FIC: Victory Spoils, YanaKiri, NC17
I challenged whisper132 to a Drabble-off yesterday, and ended up with this.
Title: Victory Spoils
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 4100 (oops)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all
Summary: Renji made a promise to Kirihara. YanaKiri, sorta.
Author's Notes: Written for a "drabbleoff" with Whisper-chan. :D :D :D SPOILERS FOR 338
Yagyuu might call Kirihara the stupid seaweed head, but sometimes Renji feels like he is the real stupid one.
Two subway changes to get to Shibuya station and Kirihara manages to lose his ticket along the way. “Where did it go? I swear I had it!” Kirihara yells. He starts to kick the automated doors when the station attendant hauls them off, calling Kirihara a teenage delinquent. Kirihara pays the fine for not having a ticket and Renji apologizes to the attendant, bowing his head and muttering sorry, even though he isn’t and Kirihara probably even less.
Still, Renji doesn’t appreciate having to slink back through the station, half-lost as he is even with the signs pointing to the correct line. He feels a hand slip into his and looking back over his shoulder, he can see Kirihara squeezing through a group of elementary girls. Kirihara’s hand is warm and clammy. Renji squeezes it tight between his fingers and pulls hard, dodging another crowd. The air is stifled, filled with too many people on a hot summer day.
Yukimura and Sanada and the rest of the team wait by the ticket counter, five frowning faces.
“What took you?” Yukimura asks.
“Akaya lost his ticket,” Renji says. It’s not a lie, only a half a truth.
Kirihara at least has the decency to look at his feet and not say anything.
The train back to Yokohama is packed with commuters, even at half-past four in the afternoon. A burning sun shines through the windows. Renji closes his eyes against the glare. His body sways with the motions of the train. Under his knees, his tennisbag is crammed up into the seat. It’s uncomfortable and hot and his body is tired from a third straight day of tennis.
Tomorrow, though.
The finals.
Something taps his knee. Renji ignores it until it happens a second time. He cracks an eye open. Kirihara looks at him, his eyes vaguely pink and his skin flushed with sunburn. He taps Renji’s knee again with his own. It is bony and sharp.
“Senpai?” he mutters.
Renji grunts.
“Remember what you said if I won?” Kirihara asks. He sticks his tongue out and licks his top lip. His hair curls even more from the heavy, hazy heat.
Both Renji’s eyes fly open. He glances around. Bunta and Jackal are sitting hunched over across the aisle, both subdued and silent. Niou and Yagyuu sit in the seats across from them. Yagyuu looks angry, staring out the window and clutching the armrest with a deathgrip. Renji wonders if he knows that Niou’s arm is around his shoulder, or if he chooses to pretend to not care.
Sanada and Yukimura sit to the other side of Renji. Sanada holds a piece of paper in his hands that Yukimura points at. Discussing the lineup for tomorrow, no doubt, hammering out those last few permutations and completely engrossed in the task.
Renji can feel his face as red as Kirihara’s.
“Someone could hear,” he says under his breath.
“I didn’t say it!” Kirihara hisses. Then, he says, “You said if I won…” Kirihara sticks out his bottom lip, pouting. So much for the teenage menace on the tennis court when he sits on a train and pouts like a little kid.
Renji chooses not to listen. Outside the window, a hundred thousand houses zoom by, a blur of white walls, wooden shingles and grey-stone fences. The soft jerking of the train lulls him into a daze again, his eyes drooping. Mostly, Renji wants to go home and have a good sleep. Somehow, he suspects that his night will instead be spent on a three-way phonecall with Sanada and Yukimura talking about tactics and Seigaku’s lineup.
Kirihara keeps poking him, having progressed from knee-tapping to full-on jabs with his fingers. When Renji does his best to focus on his breathing, Kirihara instead starts to make swirls with his fingertips.
Renji’s skin is sensitive and humming from exercise and it takes him a good while before he realizes that Kirihara isn’t making swirlies and figure-eights, he’s tracing badly-formed characters.
Victory.
Sex.
The sensation makes Renji shiver almost as much as the implication of the words themselves. He swallows, his throat having gone dry and woolly as his knees have started to lean towards Kirihara of their own accord.
“You promised,” Kirihara says when the train pulls into Shin-Yokohama station.
Renji does not want to argue about it here, not within easy earshot of the entire team. He kicks himself inwardly for before, weeks ago probably, when they were pressed against a row of lockers, mouths wet with saliva and hot from kissing. Kirihara moaned and grunted the same way on the tennis courts. It made Renji hard to watch him practice, hard watching him play, hard even now on the train.
Kirihara had complained, “We’ll never get to do it.”
“Win your Nationals games,” Renji had said. It had been a good idea at the time, to put off answering with a firm yes or no or when exactly.
He hadn’t expected Kirihara to win every single one. Surely there would have been another player as good as that Fuji Shuusuke at the Nationals. Maybe it was Kirihara’s own, unending drive. Maybe it was the idea of sex, or maybe it was Yagyuu’s goading, or a bit of everything, but whatever it was, Kirihara had won yet another game.
They heave their tennisbags off the train with tired arms and sore groans. Marui says, “We’re gonna get something to eat.”
Jackal and Yagyuu agree immediately. Niou and Sanada and Yukimura hang back, but ultimately join in the chorus of restaurant suggestions. Sushi or takoyaki. Sukiyaki or ramen or that new fish place down the road from Rikkai Dai that makes awesome Thai hotpot.
