FIC: Glory Days, Yukimura/Sanada, NC17 (7/7)
Title: Glory Days (7/7)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Sanada aims for the Nationals. And more...Yukimura/Sanada.
The skies spill their teams from black clouds and shudder with lightning, sporadically. It gleams on the silvery sword Sanada holds above his head. The slices through straw effigies are clean-cut, but too slow and too shaky. Even kendo doesn’t distract him from what Yukimura was speaking of earlier.
He crawls into bed, fishing around in the dark for the only pair of pajamas he can find. The house is asleep except for him. He’s put off his homework because he would rather spend time at Yukimura’s house than hunched over a desk. But unlike Kirihara, his grades have never suffered for lack of effort in school.
Sanada’s heart races, a dull thump in his chest so loud in his ears, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of the rain, or Yukimura. You can paint all over my body. He runs the words over his tongue, wordlessly, and touches himself under the thin sheet. It’s too hot, yes, but Sanada has never been able to masturbate without at least a sheet covering him, for fear of someone walking in on him and seeing, especially his brother.
He whispers Yukimura’s name in time with the pulling of his hands. He’s hard, he’s tired, he’s desperate to come so much that he jerks himself off in a fury of fast, hard hands, too much, too much and he gasps when he climaxes. Hot comes stains his fingers. His cock, his balls, his body hums with completion, but he’s far from satisfied.
“Yukimura,” he murmurs.
He dreams of blackness, of slipping on tiles in the tennis clubhouse changerooms, of seashells as big as his head scattered all over the beaches of Chiba, like the red leaves of autumn, but no ink and no painting.
He wakes in the midst of another orgasm, groaning his way to consciousness, his belly sticky and his back sweaty.
***
Even the lockers of the changerooms are infected with Yukimura. Sanada can smell him the moment he enters the clubhouse for practice, Yukimura’s fresh deodorant a trail for him to follow. It is also one that makes his palms sweat and his face burn. Renji asks, “Is something wrong, Genichirou?”
Sanada shrugs it off, but Renji’s knowing eyes never leave him, even as they unbutton school shirts and remove their trousers for tennis jerseys and uniform shorts. Yukimura stands casually by the rosterboard, one hand on his hip as he reads off lists of practice matches to Jackal.
One wouldn’t know from looking at him, standing and talking of games and rankings just as any baseball fan would in the school cafeteria, just what he had spoken of the night before, and about this very place. Sanada tries to focus on his racket, on redoing the griptape around the handle. His hands clench the racket handle like he had touched Yukimura’s cock in Chiba. He doesn’t even realize that he’s moving his hands up and down, the tape discarded and sticky on the floor, until Renji coughs discretely.
“How will you manage at practice today?” he asks on the courts. “Seiichi has you wrapped around his finger even more now. You’d lose to a junior preregular if you aren’t careful.”
Sanada bristles. “That has nothing to do with-”
Niou’s sly eyes glance their way. Sanada hushes his voice and adds, “I could beat them with my eyes closed,” he says.
“Like Fuji Shuusuke beat our Akaya?”
Kirihara glances their way and narrows his eyes. “What are you saying about me, Yanagi-senpai?” he asks.
“We were just discussing Genichirou’s stats,” Renji says, smooth and calm as ever.
“He’s two on the ranking list,” Kirihara tells them. “I just checked.”
“So he is,” Renji says.
Contrary to what Yanagi says, once Sanada is surrounded by the harsh green of the tennis courts, thoughts of Yukimura and sex dissipate in favour of slices and lobs and easy wins over angry junior team members who are cocky enough to challenge him. Kirihara stands back and rocks on his heels, gleeful and grinning when his classmates step up for the same challenge he tried the year before. A match with one of the three monsters.
Tennis is like sex in a way, sweat and drive and thrust and rushing forward into a climactic smash, or a serve so hard that it nearly winds. Sanada grunts and groans and speaks to his opponent with wordless noises, all coming from within as his body responds to the call of the ball, to the call of the game. He loves this rush, the way his body loosens the harder he works, the more he drives himself into a rally, faster faster faster until the opponent falls hard and Sanada is left panting on his court, grinning and dripping and awash with pleasure, of the sports kind.
The ground has been perpetually damp from the rainy season. Sanada’s sneakers track footprints of mud through the changerooms, across grimy tile floors. Who knows when they were cleaned last. The janitors come out to clean the showers once every while, but the tennis club is expected to clean the rest of the clubhouse themselves and being teenagers, that doesn’t happen very often. The last time Sanada recalls it cleaned was when he was doling out punishments to Yagyuu and Niou for inappropriate switching in the Seigaku match.
Nearly a month and a half of mud, of mould, of sweat and soap and crumbs from Marui’s snacks and sports drink residue and Sanada doesn’t want to think about the rest, but he can’t stop, not when Yukimura looks at him.
Sanada rubs the towel across his arm. Yukimura and the rest of the team are in a varied state of undress, some in towels, some naked, some with underpants and trousers. He drips from the shower still and cannot turn from the haunting command Yukimura made with his dark eyes and the quirk of his mouth.
“Let’s go for ice cream,” Marui says loudly.
A chorus of cheers follow. Sanada grunts “No”.
Yukimura shrugs. “I have some paperwork to do,” he says offhand. “Getting ready for next year.” He settles his gaze on Kirihara, who ducks his head, embarrassed and pleased and knowing. that he will be the one to lead Rikkai.
No one questions the captain, but Jackal says, “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” to Sanada once or twice more before he gives up. Sanada grunts and scowls and says he doesn’t like sweets. It is a lie and Jackal seems to realize this, but he says nothing to dispute it.
