother assume that was how it had gotten so crumpled.
"Niou," Yagyuu said, reaching vaguely for him and finding his shoulder, which quickly swept into the back of his hair and jerked on it just enough to convince Niou to lift his head. "Say it."
"Say what?"
"Niou." Yagyuu said again, and, "say your name."
Niou looked a little perturbed.
"I thought that was your job." He said. He lowered his head again to go about making Yagyuu want to say his name, repeatedly, if he were really as much of an over-achiever as everyone liked to accuse.
"I want," Yagyuu hissed as the teeth came back out, "to hear it in your voice."
"So, say it yourself." Niou replied. "You do a great impression of my voice."
There was a noteable silence, wherein Yagyuu was considering the idea, trying out how it might sound inside his head as Niou's fingers dug into his hips and pushed him down harder into the mattress.
"Niou," he said again in a voice that definitely wasn't his own. Niou himself froze up.
And began silently praying thanks to every deity he had ever even heard of for the miracle it had surely been that he hadn't just come prematurely in his own pants.
-
School was a bitch. Sometimes it seemed like for everyone else, it came easily. And that somehow, in a sense of unspoken alignment, only those on the tennis team had it difficult, and had come together to beat the crap out of each other in matches instead of wallow in their own mutual misery.
Niou suspected Yukimura's issue was that he had been bullied before entering junior high, not that it was hard to guess the primary reason why, but he had taken one hell of a lot of pent up anger and directed it into being a ruthless captain who had shown everyone exactly what he was capable of, seemingly so easily too.
That was why he had the final say in everything, why he was in charge. He had found a way to conquer his demons. Everyone else was still sort of struggling.
Soon after Niou met Yagyuu, he wondered in his amused kind of way, that if he too overcame his problems and conquered his issues, would he be promoted to vice-captain? As far as he knew, Sanada hadn't yet discovered a way to prise that huge, great, hulking stick out of his butt, after all.
-
Niou had a seat right by the classroom door, which hadn't been his decision, but the teacher's. Within about five minutes of teaching him, she had decided it would be best if he were near the exit so that when she asked him to get out during the course of lesson, he would disturb as few people as possible in leaving.
These days Niou was mostly sent out for arriving late, which he did because he had learnt quickly that if he turned up before even just one of the guys, they would always elbow, knock with their books, and find some way to otherwise smack him in the head as they passed by his seat to their own chairs towards the back of the room.
Whether it was because Niou was quick-minded or quick-witted, he couldn't begin to fathom. He wasn't lacking in attention from a few select girls, either. Giving up doing well in class was easy since he wasn't a fan of it himself anyway, and girls were of no importance once Yagyuu came around.
The only thing he wasn't willing to give up were his tricks. He learned to make himself content with knowing that in getting to class early he always had plenty of time to plant stink bombs in desks, and once, an incriminating photo of one of the guy's girlfriends looking pretty friendly with the guy's best friend.
-
Yagyuu was in the same class, but his distractions were a little different. For a start, when he had to leave the room it was his own choice, and through his own devising. He had contacts, and code-words, and kids in lower years willing to risk skipping out on their own classes to deliver fake messages. Yagyuu always compensated.
When Yagyuu found ways to get himself out of class, he would cause a commotion upon leaving. He smirked at so many girls in passing that half of them lost their place in the page they had been reading, and the others blushed so furiously they couldn't answer even one question between them for the rest of the lesson.
Therein lay the reason more often than not he would go home with hidden bruises and painful aches. Pure jealousy, and it wasn't like there was anything to be jealous of, considering Yagyuu had kept every last one of his conquests secret, and it had been unfaithful girlfriends who had tearfully leaked everything out.
-
"I'm here," Yagyuu says, slipping into his seat and trying to look appropriately shame-faced when it's rather obvious, to Niou if no-one else, that he has just let down some girl and had to stand soberly and watch her cry when all he wanted to do the entire time was laugh.
