FIC: Rewind Forward (D1) 44/63
Title: Rewind Forward (44/63)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
Sanada wanders off, grumbling something about Yukimura. Niou settles onto the bench, careful of his bulging erection, and lets his thoughts wander off. He glances down at his hand. He can feel Yagyuu's fingertips there, ghosting over his skin again and again and making it hard to concentrate on anything but. He's marked. He's scorched. There should be a line of red blisters that he can feel but his hand looks as normal as ever-even if it does tremble slightly.
Niou pulls his sweat towel from his bag and wipes the back of his neck. Yagyuu wipes his face, his collar, dabbing here and there, so proper that it makes Niou laugh under his breath.
As soon as Sanada is out of earshot, Kirihara jumps the barrier and squats down on the back of the bench; he's pleased as punch with himself that his senpais don't stop him. "You guys didn't have an easy win," Kirihara say without turning around. The brat starts to cackle to himself.
Yagyuu frowns. Niou, however, wrings his sweaty towel up and slaps it against the back of Kirihara's head.
"Ow!" he shrieks.
It's Niou's turn to chuckle. "Watch your mouth, kid," he says.
Kirihara pouts. Marui joins in the cheering masses of yellow on their side. Shouts of "Let's go Let's go Rikkai Da!" make Niou's insides swell up in that proud, excited way after a really good win, the way it happened at the Nationals last year. But mid-chant, Marui stops and clutches his stomach. He moans, "I'm so hungry…"
Jackal flips out a stopwatch. He looks up at the scoreboard. "This is taking longer than we thought." He shakes his head and sighs.
Yagyuu sits down on the bench near Niou. He crosses his legs and folds up his towel before putting it away. Niou can't stop himself: he slides closer, inching along the bench carefully to avoid getting slivers in his butt. Yagyuu half-turns, but doesn't acknowledge Niou any further.
"Yanagi-senpai'll finish this up fast," Kirihara says. Then he cups his hands around his mouth and yells, "Kick his ass, senpai!"
Their Data Master walks onto the court. Yanagi already owns it with his confident gait and tall posture, his narrow eyes sweeping the net and analyzing everything. Seigaku's Inui, on the other hand, is all raised eyebrows and frazzled hair. He starts to say something, but Yanagi finishes it for him,
"-is what you were going to say, isn't it?" he says.
Inui blinks. He mutters something under his breath and fixes his glasses.
So the old doubles partners face-off, Niou thinks. He sniffs and looks away. Uneasiness inside blooming when he remembers the day that Inui came to Rikkai, all notebooks and data and determined to get their stats. Niou shudders. He doesn't like people knowing about him. He doesn't like people knowing his tennis, his family, his home. He hides himself behind smirks and sneers and snappy little comments. He refuses to be like his family. He refuses to be known-but therein lies the problem.
Watching Yagyuu by him, his chest rising and falling as his heavy breathing from their match fades into the cacophony of summer insects, Niou wants Yagyuu to know him better than anyone else ever has or will.
Niou bites back a frown. Sanada stomps back into the stands as Inui and Yanagi draw out their game with lame talking, repressed whatever they didn't get out as kids and now have to waste everyone's time by showing off their data skills on each other.
"Get your shoes off the bench!" Sanada snaps. He hits Kirihara across the back of the head, scowling and fast, and Kirihara cringes. Sanada doesn't insist Kirihara leave, though, not even when Kirihara grumbles under his breath and glares.
"Yukimura okay?" Marui asks.
Sanada's eye twitches.
Niou lets his eyes settle on the court, but his mind floats off. He tries to ignore Sanada's shadow, half-hiding his view of the match, but it's a dark spectre, the way tonight is. His cellphone's in his bag. His mother might call and ask what Yagyuu likes to eat, what time he and Yagyuu will show up, how he and Yagyuu played today, Yagyuu Yagyuu Yagyuu!
Bile stings the back of his throat, sourness spreading over his tongue and making Niou feel even more ill. He kicks himself mentally because his bedroom is a dump, he should have cleaned it, there's dirty tissues with dried-out come in his garbage can and what if Yagyuu comes upstairs and smells them? What if he knows that Niou still masturbates and thinks of him and-
"It's cruel of Yanagi to do that," Jackal says. Niou snaps his eyes open, focusing on the match for a moment. Yanagi's down two games, according to the scoreboard, though barely a couple minutes have passed.
The sun shifts enough for the light to hit Yanagi's face, showing Niou the barest of smiles on his lips. "Our strategist is a scary person," he says.
Somehow, during all of his spacing out, Sanada's plunked himself back down on the bench. He grunts occasionally as his eyes bounce back and forth with the ball. Kirihara is down the bench from Niou, rubbing the back of his head and sniffling. The kid keeps glares at the back of Sanada's head. Sanada strokes his chin as Yanagi runs across the baseline, racket down low to receive Inui's serve with a rising shot.
But he doesn't use a rising shot. Niou's eyes widen as he sees Yanagi swing deep, flicking his hand up and out; his racket curves to slice the ball over the net before it crashes down behind Inui.
Niou rubs his mole. That would take effort-getting any ball over that Inui's height is impressive. But then, he shouldn’t be surprised with Yanagi. It's obvious to everyone except Seigaku that Yanagi isn't playing for real.
Until now.
He'll bring it home for us in another ten minutes, Niou thinks. And then Jackal leans into the fatty (who pouts as much as Kirihara now because his stomach growls and he's hungry) to ask, "Do you think it'll take Yanagi ten minutes to finish?"
Marui waves his hand. "Jeez Jackal, you're overestimating them. Yanagi'll be done sooner than that and- god, I'm so hungry! Do you think that meat bun place is close by?"
Niou rolls his eyes. Yanagi switches the flow of the game entirely to himself. Niou shifts his eyes to Yagyuu. He won't push it, but…
His throat is dry, scorched with bitterness and he remembers that he didn't even have a drink after the game. With his sneaker-heart flapping in his chest-he toes Yagyuu in the shin and nods to his bag. "Could you…pass my water?" he mutters.
Yagyuu lifts his head. A sudden flush spreads over Niou's face; he feels like an idiot for asking Yagyuu when his tennisbag is within his own reach, so he ducks his head and cocks it to the side to play it off. But Yagyuu just pushes his glasses up and, with a voice as soft as his own, says, "Here."
The water is lukewarm, all the ice from this morning has long melted. The PET bottle sweats over Niou's hand as he guzzles, grateful as the water slides down his throat. The hard lump at the base of his throat doesn't go away, but the nasty bile does. A little.
Niou sets the bottle down under the bench. He rolls it around with the toe of his sneaker before he feels that distinctive flopping around at the end of the shoe. He peels the shoes off, recoiling at the stink of his feet. He dumps them on Yagyuu's lap.
Yagyuu recoils too. He waves the air in front of his nose and makes an angry little grunt. "Must you have done that?" he asks.
Niou shrugs. Anything to take my mind off tonight…
When Yagyuu dumps Niou's sneakers on his lap, they stink just as much. "You're welcome," Yagyuu says. A tiny smirk plays at the sides of his mouth as Niou pretends to gag.
He doesn't really watch Yanagi's game. Frankly, everything after their own match is anticlimactic as Niou waits for the finals to be over and then he can return to silently moping about Yagyuu coming over tonight. It makes him feel ill, imagining his family meeting Yagyuu. His mother's smile and her dorky beaded cardigans, his father setting down an architectural report and nodding politely. His brother playing with a Phonics game or something equally as lame and his sister…
Niou shudders at her. She'll be all sliding glasses and bland smiles as she'll pass the rice bowl to Yagyuu and ask, "How on earth did you become friends with him?"
Then, someone will clean their glasses. And Niou will slither under the table and die.
The game is entirely in Yanagi's palm. Niou can hear the desperate grunts from Inui and Sanada mumbles something about animal-instincts and tennis and that absurd tennis will be defeated by Rikkai. Niou flicks his eyes up just as Yanagi smashes another ball into Seigaku's court. Inui yells percentages and loud, unintelligible noises of "Nuah!" and "NUOOOH!" Inui sweats so much that there are practically puddles scattered around his court.