The team follows Marui’s lead- and Marui’s stomach- and leaves the clubhouse, a school of koi amassing together, a whirl of colour and flutterings that leave ripples in their wake. The clubhouse door swings shut behind them, the last wave of movement, and then there is silence.
The darkest of blue eyes shift left, then right, then towards Sanada, still standing with a towel for his hair and wearing nothing but his school trousers. Time flows by like a slow current. His hair drips the minutes down his back, sliding sliding.
“Get on your knees,” Yukimura says.
Sanada hesitates for a moment. Yukimura tilts his head back, staring down his nose, every bit the buchou he is, commanding respect and obedience. His body flushes with hot and cold and his knees bend.
The tile floor soaks through his trousers. It is hard and uncomfortable, but Yukimura is so close. His eyes are level with Yukimura’s hips and the bulge between his legs. His hands tremble when he starts at the zip. It catches when he tugs it down. Yukimura breathes heavily and leans back against the row of lockers. “God,” he moans.
The fabric snags and bunches and Sanada can barely get it down to Yukimura’s knees because his skin is still damp from the shower and his hands shake so much. This is no hotel room. This is the locker room and although everyone else has left, it feels wrong, it feels open. Sanada’s ears search for noises in the background- footsteps, doors, creaks, but the only thing he can hear are Yukimura’s groans and the soft swish of hands moving through his hair, pushing his head down.
Yukimura is half-hard already. Sanada digs his hands into Yukimura’s hips for leverage, trying not to lose his balance. With a gasp, Yukimura thrusts blindly against his face, all hot and velvety hard. He feels naked here, and when he wraps his mouth around Yukimura’s cock, everything is bared.
His knees hurt. He can barely breathe, nothing but the heady scent of soap and musky sex reaches his nose, buried in the dark hairs in front of his face. He lifts his eyes and nearly comes himself at the sight of Yukimura, flushed and panting. An arm is thrown over his mouth to muffle his moans, the other still fisted in Sanada’s hair, pulling him closer.
With each lick, with each suck, he grows more confident and forgets himself. He forgets anything except Yukimura. It’s been what feels like forever since they’ve done anything. Chiba is a past life of pleasure, almost foreign back in Kanagawa. Sanada rubs himself against his tightened pants. He’s close, too. The moans rise to his ears, not all from Yukimura, either.
“B-buchou?”
Yukimura lets out a strangled gasp. He drives his cock forward, a blind thrust that chokes Sanada. He pulls back, coughing and sputtering and wiping his mouth. He looks up and time stops.
Kirihara stands beside an adjacent row of lockers, his jaw hanging to the ground and his eyes as wide as the moon. Little sputters of noise rise from his throat, but nothing more.
No one moves until Yukimura grabs his underpants and trousers and pulls them back up. He’s gone as slack as Sanada has. Sanada removes his hand from the swell of Yukimura’s bum, and stands up. His knees creak and wet patches are prominent on his shins, he knows.
“What do you want, Akaya?” Yukimura asks tersely.
“Er…I…uh…my wallet…” Kirihara laughs, a pitiful rise in his voice that is horribly forced to cut the tension. It only makes it worse when he nods to his locker. “I forgot…it…”
Sanada has a pretty good idea of what is going through Akaya’s mind, from the way he stares at him as though Sanada has suddenly sprouted Atobe as a Siamese twin. Kirihara fumbles with the lock on his locker, grabs his wallet and rushes out of the locker room so fast, he slips across the wet tiles and nearly cracks his head open when he trips over the threshold of the doorway.
“Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea,” Yukimura says softly. He smiles wryly. “The mood is gone, isn’t it?”
Sanada nods. His throat has gone dry, but the bitter taste of pre-cum still lingers. He slides a hand under Yukimura’s chin and tilts it towards him with the pad of his thumb. They kiss, just standing there, with lips brushing once, and then walk to the bus stop.
***
Kirihara won’t look him in the eye.
Normally, Sanada would be perfectly happy with that. Kirihara is enough of a brat as it is, bothering his senpais at practice, harassing them in the hallways at school, but the whole situation, of him walking in on Sanada with Yukimura’s cock in his mouth makes Sanada even more uncomfortable than he already is.
He knows Akaya’s schedule because Renji has it memorized for them. He knows that Yagyuu tutors him on Tuesday afternoons when they don’t have tennis practice. With the close of August, fewer seniors show for tennis practice in favour of starting to cram for entrance exams to high school.
Sanada tracks Yagyuu and Kirihara down to a classroom on the third floor. He waits outside and checks his watch, doubting that they would go more than an hour. Their voices are hushed within, speaking English phrases and working on pronunciations and grammar exercises.
A group of girls pass him in the hallway on their way to a tutoring session, or perhaps a home economics club meeting. They giggle and grin and wave and whisper. Sanada ignores their catcalls.
Maybe he’ll call Yukimura after this. Or maybe he’ll go home and steal one of the beers his brother hides in his closet. He’ll need one. His head throbs already with the speech he’s prepared. Akaya, I know what you saw was completely inappropriate of Yukimura and I to be doing in the locker room, but you will respect the privacy and confidence of your senpai-tachi and-
“Sanada-kun!” Yagyuu calls from inside the classroom. Sanada steps inside and toys with the brim of his hat. Kirihara shoves his books in his backpack and bolts from the classroom, but Sanada grabs the back of his blazer before he can go anywhere.
“We need to talk, Akaya,” he says.
Kirihara squeaks.
Yagyuu pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. He smiles, grabbing a stack of English textbooks from a desk. “I’ll leave you two,” he says. He nods to them as he leaves and says, “Good night.”
