in which there is surfing terminology
If someone cared enough to ask him, Fudou would have likely said that there was nothing in the world so pointless as surfing. You spend a stupid amount of time waxing a stupid board that costs a stupid amount of money, then have to paddle into a stupid ocean and try to catch a stupid wave. At the end of the day, all you've got to show for it are eyes stinging from the seawater, lungs half-filled with salt, and sand up your ass. It wasn't exactly Fudou's idea of a good time, if you asked him.
Of course, no one ever did ask him, especially not Tsunami.
Tsunami. Fudou had spent weeks now ignoring Tsunami and being quite content to do so.
If someone cared enough to ask him, Fudou would have likely said that he vaguely remembered Tsunami being a brainless lug with pink hair, but no one ever did. He had no reason, therefore, to be reminded of the Okinawa boy's existence. Thus, Tsunami was largely forgotten by the boy who had briefly commanded Shin Teikoku. With the older boy being part of the defense, Fudou generally didn't have to interact with him, well, at all.
So when Tsunami walked over to him in the dining hall one day, grinning like a fool, and invited him to go surfing, Fudou simply reacted the way he figured any person suddenly faced with flying pigs and a straight Sakuma, neither of which are known to exist in the real world, would: he shoved Tsunami aside and walked off, not even wanting to dignify the invitation with a response.
He was stopped on his way out by Kidou. "Don't do that," Kidou warned.
Fudou tilted his head to the side and shot Kidou a glare. "What? Why the hell do I have to go surfing with that idiot?"
"If you don't want to, you could at least tell him that civilly," Kidou replied with a frown on his face.
Just as Fudou was about to complain that nobody could force him to do anything, Coach Kudou, who had been quietly working on something at a table by himself, suddenly spoke up. "Fudou. Go surfing with Tsunami."
Fudou whirled around to face Kudou, but the coach remained with his back towards Fudou, his attention focused mostly on his work. "Ah? Why do I have to--"
"Fudou."
The harsh tone of Kudou's voice said much more than any words he could have added; it shot a chill down Fudou's spine, not that he ever would have admitted it. So it was an extremely reluctant and now predatory Fudou who snatched the board from Tsunami's hands and stomped off towards the beach in a huff.
"Uh, you're going to kind of need to change?" Tsunami scratched his head sheepishly as he noted the soccer uniform Fudou was still dressed in from morning practice.
Fudou froze, took an obviously irritated breath, turned around, and stomped back towards his room. He didn't have any sort of swimwear, really, so he grabbed another pair of shorts to act as makeshift swimming trunks, removed his shirt, and went back downstairs to the dining hall. He walked right up to Tsunami, intending to stare him down, but quickly realized how impossible this was--Tsunami was a whole head taller than him. "Hm?" Tsunami blinked, looking down at Fudou, confused.
"What, you got a problem?" Fudou snapped, not exactly sure where to direct his current annoyance and trying to cover up the miscalculation he'd just made.
"No?"
"Then let's go and get this over with!"
"O~kay." Tsunami's bright grin returned as he ruffled the hair in Fudou's mohawk playfully. Angered and feeling as if he was being looked down upon (he was), Fudou tried to bite Tsunami's hand, but the older boy pulled it back just in time. Chuckling, he then led Fudou towards the beach to his favorite spot, handing him a spare board he had. Fudou was about to just take the surfboard and head for the water when he noticed Tsunami kneel down and start waxing his board. Not wanting to look like he didn't know anything about surfing (he didn't), he snatched the wax out of Tsunami's hands and did the same. He focused so readily on the task that he didn't see Tsunami's little smirk.
The two of them paddled towards the crashing waves farther out to sea, but Tsunami went ahead and effortlessly caught a large wave, happily riding it and doing a floater just to show off. When he noticed Fudou trying to follow closely behind him, he called out, "I don't think you should do that when you've just started surfing today!" Just friendly advice, he figured, and anyone but Fudou would have agreed.
