FIC: Glory Days, Yukimura/Sanada, NC17 (1/7)
Title: Glory Days (1/7)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Sanada aims for the Nationals. And more...Yukimura/Sanada.
Yukimura has hardly been out of the hospital for a day before the Rikkai team has shown up at his house, armed with boxes and smiles and “Congratulations” and “We hope you recover soon, buchou”. They commandeer the family room and Yukimura’s parents shut the door so his little sister doesn’t bother them.
Niou brings a case of ponta and Marui brings his favourite cake, decorated with the Rikkai logo and “We’ll take the Nationals!” scrolled across the top in licorice-flavoured calligraphy. Yukimura sits on the couch, overwhelmed by them, overwhelmed by the cushions, but smiling nonetheless.
Kirihara shouts, “Yo- Sanada-fukubuchou! Aren’t you going to sing something for Yukimura-buchou, too?” He tossed Sanada a karaoke microphone. Yanagi turns the machine on and smiles at him.
Sanada wants to wring Kirihara’s neck for suggesting this. Yukimura laughs, his voice weak and soft, and Sanada cannot say no. If he can sing one song from Tezuka Kunimitsu’s return at the Junior Senbatsu, he can sing an entire concert’s worth if Yukimura wants him to.
Kirihara offers back-up vocals, smirking the whole while.
He doesn’t understand the words very well. It’s a song in English and Sanada can only pick out things like “love” and “heaven” and “baby” and some of the verbs, second person singular imperative. Niou snickers as Sanada sings, his eyes following the lyrics closely. He might not be a very good singer, but he’s no worse than any of the others, even if Marui has started to ignore him, too, in order to cut large slices of cake and hand them out on paper plates.
His hands are sweaty around the microphone and he stands stiffly. Sanada has no stage presence whatsoever, nothing compared to Kirihara, who bounces around and flourishes dramatic notes with equally dramatic arm gestures. Jackal is always one step ahead of Kirihara, shifting lamps across tables before Kirihara hits them and hurts himself.
Sanada’s heart pounds. The words drone in his ears. Yanagi flips through the song book, hand on the remote and ready to change songs. He watches as Yukimura places a hand over Yanagi’s and whispers something to stop him, and Sanada finishes the song with a sigh of relief. Unless Yukimura wants to hear more.
He doesn’t.
Yukimura claps and gives Sanada a small smile, one that reaches his shining eyes. Yukimura is still so pale and thin, his true thinness hidden under baggy pants and a heavy shirt. His skin retains the green tinge of the hospital. When he gets up to walk, his gait is the slow and tired steps of an old man, not a teenaged boy. It pains Sanada to see him like this, and for a moment, he wonders and worries if Yukimura will truly recover. If the doctors and nurses are telling the truth.
They eat slices of cake. Marui eats three. Yukimura says, “Excuse me,” in that wan, wasted voice and shuffles off, his cake left nearly untouched until Marui digs into it with a grin.
Sanada follows him.
The light shines under the doorway to the bathroom. Yukimura’s family is in a different section of the house, no doubt wanting to leave the tennis team and loud teenage boys to gain some of their own peace and quiet. Sanada presses an ear to the bathroom door. No one else is around. Between the bouts of laughter from across the hallway, he can make out the distinct sounds of retching.
His insides freeze. He places a hand on the doorknob and says, “Yukimura?” but he’s already opening the door before there is a reply. His heart sinks when he sees Yukimura hunched over the toilet, his thin back heaving and his bony fingers clutching the rim of the toilet seat.
“Yukimura!” he says, kneeling down next to him. “Are you all right? Do I need to-”
“No!” Yukimura hisses. He turns his head slowly. There is vomit and half-digested cake clinging to the ends of his hair. His face is contorted with sharp lines, pain written across his forehead. “Leave me be, Sanada. I’m fine.” When Sanada doesn’t move, he adds, “My stomach still isn’t used to food since the operation.”
“That was nearly two weeks ago! The doctors-”
“I’m fine!” Yukimura insists, right before he starts to gag again.
Sanada doesn’t argue with him, but he does reach over and hold Yukimura’s hair back to keep anymore vomit from it.
***
It’s been so long since Yukimura has been on the tennis courts that it is almost surreal the first time Sanada seems him standing on the courts in his uniform after classes. Sanada had been standing on the sidelines, waiting for the last of the straggling freshmen to show up before he doled out laps. With Yukimura standing beside him, his voice wants to shout laps, but his head says otherwise.
Until Yukimura says, “Give then fifty laps, Sanada. I don’t want them late for practice again.” Yukimura stares at the tennis club members, all standing around and chatting like they belong to the student’s council, rather than a serious Nationals-level sports club.
Sanada’s stomach lurches. Yukimura must be thinking, Why did I leave Sanada as fukubuchou? What a lazy ass! “Sixty laps!” he yells.
Yukimura says, “You have to do them too, Sanada.”
He doesn’t complain, but his muscles still scream as much as the next moaning member when he finishes them, much much later. Kirihara glowers at him and even Niou is muttering darkly under his breath, between rolling on the ground and gasping for air.
No one is stupid enough to question why the captain doesn’t run laps with them. Just to see Yukimura here after all these months is a miracle and Sanada is grateful. Yanagi smiles as they rally a ball back and forth between themselves.
“We’ll be invincible at the Nationals,” Yanagi says.
Sanada nods, his gaze lingering on the lone figure on the sidelines, watching them all. “We’ll be at full strength again.” Something twinges in his stomach and he isn’t sure what that feeling is until he notices Yukimura pick up his tennis racket. He holds it in his hands as though it is a steel habiki, rather than a part of his body, like it was before Guillain-Barré.
It has always been Sanada’s job to lock up the club house after practice. He waits until all of the tennis club members leave, one by one and in groups. Yanagi says “I’ll email you about an extra practice for Sunday” and closes the door behind the two of them.
The club is large, but Sanada isn’t dumb enough to not notice one person hasn’t returned from the gymnasium, where the ball machines line the one wall. He nods and waits until Yanagi’s shadow disappears into the darkening night.
The sound of the balls punching out from the machines is soothing and regular, but the intervals are long and spaced. Sanada stands in the doorway and watches Yukimura hit the balls, his racket swinging wide and his face strained and sweating. He murmurs to himself and moves across the court. His legs are thinner than Sanada had thought- now that Yukimura has stripped his pants off and wears only the white uniform shorts. His skin is translucent and tinged blue, splotched with a flush from working his unused muscles.
He must move at the wrong time, because Yukimura whips his head around and a ball flies past his head, bouncing against the wall behind him. “Why are you here?” he snaps.