“I- I need to go,” Kirihara insists. He struggles in Sanada’s grip, trying to free his blazer with one hand and grab onto the doorframe for leverage with the other. “I told my mother-”
“No, you didn’t,” Sanada says. He clears his throat. The fluttering nervousness grows exponentially inside his stomach. “Akaya, I know what you-”
“I really don’t want to know about it,” Akaya says, his voice rising an octave. “Sanada-fukubuchou, please let me-”
“-I know what you saw was completely inappropriate-”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Kirihara shrieks.
Sanada lets go of the blazer in surprise. Kirihara loses his balance and ends up sprawled on the floor, his books scattered around him after his backpack flies open everywhere. Sanada bends down to help him pick the books up.
“Oh, fuck it,” Sanada grumbles. He gives Akaya the English-Japanese dictionary. “Akaya…sometimes when people have strong feeling for each other they-”
“Well that was gross,” Kirihara says, scrunching up his nose in disgust. “Sanada-fukubuchou, you had Yukimura-buchou’s…” he waves his hands and turns red. Sanada can feel his face burn even hotter. They stand uncomfortable and staring at their feet, the both of them, as Kirihara goes on. “You had him in your mouth and…ugh! Yuck!”
“If you prefer girls, then-”
“Girls are gross!” Akaya says. He laughs to himself. “They smell like flowers and don’t like sports and they’re boring!”
Sanada breathes through his nose. He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his ankles. The heels of his shoes squeak on the recently-buffed floors. “One day maybe you’ll feel different, Akaya,” he manages.
Kirihara shrugs. “I’d want to date someone cool. Kinda like Yanagi-senpai.”
Sanada whips his head around and stares at Kirihara, who shrugs and grins and turns away himself. They stand in an uncomfortable silence until Sanada sucks in a breath and reaches for his wallet. “Akaya, if you say nothing about what you saw I’ll take you for ice cream.”
Kirihara has always been easily persuaded. But he makes sure to order the most expensive cone on the menu at the shop, just to make Sanada squirm a little more.
***
Other schools may retire the seniors in September, but Yukimura refuses. “I want to play tennis,” he says. “I missed out too much this year.”
He and Sanada walk along the canals boardwalks and bridges in the city. The sun shines molten over the waters, which sit stagnant without a breeze this afternoon. Autumn will come soon, and inevitably, exams and high school in the new year. Sanada savours the time being and slows his pace. His legs ache sweetly from today’s tennis practice, his hands still feel the press of the racket handle.
Sanada calls his mother on his cellphone and tells her he’ll be home for supper soon. He has a project in biology to work on, due next week, but he’d rather spend the time with Yukimura. They don’t say much, especially about Kirihara discovering them, but it is nice to simply sit on one of the benches and watch the low-hanging sun with Yukimura, the person Sanada loves as much as tennis. Sometimes he thinks that he and Yukimura aren’t attached by a red thread, but by a racket string.
He turns to Yukimura. His face is golden from the light, and the angle of the sun creates a blinding halo from which only the deepest eyes stare towards him. Yukimura rests his hand over Sanada’s, squeezing enough to be meaningful, but not more that any of the other pedestrians would notice something.
Perhaps even more than tennis, he thinks. His chest feels heavy and full. Sanada turns to Yukimura and gives him a rare, open smile.
***
At home, his mother serves cold tofu with pickled ginger and his grandfather barbecues slabs of beef. The entire house smells of wood smoke and Sanada retreats to his room, picking bits of tangy ginger from between his teeth with his fingernails as he stares down at his biology homework.
The tennis posters on his walls distract him from the nervous system, nodes and neurons. The photographs of the team, including a smiling, strong Yukimura distract him from his textbook until he manages to turn them over and discipline himself into working.
Three loud bangs on his door don’t help. “Genichirou!” his brother shouts, banging again. Sanada swings the door open to see his brother standing with a first raised to bang again. His brother grins and waggles his heavy eyebrows.
“Your boyfriend is here,” he says, smirking.
“Shut up!” Sanada growls. He pushes past his brother, giving him a sharp hit with his shoulder. His brother steps out of the way and smacks Sanada in the side for measure.
Yukimura hands his mother a bunch of flowers from his arms. “They’re from my garden, Sanada-san,” he tells her. “I hope I’m not bothering Genichirou.” She seems impressed with the bunch and places them in a lacquer vase. Sanada holds back a sneeze. To him, they’re just a bunch of pretty blossoms that smell of fragrant roses and pungent jasmine, but since they are from Yukimura, they seem that much bigger, that much fuller.
His mother is impressed and sends them off to Sanada’s room with a tray of pontas and shrimp chips.
“She’s not very good at cooking,” Sanada apologizes as they walk down the hallway. His brother sticks his head out of his bedroom and his mouth curls into a dark smile. Sanada scowls.
“Don’t even say it,” he threatens, “or I’ll-”
“Do what, Gen-chan?” he teases. “Whack me with a fairy sword?”
Sanada grinds his teeth and makes sure to slam his door behind the two of them. “He’s an ass,” he tells Yukimura.
“He knows,” Yukimura says.
Sanada hangs his head, recalling the nights of lonely masturbating and groaning Yukimura’s name a little too loud. “I didn’t mean for-”
“You’re not ashamed, are you?” Yukimura asks. He sets down his backpack and leans over Sanada’s back. Arms slide around his neck and lips press to his ear, kissing the dips and swirls with a wet tongue that curls down inside.
Sanada shivers, and wraps his hands around Yukimura’s arms, holding onto him like a lifeline. “No,” he says.
“That’s good.” Yukimura exhales, blowing into Sanada’s ear. The feeling courses through his veins, a rushing sea that tingles straight down to his toes. And makes his cock twitch with anticipation. “I brought something,” he says.