Kirihara frowns. His brow furrows. He pulls out his wallet and Renji can see that it’s empty now, cleaned out from his fine in Tokyo. His own wallet, Renji doesn’t think he has more than 1500 yen. Nowhere near enough to pay for both him and Kirihara at yakiniku or ramen.
“We were going to go elsewhere,” Renji says. Clearing his throat, he adds, “Akaya and I.”
Kirihara looks at him. His eyes shine, but it might be the glare of the sun bouncing off the train tracks.
“I’ll call you later,” Sanada says. He pulls at the brim of his cap- a compulsive habit of his when he doesn’t want to argue.
Kirihara waves the team off, then grabs his bag off the ground. Renji does the same. It feels twice as heavy as it did this morning.
Kirihara opens his mouth to speak, but Renji cuts him off, “You haven’t won every game yet,” he says.
“Yeah, but-” Kirihara balls his fist, threatening to slam it into the brick wall, but hesitating. “-I almost lost, senpai,” he says. His voice is so low and quiet that Renji can barely hear it so much as he can see Kirihara mouth the words.
Aa.
Inside, Renji’s stomach flutters. It might just be hunger since he hasn’t had anything except some Gatorade and rice balls before noon. But it might not be. Kirihara came so close to losing. They all did, in a sense. The niggling though chews the back of Renji’s mind. Kirihara was beaten and bleeding on the court. They were down two games already and somehow he pulled back for a win, a deserved win. Deserved a reward.
Renji swallows the reformed lump. His mouth is as dry as the dust from the tennis courts and even chalkier.
They catch another train, towards their district, and hop off at the stop for Kirihara’s house. Kirihara doesn’t say anything, spending too much time wincing as he walks and shifts his tennisbag from shoulder to shoulder. There is dried blood along his hairline and on his cheek, black and crusty. He looks a mess, like he’s been beat up by yakuza thugs.
But Renji knows Kirihara will find the something to win tomorrow.
There is a Lawson’s on the way to Kirihara’s home and Renji stops there. The selection is bad, but he fishes around long enough to dig out two katsu curry bentos from the bottom of a cooler- not something he really likes that much, but they’ll do. “My treat,” he says at the counter.
“That’s good,” Kirihara says, “because my mom’s still at work and my sister’s too lazy to cook me anything. She’s a bitch.”
Renji carries the plastic bag. It swings and crinkles with each step he takes. He breathes, carefully, and says, “Are you home alone, Akaya?”
Kirihara grins wide enough to split a scab by the side of his mouth, which makes him wince and touch his face to stop the fresh blood. He licks it off his face.
Renji walks faster.
Normally they would take the lift in Kirihara’s building, but by the time they walk through the main doors, both Renji and Kirihara are dragging their feet. The sun has started to set in the west, shining through the lobby as they wait for the elevator, listening to the chime of each floor passed.
Kirihara’s home is empty. Nothing except the sound of the city filters in through the open windows. Kirihara flicks on every fan as he walks by, making noises into the biggest ones. His home is immaculate- Renji knows Kirihara’s family has a cleaner come in twice a week- and on the walls are memento’s from his father’s business trips. Masks from Indonesia and carved bonework from India, German beer mugs and large framed photographs of teal-coloured Canadian lakes.
Tennisbags are dumped in Kirihara’s bedroom, scattered over a floor of back issues of comic books. Kirihara locks the door and says, “Just in case my dumb sister comes home.”
Kirihara sits on his bed, humming into his fan. Renji sits on the floor, but the carpet itches the sweaty backs of his legs, so he climbs up beside Kirihara. It is still too hot in the early evening to heat up their bentos, so they eat them lukewarm on Kirihara’s bed, licking curry sauce off fingers and trying their best to keep it off their uniforms and the bedspread.
The sky is a filmy mauve, blurred with grey clouds as Kirihara peels off his t-shirt first, then his shorts. He stands up, wearing nothing but his underpants. He fans himself with his hand, stretching out his arms to touch the ceiling. His sunburn is even more obvious now, pale skin on his skin against red limbs and face, a ring around his neck where his collar sat.
He flops back down on the mattress, then makes a pained noise.
“Your sunburn looks bad,” Renji says.
“It’s not,” Kirihara says. “Not really.” He forces a laugh. His voice cracks.
Dried flakes of blood sprinkle against the white bedspread. “Your knee is all scraped up,” Renji adds. “That foreigner gave you a run for it, Akaya.”
“But I won!” Kirihara shouts, sitting up so suddenly that another scab on his face starts to ooze new blood. “I won and saved the fucking team-”
“Don’t even start,” Renji snaps back at him. “We won and that’s what counts, not who saved who.”
Kirihara sniffs. He pouts and gives Renji a dirty look, before he lies back down. It must hurt because his face contorts after his back and his arms touch the mattress.
Renji chews the last piece of potato from the bento, then he chucks it into the garbage can beside Kirihara’s head. He stands up and leaves Kirihara’s bedroom without a word. Kirihara doesn’t stop him.
In the bathroom, Renji looks in the cupboard. Toilet paper, towels, aspirin and salve. His hand accidentally brushes a box and reading the word tampon, he recoils for a moment thinking Gross! But there, at the back, is exactly what he wants.
“Stand up!” he tells Kirihara when he shuts the bedroom door.
Kirihara, now lying on his stomach, gets up. “Why?”
Renji shows him the bottle.
The lotion is cool and Kirihara’s skin is burning, so hot that Renji pulls back when Kirihara hisses at the first touch. Gradually, though, he stops hissing and tensing up and leans into Renji’s hands, which smooth over the lotion onto his red arms and calves and the back of his neck.