Sanada pushes himself off the wall and turns off the ball machine. Yukimura hunches over, his hair falling over his eyes. His back heaves, this time with panting breaths, not surges of vomit. Sanada doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.
“The Nationals are in three weeks,” Yukimura says slowly. He looks up and graces Sanada with the same smile from the hospital, the sickly smile, the polite one, the one that never reached his eyes.
“You’ll be ready,” Sanada says. He sets his tennis bag on the gym floor and tucks the clubhouse keys in the sidepocket. Sanada grabs his racket and tosses Yukimura a ball. He backs up, stiffening in surprise, but catches the ball against his stomach with his free hand.
“Let’s rally,” Sanada says.
“I can hardly play!” Yukimura insists. “Genichirou, you saw-”
The sound of Yukimura’s voice, the words, they are almost heartbreaking to hear. Sanada swallows the lump in his throat and says, “We said we’d sweep the Nationals, all three years. We can’t do it without you, Yukimura.”
Sanada hits the balls slow and easy, as though he’s dealing with a freshman instead of one of the best players on the circuit. Yukimura is angry, he can tell as much from the scowl on Yukimura’s face, the way his shoulders tense when he hits back, but at least he can hit them back. Yukimura is angry that he has to play in this body still sluggish from illness and surgery. He is angry that Sanada is not giving Yukimura his everything, even by half. Sanada holds himself back, jerking his arm to keep his swings soft and light. He’s afraid of what might happen if he doesn’t. If Yukimura were to have a relapse…
But Yukimura returns the rally. His arms might be straining, his hand might be trembling, his grip might be unsteady, but the balls fly back to Sanada.
It’s a start.
After, Yukimura collapses onto a bench, his knees shaking. Sanada sucks in a breath, but Yukimura laughs it off bitterly. “I’m not having a relapse,” he says. “My muscles have…”
“…atrophied.”
“Yes.” Yukimura sighs. Sanada places a hand on his back and helps Yukimura walk to the bus stop in front of the school. They wait in silence for the next bus to loom bright and yellow out of the inky darkness of the evening. Sanada’s stomach growls with the anticipation of supper at home soon. Yukimura just looks tired, his eyes sporting heavier purple shadows than earlier.
Yukimura never says thank you and Sanada would never want him to.
***
Sunday. Renji comes by at lunchtime and they walk to Yukimura’s house from the subway station. It isn’t far and practice is in a couple hours. “We should visit him,” Renji suggested. Sanada could never say no to that.
“Seiichi’s in the garden,” his mother says. Sanada takes his cap off and he is careful not to track dirt from his shoes through Yukimura’s house as his mother leads him and Renji through to the back door.
The garden has been neglected during Yukimura’s absence. Sanada has seen it before, last summer when it was vibrant and blooming and alive, and now it has been reduced to a tangle of overgrowth and choking weeds. Stacks of clay pots line a short stone walkway. A plug tray of small, leafy plants sits beside a trowel and a boy hunched over, thin hands digging through the damp, black earth.
Renji coughs. Yukimura turns around. He pushes a strand of hair away from his forehead, smearing dirt across his skin, but not seeming to care. “You’re here early,” he says.
“We thought we’d come by before practice,” Renji says.
“To see you,” Sanada explains when Yukimura smiles and raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, Akaya’s here helping already,” Yukimura says. Sanada hasn’t noticed before now, the noises coming from a tiny shed, but now he does, the cursing and the huffing and Kirihara walks out with an armful of clay pots, his green eyes barely leering from the top of the stack.
Kirihara sets the stack of pots beside Yukimura, wiping sweat from his brow with a satisfied smirk at Sanada. He flexes his shoulders, his damp t-shirt clinging to the muscles underneath. Yukimura watches Kirihara and Sanada watches Yukimura. He clenches his fist. His eye twitches and it won’t stop.
“All right, Sanada-fukubuchou?” Kirihara asks.
“I’m fine,” Sanada says through his teeth. If Yukimura were not standing right there between them, he would have slapped the smirk from that face.
When Yukimura touches Kirihara’s arm and says, “Thank you, Akaya,” Sanada can feel his hand shaking, so much so that Renji stares at him, questioning.
On the bus to the school grounds, Renji says, “Sit here, Akaya,” and pats the seat next to him. He catches Sanada’s eye, an unspoken you’re welcome passing between the two of them.
Yukimura sits next to Sanada, and he breathes in the fresh, living smell of earth and plants and sweat and soap that clings to Yukimura like a snowcap to a mountain. If he could say something more, maybe he would. Maybe he would tell Yukimura some, many, all of the things he has been thinking about for months. But for now Sanada is content to sit beside Yukimura and breathe the same air and stare out the same bus window at the familiar streets and parks passing by, and to listen to Renji and Kirihara talk of Seigaku and the Nationals and the third straight title they will win.
Sanada doesn’t notice the hand touching his arm until Kirihara chimes the bell for their stop and Sanada moves to stand up.
His arm burns all the way through practice, the phantom memory etched to his bones.
***
A person can change overnight. A person can change in three weeks. Sanada watches from the background as Yukimura changes, his body remembering the muscles it once had, his arm remembering how to hold the racket, how to hit the ball, how to smash, how to serve.
He’s there in the mornings, sometimes an hour before practice starts, on the courts by himself. He’s there in the evenings, on the bench press and the weight machines in the club house. Sanada says nothing and stumbles home late, always waiting in silence for Yukimura to finish before he locks the club house up for the few hours in between when Yukimura must sleep.
Sometimes Yanagi is there with them, mentally taking notes.
Once Yagyuu stayed late, talking with Yukimura in sporadic intervals, spotting the weights. They rise day by day, 5 lbs at a time.
The speed on the ball machines rise by 5km. The intervals diminish by 0.5 seconds.
Yanagi says, “He’s pushing himself to the maximum.”
Sanada says, “He would do no less than that.”
The first few times Yukimura plays practice matches, he picks unassuming freshmen, who cower and stare in awe that they have been picked, by the captain, to play him and help him train for the Nationals.
Yukimura exhales as he lifts his legs. The weight rises, the metal groaning. He curls his legs back and the weight falls, slamming back down. Sanada winces.
“Are you satisfied?” he asks, eyeing Yukimura’s calves. The muscles contract with each leg curl, shifting under his thin skin.
“I played terribly,” Yukimura says.
“You didn’t give a single point. You slaughtered the freshmen.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Yukimura tells him. “The Nationals are in a week.”
Sometimes when Sanada practices kendo in the dim hall, he pretends that the straw effigy is Guillain-Barré. The sword slices through the straw with a satisfying silence, but it will never bring back the time Yukimura lost to the disease.