Sanada raises an eyebrow. Yukimura flashes a secret smile and starts to pull books from his backpack. Chemistry. Maths. English. Japanese Literature. Another book in a language Sanada can’t read. Yukimura opens the book.
It is no book, but a hollow shell.
“I borrowed this book from Niou,” Yukimura says. He sets down a small bottle on Sanada’s desk, then stands in front of him. He is enticing as he is, biting his lip and toying with the waistband of his pants.
“Paint me,” he says. “With your calligraphy. Anywhere you want.” He nods to the bottle of ink that Sanada has picked up. “Anywhere, Genichirou.”
Sanada shakes his head. “My family-”
“I promise not to be very loud,” Yukimura whispers, “so long as you promise me the same thing.” When Sanada doesn’t move, Yukimura grabs his hand and pulls it to his face, pulls Sanada to his feet. He cradles Sanada’s hand against his jaw. Yukimura’s eyes are wide and the deepest colour of the sea. He drowns in them. Yukimura knows it.
“You room has a lock,” Yukimura says at length.
“You came here tonight for this,” Sanada mutters.
“Use the time when we can, Genichirou,” Yukimura says. He laughs bitterly, “I could be dead now, you know, if the operation hadn’t-”
Sanada squeezes his eyes shut. Anything for you, he thinks, and more, for what you have been through. “With this ink?” he asks, swallowing the lump forming in his throat, choking off any other words besides acceptance, choking off any thoughts of refusal.
The door is locked but Yukimura has already pulled off his t-shirt and pants by then. Sanada stands stiffly and watches him peel his underpants off, all fluid motions like water, his limbs long and limber, his neck turning slowly and his hair, his hair like the ink Sanada holds between his fingers.
He is hard, his cock flushed and erect for this, for this fantasy of Sanada’s that Sanada himself is almost too afraid to go through with. He can hear the sounds of television from his brother’s room, and late-evening students in his grandfather’s dojo next door, grunting and huffing as they pose and strike.
Yukimura is pale skin on white sheets. His black hair falls over his eyes without the headband, but his eyes speak volumes. Come hither, Genichirou, they say. Come and paint my naked body.
There is a set of paintbrushes in his desk drawer, small with mink hair that feels like silk before Sanada dips the tip into the bottle of ink. He stares at the canvas of skin before him, a back turned, all muscles rippling underneath. He is at a complete loss of what to do, what he is supposed to do.
“I…Yukimura,” he asks, “what should I paint?” He may have mastered tennis. He may have mastered beautiful characters and calligraphy, but he has not and will never master Yukimura’s thoughts.
“A poem,” Yukimura says, his voice a relaxed drawl.
“I…I don’t know any,” Sanada admits.
“Make one up,” Yukimura tells him. “Feelings and such. That’s what girls do, ne? Aren’t you the girl for me?”
Sanada sputters. Yukimura laughs. “Genichirou, you are so easy to tease!” he says before his voice falls and he is serious once more. Yukimura’s face is an otoko mask, determined and just a little otherworldly, the way he can smile so faintly, the way his eyes can be so hollow and lifeless and yet full of fire that burns Sanada to the core.
“Paint anything, paint any poem you think of. Make me yours,” Yukimura says.
“You are mine,” Sanada says thickly.
“Make me yours with your letters then.”
The first stroke of his brush are hesitant. Yukimura gasps and draws his shoulders tight, smearing the characters when he gasps. “That’s cold!”
“You said you would be quiet,” Sanada says.
Yukimura hums and says nothing more, but with each successive stroke, each slide of the brush down his back, a new line painted, he gasps and shudders and shivers and curls his toes. He is in the throws of painting.
Sanada has always been awful at poetry, but few know this, maybe only Renji, and his grandfather. He paints copied words and phrases, but nothing original. His tennis is original but not beautiful. His calligraphy is beautiful but not original.
Yukimura doesn’t seem to care. He closes his eyes, and if it weren’t for his breathing, too fast for sleep, Sanada would think him for dead. Every exhale moves a stroke and Sanada learns to time them between breaths to keep his brush as still as possible so the characters are smooth and flawless.
He traces the characters before he paints them. Yukimura sighs into the touches. He must know each one, judging from the way he smiles and chuckles and murmurs things to himself. Sanada sticks his tongue out, biting down in concentration. It takes maybe an hour, maybe five minutes, before he stands back to admire his work.
The characters have a grace, but the words are horribly corny.
Yukimura stands and cranes his neck in the small mirror on the wall. “I thought so,” he says. He grins. “Genichirou, has anyone ever said you were an awful poet? Yosano would be ashamed to have you in his company!”
Sanada’s fingers linger over the words, hovering above the still-wet haiku.
Leaves in the fall.
Yukimura above me.
He is really hot.
He starts to laugh in spite of himself and this time it is Yukimura whose eyes widen with surprise before he joins in, too.
***
At tennis practice, Sanada can see the outline of characters under the cotton of Yukimura’s uniform t-shirt before he drapes his jacket over his shoulders. He hides his smile with his cap and grabs the clipboard with the day’s roster of ranking matches.
Renji stands beside him, and he stands beside Yukimura. He listens halfway as Yukimura announces the schedule for the day’s practice. Laps, swings, rallies, matches, work for next year’s regulars on the ball machines, two at a time. He thinks that even though the season is over, tennis never really is.
Whatever next year will bring, with high school and a new tennis club, Sanada knows that tennis, and Yukimura, are constants. These glory days extend forever into the horizon, and then stretch even further the moment Yukimura dismisses the team and places a tennis ball into Sanada’s hand.
