FIC: Rewind Forward (D1) 20/63
Title: Rewind Forward (20/63)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [Part 12] [Part 13] [Part 14] [Part 15] [Part 16] [Part 17] [Part 18] [Part 19] [Part 20]
Despite feeling himself again with his hair tied back, Niou clenches his jaw every time he passes one of those girls in the hallway or when he sees the long-faced girl- Aoi-san?- in class, passing between the desks with her girlfriends, all hushed whispers.
About Yagyuu, for all Niou knows.
He sticks his foot out, but Aoi walks one row over, then down, completely bypassing Niou’s shoe. To make matters worse, she dumps her backpack on the far side of her desk, completely out of aim for any spitballs Niou might have been able to launch from his seat.
At lunches, Niou rarely eats with the tennis team in the cafeteria because Marui is there. Marui, who stuffs his face with his cakes and four lunches. Niou tends to eat in empty stairwells since the roof is too cold. The stairwells are drafty and Niou keeps both his sweater and his blazer on and he still shivers when a cold gust passes through the cement walls. His bento boxes are colder than ever, the juice from his juiceboxes freezing in his throat.
Yagyuu sometimes eats with the tennis team. Niou has seen him with the team in the cafeteria the rare occasions Niou wanders in to buy a bag of prawn crackers or fanta from the vending machines. The rest of the time, Niou is absolutely stumped as to where Yagyuu eats lunch.
His group of fangirls- Niou cannot bring himself to even consider the possibility that Yagyuu is going out with one of them- eat in a classroom on the third floor. They push their desks into a circle, all facing each other with their asinine gossip. Niou starts to prowl the hallways during lunch when the stairwell is too cold and curiosity gets the better of him. He will find where Yagyuu eats.
One lunch, Niou checks the second floor where some of the juniors have classes. He peers into classrooms, sticking his head in through the windows.
“And then I managed to hit a two over par and it was awful!” one of the boys says.
His friends shake their heads. “Harsh. Really harsh. You had that shot, Ando.”
Niou sucks up a gulp of juice from his juicebox, catching the attention of the juniors with his noise. Golf dorks, check. Yagyuu Hiroshi, no.
He leans back against the wall, legs crossed out in front of himself. Niou chucks his juicebox into a garbage can across the corridor. “Purifect-o shotto!” he murmurs in English. He scratches his head, thinking for a moment of places he hasn’t checked, then he walks off to the stairs.
Third floor, every classroom is empty of Yagyuu, even the computer room. Niou lurks in doorways and presses his face up to windows. Some freshmen girls point at him from inside a classroom, so he smushes his nose right up against the pane of glass and makes a face at them.
The girls make faces back. “Gross!” they shriek. “Yucky! What a weirdo!”
Niou hopes that none of those girls flock around Yagyuu, but he wouldn’t be surprised if one of them did. He sticks out his tongue and licks the glass, then walks off with his hands in his pockets.
The fourth floor of the school is the draftiest next to the stairwells and from here, the slight wind sounds like a gale, howling up and down the corridor, rattling papers tacked to bulletin boards and posters pasted to walls. Here and there in the classrooms a few students eat their lunches and class 3-D is filled with boys, all throwing paper airplanes and bento boxes, waving lacrosse rackets and playing catch. One boy leans over a window sill overlooking the school campus and Niou thinks he might see cigarette smoke coiling up.
Niou avoids checking out that classroom. Those seniors aren’t the nicest people and even if Yagyuu is really strange, he wouldn’t hang out with people like that. Niou doesn’t even.
The stairs to the roof echo as Niou stomps up them. He pulls his coat tighter around himself and shoves his hands as deep as they can go in his pants pockets. With his hip, Niou shoves the doorway open. The sky is a greyish sort today, the mid-winter sun dim, but shining in the middle of the sky. Niou blows out a breath, watching it cloud up and disappear.
Niou walks around the rooftop, sneaking past vents and other landmarks cluttering the roof, stepping over old chipbags and white plastic bags. He doesn’t hear the sounds of anyone’s voices here, nothing except the faint rustle of the wind and his own footsteps on cold pavement.
That senior was definitely smoking on the fourth floor. Niou sniffs, nodding to himself. The acrid scent of smoke fills his lungs. Disgusting, and yet the fullness in chest is addictive in a way. Niou inhales again before he ducks under a duct and comes out onto an open patch of the roof.
“Yagyuu?”
Yagyuu looks up from his book, then he starts to choke. Niou’s eyes go wide as he sees Yagyuu stub the cigarette he was holding underneath his shoe. “You didn’t see that,” Yagyuu says.
Niou says, “Che. Where’d you get that from, doctor’s son?” He nods to the butt on the ground, looking like it’s been barely half-smoked.
Yagyuu stinks of the smoke. He sets his book down, splayed out over his knee. His face looks a bit pink on the cheeks. Good, Niou thinks. Much less awkward this way, although the shock of seeing Yagyuu with a cigarette between his lips and his fingers still makes Niou’s insides lurch at the sheer, well, shock.
“I thought you were the good kid,” Niou adds.
Yagyuu avoids Niou’s eye. He drums his fingernails on the cover of his novel. “I bought it off one of the boys in 3-D.”
Niou knows his eyebrows have disappeared under his hairline. Personal facelift. “Really?” he asks, before he corrects himself with a much more casual, “I wouldn’t have thought that.”
“Probably not,” Yagyuu says.
“Yanagi and Sanada will kill you,” Niou says.
This time Yagyuu’s eyebrows rise, along with the corner of his mouth. “Do you know from experience, Niou-kun?”
Niou shakes his head. He shrugs his shoulders and toes at Yagyuu’s foot. “Aa,” he says. “Why would you think that?”
“I would have expected it from you,” Yagyuu says.
“I’m that sort of person?”
Yagyuu pauses for a beat. “Something like that,” he says. But his voice sounds hollow with the wind stirring up around them. Niou buries his face into the upturned collar of his coat, which provides absolutely no warmth at all.
Niou sits down beside Yagyuu. When Yagyuu turns to his bento box, Niou swipes the book from his knee. He bends the spine and flips through, too fast to read the words but Niou doesn’t need to. The cover is black, with red characters raised. “The Gekokujou Gambit?” Niou starts to snicker.
Yagyuu grabs his book back, glaring at Niou out of the side of his glasses. He pushes them back up his nose and sits up straight, resuming his bland, boring self. “I like mysteries,” he says.
“Okay,” Niou says. He rolls his eyes. Yagyuu stares at him, but Niou stares back. He’s good at these sorts of contests.
The bell rings before either of them look away. Neither wins, although Niou’s eyes feel dry and Yagyuu keeps fixing his glasses.
Niou spends his afternoon math class doodling instead of taking notes. In the margins he writes gekokujou a hundred times, then on the next page, he scratches them all out in favour of round circles that look a bit too much like glasses lenses, so he colours them all in and makes scratching noises so loud with his pen that the teacher stops in the middle of the lesson, turns around and says,
“Is there something wrong with your pen, Niou-kun?”
Niou looks up. He shakes his pen. “No, it’s good, thanks.”
The class titters. The teacher glares at him, but gives up first when Niou stares right back.
Tennis practice starts off well. The chill of winter is neutralized with the laps Sanada assigns. Niou starts on his stretches, with Yagyuu spotting his back. They pair off now more than ever for these things. It’s almost a given, being doubles partners and now doubles one.
Kirihara touches his toes, face red with effort. He sits beside Niou on the clay court, feet splayed out in front of him. Kirihara’s nose twitches and he gives Niou a weird look, with his brow all scrunched up.
“Don’t think too hard,” Niou tells him.
Kirihara’s forehead knots into even more lines.
Marui plunks his fat ass beside Kirihara, huffing and puffing through his toe stretching. He pulls his toes forward, trying to get the least effort out of his stretch. Niou makes for the baskets of balls, stuffing a couple into his pockets when he sees Kirihara and Marui talking, leaning awfully close and conspiratorial. Marui looks at Niou, then looks back at Kirihara and nods.