In the school hallways, they pass each other. Yukimura’s nurses trail behind him, ever present during school hours. Sanada manages to lean close to Yukimura for the briefest moment before math class and says, “Let’s play a match tonight after practice.”
Yukimura’s eyes follow him into the classroom, a promise. Don’t hold back.
***
Kirihara stays late after practice. Sanada glares at him.
“Doesn’t he need to catch his bus soon?” he tells Jackal.
Jackal sighs. “I haven’t memorized his bus schedule.”
Just get the brat out of here, Sanada thinks. He can hear Kirihara’s voice, speaking with Yukimura by the lockers. He grits his teeth and puts his tennis racket in his bag. If any of the regulars knew he and Yukimura would be playing, they’d have an audience bigger than the Regionals tournament. This doesn’t concern them. It’s private.
Sanada wants it that way.
He worries that Yukimura is too weak to play still. Yukimura spends too much time in bathrooms between classes when he can dodge his nurses for a few moments. He eats too little at lunch and he pushes his body too hard during practices, and after. The threat of relapse never leaves Sanada’s thoughts and each time he sees Yukimura, he sighs with relief inside that Yukimura hasn’t collapsed again somewhere, alone and broken, his body an alien to his mind.
“Go home,” Sanada grumbles when Kirihara waltzes by, his tennis bag slung over his shoulder.
“Good night to you, too, Sanada-fukubuchou,” the brat grins widely. He brushes past Sanada, then waves an arm behind himself and knocks Sanada’s cap from his face.
Sanada clenches his fist. Kirihara’s eyes shine, waiting for a blow.
Yukimura steps beside them and says, “Goodnight, Akaya.”
“Goodnight, Yukimura-buchou! Be sure to put Sanada-fukubuchou in his place!”
The brat knew Yukimura would stop Sanada, without saying as much as a word, without even touching him. Sanada swears he hears Jackal whisper, “Whipped” to Kirihara as the club room door swings shut behind the two of them.
He grabs his cap and dusts the brim off, before placing it back on his head. He adjusts the position until his hair falls just right and won’t get in his eyes.
“Let’s use D court,” Yukimura says.
The floodlights reflect Yukimura’s dark eyes across the court as Sanada plants his feet, ready for Yukimura’s serve. It’s been a long, long while since they’ve played each other, officially or unofficially. Not for at least a year, and Yukimura won 6-4 that time in junior year.
“Don’t hold back, Sanada.” Yukimura says. He bounces the ball. The pong echoes across the empty courts, familiar music to Sanada’s ears. “Play your best for me.”
Yukimura’s words make Sanada’s chest tighten. Anything for you. He tightens his grip on his racket; the grip tape is slick and warm with his sweat already, and Yukimura has yet to serve.
He stands, waiting for the serve, when he realizes the brush of wind against his ear was the serve.
Sanada’s eyes widen.
“An invisible serve?” he whispers.
Yukimura twirls his racket, and smiles. “Fifteen-love.”
Sanada doesn’t know what to think during the game. Has Yukimura been holding back with the freshmen? It’s been three days since he last played one, when did he change that much? How? He looks too thin to be hitting balls faster than Yagyuu’s Laser Beam and heavier than a hadoukyou. Yukimura’s arms looked like they would break if he tried, but now Sanada searches for the muscles he must be developing again, Sanada searches for the speed, for the power, and instead he only finds-
-determination.
The crickets chirp and Sanada pants. Buses whiz by the other side of the school, the traffic noises carried across the empty school grounds. Yukimura’s trainers slap against the clay court, right right left, back, smash. He dashes to the net, across, back to the baseline. He feels like he’s flying, playing like this, playing with Yukimura.
Sanada wants to laugh.
Yukimura is only a stone-face. He grunts when the racket slams into the ball. His eyes will widen with a rising shot thrown across Sanada’s court, slapping the baseline, in by millimeters. His lip will curl when Sanada scores a point, scores a game, but nothing more.
Sanada has never taken an airplane before, but he thinks this is what flying must be like. This lightheaded feeling, this freedom, even through the dull, detached ache of his calves and his knees, the furious drumbeat of his heart.
Yukimura wins, 6-4.
Sanada flops onto the coach’s bench and guzzles his waterbottle. Yukimura stands in front of him. His back faces the floodlight and the front of his body is black and eclipsed, a halo around his face. “That was a good game,” Yukimura says, holding his hand out.
Sanada takes Yukimura’s hand and grips it gently. It is as sweaty and hot as his own, but it trembles slightly.
“We’ll take the Nationals,” Sanada says. Always win, Rikkai Dai.
“You backhand form looked sloppy,” Yukimura says. He sounds as cold as he did when he caught Sanada and Atobe on the courts. Sanada knew- and he does know that Rikkai doesn’t allow unofficial matches with other schools, but when cocky, arrogant Atobe Keigo from Hyoutei waltzed onto Rikkai school grounds, Sanada couldn’t resist the thrill of playing him again.
The high then was almost as much as the feeling of flight he has now.
He sits down beside Sanada and exhales heavily. They sit in silence and Yukimura tips his head up, staring into the indigo sky. The floodlight flickers off, engulfing them in darkness, but the weather and the game makes it feel warm and welcome, to be rid of the harsh fluorescent glare.
“I think I see a star,” Yukimura says quietly.
In his heart, Sanada makes a wish, but he doesn’t allow himself to think about it. Not with Yukimura here beside him, because in a way, it has almost come true already.
***
He’s forgotten to do his homework for the past week and this time he can’t ask Yukimura to write his English composition for him. The teachers don’t understand that tennis comes first, then school. They have it wrong.
Morning is practice is long. He runs to his first class. The teacher frowns when he walks in, five minutes later. “Please remove your cap, Sanada,” he says.
Sanada ignores the girls who giggle behind him as he tucks his cap into his school bag and takes his seat. He has more important things to worry about than math.
They have one last practice after school, regulars-only. A fast-paced round-robin of games, five minutes a piece. No one speaks except to call points. The balls smash and ping as they hit the ground, a pulsing effect of four simultaneous games starting to sound more like music than sport.
They walk to the bus stop in front of the school. Even Kirihara and Niou are silent.
Tomorrow the real games begin.
Four days of tennis. Three days pass with straight wins. 5-0: Round 1, Round 2, Quarterfinal. Semifinal. Yukimura sits as the reserve only for round 1. His comeback is glorious in round 2. The opponent from Murigaoka doesn’t take a single point and the game is finished under 13 minutes.
