FIC: Rewind Forward (D1) 58/63
Title: Rewind Forward (58/63)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
On Sunday, Niou does his chores without a word. Dust, sweep, put away dishes and hang up the towels on the laundry hanger in the backyard. His mother gives him odd looks, but she says nothing.
He sits at his desk in his room all afternoon, hunched over his homework, silent and productive. His door is closed. The window is open. A hot summer breeze tickles his skin as he writes the literature assignment. The cicadas buzz as he works on math. The numbers dance across the page-carried here, subtracted there, flowing lines of formulas that have no feelings.
Kinda like Yagyuu.
His cellphone is switched off. The screen is black. There's no way in hell Niou is speaking to Yagyuu right now. He doesn't even want to think about Yagyuu. Math makes it easy for his mind to drift. Equations require thought-or at least enough thought to determine if this needs to be factored, or if that needs a substitution. Niou's pencil scratches the paper, soothing in the sound and the motions he makes with his hands, making the lines and curves and brackets.
He works until his hand cramps up. Niou leans back in his chair. He peels his arms off the edge of his desk-sweat glues them down. He blows at the hair in front of his eyes. Without any reason to go out, there's no reason to do anything with his hair. It's damp and limp, about how Niou feels. Listless. Stupid.
Niou scratches the back of his head. His scalp crawls. He looks at himself in the mirror. His black roots are starting to show again; he'll need to bleach his hair soon. The clock reads three-ish. The dead hour of the afternoon. The beam of sunlight on his window sill is so bright that the reflection bounces off Niou's wall, blinding and hot.
Bleach always makes his eyes water. As it creeps over his scalp, Niou hisses. His skin feels like its being eaten away, slowly and painfully. He grips the edge of the sink and grinds his teeth.
It also stinks.
But, the whiteness of his hair is worth it. Niou runs the faucet and pats his face off with a towel. He wipes the back of his neck, half expecting to see blood, but there's nothing. He makes faces at himself. His reflection purses and puckers its lips. His reflection waggles its eyebrows and says, "Nice."
Yanagi calls.
His mother hands Niou the phone. For a moment, his heart catches in his throat. When he hears Yanagi's voice, Niou exhales. He rolls his eyes.
"Seiichi's been trying to call you," Yanagi says.
"Tell him I don't know anything," Niou says.
"Hn."
"Yeah hn."
"Don't forget about this week," Yanagi says. Niou says whatever and hangs up. He doesn't particularly remember, but then he doesn't particularly care, either. It's probably some tennis practice, extra long, he'll hear Sanada rag about it tomorrow as it is.
Maybe he's feeling masochistic, or maybe he's just bored, but Niou turns his cellphone on just before supper. It makes a happy little sound and the screen pops up with a Hello message. Then, the dozen messages Niou has ignored, almost all from Yagyuu's number.
Or Yukimura-he's sent a couple messages. Niou deletes those after he chucks all of Yagyuu's. One, though, stands out.
Message from…Jackal?
Niou blinks.
hey hey were havin a party thing at my house 2nite just the team cm if ur comin! my moms cookin 4 us!
Um, no.
Niou deletes that message too.
He feels suitably antisocial and sullen. At the dinner table, Niou sits and stews. He glares at the rice. He glowers at the fish. He scowls at the pickles that were tasty last night. He ignores everything and anything said to him. His family looks dorkier than ever, sitting around in polo shirts and khaki shorts, all in varying shades of LOSER! with their glasses and bland little smiles. "Oh how was flower arranging class?" "It was nice, how was cram school?" "It was good, how was your golf meeting with those clients, father?"
Niou wants to vomit.
His stomach turns. He stands up and leaves, scraping his chair as loud as he can across the linoleum. The first and only words he says are, "I'm going to the park".
Then, he's gone.
The park is hotter than yesterday, because there is still a sliver of sunlight. It's a southern breeze, hot and sticky, that coats the courts. Niou dumps his tennisbag. He rubs his wrists, twisting the neoprene bands around. He takes a deep breath, but his stomach is faintly sore from today, from last night…He doesn't specifically remember doing something as pathetic as crying over Yagyuu, but…
Niou looks up across the courts. He sighs.
This Zeroshiki serve is going to be a waste of time. Niou's racket shakes. He can't even bounce the ball properly to serve. Instead, he tosses the ball and slams it across the net, seething through his teeth as the ball whips through the air. It arcs over the net, higher and higher until it curves over the top of the fence and smacks into one of the trees with a rustle different from the swishing wind.
Niou blows a raspberry. Puri. He's got eight balls left, three cans minus one now.
Yagyuu…
There's a cement wall at the far of the courts, the only place possible to practice any returns. Niou camps out by it, taking a moment to stand in the long shadows the wall casts. The first tiny insects of the evening are beginning to swarm above his head. They skitter across his arms, making Niou twitch and sneer.
Five days to the Nationals.
Tokyo will be even hotter and nastier. Niou slugs a ball against the wall. He steps back, rocks on his ankle and lobs a return, just low enough to skim the top of the wall and bounce back. Tezuka's not aggressive, and it takes all Niou has inside to stop himself from smashing the ball into a rubbery sludge against the cement.
Easy, easy, he thinks. Tezuka's a natural. Tezuka's not offensive like Sanada.
On a return, Niou swings his arm back and then a sharp, flashing pain pricks his shoulder muscle. His racket drops, the ball misses and shoots across the courts and Niou sucks in a breath. He squeezes his eyes shut and thinks, So that's Tezuka…
His arm hairs stand up. A wind whips up his hair, making his rattail lick the side of his neck. Niou stiffens. As the wind dissipates, he can hear the distinctive sound of footsteps walking across the court. Niou doesn't turn around. They can have his ball if they want it.
He walks over to his bag to grab the last canister of balls. The footsteps are coming closer and closer.
And then Niou hears his name.
His first name.
The canister drops to the ground. The balls spill out, rolling in three different directions.
Yagyuu picks one up. He holds it out to Niou.
Niou's entire body is frozen to the spot. Blood drains from his face, cold and congealing as it pools in his belly, and in his cock.
The predictable Yagyuu would apologize first.
The real Yagyuu says, "Here." When Niou doesn't take the ball-he doesn't move-Yagyuu picks the canister up. He walks across the court, footsteps echoing in the darkening evening, and he picks them up, one by one. Yagyuu's skin is browner than it was two days ago. Tokyo has given him a tan. His hair has purple tints to it, blamed on the deep violet in the sky, slowly being broken up with the first dim stars.
"I went to your house first, but your mom said you came here," Yagyuu says.
It would be perfectly justified, in Niou's opinion, to tell Yagyuu to "Fuck off".
But his mouth doesn't work.
Yagyuu reaches out, obviously realizing that Niou's not moving, and he touches Niou's wrist, right below the wristweight. This electric touch of Yagyuu's warm fingertips makes Niou hiss. He yanks his hand back.
"I'm busy," Niou says.
"I could help," Yagyuu says.
The flood of emotions returns. It's last night all over again and Niou has just found out that Yagyuu switched with someone else. Yagyuu shared their trick with someone else-someone from Seigaku, no less! Niou's knees shake. His knuckles feel cold and when he glances down, the skin is white. Niou is so tense that the tendons in his neck and wrist are tight, nearly ready to pop out of his skin and strangle the polite little smile off Yagyuu's face.
"No!" he says.
"Niou-kun-"
"Just fuck off, okay?" Niou shouts. He throws his racket on the ground. Yagyuu's jaw drops and his eyes widen, pupils dilating with shock as Niou's words echo into the night. A flock of crows flutters and caws and flies off across the courts, invisible behind the harsh fluorescent flood lights.
But the wind has stopped.
"If this is about Kaidoh-kun and I-"
"I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT!"
Niou shouts so hard that his body shakes. His legs are about ready to give out and drop him to the ground in a slumping, pathetic mess. His insides are in agony and Yagyuu's straining expressions and attempts to apologize are making things worse.
Why did you do it and ruin our trick? OUR illusion?!?
It was ours…
Yagyuu's glasses have slipped so far down his nose that they're almost falling off, but his eyes are exposed. They meet Niou's, searching for…whatever that Niou is not giving into. Yagyuu takes a step to the right. Niou darts to the left. He makes a dive for his tennisbag, to escape and go home, to get away from Yagyuu since Yagyuu won't go away, but Yagyuu is the same as him, in some ways.
Yagyuu grabs Niou's hand. He won't let go. He pulls Niou close with a strength that Niou never knew about, fast and furious and tight. Their chests touch. Yagyuu breathes on Niou's skin-his name, an apology, a question that Niou refuses to answer. Yagyuu's lips are so close, his voice smooth and sliding into Niou's ears as his hand slides across the back of Niou's neck…
"Don't," Niou says. His voice is choked. It hurts to speak. It hurts even more to rip his arm from Yagyuu's grasp. There are finger marks on his skin, red on pale. Yagyuu doesn't apologize for that.
When Niou does walk away, Yagyuu stands there, stiff and still.
Niou walks three blocks until the park is completely hidden from view behind a low rise apartment block. He leans against the wall of a parking garage. The cement is damp and cool. He's shaking so hard that his lungs hurt and scratch on his ribs, his spine.
A lone car drives by. Niou waits. No long shadows approach. No voice murmuring his name. No Yagyuu following him this time.
Niou almost wishes he would have.
***
He dreams about eating dinner with Yagyuu's mom. She rubs his head and calls him, "Masaharu" but her voice is pure Yagyuu.
Niou wakes up. His sheets are messed and it's overcast outside. What a crappy way to start the day.
The streets are empty as he walks to school, cutting through the back roads. There is a sense of peace walking along the road and listening to his sneakers swish in the long, weedy grasses. Instant ramen and three pieces of dry toast sit in his stomach. Niou pops into the Familymart close to the school campus.
He can see Jackal and Marui's heads peeking over the top of an aisle.
"Hey, did you get my message?" Jackal asks.
Niou grabs an energy drink from the cooler. He raises his eyebrows and gives Jackal a look. Jackal raises his eyebrows right back at Niou.
"Yagyuu left early to tell you about it, but maybe he didn't find you…?"
Niou isn't taking the bait. He reaches into his pocket. Two hundred yen, just enough to wake up for laps with the taste of gym socks and caffeine in his mouth.
"Yay! They have it!" Marui squeals. He holds up a chocolate bar and dances, like he's got ants in his pants. Niou sneers. He's not in the mood for the fatty today and the fatty seems more than content to ignore Niou, too-though not without giving him the hairy eye and a middle finger first.
Niou shrugs.
Marui squirms.