Niou scratches his hairline. Weirdos, he thinks.
“Do you want to practice our volleys, Niou-kun?” Yagyuu asks.
Niou nods. He tosses Yagyuu a ball he had been holding. “You can start.”
They talk over half a court and leave the right side to a pair of freshmen, who serve slow and steady balls to each other when they aren’t paying attention to the two regulars on the other side of the court. Niou rubs his hands together. He almost wishes he was smart like Yagyuu, who wears a pair of fingerless gloves against the cold.
Niou cracks his knuckles, gives his fingers one last, fast rub and gives Yagyuu an okay sign with his hands. Serve me a volley!
“YAGYUU!”
Sanada’s shout across the courts makes every single player stop. The ball in Yagyuu’s hand drops to the ground. Niou blinks.
And then Sanada tops it off with an even louder, “NIOU!”
Somewhere from the rooftop, a pigeon coos, then it flies off in a flurry of flapping wings. Silence drags on. A hundred pairs of eyes stare at Niou and Yagyuu. Yagyuu pushes his glasses up.
“70 laps!” Sanada yells.
“What for?” Niou shouts back.
Behind Sanada, Niou can hear the sound of someone coughing, then he sees a flash of red hair and a third head behind the other two, black and messy hair sticking out just far enough.
Niou walks over to them. Sanada has a good five inches on Niou right now, and probably at least as many kilograms too, but Niou doesn’t care. “What for?” he repeats.
Sanada’s hand twitches. Niou steps out of the way, hopping to the side of Sanada’s slap. He narrows his eyes at Marui and Kirihara. “The fuck were you talking about?”
“You’re making Yagyuu-senpai smoke!” Kirihara says. “I smelled something funny on you guys, Niou-senpai.”
Niou feels his jaw drop a bit, but he closes his mouth and says nothing, just shakes his head and smirks. “Puri,” he says. Idiots.
Yagyuu says nothing. The perfect gentleman, he doesn’t question Sanada’s punishment or even try to defend himself, he starts on his laps after setting his racket down on an empty bench.
Niou huffs. Marui smiles at him and gives him a thumbs up. Niou gives Marui the finger, which Sanada happens to catch.
“Eighty laps, Niou,” Sanada snaps. “Get your lazy ass in gear now.”
Fuck, Niou thinks. He tosses his racket to the ground at Sanada’s feet and runs off to catch up with Yagyuu. Play resumes across the courts, one by one the players bouncing their balls and the noises and grunts starting anew.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Niou says when he falls in step with Yagyuu.
Yagyuu’s sneakers slap against the ground. He exhales heavily in perfect tune with his pace.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Niou presses.
Yagyuu picks up his speed, pushing past Niou and running around the end of the courts, rounding a corner and cutting a junior off in the process. Niou grinds his teeth and pushes himself harder, determined to keep up with Yagyuu. He’s close enough now that he can reach out and grab Yagyuu’s jacket. The nylon is slippery in his sweaty hand, but he pulls himself forward and Yagyuu back.
“Why didn’t you tell the truth?” Niou says through his teeth, right into Yagyuu’s ear. “Now we’ve got extra laps because of you!”
Yagyuu makes a noise in the back of his throat. Maybe if Niou was running beside Yagyuu and not behind, he might see a smirk on Yagyuu’s lips. But as it is, Niou’s calves ache, the muscles feel like they are pulling away from the bone. Fifty laps a practice is harsh, but another sixty is just cruel. Niou’s ribs burn and he’s panting hard.
Yagyuu is, too, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“Would it have mattered?” Yagyuu says.
“Yes!” Niou shouts.
“Mm,” Yagyuu says. “We’d still have got laps, no matter who was at fault.” Yagyuu rounds another court post, tugging hard enough to pull free from Niou.
Niou lets himself slow down. He’ll be dying by his twentieth lap as it is. How the fatty Marui manages his fifty every practice, Niou has no idea.
Yagyuu’s words sting and Niou feels a bit like he’s been slapped in the face. It matters to him who was at fault because now Kirihara and Sanada and Marui- and Yanagi from before- all think he is the one doing this shit, not Yagyuu. Yagyuu doesn’t even seem to care about it, and now he’s passing Niou a lap, not once turning around.
A weight presses against Niou’s chest and his eyes sting. He clenches his jaw to keep his expression straight, or at the very least, angry. Freshmen continue to point to him all practice and by the end, Niou’s at lap forty-eight and dragging his feet, barely managing a jog. His feet are going to fall off.
Sanada nods Yanagi off and stands in the middle of B court, arms crossed and glaring at Niou, pivoting slowly around the spot, a watchdog making sure Niou does every last lap.
***
Niou gives Yagyuu the cold shoulder.
He doesn’t care about justifying it, but if he did, he would assume that Yagyuu wouldn’t be too offended because Yagyuu is a cold-hearted bastard deep down anyway. The next practice on Monday, Yagyuu nods to Niou in the changing rooms, a mumbled good morning spoken between the entire group of regulars.
Niou turns away, changing his t-shirt with his back to Yagyuu.
Niou stays at the back of the pack during laps. Usually he prefers the middle, but today, he’s angry and hurt still, days later, so he slows his pace and stays closer to Marui than Yagyuu. Not that Yagyuu seems to notice.
Niou sniffs. He grinds his back teeth. There is a bitterness lingering in his mouth, and not just from the fishcake he had at breakfast.
He does his stretches by himself. And before Yagyuu can approach him, Niou grabs Kirihara by the bicep. “Wanna practice, kid?” he asks.
Kirihara stands, stunned for a moment. “Uh…” he says, “sure, senpai. Yeah.” Then Kirihara looks out under his curly bangs and his eyes glitter, faintly red in the early morning amber light. Niou ignores the twist in his stomach.
And the shadow behind his back, which fades as Niou strides off with Kirihara to a far court.
“Can you play with your left hand?” Kirihara asks.
Niou tosses his racket from his left to his right, then back to his left hand. “Why my left?”
Kirihara looks shifty, with his eyes darting to the side, avoiding Niou’s look. “No reason, senpai. You won’t lose as bad with your left hand, though.”
“Oi!” Niou snaps. Kirihara cackles, knowing exactly what points to touch on to get a rise out of Niou. Niou knows it, too, but he’ll humour the kid. Anything to keep from playing with Yagyuu the silent bastard who doesn’t stand up for himself, or for the truth.
Niou plays hard, but his heart isn’t in it. Deep down, he knows that Kirihara is a better player and he doesn’t really want to try to prove otherwise. Kirihara slams balls into the centre court, too close to Niou’s legs. Niou side-steps too far, then Kirihara takes his advantage all the way and uses fast smashes along the sidelines to score points and take yet another game.
Niou starts a volley, but Kirihara doesn’t fall into it. Kirihara slides the balls over his racket, he curves his balls and sends them flying over Niou’s head. He laughs and grins as he runs around, barely breaking a sweat. Niou can feel the cold seep through his own uniform, his back dripping with sweat kept too close to his skin by the nylon jacket he wears over his t-shirt.
Niou swings his arm back, hoping to use a laserbeam, but Kirihara hits a lob instead. Every drop of his shoulder, or lean in his knees changes. He knows what Niou is looking for, little habits or hints of how he’ll play and he keeps changing things up to keep the game at his pace.
Which happens to be fast. And nasty.
“Senpai, is that all you have?” Kirihara taunts. “I thought you were good at tennis!”
Niou clenches his jaw. He’s not slipping up from Kirihara’s laughter, he’s slipping up because he’s angry and he doesn’t care. “Just…” Niou sees a flash of a yellow jersey out of the corner of his eye. Sanada.
Damn, Niou thinks. So much for telling Kirihara to just take the game.
“Let’s just finish this soon,” Niou snaps.
“Okay!” Kirihara waves his racket up in the air as Niou hits a lob. It’s match-point, and he’s going to lose anyway.