"Shut up!" Fudou snapped back without thinking. Being told not to do something made him only want to do it more, but to his horror, Fudou found that he couldn't even stand on the surfboard properly. Upon attempting to do so, he quickly slipped off as soon as he had just one foot on it, and the board hit him hard in the chin as he fell and sunk below the surface of the water. The board was leashed to his arm so he easily surfaced again after only being under for a few seconds, but the whole ordeal had been terribly embarrassing, even if Tsunami seemed too engrossed in his own surfing to really care. "This is stupid! Why the hell would anyone want to do this?!" he yelled in frustration at no one in particular.
He hadn't even expected Tsunami to hear him, but the other boy laughed, "Yeah, people always say that about stuff that they're no good at! Sorry for wasting your time!" Incensed, Fudou spent the rest of the afternoon trying to at least stand on the board, but to no avail. His chin was red and sore by the time Tsunami was satisfied and wanted to call it quits, but Fudou insisted that he wanted to stay in the water. Tsunami shook his index finger at Fudou, however. "That's no good, Fudou. If you go at it too much at first, you'll just be sore tomorrow and lose a day of practice. Anyway, that's my board you're using and I'm taking it inside now, so too bad~" Nothing Fudou said seemed to make a difference after that, so he sulkily followed Tsunami back inside. "It seems like you were having a tough time out there today, so after all, maybe from now on I should just go alo--"
"No!" Fudou interrupted, surprised at his own intensity.
"Eh?"
He frowned. "No, I'm not finished yet."
Fudou didn't know what to expect, exactly, but Tsunami grabbing him by the shoulders and staring at him with excited, happy eyes hadn't really been on the list. "That's good, Fudou! That's a great attitude! Then, I'll see you at 7AM tomorrow! The ocean awaits!" he cackled and ran to go shower.
Realizing what he'd just been roped into and how easily he'd been had by this seemingly stupid defender, Fudou fumed and kicked the wall. Nobody was there to see him hopping on his other foot in pain after learning that the wall was much harder than his toes, but it was mortifying all the same.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tsunami was always talking about how majestic the ocean was, how powerful and an awesome force it could be. For his part, all Fudou had learned about the ocean over the last few days had been that A) the ocean had a horrible sense of humor, B) it clearly enjoyed toying with him, and C) Murphy's Law definitely applied to everything related to it. Soccer was something almost anyone could do given a little practice. Tsunami, a complete idiot in Fudou's books, had apparently been able to pick up soccer fairly easily and, in no time at all, been chosen for the national junior team. After countless hours of trials and tribulations, however, Fudou couldn't seem to do much more than balance on the surfboard shakily for a few seconds before wiping out. Loathe as he was to admit it, surfing was pretty difficult and he began to wonder if there was a point to all of this.
Tsunami, though... Tsunami was the golden child of the ocean. He carved, pumped, and snapped with ease, effortlessly pulling off moves that Fudou never would have thought possible for a fifteen-year-old with grace and poise unlike his usual persona. It was no wonder that even Nice Dolphin had admitted defeat to Tsunami. For several minutes at a time after resurfacing, Fudou would watch Tsunami ride the waves. At first, he did so in an attempt to see how the other boy surfed and to try to apply those techniques to his own practice, but this was to no avail and after a while, Fudou watched Tsunami just for the hell of it. He made surfing look easy, which, Fudou knew by now, it wasn't at all.
That and he always looked like he was enjoying himself. Fudou wasn't sure he had anything that brought him that much personal fulfillment.
After some more fruitless days of inhaling way too much salt water, Fudou finally swallowed his pride and asked Tsunami for some pointers. "Heh, I thought you'd never ask!" Tsunami grinned, rubbing at his nose and looking proud. He began to launch into a long speech about how great the ocean was and how you had to be serious if you wanted to challenge it. Fudou only really listened to half of that, but paid close attention when Tsunami showed him how to balance properly and get his footing on the board once he was in the water. It proved to be easier than he expected--it's just that Fudou had been going about it all wrong since he hadn't the slightest idea where to start. When he successfully stood on the surfboard for the first time for several seconds without falling, he laughed and crowed. Tsunami, for his part, only smiled knowingly and nodded, more than happy that someone else shared his enthusiasm for a change. "It's great that you've realized how awesome the ocean is." he laughed.