"Look, Jackal! They have the limited edition cucumber KitKat! Can I borrow five hundred? I wanna buy them all and-"
It's unfortunate that automatic doors don't slam. Niou wouldn't have minded slamming the door in the fatty's face to shut him up. Niou's temple hurts. His mind rings with the shrill sound of Marui's shrieks of delight and the crinkle of his candy wrappers.
Gross, Niou thinks.
Laps, stretches, swing practice-it's the same old. Sasuga Rikkai. No wonder Seigaku upset the Regionals. Niou's getting bored stiff with the regimented practice. Even Sanada, usually so content to follow Yukimura's each and every whim, asks if they can bring out the ball machine.
"Our benchwork is lacking," Sanada says.
"And the ball machine isn't going to help," Yukimura says.
"Yukimura!"
"Do you want laps, Sanada?"
Sanada sucks his lips in and makes a face. Niou can't stop the snicker that rises to his lips. When Sanada glares at him, Niou doubles over with laughter. The wonderchibi looks from Sanada to Niou, and starts to laugh too.
"We're not going to get any better with unnatural moves and fancy tennis," Yukimura says. He paces in front of the team, all lined up to face him. Yukimura takes a deep breath. Without the glaring sun, his eyes are dark and stony. His jaw is as tight as Sanada's ass and Niou wonders if Sanada has passed that stick from his ass to Yukimura's.
"We have to be better than Seigaku. We have to have better discipline than Seigaku. It's our National title to maintain. If you want that machine, Sanada," Yukimura narrows his eyes, "then I want to see you play me first and prove that you deserve it."
"So basically," Marui whispers, "Yukimura just wants someone to play with."
Jackal leans over and says, "That, and I think Akaya broke the machine last week."
Niou looks at Kirihara. Kirihara must have been listening too, because his face flushes and he starts to laugh nervously. "Eheh…"
Niou slings an arm around Kirihara. His shoulders are as wide as Yagyuu's, but there's more meat on them and his body is much, much warmer. Kirihara wiggles. He stinks like grass and Niou notices that the kid already has grass stains on his knees. "How much do you owe the club for the machine?" Niou asks.
Kirihara stops squirming for a second. His painted grin slips and he sticks his bottom lip out. "I made a deal with buchou," he hisses. "And you're not supposed to tell fukubuchou, senpai."
"Sanada would be pissed," Niou says. He lets his voice carry over the courts. Sanada pauses mid-step until Yukimura calls his name.
"Look, my sister's a mechanic, okay? She's gonna fix it later. Like, after the Nationals."
Niou looks at him.
Kirihara rips his head out from under Niou's hold. He scrambles to his feet and shakes his hair out. "Oi, senpai! Where's Yagyuu-senpai, anyway?"
Stupid wonderchibi!
A dark grin slides over Kirihara's face. He knows he's touched a nerve and he cackles under his breath. "Yagyuu-senpai said he'd play a game with me, but since he's not here, you're pretty close to him, right? Can you pretend to be Yagyuu-senpai, Niou-senpai?"
"Shut up," Niou says.
"Man, P-M-S today, ne?" Marui whistles.
"Stuff it, asshole!" Niou snaps. To Kirihara, Niou chucks up his chin and looks down his nose. "Fine. Let's go, kouhai."
Kirihara skips to the net.
He also skips when he wins.
Niou rubs his calf. There's ball burn on the skin and his leg hair is singed. He limps his way to the net, where Kirihara stops jumping from side to side. Taking the chance, Niou swings his racket and smacks Kirihara square in the arm.
The kid screams. No one really notices, except Jackal, who just shakes his head and sighs. Niou gets a snicker out of Yanagi, which almost surprises him, except it doesn't really. Yanagi's as sick as those other two monsters.
Kirihara sniffles. "Ne, senpai," he says, "Your moves were almost like Tezuka's!"
Niou says "Really?" and Kirihara nods.
Niou looks up across the courts. He relishes the thwok sounds of the balls-a half-dozen simultaneous games blurring into one. He relishes the full, burning sensation in his lungs from working hard, and even the burn on his leg. His body hums, alive and beating with the desire to play another good, solid game of tennis. Niou could go on all afternoon like this: nothing serious, just tennis.
This Tezuka thing might work after all.
"Nice," Niou says.
***
They're all breaking for lunch when Yagyuu shows up. He's dressed in his uniform already, but he lacks the red face and dripping sweat the rest of them have.
"Kebab?" Jackal offers Marui his bento. Marui beams and swipes two.
"So you decide to show up," Yukimura says. Yagyuu might be standing up, but Yukimura's got the higher ground from below. Yagyuu bows his head and apologizes.
"I accept whatever punishment you see fit, Yukimura-kun," he says. "I was busy doing something with my father this morning."
"He just wanted to sleep in," Kirihara grumbles. "That's not fair."
Niou says nothing. Yagyuu's got purple-ish bags under his eyes-but Kirihara wouldn’t notice that because he's not looking at Yagyuu's face, he's looking at the strips of gyudon in Sanada's bento box.
Niou touches his mole. He touches his lips with his fingers, an unconscious reaction to Yagyuu when he glances over at Niou and the fact there's a patch of grass beside Niou almost big enough for someone else.
"There's only four days left," Yukimura says. "We don't have time for punishment-"
"So much for discipline.." Jackal whispers.
"-but I want 100 laps and 100 push-ups."
Yagyuu nods. He sets his bag down. "Of course, Yukimura-kun. Thank you-"
"And a game with me."
Yagyuu's eyes nearly pop out of his head.
Sanada starts to choke on his gyudon. Niou stops rubbing his chin. It's Yanagi, this time, who says "Harsh."
Yukimura just smiles.
***
If Niou wasn't angry, he might feel kinda bad for Yagyuu.
He kicks Yagyuu's corpse in the leg. Yagyuu is too polite to moan, but his back does twitch.
Serves you right, megane dork, Niou thinks.
The crows laugh at Yagyuu, too: it's not just Niou.
Yukimura sits on the bench and wraps a new length of grip tape around his racket. For all his talk, Yukimura rubs his wrist and frowns at his racket when he tests the strings. Beside him, Yanagi murmurs something about Yagyuu and Yukimura's frown deepens.
For a moment, Niou's insides are warm with something almost like pride but then he remembers he's angry. He jabs Yagyuu again with his sneaker, harder and with a sneer on his face.
Take that!
"Niou-kun…" Yagyuu says. If it were anyone else, they'd be gasping. But Yagyuu, gentleman Yagyuu, saves up enough breath to be coherent.
Niou leaves him lying there to eat court dust. His own throat is dry, too. Niou tries to swallow a horked up wad of mucus, but it won't go down.
The sun makes vain attempts to peek out from the streaks of clouds when they're finishing up. Niou does his token sweep of a court with a broom. He pushes the leaves and twigs and bits of scum and gum wrappers onto Marui's section, right beside his. Good enough for Niou. Marui's too busy talking at one of the cheerleaders who pops by with a shy smile and a box full of cookies to notice, anyway.
Data Master happens to be sweeping up closest to the club house. Niou darts inside, but he can't avoid Yanagi on the way out.
Yanagi looms in front of him. His eyebrows have crawled up under his bowl cut. "Don't forget about this week," he says.
Niou has no idea what the hell Yanagi is going on about, so he says, "Whatever" and slings his bag over his shoulder.
"Later," he says.
Yanagi keeps smiling in that creepy, omniscient way that sends cold curls of nerves straight to Niou's middle. It puts Niou on edge and he's glad to lose Yanagi as soon as he walks through the gate to the courts and out onto the campus green. Without the sun it feels later than it probably is. Niou's stomach growls. The bento at lunch wasn't all that great-lukewarm tamagoyaki, kinda gross in retrospect.
And then Niou's Yagyuusense starts blaring its alarm loud and clear.
The footsteps behind him.
The frantic race of his pulse.
The long shadow creeping up on him, with the smooth head of hair and bumps of glasses that wouldn't fool even a blind megane.
And the fact Yagyuu says his name.
Niou jumps over the barrier at the school gate.
Yagyuu says his name again.
The bus won't come until half-past. The train station is a good five blocks away and the crosswalk light is red with a steady stream of traffic blocking the way of any thoughts of jaywalking.
Niou's trapped.
His hair puffs up, bristling over his scalp. Summer sweat drips down his back and neck. Niou jumps to the right toward the direction of the bus stop-
Right into Yagyuu, too.
***
"Let's get food," Yagyuu says. "Yakiniku, my treat."
No fourteen year old boy could resist.
"I hate you," Niou mutters.
They walk parallel to one of the canals, in the vague direction of a large shopping centre across from the downtown center. The sun reveals itself, more and more, until it's strong enough to create golden shadows on the water; the molten surface reflects in Niou's eyes and Yagyuu's glasses.
Seagulls troll the canal. A weak breeze blows the smell of fish around. Bitterness fills Niou's mouth. It makes his chest cave in and his throat tight. The back of his head is damp at the collar with sweat and the air stirs the fine hairs on his arms.
Yagyuu reaches into his bag. He lights a cigarette as they walk. He exhales and taps the ashes off into the canal. Niou watches them dissipate into nothing.
"Enjoying yourself?" he asks. His voice is harder than he'd intended, but Yagyuu deserves it. He's smoking something stronger today and it stinks. Niou walks on ahead. "Chimneylungs," he mumbles.
Yagyuu's got some skill-and nerve-to be holding a smoke in one hand and the strap of his tennisbag in the other. Besides, they're in public and not too far from school.
How stupid can you be, Yagyuu? You fucking idiot!
Yagyuu's bag slaps against his back and his sneakers slap against the pavement when he runs to catch up with Niou. His breath stinks when he talks. Niou turns away to the canal. He watches as the cigarette butt arcs over the railing into the water.
Yagyuu's hand touches his arm. Niou can feel it shaking. He blinks and shifts his eyes.
"Let me explain," Yagyuu says.
"Don't care," Niou says. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and shoves Yagyuu off.
"Don't lie," Yagyuu says. He won't let go of Niou and his closeness is terrifying. Yagyuu's bag slips off his shoulder, landing to the ground with a dull crunch of equipment, but Niou is trapped between his bag, the canal railing and Yagyuu.
And Yagyuu's knee is wedged between Niou's.
Niou's pulse picks up, rushing and racing through his ears. He swallows hard. There are tiny drops of sweat along Yagyuu's forehead and on his top lip. Niou bites his bottom lip. He refuses to think about how salty Yagyuu's mouth would be. Right now. Niou exhales, but he can't suck in enough air to make his mind stop whirling and floating off to fantasies of Yagyuu, pushing him harder into the railing and rubbing their dicks together-
It's so close. Niou's shorts are tight. He's panting and he can't hold it back. He forces his head away, but Yagyuu's eyes pin him down tighter than the long fingers on his wrist.