If Niou wasn’t so angry about Yagyuu, he might feel more than a sharp twitch in his calf at the shot. He looks down, seeing the ball roll away from his leg. Pain flares up above his ankle. Niou pulls his uniform pants away to reveal a large red welt, rather sized and shaped like a tennis ball.
“You should pay more attention to the game, Niou-senpai,” Kirihara calls out. “I don’t think you saw my cool new shot.”
Niou lets the leg of his trackpants drop. “Eh?”
“Yeah, my phantom ball. Lefties can’t hit it, at least not the ones I played last week. And you too.”
Niou scratches his head. “What are you talking about, Kirihara? What phantom ball?”
Kirihara sticks out his lower lip. His pout looks completely childish. “You weren’t paying attention, ne senpai?”
Niou drowns himself in the shower. He limps in, making sure to give Kirihara a good shove into the tiled wall for spite. At least getting out some physical aggression helps with his leg, but not with his chest. As soon as Yagyuu steps into the showers, naked and pink-skinned, blind as a bat without his glasses and making sure to walk into areas where no other players are, Niou’s throat seizes up and his hands feel cold, even under the scalding spray of the water.
Yagyuu can’t see him, but Yagyuu nods his way and gives Niou a slight smile. For a moment, Niou wants to smirk back, or maybe cock his head and nod, but then he remembers he’s angry at Yagyuu, at that bastard, and so he turns his head instead, snorting through his nose.
In the lockerroom, Yagyuu starts to say something to Niou, “Niou-kun…” is all he manages before Niou slams his tennisbag on the floor, then picks it up again and yells, “I’m gone!” to the rest of the regulars.
Walking to the bus stop, Niou thinks he hears the sounds of a second pair of footsteps behind him, but he ignores the desire nagging his mind to turn around in favour of waving down the approaching bus and stepping onto it as fast as he can.
At the back of the bus, Niou sets his tennisbag down in a seat and takes the next beside it. Reflected in the window is his face, frowning and miserable, his hair dark at the roots and damp at the ends, curling up as it dries. Through the glass, Niou can see a lone figure standing at the bus stops, fading into darkness as Niou’s bus drives away.
The glint of light in the glasses, though, is unmistakable.
***
It is a Tuesday morning. Completely normal. His alarm clock goes off three times before Niou bothers to roll out of bed. His now-forgotten dream leaves an ache between his legs and a hand itching to scratch it. In the shower, his slippery hands make it easier to masturbate, sliding across his cock and tugging the wet skin, squeezing and rubbing until he’s got a hand pressed to the shower wall and he’s gasping his release into the drain at his feet.
Niou grabs a couple rice balls wrapped with seaweed off the counter for breakfast, slings his backpack over one shoulder and his tennisbag over the other. He runs to catch the bus and makes it into tennis practice just on time.
“Yo!” he says, pushing the doorway open.
Six sets of eyes stare at him. Six bodies are clustered around one open locker.
Sanada’s, judging by the photo of the three monsters hanging up inside of it. And by the spare black ball cap resting on the top shelf.
“Uh, good morning?” Niou offers.
Sanada walks up to Niou and before Niou has even blinked, he shoves a magazine in Niou’s face. “What. Is. This?” he snarls.
Niou takes the magazine, and glancing down at the cover, he sees a rather scrawny-chested looking man looking rather topless with a girly haircut-
With a photograph of Yukimura’s face pasted overtop.
Niou starts to snicker, but Sanada grabs the magazine back and puffs up his chest, his face reddening and his jaw clenching. “That’s not funny!” Sanada snaps. “It’s a…a…” Sanada mouths something, but the words don’t come out.
“It’s a gay magazine,” Yanagi says.
Kirihara nods sagely, as if he knew all along, then his eyes go wide with understanding and he starts to snigger too.
Sanada breathes heavily through his nose. Like he’s about to hit something. His knuckles crack. Niou leans back on his heel, but there is a locker door in the way and-
“It was me.”
Six heads swing towards Yagyuu. Yagyuu pushes up his glasses. Sanada’s jaw has hit the floor along with the fluttering magazine. Niou can see exactly what Yanagi meant when he said it was gay. There are naked men touching each other at Niou’s feet.
He drags his eyes back to Yagyuu. Who smiles, ever so slightly, like he’s been keeping a secret for ages.
“Yagyuu-senpai?” Kirihara says.
“Yagyuu?” Jackal and Marui echo.
“I thought it would be funny,” Yagyuu says, his voice calm and cool. “The man on the cover did look a bit like Yukimura. Don’t you appreciate it, Sanada-kun?”
Sanada’s yell must be loud enough to hear as far away as the street. Or the university buildings on campus.
Yagyuu spends the entire practice running laps.
Niou spends his entire practice being flabbergasted.
“You don’t actually believe him, do you?” Yanagi asks Niou at the ball machine. Yanagi leans against the machine, stretching out his long legs. “Odd, don’t you think, that Yagyuu would claim something like that? Like…he wants to prove something.” Yanagi smiles at Niou, calculating in his mind, then leaves Niou alone again.
The anger in Niou, the balled up feelings of rage and hurt and betrayal all seem to fizzle out when Niou sees the sun glinting off the back of Yagyuu’s uniform jacket as Yagyuu finishes his last few laps. The class bell is going to ring soon and the team has left the courts to change, everyone except Yagyuu and Niou.
Yagyuu collapses onto a bench, panting hard and dripping of sweat. Niou throws a towel at his head. “You stink,” he tells Yagyuu.
Yagyuu pulls his glasses off by the nose, then wipes his face. He leans back on the bench, closing his eyes. In the background, Niou can hear the class bell ringing across campus, loud and clear.
“You’re gonna be late,” Niou says. He digs his foot into the court and shoves his hands in his pockets.
Yagyuu looks at him, although Niou knows that Yagyuu can’t really see with his glasses in his hands and not on his face. “I…I apologize,” Yagyuu tells Niou. “I should have spoken up. I’m sorry.” He bows his head down.
Niou sighs. He scratches the back of his neck, trying to avoid Yagyuu’s eyes. Trying to pretend that his face doesn’t feel warm. Trying to pretend that he doesn’t want to smirk at Yagyuu and say It’s about fucking time.
“You can buy me supper,” Niou tells Yagyuu. “Yakiniku. All you can eat.” Niou offers his hand to Yagyuu.
Despite not having his glasses, Yagyuu reaches out as though with perfect accuracy and takes Niou’s hand with a firm grip. “Deal.”
***
The winter days slowly start to get warmer. Niou leaves his mittens in his tennisbag and walks faster to preserve his body heat when he and Yagyuu walk home. They live in different directions, in different suburbs, but even if only for a few minutes every day, Niou wants to make the effort to fall in step with Yagyuu and just…be friends. If that’s what they are.
Yagyuu pays for yakiniku four weeks in a row. Niou doesn’t ask why, he just gobbles up the beef and lays more and more strips down on the little grill between them. Sometimes, Yagyuu will mention a class at school, or bring up tennis, but usually Niou just nods and they fall into a silence, broken only when waitresses offer to fill their tea cups or hand Yagyuu the bill for supper.
One Saturday, Yagyuu lays a strip of mackerel down on the grill, then says, “Niou-kun, do you want to work on math homework together? We both have Ukaji-sensei.”
Niou blinks. Yagyuu pushes his glasses up. “If it’s not a problem, we could go to your house…?” he asks.
Niou feels the blood drain from his face. He can see it already, his family peering at Yagyuu with owl-wide eyes behind their glasses. “This is your friend?” his sister would ask. “He’s not a punk. Or a delinquent. Or in jail. Or a serial biter.”
His mother would be thrilled, clapping her hands together and smiling at Yagyuu. “It’s so nice to finally meet one of Masaharu’s friends. We didn’t think he had any!”
And then Yagyuu and Niou’s entire family would laugh and fix their glasses and-
“No,” Niou says loudly. “No.”
“Aa,” Yagyuu mutters. “I understand.”
Even though he doesn’t.
So on Fridays, after finishing their BBQ, Niou walks home to the southwest and Yagyuu walks a little northeast on their own, no math homework dates.
