Happy Santa_Smex, Illuminations!
To: illuminations
From: happiestwhen
Title: Two Places at Once
Recipient's name: illuminations
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Inui/Yanagi
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created by Konomi Takeshi. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Happy holidays, illuminations! Hope you enjoy this. Thank you to L for speedily looking this over. ♥
Inui knows something is wrong from the second he wakes up. He jolts awake at 5:30am to the sound on an unfamiliar alarm, a repetitive three-note refrain. He reaches to turn it off and the switch isn't where he expects it to be. The clock is round rather than square. The second-hand ticks from the 8 to the 9. Inui can see it clearly. His hand brushes across the bedside table, fumbling for his glasses, but they aren't there. He blinks again, reaches up to the bridge of his nose for the glasses that must be there, because everything is perfectly in focus. They aren't. Inui wonders if his optic nerves have spontaneously regenerated in his sleep. The juice he drank last night had been an unstable recipe, still undergoing trials, but these side-effects were certainly not among any he'd considered.
He stands up and his toes squish into the thick brown rug. Inui doesn't own a rug. He also doesn't own the complete works of William Shakespeare, he thinks suspiciously, glancing at the bookshelf above the desk. Nothing about this room is familiar. Nothing about this room is his.
Inui begins to run through the possibilities in his head, systematically discarding each one as being statistically improbable: He could be at a classmate's house. This could be a prank. He could be under the influence of alcohol or drugs. This could be a dream.
He walks into the bathroom to splash water on his face and nearly faints when he sees his reflection in the mirror.
"Renji!" he exclaims in horror. Only, he exclaims it in Renji's voice. The look of horror is on Renji's face. Inui is Renji.
Inui runs his hands up over Renji's smooth skin, his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose. "Illogical," he breathes. The situation is beyond bizarre and for once, Inui feels completely at a loss for conclusions or calculations. There is no logical explanation for what has happened. He feels dazed. He thinks he hears bells and he can feel the lingering effects of whatever transformation has just occurred; his left leg is buzzing.
No, vibrating is more accurate.
Inui reaches into the cargo pocket of Renji's pajama shorts. Oh. His cell phone is ringing.
He pulls it out and answers it: "Hello?"
"Sadaharu, what have you done?" Inui hears his own voice reply.
Inui lets out a sigh of relief. Whatever this is seems to have affected only the two of them. He would have been in a world of trouble if it had been Horio trapped in his body instead.
"I think," Inui begins, still feeling very awkward about having his words come out in Renji's voice, "that something might have gone wrong with my latest juice experiment."
"Ah," Renji says, sounding unsurprised, maybe even amused. "Do you have a solution?"
Inui fumbles for an answer, but comes up empty-handed. "No?" He hears Renji laugh at the uncertainty in his own voice.
"We both have school soon," Renji says slowly. "I doubt there's much that can be done right now. It would take too long for you to reach Tokyo."
"Yes," Inui agrees. "I'd left the pertinent details of my latest juice recipe on my desk before I went to bed last night. They should be there now and--"
"I can go over them and see if there's a way to reverse the effects, yes," Renji replies.
Inui smiles. "After classes and practice, we should meet. Until then, just act like nothing is wrong."
Renji laughs. "I'm sure that won't be a problem. It can't be that hard to be Inui Sadaharu..."
"Be cool," Inui says tentatively.
"But you aren't cool, Sadaharu."
"Just don't do anything to make me look bad."
"Don't worry," Renji says, smirk audible in his voice, "I'll do my best to preserve your dignity, Hakase. Now, I should go. I'm going to be late."
Inui looks at his watch. 6:00. "Where are you going?"
"I have to train with Kaidoh," Renji responds. Inui notes that the way his voice says "Kaidoh" is different when it's Renji saying it.
"What? How did you--"
"Oh Sadaharu, don't pretend you don't have my schedule just as perfectly memorized. Which reminds me. I hope you've brushed up on literature recently. There's an exam today in that class."
And with that, Renji hangs up.