"What if I said," Yagyuu murmurs, "that switching with Kaidoh was better than switching with you?"
Niou's stomach plummets. His heart sinks in his chest, landing on top of his intestines with a leaden, frozen kick. It takes Niou a moment to process Yagyuu's words, which echo over and over again in his ears, crushing in their finality.
"Asshole!" Niou spits in Yagyuu's face. "You fucker, you-"
Yagyuu slams Niou's wrist into the railing. Niou grinds his teeth. The pain stings his eyes. Yagyuu makes him ache all over.
"It wasn't!" Yagyuu insists. His face loses that hard edge it had a moment before. He shakes his head. His fingers loosen on Niou's wrist, but they won't let go. He wraps them around the skin, stroking with the barest of touches. Niou shivers. His knees are turning into jelly and nothing except Yagyuu is keeping him up.
"It meant nothing," Yagyuu says. "Niou-kun, you're the only-"
Yagyuu stops. He looks away, over Niou's shoulder and he sighs. His hips are pressed to Niou's and Yagyuu pushes them forward, just enough to make Niou gasp when he feels that tell-tale hardness on his thigh. Niou whimpers. He cringes at how pathetic he is, but Yagyuu's erection is making his body sink more and more into believing Yagyuu and forgiving Yagyuu and kissing those gross, nicotine-stained, sweaty lips…
"Let me kiss you right now," Yagyuu whispers.
"No!"
Niou's eyes are wide open. Yagyuu shifts his leg, brushing Niou's erection, which makes him moan, Niou can't stop that and he hates himself for it.
"What?" Yagyuu asks. "I didn't say anything."
Now Niou is the idiot.
"Just buy the yakiniku," he mutters. "Megane dork."
***
He really, really wants to be angrier at Yagyuu than he is.
Amazing what a couple platters of beef will do for a relationship.
A friendship.
A partnership.
A whatever-the-hell-this-is-ship.
Niou rolls onto his side, sprawled out across the tatami floor in their little booth. He moans and clutches his stomach. His waistband is tight and his stomach is about to explode, but there are two or three pieces of beef left, lonely and delicious and waiting to be cooked.
It isn't just any beef, either.
It's amazing beef. Good stuff, from Kobe. Marbled with white fat that sizzles and spits on the grill, dripping down Niou's chopsticks as he lifts it to his lips.
Yagyuu holds out the tongs. "Would you like to do the honours?" He fixes his glasses.
It hurts to grunt. It hurts to roll back over to a sitting position. Niou's eyes are bleeding from his skull, popping out from the food stuffed into his body. Somehow, he manages to take the tongs. With a belch (and a grimace from Yagyuu, beautiful and worth Niou's effort to disgust him), Niou lays the last three strips of beef on the lattice of the grill. They make a hissing sound more lovely than anything else Niou knows of. And when the little black bits from meat before start to catch fire and burn, the flames dance in Niou's eyes.
Yagyuu stirs at their bowl of bibimbap. He picks out the mushrooms and chews on them as Niou flips the beef over.
"Say, Niou-kun?"
Niou looks at him. I'm still angry with you, Yagyuu. He makes a point to glare, but it's difficult with the beef so close, so nearly finished that his mouth is watering for those last few bites…
"Should we meet at the train station tomorrow?"
Niou grabs a piece of beef with the tong and dunks it into the remnants of his sauce dish. "Eh?"
"For the team trip?"
Team trip? What the hell are you talking about, Yagyuu?
Yagyuu's lips quirk. He sets the long, thin Korean spoon down on the table. It makes a little clink. He shifts his legs, then settles back down on his knees. "Maybe you forgot about the permission forms Sanada-kun handed out last week."
Somehow, Niou is skeptical of this. Then again, he can't remember much about last week except the heat melting his muscles and endless practices under the blinding sunlight. Summer days meld into the next, dripping like the sweat down their faces and the hair in their eyes. They've been so focused on the Nationals that it's no wonder no one has mentioned this team trip to him until Yagyuu does now.
"So what are we doing?" Niou asks, mouth open, food half-chewed. He clutches his stomach as the beef slides down his throat. A long, drawn-out moan escapes his lips.
The beef is orgasmically wonderful.
Niou is practically half-hard from the sensation of the sweet-sour-salty beef on his tongue, between his teeth, flooding his sensations with the most delicious tastes…
"Yukimura said that if Seigaku can have a training camp, then Rikkai can do it better," Yagyuu says. "Would you like to meet tomorrow at the station by your house at 10:30?"
Just to piss Yagyuu off, Niou doesn't answer. Yagyuu waits. And waits. Niou drags himself to finish the last two pieces of meat, the very last one nearly making him gag from the effort of trying to swallow it down. Yagyuu sighs heavily, obviously getting it, before he grabs his bags and goes to pay the bill.
"8200 yen," the cashier says.
Niou raises his eyebrows. Expensive! He watches Yagyuu pull a 10 000 yen note from his wallet and he can't help but feel a little green. Yagyuu's parents must buy his love. Niou's lucky to scrape a 1000 yen for the arcade, once or twice a week.
But he says nothing. Niou leans over to grab his own bags when he sees a pamphlet lying on the floor. It must have come from Yagyuu's school bag, which covered the same spot the last couple hours. Niou turns it over. The front is covered with glossy photos of green mountains and rural temples, endless stairs leading up to misty, cedar halls.
Welcome to Gumma! in red letters splashes across the top.
Niou opens the pamphlet. Inside, there are photographs of hot springs and old-fashioned onsens, and even an ad for an amusement park in the middle of nowhere.
And then a hand snatches the pamphlet away.
Niou looks up and Yagyuu is stuffing the pamphlet into his bag. "That's my mom's," Yagyuu says. His voice cracks on the word "mom", but it lacks the usual bitterness he has when talking about her.
"Whatever," Niou says.
The sun has long set. The city lights are out in full-force, a barrage of neon signs and lit up skyscrapers. Across the downtown, to the east, the tall spires of MM21 twinkle, stretching forever into the heavens above.
Niou walks ahead, vaguely in the direction of home, sorta along one of the dozens of seaside parks. There is no one but him and Yagyuu and couples, all holding hands or walking close together, hands around hips or shoulders. Niou turns right at the sound of leaves rustling, muffled giggles and a little gasp in between wet, nasty noises. It's not that dark with the harbour filled with boats, illuminating the black waters. Niou can see a couple of people, maybe in university, necking in the bushes. The guy has his hand down the chick's shirt and she's got her hands around his neck.
"Gross," he mutters.
Jealous?
Niou refuses to answer the voice in his head. The platters of beef sit heavy and solid in his stomach and his waistband is uncomfortably tight. The fatty must feel this way on a regular basis. Niou would rather roll under one of those benches with the homeless guys and moan. Instead, he keeps walking, wincing one step ahead of Yagyuu, lest Yagyuu think Niou regretted eating all that yakiniku.
He doesn't.
The park gives way into rows of suburban houses, interspersed with fewer and fewer apartment blocks the further they walk. The harbour disappears. The wide tracks of lawn and trees morph into quiet side streets off the main highways. Niou crosses the crosswalk. He walks past a conbini, then cuts down toward another canal, following the cement pavement. Yagyuu follows him.
Now, there really isn’t anyone else around. Even the seagulls have gone to sleep, clustered along the edge of the dark water.
"You're coming tomorrow, right?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou's footsteps stop for a beat, the pace broken by his hesitance. He does not have to answer that question. Yagyuu still hasn't answered his.
Niou can play this new game, if Yagyuu wants to keep up this volley of meaningless small talk.
"Is Kaidoh coming?" Niou asks. Your new best friend…
It hurts to swallow. It hurts to breathe, too, when Yagyuu walks ahead and into Niou's path, cutting him off from escape. Niou is trapped, and the pavement seems to buckle under his feet, making him off-balance and dizzy. He's stuck between the canal railing and a cement retaining wall.
"Get out of my way," he hisses.
Yagyuu's face is a kaleidoscope of emotion: twisted hurt and pained confusion, contorting anger and pursed lips. For all that he keeps himself in check, he's doing a shit job now. "Stop that!" Yagyuu shouts. His knuckles crack when he balls his fist. Niou bites his tongue to stop from flinching. His legs are shaking as bad as Yagyuu now, but Yagyuu isn't repeating this afternoon.
"It was my idea, okay, Niou-kun? I suggested it and Kaidoh-kun went along and it had nothing to do with you. If I knew it bothered you that much, I wouldn't have bothered!"
Yagyuu's breathing hard and erratic. He exhales and runs his hand through his hair. It falls back on his head, his part messed up. Niou pushes down the urge to reach out and fix it. This Yagyuu is in his face, seething and sneering and telling him off for being this way and Niou doesn't know what to do.
This isn't the usual Yagyuu he knows how to handle. This is that other, scarier Yagyuu who played on the courts as him last month.
"Kaidoh-kun is not my friend. You are! What we did meant nothing! I thought you might have laughed when I told you the story, but I can see that you can't get over the fact I played a one-off game with Kaidoh-kun to protect our team." Yagyuu makes a noise, an angry grunt before he goes on. Yagyuu closes his eyes and his voice drops a thousand notches into something just above a whisper.
"I know what we did was special for you, Niou-kun. It was our trick. My playing with Kaidoh-kun doesn't change it."
It does! Niou wants to say. But he can't say anything because Yagyuu is touching him again. Yagyuu is looking at him with big, myopic eyes that seem to glow orange under the streetlamps. He can feel Yagyuu's breath on his skin, just that much warmer than the air to be noticeable.
Yagyuu tugs on Niou's rat tail. Niou sucks in a breath. A shiver runs down his spine, starting at the back of his neck where the hair meets his skin. He stiffens. Yagyuu leans in close. It's going to be a repeat of that day, after the beach, when Yagyuu kissed him at the bus stop. Niou's heart flutters, doki doki doki doki, and blood rushes to his face, his mouth, tingling with the anticipation of meeting Yagyuu's…
It feels like forever since they've kissed.
Niou's arms are slack at his sides. He knows he could reach up, maybe, and touch Yagyuu's back, to feel Yagyuu's move as he breathes Niou in, but he's rooted to the spot and it's getting harder and harder to think. Yagyuu seems to take ages to move closer. Time is in slow-motion as Yagyuu leans, achingly slowly, toward Niou.
"Masa-"
The moment is ruined by the sudden crash and frantic clang of something jumping into a dumpster, the metallic sounds ringing into the black night along with a cat's plaintive yowling.