Yanagi hasn't broken a sweat. And he's still wearing his uniform jacket in this heat.
Niou is impressed.
Yanagi's up, 4-4.
He takes another game: volleys and straight shots, serving hard, long balls behind Inui with a little smile on his lips. Kirihara pumps his fist, yelling out that Yanagi should "Knock those megane off and step on them!" Niou snickers at the image. Luckily, Kirihara isn't playing the megane: it would be a disaster, crushed glass and bent frames and Inui would be a bloody-instead of a sweaty-pulp.
For all Yanagi plays with data, he's more inwardly analytical and qualitative than this megane dork, who has nothing to cling to after Yanagi throws the data away. A hot summer wind picks up, fluttering Niou's sweaty hair when it doesn't lie flat against his crawling scalp. Yanagi looks comfortable as he makes a drop shot. The ball is inches from Inui's racket when he dives, always a step behind their data master.
Game Rikkai, 5-4.
"The match is decided," Sanada mutters. The cheerleaders' pompoms swish louder than ever and the crowds are antsy, wild with the rush of impending victory. Yanagi pulls a ball from his pocket and squints at Inui.
He's shown his former partner no mercy. He sweeps the court with a vengeance, proud and smirking as he stretches tall, throwing the ball up to start the last serve. He's a monster.
Niou drifts off. Yagyuu stands in the way of his view of Yanagi anyway, all stiff shoulders as he rubs his hands together, probably just as eager as Niou is to escape the glaring sun and slink off to the shade. Marui's moaning about lunch doesn't sound like such a bad idea. His own stomach grumbles and churns, poking at his side and wanting to eat the bento his mom gave him this morning. Or even another stick of that green gum they bought at the conbini. He grabs Yagyuu's tennisbag with the toe of his sneaker, dragging it along the dusty bench toward himself.
Yanagi shouts something at Inui on the court about data. Niou doesn't care. Yagyuu glances over his shoulder to Niou when the tennisbag bumps into his ankles, messing up his perfect socks. He frowns but says nothing to Niou before he turns back to the match.
Niou opens the zipper. Immediately he sees the plastic bag that rustles under his eager fingers. His fingertips touch a box-not a bento, not gum, maybe candy, so he reaches but it's under the conbini bag, not in it. He fishes around. The Lotte gum pack falls to the ground by his feet, sticks spilling out. Niou continues to rummage.
Something catches his eye. Something yellow, with a helmet-head profile at the end and romanji lettering that Niou reads aloud in his mind. His lips mouth it out in tandem: T-R-O-J-A-
Niou jerks back, his hand burned again. He shakes his head. No. I'm seeing things. Yagyuu wouldn’t-
"Niou-kun!" Yagyuu snaps.
His pulse quickens and his cock hardens, too obvious the way he's sprawled across the bench with his legs bent up. Niou swings around, wincing as his shorts catch on the rough wooden seat. He squirms, squeezing his legs closed. The throbbing in his dick makes his head spin. Everything is that much more sensitized: the air feels hotter, muggier. Yagyuu feels closer, his shadow looming and sweating onto Niou as he sucks in shallow breaths.
Yagyuu wouldn't carry condoms around!
And to boot, the match hasn't gone Yanagi's way. All the while Niou fished around Yagyuu's tennisbag, Inui caught up. One point Inui, one point data master Yanagi. Back and forth like a ping pong match. Sanada grunts. Kirihara stops whining that he won't be able to play. Marui shuts up about lunch. Jackal's stopwatch falls from his hand, and Yagyuu, realizing what Niou was doing, sniffs sharply and rips the zipper up on his tennisbag, so fast that he nearly catches his fingers.
Niou's entire body burns. Sweat dribbles down his back. He's so very, very confused.
It was probably just candy.
He was probably hallucinating.
The day is hot enough; it wouldn’t take long for heatstroke to set in. Besides, there's no shade, just the unrelenting sun and the low drone of insects, the very cicadas that Yanagi loathes.
Yanagi, who still refuses to take off his coat even though he's drenched in sweat now. Niou's eyes snap open. He looks at the scoreboard. Shit! Yanagi, what the hell?!? Inui's up a point and has the serve. If he makes the point, he could break the tie. Yanagi lumbers along, breathing hard enough to be heard across the court. Niou shakes his head. He's definitely seeing things because there's no way that one of those three would ever lose. He pinches his arm, hissing at the pain, but his eyes must be deceiving him.
It's almost slow motion as Inui throws his weight and height into a shot from the baseline, so much and so deep that he's leaning over in his follow-through. His glasses are half-way down his face, his mouth opens in a low, mournful groan as the ball barrels through the sticky air. Yanagi might be running, but his long legs trip up. Niou sees before Yanagi stumbles-or does he?-and he sucks in his stomach, biting the inside of his lip as that ball bypasses Yanagi's racket entirely, plonking on the clay ground.
And then the fast-forward button is on as Seigaku bursts out into frantic screaming. Inui lets lose some primal scream that Niou would never, ever have expected from a megane data dork. It sends a frigid shiver down his spine.
Niou doesn't move. Seigaku's stands are playing, but Rikkai's is on pause. Niou exhales through his nose, the reality of loss sinking in deep, the same way it must for Yanagi. Yanagi's back is to them. For all Niou knows, he could be crying.
Marui pushes up Jackal's chin, closing his hanging jaw. Kirihara falls back into the bench, forcing a strained laugh. In a high-pitched, cracking voice he says, "Now I'll get to pl-ay, eh Sanada-fukubuchou?"
Yagyuu just breathes out. "Oh dear," he whispers, right after Sanada stands up, his knuckles cracking with ominous intent. A cloud passes over the court, but its dark shade isn't refreshing at all. It hangs over them, their light ruined as Seigaku's side glitters.
Yanagi and Inui meet at the net. Whatever they say, Niou can't hear. They shake hands, lingering a fraction too long to ever be true rivals. It makes Kirihara groan under his breath and Niou sees his racket shaking. Niou whistles, finally, because he doesn't know what else to do to cut the tension. "Fuck," he says.
"Double fuck," Marui says. Then, his expression changes, breaking out into a toothy grin. "Well, at least I wasn't the one who lost."
Niou has never seen Yanagi so defeated as when he shuffles back to the bench to deal with Sanada's punishment. It’s been a secret little desire of his to see Yanagi less than smug, of course, but…Niou almost feels bad for the data master. Yanagi keeps his head up, but his gait is slow and laboured. His skinny throat bobs. Niou frowns a little as his eyes flick down to Sanada's hand.
The slap will sting, sure. He winces in sympathy, remembering the numbness, then the burst of pain Sanada's backhand caused on his cheek so many times before. But at the same time…
So long as Kirihara delivers a fast win, they can be done and to the hospital to wish Yukimura luck before his surgery.
Akaya twirls his racket around. Yagyuu fixes his glasses. "Yukimura's surgery will begin soon," he says.
"Think we'll make it on time?" Marui asks.
Niou watches Yanagi and Sanada. "This loss can't be overlooked," he mutters, touching his mole. His face twitches. Yanagi shuffles closer to Sanada and then he closes his eyes.
"You could have won that match," Sanada says. Despite being best friends, the distance between them in this moment is palpable. Yanagi's racket hangs from his fingers. Sanada's jaw is set, squared and tense. He's holding back his anger. His words are too rehearsed, too contained.
"Hit me," Yanagi says. He's wincing already, his face turning and expecting the blow before it comes and Niou cringes with him.
So the mighty have fallen…
"This must- I must set an example for the team-"
There's a flash, a swoosh through the air, as fast as lightning as Sanada strikes. But Niou sees something else-someone else-jumping between Yanagi's face and Sanada's hand.
Kirihara, with his upturned racket.
It can't have been a fluke that Kirihara would jump from the bleachers at that exact moment. It can't be a fluke that he forces a little laugh, his eyes sparkling when he turns to Sanada, as if to say Don't you dare, fukubuchou…
Niou hums and shields his eyes with his hand. There was always something a little odd between Kirihara and Yanagi. Or if there wasn't before, there is now. Since when would the wonderchibi ever stand up to Sanada for him, or Jackal, or anyone else?