"Whatever," Fudou shrugged. "I still think surfing is stupid." Before Tsunami could react, Fudou smirked and yelled, "Race you back to the shore!" The boys flailed through the water, one after the other, in a frenzied attempt to win a pointless race; but when it was over and they lay on the beach panting heavily, not knowing who won or lost, Fudou had a weird feeling in his chest that felt a little bit like happiness.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tsunami said that it would likely be some time before Fudou could really surf properly, but the other boy couldn't accept this. He threw himself into surfing with a fervor previously reserved for soccer and pissing off Kidou and progressed to the point where he could ride very small and tame waves, at least. After showing such an embarrassing side of his personality to Tsunami for so long, Fudou was starting to forget what it was like when he'd been more guarded. It was pretty hard to stay reserved and closed off around someone who was like a ball of sunshine.
His soccer, too, changed. He was less pressured to rush through plays and though few noticed the subtle shift, he became just a little bit more patient than before. One morning Fudou realized that this was probably why Kudou had wanted him to start spending more time with Tsunami--the idiot's passion for life was annoyingly contagious.
"D'ya think Kudou just wanted me to surf with you to improve my game?" Fudou asked Tsunami as they were waxing their boards.
"Who knows? Who cares?" An uncharacteristically flippant response for Tsunami, but Fudou thought it a nice change. Finishing his task, Tsunami rose and surveyed the ocean stretched out before them. "Looks like there're some good waves today. Think you can handle them without being drawn over the falls?" Tsunami grinned.
"Hmph." Fudou snorted and rolled his eyes before refocusing his attention on his board.
"Anyway…" Within moments, Tsunami was squatting down in front of Fudou, their faces right in front of one another.
"Wha--" Fudou's words were abruptly cut off as Tsunami roughly shoved him back against the palm tree he'd been sitting in front of. He was winded just for a bit before Tsunami's mouth was on his, robbing him of any air he'd retained during this unexpected attack. Completely at a loss as to how to respond, Fudou bit down, hard. Tsunami let out a little hiss of pain and pulled away; Fudou had drawn blood, which dripped onto the older boy's shorts from his cut bottom lip. Tsunami grinned at this and kissed Fudou again, smearing the blood onto the other boy's lips as he did so. For far more time than Fudou would like to ever admit to, he had thoughts that Tsunami tasted like iron and salt and, curiously, watermelon. He began to wonder whether it was a good or a bad thing, this taste. Then, finally regaining his senses after these thoughts eventually passed, Fudou pushed at Tsunami's chest. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
Tsunami only laughed, grabbing his board and running for the water, kicking up sand as he went. "Even if Coach Kudou hadn't scared you into joining me, I would've made you do it somehow, Fudou. I'm not good at resisting a challenge."
Fudou waited not only until Tsunami's back was turned, but until the other boy was almost out of sight completely, a dot on the watery horizon floating along the waves. He touched his bloodied lips and a deep blush spread across his cheeks despite his best efforts to remain calm about what had just happened. If someone cared enough to ask him, Fudou would have likely said that he most definitely hated Tsunami's guts and that he would kick the other boy's ass as soon as they were both on land again.
Of course, no one ever did, and Fudou was spared having to lie through his teeth.
『TITLE』 over the falls
『RATING』 pg-13 for language and suggestive content idk
『CHARACTERS』 tsunami jousuke + fudou akio
『WORDCOUNT』 2,404
『NOTES』 why do I ship this omg. also originally fudou was going to be on top, but then noonish happened. not that it matters since I'm apparently incapable of writing porn, but hey.
『SUMMARY』 tsunami seems to be convinced that fudou's inner child needs a friend. the other boy is not amused.