"SUMI! SUMI WHERE ARE YOU?" someone yells from one of the houses. The cat jumps again, repeating the clangs and crunching of paws on garbage and tin cans rolling into alleyways.
Yagyuu clears his throat. He steps away first.
Niou wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. It feels like Yagyuu kissed his lips, the way they tingle, all numb and used like that, but his hand is dry of saliva.
"I haven't forgiven you, you know," he says.
Yagyuu nods. "Mn." He sighs and looks up at the sky. The suburban lights hide whatever moon might be out tonight. A scooter drives by, its engine revving as it cuts through a red light.
Home isn't that far away. The walk cuts the pain from Niou's belly into something more manageable, a dull weight inside instead of that overstuffed, Marui-like sensation of waddling and wincing.
Usually, Niou is the one to latch onto Yagyuu and invite himself over, opportunistic and annoying. Tonight, though, Yagyuu is the one who walks past the bus stop, who walks past the turn off for the train station, who follows Niou through the streets of middle-class suburban Kanagawa until the slight incline of his road.
Only then does Yagyuu stop. He shifts his tennisbag strap on his shoulder. It rustles. The wind picks up and licks at Niou's ears, ruffling his hair and the leaves of the dripping trees and vines spilling out from private gardens onto the pavement.
"May I…?"
Niou grunts.
"Thank you," Yagyuu says. He sounds relieved, but when Niou pushes the gate open into the front yard, the porch light makes Yagyuu's skin look a shade of green. He's sweating at the temples and under his glasses. Yagyuu pinches the bridge of his nose, but his glasses slide right back down. He wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, bunching it up instead of folding it.
Odd, Niou thinks. He pushes the latch on the front door and shouts, "Yo!"
"You're home," his mom says, before she's even at the door. Her face breaks into a smile when she sees Yagyuu behind Niou. Yagyuu stands stiff and sweaty on the other side of the threshold. "Ah! Please come in, Yagyuu-kun."
Niou's mom is still standing in the hallway when Yagyuu says-in a not too quiet voice-"Are you going to ask?"
Niou's mom smiles in that dorky megane way that makes Niou want to crawl somewhere deep and dark in the underground shopping centre and hide. "Ask us what, Masaharu?"
Niou looks at Yagyuu and rolls his eyes. "There's some sort of tennis camp tomorrow. Can I go?"
His mom blinks. "Don't you think you're asking us awfully late? You were just groun-"
"Look, we've been really busy practicing!" Niou says. His face is hot because he knows exactly what she was going to say. You don't need to talk about me being grounded! He glares at his mom. Stupid megane mother! Don't talk about that in front of Yagyuu!
"We just got the forms last week," Yagyuu says. "We're leaving tomorrow but we'll be back Thursday for the matsuri festival. Our coach will be chaperoning blah blah blah blah."
Of course, Niou's parents listen to whatever Yagyuu tells them about this camping tennis trip. It's more information than Niou was ever told-though, come to think of it, he sorta remembers Yanagi talking about something. Niou rubs his chin and he taps his mole. His mom smiles at Yagyuu, who smiles at her in a polite, bland way.
They sit in Niou's room. He rifles through his drawers, tossing some underpants (that smell clean) and some t-shirts into a bag. Yagyuu sits in the chair at Niou's desk, where he was just a couple nights before, doing his damndest to forget about Yagyuu and the fact he was pissed as hell. Now, the tension slackens, bit by bit. The beef helped.
Niou rummages through his closet, looking for parts of clean tennis uniforms, or, failing that, a pair of sweatpants or shorts from gym class. "So," he says, back turned from Yagyuu, although he can listen to Yagyuu touching his class notes and math homework, "where is this place?"
Gumma?
Niou smirks.
Yagyuu makes a noise. Then, he says, "Yamanashi."
That's not Gumma.
"Really," Niou says.
"That's what the handout said," Yagyuu says.
Niou throws a winter blazer out of the way and digs deeper into a pile of forgotten clothes. There, at the bottom of the stack, a pair of old shorts. He holds them up. Probably be okay. He hasn't grown that much since second year.
Niou steps out of his closet and over the pile of clothes. In better light, he can see that the shorts maybe aren't as big as he thought. He holds them up to his front a second time and frowns. He leans down to sort through the mess of clothes from this past week-next to the pile from his closet-to give to his mom to wash when the chair creeks. Yagyuu stands up. He takes two steps to Niou and pushes his shoulder. It's hard and sudden enough that Niou rolls to the floor, landing halfway onto his bed.
The other half Yagyuu makes up for.
He's so close that the heat returns to Niou's cheeks. He struggles to sit up, to inch away from Yagyuu (still mad! Kinda!) and Yagyuu lets him. They sit next to each other on Niou's bed. In the moment, Niou is hyperaware of that strange, slightly musky smell from his sheets and it makes him cringe; he's embarrassed for all the wet dreams that seem to crash down onto his shoulders right now.
The fact Yagyuu's nostrils twitch only make him wince more. Yagyuu can smell his gross sheets and why was Niou so dumb enough not to toss them into the washing machine this morning before he left? Niou kicks himself inside. The beef from dinner churns in his stomach, causing hot bile to scorch his throat.
Wind swishes through the fingerling branches of the tree in the back yard. The A/C rattles and Niou holds his breath. He leans forward to stand up when Yagyuu says, "You have a bit of a sunburn, Niou-kun."
Niou turns his head. Long fingers brush across his cheek, touching the flush on his skin. Niou tries to swallow, but his tongue catches.
Yagyuu says something. Niou doesn't hear it. All of the feeling in his body settles on the clammy coolness of Yagyuu's palm, splayed across his face, touching the side, the shell of his ear, all the way down to his jaw. Niou's collar is too tight. There is sweat dribbling down his face and his mouth slackens. He glances down, unwilling to look at Yagyuu as he speaks words that Niou's body is unable to hear because there is nothing, right now, except for the thud thud thud of his heart.
His dick is hard. His nipples stiffen. He's reaching up before he fully realizes. It's like tennis-he has to act without thought, only this is completely different too. He touches Yagyuu's wrist. He should say, "No, my family's here".
Instead, Niou lets his hand close around Yagyuu's wrist. The wristweight is the same as his own, blocking the contact of skin-to-skin, but when Niou moves, Yagyuu does too and that hand on his cheek spreads to cover his lips.
Niou gasps.
Yagyuu's fingers loosen, falling away from Niou's cheek. Niou leans closer, brings himself to that palm on his lips. He opens his mouth, a half-kiss to Yagyuu's salty palm, and he's gone as soon as Yagyuu's free hand touches the back of his neck.
Yes…yes…
"Maybe it isn't a sunburn…" Yagyuu murmurs. Niou makes a noise in the back of his throat. He should be embarrassed at the little whimper, the broken mewl, but he's more focused on the contours of Yagyuu's palm. Under his tongue, the salty of Yagyuu's skin is better than the yakiniku. Niou closes his eyes.
The palm is replaced by a mouth.
And this time, Niou does moan. Yagyuu's tongue is wet and soft on his at first, then he pushes harder, deeper until Niou can't breathe, can't do anything except push back. Yagyuu bites his top lip. His glasses bump Niou's face, until Yagyuu takes them off. Niou opens his eyes, but Yagyuu is fast. His pupils blacken before Niou's eyes flutter closed a second time. He can't look at Yagyuu when Yagyuu is that intense, blinding and consuming and sucking the breath, the movement from his body until Niou is left as nothing except a puddle of sludge, only his lips moving.
He makes breathy little "ah!"s. They sound pathetic in his ears, but Yagyuu pushes him down onto the bed anyway. It groans under their weight. Niou groans under Yagyuu's weight. His legs widen, Yagyuu's knee wedges between and he digs his hands into Niou's neck as he licks the other side.
"Ah!" Niou's toes curl. Electric shivers race down his spine. His dick swells, rubbing against Yagyuu when Yagyuu shifts. His hair tickles the side of Niou's face, spidery-thin strands clinging to the saliva trails. Niou arches his back and he can't stop this desperate bucking against Yagyuu. Rub harder, rub more, kiss me just a little higher in that spot that makes me-
"Niou-kun," Yagyuu murmurs. His words are pressed into Niou's skin, kissed and licked from the patterns Yagyuu's tongue makes.
Niou whimpers. He twitches. Yagyuu drags his teeth over Niou's neck. A hot hand creeps under the hem of Niou's shirt and he sucks his stomach in from the shocking pressure. His balls are so tight. Yagyuu's thrusting, just faintly, as he dips his head down and kisses Niou's shoulder, right where it meets his neck and Yagyuu's hands keep moving, keep searching lower and lower until Niou feels his waistband pull away from his skin because those fingers are crawling lower and he's shaking, trembling, his thighs are squeezing and Yagyuu keeps kissing him, frantic and hard and he'll leave marks and Niou keeps moaning and the tightness keeps twisting inside, more and more and-
"Stop!"
Niou shifts his head. The back of his hair is damp against his pillow. His hands are splayed to the sides. It takes all his concentration to remember to breathe normally because his heart is about to explode and his veins will burst from the furious pulse of blood through his body. He listens for a moment. There is nothing-no parents, no siblings-just the sound of Yagyuu's harsh breathing and the air conditioning.
Yagyuu puts his glasses back on.
"All right," he says. His voice is distant. He pulls his hand out from Niou's waistband. Niou bites his lip. The warm hand is replaced in an instant with cold reality.
He's scared of going further.
Niou closes his eyes. He hangs his head.
So much for being confident about this last week.
Yagyuu says, "Here." He touches Niou's hair, grabbing the back and tugging softly. Niou looks up and Yagyuu's got his tongue between his teeth as the hair elastic snaps, pushed back up to Niou's neck.
Niou doesn't say thanks. His face feels hot enough as is. The clock reads nine; Yagyuu flips his cellphone open. His hands shake and the phone charm dangling from his cell jingles a little.
"I should go," Yagyuu says. "I'll see you tomorrow." He starts to stand, but Niou grabs his arm, pulling Yagyuu back down, half on top of him again. Yagyuu looks at Niou, his mouth parting.
It would be so easy to give into that…
Inside, Niou steels himself. He shakes his head and touches Yagyuu himself, fixing Yagyuu's collar. Niou pops out the one corner that was folded down from their kissing. He smirks when Yagyuu blinks at him.
"Megane dork," he mutters.
***
To: 柳生比呂士
is sanada bringin the balls tomorrow? lol
Niou snickers to himself. He rolls over in bed to turn out the light. His cellphone sings with a response just as he stretches toward his lamp.
He reads Yagyuu's message and he's bend over the mattress, clutching his sides to stop himself from laughing out loud.