“Yukimura-buchou beat my record,” Kirihara says. “Heh.”
Seigaku waits for the finals, on Sunday. The rush of wins, the exhilaration of the courts, all this work has boiled down to one final match set in the morning. Yukimura smiles when he hears the results of the Seigaku-Shitenhoji semifinal. “I wanted to play Tezuka most of all,” he says.
“Echizen’s mine,” Kirihara insists. “You have to let me play him, buchou!”
“Tomorrow we take the championship,” Yukimura says.
The bus back to Rikkai is packed with regulars and other club members, so tight that Sanada can barely breathe. There are arms poking his stomach and elbows in his side and even the window that Jackal cranks open doesn’t do much with this many people. When they reach the school, Yukimura says, “You should sleep over at my house. Yours is so far from the train station, Sanada.”
Sanada pinches himself, waiting for the bus back to his own home. He’s not dreaming, but the hazy warmth inside makes him feel that way. Maybe he’s played too hard these last few days.
He barely notices his family when he returns home. His mother asks him about the games. His brother slaps his shoulder, which Sanada shrugs off. “I’m staying the night at Yukimura’s,” he says. “We have early matches tomorrow.”
He packs his tennis bag carefully. Three rackets. Two waterbottles. Two towels, freshly laundered by his mother. His uniform. Sanada stuffs a pair of pajamas and a toothbrush into the side pocket, too, and slings it over his shoulder.
“Good luck,” his grandfather says as Sanada walks out the door.
It’s late when he finally arrives at Yukimura’s house. Yukimura answers the door. “Are you hungry?” he asks.
They snack on fish crackers and cucumbers in Yukimura’s bedroom. The knots twisting in Sanada’s stomach tighten when he thinks about Seigaku. Always win, Rikkai Dai.
“We won’t lose to them twice,” he says.
Yukimura smiles. “They will be a good opponent for us.” His face goes blank as he stares at a piece of paper that Sanada recognizes as a roster. The spaces are blank. No names are entered yet, but the paper is dented with characters that have been erased, time and time again. “We will win, Sanada,” Yukimura says fatalistically.
Yukimura’s mother has rolled out a futon on the floor. Sanada takes it before Yukimura says otherwise. It’s not very late, but it feels like the middle of the night, the way Sanada’s body aches from three days straight of good, solid games. His toes tingle and his arms hang heavy like katana swords, and just as lifeless.
“Yukimura?” he asks in the dark. A pale stream of light flits under the doorway, the only light save for the dim glow behind the curtains of the window. “Why did you have me sleep here?”
“Your play looked tired, Sanada,” Yukimura murmurs from his bed. Sanada can’t see him from this angle on the floor. “Your bus route takes the longest. I want my players in top condition for the finals.”
He doesn’t have a hard time falling asleep. The futon here, even if it was dragged out of a storage closet, is thicker than the ones at home. Sanada feels as though his body is sinking down, down into it and it isn’t long before he’s asleep. But he wakes, sensing something is off.
He cracks an eye open. Blearily, he sees the numbers on Yukimura’s digital clock. Past one. Yukimura is sitting at his desk in the corner, a dim desk lamp turned on, illuminating only his hands and his face.
“Yukimura,” Sanada says. His voice sounds grave and grumbling. He coughs to clear his throat.
Yukimura turns around, a slight smile on his face. “Sorry to wake you, Sanada,” he says.
“That’s okay. What are you doing?” Sanada sits up as Yukimura turns the light off and steps across the room, careful to avoid the futon.
“I’m still not satisfied with the roster,” Yukimura says. The bed creaks under his weight when he crawls under the sheets. “I think Marui would better in doubles, although I’d prefer to have you and Renji in doubles, but Seigaku will have Fuji Shuusuke in singles 2 and I want to be sure we’ll win.”
“What about Niou, with Yagyuu and Jackal as doubles 1?”
Yukimura hums. “I thought of that, but Seigaku will have either Momoshiro or Kawamura as their alternate and if we need an alternate, I want someone who’s more of a powerplayer than Marui to counter them.” He sighs and rolls onto his side. Sanada stares up at Yukimura, who watches him with huge eyes, glowing like an animal’s.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping, too, and leave the scenarios to Renji?”
Yukimura says nothing for the longest while. Sanada thinks that Yukimura must have fallen asleep until he hears Yukimura whisper, “Oh, Sanada…”
He dreams that he is painting with the biggest calligraphy brush his father owns, a beautiful, big brush that dips into the black ink and runs smooth across the paper, like dark water in his hand. Sanada paints and paints, moving his hand, but the characters don’t appear and when he looks down, the paper has crumbled into a pool of ink.
Ink is everywhere. Everything disappears into it, a black hole ink pot. Yukimura stands in the middle. Ink laps at his body, up to his waist. He’s naked, Sanada knows that much, he can see that much. Yukimura’s skin is so pale and white, like rice paper against the black.
“I’ll save you,” he says.
Yukimura smiles and shakes his head. “I don’t need saving, Genichirou. Come and paint me. Will you paint my body? Everywhere?”
Sanada wakes with a gasp. He opens his eyes, but eyes stare back at him, blue and shining. “Good morning,” Yukimura says. “I was about to wake you. We need to get ready soon.”
Of all the days for this to happen, fate would have it today. He lies there for a moment, waiting for Yukimura to turn around, to leave him be. Sanada feels his body flush with warmth, his cock hard and heavy between his legs and he prays that he wasn’t moaning in his sleep during his dream, because he aches so much right now, if Yukimura doesn’t stop hovering over his shoulder, he will moan aloud.
The dream shakes him up. Tennis. Tennis. The Nationals. Always win, Rikkai Dai. It is his mantra in the shower, but it doesn’t stop him from finally sliding a hand down to his cock to touch, to ease the ache. Yukimura wants him to be in top form. As guilty as he feels for masturbating in Yukimura’s shower, he would feel guiltier if he let the lust pent up in his body and distract him from the game.
The game is everything. This championship is everything. What happens afterwards doesn’t matter.
For now.
The sun barely peeks over the edges of the high rise buildings when they meet the other regulars at the school. For this last day, Yukimura has somehow convinced the student’s council to let the tennis club rent a van, instead of making them take the subway train or a bus. Marui and Yagyuu sleep in their seats on the drive to the stadium. Yanagi and Yukimura sit together and finalize the roster based on a notebook of data.
Sanada keeps an eye on Niou, who seems to be lugging a strangely heavy and bulky tennis bag into the empty seat beside himself. He smirks when Sanada catches his eye. Sanada lets the matter simmer in the back of his mind. Whatever tricks Niou has up his sleeve, he doesn’t want to know just yet.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Sanada aims for the Nationals. And more...Yukimura/Sanada.