It’s not that Niou doesn’t want to, but he doesn’t want Yagyuu to know about his megane dorky family. It’s embarrassing enough as it is to live with them, Yagyuu doesn’t need to bond with them at all.
The spring winds from the west start to blow warm, salty air from Okinawa and the islands. The frost during the nights stops altogether. Exams come and go as the first green spring buds sprout on the trees all over the city. The canals turn from a murky brown to a sparkling, if cold, blue.
Sometimes after practice, Niou will walk along the canals near the bay and sit on an empty bench, just staring out at the ocean and listening to the seagulls cawing and squawking. He lets his mind wander, but in the end, it always settles on Yagyuu.
Yagyuu, Niou thinks. He’s confused by the dreams, by the thoughts in the shower. The laser beam, Yagyuu’s tennis, his weird and unexpected family. Niou doesn’t know if it’s jealousy, or something else.
Yukimura doesn’t get any better. But he doesn’t get any worse.
Sanada stops showing up every Saturday night to team suppers at the hotel buffets. He does maybe half the time. No one, not even Kirihara, says anything about where Sanada might be. The occasional red mark on his neck Monday morning says enough.
Yanagi keeps a log book on Yukimura’s condition, recording everything Sanada says. “He’s sitting up,” Sanada says. “He’s eating food again.”
And then the next week, “He’s using the hospital wheelchairs, but he hates them. The nurses got angry when he tried to run away from them.”
Niou visits Yukimura, yes, like the good team mate, like a friend. But it’s weird and awkward and forced, seeing Yukimura sitting in a wheelchair, staring forlornly out his window. He always smells like antiseptic, like the formaldehyde of the frogs in biology class. It makes Niou want to be sick and barf up the cookies Marui shared with them all five minutes before.
“Buchou will be back by April, right?” Kirihara asks. Every visit they make to Yukimura ends the same way, with Yukimura tired and out of breath, looking like he’ll do a faceplant straight out of his wheelchair. Sanada will nod to Yanagi, who will suggest they leave Yukimura to have a nap.
Sanada, of course, stays behind.
The buds on the trees start to bloom, unfurling soft green leaves almost overnight. The wave of cherry blossoms starts in the south of the island, spreading north one day at a time until the trees in Kanagawa are pink and petals swirl on the sea breezes.
No one has the heart to tell Kirihara that it doesn’t look like Yukimura is coming back any time soon. He might be tennis captain, but in name only.
Niou thinks We need to pick up the slack if we want to win the Nationals again.
Somehow, Yukimura’s goal in third year has become an unspoken, unquestioned desire for every single regular now.
***
It is sometime during the break after school finishes that it happens. The school grounds are closed, otherwise Niou and everyone else would be up at six and practicing a hundred swings, fifty laps, an hour on the ball machines and two at matches on the school courts.
Instead, groups of them stalk the streetcourts. Playing who they can when Sanada isn’t around. It was the first day of vacation and Niou got a text from Jackal: Akaya is playing at the courts by Maita station.
Niou hops the first bus he can, but by the time he manages to find the damned streetcourt, Sanada has already come and gone, leaving a sniffling and bitter Kirihara on the ground, his cheek broken out in splotches of red and white.
“Sanada-fukubuchou said we’re not supposed to play unofficial games,” Kirihara says. “But he does it all the time!”
“You lost a set,” Jackal tells him. “You aren’t allowed to.”
“Law of Rikkai, yeah yeah, but I was using what you said works all the time, Jackal-senpai. Losing a set to see what the other side does.” Kirihara wipes the trail of spit from his mouth. Niou thinks it looks like his saliva was tinged pink with blood. Sanada outweighs the entire team, even Jackal, by a couple pounds. And he’s got the strength to prove it.
Niou doesn’t want to test Sanada’s punches.
He lurks around the courts farthest from home, farthest from the part of town Sanada lives. In the east, around Tsurumi and Hiyoshi stations, a few players from Hanomiya hang around. Niou takes his racket and offers to play them, no name, no school, just a friendly match.
Niou uses his right hand, but he manages to win. Each and every game. It’s good practice, if nothing else. And if Sanada shows up, well, Niou figures that running away to the train station at break-neck speed would count as at least a good twenty laps.
It is on one of these days, these lazy, spring days that it happens. The night was mild, so Niou left his window open just a crack for some fresh air. That, and his gym shoes were getting a bit rank from walking through some slimy-looking puddles on the way home from the train station earlier in the afternoon.
Niou knows it is a dream. An ethereal sort of fuzz hangs around the edges as Niou climbs the metal stairs to the room of the school. He can’t feel anything, but he moves. The doorway opens.
Yagyuu is on the roof. Niou knows it before he can see it.
Yagyuu puts his book down on the roof when he looks up and sees Niou. He smiles and says, “Niou-kun.”
Niou says Yagyuu’s name. In his mind, but he knows Yagyuu can hear him clear enough.
“Are you happy to see me, Niou-kun?” Yagyuu asks.
In that instant, Niou remembers that he’s wearing his pajamas. Or he should be. When he looks down, he can see his naked legs. His naked stomach. His naked, hard cock…
Shame and embarrassment burns through his body. Yagyuu laughs and it only gets worse. His cock swells, eager to be touched. Niou squeezes his eyes shut, but Yagyuu only says, “Come here.”
Niou tries to shake his head, but he can’t. His feet move for him, his dream moves forward and so does he. If he was really on the roof of the school, Niou knows he should be able to feel hard asphalt under his knees when Yagyuu pushes on his shoulders, demanding Niou get down. But Niou feels nothing, nothing except a vaguely soft lump. He pulls away, wanting and needing to crawl away, but the rooftop ends just over the ledge pressing against Niou’s forehead.
“Do you want to be fucked?” Yagyuu asks.
“Shut up! Someone could hear!” Niou moans. Yagyuu runs a hand down Niou’s side, making him shiver and lean back. Niou tries to tell Yagyuu to stop, but he moans again. The sound vibrates through his mouth, his teeth, his ears, too.
Yagyuu slaps Niou on the ass. “You want this, ne?” Something warm squeezes around Niou’s cock. He thinks it might be Yagyuu’s hand, but he can’t see his own hands, he doesn’t know what he is doing except pushing back against Yagyuu’s hips, grinding back for friction, to make the swell of pleasure explode.
“You need to be able to see properly,” Yagyuu tells him. Glasses are poked over Niou’s ears. Niou looks out the lenses for a fraction of a second, before Yagyuu rubs against his ass, hips to Niou’s back, his hair prickling the side of Niou’s face.
Yagyuu breathes hot in his ear when he fucks Niou. It takes Niou a moment to realize what is happening because everything is distorted and fuzzy. Niou hangs his head and he can see his cock swollen dark and leaking between his legs. He can see the shadows of Yagyuu’s body slapping against his. It feels strange, in his ass, like nothing and being torn open at the same time.
Niou can hear himself whimper. It sounds like a third person, neither him nor Yagyuu, but an outsider completely, moaning and gasping and begging for more, to be fucked harder, for Yagyuu never to stop.
“I’m gonna-”
“Don’t you dare come until I tell you, Niou-kun,” Yagyuu hisses. His spit hits Niou on the cheek. Yagyuu doesn’t make any noise; everything is Niou, all the grunts, all the sounds. Yagyuu just moves with Niou, harder and harder, faster and faster and Niou can’t get enough.
Niou shakes his head. “I can’t, I-” His cock feels so hard it’s numb. His legs shake. He can’t take much more, the wave rises up in his body. He’s sweaty and feverish and shivering and then Niou let himself go-
“MASAHARU!”
Niou opens his eyes with a strangled gasp. Everything around him is dark and warm and fuzzy. He blinks again, then untangles his legs from the mess of sheets and covers. His legs are still shaky when he stands and there is sticky come on his thighs and stomach and hands, too.
Niou flops back on his bed. Yagyuu burns his eyelids, smirking and whispering, “Do you want to be fucked, Niou-kun?”
Niou clenches his ass. That dream was too real for his tastes.
