Safe Harbour (Part 2, PG-13, OshiGaku, Ohtori/Shishido?)
Title: Safe Harbour
Part 2
Author: Gold
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis is created by Konomi Takeshi. This work is merely a piece of fanfiction and no part of it is attributed to Konomi-san or any other entity holding any legal right associated with and arising out of Prince of Tennis . It was written purely out of fanservice and it is not to be used for profit or any association with Konomi-san or aforesaid entities.
Pairings and Guests: Oshitari/Gakuto. All of Hyoutei guest-star. Ohtori pines.
Warning: Ohtori Choutarou is the mainstay of this chapter. Naturally, the Ohtori/Shishido fic bunnies came bopping up. So... I guess this part is about Oshitari/Gakuto and Ohtori/Shishido.
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Ohtori Choutarou has been away for nearly four whole years, but he remembers his Gakuto-sempai well.
Gakuto-sempai went through Hyotei a little bit like exploding fireworks-unexpected, brilliant and vivid, and with just the slightest bit of a bite if you got too close. Alternately adored and feared by the combined populace of all the Hyoutei schools, Gakuto-sempai always had too quick and too direct a tongue to be beloved by many, and his temper was likened to a cat o’ nine tails that stripped the skin off noses and more if one didn’t get out of the way fast enough. His build was slight and slender, but he was very strong and surprisingly sturdy, and the way he played tennis was similar to the way he moved-eye-catching, gravity-defying and utterly breathtaking.
So when Gakuto-sempai was spotted by one of Japan’s premier talent agencies and handpicked as The Next Big Thing, Ohtori Choutarou was not surprised. He had never met anyone as alive as his sempai, and there was something special about the way Gakuto-sempai lit up television screens and those large advertising screens.
Ohtori knows that the entertainment world is a place where there is no humanity and where flesh is sold for favour, both metaphorically and literally, but Gakuto-sempai seems above all that - maybe it is because Atobe-sempai and Sakaki-kantoku have him under their protection. At any rate, Gakuto-sempai seems satisfied. Ohtori has never told anyone this, but he watches Gakuto-sempai’s show religiously, because Gakuto-sempai always seems so real and alive there, and it makes Ohtori think of those days a very long time ago, when he was tanned all over from playing with Shishido-san long hours in the sun, and Gakuto-sempai used to make them hoot and applaud with the way he could somersault and cartwheel over just about everything.
And it is all so dreadfully, horribly wrong, when Ohtori has to come back to Tokyo because Gakuto-sempai, who has always been so alive, is now a comatose figure under stark white sheets in the best hospital that money can buy in Japan, with Atobe Keigo’s own personal physicians in attendance.
In Gakuto-sempai’s room, Atobe-sempai has ordered (because it offends Atobe-sempai’s sense of fashion otherwise) that the bedsheets be changed to a dark blue, gold-threaded set that has been specially purchased to match the dark blue, Milky-Way-patterned quilt that covers Gakuto-sempai. It is Gakuto-sempai’s favourite quilt, which Oshitari-sempai picked up from his trip to London just last year. Even the cream leather sofa in the room comes with Gakuto-sempai’s favourite cushion, the outsize one from Turkey, in a custom-made silver velvet cover lavishly embroidered with little satiny Hyoutei crests all over it. Gakuto-sempai himself, who seems to be practically mummified in bandages, is a ghastly sort of dead white, except for what’s left of the cranberry-red hair that peeks out from under those bandages.
Oshitari-sempai is standing very still by Gakuto-sempai’s bed, in a frozen, detached sort of way. But Ohtori knows, because Hiyoshi has told him, that Oshitari-sempai has refused to leave Gakuto-sempai’s bedside since it happened six days ago.
