Prince of Tennis: Fic: "Playing Grown Ups" 1/2
Title: Playing Grown Ups
Pairings: Tezuka/Ryoma, some Fuji/Ryoma.
Rating: Soft R.
Word Count: 15,770. Split into two posts for length.
Summary: Tezuka assumes he has been forgotten.
Timeline: Future-fic; spoilers for entire Anime series.
Disclaimer: All belongs to Konomi. No infringement intended.
Thanks to bookshop, thewhiteprophet, and annafreud for everything.
Every now and then Tezuka will get phone calls first thing in the morning. Over breakfast or on the way to school, he’ll listen to Echizen’s subdued voice as he says, Buchou, and asks for advice. Sometimes Echizen just wants to tell him something, about the courts or the sponsors or the opponent he has to face in the semi-finals. Tezuka never tells anybody about these calls. He’s not sure why, but it feels like a secret.
Echizen doesn’t call for a while, and Tezuka assumes he has been forgotten.
--
In Tezuka’s first year of high school he’s not captain anymore and his protégé is off conquering the universe, so he seems to have a lot more free time. He doubles his practice load and spends a lot of time studying. He jogs in the half-light every morning, passing Kaidoh by the park. Sometimes at night he tries to watch television with his older sister, but he can’t understand these Americans with their tiny Californian lives. Sometimes he watches the news with his grandfather. He prefers the paper, which he reads cover to cover alone in his room at night.
On Sundays he plays tennis with Fuji and the matches last for hours. He feels himself growing stronger. There is new force in the slice of his racquet through air, new grace in his feet against the clay. Sometimes Fuji will come close to beating him, and it makes Tezuka work harder. He imagines facing Fuji at Wimbledon. He imagines facing Echizen.
The year passes slowly. Sometimes he’ll drop by the junior high to see how Momoshiro and Kaidoh are faring with the new regulars. Oishi comes with him and they drink tea with Ryuzaki-sensei in her office. He worries about her. The lines around her eyes are deep and jagged now, and it seems like she’s aged ten years in six months. He can see it in the dead weight of her serve, the way it seems to fall more than it flies. He tries not to watch when she’s on the courts.
In August Echizen Nanjiroh sends Ryuzaki-sensei a video of Ryoma playing the US national championships, and the old team gathers at Kawamura Sushi to watch. Echizen is taller since the last time Tezuka really looked at him, and when he speaks to the camera after he takes the match (6-3 with a close final game) his voice crumbles and breaks over the words he speaks in English. He’ll be fourteen in three months. Tezuka watches his broad new shoulders flex as he serves, his long new legs stretch as he wins, and feels restless.
--
In Tezuka’s second year of high school, he’s not captain and there seem to be photos of Echizen all over Tokyo. Echizen stares at him from newspapers and tennis magazines, from the bottle of juice he pours in the morning. Even in advertising Echizen looks grumpy and slightly bored, like he’d rather be posing on a can of Ponta.
The new captain is Kugimiya Shizuka, and he doesn’t really like Tezuka much. In first year Tezuka had crushed him in the finals of the intra-school ranking tournament. Sometimes Tezuka can still feel that victory in the clipped tone with which Kugimaya addresses him. In first year, only Tezuka and Fuji had made the regulars.
Two months into the new school year, Echizen drops into practice. Tezuka doesn’t notice him at first, the unfamiliar new line of his body not registering in the corner of his eye. It’s not until he hears Momoshiro and Kikumaru’s mingled hollering that he sees him standing behind the chain link fence, faltering under the combined weight of his friends.
“Oi, Echizen, you sneaky little shit!” Momoshiro squawks, his knuckle rubbing Echizen’s crisp white cap askew. “Showing up without telling anybody.”
“That hurts,” Echizen says, wrenching his skull from Momoshiro’s grasp. Kikumaru is writhing with excitement, bouncing at Momoshiro’s side and clutching Echizen’s shoulder.
“Ochibi,” Kikumaru starts, “What are you -“
“Momoshiro, Kikumaru, twenty laps!” The captain calls. Tezuka feels a little like he’s fallen a year and a half into the past, like if he turns around to look the irritated figure shouting at Momoshiro and Kikumaru will be his fourteen year old self, long and stern in his old uniform.