Yukimura-kun has Sanada-kun's balls. I'm sure he'll bring them.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
On Sunday, Niou does his chores without a word. Dust, sweep, put away dishes and hang up the towels on the laundry hanger in the backyard. His mother gives him odd looks, but she says nothing.
He sits at his desk in his room all afternoon, hunched over his homework, silent and productive. His door is closed. The window is open. A hot summer breeze tickles his skin as he writes the literature assignment. The cicadas buzz as he works on math. The numbers dance across the page-carried here, subtracted there, flowing lines of formulas that have no feelings.
Kinda like Yagyuu.
His cellphone is switched off. The screen is black. There's no way in hell Niou is speaking to Yagyuu right now. He doesn't even want to think about Yagyuu. Math makes it easy for his mind to drift. Equations require thought-or at least enough thought to determine if this needs to be factored, or if that needs a substitution. Niou's pencil scratches the paper, soothing in the sound and the motions he makes with his hands, making the lines and curves and brackets.
He works until his hand cramps up. Niou leans back in his chair. He peels his arms off the edge of his desk-sweat glues them down. He blows at the hair in front of his eyes. Without any reason to go out, there's no reason to do anything with his hair. It's damp and limp, about how Niou feels. Listless. Stupid.
Niou scratches the back of his head. His scalp crawls. He looks at himself in the mirror. His black roots are starting to show again; he'll need to bleach his hair soon. The clock reads three-ish. The dead hour of the afternoon. The beam of sunlight on his window sill is so bright that the reflection bounces off Niou's wall, blinding and hot.
Bleach always makes his eyes water. As it creeps over his scalp, Niou hisses. His skin feels like its being eaten away, slowly and painfully. He grips the edge of the sink and grinds his teeth.
It also stinks.
But, the whiteness of his hair is worth it. Niou runs the faucet and pats his face off with a towel. He wipes the back of his neck, half expecting to see blood, but there's nothing. He makes faces at himself. His reflection purses and puckers its lips. His reflection waggles its eyebrows and says, "Nice."
Yanagi calls.
His mother hands Niou the phone. For a moment, his heart catches in his throat. When he hears Yanagi's voice, Niou exhales. He rolls his eyes.
"Seiichi's been trying to call you," Yanagi says.
"Tell him I don't know anything," Niou says.
"Hn."
"Yeah hn."
"Don't forget about this week," Yanagi says. Niou says whatever and hangs up. He doesn't particularly remember, but then he doesn't particularly care, either. It's probably some tennis practice, extra long, he'll hear Sanada rag about it tomorrow as it is.
Maybe he's feeling masochistic, or maybe he's just bored, but Niou turns his cellphone on just before supper. It makes a happy little sound and the screen pops up with a Hello message. Then, the dozen messages Niou has ignored, almost all from Yagyuu's number.
Or Yukimura-he's sent a couple messages. Niou deletes those after he chucks all of Yagyuu's. One, though, stands out.
Message from…Jackal?
Niou blinks.
hey hey were havin a party thing at my house 2nite just the team cm if ur comin! my moms cookin 4 us!
Um, no.
Niou deletes that message too.
He feels suitably antisocial and sullen. At the dinner table, Niou sits and stews. He glares at the rice. He glowers at the fish. He scowls at the pickles that were tasty last night. He ignores everything and anything said to him. His family looks dorkier than ever, sitting around in polo shirts and khaki shorts, all in varying shades of LOSER! with their glasses and bland little smiles. "Oh how was flower arranging class?" "It was nice, how was cram school?" "It was good, how was your golf meeting with those clients, father?"
Niou wants to vomit.
His stomach turns. He stands up and leaves, scraping his chair as loud as he can across the linoleum. The first and only words he says are, "I'm going to the park".
Then, he's gone.
The park is hotter than yesterday, because there is still a sliver of sunlight. It's a southern breeze, hot and sticky, that coats the courts. Niou dumps his tennisbag. He rubs his wrists, twisting the neoprene bands around. He takes a deep breath, but his stomach is faintly sore from today, from last night…He doesn't specifically remember doing something as pathetic as crying over Yagyuu, but…
Niou looks up across the courts. He sighs.
This Zeroshiki serve is going to be a waste of time. Niou's racket shakes. He can't even bounce the ball properly to serve. Instead, he tosses the ball and slams it across the net, seething through his teeth as the ball whips through the air. It arcs over the net, higher and higher until it curves over the top of the fence and smacks into one of the trees with a rustle different from the swishing wind.
Niou blows a raspberry. Puri. He's got eight balls left, three cans minus one now.
Yagyuu…
There's a cement wall at the far of the courts, the only place possible to practice any returns. Niou camps out by it, taking a moment to stand in the long shadows the wall casts. The first tiny insects of the evening are beginning to swarm above his head. They skitter across his arms, making Niou twitch and sneer.
Five days to the Nationals.
Tokyo will be even hotter and nastier. Niou slugs a ball against the wall. He steps back, rocks on his ankle and lobs a return, just low enough to skim the top of the wall and bounce back. Tezuka's not aggressive, and it takes all Niou has inside to stop himself from smashing the ball into a rubbery sludge against the cement.
Easy, easy, he thinks. Tezuka's a natural. Tezuka's not offensive like Sanada.
On a return, Niou swings his arm back and then a sharp, flashing pain pricks his shoulder muscle. His racket drops, the ball misses and shoots across the courts and Niou sucks in a breath. He squeezes his eyes shut and thinks, So that's Tezuka…
His arm hairs stand up. A wind whips up his hair, making his rattail lick the side of his neck. Niou stiffens. As the wind dissipates, he can hear the distinctive sound of footsteps walking across the court. Niou doesn't turn around. They can have his ball if they want it.
He walks over to his bag to grab the last canister of balls. The footsteps are coming closer and closer.
And then Niou hears his name.
His first name.
The canister drops to the ground. The balls spill out, rolling in three different directions.
Yagyuu picks one up. He holds it out to Niou.
Niou's entire body is frozen to the spot. Blood drains from his face, cold and congealing as it pools in his belly, and in his cock.
The predictable Yagyuu would apologize first.
The real Yagyuu says, "Here." When Niou doesn't take the ball-he doesn't move-Yagyuu picks the canister up. He walks across the court, footsteps echoing in the darkening evening, and he picks them up, one by one. Yagyuu's skin is browner than it was two days ago. Tokyo has given him a tan. His hair has purple tints to it, blamed on the deep violet in the sky, slowly being broken up with the first dim stars.
"I went to your house first, but your mom said you came here," Yagyuu says.
It would be perfectly justified, in Niou's opinion, to tell Yagyuu to "Fuck off".
But his mouth doesn't work.
Yagyuu reaches out, obviously realizing that Niou's not moving, and he touches Niou's wrist, right below the wristweight. This electric touch of Yagyuu's warm fingertips makes Niou hiss. He yanks his hand back.
"I'm busy," Niou says.
"I could help," Yagyuu says.
The flood of emotions returns. It's last night all over again and Niou has just found out that Yagyuu switched with someone else. Yagyuu shared their trick with someone else-someone from Seigaku, no less! Niou's knees shake. His knuckles feel cold and when he glances down, the skin is white. Niou is so tense that the tendons in his neck and wrist are tight, nearly ready to pop out of his skin and strangle the polite little smile off Yagyuu's face.
"No!" he says.
"Niou-kun-"
"Just fuck off, okay?" Niou shouts. He throws his racket on the ground. Yagyuu's jaw drops and his eyes widen, pupils dilating with shock as Niou's words echo into the night. A flock of crows flutters and caws and flies off across the courts, invisible behind the harsh fluorescent flood lights.
But the wind has stopped.
"If this is about Kaidoh-kun and I-"
"I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT!"
Niou shouts so hard that his body shakes. His legs are about ready to give out and drop him to the ground in a slumping, pathetic mess. His insides are in agony and Yagyuu's straining expressions and attempts to apologize are making things worse.
Why did you do it and ruin our trick? OUR illusion?!?
It was ours…
Yagyuu's glasses have slipped so far down his nose that they're almost falling off, but his eyes are exposed. They meet Niou's, searching for…whatever that Niou is not giving into. Yagyuu takes a step to the right. Niou darts to the left. He makes a dive for his tennisbag, to escape and go home, to get away from Yagyuu since Yagyuu won't go away, but Yagyuu is the same as him, in some ways.
Yagyuu grabs Niou's hand. He won't let go. He pulls Niou close with a strength that Niou never knew about, fast and furious and tight. Their chests touch. Yagyuu breathes on Niou's skin-his name, an apology, a question that Niou refuses to answer. Yagyuu's lips are so close, his voice smooth and sliding into Niou's ears as his hand slides across the back of Niou's neck…
"Don't," Niou says. His voice is choked. It hurts to speak. It hurts even more to rip his arm from Yagyuu's grasp. There are finger marks on his skin, red on pale. Yagyuu doesn't apologize for that.
When Niou does walk away, Yagyuu stands there, stiff and still.
Niou walks three blocks until the park is completely hidden from view behind a low rise apartment block. He leans against the wall of a parking garage. The cement is damp and cool. He's shaking so hard that his lungs hurt and scratch on his ribs, his spine.
A lone car drives by. Niou waits. No long shadows approach. No voice murmuring his name. No Yagyuu following him this time.
Niou almost wishes he would have.
***
He dreams about eating dinner with Yagyuu's mom. She rubs his head and calls him, "Masaharu" but her voice is pure Yagyuu.
Niou wakes up. His sheets are messed and it's overcast outside. What a crappy way to start the day.
The streets are empty as he walks to school, cutting through the back roads. There is a sense of peace walking along the road and listening to his sneakers swish in the long, weedy grasses. Instant ramen and three pieces of dry toast sit in his stomach. Niou pops into the Familymart close to the school campus.
He can see Jackal and Marui's heads peeking over the top of an aisle.
"Hey, did you get my message?" Jackal asks.
Niou grabs an energy drink from the cooler. He raises his eyebrows and gives Jackal a look. Jackal raises his eyebrows right back at Niou.
"Yagyuu left early to tell you about it, but maybe he didn't find you…?"
Niou isn't taking the bait. He reaches into his pocket. Two hundred yen, just enough to wake up for laps with the taste of gym socks and caffeine in his mouth.
"Yay! They have it!" Marui squeals. He holds up a chocolate bar and dances, like he's got ants in his pants. Niou sneers. He's not in the mood for the fatty today and the fatty seems more than content to ignore Niou, too-though not without giving him the hairy eye and a middle finger first.
Niou shrugs.
Marui squirms.