No-one else seems to know about any of this, or seems to care.
"You're five seconds late." Yukimura says, hand round Yanagi's wrist looking at the seconds and milliseconds on his digital watch.
"My apologies." Yagyuu says, ducking his head down and still holding in the laugh. Niou wants to poke Yagyuu with his finger and make him loose it, just to see if he can.
"Since it's only five seconds, I suppose you can make do with only five laps." Yukimura shrugs. "I must say I like the idea of assigning laps by seconds. From now on, if you're over a minute late that's automatically sixty laps."
"That's how many seconds are in a minute, Marui." Niou whispers helpfully.
"Oh, shut up." Marui hisses back, elbowing Niou in the side.
No-one seems to blame Yagyuu for this change in the rules, but Niou considers that nothing that seems to be Yagyuu's fault actually ever finds its way back to him.
-
Yagyuu finds it easy to really hate Niou sometimes, in a way that is completely separate from how much he likes Niou as a friend, and how much Yagyuu enjoys him in his bed.
Like when they are at practice and Niou pulls off the kind of trick that has Sanada frowning, but Yukimura laughing so hard there are tears in his eyes, so nobody says anything. Yukimura really smiling is something they all want to see all the time. In those moments, when Niou is touching the hearts of everyone who really matters and forging real ties of friendship, Yagyuu hates him because he is envious.
Yagyuu sees himself as the most distant person of the entire group. Even Sanada with his discipline and refusal to get involved in anything 'immature', is drawn in by the warmth of Yukimura's words and the need to coerce Kirihara with a firm hand and firmer words. Even Yanagi with his clinical facts and figures knows how to befriend people, and has answers to emotional problems as well as homework related ones.
-
"Hiroshi, are you coming with us tonight?"
"Sorry Yukimura, no, my parents need me at home."
"So polite and proper!"
"Must be such a joy to his parents."
"Unlike most of you."
"Oh Sanada, practice is over now, give us a break."
"I suppose we can still rely on you, however?"
"Of course you can, Yukimura! Don't doubt that."
"I don't. I was only teasing." Yukimura's last glance before Yagyuu leaves cuts through him swift and sure. "If I had ever doubted you for even a moment, you wouldn't be here now."
-
Niou is quite prone to illness, when he gets close enough to anyone to actually catch anything. Yagyuu is quite often the one to pass infections on without suffering the symptoms himself. And therefore can never be surely pinned down as the culprit.
Even though it isn't his fault, Yagyuu notes the way the team act. It's Niou, Niou is unreliable sometimes. Oh sure, not in the moments that really count, no he's a good guy, a brilliant guy, but he can be a little flakey. You know, sometimes he doesn't go home, and sometimes his parents don't actually know whereabouts he is. He has this scary sort of freedom you have to watch out for, stay on your guard.
He always comes through for the team, but they've heard words. Whispers, rumours. They don't take it as Gospel, but they do keep it in the back of their minds.
Yagyuu half wonders what they say about him when he is not there, until he gets home, dumps down his possessions and realises there's never been a time when he wasn't there to hear every single exact thing that was said.
-
"You shouldn't come in," Niou says, standing in his pyjamas and some ratty old bunny slippers and sniffling. "You'll get sick. Can't have it happen to both of us, that'd wreck the team."
"I won't get sick." Yagyuu says. He knows his sister has been suffering the exact same symptoms as Niou, just six days earlier, and he hasn't caught it yet. Niou doesn't know that though.
Niou has to take his word for it five minutes later when they're on Niou's bed and Yagyuu's tongue is down his throat. He's no longer really in the mood to protest it anyway. Yagyuu's hand is rubbing all over the front of his pyjama bottoms, bunching up the fabric and curving his lips into a smile at Niou's frustration.
"Hey, Niou," Yagyuu says, and gets nothing but squirming and keening in reply. "Niou." He says again, in Niou's own voice. He stops promptly, eyes wide and a little angry seeming. Probably pissed that Yagyuu knows a way to really get to him now.