“I think that was…” gay, he thinks.
Puri.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [Part 12] [Part 13] [Part 14] [Part 15] [Part 16] [Part 17] [Part 18] [Part 19] [Part 20]
Despite feeling himself again with his hair tied back, Niou clenches his jaw every time he passes one of those girls in the hallway or when he sees the long-faced girl- Aoi-san?- in class, passing between the desks with her girlfriends, all hushed whispers.
About Yagyuu, for all Niou knows.
He sticks his foot out, but Aoi walks one row over, then down, completely bypassing Niou’s shoe. To make matters worse, she dumps her backpack on the far side of her desk, completely out of aim for any spitballs Niou might have been able to launch from his seat.
At lunches, Niou rarely eats with the tennis team in the cafeteria because Marui is there. Marui, who stuffs his face with his cakes and four lunches. Niou tends to eat in empty stairwells since the roof is too cold. The stairwells are drafty and Niou keeps both his sweater and his blazer on and he still shivers when a cold gust passes through the cement walls. His bento boxes are colder than ever, the juice from his juiceboxes freezing in his throat.
Yagyuu sometimes eats with the tennis team. Niou has seen him with the team in the cafeteria the rare occasions Niou wanders in to buy a bag of prawn crackers or fanta from the vending machines. The rest of the time, Niou is absolutely stumped as to where Yagyuu eats lunch.
His group of fangirls- Niou cannot bring himself to even consider the possibility that Yagyuu is going out with one of them- eat in a classroom on the third floor. They push their desks into a circle, all facing each other with their asinine gossip. Niou starts to prowl the hallways during lunch when the stairwell is too cold and curiosity gets the better of him. He will find where Yagyuu eats.
One lunch, Niou checks the second floor where some of the juniors have classes. He peers into classrooms, sticking his head in through the windows.
“And then I managed to hit a two over par and it was awful!” one of the boys says.
His friends shake their heads. “Harsh. Really harsh. You had that shot, Ando.”
Niou sucks up a gulp of juice from his juicebox, catching the attention of the juniors with his noise. Golf dorks, check. Yagyuu Hiroshi, no.
He leans back against the wall, legs crossed out in front of himself. Niou chucks his juicebox into a garbage can across the corridor. “Purifect-o shotto!” he murmurs in English. He scratches his head, thinking for a moment of places he hasn’t checked, then he walks off to the stairs.
Third floor, every classroom is empty of Yagyuu, even the computer room. Niou lurks in doorways and presses his face up to windows. Some freshmen girls point at him from inside a classroom, so he smushes his nose right up against the pane of glass and makes a face at them.
The girls make faces back. “Gross!” they shriek. “Yucky! What a weirdo!”
Niou hopes that none of those girls flock around Yagyuu, but he wouldn’t be surprised if one of them did. He sticks out his tongue and licks the glass, then walks off with his hands in his pockets.
The fourth floor of the school is the draftiest next to the stairwells and from here, the slight wind sounds like a gale, howling up and down the corridor, rattling papers tacked to bulletin boards and posters pasted to walls. Here and there in the classrooms a few students eat their lunches and class 3-D is filled with boys, all throwing paper airplanes and bento boxes, waving lacrosse rackets and playing catch. One boy leans over a window sill overlooking the school campus and Niou thinks he might see cigarette smoke coiling up.
Niou avoids checking out that classroom. Those seniors aren’t the nicest people and even if Yagyuu is really strange, he wouldn’t hang out with people like that. Niou doesn’t even.
The stairs to the roof echo as Niou stomps up them. He pulls his coat tighter around himself and shoves his hands as deep as they can go in his pants pockets. With his hip, Niou shoves the doorway open. The sky is a greyish sort today, the mid-winter sun dim, but shining in the middle of the sky. Niou blows out a breath, watching it cloud up and disappear.
Niou walks around the rooftop, sneaking past vents and other landmarks cluttering the roof, stepping over old chipbags and white plastic bags. He doesn’t hear the sounds of anyone’s voices here, nothing except the faint rustle of the wind and his own footsteps on cold pavement.
That senior was definitely smoking on the fourth floor. Niou sniffs, nodding to himself. The acrid scent of smoke fills his lungs. Disgusting, and yet the fullness in chest is addictive in a way. Niou inhales again before he ducks under a duct and comes out onto an open patch of the roof.
“Yagyuu?”
Yagyuu looks up from his book, then he starts to choke. Niou’s eyes go wide as he sees Yagyuu stub the cigarette he was holding underneath his shoe. “You didn’t see that,” Yagyuu says.
Niou says, “Che. Where’d you get that from, doctor’s son?” He nods to the butt on the ground, looking like it’s been barely half-smoked.
Yagyuu stinks of the smoke. He sets his book down, splayed out over his knee. His face looks a bit pink on the cheeks. Good, Niou thinks. Much less awkward this way, although the shock of seeing Yagyuu with a cigarette between his lips and his fingers still makes Niou’s insides lurch at the sheer, well, shock.
“I thought you were the good kid,” Niou adds.
Yagyuu avoids Niou’s eye. He drums his fingernails on the cover of his novel. “I bought it off one of the boys in 3-D.”
Niou knows his eyebrows have disappeared under his hairline. Personal facelift. “Really?” he asks, before he corrects himself with a much more casual, “I wouldn’t have thought that.”
“Probably not,” Yagyuu says.
“Yanagi and Sanada will kill you,” Niou says.
This time Yagyuu’s eyebrows rise, along with the corner of his mouth. “Do you know from experience, Niou-kun?”
Niou shakes his head. He shrugs his shoulders and toes at Yagyuu’s foot. “Aa,” he says. “Why would you think that?”
“I would have expected it from you,” Yagyuu says.
“I’m that sort of person?”
Yagyuu pauses for a beat. “Something like that,” he says. But his voice sounds hollow with the wind stirring up around them. Niou buries his face into the upturned collar of his coat, which provides absolutely no warmth at all.
Niou sits down beside Yagyuu. When Yagyuu turns to his bento box, Niou swipes the book from his knee. He bends the spine and flips through, too fast to read the words but Niou doesn’t need to. The cover is black, with red characters raised. “The Gekokujou Gambit?” Niou starts to snicker.
Yagyuu grabs his book back, glaring at Niou out of the side of his glasses. He pushes them back up his nose and sits up straight, resuming his bland, boring self. “I like mysteries,” he says.
“Okay,” Niou says. He rolls his eyes. Yagyuu stares at him, but Niou stares back. He’s good at these sorts of contests.
The bell rings before either of them look away. Neither wins, although Niou’s eyes feel dry and Yagyuu keeps fixing his glasses.
Niou spends his afternoon math class doodling instead of taking notes. In the margins he writes gekokujou a hundred times, then on the next page, he scratches them all out in favour of round circles that look a bit too much like glasses lenses, so he colours them all in and makes scratching noises so loud with his pen that the teacher stops in the middle of the lesson, turns around and says,
“Is there something wrong with your pen, Niou-kun?”
Niou looks up. He shakes his pen. “No, it’s good, thanks.”
The class titters. The teacher glares at him, but gives up first when Niou stares right back.
Tennis practice starts off well. The chill of winter is neutralized with the laps Sanada assigns. Niou starts on his stretches, with Yagyuu spotting his back. They pair off now more than ever for these things. It’s almost a given, being doubles partners and now doubles one.
Kirihara touches his toes, face red with effort. He sits beside Niou on the clay court, feet splayed out in front of him. Kirihara’s nose twitches and he gives Niou a weird look, with his brow all scrunched up.
“Don’t think too hard,” Niou tells him.
Kirihara’s forehead knots into even more lines.
Marui plunks his fat ass beside Kirihara, huffing and puffing through his toe stretching. He pulls his toes forward, trying to get the least effort out of his stretch. Niou makes for the baskets of balls, stuffing a couple into his pockets when he sees Kirihara and Marui talking, leaning awfully close and conspiratorial. Marui looks at Niou, then looks back at Kirihara and nods.
Niou scratches his hairline. Weirdos, he thinks.