"Che," Niou whispers. "Playing favourites, wonderchibi."
Or maybe it's nothing more than the kid holding a grudge for all the times he's been hit. Sanada stares down at his hand for a moment, where Niou can see the criss-crossed lines of Kirihara's Wilson beating red on the skin. If it hurts, Sanada says nothing, the stoic bastard, when he sits back down on the bench. Sanada only snorts loudly as Kirihara announces he'll take the game in thirteen minutes flat.
Yanagi takes a place between Niou and Yagyuu, standing at a safe arms' length from Sanada. He doesn't wipe his face. He doesn’t take a swig from his water bottle, he just stands there, dazed and confused and staring out blankly at the net.
Niou clicks his tongue. "Oi, Data Man," he says.
Yanagi doesn’t turn. Niou hears the faint sound of a stifled sniffle. After a beat, Yanagi says, "What?"
"Nothin'," Niou says. He scratches a bead of a sweat from his top lip, hiding a small smile under his hand when Yagyuu looks at him, shaking his head with disapproval.
Fuji Shuusuke takes his sweet time, removing his coat, tightening his shoe laces, fixing his collar, everything to make Kirihara that much more irritated and ready to flip the switch to red-eye mode. Kirihara leans on the net. Kirihara waves his racket. He yells and taunts and Fuji just smiles at him.
Kirihara growls, snapping the cords of the net as Fuji finally, finally approaches him. "Know what they say about Geniuses?" Kirihara asks.
Fuji waits for Kirihara to answer. Niou picks at a hangnail. Shut up and play kid, you're wasting everyone's time…
Jackal has the stopwatch ticking. Sanada's scowl deepens as his hand swells. He tucks it under his elbow, hiding it from Niou's view. For all that Sanada backhands the kid to discipline him, Kirihara gets away with a hell of a lot more than Niou would.
Kirihara laughs, and the sound rings out over the court as a pair of crows joins him, cackling at Fuji, mocking and maniacal. "Once you crush them, they turn out to be awfully fragile."
"OI!" Marui shouts. He slams his fists down on the barrier, hissing when he realizes its metal and it hurts. "Akaya you're full of bull-"
"Marui!" Sanada says.
Marui closes his mouth, but he narrows his eyes and starts to chew his gum faster, the cow sound grating Niou's ears.
As much as Fuji seems like an interesting player, when Yanagi's shadow moves out of Niou's way, revealing Yagyuu's back and bum and long legs, he floats off again into that hazy, lazy summer drift. His mind carries off with the crows flapping above rustling trees. Niou sighs.
Kirihara's serving and starting the game with a grand slamming ball and Niou shoves it aside, paying more attention to Yagyuu's hand when it slides over his round butt and then picks at his shorts, pulling the wedgie from his buttcrack with more ease and decorum than Niou could ever manage. Then Yagyuu removes his hand and fixes his glasses. Behind them, the support group cheers as some of the cheerleaders are gasping and whispering and pointing in the vague direction of Marui and Jackal. Marui waggles his fingers and mouths, "Cutie!" to one.
Kirihara cackles and laughs and throws his head back, throwing his body into his shots as he taunts Fuji. "Hey Genius!" he calls out, following through another fast rally and rolling his hips at the same time. "Can't you go any faster?!?"
Niou is certain he can hear Yanagi clearing his throat. Either that, or it's Sanada looking increasingly uncomfortable, grinding his deep and digging a hole in the clay with his sneaker. Niou scrunches his forehead, looking up at the match for the first time.
Kirihara might be laughing and dashing his way through the shots, but Fuji smiles too. Fuji hovers at his baseline-forehand, backhand, then another forehand shot, all without moving much, all shots so simple and easy that he's not making a noise. Any real noises anyway: he grunts and groans, but it's all for show.
That guy is quiet, normally. Introverted and calculated in his own way. He's playing Kirihara, not the other way around.
"Fuji won't last long against Akaya's style of super attack," Yagyuu says.
Niou snaps his head up. "No," he says, loud enough to get everyone's attention. "Look more closely. Fuji's the one who's attacking."
Yagyuu really need to get his eyes checked. Blind megane, Niou thinks. But warmth spreads in his chest, seeping down his stomach into his balls, tightening them as his dick twitches. He shifts on the bench, wishing Kirihara would do something drastic to hurry up.
He should be watching the game. He should be worried-even just a little-that Kirihara's not the one controlling the pace, as much as the kid thinks otherwise, but Niou has other things on his mind.
Like the fact Yagyuu carries condoms around in his tennisbag. Niou's mouth goes dry at the thought.
Like the fact Yagyuu was hot as him, all nonchalant and smirking, glimpses of whatever lurks under his skin. That deeper, angrier person Niou is desperate to pull out but failing to each time. His skin prickles at the thought.
Like the fact Yagyuu is coming over for dinner tonight.
Niou's head spins. He swallows hard. He looks to his side, down the court and the monochrome blur of spectators. Yagyuu has a running commentary. "He's fast" re: Fuji, "His eyes are bloodshot" re: Kirihara. Niou focuses on his breathing, mentally listing and numbering everything he has to do before tonight. There are no showers here, nothing usable anyway, and they'll probably have to visit Yukimura after-
"Four minutes in," Jackal mutters.
"Kirihara-kun is being pressured offensively," Yagyuu says.
"I wouldn't say that," Sanada says.
-after the matches and explain to him why Yanagi lost and Kirihara's falling behind, despite being in red-eye mode now and Niou should feel sorry for Fuji-and, by the way, pay attention-but he's busy, lost in some inner turmoil that twists everything up and makes his fingers and toes numb because fuck Yagyuu is coming over tonight and his parents will ask Yagyuu questions and he's dirty and sweaty and smelly and his room is a dump and Yagyuu…
Yagyuu has condoms in his bag and Niou wants and needs to ask why, but he's terrified of the answer and thinking about it more and more-
"Game, Seigaku, 1-0!"
-makes him ill. His throat is burned and woolen, scratched and hurting. His eyes sting even more under the hot, hot sun.
Where will Yagyuu sit tonight? Beside him? Beside his sister? What if she likes Yagyuu and he's not like Niou, he's not a fag and what if he decides that his sister is ideal, all megane dork with long hair and round chin and owlish eyes and smart, scholarly, dorky girl that Yagyuu needs.
Niou's chest heaves.
"Why are you holding your watch in your hand?" Marui's voice says.
Niou digs his nails into the wooden seat. If Yagyuu and her hit it off…
"Don't want tan lines," Jackal says.
In the corner of Niou's eye, the brat starts to kick the net. Sanada's knuckles crack. The court official yells out, "If you do that again, you'll be disqualified!"
Idiot, Niou thinks. Way to fuck today up even more if you get disqualified… But he doesn't bother to look up and sneer at the wonderchibi. Deep down, Niou knows that Kirihara's not done yet. He's not mad enough. He hasn't reached for that innate, violent streak that breaks ankles and racket strings.
Game Seigaku, 2-0.
Niou wrings his hands under the seat. He chews on the inside of his lip and tries to not think about Yagyuu, but it's hard. Impossible. All the distraction of the tennis does nothing to change the fact that he's hung up on the fact Yagyuu will meet his fucking loser family.
A ball smashes into Fuji, right at the side of his temple, blowing away the racket held up to receive it. He crumples to his knees as Kirihara looms over the net, his shadow cast long across the court and his eyes bleeding. Fuji fumbles with his racket as his coach walks out onto the court, sending a hard, pointed look to Kirihara, then to Sanada.
Sanada doesn't reprimand Kirihara.
Winning is everything, Niou thinks. But the voice in his head sounds too sweet to be his own. It's Yukimura who says, I want to hear all about it, Niou…
Niou swallows. He ducks his head, scratching the back of his scalp furiously. The roots of his hair are scorching. The sun's strength weighs him down, as does the finality of today.