Yukimura has hardly been out of the hospital for a day before the Rikkai team has shown up at his house, armed with boxes and smiles and “Congratulations” and “We hope you recover soon, buchou”. They commandeer the family room and Yukimura’s parents shut the door so his little sister doesn’t bother them.
Niou brings a case of ponta and Marui brings his favourite cake, decorated with the Rikkai logo and “We’ll take the Nationals!” scrolled across the top in licorice-flavoured calligraphy. Yukimura sits on the couch, overwhelmed by them, overwhelmed by the cushions, but smiling nonetheless.
Kirihara shouts, “Yo- Sanada-fukubuchou! Aren’t you going to sing something for Yukimura-buchou, too?” He tossed Sanada a karaoke microphone. Yanagi turns the machine on and smiles at him.
Sanada wants to wring Kirihara’s neck for suggesting this. Yukimura laughs, his voice weak and soft, and Sanada cannot say no. If he can sing one song from Tezuka Kunimitsu’s return at the Junior Senbatsu, he can sing an entire concert’s worth if Yukimura wants him to.
Kirihara offers back-up vocals, smirking the whole while.
He doesn’t understand the words very well. It’s a song in English and Sanada can only pick out things like “love” and “heaven” and “baby” and some of the verbs, second person singular imperative. Niou snickers as Sanada sings, his eyes following the lyrics closely. He might not be a very good singer, but he’s no worse than any of the others, even if Marui has started to ignore him, too, in order to cut large slices of cake and hand them out on paper plates.
His hands are sweaty around the microphone and he stands stiffly. Sanada has no stage presence whatsoever, nothing compared to Kirihara, who bounces around and flourishes dramatic notes with equally dramatic arm gestures. Jackal is always one step ahead of Kirihara, shifting lamps across tables before Kirihara hits them and hurts himself.
Sanada’s heart pounds. The words drone in his ears. Yanagi flips through the song book, hand on the remote and ready to change songs. He watches as Yukimura places a hand over Yanagi’s and whispers something to stop him, and Sanada finishes the song with a sigh of relief. Unless Yukimura wants to hear more.
He doesn’t.
Yukimura claps and gives Sanada a small smile, one that reaches his shining eyes. Yukimura is still so pale and thin, his true thinness hidden under baggy pants and a heavy shirt. His skin retains the green tinge of the hospital. When he gets up to walk, his gait is the slow and tired steps of an old man, not a teenaged boy. It pains Sanada to see him like this, and for a moment, he wonders and worries if Yukimura will truly recover. If the doctors and nurses are telling the truth.
They eat slices of cake. Marui eats three. Yukimura says, “Excuse me,” in that wan, wasted voice and shuffles off, his cake left nearly untouched until Marui digs into it with a grin.
Sanada follows him.
The light shines under the doorway to the bathroom. Yukimura’s family is in a different section of the house, no doubt wanting to leave the tennis team and loud teenage boys to gain some of their own peace and quiet. Sanada presses an ear to the bathroom door. No one else is around. Between the bouts of laughter from across the hallway, he can make out the distinct sounds of retching.
His insides freeze. He places a hand on the doorknob and says, “Yukimura?” but he’s already opening the door before there is a reply. His heart sinks when he sees Yukimura hunched over the toilet, his thin back heaving and his bony fingers clutching the rim of the toilet seat.
“Yukimura!” he says, kneeling down next to him. “Are you all right? Do I need to-”
“No!” Yukimura hisses. He turns his head slowly. There is vomit and half-digested cake clinging to the ends of his hair. His face is contorted with sharp lines, pain written across his forehead. “Leave me be, Sanada. I’m fine.” When Sanada doesn’t move, he adds, “My stomach still isn’t used to food since the operation.”
“That was nearly two weeks ago! The doctors-”
“I’m fine!” Yukimura insists, right before he starts to gag again.
Sanada doesn’t argue with him, but he does reach over and hold Yukimura’s hair back to keep anymore vomit from it.
***
It’s been so long since Yukimura has been on the tennis courts that it is almost surreal the first time Sanada seems him standing on the courts in his uniform after classes. Sanada had been standing on the sidelines, waiting for the last of the straggling freshmen to show up before he doled out laps. With Yukimura standing beside him, his voice wants to shout laps, but his head says otherwise.
Until Yukimura says, “Give then fifty laps, Sanada. I don’t want them late for practice again.” Yukimura stares at the tennis club members, all standing around and chatting like they belong to the student’s council, rather than a serious Nationals-level sports club.
Sanada’s stomach lurches. Yukimura must be thinking, Why did I leave Sanada as fukubuchou? What a lazy ass! “Sixty laps!” he yells.
Yukimura says, “You have to do them too, Sanada.”
He doesn’t complain, but his muscles still scream as much as the next moaning member when he finishes them, much much later. Kirihara glowers at him and even Niou is muttering darkly under his breath, between rolling on the ground and gasping for air.
No one is stupid enough to question why the captain doesn’t run laps with them. Just to see Yukimura here after all these months is a miracle and Sanada is grateful. Yanagi smiles as they rally a ball back and forth between themselves.
“We’ll be invincible at the Nationals,” Yanagi says.
Sanada nods, his gaze lingering on the lone figure on the sidelines, watching them all. “We’ll be at full strength again.” Something twinges in his stomach and he isn’t sure what that feeling is until he notices Yukimura pick up his tennis racket. He holds it in his hands as though it is a steel habiki, rather than a part of his body, like it was before Guillain-Barré.
It has always been Sanada’s job to lock up the club house after practice. He waits until all of the tennis club members leave, one by one and in groups. Yanagi says “I’ll email you about an extra practice for Sunday” and closes the door behind the two of them.
The club is large, but Sanada isn’t dumb enough to not notice one person hasn’t returned from the gymnasium, where the ball machines line the one wall. He nods and waits until Yanagi’s shadow disappears into the darkening night.
The sound of the balls punching out from the machines is soothing and regular, but the intervals are long and spaced. Sanada stands in the doorway and watches Yukimura hit the balls, his racket swinging wide and his face strained and sweating. He murmurs to himself and moves across the court. His legs are thinner than Sanada had thought- now that Yukimura has stripped his pants off and wears only the white uniform shorts. His skin is translucent and tinged blue, splotched with a flush from working his unused muscles.
He must move at the wrong time, because Yukimura whips his head around and a ball flies past his head, bouncing against the wall behind him. “Why are you here?” he snaps.