He doesn’t look. He meets Echizen’s steady gaze for a moment before turning back to his game with Oishi. After practice everybody converges on Echizen. He’s in Tokyo for his cousin’s wedding. He’ll be gone again by morning.
--
In August, Tezuka is chosen as part of the team that will be sent to the US for a junior goodwill tournament. He sits beside Tachibana on the plane and tries to focus on the match ahead. Echizen Ryoma is the star of the American side, and when Tezuka closes his eyes he can see those huge eyes across the net, goading him.
“I imagine Echizen will play first singles,” Fuji says quietly, standing beside Tezuka at the baggage carousel. “How exciting.”
The Japanese line up has yet to be decided. Atobe might play first singles, or Kirihara. Fuji or Yukimura might take the position from him. Probably the only person that doesn’t want to play first singles is Kikumaru Eiji, who is unusually subdued in the face of Oishi’s absence. Tezuka tries not to think too hard about the line up, because they’re supposed to be a team. His ambition is selfish.
Still, as they pile into taxis at the airport he remembers Echizen’s victory on the clay courts by the train tracks and thinks, please. Please let me.
--
It’s awkward when the teams meet the day before the tournament. Echizen sits on the other side of the room with Kevin Smith and looks like he’d like to get up and take a seat next to Kikumaru. The teams bow and shake hands and afterward Echizen follows Fuji and Kikumaru to dinner. They eat in a pizza place Echizen must frequent. The waiters all seem to know his name.
“Nya, superstar!” Kikumaru says, bumping Echizen’s shoulder with his own. “You’re on my juicebox!”
“Shut up,” Echizen says, and pulls his cap low over his face. “They have a deal with the school.”
Tezuka doesn’t understand what kind of school would sell their students to advertisers, but Echizen has the best coaches and gets to play tennis half the day. Tezuka had been offered a place at the academy that Echizen attends. He wonders how life would have been different had he taken it.
“I hope you have not been neglecting your studies,” Tezuka says. He can’t eat the pizza in front of him, with its grease and clusters of mysterious meat.
Echizen swallows a mouthful of pizza. Tezuka imagines it forcing its way through Echizen’s body and congealing in his stomach. “Don’t worry, Buchou,” Echizen says. “I won’t be careless.”
--
When the coach announces that Tezuka will play first singles, his heart thumps once hard inside his chest. Beside him Kirihara is all muttered curses, while Yukimura just smiles serenely. When the positions are announced Tezuka thinks he sees Echizen smiling beneath his cap, but he’s on the other side of the room and doesn’t even know if the boy is listening.
--
They play so hard that Tezuka thinks he feels the ghost of his old shoulder injury burning and screaming in his muscles. Echizen has changed since the last time they played, but then so has Tezuka. They match one another point for point, and whenever he has a moment to look Tezuka can see Echizen grinning in exhilaration.
Tezuka takes the match, 7 games to 6.
--
Echizen Ryoma tries to come back quietly. The first Tezuka hears of it is Echizen’s name on the list of new club members he’s given on his first day as Captain. Then Echizen just shows up to practice and tries to help gather the scattered yellow tennis balls like all the other freshmen. Tezuka watches him and wonders if it’s easy for him to ignore the whispers that follow the movement of his body around the court. He remembers Echizen as a twelve year old, his unfathomable ability to ignore everyone and everything around him.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Tezuka says later. Practice is over and almost everybody has gone home, but when Tezuka left the clubhouse Echizen had been lingering around the entrance, waiting for him.
Echizen blinks at him, and Tezuka doesn’t think he’s going to answer. “My mother thought that school was warping my social development,” he reveals finally. “She said that if you’re always on the court and never in the classroom, you never learn to deal with anybody.”
“Oh,” Tezuka says.
They walk toward the exit together, and a little beyond the gates. “Besides,” Echizen says finally. “All the best players are here.” He doesn’t meet Tezuka’s eyes. “Bye, Buchou.”
He watches Echizen walk away and thinks, this year we’ll take Nationals.
--
The day before the first intra-school tournament is scheduled to begin, Tezuka is leaving a bookshop when he sees Echizen standing awkwardly on the corner with Momoshiro and Tachibana An. The couple are all tangled arms against Echizen’s blank face. Tezuka takes a step towards them and can hear their voices, muffled in the cracks between the sounds of the busy city street.