“If you’d worn sunscreen like Sanada suggested, you wouldn’t have had this problem,” Renji says.
“You’re not my mom,” Kirihara says. “And Sanada-fukubuchou isn’t either. I didn’t think my game would last…that long…”
Renji doesn’t say anything to that. None of them had anticipated losing the first two games to a bunch of foreigners. They got too careless and too cocky with the rush of easy wins in earlier rounds.
“It won’t be like that tomorrow,” Renji says.
“It won’t be a repeat of the Kantou Regionals,” Kirihara mutters. “We’re gonna fucking win.”
Renji moves his hands over Kirihara’s shoulders. The lotion makes his own hands oily. Kirihara’s muscles are buttery, smooth under his skin and shifting under Renji’s touch. “Do you want me to do your face as well?”
Kirihara turns around, his answer a wordless nod.
Kirihara would press himself in your face on the court, and he does the same even now, at home, in his bedroom. Renji breathes in the air that Kirihara exhales, so close that his eyes hurt to focus on the person inches away from his pupils. So close that he can see the beads of sweat mixing with the blood on Kirihara’s face, and the little goosebumps he has too.
“Your neck,” Renji mutters. This is too close for comfort. His heart pounds, slow but heavy, like the weather. His own shorts, too, are strained and Kirihara must know this because he smirks, that devious little grin he favours when he knows something he shouldn’t.
Renji smears a smudge of lotion across a reddened plane of skin, just below Kirihara’s neck. His thumb brushes over Kirihara’s Adam’s Apple. It bobs when Kirihara says, “Yanagi-senpai…”
Renji’s head feels leaden and his hands stop for a moment, before he realizes that Kirihara is even closer, pressing a sweaty thigh to Renji’s and rubbing his erection against him.
“A-Akaya…” he says.
“Remember?” Kirihara pushes with his words. He pushes with his body too, hot hands on Renji’s arms as he rubs his swollen cock, in nothing but his underpants. “You promised?” He shifts his weight, his footing and rubs himself against Renji, cock to cock through thin layers of flimsy fabric.
And Renji is lost. He leans down, Kirihara leans up, and their mouths meet. A warm, sloppy kiss, curry-flavoured, and then a second, pressing deeper and Renji’s hands leave Kirihara’s neck, skittering over his shoulders and trying to remember the sunburn, but digging into the dips in Kirihara’s shoulders, making him hiss and groan and kiss more, slipping his tongue over Renji’s, hungry and demanding.
They end up on the bed, with Kirihara’s hot hands under Renji’s t-shirt, exploring his stomach the way they have before, but with a new intensity. Kirihara groans and winces and Renji pulls back from kissing the side of Kirihara’s face, the sharp tang of blood lingering on his tongue.
“My sunburn…” Kirihara says.
Renji takes his hands from Kirihara’s sides. “Aa, sorry,” he mutters.
Kirihara swats him on the head. “Not that,” he says. “Just…” He wiggles enough and Renji gets the idea to get off him. Kirihara sits up, then pushes Renji onto his back, with palms outstretched on his chest. “I wanna be on top.”
Renji stares at him.
Kirihara lets out a dark little laugh. A lock of hair falls over his right eye, then flutters up with the revolving turn of the fan. “I won my game, so I should get to be on top.”
“I won my game, too…” Renji says. His voice hangs weak in the air over the sounds of the humming fan and Kirihara’s panting.
“Doubles with Niou-senpai don’t count,” Kirihara says. He climbs over Renji, his weight heavier than ever. Kirihara sits down, right on top of Renji’s hips, and wriggles, licking his lips and moaning, settling down on Renji’s erection and rubbing up and down, shifting the fabric of Renji’s shorts.
The friction feels amazing.
It sends a delicious thrill down Renji’s spine and his head feels so light and heavy at once he squeezes his eyes shut for an instant to keep the dizziness at bay.
Kirihara is flushed from the sun, lips puffy from kissing and from grinding his face in the clay courts dozens of times in today’s game. It makes Renji’s insides shrivel up and slither down between his legs. Kirihara throws his head back, presses his hands down on Renji’s arms, and keeps moving, hips back and forth, back and forth in perfect timing with the rising tides of numb pleasure that course through Renji’s body.
He digs his hands into the sheets. The summer air seems to have seeped into them, damp folds of drapery rumpling under his clawing hands. The back of his head feels too sweaty, and Renji can hear himself making noises that would be embarrassing anywhere except in the middle of a tennis match. With the feeling between his legs, his cock demanding every single thought, he doesn’t care.
Kirihara’s fingernails are sharp, and torn up, jagged edges that poke Renji when his t-shirt is pushed up over his head. Renji grabs at his own shorts and underwear and Kirihara climbs over him, awkward as he pulls off his own underpants. Skin to skin from head to toe, things aren’t like the kisses in the locker room, or the trophy room, or the time when they snuck into the boy’s washroom after school one day and stuck frantic hands down school uniform pants.
No, skin to skin now, Renji can feel just how slick that lotion makes Kirihara, how their sweat slides off each other, mixing in the hollows of hits and armpits and navels. He makes the mistake of kissing Kirihara’s collar and gets a mouthful of bitter lotion-tasting skin.
Kirihara snickers. For a moment, the mood is lost until Renji hooks a leg behind Kirihara’s knee to jerk him forward and shut him up.
Kirihara’s skin burns. His kisses, just as much. His touch, even more. They’ve never had sex before, but Renji has a decent enough idea of how to do it and where to stick things. Kirihara’s hands seek out Renji’s cock first, and Renji kneads Kirihara’s ass, bringing their hips closer, rubbing and moving together until Kirihara bumps his nose when he reaches over the edge of the bed.