Oshitari-sempai’s research supervisor has been calling him, because he hasn’t attended their last three scheduled sessions (even though they are being held at the very hospital that Gakuto-sempai is in) and his research partners (one Yagyuu Hiroshi and one Yanagi Renji) don’t seem to be too worried about it; Oshitari-sempai’s parents are bewildered and they don’t understand; and Oshitari-sempai’s soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend (‘soon-to-be-ex’ because it is pretty patently obvious where that relationship is going now) is upset with him, because he hasn’t been to see her for six full days and she’s throwing fits of fury.
Gakuto-sempai’s parents are touched, but they don’t understand either. Every day, Gakuto-sempai’s mother thanks them from the bottom of her heart and gently says that really, they can leave, and it’s all right. She knows that they all have their own lives.
But Oshitari-sempai doesn’t care.
Oshitari-sempai doesn’t have the time to care for anyone, save that quiet figure under the dark blue, galaxy-starred quilt. It’s because all the time that Oshitari-sempai will ever have to care for Gakuto-sempai may be now-and no more.
And Ohtori wonders if this is a lesson to them all, him included - and if this is a sign. Maybe if, instead of pretending that everything’s all right, and imagining that it’s only time that’s driven them apart - instead of believing that things have changed because that’s all that’s left to believe in - he should step forth and go boldly where he has always wanted to go, but never dared to -
-because, you see, he never wants to be where Oshitari-sempai is now, standing helplessly by Gakuto-sempai’s bedside.
Never.
Maybe if they could all turn back time, it would be best.
What would they change?
“Oi, Choutarou.”
“H-hai, Shi-”
Ohtori pauses, mouth half-open with surprise, his mind spinning, spiraling, twisting almost out of control... did Shishido-san just…?
Something brushes past him softly, a quick flash of nut-brown colour, a brief touch of warm skin, a familiar scent on the wind…
“Same place. Fifteen minutes.”
Same place. Fifteen minutes.
Time has stopped.
And Shishido Ryou has walked out.
Ohtori knows he should follow, but something holds him frozen in place, and-
“Stop wondering, Ohtori, and go.”
Ohtori jerks slightly and blinks. He remembers then that there are other people in the hospital room:
Atobe-sempai, cool and business-like in dark purple Armani with lapels of black silk;
Jirou-sempai, with wide-awake eyes hidden under pale, gold-brown, red-tinted curls;
Kabaji, like a very stolid, reassuring oblong of hulking wood behind Atobe-sempai;
Taki-sempai, glumly hugging Gakuto-sempai’s favourite cushion;
Hiyoshi, arms folded grimly as he stands silently in the farthest corner of the room.
It is Atobe-sempai who has spoken, and under normal circumstances, his word is law, and Ohtori’s body has automatically begun to follow orders, but still Ohtori forces his body back under his control and hesitates.
Atobe-sempai is not looking at him; his face is turned towards the pathetic little tableau in the room, of Gakuto-sempai, kept alive only by a mountain of white gauze, plastic tubes, long metal needles and humming machinery, and Oshitari-sempai, limp and helplessly frozen beside him.
“Life,” says Atobe-sempai flatly, without any consideration whatsoever for anybody’s feelings, “is very short, Ohtori.”
So very short.
“Ohtori. What are you waiting for?”
What, indeed?
Ohtori bolts.
Less than ten minutes. Maybe he won’t make it in time. But he knows that even if he is late, Shishido Ryou will still be waiting there for him, at the same place-the street tennis courts of yesteryear, where they honed their game and friendship, and where they first began, all those years ago. This time, Ohtori won’t simply cut and run the way he did all those years ago. He has something very important that he wants to say and there has never been a better opportunity. -Well, that isn’t really true, since there have been better opportunities before, but he doesn’t wish to throw away any more chances, because he might never get another one again. He never wants to be the way Oshitari Yuushi is now, standing helplessly by Mukahi Gakuto’s bedside, just waiting… waiting.
He just hopes that Shishido-san feels the same way. And even if Shishido-san doesn’t…
Ohtori takes a deep breath. He will cross that bridge later, if it comes to that. For now, he will start first by re-building the bridges he burnt so long ago.