Kirihara picks up his slack quickly. 2-3, 3-3, 4-3, 4-4, one game after the other, but never enough to get a huge lead. Fuji stumbles and swings blindly. He's blind, he's grasping at the ball with his racket and groaning through his teeth, straining to make the shots with his other senses. Kirihara screams and swears when Fuji takes a game. "It's a fluke!" he shrieks. "You can't keep up! I'll-"
"Crush you," Niou mouths along with the kid. He smirks and leans back into the bleacher bench behind himself. He balls his fist, digging his blunt nails into the soft flesh of his yielding palm instead of the wooden seat. Hurry up kid and stop fucking around!
"Did you see that?" Yanagi says. It's the first thing he's said since telling Sanada to hit him, and his eyes are wide open, rounded and blazing white.
Sanada bristles. "Aa," he says. The hairs on the back of his neck are stiff.
Niou flicks his gaze from Sanada to Fuji's drop shot, then back to Kirihara. There's something odd about the kid: not the sheen of sweat over his body, not the sharp teeth or animalistic howls he makes as he struggles to make his shots now.
The kid's red eyes are gone.
Back to their usual brown, though still squinting and pink-tinged.
He's furious when the tie break is called. "Victory belongs to ME!" he screams, throwing his racket wide to block Fuji's lob. But Fuji screams the same thing at the same time and it's like an electric current shocking the air. The support team shuts up, but Seigaku's side is a crush of people, now clustered with red Rokkaku jerseys and a few kids that Niou recognizes from that lame Fudomine team too.
Niou shivers. A sticky breeze lifts his hair. He shivers again.
Kirihara glows as a steaming beam of light shines down, making his eyes as red as lasers before he drops his shoulders, rocks back and bares his teeth, pummeling Fuji with a-
"My Laser!" Yagyuu says.
"You can do it, Akaya!" Jackal yells. Fuji's advantage is called. Jackal shakes his head and yells louder, "You have to do it!"
Although Kirihara pants hard and his steps are heavier, the grin on his face as he shimmers in the mirage-blurred baseline-having reached that State by himself-that's real. The kid is having fun. He runs and gasps and chases a lob, shaking his head so much that it almost looks like he'll have a seizure and conk out and then they'll be down another game.
Niou sucks in a breath, but when he sees that arching back and wide, controlled swing of the Higuma Otoshi, he exhales with relief.
Fuji returns it. Kirihara does another laser, making Yagyuu stiffen. Whether he's amazed or irritated, with his back turned Niou can't be certain. Blood pools between Niou's legs when Yagyuu unclenches his bum and it fills out his shorts again.
Just because Kirihara can do a laser when self-actualized doesn't mean he has Yagyuu's form. Niou slides down in his seat, wishing the ache between his legs would subside a little. His erection makes him sweat more than usual. His armpits are drenched. He can smell his sour stink and closes his eyes for an instant, hoping that Yagyuu can't.
When Kirihara uses Yanagi's high-speed slice, Yanagi gasps.
Niou chuckles under his breath. "Jealous it's not just your special move?" he asks. "The wonderchibi is using everyone's special moves now."
Marui pops a bubble. He points at Niou. "You're the real jealous one, asswipe. You're just pissed because you have nothing special for Akaya to swipe."
Niou rolls his eyes. As if.
The kid seems to almost float across the court. He doesn't have that solid heaviness like Sanada does. He doesn't wield his racket like a sword like Sanada does. He doesn't have that dark set to his eyes that Sanada does in the State of Self-Actualization, but he's just as determined and concentrated as he pinpoints the balls, aims, shoots, volleys, smashes and glows.
"I feel so proud of him," Jackal says with a sniffle. Marui hands him a crumbled hanky from his pocket, one covered in colourful Moyashimon microbes.
Niou, too, feels something fluttery and new in his chest as he watches their ace take back points from Fuji.
And then, to top everything off, Sanada stands up from the bench and screams, "WIN THIS GAME AKAYA! WIN THIS GAME AND TAKE THE KANTOU CHAMPIOSHIP WITH YOUR OWN HAND!"
Sanada is so enthusiastic that his t-shirt rides up and his cap shrugs back on his head. In takes him a beat to realize this before he flushes and coughs and pulls his hat and shirt back down.
Pity Yukimura wasn't here to appreciate that view, Niou thinks. Not that seeing a slice of Sanada's side makes his heart go all doki doki, but maybe for Yukimura it does. Maybe it helps Yukimura feel better, having someone who loves him regardless of his flaws, having someone who loves him unconditionally.
Niou's eyes linger on Yagyuu, then they settle back on the court. Tightness returns to his ribs, squeezing the air away from his lungs and making it hard to breathe. Jealously tastes bitter in his mouth, dry and dusty like the clay Kirihara kicks up.
Fuji hits a Higuma Otoshi of his own. Kirihara twists and spins and drags his racket, his back bent and his legs low and this time, Sanada grunts.
Yagyuu says it first. "That ground smash is Sanada-kun's-"
"Fuji can't return it," Yanagi says.
Niou nods. "The gut of his racket's snapped."
"Go AKAYA!" Jackal yells. Marui claps, twirling around in a pre-victory pirouette.
"FUJI-SENPAI USE THE FRAME!"
Niou whips his head up. Across the court, that brat Echizen is yelling at Fuji. Fuji, blinks and looks up, his eyes clear and seeing. He takes Echizen's advice and douses Kirihara's Fire-the very move that invaded Kirihara's own tennis that day he challenged those monsters last year-with the edge of his racket. The sound is a cross between a hum and a hollow plong as Fuji slugs it back to Kirihara, groaning through his teeth with a real determination of his own.
Kirihara's racket clatters when it hits the ground.
Niou's stomach drops, along with Jackal and Marui's jaws. Yagyuu tightens his lips and Yanagi closes his eyes.
Sanada is the only one who seems uncaring; he snorts and mutters, "Your grip isn't strong enough to handle that move yet" as the official shouts out the win.
Game, Seigaku. 7-5.
The winner is Fuji.
Kirihara must be seething inside. His entire body shakes, spraying sweat as he stumbles up to the net, hand stretched out to shake Fuji's. Niou raises his eyebrows. The kid'll probably do something now, like squeeze Fuji's hand hard enough to break a few fingers.
The insects pause in their song long enough for the tension to raise another level. Niou fans his neck with the collar of his t-shirt.
But instead of breaking something, Kirihara just falls forward, slumping into Fuji's arms like a deadweight.
Sanada rises to his feet, but Fuji shakes his head. He beams at all of them, his eyes focusing on the entire Rikkai team and no one all in one glance. "It's all right," he says. "He's just asleep."
Niou facepalms.
***
With Sanada preparing, and Yanagi currently a useless, motionless loser, Niou and Yagyuu drag Kirihara's carcass back to their side. Niou takes care to dump the kid's bottle of gross orange Gatorade all over his face. It makes Kirihara cough and sputter and cry out when he wakes up, orange-faced and gasping.
"Did I win?"
Kirihara starts to pant, so hard and so fast that he's practically hyperventilating. Sweat sluices down his face and he throws the towel from Jackal's hands. Yanagi favours the kid with a twisted, pained look that only makes Kirihara start to rock on his ankles and moan, like a dying animal, all plaintive yelps and howls.
Because the kid knows. He's not stupid. Surely he's expecting the answer when Sanada grumbles, "You lost, Akaya!"
Niou can't tell if the wonderchibi is just sweating, or if those are tears rolling down his cheeks. He shakes his head slowly as Kirihara jumps the barrier to stop Sanada in his tracks.
Idiot, he thinks.
"Hi-hit me!" Kirihara shouts.
"Akaya…" Yanagi murmurs. He sucks in a breath. Niou strokes his chin, watching Yanagi's throat bob as Kirihara presses Sanada harder, demanding and determined to be punished for his loss.
"Sanada-fukubuchou, please-"
Sanada walks right by the kid. Without so much as turning around he says, "Sit down." Wind seems to flutter as he walks and Kirihara's wet t-shirt whips up over his stomach.
Sanada's stirring the elements already.
That chibi who's playing against him is going to hurt.