“Do you want to practice our volleys, Niou-kun?” Yagyuu asks.
Niou nods. He tosses Yagyuu a ball he had been holding. “You can start.”
They talk over half a court and leave the right side to a pair of freshmen, who serve slow and steady balls to each other when they aren’t paying attention to the two regulars on the other side of the court. Niou rubs his hands together. He almost wishes he was smart like Yagyuu, who wears a pair of fingerless gloves against the cold.
Niou cracks his knuckles, gives his fingers one last, fast rub and gives Yagyuu an okay sign with his hands. Serve me a volley!
“YAGYUU!”
Sanada’s shout across the courts makes every single player stop. The ball in Yagyuu’s hand drops to the ground. Niou blinks.
And then Sanada tops it off with an even louder, “NIOU!”
Somewhere from the rooftop, a pigeon coos, then it flies off in a flurry of flapping wings. Silence drags on. A hundred pairs of eyes stare at Niou and Yagyuu. Yagyuu pushes his glasses up.
“70 laps!” Sanada yells.
“What for?” Niou shouts back.
Behind Sanada, Niou can hear the sound of someone coughing, then he sees a flash of red hair and a third head behind the other two, black and messy hair sticking out just far enough.
Niou walks over to them. Sanada has a good five inches on Niou right now, and probably at least as many kilograms too, but Niou doesn’t care. “What for?” he repeats.
Sanada’s hand twitches. Niou steps out of the way, hopping to the side of Sanada’s slap. He narrows his eyes at Marui and Kirihara. “The fuck were you talking about?”
“You’re making Yagyuu-senpai smoke!” Kirihara says. “I smelled something funny on you guys, Niou-senpai.”
Niou feels his jaw drop a bit, but he closes his mouth and says nothing, just shakes his head and smirks. “Puri,” he says. Idiots.
Yagyuu says nothing. The perfect gentleman, he doesn’t question Sanada’s punishment or even try to defend himself, he starts on his laps after setting his racket down on an empty bench.
Niou huffs. Marui smiles at him and gives him a thumbs up. Niou gives Marui the finger, which Sanada happens to catch.
“Eighty laps, Niou,” Sanada snaps. “Get your lazy ass in gear now.”
Fuck, Niou thinks. He tosses his racket to the ground at Sanada’s feet and runs off to catch up with Yagyuu. Play resumes across the courts, one by one the players bouncing their balls and the noises and grunts starting anew.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Niou says when he falls in step with Yagyuu.
Yagyuu’s sneakers slap against the ground. He exhales heavily in perfect tune with his pace.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Niou presses.
Yagyuu picks up his speed, pushing past Niou and running around the end of the courts, rounding a corner and cutting a junior off in the process. Niou grinds his teeth and pushes himself harder, determined to keep up with Yagyuu. He’s close enough now that he can reach out and grab Yagyuu’s jacket. The nylon is slippery in his sweaty hand, but he pulls himself forward and Yagyuu back.
“Why didn’t you tell the truth?” Niou says through his teeth, right into Yagyuu’s ear. “Now we’ve got extra laps because of you!”
Yagyuu makes a noise in the back of his throat. Maybe if Niou was running beside Yagyuu and not behind, he might see a smirk on Yagyuu’s lips. But as it is, Niou’s calves ache, the muscles feel like they are pulling away from the bone. Fifty laps a practice is harsh, but another sixty is just cruel. Niou’s ribs burn and he’s panting hard.
Yagyuu is, too, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“Would it have mattered?” Yagyuu says.
“Yes!” Niou shouts.
“Mm,” Yagyuu says. “We’d still have got laps, no matter who was at fault.” Yagyuu rounds another court post, tugging hard enough to pull free from Niou.
Niou lets himself slow down. He’ll be dying by his twentieth lap as it is. How the fatty Marui manages his fifty every practice, Niou has no idea.
Yagyuu’s words sting and Niou feels a bit like he’s been slapped in the face. It matters to him who was at fault because now Kirihara and Sanada and Marui- and Yanagi from before- all think he is the one doing this shit, not Yagyuu. Yagyuu doesn’t even seem to care about it, and now he’s passing Niou a lap, not once turning around.
A weight presses against Niou’s chest and his eyes sting. He clenches his jaw to keep his expression straight, or at the very least, angry. Freshmen continue to point to him all practice and by the end, Niou’s at lap forty-eight and dragging his feet, barely managing a jog. His feet are going to fall off.
Sanada nods Yanagi off and stands in the middle of B court, arms crossed and glaring at Niou, pivoting slowly around the spot, a watchdog making sure Niou does every last lap.
***
Niou gives Yagyuu the cold shoulder.
He doesn’t care about justifying it, but if he did, he would assume that Yagyuu wouldn’t be too offended because Yagyuu is a cold-hearted bastard deep down anyway. The next practice on Monday, Yagyuu nods to Niou in the changing rooms, a mumbled good morning spoken between the entire group of regulars.
Niou turns away, changing his t-shirt with his back to Yagyuu.
Niou stays at the back of the pack during laps. Usually he prefers the middle, but today, he’s angry and hurt still, days later, so he slows his pace and stays closer to Marui than Yagyuu. Not that Yagyuu seems to notice.
Niou sniffs. He grinds his back teeth. There is a bitterness lingering in his mouth, and not just from the fishcake he had at breakfast.
He does his stretches by himself. And before Yagyuu can approach him, Niou grabs Kirihara by the bicep. “Wanna practice, kid?” he asks.
Kirihara stands, stunned for a moment. “Uh…” he says, “sure, senpai. Yeah.” Then Kirihara looks out under his curly bangs and his eyes glitter, faintly red in the early morning amber light. Niou ignores the twist in his stomach.
And the shadow behind his back, which fades as Niou strides off with Kirihara to a far court.
“Can you play with your left hand?” Kirihara asks.
Niou tosses his racket from his left to his right, then back to his left hand. “Why my left?”
Kirihara looks shifty, with his eyes darting to the side, avoiding Niou’s look. “No reason, senpai. You won’t lose as bad with your left hand, though.”
“Oi!” Niou snaps. Kirihara cackles, knowing exactly what points to touch on to get a rise out of Niou. Niou knows it, too, but he’ll humour the kid. Anything to keep from playing with Yagyuu the silent bastard who doesn’t stand up for himself, or for the truth.
Niou plays hard, but his heart isn’t in it. Deep down, he knows that Kirihara is a better player and he doesn’t really want to try to prove otherwise. Kirihara slams balls into the centre court, too close to Niou’s legs. Niou side-steps too far, then Kirihara takes his advantage all the way and uses fast smashes along the sidelines to score points and take yet another game.
Niou starts a volley, but Kirihara doesn’t fall into it. Kirihara slides the balls over his racket, he curves his balls and sends them flying over Niou’s head. He laughs and grins as he runs around, barely breaking a sweat. Niou can feel the cold seep through his own uniform, his back dripping with sweat kept too close to his skin by the nylon jacket he wears over his t-shirt.
Niou swings his arm back, hoping to use a laserbeam, but Kirihara hits a lob instead. Every drop of his shoulder, or lean in his knees changes. He knows what Niou is looking for, little habits or hints of how he’ll play and he keeps changing things up to keep the game at his pace.
Which happens to be fast. And nasty.
“Senpai, is that all you have?” Kirihara taunts. “I thought you were good at tennis!”
Niou clenches his jaw. He’s not slipping up from Kirihara’s laughter, he’s slipping up because he’s angry and he doesn’t care. “Just…” Niou sees a flash of a yellow jersey out of the corner of his eye. Sanada.
Damn, Niou thinks. So much for telling Kirihara to just take the game.
“Let’s just finish this soon,” Niou snaps.
“Okay!” Kirihara waves his racket up in the air as Niou hits a lob. It’s match-point, and he’s going to lose anyway.
If Niou wasn’t so angry about Yagyuu, he might feel more than a sharp twitch in his calf at the shot. He looks down, seeing the ball roll away from his leg. Pain flares up above his ankle. Niou pulls his uniform pants away to reveal a large red welt, rather sized and shaped like a tennis ball.