If he'd been paying attention instead of getting off, he would've noticed more than that.
"Why do we do this?" Yagyuu asks, punctuating his words with squeezing fingers. Niou has to groan before he can choke out coherent words and answer.
"Don't get all introspective and girly on me." He says, gritting his teeth.
"Oh, I already know the answer." Yagyuu says. "I just wanted to see if you knew."
-
There's one night when Niou's still off school sick and Yagyuu has no-one to walk home with when he runs into a guy whose girlfriend he screwed a few weeks ago; plenty enough time to build up some high frustration over the whole deal. Strange the number of these guys who have had these girls on their arms for weeks and months even, and still haven't managed to devirginise them. Yagyuu barely ever even needs a second date.
Though he is slight, his constant tennis practice (not quite Spartan, but close; Yukimurian) gives him enough muscle to rely upon. Fact is, when someone is bigger and heavier than you, they tend to have a slight edge in a fight.
Yagyuu acts for the first time in his life not like a perfect gentlemen in the eyes of his parents. Phones home, lies about spur-of-the-moment plans with a friend who can't make decisions more than five minutes ahead of time.
It would all be true, if Niou were beside him.
-
Niou licks the blood right off his face, speckles of dirt mixed in and all.
"I'm already sick," he says, "a little dirt won't do much worse damage."
It kind of tickles, in a stingy, wet, saliva-coated sort of way, so Yagyuu doesn't say anything. Figures it's Niou's funeral.
And just like he'd figured, hoped mostly, Niou doesn't ask questions. Doesn't say much of anything that he wouldn't normally. Even makes an odd joke about it all, just like he would if anyone else had had the shit ripped out of them.
Just because it's Yagyuu, he still has to be himself, or things won't be normal. They'll be different, and weird, and concerned, or something.
"Is it a relief?" Niou asks, and Yagyuu has to admit he doesn't have a clue what the fuck Niou's talking about.
"When someone punches you," Niou elaborates. "Knocks you clean out on the floor, whack. Is it a relief to just give up and let go?"
Yagyuu just stares at him with a look he hopes is still disgust even though it's a little warped by a bruised lip.
"Look, I spend all day every day waiting for petty little kicks and hits and pinches." Niou says, shrugging and leaning back on the bed, away from Yagyuu, who he figures all of a sudden seems to need the space. "I have to hold my breath everyday and wonder what will come next, if this is the day they'll finally get a bit bolder. And I don't even know what for; their issue with you is pretty damn obvious! I think that sometimes it'd be a relief if they'd just punch my lights out and get it over with."
Yagyuu takes the clean tissue Niou's been holding out of his fist roughly and holds it to the cut under his eye. Doesn't say anything.
-
"Some days," Niou says, leaning on his side and looking down at Yagyuu on his back. "I think I'd really like to be you."
"I know." Yagyuu says, and says it so it sounds like, yeah, me too with you.
-
It is just little touches at first, and only certain members of the team notice.
"Nice tie," Yukimura smirks, though Yagyuu's wearing the same standard school uniform they all are. It's just that today it isn't right up under his chin ready to choke him. It's a little loose, and a lot shorter, dangling around his neck like a fashion accessory as opposed to a flash of colour in his very sober and correct uniform.
"You changed your hair." Yanagi notes, and Niou wonders if he's only playing dumb, if he really sees the significance.
-
"I need glasses the same as this," Niou says, holding out Yagyuu's glasses while Yagyuu pretends to stare intently at a display he can't really even see. "But with this prescription." He holds out his own eye tests results.
"You couldn't have just borrowed mine?" Yagyuu asks when they leave. They have to walk four blocks out of sight before Niou will let him put his glasses back on, and the world swims outside his head. His fingers are clutching Niou's arm tightly, but not so anyone would notice, but for Niou's grimace. He deserves it.