“Will this…” he starts, holding out the sunburn lotion.
Renji wants to say no, they should find something better, but his cock throbs, his heart pounds and Kirihara is pressing a cock right in Renji’s thigh, branding him with proof of how much he wants to do this from the hard, strange, hot swell.
Renji nods. “We’d better be able to walk tomorrow, or Yukimura will kill us,” he mutters.
They kiss again, less curry and more the tasteless wet of two tongues sliding over and over each other. Kirihara wants to be the best tennis player, Renji knows, but he’s already damn good at kissing too. Desire in his belly coils up and he pushes his tongue into Kirihara’s mouth, fighting back.
The first sensation of cool, oily fingers against his ass and Renji second-guesses his willingness to let Kirihara try this out first. He opens his mouth to protest, but the single finger pushes inside. Renji sucks in his breath.
No, he thinks.
The fingers curls up, wiggling around.
Electric shock paralyzes his body, and then an indescribable pleasure from deep inside, pulsing through his veins as loud as his pounding heart.
“Yes…” he can hear himself moan, a throaty sort of whine, even, that seems to only encourage Kirihara to try a second finger.
The two fingers curl up, wiggle around then brush against something that makes Renji arch his back and all coherent thought leaves his mind because Kirihara has discovered something that he only has to touch to leave Renji a mess of sobbing moans and feet digging into the bed and hips rising to get deeper and-
The fingers leave.
The sensations stop, but the palpations remain.
And something blunt, and thicker and bigger pushes against him. “Senpai,” Kirihara groans into his ear.
It hurts. It feels weird. It stretches him beyond belief, but not quite to tears. Thank God Kirihara isn’t done growing yet, or it would really hurt. Kirihara pants over him. Renji hooks his legs up higher on Kirihara’s back, grabbing the first thing he can reach, needing to hold onto something- Kirihara’s sunburnt arms- which makes Kirihara gasp with pain and pleasure at once.
The look that crosses his face- the surprise, the pinkish eyes, the open, saliva-slicked mouth…
Renji digs his fingers in harder. Kirihara pushes deeper. Renji clenches his ass tighter.
“God…” Kirihara might moan, but the word comes out unintelligible because he’s moaning and shaking and sweat dribbles down his nose, collecting on the tip and dripping down onto Renji’s face.
He clenches again, and clenches his jaw. Kirihara is heavy and his leg is cramping up and the pleasurable spot of before isn’t around anymore and surely Kirihara can’t have this much stamina off the court…
Renji jabs his fingers into Kirihara’s hot skin, his biceps straining as he pushes back and out, then in deeper, grunting and…
Kirihara gasps. He stiffens, and Renji can feel him coming, thrusting blindly once, twice, three times, maybe a few more, before he slumps forward, arms collapsing and his full weight smushing Renji back into the mattress.
The lotion tingles Renji’s thighs and ass. He squirms around, pushing Kirihara off him and more to the side. “Too hot,” he mumbles. With Kirihara only half-covering him, Renji can feel the cool rush of air from the fan blowing over his body in staccato waves.
A car honks down on the road outside. Kirihara sighs heavily, his breath stirring Renji’s damp hair. The bed creaks when he moves and Renji can see even darker marks on Kirihara’s upper arms, marks that look distinctively fingerprint-shaped.
Oops, he thinks.
“Do you want me to…” Kirihara offers.
Renji doesn’t hesitate a moment when he says “You’d better.”
Kirihara’s hands are fast and his wrists good. His skin buzzes all over and it isn’t more than a few sharp strokes of Kirihara’s wriggling fingers, thumb pressed under the head of Renji’s cock and fanning air create palpations that makes Renji groan and shake and come all over Kirihara’s hand.
Kirihara wipes his hand off on his bedspread. Renji can see a box of Kleenex barely two feet away on a little table. He can’t be bothered to be slightly grossed out when Kirihara lies down right where he wiped sticky come off his hand.
Renji’s own skin feels as feverish as Kirihara’s burn. It feels a bit like Kirihara has burned him. Renji closes his eyes and smiles to himself. Kirihara burrows his head into the crook of Renji’s neck, his hair smelling thickly of sweat and the ends prickling Renji’s ear. In the dim light just before the sun disappears, when silvery fingers of purple still lick the western horizon through the open window of Kirihara’s bedroom, Renji can make out the black, coiled tendrils of Kirihara’s hair. Like fresh seaweed and twisted. Yagyuu is right about that.
“Akaya?”
Kirihara grunts. “Wake me up before my sister comes home, senpai,” he murmurs. “I like victory sex…”
Renji grunts back, agreeing. His body is starting to cool from the fan. His pulse is started to slow down to a regular pace. If he wasn’t so tired after the long day at the stadium, he might be more inclined to think about how this will change things between them. For now, though, it just feels nice to lie here, with the fan blowing over them and Kirihara’s arm draped over his chest. “Akaya,” he says again. “If I win my game tomorrow, we’ll switch, okay?”
Kirihara pushes himself up onto his elbows and stares down at Renji. His eyes are wide, pink-rimmed and the scabs on his face must have split sometime recently, because blood trickles down his face, like red tears. “But- senpai…you’d win anyways…”
Renji smiles as Kirihara keeps staring, as he pouts and bleeds.
Then, Renji launches himself at Kirihara and attacks his hair with a furious rub from his hands. He laughs and Kirihara shouts, and Renji laughs again, saying:
“Of course, you stupid seaweed head!”