*
Inui puts the phone down on the counter and studies his -- Renji's -- face in the mirror. It should be impossible that this has happened. Inui rolls up the sleeve of his shirt. There's the thin white scar on Renji's elbow where he fell during a doubles match back when they were ten years old. So much about this body feels familiar to Inui, carefully charted height and weight and growth patterns, and at the same time, it's perfectly foreign. Stranger fates have befallen the Seigaku tennis team, but this is something Inui caused, and unintentionally, too. He should be frightened, but instead he feels, well, a little powerful.
He goes back to the bedroom and rifles through Renji's desk, looking for some blank notebooks or paper to start cataloguing his findings and observations. There's a book of poetry, a file folder titled "Exam Notes" (useful for later, Inui thinks), and a notepad with cranes on it. Inui tears off the top sheet and starts writing. He looks around the room, imagining how Renji would be spending his morning if he were here and not there. It's a comfortable room, very similar to Inui's in shape and size and yet with a definite Renji-quality to everything. It makes the whole situation feel a bit surreal, like everything is almost-but-not-quite right.
There are notebooks on the shelves, Renji's tennis data for the Rikkai Dai team three years running, and they look like Inui's notebooks except the colors are blue instead of green, and they're not as numerous. Renji's data has always been more in his head than on paper.
Inui has a sudden pang of worry that Renji is going to forget to take down data at practice, is going to fail to adhere to Inui's training regiment, is going to fail to document the lab results in Inui's science class in the proper fashion. But then, he remembers: This is Renji. He knows what Inui would want, just as Inui knows what Renji will want, how his day is meant to proceed.
Still, he has to fight the urge to call Tezuka to give him a heads-up.
Instead he goes back into the bathroom to take a shower. He feels oddly uncomfortable as he strips out of his clothes, and wraps the towel around himself almost immediately, taking it off only right before he steps under the shower head. It's his body, at least for the moment, so he can feel the warm droplets of water rolling down his skin, but it's Renji's skin. The muscles are all Renji's. The awkward tennis tan-line is Renji's. The--
"Oh," Inui breathes, looking down. His faces flushes red. He tries to think of something distracting, because this is wrong. This can't be happening. He can't do that to Renji's body. Ryuuzaki-sensei in a bikini, Ryuuzaki-sensei in a bikini, he thinks, but even that isn't helping. All he can think about is the fact that his body -- no, Renji's body -- is now impossibly hard. Inui certainly isn't a stranger to erections. For his first year of puberty, he'd gleefully catalogued the results of his masturbation sessions, graphing them against statistical averages and setting stamina goals for himself to improve his performance.
But this is different. It cannot be solved with a simple equation.
He wonders what Renji is doing right now, surely not anything quite so embarrassing. Inui looks at Renji's waterproof digital wrist watch, the screen blurred by the water and Inui's lack of glasses. Renji and Kaidoh must be stretching now. Inui tries to picture the scene in his head. Renji reading off Inui's figures from his notebook. Renji passing Kaidoh a water bottle or a towel. The two of them lying back on the grass, sweating and panting and exhausted.
"Oh," Inui breathes again. That was probably not the right train of thought. He closes his eyes. Maybe if he concentrates hard enough, it will just go away. Maybe if he closes his eyes and concentrates hard enough and decidedly doesn't think of Renji then he will be able to make the problem go away himself.
He slides his hands down his stomach and then lower. He lets out a sharp hiss as he begins to stroke himself. It doesn't help that the hiss is in Renji's voice, that the hands on his dick feel like Renji's hands -- are Renji's hands -- and every sound he makes is not himself, but Renji Renji Renji--
Inui comes with a gasp and presses his forehead against the wet tiled wall of the shower, trying to forget what's just happened. For once he feels like he has too much data. There is no way to even begin to analyze this.
*
He really isn't sure how he makes it through the school day after that. He has never walked from Renji's house to Rikkai Dai before and yet somehow he makes it to school on time. Luckily Renji was organized and laid out an outfit for him to wear, but Inui feels strange and gangly in it, uncomfortably aware of the way Renji's body moves -- his stride and gait, the way his weight shifts when he stands -- and how different it is from Inui's own. He takes Renji's literature exam and does very well considering he'd only had forty-five minutes to read through Renji's notes. He tries to remain inconspicuous and unassuming, not saying much to anyone for fear the Juice will start to wear off and he'll suddenly sound like himself. No one seems to suspect anything odd in the slightest though.