“We’re heading over to the public courts,” Momoshiro is saying, “I have to practice before the big day tomorrow! Are you going to come?”
Echizen seems to be staring at their tightly clasped fingers; when Tachibana An calls Momoshiro Momo-chan, his face flickers a little in disgust.
“No,” Echizen says. “You go on ahead without me.”
Tezuka stands on the street and watches Echizen watch Momoshiro walk away. He moves in Echizen’s direction, but a group of tittering schoolkids intercepts him. When his vision clears Echizen is gone.
--
The regulars are as follows: Echizen Ryoma (1st year), Kaidoh Kaoru (2nd year), Momoshiro Takeshi (2nd year), Fuji Syuusuke (3rd year), Inui Sadaharu (3rd year), Kikumaru Eiji (3rd year), Oishi Shuichiro (3rd year), and Tezuka Kunimitsu (3rd year).
Just looking at the list makes Tezuka’s fingers tingle in anticipation. When they walk onto the grounds at the district tournament, he thinks he sees mouths dropping.
--
He dreams that he’s having tea with Fuji Yuuta and Echizen’s mother in a hotel he stayed at in London when he was thirteen. They’re eating tiny white biscuits and their teacups are full of wine, and at the end of the dream Yuuta becomes Ryoma and his mother disappears.
--
Atobe Keigo throws a party and invites all the Seigaku regulars, along with everybody Tezuka has ever met. When he arrives Atobe touches his shoulder with his perfectly manicured hand and offers him a glass of champagne.
“What are we celebrating?” Tezuka asks.
“My inevitable triumph at Nationals,” Atobe says, sliding long, cool fingers against Tezuka’s wrist before he walks away.
Tezuka leaves the champagne on the table in the hall and tries to find his team. He finds Oishi first, standing by the pool full of half-naked kids, wrestling and tumbling in the water. Oishi stares at them with his wide, wobbling eyes, and Tezuka knows he’s worrying about the effects of alcohol on a person’s reflexes, imagining a drowning, spluttering teenage girl, the arrival of an ambulance, her funeral and the articles in the paper.
“Come on,” Tezuka says, and goes inside. Atobe’s house has about a thousand rooms with ceilings a hundred years above their heads, but Tezuka hates it. Every time he comes here all he sees are the giant floral sofas swelling and mutating into monsters before his eyes, the gilded corners and polished marble blinding him with their reflected light. He hates the hundreds of strangers that flood these affairs, dwelling like parasites on every surface, their voices buzzing like locusts.
He wanders the halls with Oishi for a while, stopping to talk now and then to the boys they know from years of tournaments or the girls that approach with their lip gloss and sweet perfume. Eventually Oishi breaks away to find Kikumaru and Tezuka is left to join the poker game that has started in the half-lit library. He sits to Fuji’s left while he shuffles the cards, as he deals. Tezuka wins two hands and then loses a third when Yanagi joins the game. Kawamura is bent over his cards with a frazzled expression. He’d probably play better if someone would hand him a racquet.
Sometime during the fourth round, when Tezuka has just thrown a handful of chips into the kitty, Echizen wanders in. He’s drinking from a heavy glass tumbler full of a liquid that looks suspiciously unlike Ponta and ignoring Ibu Shinji. He stands behind Tezuka’s chair and looks over his shoulder. Tezuka can smell the fabric softener on his t-shirt and the faint scent of sweat beneath.
“Join the game, Echizen,” Fuji says.
“I’ll just bench coach,” Echizen replies. He leans closer to see Tezuka’s cards and says, “I don’t want to play against Buchou’s poker face.”
Echizen is close enough that Tezuka can feel his words stirring against his cheek and taste the faint edge of whiskey in his breath.
“Echizen!” Tezuka says. “What are you drinking?”
“I don’t know,” Echizen puts the glass down by Tezuka’s elbow. The light refracts through the tumbler and makes a kaleidoscope against the timber. “Atobe gave it to me. I think it’s Scotch.”
“Fifty laps on Monday. Don’t drink anymore.”
“I only had a sip.” Echizen pulls away to stand at Tezuka’s side. He looks the same way he always has when Tezuka rebukes him, half rebellious and half repentant. He’s always wanted Tezuka’s forgiveness, always stared at him with that unhappy smirk until it’s granted.
Fuji picks up the glass. “I’ll have this,” he says. “We can run those laps together.”