Title: Victory Spoils
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 4100 (oops)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all
Summary: Renji made a promise to Kirihara. YanaKiri, sorta.
Author's Notes: Written for a "drabbleoff" with Whisper-chan. :D :D :D SPOILERS FOR 338
Yagyuu might call Kirihara the stupid seaweed head, but sometimes Renji feels like he is the real stupid one.
Two subway changes to get to Shibuya station and Kirihara manages to lose his ticket along the way. “Where did it go? I swear I had it!” Kirihara yells. He starts to kick the automated doors when the station attendant hauls them off, calling Kirihara a teenage delinquent. Kirihara pays the fine for not having a ticket and Renji apologizes to the attendant, bowing his head and muttering sorry, even though he isn’t and Kirihara probably even less.
Still, Renji doesn’t appreciate having to slink back through the station, half-lost as he is even with the signs pointing to the correct line. He feels a hand slip into his and looking back over his shoulder, he can see Kirihara squeezing through a group of elementary girls. Kirihara’s hand is warm and clammy. Renji squeezes it tight between his fingers and pulls hard, dodging another crowd. The air is stifled, filled with too many people on a hot summer day.
Yukimura and Sanada and the rest of the team wait by the ticket counter, five frowning faces.
“What took you?” Yukimura asks.
“Akaya lost his ticket,” Renji says. It’s not a lie, only a half a truth.
Kirihara at least has the decency to look at his feet and not say anything.
The train back to Yokohama is packed with commuters, even at half-past four in the afternoon. A burning sun shines through the windows. Renji closes his eyes against the glare. His body sways with the motions of the train. Under his knees, his tennisbag is crammed up into the seat. It’s uncomfortable and hot and his body is tired from a third straight day of tennis.
Tomorrow, though.
The finals.
Something taps his knee. Renji ignores it until it happens a second time. He cracks an eye open. Kirihara looks at him, his eyes vaguely pink and his skin flushed with sunburn. He taps Renji’s knee again with his own. It is bony and sharp.
“Senpai?” he mutters.
Renji grunts.
“Remember what you said if I won?” Kirihara asks. He sticks his tongue out and licks his top lip. His hair curls even more from the heavy, hazy heat.
Both Renji’s eyes fly open. He glances around. Bunta and Jackal are sitting hunched over across the aisle, both subdued and silent. Niou and Yagyuu sit in the seats across from them. Yagyuu looks angry, staring out the window and clutching the armrest with a deathgrip. Renji wonders if he knows that Niou’s arm is around his shoulder, or if he chooses to pretend to not care.
Sanada and Yukimura sit to the other side of Renji. Sanada holds a piece of paper in his hands that Yukimura points at. Discussing the lineup for tomorrow, no doubt, hammering out those last few permutations and completely engrossed in the task.
Renji can feel his face as red as Kirihara’s.
“Someone could hear,” he says under his breath.
“I didn’t say it!” Kirihara hisses. Then, he says, “You said if I won…” Kirihara sticks out his bottom lip, pouting. So much for the teenage menace on the tennis court when he sits on a train and pouts like a little kid.
Renji chooses not to listen. Outside the window, a hundred thousand houses zoom by, a blur of white walls, wooden shingles and grey-stone fences. The soft jerking of the train lulls him into a daze again, his eyes drooping. Mostly, Renji wants to go home and have a good sleep. Somehow, he suspects that his night will instead be spent on a three-way phonecall with Sanada and Yukimura talking about tactics and Seigaku’s lineup.
Kirihara keeps poking him, having progressed from knee-tapping to full-on jabs with his fingers. When Renji does his best to focus on his breathing, Kirihara instead starts to make swirls with his fingertips.
Renji’s skin is sensitive and humming from exercise and it takes him a good while before he realizes that Kirihara isn’t making swirlies and figure-eights, he’s tracing badly-formed characters.
Victory.
Sex.
The sensation makes Renji shiver almost as much as the implication of the words themselves. He swallows, his throat having gone dry and woolly as his knees have started to lean towards Kirihara of their own accord.
“You promised,” Kirihara says when the train pulls into Shin-Yokohama station.
Renji does not want to argue about it here, not within easy earshot of the entire team. He kicks himself inwardly for before, weeks ago probably, when they were pressed against a row of lockers, mouths wet with saliva and hot from kissing. Kirihara moaned and grunted the same way on the tennis courts. It made Renji hard to watch him practice, hard watching him play, hard even now on the train.
Kirihara had complained, “We’ll never get to do it.”
“Win your Nationals games,” Renji had said. It had been a good idea at the time, to put off answering with a firm yes or no or when exactly.
He hadn’t expected Kirihara to win every single one. Surely there would have been another player as good as that Fuji Shuusuke at the Nationals. Maybe it was Kirihara’s own, unending drive. Maybe it was the idea of sex, or maybe it was Yagyuu’s goading, or a bit of everything, but whatever it was, Kirihara had won yet another game.
They heave their tennisbags off the train with tired arms and sore groans. Marui says, “We’re gonna get something to eat.”
Jackal and Yagyuu agree immediately. Niou and Sanada and Yukimura hang back, but ultimately join in the chorus of restaurant suggestions. Sushi or takoyaki. Sukiyaki or ramen or that new fish place down the road from Rikkai Dai that makes awesome Thai hotpot.
Kirihara frowns. His brow furrows. He pulls out his wallet and Renji can see that it’s empty now, cleaned out from his fine in Tokyo. His own wallet, Renji doesn’t think he has more than 1500 yen. Nowhere near enough to pay for both him and Kirihara at yakiniku or ramen.