"Yanagi-senpai!!" someone shouts, and suddenly there is an arm slung around Inui's shoulder. He looks over and sees Kirihara Akaya staring at him with a devilish grin. "That was some try-out yesterday, wasn't it?"
"Uh..." Inui glances around quickly for an exit. "Yeah. Yeah, it was."
"Oh come on, senpai. Don't tell me you're going to give me a hard time about the injuries, too. It really wasn't my fault!"
"Injuries?" Inui asks. He mentally runs through the list of Kirihara's data in his head.
Kirihara rolls his eyes. "The boy with the sprain and the other one who twisted his ankle. They were playing shitty tennis. That's not my problem."
"Ah" Inui replies. He is tempted to ask for more information but fears that doing so would blow his cover. "Right," he says instead. "That's unfortunate. I have to, um, go study for my history class now."
"Okay," Kirihara whines, letting Inui go. "I guess you have tests, or whatever. I'll see you after school!"
Inui nods and leaves without a backwards glance. He rounds the corner and slips into the boy's bathroom and locks himself in a stall. This is turning out to be more of a challenge than Inui had expected it to be. It isn't that he's obviously struggling -- Inui has always been a master of stealth and disguise -- but Rikkai is very different from Seigaku and Inui doesn't like being presented with that many unknown variables. He wants to call Renji, but at the same time doesn't. Renji should call him first. Why isn't he? Inui imagines Renji at Seigaku. Will he fit in? Will he be all right? He pictures Renji trying to explain Two Gentlemen of Verona to Eiji and Oishi over lunch, neither of them noticing anything different or strange about "Inui". Eiji would probably think it was a new tennis strategy. Maybe Two Gentlemen of Verona is like Australian Formation.
He pictures Renji talking to Tezuka. Would they get along? Would Tezuka like him better than he likes Inui? Would he let Renji call him on the phone?
Inui thinks that he would be okay with Renji being at Seigaku as long as Inui was there, too. This way is just too strange.
Inevitably, Inui's curiosity gets the better of him and he finds himself unzipping his pants and pulling them down around his knees. This is for the sake of experiment. For data. It's important to know one's opponent as thoroughly and intimately as possible. Sure, this sort of scale has never been applied to any of Inui's other competitors, but when an opportunity presents itself, it must be fully explored.
Inui closes his eyes again and wraps his hand around Renji's dick. Empirically speaking, there are no huge differences between him and Renji in this area. Renji seems to have more length where Inui has width, maybe a centimeter, give or take, but despite the physical similarities, Inui finds that this is somehow a world apart from touching himself. He tries to stay quiet and focused, not wanting to disclose himself to any unlikely passersby, but it's nearly impossible. As his hand begins to move, Inui feels pressure building up inside of him. His breath hitches and stutters out in gasps. He bites the corner of his lip and with his eyes closed, that somehow feels like Renji kissing him, and Inui isn't sure how his mind could even begin to approximate such a feeling. Then there's that strange vibrating against his thigh again and Inui is close, so close.
By the time the cell phone has switched from vibrate to ring, Inui has already come.
"Hello?" he answers, trying to control his breathing. Renji is the last person he needs to hear from right now, but who knows, this could be important.
"You sound out of breath," Renji says, sounding more amused than concerned. "Are you all right?"
"I--" Inui starts. "I was just out for a run. Part of my training routine."
"You're missing my math class," Renji chides, sounding far too understanding for Inui's liking. "I'll call you again after tennis practice. When you're less busy."
"I was just--" Inui starts, defensively.
"Later, Hakase."
The receiver clicks.
Inui sighs. He needs to get a grip. He closes his eyes again and counts out the decimals of pi in his head, trying to calm himself down. This only riles him up further considering the voice in his head is now Renji's voice.
What a day, it thinks.