“Up for a game, Genichirou?”
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Sanada aims for the Nationals. And more...Yukimura/Sanada.
The skies spill their teams from black clouds and shudder with lightning, sporadically. It gleams on the silvery sword Sanada holds above his head. The slices through straw effigies are clean-cut, but too slow and too shaky. Even kendo doesn’t distract him from what Yukimura was speaking of earlier.
He crawls into bed, fishing around in the dark for the only pair of pajamas he can find. The house is asleep except for him. He’s put off his homework because he would rather spend time at Yukimura’s house than hunched over a desk. But unlike Kirihara, his grades have never suffered for lack of effort in school.
Sanada’s heart races, a dull thump in his chest so loud in his ears, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of the rain, or Yukimura. You can paint all over my body. He runs the words over his tongue, wordlessly, and touches himself under the thin sheet. It’s too hot, yes, but Sanada has never been able to masturbate without at least a sheet covering him, for fear of someone walking in on him and seeing, especially his brother.
He whispers Yukimura’s name in time with the pulling of his hands. He’s hard, he’s tired, he’s desperate to come so much that he jerks himself off in a fury of fast, hard hands, too much, too much and he gasps when he climaxes. Hot comes stains his fingers. His cock, his balls, his body hums with completion, but he’s far from satisfied.
“Yukimura,” he murmurs.
He dreams of blackness, of slipping on tiles in the tennis clubhouse changerooms, of seashells as big as his head scattered all over the beaches of Chiba, like the red leaves of autumn, but no ink and no painting.
He wakes in the midst of another orgasm, groaning his way to consciousness, his belly sticky and his back sweaty.
***
Even the lockers of the changerooms are infected with Yukimura. Sanada can smell him the moment he enters the clubhouse for practice, Yukimura’s fresh deodorant a trail for him to follow. It is also one that makes his palms sweat and his face burn. Renji asks, “Is something wrong, Genichirou?”
Sanada shrugs it off, but Renji’s knowing eyes never leave him, even as they unbutton school shirts and remove their trousers for tennis jerseys and uniform shorts. Yukimura stands casually by the rosterboard, one hand on his hip as he reads off lists of practice matches to Jackal.
One wouldn’t know from looking at him, standing and talking of games and rankings just as any baseball fan would in the school cafeteria, just what he had spoken of the night before, and about this very place. Sanada tries to focus on his racket, on redoing the griptape around the handle. His hands clench the racket handle like he had touched Yukimura’s cock in Chiba. He doesn’t even realize that he’s moving his hands up and down, the tape discarded and sticky on the floor, until Renji coughs discretely.
“How will you manage at practice today?” he asks on the courts. “Seiichi has you wrapped around his finger even more now. You’d lose to a junior preregular if you aren’t careful.”
Sanada bristles. “That has nothing to do with-”
Niou’s sly eyes glance their way. Sanada hushes his voice and adds, “I could beat them with my eyes closed,” he says.
“Like Fuji Shuusuke beat our Akaya?”
Kirihara glances their way and narrows his eyes. “What are you saying about me, Yanagi-senpai?” he asks.
“We were just discussing Genichirou’s stats,” Renji says, smooth and calm as ever.
“He’s two on the ranking list,” Kirihara tells them. “I just checked.”
“So he is,” Renji says.
Contrary to what Yanagi says, once Sanada is surrounded by the harsh green of the tennis courts, thoughts of Yukimura and sex dissipate in favour of slices and lobs and easy wins over angry junior team members who are cocky enough to challenge him. Kirihara stands back and rocks on his heels, gleeful and grinning when his classmates step up for the same challenge he tried the year before. A match with one of the three monsters.
Tennis is like sex in a way, sweat and drive and thrust and rushing forward into a climactic smash, or a serve so hard that it nearly winds. Sanada grunts and groans and speaks to his opponent with wordless noises, all coming from within as his body responds to the call of the ball, to the call of the game. He loves this rush, the way his body loosens the harder he works, the more he drives himself into a rally, faster faster faster until the opponent falls hard and Sanada is left panting on his court, grinning and dripping and awash with pleasure, of the sports kind.
The ground has been perpetually damp from the rainy season. Sanada’s sneakers track footprints of mud through the changerooms, across grimy tile floors. Who knows when they were cleaned last. The janitors come out to clean the showers once every while, but the tennis club is expected to clean the rest of the clubhouse themselves and being teenagers, that doesn’t happen very often. The last time Sanada recalls it cleaned was when he was doling out punishments to Yagyuu and Niou for inappropriate switching in the Seigaku match.
Nearly a month and a half of mud, of mould, of sweat and soap and crumbs from Marui’s snacks and sports drink residue and Sanada doesn’t want to think about the rest, but he can’t stop, not when Yukimura looks at him.
Sanada rubs the towel across his arm. Yukimura and the rest of the team are in a varied state of undress, some in towels, some naked, some with underpants and trousers. He drips from the shower still and cannot turn from the haunting command Yukimura made with his dark eyes and the quirk of his mouth.
“Let’s go for ice cream,” Marui says loudly.
A chorus of cheers follow. Sanada grunts “No”.
Yukimura shrugs. “I have some paperwork to do,” he says offhand. “Getting ready for next year.” He settles his gaze on Kirihara, who ducks his head, embarrassed and pleased and knowing. that he will be the one to lead Rikkai.
No one questions the captain, but Jackal says, “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” to Sanada once or twice more before he gives up. Sanada grunts and scowls and says he doesn’t like sweets. It is a lie and Jackal seems to realize this, but he says nothing to dispute it.