“We were going to go elsewhere,” Renji says. Clearing his throat, he adds, “Akaya and I.”
Kirihara looks at him. His eyes shine, but it might be the glare of the sun bouncing off the train tracks.
“I’ll call you later,” Sanada says. He pulls at the brim of his cap- a compulsive habit of his when he doesn’t want to argue.
Kirihara waves the team off, then grabs his bag off the ground. Renji does the same. It feels twice as heavy as it did this morning.
Kirihara opens his mouth to speak, but Renji cuts him off, “You haven’t won every game yet,” he says.
“Yeah, but-” Kirihara balls his fist, threatening to slam it into the brick wall, but hesitating. “-I almost lost, senpai,” he says. His voice is so low and quiet that Renji can barely hear it so much as he can see Kirihara mouth the words.
Aa.
Inside, Renji’s stomach flutters. It might just be hunger since he hasn’t had anything except some Gatorade and rice balls before noon. But it might not be. Kirihara came so close to losing. They all did, in a sense. The niggling though chews the back of Renji’s mind. Kirihara was beaten and bleeding on the court. They were down two games already and somehow he pulled back for a win, a deserved win. Deserved a reward.
Renji swallows the reformed lump. His mouth is as dry as the dust from the tennis courts and even chalkier.
They catch another train, towards their district, and hop off at the stop for Kirihara’s house. Kirihara doesn’t say anything, spending too much time wincing as he walks and shifts his tennisbag from shoulder to shoulder. There is dried blood along his hairline and on his cheek, black and crusty. He looks a mess, like he’s been beat up by yakuza thugs.
But Renji knows Kirihara will find the something to win tomorrow.
There is a Lawson’s on the way to Kirihara’s home and Renji stops there. The selection is bad, but he fishes around long enough to dig out two katsu curry bentos from the bottom of a cooler- not something he really likes that much, but they’ll do. “My treat,” he says at the counter.
“That’s good,” Kirihara says, “because my mom’s still at work and my sister’s too lazy to cook me anything. She’s a bitch.”
Renji carries the plastic bag. It swings and crinkles with each step he takes. He breathes, carefully, and says, “Are you home alone, Akaya?”
Kirihara grins wide enough to split a scab by the side of his mouth, which makes him wince and touch his face to stop the fresh blood. He licks it off his face.
Renji walks faster.
Normally they would take the lift in Kirihara’s building, but by the time they walk through the main doors, both Renji and Kirihara are dragging their feet. The sun has started to set in the west, shining through the lobby as they wait for the elevator, listening to the chime of each floor passed.
Kirihara’s home is empty. Nothing except the sound of the city filters in through the open windows. Kirihara flicks on every fan as he walks by, making noises into the biggest ones. His home is immaculate- Renji knows Kirihara’s family has a cleaner come in twice a week- and on the walls are memento’s from his father’s business trips. Masks from Indonesia and carved bonework from India, German beer mugs and large framed photographs of teal-coloured Canadian lakes.
Tennisbags are dumped in Kirihara’s bedroom, scattered over a floor of back issues of comic books. Kirihara locks the door and says, “Just in case my dumb sister comes home.”
Kirihara sits on his bed, humming into his fan. Renji sits on the floor, but the carpet itches the sweaty backs of his legs, so he climbs up beside Kirihara. It is still too hot in the early evening to heat up their bentos, so they eat them lukewarm on Kirihara’s bed, licking curry sauce off fingers and trying their best to keep it off their uniforms and the bedspread.
The sky is a filmy mauve, blurred with grey clouds as Kirihara peels off his t-shirt first, then his shorts. He stands up, wearing nothing but his underpants. He fans himself with his hand, stretching out his arms to touch the ceiling. His sunburn is even more obvious now, pale skin on his skin against red limbs and face, a ring around his neck where his collar sat.
He flops back down on the mattress, then makes a pained noise.
“Your sunburn looks bad,” Renji says.
“It’s not,” Kirihara says. “Not really.” He forces a laugh. His voice cracks.
Dried flakes of blood sprinkle against the white bedspread. “Your knee is all scraped up,” Renji adds. “That foreigner gave you a run for it, Akaya.”
“But I won!” Kirihara shouts, sitting up so suddenly that another scab on his face starts to ooze new blood. “I won and saved the fucking team-”
“Don’t even start,” Renji snaps back at him. “We won and that’s what counts, not who saved who.”
Kirihara sniffs. He pouts and gives Renji a dirty look, before he lies back down. It must hurt because his face contorts after his back and his arms touch the mattress.
Renji chews the last piece of potato from the bento, then he chucks it into the garbage can beside Kirihara’s head. He stands up and leaves Kirihara’s bedroom without a word. Kirihara doesn’t stop him.
In the bathroom, Renji looks in the cupboard. Toilet paper, towels, aspirin and salve. His hand accidentally brushes a box and reading the word tampon, he recoils for a moment thinking Gross! But there, at the back, is exactly what he wants.
“Stand up!” he tells Kirihara when he shuts the bedroom door.
Kirihara, now lying on his stomach, gets up. “Why?”
Renji shows him the bottle.
The lotion is cool and Kirihara’s skin is burning, so hot that Renji pulls back when Kirihara hisses at the first touch. Gradually, though, he stops hissing and tensing up and leans into Renji’s hands, which smooth over the lotion onto his red arms and calves and the back of his neck.
“If you’d worn sunscreen like Sanada suggested, you wouldn’t have had this problem,” Renji says.