As the chanting for Sanada starts, Niou leans back on the bench with a smirk.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
Sanada wanders off, grumbling something about Yukimura. Niou settles onto the bench, careful of his bulging erection, and lets his thoughts wander off. He glances down at his hand. He can feel Yagyuu's fingertips there, ghosting over his skin again and again and making it hard to concentrate on anything but. He's marked. He's scorched. There should be a line of red blisters that he can feel but his hand looks as normal as ever-even if it does tremble slightly.
Niou pulls his sweat towel from his bag and wipes the back of his neck. Yagyuu wipes his face, his collar, dabbing here and there, so proper that it makes Niou laugh under his breath.
As soon as Sanada is out of earshot, Kirihara jumps the barrier and squats down on the back of the bench; he's pleased as punch with himself that his senpais don't stop him. "You guys didn't have an easy win," Kirihara say without turning around. The brat starts to cackle to himself.
Yagyuu frowns. Niou, however, wrings his sweaty towel up and slaps it against the back of Kirihara's head.
"Ow!" he shrieks.
It's Niou's turn to chuckle. "Watch your mouth, kid," he says.
Kirihara pouts. Marui joins in the cheering masses of yellow on their side. Shouts of "Let's go Let's go Rikkai Da!" make Niou's insides swell up in that proud, excited way after a really good win, the way it happened at the Nationals last year. But mid-chant, Marui stops and clutches his stomach. He moans, "I'm so hungry…"
Jackal flips out a stopwatch. He looks up at the scoreboard. "This is taking longer than we thought." He shakes his head and sighs.
Yagyuu sits down on the bench near Niou. He crosses his legs and folds up his towel before putting it away. Niou can't stop himself: he slides closer, inching along the bench carefully to avoid getting slivers in his butt. Yagyuu half-turns, but doesn't acknowledge Niou any further.
"Yanagi-senpai'll finish this up fast," Kirihara says. Then he cups his hands around his mouth and yells, "Kick his ass, senpai!"
Their Data Master walks onto the court. Yanagi already owns it with his confident gait and tall posture, his narrow eyes sweeping the net and analyzing everything. Seigaku's Inui, on the other hand, is all raised eyebrows and frazzled hair. He starts to say something, but Yanagi finishes it for him,
"-is what you were going to say, isn't it?" he says.
Inui blinks. He mutters something under his breath and fixes his glasses.
So the old doubles partners face-off, Niou thinks. He sniffs and looks away. Uneasiness inside blooming when he remembers the day that Inui came to Rikkai, all notebooks and data and determined to get their stats. Niou shudders. He doesn't like people knowing about him. He doesn't like people knowing his tennis, his family, his home. He hides himself behind smirks and sneers and snappy little comments. He refuses to be like his family. He refuses to be known-but therein lies the problem.
Watching Yagyuu by him, his chest rising and falling as his heavy breathing from their match fades into the cacophony of summer insects, Niou wants Yagyuu to know him better than anyone else ever has or will.
Niou bites back a frown. Sanada stomps back into the stands as Inui and Yanagi draw out their game with lame talking, repressed whatever they didn't get out as kids and now have to waste everyone's time by showing off their data skills on each other.
"Get your shoes off the bench!" Sanada snaps. He hits Kirihara across the back of the head, scowling and fast, and Kirihara cringes. Sanada doesn't insist Kirihara leave, though, not even when Kirihara grumbles under his breath and glares.
"Yukimura okay?" Marui asks.
Sanada's eye twitches.
Niou lets his eyes settle on the court, but his mind floats off. He tries to ignore Sanada's shadow, half-hiding his view of the match, but it's a dark spectre, the way tonight is. His cellphone's in his bag. His mother might call and ask what Yagyuu likes to eat, what time he and Yagyuu will show up, how he and Yagyuu played today, Yagyuu Yagyuu Yagyuu!
Bile stings the back of his throat, sourness spreading over his tongue and making Niou feel even more ill. He kicks himself mentally because his bedroom is a dump, he should have cleaned it, there's dirty tissues with dried-out come in his garbage can and what if Yagyuu comes upstairs and smells them? What if he knows that Niou still masturbates and thinks of him and-
"It's cruel of Yanagi to do that," Jackal says. Niou snaps his eyes open, focusing on the match for a moment. Yanagi's down two games, according to the scoreboard, though barely a couple minutes have passed.
The sun shifts enough for the light to hit Yanagi's face, showing Niou the barest of smiles on his lips. "Our strategist is a scary person," he says.
Somehow, during all of his spacing out, Sanada's plunked himself back down on the bench. He grunts occasionally as his eyes bounce back and forth with the ball. Kirihara is down the bench from Niou, rubbing the back of his head and sniffling. The kid keeps glares at the back of Sanada's head. Sanada strokes his chin as Yanagi runs across the baseline, racket down low to receive Inui's serve with a rising shot.
But he doesn't use a rising shot. Niou's eyes widen as he sees Yanagi swing deep, flicking his hand up and out; his racket curves to slice the ball over the net before it crashes down behind Inui.
Niou rubs his mole. That would take effort-getting any ball over that Inui's height is impressive. But then, he shouldn’t be surprised with Yanagi. It's obvious to everyone except Seigaku that Yanagi isn't playing for real.
Until now.
He'll bring it home for us in another ten minutes, Niou thinks. And then Jackal leans into the fatty (who pouts as much as Kirihara now because his stomach growls and he's hungry) to ask, "Do you think it'll take Yanagi ten minutes to finish?"
Marui waves his hand. "Jeez Jackal, you're overestimating them. Yanagi'll be done sooner than that and- god, I'm so hungry! Do you think that meat bun place is close by?"
Niou rolls his eyes. Yanagi switches the flow of the game entirely to himself. Niou shifts his eyes to Yagyuu. He won't push it, but…
His throat is dry, scorched with bitterness and he remembers that he didn't even have a drink after the game. With his sneaker-heart flapping in his chest-he toes Yagyuu in the shin and nods to his bag. "Could you…pass my water?" he mutters.
Yagyuu lifts his head. A sudden flush spreads over Niou's face; he feels like an idiot for asking Yagyuu when his tennisbag is within his own reach, so he ducks his head and cocks it to the side to play it off. But Yagyuu just pushes his glasses up and, with a voice as soft as his own, says, "Here."
The water is lukewarm, all the ice from this morning has long melted. The PET bottle sweats over Niou's hand as he guzzles, grateful as the water slides down his throat. The hard lump at the base of his throat doesn't go away, but the nasty bile does. A little.
Niou sets the bottle down under the bench. He rolls it around with the toe of his sneaker before he feels that distinctive flopping around at the end of the shoe. He peels the shoes off, recoiling at the stink of his feet. He dumps them on Yagyuu's lap.
Yagyuu recoils too. He waves the air in front of his nose and makes an angry little grunt. "Must you have done that?" he asks.
Niou shrugs. Anything to take my mind off tonight…
When Yagyuu dumps Niou's sneakers on his lap, they stink just as much. "You're welcome," Yagyuu says. A tiny smirk plays at the sides of his mouth as Niou pretends to gag.
He doesn't really watch Yanagi's game. Frankly, everything after their own match is anticlimactic as Niou waits for the finals to be over and then he can return to silently moping about Yagyuu coming over tonight. It makes him feel ill, imagining his family meeting Yagyuu. His mother's smile and her dorky beaded cardigans, his father setting down an architectural report and nodding politely. His brother playing with a Phonics game or something equally as lame and his sister…
Niou shudders at her. She'll be all sliding glasses and bland smiles as she'll pass the rice bowl to Yagyuu and ask, "How on earth did you become friends with him?"
Then, someone will clean their glasses. And Niou will slither under the table and die.
The game is entirely in Yanagi's palm. Niou can hear the desperate grunts from Inui and Sanada mumbles something about animal-instincts and tennis and that absurd tennis will be defeated by Rikkai. Niou flicks his eyes up just as Yanagi smashes another ball into Seigaku's court. Inui yells percentages and loud, unintelligible noises of "Nuah!" and "NUOOOH!" Inui sweats so much that there are practically puddles scattered around his court.