"Look, Jackal! They have the limited edition cucumber KitKat! Can I borrow five hundred? I wanna buy them all and-"
It's unfortunate that automatic doors don't slam. Niou wouldn't have minded slamming the door in the fatty's face to shut him up. Niou's temple hurts. His mind rings with the shrill sound of Marui's shrieks of delight and the crinkle of his candy wrappers.
Gross, Niou thinks.
Laps, stretches, swing practice-it's the same old. Sasuga Rikkai. No wonder Seigaku upset the Regionals. Niou's getting bored stiff with the regimented practice. Even Sanada, usually so content to follow Yukimura's each and every whim, asks if they can bring out the ball machine.
"Our benchwork is lacking," Sanada says.
"And the ball machine isn't going to help," Yukimura says.
"Yukimura!"
"Do you want laps, Sanada?"
Sanada sucks his lips in and makes a face. Niou can't stop the snicker that rises to his lips. When Sanada glares at him, Niou doubles over with laughter. The wonderchibi looks from Sanada to Niou, and starts to laugh too.
"We're not going to get any better with unnatural moves and fancy tennis," Yukimura says. He paces in front of the team, all lined up to face him. Yukimura takes a deep breath. Without the glaring sun, his eyes are dark and stony. His jaw is as tight as Sanada's ass and Niou wonders if Sanada has passed that stick from his ass to Yukimura's.
"We have to be better than Seigaku. We have to have better discipline than Seigaku. It's our National title to maintain. If you want that machine, Sanada," Yukimura narrows his eyes, "then I want to see you play me first and prove that you deserve it."
"So basically," Marui whispers, "Yukimura just wants someone to play with."
Jackal leans over and says, "That, and I think Akaya broke the machine last week."
Niou looks at Kirihara. Kirihara must have been listening too, because his face flushes and he starts to laugh nervously. "Eheh…"
Niou slings an arm around Kirihara. His shoulders are as wide as Yagyuu's, but there's more meat on them and his body is much, much warmer. Kirihara wiggles. He stinks like grass and Niou notices that the kid already has grass stains on his knees. "How much do you owe the club for the machine?" Niou asks.
Kirihara stops squirming for a second. His painted grin slips and he sticks his bottom lip out. "I made a deal with buchou," he hisses. "And you're not supposed to tell fukubuchou, senpai."
"Sanada would be pissed," Niou says. He lets his voice carry over the courts. Sanada pauses mid-step until Yukimura calls his name.
"Look, my sister's a mechanic, okay? She's gonna fix it later. Like, after the Nationals."
Niou looks at him.
Kirihara rips his head out from under Niou's hold. He scrambles to his feet and shakes his hair out. "Oi, senpai! Where's Yagyuu-senpai, anyway?"
Stupid wonderchibi!
A dark grin slides over Kirihara's face. He knows he's touched a nerve and he cackles under his breath. "Yagyuu-senpai said he'd play a game with me, but since he's not here, you're pretty close to him, right? Can you pretend to be Yagyuu-senpai, Niou-senpai?"
"Shut up," Niou says.
"Man, P-M-S today, ne?" Marui whistles.
"Stuff it, asshole!" Niou snaps. To Kirihara, Niou chucks up his chin and looks down his nose. "Fine. Let's go, kouhai."
Kirihara skips to the net.
He also skips when he wins.
Niou rubs his calf. There's ball burn on the skin and his leg hair is singed. He limps his way to the net, where Kirihara stops jumping from side to side. Taking the chance, Niou swings his racket and smacks Kirihara square in the arm.
The kid screams. No one really notices, except Jackal, who just shakes his head and sighs. Niou gets a snicker out of Yanagi, which almost surprises him, except it doesn't really. Yanagi's as sick as those other two monsters.
Kirihara sniffles. "Ne, senpai," he says, "Your moves were almost like Tezuka's!"
Niou says "Really?" and Kirihara nods.
Niou looks up across the courts. He relishes the thwok sounds of the balls-a half-dozen simultaneous games blurring into one. He relishes the full, burning sensation in his lungs from working hard, and even the burn on his leg. His body hums, alive and beating with the desire to play another good, solid game of tennis. Niou could go on all afternoon like this: nothing serious, just tennis.
This Tezuka thing might work after all.
"Nice," Niou says.
***
They're all breaking for lunch when Yagyuu shows up. He's dressed in his uniform already, but he lacks the red face and dripping sweat the rest of them have.
"Kebab?" Jackal offers Marui his bento. Marui beams and swipes two.
"So you decide to show up," Yukimura says. Yagyuu might be standing up, but Yukimura's got the higher ground from below. Yagyuu bows his head and apologizes.
"I accept whatever punishment you see fit, Yukimura-kun," he says. "I was busy doing something with my father this morning."
"He just wanted to sleep in," Kirihara grumbles. "That's not fair."
Niou says nothing. Yagyuu's got purple-ish bags under his eyes-but Kirihara wouldn’t notice that because he's not looking at Yagyuu's face, he's looking at the strips of gyudon in Sanada's bento box.
Niou touches his mole. He touches his lips with his fingers, an unconscious reaction to Yagyuu when he glances over at Niou and the fact there's a patch of grass beside Niou almost big enough for someone else.
"There's only four days left," Yukimura says. "We don't have time for punishment-"
"So much for discipline.." Jackal whispers.
"-but I want 100 laps and 100 push-ups."
Yagyuu nods. He sets his bag down. "Of course, Yukimura-kun. Thank you-"
"And a game with me."
Yagyuu's eyes nearly pop out of his head.
Sanada starts to choke on his gyudon. Niou stops rubbing his chin. It's Yanagi, this time, who says "Harsh."
Yukimura just smiles.
***
If Niou wasn't angry, he might feel kinda bad for Yagyuu.
He kicks Yagyuu's corpse in the leg. Yagyuu is too polite to moan, but his back does twitch.
Serves you right, megane dork, Niou thinks.
The crows laugh at Yagyuu, too: it's not just Niou.
Yukimura sits on the bench and wraps a new length of grip tape around his racket. For all his talk, Yukimura rubs his wrist and frowns at his racket when he tests the strings. Beside him, Yanagi murmurs something about Yagyuu and Yukimura's frown deepens.
For a moment, Niou's insides are warm with something almost like pride but then he remembers he's angry. He jabs Yagyuu again with his sneaker, harder and with a sneer on his face.
Take that!
"Niou-kun…" Yagyuu says. If it were anyone else, they'd be gasping. But Yagyuu, gentleman Yagyuu, saves up enough breath to be coherent.
Niou leaves him lying there to eat court dust. His own throat is dry, too. Niou tries to swallow a horked up wad of mucus, but it won't go down.
The sun makes vain attempts to peek out from the streaks of clouds when they're finishing up. Niou does his token sweep of a court with a broom. He pushes the leaves and twigs and bits of scum and gum wrappers onto Marui's section, right beside his. Good enough for Niou. Marui's too busy talking at one of the cheerleaders who pops by with a shy smile and a box full of cookies to notice, anyway.
Data Master happens to be sweeping up closest to the club house. Niou darts inside, but he can't avoid Yanagi on the way out.
Yanagi looms in front of him. His eyebrows have crawled up under his bowl cut. "Don't forget about this week," he says.
Niou has no idea what the hell Yanagi is going on about, so he says, "Whatever" and slings his bag over his shoulder.
"Later," he says.
Yanagi keeps smiling in that creepy, omniscient way that sends cold curls of nerves straight to Niou's middle. It puts Niou on edge and he's glad to lose Yanagi as soon as he walks through the gate to the courts and out onto the campus green. Without the sun it feels later than it probably is. Niou's stomach growls. The bento at lunch wasn't all that great-lukewarm tamagoyaki, kinda gross in retrospect.
And then Niou's Yagyuusense starts blaring its alarm loud and clear.
The footsteps behind him.
The frantic race of his pulse.
The long shadow creeping up on him, with the smooth head of hair and bumps of glasses that wouldn't fool even a blind megane.
And the fact Yagyuu says his name.
Niou jumps over the barrier at the school gate.
Yagyuu says his name again.
The bus won't come until half-past. The train station is a good five blocks away and the crosswalk light is red with a steady stream of traffic blocking the way of any thoughts of jaywalking.
Niou's trapped.
His hair puffs up, bristling over his scalp. Summer sweat drips down his back and neck. Niou jumps to the right toward the direction of the bus stop-
Right into Yagyuu, too.
***
"Let's get food," Yagyuu says. "Yakiniku, my treat."
No fourteen year old boy could resist.
"I hate you," Niou mutters.
They walk parallel to one of the canals, in the vague direction of a large shopping centre across from the downtown center. The sun reveals itself, more and more, until it's strong enough to create golden shadows on the water; the molten surface reflects in Niou's eyes and Yagyuu's glasses.
Seagulls troll the canal. A weak breeze blows the smell of fish around. Bitterness fills Niou's mouth. It makes his chest cave in and his throat tight. The back of his head is damp at the collar with sweat and the air stirs the fine hairs on his arms.
Yagyuu reaches into his bag. He lights a cigarette as they walk. He exhales and taps the ashes off into the canal. Niou watches them dissipate into nothing.
"Enjoying yourself?" he asks. His voice is harder than he'd intended, but Yagyuu deserves it. He's smoking something stronger today and it stinks. Niou walks on ahead. "Chimneylungs," he mumbles.
Yagyuu's got some skill-and nerve-to be holding a smoke in one hand and the strap of his tennisbag in the other. Besides, they're in public and not too far from school.
How stupid can you be, Yagyuu? You fucking idiot!
Yagyuu's bag slaps against his back and his sneakers slap against the pavement when he runs to catch up with Niou. His breath stinks when he talks. Niou turns away to the canal. He watches as the cigarette butt arcs over the railing into the water.
Yagyuu's hand touches his arm. Niou can feel it shaking. He blinks and shifts his eyes.
"Let me explain," Yagyuu says.
"Don't care," Niou says. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and shoves Yagyuu off.
"Don't lie," Yagyuu says. He won't let go of Niou and his closeness is terrifying. Yagyuu's bag slips off his shoulder, landing to the ground with a dull crunch of equipment, but Niou is trapped between his bag, the canal railing and Yagyuu.
And Yagyuu's knee is wedged between Niou's.
Niou's pulse picks up, rushing and racing through his ears. He swallows hard. There are tiny drops of sweat along Yagyuu's forehead and on his top lip. Niou bites his bottom lip. He refuses to think about how salty Yagyuu's mouth would be. Right now. Niou exhales, but he can't suck in enough air to make his mind stop whirling and floating off to fantasies of Yagyuu, pushing him harder into the railing and rubbing their dicks together-
It's so close. Niou's shorts are tight. He's panting and he can't hold it back. He forces his head away, but Yagyuu's eyes pin him down tighter than the long fingers on his wrist.