“You’re not my mom,” Kirihara says. “And Sanada-fukubuchou isn’t either. I didn’t think my game would last…that long…”
Renji doesn’t say anything to that. None of them had anticipated losing the first two games to a bunch of foreigners. They got too careless and too cocky with the rush of easy wins in earlier rounds.
“It won’t be like that tomorrow,” Renji says.
“It won’t be a repeat of the Kantou Regionals,” Kirihara mutters. “We’re gonna fucking win.”
Renji moves his hands over Kirihara’s shoulders. The lotion makes his own hands oily. Kirihara’s muscles are buttery, smooth under his skin and shifting under Renji’s touch. “Do you want me to do your face as well?”
Kirihara turns around, his answer a wordless nod.
Kirihara would press himself in your face on the court, and he does the same even now, at home, in his bedroom. Renji breathes in the air that Kirihara exhales, so close that his eyes hurt to focus on the person inches away from his pupils. So close that he can see the beads of sweat mixing with the blood on Kirihara’s face, and the little goosebumps he has too.
“Your neck,” Renji mutters. This is too close for comfort. His heart pounds, slow but heavy, like the weather. His own shorts, too, are strained and Kirihara must know this because he smirks, that devious little grin he favours when he knows something he shouldn’t.
Renji smears a smudge of lotion across a reddened plane of skin, just below Kirihara’s neck. His thumb brushes over Kirihara’s Adam’s Apple. It bobs when Kirihara says, “Yanagi-senpai…”
Renji’s head feels leaden and his hands stop for a moment, before he realizes that Kirihara is even closer, pressing a sweaty thigh to Renji’s and rubbing his erection against him.
“A-Akaya…” he says.
“Remember?” Kirihara pushes with his words. He pushes with his body too, hot hands on Renji’s arms as he rubs his swollen cock, in nothing but his underpants. “You promised?” He shifts his weight, his footing and rubs himself against Renji, cock to cock through thin layers of flimsy fabric.
And Renji is lost. He leans down, Kirihara leans up, and their mouths meet. A warm, sloppy kiss, curry-flavoured, and then a second, pressing deeper and Renji’s hands leave Kirihara’s neck, skittering over his shoulders and trying to remember the sunburn, but digging into the dips in Kirihara’s shoulders, making him hiss and groan and kiss more, slipping his tongue over Renji’s, hungry and demanding.
They end up on the bed, with Kirihara’s hot hands under Renji’s t-shirt, exploring his stomach the way they have before, but with a new intensity. Kirihara groans and winces and Renji pulls back from kissing the side of Kirihara’s face, the sharp tang of blood lingering on his tongue.
“My sunburn…” Kirihara says.
Renji takes his hands from Kirihara’s sides. “Aa, sorry,” he mutters.
Kirihara swats him on the head. “Not that,” he says. “Just…” He wiggles enough and Renji gets the idea to get off him. Kirihara sits up, then pushes Renji onto his back, with palms outstretched on his chest. “I wanna be on top.”
Renji stares at him.
Kirihara lets out a dark little laugh. A lock of hair falls over his right eye, then flutters up with the revolving turn of the fan. “I won my game, so I should get to be on top.”
“I won my game, too…” Renji says. His voice hangs weak in the air over the sounds of the humming fan and Kirihara’s panting.
“Doubles with Niou-senpai don’t count,” Kirihara says. He climbs over Renji, his weight heavier than ever. Kirihara sits down, right on top of Renji’s hips, and wriggles, licking his lips and moaning, settling down on Renji’s erection and rubbing up and down, shifting the fabric of Renji’s shorts.
The friction feels amazing.
It sends a delicious thrill down Renji’s spine and his head feels so light and heavy at once he squeezes his eyes shut for an instant to keep the dizziness at bay.
Kirihara is flushed from the sun, lips puffy from kissing and from grinding his face in the clay courts dozens of times in today’s game. It makes Renji’s insides shrivel up and slither down between his legs. Kirihara throws his head back, presses his hands down on Renji’s arms, and keeps moving, hips back and forth, back and forth in perfect timing with the rising tides of numb pleasure that course through Renji’s body.
He digs his hands into the sheets. The summer air seems to have seeped into them, damp folds of drapery rumpling under his clawing hands. The back of his head feels too sweaty, and Renji can hear himself making noises that would be embarrassing anywhere except in the middle of a tennis match. With the feeling between his legs, his cock demanding every single thought, he doesn’t care.
Kirihara’s fingernails are sharp, and torn up, jagged edges that poke Renji when his t-shirt is pushed up over his head. Renji grabs at his own shorts and underwear and Kirihara climbs over him, awkward as he pulls off his own underpants. Skin to skin from head to toe, things aren’t like the kisses in the locker room, or the trophy room, or the time when they snuck into the boy’s washroom after school one day and stuck frantic hands down school uniform pants.
No, skin to skin now, Renji can feel just how slick that lotion makes Kirihara, how their sweat slides off each other, mixing in the hollows of hits and armpits and navels. He makes the mistake of kissing Kirihara’s collar and gets a mouthful of bitter lotion-tasting skin.
Kirihara snickers. For a moment, the mood is lost until Renji hooks a leg behind Kirihara’s knee to jerk him forward and shut him up.
Kirihara’s skin burns. His kisses, just as much. His touch, even more. They’ve never had sex before, but Renji has a decent enough idea of how to do it and where to stick things. Kirihara’s hands seek out Renji’s cock first, and Renji kneads Kirihara’s ass, bringing their hips closer, rubbing and moving together until Kirihara bumps his nose when he reaches over the edge of the bed.