Sanada pushes himself off the wall and turns off the ball machine. Yukimura hunches over, his hair falling over his eyes. His back heaves, this time with panting breaths, not surges of vomit. Sanada doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.
“The Nationals are in three weeks,” Yukimura says slowly. He looks up and graces Sanada with the same smile from the hospital, the sickly smile, the polite one, the one that never reached his eyes.
“You’ll be ready,” Sanada says. He sets his tennis bag on the gym floor and tucks the clubhouse keys in the sidepocket. Sanada grabs his racket and tosses Yukimura a ball. He backs up, stiffening in surprise, but catches the ball against his stomach with his free hand.
“Let’s rally,” Sanada says.
“I can hardly play!” Yukimura insists. “Genichirou, you saw-”
The sound of Yukimura’s voice, the words, they are almost heartbreaking to hear. Sanada swallows the lump in his throat and says, “We said we’d sweep the Nationals, all three years. We can’t do it without you, Yukimura.”
Sanada hits the balls slow and easy, as though he’s dealing with a freshman instead of one of the best players on the circuit. Yukimura is angry, he can tell as much from the scowl on Yukimura’s face, the way his shoulders tense when he hits back, but at least he can hit them back. Yukimura is angry that he has to play in this body still sluggish from illness and surgery. He is angry that Sanada is not giving Yukimura his everything, even by half. Sanada holds himself back, jerking his arm to keep his swings soft and light. He’s afraid of what might happen if he doesn’t. If Yukimura were to have a relapse…
But Yukimura returns the rally. His arms might be straining, his hand might be trembling, his grip might be unsteady, but the balls fly back to Sanada.
It’s a start.
After, Yukimura collapses onto a bench, his knees shaking. Sanada sucks in a breath, but Yukimura laughs it off bitterly. “I’m not having a relapse,” he says. “My muscles have…”
“…atrophied.”
“Yes.” Yukimura sighs. Sanada places a hand on his back and helps Yukimura walk to the bus stop in front of the school. They wait in silence for the next bus to loom bright and yellow out of the inky darkness of the evening. Sanada’s stomach growls with the anticipation of supper at home soon. Yukimura just looks tired, his eyes sporting heavier purple shadows than earlier.
Yukimura never says thank you and Sanada would never want him to.
***
Sunday. Renji comes by at lunchtime and they walk to Yukimura’s house from the subway station. It isn’t far and practice is in a couple hours. “We should visit him,” Renji suggested. Sanada could never say no to that.
“Seiichi’s in the garden,” his mother says. Sanada takes his cap off and he is careful not to track dirt from his shoes through Yukimura’s house as his mother leads him and Renji through to the back door.
The garden has been neglected during Yukimura’s absence. Sanada has seen it before, last summer when it was vibrant and blooming and alive, and now it has been reduced to a tangle of overgrowth and choking weeds. Stacks of clay pots line a short stone walkway. A plug tray of small, leafy plants sits beside a trowel and a boy hunched over, thin hands digging through the damp, black earth.
Renji coughs. Yukimura turns around. He pushes a strand of hair away from his forehead, smearing dirt across his skin, but not seeming to care. “You’re here early,” he says.
“We thought we’d come by before practice,” Renji says.
“To see you,” Sanada explains when Yukimura smiles and raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, Akaya’s here helping already,” Yukimura says. Sanada hasn’t noticed before now, the noises coming from a tiny shed, but now he does, the cursing and the huffing and Kirihara walks out with an armful of clay pots, his green eyes barely leering from the top of the stack.
Kirihara sets the stack of pots beside Yukimura, wiping sweat from his brow with a satisfied smirk at Sanada. He flexes his shoulders, his damp t-shirt clinging to the muscles underneath. Yukimura watches Kirihara and Sanada watches Yukimura. He clenches his fist. His eye twitches and it won’t stop.
“All right, Sanada-fukubuchou?” Kirihara asks.
“I’m fine,” Sanada says through his teeth. If Yukimura were not standing right there between them, he would have slapped the smirk from that face.
When Yukimura touches Kirihara’s arm and says, “Thank you, Akaya,” Sanada can feel his hand shaking, so much so that Renji stares at him, questioning.
On the bus to the school grounds, Renji says, “Sit here, Akaya,” and pats the seat next to him. He catches Sanada’s eye, an unspoken you’re welcome passing between the two of them.
Yukimura sits next to Sanada, and he breathes in the fresh, living smell of earth and plants and sweat and soap that clings to Yukimura like a snowcap to a mountain. If he could say something more, maybe he would. Maybe he would tell Yukimura some, many, all of the things he has been thinking about for months. But for now Sanada is content to sit beside Yukimura and breathe the same air and stare out the same bus window at the familiar streets and parks passing by, and to listen to Renji and Kirihara talk of Seigaku and the Nationals and the third straight title they will win.
Sanada doesn’t notice the hand touching his arm until Kirihara chimes the bell for their stop and Sanada moves to stand up.
His arm burns all the way through practice, the phantom memory etched to his bones.
***
A person can change overnight. A person can change in three weeks. Sanada watches from the background as Yukimura changes, his body remembering the muscles it once had, his arm remembering how to hold the racket, how to hit the ball, how to smash, how to serve.
He’s there in the mornings, sometimes an hour before practice starts, on the courts by himself. He’s there in the evenings, on the bench press and the weight machines in the club house. Sanada says nothing and stumbles home late, always waiting in silence for Yukimura to finish before he locks the club house up for the few hours in between when Yukimura must sleep.
Sometimes Yanagi is there with them, mentally taking notes.
Once Yagyuu stayed late, talking with Yukimura in sporadic intervals, spotting the weights. They rise day by day, 5 lbs at a time.
The speed on the ball machines rise by 5km. The intervals diminish by 0.5 seconds.
Yanagi says, “He’s pushing himself to the maximum.”
Sanada says, “He would do no less than that.”
The first few times Yukimura plays practice matches, he picks unassuming freshmen, who cower and stare in awe that they have been picked, by the captain, to play him and help him train for the Nationals.
Yukimura exhales as he lifts his legs. The weight rises, the metal groaning. He curls his legs back and the weight falls, slamming back down. Sanada winces.
“Are you satisfied?” he asks, eyeing Yukimura’s calves. The muscles contract with each leg curl, shifting under his thin skin.
“I played terribly,” Yukimura says.
“You didn’t give a single point. You slaughtered the freshmen.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Yukimura tells him. “The Nationals are in a week.”
Sometimes when Sanada practices kendo in the dim hall, he pretends that the straw effigy is Guillain-Barré. The sword slices through the straw with a satisfying silence, but it will never bring back the time Yukimura lost to the disease.