"Yours aren't strong enough." Niou says, making Yagyuu's educated assumption about Niou's eyesight an actual fact.
-
"You look good." Yagyuu admits reluctantly, standing behind Niou and looking into the full-length mirror.
"This looks accurate, or I look hot?" Niou asks, wears a smirk that looks really foreign on his face now that it isn't his own. Yagyuu doesn't answer, knows he doesn't need to answer. And until he's finished and they've perfected his hair, he won't say anything because it won't be complete.
"Is it wrong that I think I look hot?" Niou asks. "Is it still considered narcissism when this isn't technically me?"
"Technically it is still you under there." Yagyuu points out. "Help me wash this out."
Niou's fingers weave right into his hair and pull strands between them in smooth motions that make Yagyuu bite his lip.
"Is it weird to be planning something like this?" Niou asks, pouring water over Yagyuu's head and beginning again.
"I think," Yagyuu says later, after his hair is dry and tied back out of his way. Then he interrupts himself by covering Niou's mouth with his own, "that the planning of it is the least weird aspect. And I can't find it in myself to care."
-
When he runs a hand up the inside of Niou's thigh, Yagyuu is looking at a body very familiar to him, that aspect hasn't changed. Even when he flicks his eyes upwards and sees the wrong colour hair and the new glasses slipping halfway down Niou's nose, he doesn't so much think to himself, my god I'm about to fuck myself, as he thinks he's Yagyuu so that makes me Niou, and now he feels like he can do anything.
Everything from biting, which he's never even thought of trying before because though it feels good when Niou does it to him, somehow he thinks there must be a way to fuck it up, and if he goes into it assuming it won't be sexy isn't that just asking to fuck it up completely?, to waking up in the morning coiled in blankets and clamping a hand over Niou's mouth when his mother calls up for him to get up, and replying in Niou's voice for him.
-
And fuck, but doesn't it feel good to not have to hang around as close to the classroom as he can get without being in the path of anyone who might smack him in the side or around the head just for being there. Niou sits himself down leisurely in Yagyuu's seat, clasps his hands in front of him just like he told Yagyuu he mustn't do anymore, and breathes in the moudly, musty scent of the classroom he doesn't usually notice because he rushes in all squeaky sneakers and heavy breaths and can only smell cramped space and a hell of a lot of sweat.
He almost bothers to warn Yagyuu about the reason he comes to class late, except his pride prevents him from doing so, even if he knows Yagyuu will pay for it. But he said he wanted to be Niou, and that means everything that comes with it. Thing is, Niou hadn't really thought about the fact that he knows things about Yagyuu no-one else does, or is supposed to, and that it can probably work both ways.
So it comes as somewhat of a shock when Yagyuu rushes into the classroom late and doesn't bow his apology, but shrugs and smiles at the teacher, who rolls her eyes and points back out the door. Niou knows what he sees, but it's a little hard to connect the fact that it's Yagyuu in his head with the sight that it's him in front of everybody acting just like usual.
-
Second class of the day, some spotty-faced kid he never met before in his life hands a note to the teacher and gets him out of class with a smile and an, "I'm sure you've got most of the work done already, Yagyuu-kun, so don't rush that homework will you? You're capable of better than that."
There's this awful sort of pride welling up in him, even if it's Yagyuu's praise he knows that when he hands the work in it'll be his own doing, and whatever grade comes back on it will be his accomplishment. He still doesn't care much for schoolwork, but it's the thrill of someone taking pride in him for once, and believing he can do well.
He is so used to the finger pointing out the door and spending his class time in the library, or just sitting outside the room with his book propped up on his knees, pressing an ear to the door to try and catch the lecture being spoken.
-
"Something's different." Yukimura says, eyeing both Niou and Yagyuu as if he can't figure out which one he should be addressing his words to. He taps his lip with one solitary finger thoughtfully.