The team follows Marui’s lead- and Marui’s stomach- and leaves the clubhouse, a school of koi amassing together, a whirl of colour and flutterings that leave ripples in their wake. The clubhouse door swings shut behind them, the last wave of movement, and then there is silence.
The darkest of blue eyes shift left, then right, then towards Sanada, still standing with a towel for his hair and wearing nothing but his school trousers. Time flows by like a slow current. His hair drips the minutes down his back, sliding sliding.
“Get on your knees,” Yukimura says.
Sanada hesitates for a moment. Yukimura tilts his head back, staring down his nose, every bit the buchou he is, commanding respect and obedience. His body flushes with hot and cold and his knees bend.
The tile floor soaks through his trousers. It is hard and uncomfortable, but Yukimura is so close. His eyes are level with Yukimura’s hips and the bulge between his legs. His hands tremble when he starts at the zip. It catches when he tugs it down. Yukimura breathes heavily and leans back against the row of lockers. “God,” he moans.
The fabric snags and bunches and Sanada can barely get it down to Yukimura’s knees because his skin is still damp from the shower and his hands shake so much. This is no hotel room. This is the locker room and although everyone else has left, it feels wrong, it feels open. Sanada’s ears search for noises in the background- footsteps, doors, creaks, but the only thing he can hear are Yukimura’s groans and the soft swish of hands moving through his hair, pushing his head down.
Yukimura is half-hard already. Sanada digs his hands into Yukimura’s hips for leverage, trying not to lose his balance. With a gasp, Yukimura thrusts blindly against his face, all hot and velvety hard. He feels naked here, and when he wraps his mouth around Yukimura’s cock, everything is bared.
His knees hurt. He can barely breathe, nothing but the heady scent of soap and musky sex reaches his nose, buried in the dark hairs in front of his face. He lifts his eyes and nearly comes himself at the sight of Yukimura, flushed and panting. An arm is thrown over his mouth to muffle his moans, the other still fisted in Sanada’s hair, pulling him closer.
With each lick, with each suck, he grows more confident and forgets himself. He forgets anything except Yukimura. It’s been what feels like forever since they’ve done anything. Chiba is a past life of pleasure, almost foreign back in Kanagawa. Sanada rubs himself against his tightened pants. He’s close, too. The moans rise to his ears, not all from Yukimura, either.
“B-buchou?”
Yukimura lets out a strangled gasp. He drives his cock forward, a blind thrust that chokes Sanada. He pulls back, coughing and sputtering and wiping his mouth. He looks up and time stops.
Kirihara stands beside an adjacent row of lockers, his jaw hanging to the ground and his eyes as wide as the moon. Little sputters of noise rise from his throat, but nothing more.
No one moves until Yukimura grabs his underpants and trousers and pulls them back up. He’s gone as slack as Sanada has. Sanada removes his hand from the swell of Yukimura’s bum, and stands up. His knees creak and wet patches are prominent on his shins, he knows.
“What do you want, Akaya?” Yukimura asks tersely.
“Er…I…uh…my wallet…” Kirihara laughs, a pitiful rise in his voice that is horribly forced to cut the tension. It only makes it worse when he nods to his locker. “I forgot…it…”
Sanada has a pretty good idea of what is going through Akaya’s mind, from the way he stares at him as though Sanada has suddenly sprouted Atobe as a Siamese twin. Kirihara fumbles with the lock on his locker, grabs his wallet and rushes out of the locker room so fast, he slips across the wet tiles and nearly cracks his head open when he trips over the threshold of the doorway.
“Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea,” Yukimura says softly. He smiles wryly. “The mood is gone, isn’t it?”
Sanada nods. His throat has gone dry, but the bitter taste of pre-cum still lingers. He slides a hand under Yukimura’s chin and tilts it towards him with the pad of his thumb. They kiss, just standing there, with lips brushing once, and then walk to the bus stop.
***
Kirihara won’t look him in the eye.
Normally, Sanada would be perfectly happy with that. Kirihara is enough of a brat as it is, bothering his senpais at practice, harassing them in the hallways at school, but the whole situation, of him walking in on Sanada with Yukimura’s cock in his mouth makes Sanada even more uncomfortable than he already is.
He knows Akaya’s schedule because Renji has it memorized for them. He knows that Yagyuu tutors him on Tuesday afternoons when they don’t have tennis practice. With the close of August, fewer seniors show for tennis practice in favour of starting to cram for entrance exams to high school.
Sanada tracks Yagyuu and Kirihara down to a classroom on the third floor. He waits outside and checks his watch, doubting that they would go more than an hour. Their voices are hushed within, speaking English phrases and working on pronunciations and grammar exercises.
A group of girls pass him in the hallway on their way to a tutoring session, or perhaps a home economics club meeting. They giggle and grin and wave and whisper. Sanada ignores their catcalls.
Maybe he’ll call Yukimura after this. Or maybe he’ll go home and steal one of the beers his brother hides in his closet. He’ll need one. His head throbs already with the speech he’s prepared. Akaya, I know what you saw was completely inappropriate of Yukimura and I to be doing in the locker room, but you will respect the privacy and confidence of your senpai-tachi and-
“Sanada-kun!” Yagyuu calls from inside the classroom. Sanada steps inside and toys with the brim of his hat. Kirihara shoves his books in his backpack and bolts from the classroom, but Sanada grabs the back of his blazer before he can go anywhere.
“We need to talk, Akaya,” he says.
Kirihara squeaks.
Yagyuu pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. He smiles, grabbing a stack of English textbooks from a desk. “I’ll leave you two,” he says. He nods to them as he leaves and says, “Good night.”