“You should pay more attention to the game, Niou-senpai,” Kirihara calls out. “I don’t think you saw my cool new shot.”
Niou lets the leg of his trackpants drop. “Eh?”
“Yeah, my phantom ball. Lefties can’t hit it, at least not the ones I played last week. And you too.”
Niou scratches his head. “What are you talking about, Kirihara? What phantom ball?”
Kirihara sticks out his lower lip. His pout looks completely childish. “You weren’t paying attention, ne senpai?”
Niou drowns himself in the shower. He limps in, making sure to give Kirihara a good shove into the tiled wall for spite. At least getting out some physical aggression helps with his leg, but not with his chest. As soon as Yagyuu steps into the showers, naked and pink-skinned, blind as a bat without his glasses and making sure to walk into areas where no other players are, Niou’s throat seizes up and his hands feel cold, even under the scalding spray of the water.
Yagyuu can’t see him, but Yagyuu nods his way and gives Niou a slight smile. For a moment, Niou wants to smirk back, or maybe cock his head and nod, but then he remembers he’s angry at Yagyuu, at that bastard, and so he turns his head instead, snorting through his nose.
In the lockerroom, Yagyuu starts to say something to Niou, “Niou-kun…” is all he manages before Niou slams his tennisbag on the floor, then picks it up again and yells, “I’m gone!” to the rest of the regulars.
Walking to the bus stop, Niou thinks he hears the sounds of a second pair of footsteps behind him, but he ignores the desire nagging his mind to turn around in favour of waving down the approaching bus and stepping onto it as fast as he can.
At the back of the bus, Niou sets his tennisbag down in a seat and takes the next beside it. Reflected in the window is his face, frowning and miserable, his hair dark at the roots and damp at the ends, curling up as it dries. Through the glass, Niou can see a lone figure standing at the bus stops, fading into darkness as Niou’s bus drives away.
The glint of light in the glasses, though, is unmistakable.
***
It is a Tuesday morning. Completely normal. His alarm clock goes off three times before Niou bothers to roll out of bed. His now-forgotten dream leaves an ache between his legs and a hand itching to scratch it. In the shower, his slippery hands make it easier to masturbate, sliding across his cock and tugging the wet skin, squeezing and rubbing until he’s got a hand pressed to the shower wall and he’s gasping his release into the drain at his feet.
Niou grabs a couple rice balls wrapped with seaweed off the counter for breakfast, slings his backpack over one shoulder and his tennisbag over the other. He runs to catch the bus and makes it into tennis practice just on time.
“Yo!” he says, pushing the doorway open.
Six sets of eyes stare at him. Six bodies are clustered around one open locker.
Sanada’s, judging by the photo of the three monsters hanging up inside of it. And by the spare black ball cap resting on the top shelf.
“Uh, good morning?” Niou offers.
Sanada walks up to Niou and before Niou has even blinked, he shoves a magazine in Niou’s face. “What. Is. This?” he snarls.
Niou takes the magazine, and glancing down at the cover, he sees a rather scrawny-chested looking man looking rather topless with a girly haircut-
With a photograph of Yukimura’s face pasted overtop.
Niou starts to snicker, but Sanada grabs the magazine back and puffs up his chest, his face reddening and his jaw clenching. “That’s not funny!” Sanada snaps. “It’s a…a…” Sanada mouths something, but the words don’t come out.
“It’s a gay magazine,” Yanagi says.
Kirihara nods sagely, as if he knew all along, then his eyes go wide with understanding and he starts to snigger too.
Sanada breathes heavily through his nose. Like he’s about to hit something. His knuckles crack. Niou leans back on his heel, but there is a locker door in the way and-
“It was me.”
Six heads swing towards Yagyuu. Yagyuu pushes up his glasses. Sanada’s jaw has hit the floor along with the fluttering magazine. Niou can see exactly what Yanagi meant when he said it was gay. There are naked men touching each other at Niou’s feet.
He drags his eyes back to Yagyuu. Who smiles, ever so slightly, like he’s been keeping a secret for ages.
“Yagyuu-senpai?” Kirihara says.
“Yagyuu?” Jackal and Marui echo.
“I thought it would be funny,” Yagyuu says, his voice calm and cool. “The man on the cover did look a bit like Yukimura. Don’t you appreciate it, Sanada-kun?”
Sanada’s yell must be loud enough to hear as far away as the street. Or the university buildings on campus.
Yagyuu spends the entire practice running laps.
Niou spends his entire practice being flabbergasted.
“You don’t actually believe him, do you?” Yanagi asks Niou at the ball machine. Yanagi leans against the machine, stretching out his long legs. “Odd, don’t you think, that Yagyuu would claim something like that? Like…he wants to prove something.” Yanagi smiles at Niou, calculating in his mind, then leaves Niou alone again.
The anger in Niou, the balled up feelings of rage and hurt and betrayal all seem to fizzle out when Niou sees the sun glinting off the back of Yagyuu’s uniform jacket as Yagyuu finishes his last few laps. The class bell is going to ring soon and the team has left the courts to change, everyone except Yagyuu and Niou.
Yagyuu collapses onto a bench, panting hard and dripping of sweat. Niou throws a towel at his head. “You stink,” he tells Yagyuu.
Yagyuu pulls his glasses off by the nose, then wipes his face. He leans back on the bench, closing his eyes. In the background, Niou can hear the class bell ringing across campus, loud and clear.
“You’re gonna be late,” Niou says. He digs his foot into the court and shoves his hands in his pockets.
Yagyuu looks at him, although Niou knows that Yagyuu can’t really see with his glasses in his hands and not on his face. “I…I apologize,” Yagyuu tells Niou. “I should have spoken up. I’m sorry.” He bows his head down.
Niou sighs. He scratches the back of his neck, trying to avoid Yagyuu’s eyes. Trying to pretend that his face doesn’t feel warm. Trying to pretend that he doesn’t want to smirk at Yagyuu and say It’s about fucking time.
“You can buy me supper,” Niou tells Yagyuu. “Yakiniku. All you can eat.” Niou offers his hand to Yagyuu.
Despite not having his glasses, Yagyuu reaches out as though with perfect accuracy and takes Niou’s hand with a firm grip. “Deal.”
***
The winter days slowly start to get warmer. Niou leaves his mittens in his tennisbag and walks faster to preserve his body heat when he and Yagyuu walk home. They live in different directions, in different suburbs, but even if only for a few minutes every day, Niou wants to make the effort to fall in step with Yagyuu and just…be friends. If that’s what they are.
Yagyuu pays for yakiniku four weeks in a row. Niou doesn’t ask why, he just gobbles up the beef and lays more and more strips down on the little grill between them. Sometimes, Yagyuu will mention a class at school, or bring up tennis, but usually Niou just nods and they fall into a silence, broken only when waitresses offer to fill their tea cups or hand Yagyuu the bill for supper.
One Saturday, Yagyuu lays a strip of mackerel down on the grill, then says, “Niou-kun, do you want to work on math homework together? We both have Ukaji-sensei.”
Niou blinks. Yagyuu pushes his glasses up. “If it’s not a problem, we could go to your house…?” he asks.
Niou feels the blood drain from his face. He can see it already, his family peering at Yagyuu with owl-wide eyes behind their glasses. “This is your friend?” his sister would ask. “He’s not a punk. Or a delinquent. Or in jail. Or a serial biter.”
His mother would be thrilled, clapping her hands together and smiling at Yagyuu. “It’s so nice to finally meet one of Masaharu’s friends. We didn’t think he had any!”
And then Yagyuu and Niou’s entire family would laugh and fix their glasses and-
“No,” Niou says loudly. “No.”
“Aa,” Yagyuu mutters. “I understand.”
Even though he doesn’t.
So on Fridays, after finishing their BBQ, Niou walks home to the southwest and Yagyuu walks a little northeast on their own, no math homework dates.