*
Tennis practice is an improvement because even though the Rikkai Dai courts are unfamiliar, tennis always is. Inui plays matches against Niou Masaharu and Sanada Genichirou, and he feels his head buzzing, his mind excitedly compiling data. No one on the team seems to notice anything strange about Inui's playing style. He and Renji are similar for the most part, and Inui knows more than enough about Renji to be able to mimic the rest believably.
The only one who seems suspicious is Yukimura. After practices end and the team heads for the showers, he catches Inui by the sleeve of his uniform and laughs, a sly twinkle in his eyes.
"Your serve has gotten faster," is all Yukimura says.
*
When the phone buzzes again in Inui's pocket, he nearly shouts with relief. He is just finishing up in the Rikkai locker room, the last one to leave, and has been packing and repacking Renji's tennis uniform into his bag, anxiously awaiting the phone call. Seigaku practice must have run late today. Or else Renji is keeping him waiting to tease. Either way, he's calling now, and that's what matters.
"Renji," Inui answers.
Renji laughs. "That sounds so strange. I feel like I'm talking to myself."
"Technically, I suppose you are."
"I think I've solved our problem," Renji says, getting to the point.
Inui's eyebrows raise. "Oh?"
"We should meet," Renji says. "How about the tennis club near my old house?"
Inui has an unexpected feeling in his chest like a coin flipping over. "Okay," he agrees. Then, blushing a little he thinks of something: "Renji, what do I feel like?"
"Your skin?" he hears his own voice reply. "It feels like skin. There are no striking anomalies."
"I mean," Inui begins hesitantly, "do I feel... different? You feel different. I can't explain it in terms of science although it's true your body temperature is at least a degree higher than mine and your frame is lighter so I exert less energy when I--"
"You feel different too, Sadaharu," Renji interrupts. "I understand."
"It's not all bad though," Inui says, beginning to get used to hearing Renji's voice speak his words. It makes him feel oddly unguarded, which wouldn't be comforting with anyone but Renji.
"I know," Renji replies. "This is the most we've talked in a long time," he observes, and then, after a long pause: "I'm glad you haven't changed."
"But I have changed, Renji," Inui says in confusion. "I'm in your body."
"I didn't mean like that," says Renji, laughing. "I'll see you soon."
*
Going to the tennis club is strange for Inui. He hasn't been there since he was eleven, since Renji was eleven, too, since he and Renji were still an unstoppable doubles pair.
Inui kept coming to the club for twenty two days after Renji moved. He kept coming until he was sure that Renji wouldn't be coming anymore. For the first week, it had to be a joke. The second week made it a really good joke. The third week was when the joke stopped being funny. Renji was gone.
Now, Inui feels that same pang of worry in his chest, as though he is going to get there and Renji won't be there to meet him and history will repeat itself. Technically, this is true. It won't be Renji there to greet him, but Inui, but at least Renji will be somewhere inside; cleverly disguised like they're kids again and it's Halloween.
As he walks, Inui is passed by two kids on twin blue bicycles, a microscope perched dangerously in the basket of one of them. At a crosswalk, Inui overhears two old businessmen arguing loudly about stock prices of the company they share. As Inui rounds the corner, the drooping branch of a willow tree nearly smacks him in the face.
It's probably just coincidence, he thinks.
When he arrives at the tennis club, when he sees himself standing there, leaning against the bike rack and smirking, he nearly stumbles over his feet in surprise. Of course him being in Renji's body would mean Renji would be in his, but it's surreal to actually see it.
"I don't think I've ever worn that facial expression before," Renji comments, the corner of his mouth turning up in amusement. Inui feels light-headed. Having known Renji for years, he's perfectly used to being mocked by him. He's just not used to being mocked by him in his own voice.
"So what is the solution?" Inui asks.
Renji smiles. "Tennis."
*
And that is how they find themselves in the midst of a heated singles match on the very same court they'd played on together in their youth.
It's nearing the end of the second set, and it's Renji's serve. He tosses the ball in the air. "Remember when our coach told us we were so in sync it was as though each of us was in two places at once?" he asks.
Inui frowns. "I'm sure he didn't mean it literally."