“I- I need to go,” Kirihara insists. He struggles in Sanada’s grip, trying to free his blazer with one hand and grab onto the doorframe for leverage with the other. “I told my mother-”
“No, you didn’t,” Sanada says. He clears his throat. The fluttering nervousness grows exponentially inside his stomach. “Akaya, I know what you-”
“I really don’t want to know about it,” Akaya says, his voice rising an octave. “Sanada-fukubuchou, please let me-”
“-I know what you saw was completely inappropriate-”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Kirihara shrieks.
Sanada lets go of the blazer in surprise. Kirihara loses his balance and ends up sprawled on the floor, his books scattered around him after his backpack flies open everywhere. Sanada bends down to help him pick the books up.
“Oh, fuck it,” Sanada grumbles. He gives Akaya the English-Japanese dictionary. “Akaya…sometimes when people have strong feeling for each other they-”
“Well that was gross,” Kirihara says, scrunching up his nose in disgust. “Sanada-fukubuchou, you had Yukimura-buchou’s…” he waves his hands and turns red. Sanada can feel his face burn even hotter. They stand uncomfortable and staring at their feet, the both of them, as Kirihara goes on. “You had him in your mouth and…ugh! Yuck!”
“If you prefer girls, then-”
“Girls are gross!” Akaya says. He laughs to himself. “They smell like flowers and don’t like sports and they’re boring!”
Sanada breathes through his nose. He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his ankles. The heels of his shoes squeak on the recently-buffed floors. “One day maybe you’ll feel different, Akaya,” he manages.
Kirihara shrugs. “I’d want to date someone cool. Kinda like Yanagi-senpai.”
Sanada whips his head around and stares at Kirihara, who shrugs and grins and turns away himself. They stand in an uncomfortable silence until Sanada sucks in a breath and reaches for his wallet. “Akaya, if you say nothing about what you saw I’ll take you for ice cream.”
Kirihara has always been easily persuaded. But he makes sure to order the most expensive cone on the menu at the shop, just to make Sanada squirm a little more.
***
Other schools may retire the seniors in September, but Yukimura refuses. “I want to play tennis,” he says. “I missed out too much this year.”
He and Sanada walk along the canals boardwalks and bridges in the city. The sun shines molten over the waters, which sit stagnant without a breeze this afternoon. Autumn will come soon, and inevitably, exams and high school in the new year. Sanada savours the time being and slows his pace. His legs ache sweetly from today’s tennis practice, his hands still feel the press of the racket handle.
Sanada calls his mother on his cellphone and tells her he’ll be home for supper soon. He has a project in biology to work on, due next week, but he’d rather spend the time with Yukimura. They don’t say much, especially about Kirihara discovering them, but it is nice to simply sit on one of the benches and watch the low-hanging sun with Yukimura, the person Sanada loves as much as tennis. Sometimes he thinks that he and Yukimura aren’t attached by a red thread, but by a racket string.
He turns to Yukimura. His face is golden from the light, and the angle of the sun creates a blinding halo from which only the deepest eyes stare towards him. Yukimura rests his hand over Sanada’s, squeezing enough to be meaningful, but not more that any of the other pedestrians would notice something.
Perhaps even more than tennis, he thinks. His chest feels heavy and full. Sanada turns to Yukimura and gives him a rare, open smile.
***
At home, his mother serves cold tofu with pickled ginger and his grandfather barbecues slabs of beef. The entire house smells of wood smoke and Sanada retreats to his room, picking bits of tangy ginger from between his teeth with his fingernails as he stares down at his biology homework.
The tennis posters on his walls distract him from the nervous system, nodes and neurons. The photographs of the team, including a smiling, strong Yukimura distract him from his textbook until he manages to turn them over and discipline himself into working.
Three loud bangs on his door don’t help. “Genichirou!” his brother shouts, banging again. Sanada swings the door open to see his brother standing with a first raised to bang again. His brother grins and waggles his heavy eyebrows.
“Your boyfriend is here,” he says, smirking.
“Shut up!” Sanada growls. He pushes past his brother, giving him a sharp hit with his shoulder. His brother steps out of the way and smacks Sanada in the side for measure.
Yukimura hands his mother a bunch of flowers from his arms. “They’re from my garden, Sanada-san,” he tells her. “I hope I’m not bothering Genichirou.” She seems impressed with the bunch and places them in a lacquer vase. Sanada holds back a sneeze. To him, they’re just a bunch of pretty blossoms that smell of fragrant roses and pungent jasmine, but since they are from Yukimura, they seem that much bigger, that much fuller.
His mother is impressed and sends them off to Sanada’s room with a tray of pontas and shrimp chips.
“She’s not very good at cooking,” Sanada apologizes as they walk down the hallway. His brother sticks his head out of his bedroom and his mouth curls into a dark smile. Sanada scowls.
“Don’t even say it,” he threatens, “or I’ll-”
“Do what, Gen-chan?” he teases. “Whack me with a fairy sword?”
Sanada grinds his teeth and makes sure to slam his door behind the two of them. “He’s an ass,” he tells Yukimura.
“He knows,” Yukimura says.
Sanada hangs his head, recalling the nights of lonely masturbating and groaning Yukimura’s name a little too loud. “I didn’t mean for-”
“You’re not ashamed, are you?” Yukimura asks. He sets down his backpack and leans over Sanada’s back. Arms slide around his neck and lips press to his ear, kissing the dips and swirls with a wet tongue that curls down inside.
Sanada shivers, and wraps his hands around Yukimura’s arms, holding onto him like a lifeline. “No,” he says.
“That’s good.” Yukimura exhales, blowing into Sanada’s ear. The feeling courses through his veins, a rushing sea that tingles straight down to his toes. And makes his cock twitch with anticipation. “I brought something,” he says.