"What if I said," Yagyuu murmurs, "that switching with Kaidoh was better than switching with you?"
Niou's stomach plummets. His heart sinks in his chest, landing on top of his intestines with a leaden, frozen kick. It takes Niou a moment to process Yagyuu's words, which echo over and over again in his ears, crushing in their finality.
"Asshole!" Niou spits in Yagyuu's face. "You fucker, you-"
Yagyuu slams Niou's wrist into the railing. Niou grinds his teeth. The pain stings his eyes. Yagyuu makes him ache all over.
"It wasn't!" Yagyuu insists. His face loses that hard edge it had a moment before. He shakes his head. His fingers loosen on Niou's wrist, but they won't let go. He wraps them around the skin, stroking with the barest of touches. Niou shivers. His knees are turning into jelly and nothing except Yagyuu is keeping him up.
"It meant nothing," Yagyuu says. "Niou-kun, you're the only-"
Yagyuu stops. He looks away, over Niou's shoulder and he sighs. His hips are pressed to Niou's and Yagyuu pushes them forward, just enough to make Niou gasp when he feels that tell-tale hardness on his thigh. Niou whimpers. He cringes at how pathetic he is, but Yagyuu's erection is making his body sink more and more into believing Yagyuu and forgiving Yagyuu and kissing those gross, nicotine-stained, sweaty lips…
"Let me kiss you right now," Yagyuu whispers.
"No!"
Niou's eyes are wide open. Yagyuu shifts his leg, brushing Niou's erection, which makes him moan, Niou can't stop that and he hates himself for it.
"What?" Yagyuu asks. "I didn't say anything."
Now Niou is the idiot.
"Just buy the yakiniku," he mutters. "Megane dork."
***
He really, really wants to be angrier at Yagyuu than he is.
Amazing what a couple platters of beef will do for a relationship.
A friendship.
A partnership.
A whatever-the-hell-this-is-ship.
Niou rolls onto his side, sprawled out across the tatami floor in their little booth. He moans and clutches his stomach. His waistband is tight and his stomach is about to explode, but there are two or three pieces of beef left, lonely and delicious and waiting to be cooked.
It isn't just any beef, either.
It's amazing beef. Good stuff, from Kobe. Marbled with white fat that sizzles and spits on the grill, dripping down Niou's chopsticks as he lifts it to his lips.
Yagyuu holds out the tongs. "Would you like to do the honours?" He fixes his glasses.
It hurts to grunt. It hurts to roll back over to a sitting position. Niou's eyes are bleeding from his skull, popping out from the food stuffed into his body. Somehow, he manages to take the tongs. With a belch (and a grimace from Yagyuu, beautiful and worth Niou's effort to disgust him), Niou lays the last three strips of beef on the lattice of the grill. They make a hissing sound more lovely than anything else Niou knows of. And when the little black bits from meat before start to catch fire and burn, the flames dance in Niou's eyes.
Yagyuu stirs at their bowl of bibimbap. He picks out the mushrooms and chews on them as Niou flips the beef over.
"Say, Niou-kun?"
Niou looks at him. I'm still angry with you, Yagyuu. He makes a point to glare, but it's difficult with the beef so close, so nearly finished that his mouth is watering for those last few bites…
"Should we meet at the train station tomorrow?"
Niou grabs a piece of beef with the tong and dunks it into the remnants of his sauce dish. "Eh?"
"For the team trip?"
Team trip? What the hell are you talking about, Yagyuu?
Yagyuu's lips quirk. He sets the long, thin Korean spoon down on the table. It makes a little clink. He shifts his legs, then settles back down on his knees. "Maybe you forgot about the permission forms Sanada-kun handed out last week."
Somehow, Niou is skeptical of this. Then again, he can't remember much about last week except the heat melting his muscles and endless practices under the blinding sunlight. Summer days meld into the next, dripping like the sweat down their faces and the hair in their eyes. They've been so focused on the Nationals that it's no wonder no one has mentioned this team trip to him until Yagyuu does now.
"So what are we doing?" Niou asks, mouth open, food half-chewed. He clutches his stomach as the beef slides down his throat. A long, drawn-out moan escapes his lips.
The beef is orgasmically wonderful.
Niou is practically half-hard from the sensation of the sweet-sour-salty beef on his tongue, between his teeth, flooding his sensations with the most delicious tastes…
"Yukimura said that if Seigaku can have a training camp, then Rikkai can do it better," Yagyuu says. "Would you like to meet tomorrow at the station by your house at 10:30?"
Just to piss Yagyuu off, Niou doesn't answer. Yagyuu waits. And waits. Niou drags himself to finish the last two pieces of meat, the very last one nearly making him gag from the effort of trying to swallow it down. Yagyuu sighs heavily, obviously getting it, before he grabs his bags and goes to pay the bill.
"8200 yen," the cashier says.
Niou raises his eyebrows. Expensive! He watches Yagyuu pull a 10 000 yen note from his wallet and he can't help but feel a little green. Yagyuu's parents must buy his love. Niou's lucky to scrape a 1000 yen for the arcade, once or twice a week.
But he says nothing. Niou leans over to grab his own bags when he sees a pamphlet lying on the floor. It must have come from Yagyuu's school bag, which covered the same spot the last couple hours. Niou turns it over. The front is covered with glossy photos of green mountains and rural temples, endless stairs leading up to misty, cedar halls.
Welcome to Gumma! in red letters splashes across the top.
Niou opens the pamphlet. Inside, there are photographs of hot springs and old-fashioned onsens, and even an ad for an amusement park in the middle of nowhere.
And then a hand snatches the pamphlet away.
Niou looks up and Yagyuu is stuffing the pamphlet into his bag. "That's my mom's," Yagyuu says. His voice cracks on the word "mom", but it lacks the usual bitterness he has when talking about her.
"Whatever," Niou says.
The sun has long set. The city lights are out in full-force, a barrage of neon signs and lit up skyscrapers. Across the downtown, to the east, the tall spires of MM21 twinkle, stretching forever into the heavens above.
Niou walks ahead, vaguely in the direction of home, sorta along one of the dozens of seaside parks. There is no one but him and Yagyuu and couples, all holding hands or walking close together, hands around hips or shoulders. Niou turns right at the sound of leaves rustling, muffled giggles and a little gasp in between wet, nasty noises. It's not that dark with the harbour filled with boats, illuminating the black waters. Niou can see a couple of people, maybe in university, necking in the bushes. The guy has his hand down the chick's shirt and she's got her hands around his neck.
"Gross," he mutters.
Jealous?
Niou refuses to answer the voice in his head. The platters of beef sit heavy and solid in his stomach and his waistband is uncomfortably tight. The fatty must feel this way on a regular basis. Niou would rather roll under one of those benches with the homeless guys and moan. Instead, he keeps walking, wincing one step ahead of Yagyuu, lest Yagyuu think Niou regretted eating all that yakiniku.
He doesn't.
The park gives way into rows of suburban houses, interspersed with fewer and fewer apartment blocks the further they walk. The harbour disappears. The wide tracks of lawn and trees morph into quiet side streets off the main highways. Niou crosses the crosswalk. He walks past a conbini, then cuts down toward another canal, following the cement pavement. Yagyuu follows him.
Now, there really isn’t anyone else around. Even the seagulls have gone to sleep, clustered along the edge of the dark water.
"You're coming tomorrow, right?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou's footsteps stop for a beat, the pace broken by his hesitance. He does not have to answer that question. Yagyuu still hasn't answered his.
Niou can play this new game, if Yagyuu wants to keep up this volley of meaningless small talk.
"Is Kaidoh coming?" Niou asks. Your new best friend…
It hurts to swallow. It hurts to breathe, too, when Yagyuu walks ahead and into Niou's path, cutting him off from escape. Niou is trapped, and the pavement seems to buckle under his feet, making him off-balance and dizzy. He's stuck between the canal railing and a cement retaining wall.
"Get out of my way," he hisses.
Yagyuu's face is a kaleidoscope of emotion: twisted hurt and pained confusion, contorting anger and pursed lips. For all that he keeps himself in check, he's doing a shit job now. "Stop that!" Yagyuu shouts. His knuckles crack when he balls his fist. Niou bites his tongue to stop from flinching. His legs are shaking as bad as Yagyuu now, but Yagyuu isn't repeating this afternoon.
"It was my idea, okay, Niou-kun? I suggested it and Kaidoh-kun went along and it had nothing to do with you. If I knew it bothered you that much, I wouldn't have bothered!"
Yagyuu's breathing hard and erratic. He exhales and runs his hand through his hair. It falls back on his head, his part messed up. Niou pushes down the urge to reach out and fix it. This Yagyuu is in his face, seething and sneering and telling him off for being this way and Niou doesn't know what to do.
This isn't the usual Yagyuu he knows how to handle. This is that other, scarier Yagyuu who played on the courts as him last month.
"Kaidoh-kun is not my friend. You are! What we did meant nothing! I thought you might have laughed when I told you the story, but I can see that you can't get over the fact I played a one-off game with Kaidoh-kun to protect our team." Yagyuu makes a noise, an angry grunt before he goes on. Yagyuu closes his eyes and his voice drops a thousand notches into something just above a whisper.
"I know what we did was special for you, Niou-kun. It was our trick. My playing with Kaidoh-kun doesn't change it."
It does! Niou wants to say. But he can't say anything because Yagyuu is touching him again. Yagyuu is looking at him with big, myopic eyes that seem to glow orange under the streetlamps. He can feel Yagyuu's breath on his skin, just that much warmer than the air to be noticeable.
Yagyuu tugs on Niou's rat tail. Niou sucks in a breath. A shiver runs down his spine, starting at the back of his neck where the hair meets his skin. He stiffens. Yagyuu leans in close. It's going to be a repeat of that day, after the beach, when Yagyuu kissed him at the bus stop. Niou's heart flutters, doki doki doki doki, and blood rushes to his face, his mouth, tingling with the anticipation of meeting Yagyuu's…
It feels like forever since they've kissed.
Niou's arms are slack at his sides. He knows he could reach up, maybe, and touch Yagyuu's back, to feel Yagyuu's move as he breathes Niou in, but he's rooted to the spot and it's getting harder and harder to think. Yagyuu seems to take ages to move closer. Time is in slow-motion as Yagyuu leans, achingly slowly, toward Niou.
"Masa-"
The moment is ruined by the sudden crash and frantic clang of something jumping into a dumpster, the metallic sounds ringing into the black night along with a cat's plaintive yowling.
"SUMI! SUMI WHERE ARE YOU?" someone yells from one of the houses. The cat jumps again, repeating the clangs and crunching of paws on garbage and tin cans rolling into alleyways.