"Well, no," Renji agrees, serving the ball hard across the net. Inui dives to return it. "I just thought--" Renji continues, volleying the shot back over the net with ease "-- that maybe there's something to that. Who would win if we really were in two places at once? Being ourselves is the easy part, but what if we're not ourselves? This tests how well we know each other, right? It will show who's really stronger."
Inui rushes up to the net, his sneakers skidding sharply on the court. "This isn't very logical, Kyouju." He returns the ball as a slice across the net. Renji isn't quick enough and it whizzes past him and clangs against the back fence.
Renji looks up and meets Inui's eyes. "We're even," he says. It's the final game; 15-all.
"If we're even, then how does that prove who is stronger?" Inui asks.
Renji flips the face of his racket back and forth in his hand. "Maybe that we are even? Maybe that's what this whole thing is trying to show us. It doesn't matter if you win this match or if I do, because whomever lost will win next time. You can be me and I can be you and there's no difference."
Inui thinks about data, about statistical probabilities, about cold, hard, tangible ways to rationalize this. Renji isn't making any sense.
Then he thinks about this morning in the shower. He thinks about the children on their bicycles. He thinks about how being in Renji's body is the closest Inui's ever got to doing something so simple as holding his hand. The last thought takes him by surprise, and the thoughts that follow are even stranger. It's not only touching that Inui wants. He thinks of the way Renji's teeth felt as they chewed into his sandwich at lunch and imagines those teeth on his own skin. He thinks about the way Renji's fingers held the pencil as Inui wrote the literature test and imagines those fingers pressing half-moon indentations into his shoulder blades.
He wants Renji.
He wants Renji. Not in the sense of tennis opponents or friends or lucrative business associates. He wants Renji the way his biology textbooks write about animals desiring a mate, the way Momoshiro and Kikumaru talk about wanting girls. The force with which these thoughts hit Inui makes him suddenly feel a little dizzy, and he reaches forward for the net for balance.
He misses and falls forward against the ground.
*
Inui isn't sure how long he's out for. When he wakes up, Renji is staring down at him.
"Sadaharu!" he exclaims. He's smiling and his eyes are open and that's when Inui puts two and two together: Renji is staring at him. Not Renji in Inui's body. Renji is Renji. Which must mean--
Inui reaches up to the bridge of his nose. His glasses are there. He looks at his hands. They're his own hands. He tries speaking:
"How..." his voice comes out a little shaky, but it's definitely his own voice.
Renji closes his eyes again. "This isn't going to sound logical, I know, but I think I might have some idea. In one of your notebooks, you wrote something about wishing I could be in your place to see you how you feel. Did you really--"
"You read my notebooks??" Inui sits straight up. "How much did you read??"
"Oh," Renji says laughing, "I only read the one in your drawer. It used to be ours, I thought I was entitled to read that one."
That was the notebook they had kept together during their last summer at the tennis club. Inui tries to remember what was written in it. Tennis strategies, doubles formations, plans for world domination-- Oh. The last five or ten pages were just angry letters to Renji after he'd moved away. Inui feels his cheeks go red.
"I'm sorry," Inui says. "I didn't mean what I said."
"Don't say that," Renji argues. "I hope you meant what you said."
Inui's brow furrows in confusion. Meant which part? The part where he'd said he wished Renji would die at the hands of hostile alien invaders? The part where he said Renji was the worst possible friend anyone could ever have. The part where he--
"Oh," Inui says softly. There were some other parts too. Nicer parts. He shifts on the court and is suddenly aware of something in his back pocket. He reaches in and pulls out a folded photograph. "This is from--"
"Your room," Renji finishes. "Yes... I'm sorry I took that. I couldn't help it. I guess it's because, the truth is, I feel the same way, Sadaharu."
"I don't see what you mean," Inui says.
Renji's fingers touch the frame of Inui's glasses, and he smiles as he pulls them off. Renji goes blurry in Inui's vision and then comes back into focus as he moves closer. "Can you see what I mean, now?" Renji asks, and kisses him.
*
Later, Inui is surprised to learn that it is actually quite hard to stop at just one kiss, and kissing inevitably leads to other, much more exciting things, and neither he nor Renji make it home until long after dark.
And neither of them really minds.