It’s not that Niou doesn’t want to, but he doesn’t want Yagyuu to know about his megane dorky family. It’s embarrassing enough as it is to live with them, Yagyuu doesn’t need to bond with them at all.
The spring winds from the west start to blow warm, salty air from Okinawa and the islands. The frost during the nights stops altogether. Exams come and go as the first green spring buds sprout on the trees all over the city. The canals turn from a murky brown to a sparkling, if cold, blue.
Sometimes after practice, Niou will walk along the canals near the bay and sit on an empty bench, just staring out at the ocean and listening to the seagulls cawing and squawking. He lets his mind wander, but in the end, it always settles on Yagyuu.
Yagyuu, Niou thinks. He’s confused by the dreams, by the thoughts in the shower. The laser beam, Yagyuu’s tennis, his weird and unexpected family. Niou doesn’t know if it’s jealousy, or something else.
Yukimura doesn’t get any better. But he doesn’t get any worse.
Sanada stops showing up every Saturday night to team suppers at the hotel buffets. He does maybe half the time. No one, not even Kirihara, says anything about where Sanada might be. The occasional red mark on his neck Monday morning says enough.
Yanagi keeps a log book on Yukimura’s condition, recording everything Sanada says. “He’s sitting up,” Sanada says. “He’s eating food again.”
And then the next week, “He’s using the hospital wheelchairs, but he hates them. The nurses got angry when he tried to run away from them.”
Niou visits Yukimura, yes, like the good team mate, like a friend. But it’s weird and awkward and forced, seeing Yukimura sitting in a wheelchair, staring forlornly out his window. He always smells like antiseptic, like the formaldehyde of the frogs in biology class. It makes Niou want to be sick and barf up the cookies Marui shared with them all five minutes before.
“Buchou will be back by April, right?” Kirihara asks. Every visit they make to Yukimura ends the same way, with Yukimura tired and out of breath, looking like he’ll do a faceplant straight out of his wheelchair. Sanada will nod to Yanagi, who will suggest they leave Yukimura to have a nap.
Sanada, of course, stays behind.
The buds on the trees start to bloom, unfurling soft green leaves almost overnight. The wave of cherry blossoms starts in the south of the island, spreading north one day at a time until the trees in Kanagawa are pink and petals swirl on the sea breezes.
No one has the heart to tell Kirihara that it doesn’t look like Yukimura is coming back any time soon. He might be tennis captain, but in name only.
Niou thinks We need to pick up the slack if we want to win the Nationals again.
Somehow, Yukimura’s goal in third year has become an unspoken, unquestioned desire for every single regular now.
***
It is sometime during the break after school finishes that it happens. The school grounds are closed, otherwise Niou and everyone else would be up at six and practicing a hundred swings, fifty laps, an hour on the ball machines and two at matches on the school courts.
Instead, groups of them stalk the streetcourts. Playing who they can when Sanada isn’t around. It was the first day of vacation and Niou got a text from Jackal: Akaya is playing at the courts by Maita station.
Niou hops the first bus he can, but by the time he manages to find the damned streetcourt, Sanada has already come and gone, leaving a sniffling and bitter Kirihara on the ground, his cheek broken out in splotches of red and white.
“Sanada-fukubuchou said we’re not supposed to play unofficial games,” Kirihara says. “But he does it all the time!”
“You lost a set,” Jackal tells him. “You aren’t allowed to.”
“Law of Rikkai, yeah yeah, but I was using what you said works all the time, Jackal-senpai. Losing a set to see what the other side does.” Kirihara wipes the trail of spit from his mouth. Niou thinks it looks like his saliva was tinged pink with blood. Sanada outweighs the entire team, even Jackal, by a couple pounds. And he’s got the strength to prove it.
Niou doesn’t want to test Sanada’s punches.
He lurks around the courts farthest from home, farthest from the part of town Sanada lives. In the east, around Tsurumi and Hiyoshi stations, a few players from Hanomiya hang around. Niou takes his racket and offers to play them, no name, no school, just a friendly match.
Niou uses his right hand, but he manages to win. Each and every game. It’s good practice, if nothing else. And if Sanada shows up, well, Niou figures that running away to the train station at break-neck speed would count as at least a good twenty laps.
It is on one of these days, these lazy, spring days that it happens. The night was mild, so Niou left his window open just a crack for some fresh air. That, and his gym shoes were getting a bit rank from walking through some slimy-looking puddles on the way home from the train station earlier in the afternoon.
Niou knows it is a dream. An ethereal sort of fuzz hangs around the edges as Niou climbs the metal stairs to the room of the school. He can’t feel anything, but he moves. The doorway opens.
Yagyuu is on the roof. Niou knows it before he can see it.
Yagyuu puts his book down on the roof when he looks up and sees Niou. He smiles and says, “Niou-kun.”
Niou says Yagyuu’s name. In his mind, but he knows Yagyuu can hear him clear enough.
“Are you happy to see me, Niou-kun?” Yagyuu asks.
In that instant, Niou remembers that he’s wearing his pajamas. Or he should be. When he looks down, he can see his naked legs. His naked stomach. His naked, hard cock…
Shame and embarrassment burns through his body. Yagyuu laughs and it only gets worse. His cock swells, eager to be touched. Niou squeezes his eyes shut, but Yagyuu only says, “Come here.”
Niou tries to shake his head, but he can’t. His feet move for him, his dream moves forward and so does he. If he was really on the roof of the school, Niou knows he should be able to feel hard asphalt under his knees when Yagyuu pushes on his shoulders, demanding Niou get down. But Niou feels nothing, nothing except a vaguely soft lump. He pulls away, wanting and needing to crawl away, but the rooftop ends just over the ledge pressing against Niou’s forehead.
“Do you want to be fucked?” Yagyuu asks.
“Shut up! Someone could hear!” Niou moans. Yagyuu runs a hand down Niou’s side, making him shiver and lean back. Niou tries to tell Yagyuu to stop, but he moans again. The sound vibrates through his mouth, his teeth, his ears, too.
Yagyuu slaps Niou on the ass. “You want this, ne?” Something warm squeezes around Niou’s cock. He thinks it might be Yagyuu’s hand, but he can’t see his own hands, he doesn’t know what he is doing except pushing back against Yagyuu’s hips, grinding back for friction, to make the swell of pleasure explode.
“You need to be able to see properly,” Yagyuu tells him. Glasses are poked over Niou’s ears. Niou looks out the lenses for a fraction of a second, before Yagyuu rubs against his ass, hips to Niou’s back, his hair prickling the side of Niou’s face.
Yagyuu breathes hot in his ear when he fucks Niou. It takes Niou a moment to realize what is happening because everything is distorted and fuzzy. Niou hangs his head and he can see his cock swollen dark and leaking between his legs. He can see the shadows of Yagyuu’s body slapping against his. It feels strange, in his ass, like nothing and being torn open at the same time.
Niou can hear himself whimper. It sounds like a third person, neither him nor Yagyuu, but an outsider completely, moaning and gasping and begging for more, to be fucked harder, for Yagyuu never to stop.
“I’m gonna-”
“Don’t you dare come until I tell you, Niou-kun,” Yagyuu hisses. His spit hits Niou on the cheek. Yagyuu doesn’t make any noise; everything is Niou, all the grunts, all the sounds. Yagyuu just moves with Niou, harder and harder, faster and faster and Niou can’t get enough.
Niou shakes his head. “I can’t, I-” His cock feels so hard it’s numb. His legs shake. He can’t take much more, the wave rises up in his body. He’s sweaty and feverish and shivering and then Niou let himself go-
“MASAHARU!”
Niou opens his eyes with a strangled gasp. Everything around him is dark and warm and fuzzy. He blinks again, then untangles his legs from the mess of sheets and covers. His legs are still shaky when he stands and there is sticky come on his thighs and stomach and hands, too.
Niou flops back on his bed. Yagyuu burns his eyelids, smirking and whispering, “Do you want to be fucked, Niou-kun?”
Niou clenches his ass. That dream was too real for his tastes.
“I think that was…” gay, he thinks.
Puri.