Yanagi hasn't broken a sweat. And he's still wearing his uniform jacket in this heat.
Niou is impressed.
Yanagi's up, 4-4.
He takes another game: volleys and straight shots, serving hard, long balls behind Inui with a little smile on his lips. Kirihara pumps his fist, yelling out that Yanagi should "Knock those megane off and step on them!" Niou snickers at the image. Luckily, Kirihara isn't playing the megane: it would be a disaster, crushed glass and bent frames and Inui would be a bloody-instead of a sweaty-pulp.
For all Yanagi plays with data, he's more inwardly analytical and qualitative than this megane dork, who has nothing to cling to after Yanagi throws the data away. A hot summer wind picks up, fluttering Niou's sweaty hair when it doesn't lie flat against his crawling scalp. Yanagi looks comfortable as he makes a drop shot. The ball is inches from Inui's racket when he dives, always a step behind their data master.
Game Rikkai, 5-4.
"The match is decided," Sanada mutters. The cheerleaders' pompoms swish louder than ever and the crowds are antsy, wild with the rush of impending victory. Yanagi pulls a ball from his pocket and squints at Inui.
He's shown his former partner no mercy. He sweeps the court with a vengeance, proud and smirking as he stretches tall, throwing the ball up to start the last serve. He's a monster.
Niou drifts off. Yagyuu stands in the way of his view of Yanagi anyway, all stiff shoulders as he rubs his hands together, probably just as eager as Niou is to escape the glaring sun and slink off to the shade. Marui's moaning about lunch doesn't sound like such a bad idea. His own stomach grumbles and churns, poking at his side and wanting to eat the bento his mom gave him this morning. Or even another stick of that green gum they bought at the conbini. He grabs Yagyuu's tennisbag with the toe of his sneaker, dragging it along the dusty bench toward himself.
Yanagi shouts something at Inui on the court about data. Niou doesn't care. Yagyuu glances over his shoulder to Niou when the tennisbag bumps into his ankles, messing up his perfect socks. He frowns but says nothing to Niou before he turns back to the match.
Niou opens the zipper. Immediately he sees the plastic bag that rustles under his eager fingers. His fingertips touch a box-not a bento, not gum, maybe candy, so he reaches but it's under the conbini bag, not in it. He fishes around. The Lotte gum pack falls to the ground by his feet, sticks spilling out. Niou continues to rummage.
Something catches his eye. Something yellow, with a helmet-head profile at the end and romanji lettering that Niou reads aloud in his mind. His lips mouth it out in tandem: T-R-O-J-A-
Niou jerks back, his hand burned again. He shakes his head. No. I'm seeing things. Yagyuu wouldn’t-
"Niou-kun!" Yagyuu snaps.
His pulse quickens and his cock hardens, too obvious the way he's sprawled across the bench with his legs bent up. Niou swings around, wincing as his shorts catch on the rough wooden seat. He squirms, squeezing his legs closed. The throbbing in his dick makes his head spin. Everything is that much more sensitized: the air feels hotter, muggier. Yagyuu feels closer, his shadow looming and sweating onto Niou as he sucks in shallow breaths.
Yagyuu wouldn't carry condoms around!
And to boot, the match hasn't gone Yanagi's way. All the while Niou fished around Yagyuu's tennisbag, Inui caught up. One point Inui, one point data master Yanagi. Back and forth like a ping pong match. Sanada grunts. Kirihara stops whining that he won't be able to play. Marui shuts up about lunch. Jackal's stopwatch falls from his hand, and Yagyuu, realizing what Niou was doing, sniffs sharply and rips the zipper up on his tennisbag, so fast that he nearly catches his fingers.
Niou's entire body burns. Sweat dribbles down his back. He's so very, very confused.
It was probably just candy.
He was probably hallucinating.
The day is hot enough; it wouldn’t take long for heatstroke to set in. Besides, there's no shade, just the unrelenting sun and the low drone of insects, the very cicadas that Yanagi loathes.
Yanagi, who still refuses to take off his coat even though he's drenched in sweat now. Niou's eyes snap open. He looks at the scoreboard. Shit! Yanagi, what the hell?!? Inui's up a point and has the serve. If he makes the point, he could break the tie. Yanagi lumbers along, breathing hard enough to be heard across the court. Niou shakes his head. He's definitely seeing things because there's no way that one of those three would ever lose. He pinches his arm, hissing at the pain, but his eyes must be deceiving him.
It's almost slow motion as Inui throws his weight and height into a shot from the baseline, so much and so deep that he's leaning over in his follow-through. His glasses are half-way down his face, his mouth opens in a low, mournful groan as the ball barrels through the sticky air. Yanagi might be running, but his long legs trip up. Niou sees before Yanagi stumbles-or does he?-and he sucks in his stomach, biting the inside of his lip as that ball bypasses Yanagi's racket entirely, plonking on the clay ground.
And then the fast-forward button is on as Seigaku bursts out into frantic screaming. Inui lets lose some primal scream that Niou would never, ever have expected from a megane data dork. It sends a frigid shiver down his spine.
Niou doesn't move. Seigaku's stands are playing, but Rikkai's is on pause. Niou exhales through his nose, the reality of loss sinking in deep, the same way it must for Yanagi. Yanagi's back is to them. For all Niou knows, he could be crying.
Marui pushes up Jackal's chin, closing his hanging jaw. Kirihara falls back into the bench, forcing a strained laugh. In a high-pitched, cracking voice he says, "Now I'll get to pl-ay, eh Sanada-fukubuchou?"
Yagyuu just breathes out. "Oh dear," he whispers, right after Sanada stands up, his knuckles cracking with ominous intent. A cloud passes over the court, but its dark shade isn't refreshing at all. It hangs over them, their light ruined as Seigaku's side glitters.
Yanagi and Inui meet at the net. Whatever they say, Niou can't hear. They shake hands, lingering a fraction too long to ever be true rivals. It makes Kirihara groan under his breath and Niou sees his racket shaking. Niou whistles, finally, because he doesn't know what else to do to cut the tension. "Fuck," he says.
"Double fuck," Marui says. Then, his expression changes, breaking out into a toothy grin. "Well, at least I wasn't the one who lost."
Niou has never seen Yanagi so defeated as when he shuffles back to the bench to deal with Sanada's punishment. It’s been a secret little desire of his to see Yanagi less than smug, of course, but…Niou almost feels bad for the data master. Yanagi keeps his head up, but his gait is slow and laboured. His skinny throat bobs. Niou frowns a little as his eyes flick down to Sanada's hand.
The slap will sting, sure. He winces in sympathy, remembering the numbness, then the burst of pain Sanada's backhand caused on his cheek so many times before. But at the same time…
So long as Kirihara delivers a fast win, they can be done and to the hospital to wish Yukimura luck before his surgery.
Akaya twirls his racket around. Yagyuu fixes his glasses. "Yukimura's surgery will begin soon," he says.
"Think we'll make it on time?" Marui asks.
Niou watches Yanagi and Sanada. "This loss can't be overlooked," he mutters, touching his mole. His face twitches. Yanagi shuffles closer to Sanada and then he closes his eyes.
"You could have won that match," Sanada says. Despite being best friends, the distance between them in this moment is palpable. Yanagi's racket hangs from his fingers. Sanada's jaw is set, squared and tense. He's holding back his anger. His words are too rehearsed, too contained.
"Hit me," Yanagi says. He's wincing already, his face turning and expecting the blow before it comes and Niou cringes with him.
So the mighty have fallen…
"This must- I must set an example for the team-"
There's a flash, a swoosh through the air, as fast as lightning as Sanada strikes. But Niou sees something else-someone else-jumping between Yanagi's face and Sanada's hand.
Kirihara, with his upturned racket.
It can't have been a fluke that Kirihara would jump from the bleachers at that exact moment. It can't be a fluke that he forces a little laugh, his eyes sparkling when he turns to Sanada, as if to say Don't you dare, fukubuchou…
Niou hums and shields his eyes with his hand. There was always something a little odd between Kirihara and Yanagi. Or if there wasn't before, there is now. Since when would the wonderchibi ever stand up to Sanada for him, or Jackal, or anyone else?