In the school hallways, they pass each other. Yukimura’s nurses trail behind him, ever present during school hours. Sanada manages to lean close to Yukimura for the briefest moment before math class and says, “Let’s play a match tonight after practice.”
Yukimura’s eyes follow him into the classroom, a promise. Don’t hold back.
***
Kirihara stays late after practice. Sanada glares at him.
“Doesn’t he need to catch his bus soon?” he tells Jackal.
Jackal sighs. “I haven’t memorized his bus schedule.”
Just get the brat out of here, Sanada thinks. He can hear Kirihara’s voice, speaking with Yukimura by the lockers. He grits his teeth and puts his tennis racket in his bag. If any of the regulars knew he and Yukimura would be playing, they’d have an audience bigger than the Regionals tournament. This doesn’t concern them. It’s private.
Sanada wants it that way.
He worries that Yukimura is too weak to play still. Yukimura spends too much time in bathrooms between classes when he can dodge his nurses for a few moments. He eats too little at lunch and he pushes his body too hard during practices, and after. The threat of relapse never leaves Sanada’s thoughts and each time he sees Yukimura, he sighs with relief inside that Yukimura hasn’t collapsed again somewhere, alone and broken, his body an alien to his mind.
“Go home,” Sanada grumbles when Kirihara waltzes by, his tennis bag slung over his shoulder.
“Good night to you, too, Sanada-fukubuchou,” the brat grins widely. He brushes past Sanada, then waves an arm behind himself and knocks Sanada’s cap from his face.
Sanada clenches his fist. Kirihara’s eyes shine, waiting for a blow.
Yukimura steps beside them and says, “Goodnight, Akaya.”
“Goodnight, Yukimura-buchou! Be sure to put Sanada-fukubuchou in his place!”
The brat knew Yukimura would stop Sanada, without saying as much as a word, without even touching him. Sanada swears he hears Jackal whisper, “Whipped” to Kirihara as the club room door swings shut behind the two of them.
He grabs his cap and dusts the brim off, before placing it back on his head. He adjusts the position until his hair falls just right and won’t get in his eyes.
“Let’s use D court,” Yukimura says.
The floodlights reflect Yukimura’s dark eyes across the court as Sanada plants his feet, ready for Yukimura’s serve. It’s been a long, long while since they’ve played each other, officially or unofficially. Not for at least a year, and Yukimura won 6-4 that time in junior year.
“Don’t hold back, Sanada.” Yukimura says. He bounces the ball. The pong echoes across the empty courts, familiar music to Sanada’s ears. “Play your best for me.”
Yukimura’s words make Sanada’s chest tighten. Anything for you. He tightens his grip on his racket; the grip tape is slick and warm with his sweat already, and Yukimura has yet to serve.
He stands, waiting for the serve, when he realizes the brush of wind against his ear was the serve.
Sanada’s eyes widen.
“An invisible serve?” he whispers.
Yukimura twirls his racket, and smiles. “Fifteen-love.”
Sanada doesn’t know what to think during the game. Has Yukimura been holding back with the freshmen? It’s been three days since he last played one, when did he change that much? How? He looks too thin to be hitting balls faster than Yagyuu’s Laser Beam and heavier than a hadoukyou. Yukimura’s arms looked like they would break if he tried, but now Sanada searches for the muscles he must be developing again, Sanada searches for the speed, for the power, and instead he only finds-
-determination.
The crickets chirp and Sanada pants. Buses whiz by the other side of the school, the traffic noises carried across the empty school grounds. Yukimura’s trainers slap against the clay court, right right left, back, smash. He dashes to the net, across, back to the baseline. He feels like he’s flying, playing like this, playing with Yukimura.
Sanada wants to laugh.
Yukimura is only a stone-face. He grunts when the racket slams into the ball. His eyes will widen with a rising shot thrown across Sanada’s court, slapping the baseline, in by millimeters. His lip will curl when Sanada scores a point, scores a game, but nothing more.
Sanada has never taken an airplane before, but he thinks this is what flying must be like. This lightheaded feeling, this freedom, even through the dull, detached ache of his calves and his knees, the furious drumbeat of his heart.
Yukimura wins, 6-4.
Sanada flops onto the coach’s bench and guzzles his waterbottle. Yukimura stands in front of him. His back faces the floodlight and the front of his body is black and eclipsed, a halo around his face. “That was a good game,” Yukimura says, holding his hand out.
Sanada takes Yukimura’s hand and grips it gently. It is as sweaty and hot as his own, but it trembles slightly.
“We’ll take the Nationals,” Sanada says. Always win, Rikkai Dai.
“You backhand form looked sloppy,” Yukimura says. He sounds as cold as he did when he caught Sanada and Atobe on the courts. Sanada knew- and he does know that Rikkai doesn’t allow unofficial matches with other schools, but when cocky, arrogant Atobe Keigo from Hyoutei waltzed onto Rikkai school grounds, Sanada couldn’t resist the thrill of playing him again.
The high then was almost as much as the feeling of flight he has now.
He sits down beside Sanada and exhales heavily. They sit in silence and Yukimura tips his head up, staring into the indigo sky. The floodlight flickers off, engulfing them in darkness, but the weather and the game makes it feel warm and welcome, to be rid of the harsh fluorescent glare.
“I think I see a star,” Yukimura says quietly.
In his heart, Sanada makes a wish, but he doesn’t allow himself to think about it. Not with Yukimura here beside him, because in a way, it has almost come true already.
***
He’s forgotten to do his homework for the past week and this time he can’t ask Yukimura to write his English composition for him. The teachers don’t understand that tennis comes first, then school. They have it wrong.
Morning is practice is long. He runs to his first class. The teacher frowns when he walks in, five minutes later. “Please remove your cap, Sanada,” he says.
Sanada ignores the girls who giggle behind him as he tucks his cap into his school bag and takes his seat. He has more important things to worry about than math.
They have one last practice after school, regulars-only. A fast-paced round-robin of games, five minutes a piece. No one speaks except to call points. The balls smash and ping as they hit the ground, a pulsing effect of four simultaneous games starting to sound more like music than sport.
They walk to the bus stop in front of the school. Even Kirihara and Niou are silent.
Tomorrow the real games begin.
Four days of tennis. Three days pass with straight wins. 5-0: Round 1, Round 2, Quarterfinal. Semifinal. Yukimura sits as the reserve only for round 1. His comeback is glorious in round 2. The opponent from Murigaoka doesn’t take a single point and the game is finished under 13 minutes.
“Yukimura-buchou beat my record,” Kirihara says. “Heh.”