Yagyuu clears his throat. He steps away first.
Niou wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. It feels like Yagyuu kissed his lips, the way they tingle, all numb and used like that, but his hand is dry of saliva.
"I haven't forgiven you, you know," he says.
Yagyuu nods. "Mn." He sighs and looks up at the sky. The suburban lights hide whatever moon might be out tonight. A scooter drives by, its engine revving as it cuts through a red light.
Home isn't that far away. The walk cuts the pain from Niou's belly into something more manageable, a dull weight inside instead of that overstuffed, Marui-like sensation of waddling and wincing.
Usually, Niou is the one to latch onto Yagyuu and invite himself over, opportunistic and annoying. Tonight, though, Yagyuu is the one who walks past the bus stop, who walks past the turn off for the train station, who follows Niou through the streets of middle-class suburban Kanagawa until the slight incline of his road.
Only then does Yagyuu stop. He shifts his tennisbag strap on his shoulder. It rustles. The wind picks up and licks at Niou's ears, ruffling his hair and the leaves of the dripping trees and vines spilling out from private gardens onto the pavement.
"May I…?"
Niou grunts.
"Thank you," Yagyuu says. He sounds relieved, but when Niou pushes the gate open into the front yard, the porch light makes Yagyuu's skin look a shade of green. He's sweating at the temples and under his glasses. Yagyuu pinches the bridge of his nose, but his glasses slide right back down. He wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, bunching it up instead of folding it.
Odd, Niou thinks. He pushes the latch on the front door and shouts, "Yo!"
"You're home," his mom says, before she's even at the door. Her face breaks into a smile when she sees Yagyuu behind Niou. Yagyuu stands stiff and sweaty on the other side of the threshold. "Ah! Please come in, Yagyuu-kun."
Niou's mom is still standing in the hallway when Yagyuu says-in a not too quiet voice-"Are you going to ask?"
Niou's mom smiles in that dorky megane way that makes Niou want to crawl somewhere deep and dark in the underground shopping centre and hide. "Ask us what, Masaharu?"
Niou looks at Yagyuu and rolls his eyes. "There's some sort of tennis camp tomorrow. Can I go?"
His mom blinks. "Don't you think you're asking us awfully late? You were just groun-"
"Look, we've been really busy practicing!" Niou says. His face is hot because he knows exactly what she was going to say. You don't need to talk about me being grounded! He glares at his mom. Stupid megane mother! Don't talk about that in front of Yagyuu!
"We just got the forms last week," Yagyuu says. "We're leaving tomorrow but we'll be back Thursday for the matsuri festival. Our coach will be chaperoning blah blah blah blah."
Of course, Niou's parents listen to whatever Yagyuu tells them about this camping tennis trip. It's more information than Niou was ever told-though, come to think of it, he sorta remembers Yanagi talking about something. Niou rubs his chin and he taps his mole. His mom smiles at Yagyuu, who smiles at her in a polite, bland way.
They sit in Niou's room. He rifles through his drawers, tossing some underpants (that smell clean) and some t-shirts into a bag. Yagyuu sits in the chair at Niou's desk, where he was just a couple nights before, doing his damndest to forget about Yagyuu and the fact he was pissed as hell. Now, the tension slackens, bit by bit. The beef helped.
Niou rummages through his closet, looking for parts of clean tennis uniforms, or, failing that, a pair of sweatpants or shorts from gym class. "So," he says, back turned from Yagyuu, although he can listen to Yagyuu touching his class notes and math homework, "where is this place?"
Gumma?
Niou smirks.
Yagyuu makes a noise. Then, he says, "Yamanashi."
That's not Gumma.
"Really," Niou says.
"That's what the handout said," Yagyuu says.
Niou throws a winter blazer out of the way and digs deeper into a pile of forgotten clothes. There, at the bottom of the stack, a pair of old shorts. He holds them up. Probably be okay. He hasn't grown that much since second year.
Niou steps out of his closet and over the pile of clothes. In better light, he can see that the shorts maybe aren't as big as he thought. He holds them up to his front a second time and frowns. He leans down to sort through the mess of clothes from this past week-next to the pile from his closet-to give to his mom to wash when the chair creeks. Yagyuu stands up. He takes two steps to Niou and pushes his shoulder. It's hard and sudden enough that Niou rolls to the floor, landing halfway onto his bed.
The other half Yagyuu makes up for.
He's so close that the heat returns to Niou's cheeks. He struggles to sit up, to inch away from Yagyuu (still mad! Kinda!) and Yagyuu lets him. They sit next to each other on Niou's bed. In the moment, Niou is hyperaware of that strange, slightly musky smell from his sheets and it makes him cringe; he's embarrassed for all the wet dreams that seem to crash down onto his shoulders right now.
The fact Yagyuu's nostrils twitch only make him wince more. Yagyuu can smell his gross sheets and why was Niou so dumb enough not to toss them into the washing machine this morning before he left? Niou kicks himself inside. The beef from dinner churns in his stomach, causing hot bile to scorch his throat.
Wind swishes through the fingerling branches of the tree in the back yard. The A/C rattles and Niou holds his breath. He leans forward to stand up when Yagyuu says, "You have a bit of a sunburn, Niou-kun."
Niou turns his head. Long fingers brush across his cheek, touching the flush on his skin. Niou tries to swallow, but his tongue catches.
Yagyuu says something. Niou doesn't hear it. All of the feeling in his body settles on the clammy coolness of Yagyuu's palm, splayed across his face, touching the side, the shell of his ear, all the way down to his jaw. Niou's collar is too tight. There is sweat dribbling down his face and his mouth slackens. He glances down, unwilling to look at Yagyuu as he speaks words that Niou's body is unable to hear because there is nothing, right now, except for the thud thud thud of his heart.
His dick is hard. His nipples stiffen. He's reaching up before he fully realizes. It's like tennis-he has to act without thought, only this is completely different too. He touches Yagyuu's wrist. He should say, "No, my family's here".
Instead, Niou lets his hand close around Yagyuu's wrist. The wristweight is the same as his own, blocking the contact of skin-to-skin, but when Niou moves, Yagyuu does too and that hand on his cheek spreads to cover his lips.
Niou gasps.
Yagyuu's fingers loosen, falling away from Niou's cheek. Niou leans closer, brings himself to that palm on his lips. He opens his mouth, a half-kiss to Yagyuu's salty palm, and he's gone as soon as Yagyuu's free hand touches the back of his neck.
Yes…yes…
"Maybe it isn't a sunburn…" Yagyuu murmurs. Niou makes a noise in the back of his throat. He should be embarrassed at the little whimper, the broken mewl, but he's more focused on the contours of Yagyuu's palm. Under his tongue, the salty of Yagyuu's skin is better than the yakiniku. Niou closes his eyes.
The palm is replaced by a mouth.
And this time, Niou does moan. Yagyuu's tongue is wet and soft on his at first, then he pushes harder, deeper until Niou can't breathe, can't do anything except push back. Yagyuu bites his top lip. His glasses bump Niou's face, until Yagyuu takes them off. Niou opens his eyes, but Yagyuu is fast. His pupils blacken before Niou's eyes flutter closed a second time. He can't look at Yagyuu when Yagyuu is that intense, blinding and consuming and sucking the breath, the movement from his body until Niou is left as nothing except a puddle of sludge, only his lips moving.
He makes breathy little "ah!"s. They sound pathetic in his ears, but Yagyuu pushes him down onto the bed anyway. It groans under their weight. Niou groans under Yagyuu's weight. His legs widen, Yagyuu's knee wedges between and he digs his hands into Niou's neck as he licks the other side.
"Ah!" Niou's toes curl. Electric shivers race down his spine. His dick swells, rubbing against Yagyuu when Yagyuu shifts. His hair tickles the side of Niou's face, spidery-thin strands clinging to the saliva trails. Niou arches his back and he can't stop this desperate bucking against Yagyuu. Rub harder, rub more, kiss me just a little higher in that spot that makes me-
"Niou-kun," Yagyuu murmurs. His words are pressed into Niou's skin, kissed and licked from the patterns Yagyuu's tongue makes.
Niou whimpers. He twitches. Yagyuu drags his teeth over Niou's neck. A hot hand creeps under the hem of Niou's shirt and he sucks his stomach in from the shocking pressure. His balls are so tight. Yagyuu's thrusting, just faintly, as he dips his head down and kisses Niou's shoulder, right where it meets his neck and Yagyuu's hands keep moving, keep searching lower and lower until Niou feels his waistband pull away from his skin because those fingers are crawling lower and he's shaking, trembling, his thighs are squeezing and Yagyuu keeps kissing him, frantic and hard and he'll leave marks and Niou keeps moaning and the tightness keeps twisting inside, more and more and-
"Stop!"
Niou shifts his head. The back of his hair is damp against his pillow. His hands are splayed to the sides. It takes all his concentration to remember to breathe normally because his heart is about to explode and his veins will burst from the furious pulse of blood through his body. He listens for a moment. There is nothing-no parents, no siblings-just the sound of Yagyuu's harsh breathing and the air conditioning.
Yagyuu puts his glasses back on.
"All right," he says. His voice is distant. He pulls his hand out from Niou's waistband. Niou bites his lip. The warm hand is replaced in an instant with cold reality.
He's scared of going further.
Niou closes his eyes. He hangs his head.
So much for being confident about this last week.
Yagyuu says, "Here." He touches Niou's hair, grabbing the back and tugging softly. Niou looks up and Yagyuu's got his tongue between his teeth as the hair elastic snaps, pushed back up to Niou's neck.
Niou doesn't say thanks. His face feels hot enough as is. The clock reads nine; Yagyuu flips his cellphone open. His hands shake and the phone charm dangling from his cell jingles a little.
"I should go," Yagyuu says. "I'll see you tomorrow." He starts to stand, but Niou grabs his arm, pulling Yagyuu back down, half on top of him again. Yagyuu looks at Niou, his mouth parting.
It would be so easy to give into that…
Inside, Niou steels himself. He shakes his head and touches Yagyuu himself, fixing Yagyuu's collar. Niou pops out the one corner that was folded down from their kissing. He smirks when Yagyuu blinks at him.
"Megane dork," he mutters.
***
To: 柳生比呂士
is sanada bringin the balls tomorrow? lol
Niou snickers to himself. He rolls over in bed to turn out the light. His cellphone sings with a response just as he stretches toward his lamp.
He reads Yagyuu's message and he's bend over the mattress, clutching his sides to stop himself from laughing out loud.
Yukimura-kun has Sanada-kun's balls. I'm sure he'll bring them.