"Che," Niou whispers. "Playing favourites, wonderchibi."
Or maybe it's nothing more than the kid holding a grudge for all the times he's been hit. Sanada stares down at his hand for a moment, where Niou can see the criss-crossed lines of Kirihara's Wilson beating red on the skin. If it hurts, Sanada says nothing, the stoic bastard, when he sits back down on the bench. Sanada only snorts loudly as Kirihara announces he'll take the game in thirteen minutes flat.
Yanagi takes a place between Niou and Yagyuu, standing at a safe arms' length from Sanada. He doesn't wipe his face. He doesn’t take a swig from his water bottle, he just stands there, dazed and confused and staring out blankly at the net.
Niou clicks his tongue. "Oi, Data Man," he says.
Yanagi doesn’t turn. Niou hears the faint sound of a stifled sniffle. After a beat, Yanagi says, "What?"
"Nothin'," Niou says. He scratches a bead of a sweat from his top lip, hiding a small smile under his hand when Yagyuu looks at him, shaking his head with disapproval.
Fuji Shuusuke takes his sweet time, removing his coat, tightening his shoe laces, fixing his collar, everything to make Kirihara that much more irritated and ready to flip the switch to red-eye mode. Kirihara leans on the net. Kirihara waves his racket. He yells and taunts and Fuji just smiles at him.
Kirihara growls, snapping the cords of the net as Fuji finally, finally approaches him. "Know what they say about Geniuses?" Kirihara asks.
Fuji waits for Kirihara to answer. Niou picks at a hangnail. Shut up and play kid, you're wasting everyone's time…
Jackal has the stopwatch ticking. Sanada's scowl deepens as his hand swells. He tucks it under his elbow, hiding it from Niou's view. For all that Sanada backhands the kid to discipline him, Kirihara gets away with a hell of a lot more than Niou would.
Kirihara laughs, and the sound rings out over the court as a pair of crows joins him, cackling at Fuji, mocking and maniacal. "Once you crush them, they turn out to be awfully fragile."
"OI!" Marui shouts. He slams his fists down on the barrier, hissing when he realizes its metal and it hurts. "Akaya you're full of bull-"
"Marui!" Sanada says.
Marui closes his mouth, but he narrows his eyes and starts to chew his gum faster, the cow sound grating Niou's ears.
As much as Fuji seems like an interesting player, when Yanagi's shadow moves out of Niou's way, revealing Yagyuu's back and bum and long legs, he floats off again into that hazy, lazy summer drift. His mind carries off with the crows flapping above rustling trees. Niou sighs.
Kirihara's serving and starting the game with a grand slamming ball and Niou shoves it aside, paying more attention to Yagyuu's hand when it slides over his round butt and then picks at his shorts, pulling the wedgie from his buttcrack with more ease and decorum than Niou could ever manage. Then Yagyuu removes his hand and fixes his glasses. Behind them, the support group cheers as some of the cheerleaders are gasping and whispering and pointing in the vague direction of Marui and Jackal. Marui waggles his fingers and mouths, "Cutie!" to one.
Kirihara cackles and laughs and throws his head back, throwing his body into his shots as he taunts Fuji. "Hey Genius!" he calls out, following through another fast rally and rolling his hips at the same time. "Can't you go any faster?!?"
Niou is certain he can hear Yanagi clearing his throat. Either that, or it's Sanada looking increasingly uncomfortable, grinding his deep and digging a hole in the clay with his sneaker. Niou scrunches his forehead, looking up at the match for the first time.
Kirihara might be laughing and dashing his way through the shots, but Fuji smiles too. Fuji hovers at his baseline-forehand, backhand, then another forehand shot, all without moving much, all shots so simple and easy that he's not making a noise. Any real noises anyway: he grunts and groans, but it's all for show.
That guy is quiet, normally. Introverted and calculated in his own way. He's playing Kirihara, not the other way around.
"Fuji won't last long against Akaya's style of super attack," Yagyuu says.
Niou snaps his head up. "No," he says, loud enough to get everyone's attention. "Look more closely. Fuji's the one who's attacking."
Yagyuu really need to get his eyes checked. Blind megane, Niou thinks. But warmth spreads in his chest, seeping down his stomach into his balls, tightening them as his dick twitches. He shifts on the bench, wishing Kirihara would do something drastic to hurry up.
He should be watching the game. He should be worried-even just a little-that Kirihara's not the one controlling the pace, as much as the kid thinks otherwise, but Niou has other things on his mind.
Like the fact Yagyuu carries condoms around in his tennisbag. Niou's mouth goes dry at the thought.
Like the fact Yagyuu was hot as him, all nonchalant and smirking, glimpses of whatever lurks under his skin. That deeper, angrier person Niou is desperate to pull out but failing to each time. His skin prickles at the thought.
Like the fact Yagyuu is coming over for dinner tonight.
Niou's head spins. He swallows hard. He looks to his side, down the court and the monochrome blur of spectators. Yagyuu has a running commentary. "He's fast" re: Fuji, "His eyes are bloodshot" re: Kirihara. Niou focuses on his breathing, mentally listing and numbering everything he has to do before tonight. There are no showers here, nothing usable anyway, and they'll probably have to visit Yukimura after-
"Four minutes in," Jackal mutters.
"Kirihara-kun is being pressured offensively," Yagyuu says.
"I wouldn't say that," Sanada says.
-after the matches and explain to him why Yanagi lost and Kirihara's falling behind, despite being in red-eye mode now and Niou should feel sorry for Fuji-and, by the way, pay attention-but he's busy, lost in some inner turmoil that twists everything up and makes his fingers and toes numb because fuck Yagyuu is coming over tonight and his parents will ask Yagyuu questions and he's dirty and sweaty and smelly and his room is a dump and Yagyuu…
Yagyuu has condoms in his bag and Niou wants and needs to ask why, but he's terrified of the answer and thinking about it more and more-
"Game, Seigaku, 1-0!"
-makes him ill. His throat is burned and woolen, scratched and hurting. His eyes sting even more under the hot, hot sun.
Where will Yagyuu sit tonight? Beside him? Beside his sister? What if she likes Yagyuu and he's not like Niou, he's not a fag and what if he decides that his sister is ideal, all megane dork with long hair and round chin and owlish eyes and smart, scholarly, dorky girl that Yagyuu needs.
Niou's chest heaves.
"Why are you holding your watch in your hand?" Marui's voice says.
Niou digs his nails into the wooden seat. If Yagyuu and her hit it off…
"Don't want tan lines," Jackal says.
In the corner of Niou's eye, the brat starts to kick the net. Sanada's knuckles crack. The court official yells out, "If you do that again, you'll be disqualified!"
Idiot, Niou thinks. Way to fuck today up even more if you get disqualified… But he doesn't bother to look up and sneer at the wonderchibi. Deep down, Niou knows that Kirihara's not done yet. He's not mad enough. He hasn't reached for that innate, violent streak that breaks ankles and racket strings.
Game Seigaku, 2-0.
Niou wrings his hands under the seat. He chews on the inside of his lip and tries to not think about Yagyuu, but it's hard. Impossible. All the distraction of the tennis does nothing to change the fact that he's hung up on the fact Yagyuu will meet his fucking loser family.
A ball smashes into Fuji, right at the side of his temple, blowing away the racket held up to receive it. He crumples to his knees as Kirihara looms over the net, his shadow cast long across the court and his eyes bleeding. Fuji fumbles with his racket as his coach walks out onto the court, sending a hard, pointed look to Kirihara, then to Sanada.
Sanada doesn't reprimand Kirihara.
Winning is everything, Niou thinks. But the voice in his head sounds too sweet to be his own. It's Yukimura who says, I want to hear all about it, Niou…
Niou swallows. He ducks his head, scratching the back of his scalp furiously. The roots of his hair are scorching. The sun's strength weighs him down, as does the finality of today.