“Will this…” he starts, holding out the sunburn lotion.
Renji wants to say no, they should find something better, but his cock throbs, his heart pounds and Kirihara is pressing a cock right in Renji’s thigh, branding him with proof of how much he wants to do this from the hard, strange, hot swell.
Renji nods. “We’d better be able to walk tomorrow, or Yukimura will kill us,” he mutters.
They kiss again, less curry and more the tasteless wet of two tongues sliding over and over each other. Kirihara wants to be the best tennis player, Renji knows, but he’s already damn good at kissing too. Desire in his belly coils up and he pushes his tongue into Kirihara’s mouth, fighting back.
The first sensation of cool, oily fingers against his ass and Renji second-guesses his willingness to let Kirihara try this out first. He opens his mouth to protest, but the single finger pushes inside. Renji sucks in his breath.
No, he thinks.
The fingers curls up, wiggling around.
Electric shock paralyzes his body, and then an indescribable pleasure from deep inside, pulsing through his veins as loud as his pounding heart.
“Yes…” he can hear himself moan, a throaty sort of whine, even, that seems to only encourage Kirihara to try a second finger.
The two fingers curl up, wiggle around then brush against something that makes Renji arch his back and all coherent thought leaves his mind because Kirihara has discovered something that he only has to touch to leave Renji a mess of sobbing moans and feet digging into the bed and hips rising to get deeper and-
The fingers leave.
The sensations stop, but the palpations remain.
And something blunt, and thicker and bigger pushes against him. “Senpai,” Kirihara groans into his ear.
It hurts. It feels weird. It stretches him beyond belief, but not quite to tears. Thank God Kirihara isn’t done growing yet, or it would really hurt. Kirihara pants over him. Renji hooks his legs up higher on Kirihara’s back, grabbing the first thing he can reach, needing to hold onto something- Kirihara’s sunburnt arms- which makes Kirihara gasp with pain and pleasure at once.
The look that crosses his face- the surprise, the pinkish eyes, the open, saliva-slicked mouth…
Renji digs his fingers in harder. Kirihara pushes deeper. Renji clenches his ass tighter.
“God…” Kirihara might moan, but the word comes out unintelligible because he’s moaning and shaking and sweat dribbles down his nose, collecting on the tip and dripping down onto Renji’s face.
He clenches again, and clenches his jaw. Kirihara is heavy and his leg is cramping up and the pleasurable spot of before isn’t around anymore and surely Kirihara can’t have this much stamina off the court…
Renji jabs his fingers into Kirihara’s hot skin, his biceps straining as he pushes back and out, then in deeper, grunting and…
Kirihara gasps. He stiffens, and Renji can feel him coming, thrusting blindly once, twice, three times, maybe a few more, before he slumps forward, arms collapsing and his full weight smushing Renji back into the mattress.
The lotion tingles Renji’s thighs and ass. He squirms around, pushing Kirihara off him and more to the side. “Too hot,” he mumbles. With Kirihara only half-covering him, Renji can feel the cool rush of air from the fan blowing over his body in staccato waves.
A car honks down on the road outside. Kirihara sighs heavily, his breath stirring Renji’s damp hair. The bed creaks when he moves and Renji can see even darker marks on Kirihara’s upper arms, marks that look distinctively fingerprint-shaped.
Oops, he thinks.
“Do you want me to…” Kirihara offers.
Renji doesn’t hesitate a moment when he says “You’d better.”
Kirihara’s hands are fast and his wrists good. His skin buzzes all over and it isn’t more than a few sharp strokes of Kirihara’s wriggling fingers, thumb pressed under the head of Renji’s cock and fanning air create palpations that makes Renji groan and shake and come all over Kirihara’s hand.
Kirihara wipes his hand off on his bedspread. Renji can see a box of Kleenex barely two feet away on a little table. He can’t be bothered to be slightly grossed out when Kirihara lies down right where he wiped sticky come off his hand.
Renji’s own skin feels as feverish as Kirihara’s burn. It feels a bit like Kirihara has burned him. Renji closes his eyes and smiles to himself. Kirihara burrows his head into the crook of Renji’s neck, his hair smelling thickly of sweat and the ends prickling Renji’s ear. In the dim light just before the sun disappears, when silvery fingers of purple still lick the western horizon through the open window of Kirihara’s bedroom, Renji can make out the black, coiled tendrils of Kirihara’s hair. Like fresh seaweed and twisted. Yagyuu is right about that.
“Akaya?”
Kirihara grunts. “Wake me up before my sister comes home, senpai,” he murmurs. “I like victory sex…”
Renji grunts back, agreeing. His body is starting to cool from the fan. His pulse is started to slow down to a regular pace. If he wasn’t so tired after the long day at the stadium, he might be more inclined to think about how this will change things between them. For now, though, it just feels nice to lie here, with the fan blowing over them and Kirihara’s arm draped over his chest. “Akaya,” he says again. “If I win my game tomorrow, we’ll switch, okay?”
Kirihara pushes himself up onto his elbows and stares down at Renji. His eyes are wide, pink-rimmed and the scabs on his face must have split sometime recently, because blood trickles down his face, like red tears. “But- senpai…you’d win anyways…”
Renji smiles as Kirihara keeps staring, as he pouts and bleeds.
Then, Renji launches himself at Kirihara and attacks his hair with a furious rub from his hands. He laughs and Kirihara shouts, and Renji laughs again, saying:
“Of course, you stupid seaweed head!”