Niou doesn't dare to look in Yagyuu's direction, and knows Yagyuu would never say anything in response to this, so he keeps his mouth shut. It's kind of nice to not have to keep up with the effort of snappy comebacks and retorts, and to keep a silent counsel in his own head.
"Well, Niou's here and not out of sight, so perhaps he isn't planning anything stupid today." Sanada shrugs, rummaging through his bag.
"You wish," Yagyuu says, and Niou pulls his lips tight to keep his mouth from falling open. Well yeah, it's fine when he says these kind of things, everyone expects it, and he's used to vague abuse, but for Yagyuu to do it, and take the fall-
-except, except that this time he was the one to say it, and it is his fault, and everyone just thinks he's Niou anyway.
-
His head bangs against the locker when he slides down to the floor, and through shakey breaths Yagyuu realises why Niou has always insisted there's no point to waiting for him after practice.
Surely this kind of punishment can't happen to him everyday, the lap after lap after lap after cleaning equipment after putting up nets only to take them all down again. All the ball machines... Is it really fair to pit someone against three with no racket to protect them?
Though Yagyuu knows this isn't about fairness. It's about undermining authority, and how Yukimura seems to be so underenthused by it, not even bothering to respond most of the time when Niou is rude directly to Sanada's face, and yet when everyone else is gone he takes the time to point out that really, it does matter.
Niou can do and say whatever the hell he wants, that won't be forced out of him. Because there's always something waiting for him after practice if he still hasn't learned to shut his mouth.
"We do it because we love you," Yukimura says, mouth twisting in an unidentifiable manner, but it's definitely a kind of smile. Sanada, behind him, can't even look Yagyuu in the face afterwards.
-
After all the sly nicks and pinches, the really underhand smirks peppering his day and lurking continually around the next corner, Yagyuu tilts his head back against the lockers again, breathes once, twice, three times, and thinks about what a relief it is just to be punished completely for once.
And he's only had to suffer it for one single day.
-
Niou takes the scenic route home, otherwise he's going to be early for once.
He is enjoying himself too much to hear anything beyond his own tuneless humming, and the hop in his step. A hand clamps down on his shoulder, swings him round to face a guyfrom school built a lot like a brick wall.
When a fist comes swinging at Niou's face he doesn't really have time to think, even though he's wasted so many days imagining what he might do if something were to finally happen to him. He simply dodges faster than he knew how to, and throws a punch of his own that sends the bigger guy to the floor like a bug-zapped fly. Everyone else Niou notices suddenly surrounding them eyes him warily, and he crouches a little like a rabid animal, maybe a cat with its claws out, teeth bared.
"What the fuck?" Someone says, and it's like code for 'let's get the hell out of here'.
Niou brings a hand to his head to stop the strange swirling, the rush of adrenaline jumping up and down inside, tingling like pins and needles.
Somehow he had already known, it was damn obvious, that Yagyuu never usually fought back.
-
Yagyuu almost walks himself home, to his real home, he is that distracted. He forgets even to watch out for anyone lurking in the shadows, following his footsteps. Lucky for him he has nothing to fear; Niou's day always ends on the tennis courts with a resounding thud.
Niou is waiting for him outside. Kicking a stone against the tree and then again when it bounces back. It's not something he would do, well, maybe if he had been waiting a while. He doesn't ask, though.
"Good day?" Niou asks, lifting his head and betraying nothing. But Yagyuu is used to that.
"Yeah," he says, the word falling right out of his mouth while he's still considering. They both break into matching grins.
"Tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
-
"I should've known." Yukimura says, narrowing his eyes at the both of them. Niou looks at Yagyuu. Yagyuu looks at Niou. They don't know who is wearing whose smile anymore.
"I don't really see necessary to point out that you'll both be staying behind tonight." Yukimura says. He waves them away, but neither of them move.
"Renji," Yukimura yells, and turns his back on them. "Get on the phone! We need to borrow a couple more ball machines from somewhere!"
-