Kirihara picks up his slack quickly. 2-3, 3-3, 4-3, 4-4, one game after the other, but never enough to get a huge lead. Fuji stumbles and swings blindly. He's blind, he's grasping at the ball with his racket and groaning through his teeth, straining to make the shots with his other senses. Kirihara screams and swears when Fuji takes a game. "It's a fluke!" he shrieks. "You can't keep up! I'll-"
"Crush you," Niou mouths along with the kid. He smirks and leans back into the bleacher bench behind himself. He balls his fist, digging his blunt nails into the soft flesh of his yielding palm instead of the wooden seat. Hurry up kid and stop fucking around!
"Did you see that?" Yanagi says. It's the first thing he's said since telling Sanada to hit him, and his eyes are wide open, rounded and blazing white.
Sanada bristles. "Aa," he says. The hairs on the back of his neck are stiff.
Niou flicks his gaze from Sanada to Fuji's drop shot, then back to Kirihara. There's something odd about the kid: not the sheen of sweat over his body, not the sharp teeth or animalistic howls he makes as he struggles to make his shots now.
The kid's red eyes are gone.
Back to their usual brown, though still squinting and pink-tinged.
He's furious when the tie break is called. "Victory belongs to ME!" he screams, throwing his racket wide to block Fuji's lob. But Fuji screams the same thing at the same time and it's like an electric current shocking the air. The support team shuts up, but Seigaku's side is a crush of people, now clustered with red Rokkaku jerseys and a few kids that Niou recognizes from that lame Fudomine team too.
Niou shivers. A sticky breeze lifts his hair. He shivers again.
Kirihara glows as a steaming beam of light shines down, making his eyes as red as lasers before he drops his shoulders, rocks back and bares his teeth, pummeling Fuji with a-
"My Laser!" Yagyuu says.
"You can do it, Akaya!" Jackal yells. Fuji's advantage is called. Jackal shakes his head and yells louder, "You have to do it!"
Although Kirihara pants hard and his steps are heavier, the grin on his face as he shimmers in the mirage-blurred baseline-having reached that State by himself-that's real. The kid is having fun. He runs and gasps and chases a lob, shaking his head so much that it almost looks like he'll have a seizure and conk out and then they'll be down another game.
Niou sucks in a breath, but when he sees that arching back and wide, controlled swing of the Higuma Otoshi, he exhales with relief.
Fuji returns it. Kirihara does another laser, making Yagyuu stiffen. Whether he's amazed or irritated, with his back turned Niou can't be certain. Blood pools between Niou's legs when Yagyuu unclenches his bum and it fills out his shorts again.
Just because Kirihara can do a laser when self-actualized doesn't mean he has Yagyuu's form. Niou slides down in his seat, wishing the ache between his legs would subside a little. His erection makes him sweat more than usual. His armpits are drenched. He can smell his sour stink and closes his eyes for an instant, hoping that Yagyuu can't.
When Kirihara uses Yanagi's high-speed slice, Yanagi gasps.
Niou chuckles under his breath. "Jealous it's not just your special move?" he asks. "The wonderchibi is using everyone's special moves now."
Marui pops a bubble. He points at Niou. "You're the real jealous one, asswipe. You're just pissed because you have nothing special for Akaya to swipe."
Niou rolls his eyes. As if.
The kid seems to almost float across the court. He doesn't have that solid heaviness like Sanada does. He doesn't wield his racket like a sword like Sanada does. He doesn't have that dark set to his eyes that Sanada does in the State of Self-Actualization, but he's just as determined and concentrated as he pinpoints the balls, aims, shoots, volleys, smashes and glows.
"I feel so proud of him," Jackal says with a sniffle. Marui hands him a crumbled hanky from his pocket, one covered in colourful Moyashimon microbes.
Niou, too, feels something fluttery and new in his chest as he watches their ace take back points from Fuji.
And then, to top everything off, Sanada stands up from the bench and screams, "WIN THIS GAME AKAYA! WIN THIS GAME AND TAKE THE KANTOU CHAMPIOSHIP WITH YOUR OWN HAND!"
Sanada is so enthusiastic that his t-shirt rides up and his cap shrugs back on his head. In takes him a beat to realize this before he flushes and coughs and pulls his hat and shirt back down.
Pity Yukimura wasn't here to appreciate that view, Niou thinks. Not that seeing a slice of Sanada's side makes his heart go all doki doki, but maybe for Yukimura it does. Maybe it helps Yukimura feel better, having someone who loves him regardless of his flaws, having someone who loves him unconditionally.
Niou's eyes linger on Yagyuu, then they settle back on the court. Tightness returns to his ribs, squeezing the air away from his lungs and making it hard to breathe. Jealously tastes bitter in his mouth, dry and dusty like the clay Kirihara kicks up.
Fuji hits a Higuma Otoshi of his own. Kirihara twists and spins and drags his racket, his back bent and his legs low and this time, Sanada grunts.
Yagyuu says it first. "That ground smash is Sanada-kun's-"
"Fuji can't return it," Yanagi says.
Niou nods. "The gut of his racket's snapped."
"Go AKAYA!" Jackal yells. Marui claps, twirling around in a pre-victory pirouette.
"FUJI-SENPAI USE THE FRAME!"
Niou whips his head up. Across the court, that brat Echizen is yelling at Fuji. Fuji, blinks and looks up, his eyes clear and seeing. He takes Echizen's advice and douses Kirihara's Fire-the very move that invaded Kirihara's own tennis that day he challenged those monsters last year-with the edge of his racket. The sound is a cross between a hum and a hollow plong as Fuji slugs it back to Kirihara, groaning through his teeth with a real determination of his own.
Kirihara's racket clatters when it hits the ground.
Niou's stomach drops, along with Jackal and Marui's jaws. Yagyuu tightens his lips and Yanagi closes his eyes.
Sanada is the only one who seems uncaring; he snorts and mutters, "Your grip isn't strong enough to handle that move yet" as the official shouts out the win.
Game, Seigaku. 7-5.
The winner is Fuji.
Kirihara must be seething inside. His entire body shakes, spraying sweat as he stumbles up to the net, hand stretched out to shake Fuji's. Niou raises his eyebrows. The kid'll probably do something now, like squeeze Fuji's hand hard enough to break a few fingers.
The insects pause in their song long enough for the tension to raise another level. Niou fans his neck with the collar of his t-shirt.
But instead of breaking something, Kirihara just falls forward, slumping into Fuji's arms like a deadweight.
Sanada rises to his feet, but Fuji shakes his head. He beams at all of them, his eyes focusing on the entire Rikkai team and no one all in one glance. "It's all right," he says. "He's just asleep."
Niou facepalms.
***
With Sanada preparing, and Yanagi currently a useless, motionless loser, Niou and Yagyuu drag Kirihara's carcass back to their side. Niou takes care to dump the kid's bottle of gross orange Gatorade all over his face. It makes Kirihara cough and sputter and cry out when he wakes up, orange-faced and gasping.
"Did I win?"
Kirihara starts to pant, so hard and so fast that he's practically hyperventilating. Sweat sluices down his face and he throws the towel from Jackal's hands. Yanagi favours the kid with a twisted, pained look that only makes Kirihara start to rock on his ankles and moan, like a dying animal, all plaintive yelps and howls.
Because the kid knows. He's not stupid. Surely he's expecting the answer when Sanada grumbles, "You lost, Akaya!"
Niou can't tell if the wonderchibi is just sweating, or if those are tears rolling down his cheeks. He shakes his head slowly as Kirihara jumps the barrier to stop Sanada in his tracks.
Idiot, he thinks.
"Hi-hit me!" Kirihara shouts.
"Akaya…" Yanagi murmurs. He sucks in a breath. Niou strokes his chin, watching Yanagi's throat bob as Kirihara presses Sanada harder, demanding and determined to be punished for his loss.
"Sanada-fukubuchou, please-"
Sanada walks right by the kid. Without so much as turning around he says, "Sit down." Wind seems to flutter as he walks and Kirihara's wet t-shirt whips up over his stomach.
Sanada's stirring the elements already.
That chibi who's playing against him is going to hurt.
As the chanting for Sanada starts, Niou leans back on the bench with a smirk.