Sanada raises an eyebrow. Yukimura flashes a secret smile and starts to pull books from his backpack. Chemistry. Maths. English. Japanese Literature. Another book in a language Sanada can’t read. Yukimura opens the book.
It is no book, but a hollow shell.
“I borrowed this book from Niou,” Yukimura says. He sets down a small bottle on Sanada’s desk, then stands in front of him. He is enticing as he is, biting his lip and toying with the waistband of his pants.
“Paint me,” he says. “With your calligraphy. Anywhere you want.” He nods to the bottle of ink that Sanada has picked up. “Anywhere, Genichirou.”
Sanada shakes his head. “My family-”
“I promise not to be very loud,” Yukimura whispers, “so long as you promise me the same thing.” When Sanada doesn’t move, Yukimura grabs his hand and pulls it to his face, pulls Sanada to his feet. He cradles Sanada’s hand against his jaw. Yukimura’s eyes are wide and the deepest colour of the sea. He drowns in them. Yukimura knows it.
“You room has a lock,” Yukimura says at length.
“You came here tonight for this,” Sanada mutters.
“Use the time when we can, Genichirou,” Yukimura says. He laughs bitterly, “I could be dead now, you know, if the operation hadn’t-”
Sanada squeezes his eyes shut. Anything for you, he thinks, and more, for what you have been through. “With this ink?” he asks, swallowing the lump forming in his throat, choking off any other words besides acceptance, choking off any thoughts of refusal.
The door is locked but Yukimura has already pulled off his t-shirt and pants by then. Sanada stands stiffly and watches him peel his underpants off, all fluid motions like water, his limbs long and limber, his neck turning slowly and his hair, his hair like the ink Sanada holds between his fingers.
He is hard, his cock flushed and erect for this, for this fantasy of Sanada’s that Sanada himself is almost too afraid to go through with. He can hear the sounds of television from his brother’s room, and late-evening students in his grandfather’s dojo next door, grunting and huffing as they pose and strike.
Yukimura is pale skin on white sheets. His black hair falls over his eyes without the headband, but his eyes speak volumes. Come hither, Genichirou, they say. Come and paint my naked body.
There is a set of paintbrushes in his desk drawer, small with mink hair that feels like silk before Sanada dips the tip into the bottle of ink. He stares at the canvas of skin before him, a back turned, all muscles rippling underneath. He is at a complete loss of what to do, what he is supposed to do.
“I…Yukimura,” he asks, “what should I paint?” He may have mastered tennis. He may have mastered beautiful characters and calligraphy, but he has not and will never master Yukimura’s thoughts.
“A poem,” Yukimura says, his voice a relaxed drawl.
“I…I don’t know any,” Sanada admits.
“Make one up,” Yukimura tells him. “Feelings and such. That’s what girls do, ne? Aren’t you the girl for me?”
Sanada sputters. Yukimura laughs. “Genichirou, you are so easy to tease!” he says before his voice falls and he is serious once more. Yukimura’s face is an otoko mask, determined and just a little otherworldly, the way he can smile so faintly, the way his eyes can be so hollow and lifeless and yet full of fire that burns Sanada to the core.
“Paint anything, paint any poem you think of. Make me yours,” Yukimura says.
“You are mine,” Sanada says thickly.
“Make me yours with your letters then.”
The first stroke of his brush are hesitant. Yukimura gasps and draws his shoulders tight, smearing the characters when he gasps. “That’s cold!”
“You said you would be quiet,” Sanada says.
Yukimura hums and says nothing more, but with each successive stroke, each slide of the brush down his back, a new line painted, he gasps and shudders and shivers and curls his toes. He is in the throws of painting.
Sanada has always been awful at poetry, but few know this, maybe only Renji, and his grandfather. He paints copied words and phrases, but nothing original. His tennis is original but not beautiful. His calligraphy is beautiful but not original.
Yukimura doesn’t seem to care. He closes his eyes, and if it weren’t for his breathing, too fast for sleep, Sanada would think him for dead. Every exhale moves a stroke and Sanada learns to time them between breaths to keep his brush as still as possible so the characters are smooth and flawless.
He traces the characters before he paints them. Yukimura sighs into the touches. He must know each one, judging from the way he smiles and chuckles and murmurs things to himself. Sanada sticks his tongue out, biting down in concentration. It takes maybe an hour, maybe five minutes, before he stands back to admire his work.
The characters have a grace, but the words are horribly corny.
Yukimura stands and cranes his neck in the small mirror on the wall. “I thought so,” he says. He grins. “Genichirou, has anyone ever said you were an awful poet? Yosano would be ashamed to have you in his company!”
Sanada’s fingers linger over the words, hovering above the still-wet haiku.
Leaves in the fall.
Yukimura above me.
He is really hot.
He starts to laugh in spite of himself and this time it is Yukimura whose eyes widen with surprise before he joins in, too.
***
At tennis practice, Sanada can see the outline of characters under the cotton of Yukimura’s uniform t-shirt before he drapes his jacket over his shoulders. He hides his smile with his cap and grabs the clipboard with the day’s roster of ranking matches.
Renji stands beside him, and he stands beside Yukimura. He listens halfway as Yukimura announces the schedule for the day’s practice. Laps, swings, rallies, matches, work for next year’s regulars on the ball machines, two at a time. He thinks that even though the season is over, tennis never really is.
Whatever next year will bring, with high school and a new tennis club, Sanada knows that tennis, and Yukimura, are constants. These glory days extend forever into the horizon, and then stretch even further the moment Yukimura dismisses the team and places a tennis ball into Sanada’s hand.
“Up for a game, Genichirou?”