Seigaku waits for the finals, on Sunday. The rush of wins, the exhilaration of the courts, all this work has boiled down to one final match set in the morning. Yukimura smiles when he hears the results of the Seigaku-Shitenhoji semifinal. “I wanted to play Tezuka most of all,” he says.
“Echizen’s mine,” Kirihara insists. “You have to let me play him, buchou!”
“Tomorrow we take the championship,” Yukimura says.
The bus back to Rikkai is packed with regulars and other club members, so tight that Sanada can barely breathe. There are arms poking his stomach and elbows in his side and even the window that Jackal cranks open doesn’t do much with this many people. When they reach the school, Yukimura says, “You should sleep over at my house. Yours is so far from the train station, Sanada.”
Sanada pinches himself, waiting for the bus back to his own home. He’s not dreaming, but the hazy warmth inside makes him feel that way. Maybe he’s played too hard these last few days.
He barely notices his family when he returns home. His mother asks him about the games. His brother slaps his shoulder, which Sanada shrugs off. “I’m staying the night at Yukimura’s,” he says. “We have early matches tomorrow.”
He packs his tennis bag carefully. Three rackets. Two waterbottles. Two towels, freshly laundered by his mother. His uniform. Sanada stuffs a pair of pajamas and a toothbrush into the side pocket, too, and slings it over his shoulder.
“Good luck,” his grandfather says as Sanada walks out the door.
It’s late when he finally arrives at Yukimura’s house. Yukimura answers the door. “Are you hungry?” he asks.
They snack on fish crackers and cucumbers in Yukimura’s bedroom. The knots twisting in Sanada’s stomach tighten when he thinks about Seigaku. Always win, Rikkai Dai.
“We won’t lose to them twice,” he says.
Yukimura smiles. “They will be a good opponent for us.” His face goes blank as he stares at a piece of paper that Sanada recognizes as a roster. The spaces are blank. No names are entered yet, but the paper is dented with characters that have been erased, time and time again. “We will win, Sanada,” Yukimura says fatalistically.
Yukimura’s mother has rolled out a futon on the floor. Sanada takes it before Yukimura says otherwise. It’s not very late, but it feels like the middle of the night, the way Sanada’s body aches from three days straight of good, solid games. His toes tingle and his arms hang heavy like katana swords, and just as lifeless.
“Yukimura?” he asks in the dark. A pale stream of light flits under the doorway, the only light save for the dim glow behind the curtains of the window. “Why did you have me sleep here?”
“Your play looked tired, Sanada,” Yukimura murmurs from his bed. Sanada can’t see him from this angle on the floor. “Your bus route takes the longest. I want my players in top condition for the finals.”
He doesn’t have a hard time falling asleep. The futon here, even if it was dragged out of a storage closet, is thicker than the ones at home. Sanada feels as though his body is sinking down, down into it and it isn’t long before he’s asleep. But he wakes, sensing something is off.
He cracks an eye open. Blearily, he sees the numbers on Yukimura’s digital clock. Past one. Yukimura is sitting at his desk in the corner, a dim desk lamp turned on, illuminating only his hands and his face.
“Yukimura,” Sanada says. His voice sounds grave and grumbling. He coughs to clear his throat.
Yukimura turns around, a slight smile on his face. “Sorry to wake you, Sanada,” he says.
“That’s okay. What are you doing?” Sanada sits up as Yukimura turns the light off and steps across the room, careful to avoid the futon.
“I’m still not satisfied with the roster,” Yukimura says. The bed creaks under his weight when he crawls under the sheets. “I think Marui would better in doubles, although I’d prefer to have you and Renji in doubles, but Seigaku will have Fuji Shuusuke in singles 2 and I want to be sure we’ll win.”
“What about Niou, with Yagyuu and Jackal as doubles 1?”
Yukimura hums. “I thought of that, but Seigaku will have either Momoshiro or Kawamura as their alternate and if we need an alternate, I want someone who’s more of a powerplayer than Marui to counter them.” He sighs and rolls onto his side. Sanada stares up at Yukimura, who watches him with huge eyes, glowing like an animal’s.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping, too, and leave the scenarios to Renji?”
Yukimura says nothing for the longest while. Sanada thinks that Yukimura must have fallen asleep until he hears Yukimura whisper, “Oh, Sanada…”
He dreams that he is painting with the biggest calligraphy brush his father owns, a beautiful, big brush that dips into the black ink and runs smooth across the paper, like dark water in his hand. Sanada paints and paints, moving his hand, but the characters don’t appear and when he looks down, the paper has crumbled into a pool of ink.
Ink is everywhere. Everything disappears into it, a black hole ink pot. Yukimura stands in the middle. Ink laps at his body, up to his waist. He’s naked, Sanada knows that much, he can see that much. Yukimura’s skin is so pale and white, like rice paper against the black.
“I’ll save you,” he says.
Yukimura smiles and shakes his head. “I don’t need saving, Genichirou. Come and paint me. Will you paint my body? Everywhere?”
Sanada wakes with a gasp. He opens his eyes, but eyes stare back at him, blue and shining. “Good morning,” Yukimura says. “I was about to wake you. We need to get ready soon.”
Of all the days for this to happen, fate would have it today. He lies there for a moment, waiting for Yukimura to turn around, to leave him be. Sanada feels his body flush with warmth, his cock hard and heavy between his legs and he prays that he wasn’t moaning in his sleep during his dream, because he aches so much right now, if Yukimura doesn’t stop hovering over his shoulder, he will moan aloud.
The dream shakes him up. Tennis. Tennis. The Nationals. Always win, Rikkai Dai. It is his mantra in the shower, but it doesn’t stop him from finally sliding a hand down to his cock to touch, to ease the ache. Yukimura wants him to be in top form. As guilty as he feels for masturbating in Yukimura’s shower, he would feel guiltier if he let the lust pent up in his body and distract him from the game.
The game is everything. This championship is everything. What happens afterwards doesn’t matter.
For now.
The sun barely peeks over the edges of the high rise buildings when they meet the other regulars at the school. For this last day, Yukimura has somehow convinced the student’s council to let the tennis club rent a van, instead of making them take the subway train or a bus. Marui and Yagyuu sleep in their seats on the drive to the stadium. Yanagi and Yukimura sit together and finalize the roster based on a notebook of data.
Sanada keeps an eye on Niou, who seems to be lugging a strangely heavy and bulky tennis bag into the empty seat beside himself. He smirks when Sanada catches his eye. Sanada lets the matter simmer in the back of his mind. Whatever tricks Niou has up his sleeve, he doesn’t want to know just yet.