Fuji smiles at them over the rim of the glass, and Tezuka feels an acid burst of worry bloom in his stomach. When Echizen follows Fuji out of the room an hour and a half later, Tezuka wants to grab his wrist and force him to stay.
--
When Tezuka meets Fuji at the courts on Sunday he tries not to notice the malice in Fuji’s smile or the odd red marks that disturb the pale skin of his neck. Tezuka serves with force and takes the match six games to one.
Fuji watches him serenely and says, “You seem stressed, Tezuka.”
--
His father begins to initiate weekly discussions about Tezuka’s future. They are serious, solemn talks after dinner or over Tezuka’s homework. He could be a doctor or a lawyer or an orthodontist and that would please his father. It’s Tezuka’s mother that tilts her head to the side and says, “But what about his tennis?”
Tezuka tries to imagine a career that would make him happy.
--
The library in the evenings is calm and quiet and Tezuka likes hearing the crisp sound of turning pages almost as much as he likes the thwack of balls on racquets. Sometimes he studies here at night to avoid the weight of his father’s expectations hanging heavy in the air at home. Sometimes he just needs the extra resources.
He’s so used to being alone here that one night when he hears Echizen’s voice soft voice call Buchou, it stuns him. For a moment he thinks he’s dreaming. He looks up from his notes to see Echizen standing across the table in a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, a hefty pile of books in his hands.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” Echizen asks. Tezuka consents and Echizen arranges himself in the seat opposite, opening his books and scratching out notes right away. Every now and then Tezuka will look up to see Echizen diligently making his way through a Japanese History textbook, distracted for a minute by Echizen’s serious golden eyes and the grace of his fingers as they turn the pages. Echizen’s handwriting is tiny and neat and the notes are all in English. Tezuka knows that Echizen performs well in all of his subjects, but he doesn’t know if he finds it difficult.
Echizen begins to pack up first and Tezuka looks at his watch and decides to follow. When they step out into the cool night air he sees Echizen’s cheeks flush slightly pink from the cold. From this part of town their homes are in the same direction and they walk quietly without saying much. Every now and then Echizen’s phone rings and he ignores it.
“What if that’s important?” Tezuka asks after the fourth or fifth time Echizen doesn’t answer the phone.
“Che,” Echizen says. “It’s not, I can tell from the ringtones. It’s just Momo-senpai.” He pauses for a moment, his eyes searching Tezuka’s face and shifting away. “And Fuji-senpai.”
“I see,” Tezuka says. He wants to tell Echizen not to be careless with Fuji, that Fuji’s motives are often suspect, that when his motive is pure his method is usually not. He wants Echizen to be careful. To be safe.
“I just don’t feel like talking to anybody,” Echizen says. “I’ll call them back later.” He gasps suddenly and says, “I didn’t mean you, Buchou, you’re not annoying like other people.”
Tezuka smiles at him faintly, touched. “I see,” he repeats.
Echizen smiles at him broadly. “Sometimes you’re annoying in your own way.”
“Ah.”
“But not usually.”
They’ve reached the corner of Echizen’s street. They stand in the light of the flickering television that pours out of his neighbour’s window. There are lines of red and yellow light on Echizen’s face, flashing blue and then green on his pale skin.
“Goodnight, Echizen,” Tezuka says, and walks the rest of the way home alone.
--
When Seigaku meet St Rudolph Tezuka lets Fuji play against his younger brother for the first time in tournament history. Fuji thanks him and touches Tezuka’s elbow as he walks out onto the court, but is moody and uncommunicative when he wins. He watches Echizen’s singles two match in silence and sits alone on the bus back to Seigaku, picking at his racquet strings one by one.
They celebrate at Kawamura Sushi and he sits soberly by Tezuka’s side, barely touching the wasabi rolls Kawamura has specially prepared for him. He waits until Kikumaru wanders off and they are alone before he says, “He should have improved by now.”
Tezuka considers this. “It is not that he has not improved,” he tells Fuji finally, “but that your own skills have also developed.”
“I would not mind it if he were to catch up.”
He understands Fuji on this point. Tezuka remembers the first year he had known Echizen; watching from the sidelines as his tennis improved, refusing his increasingly impassioned pleas for a match. Knowing that soon the day would come when Echizen would surpass him. He remembers that day beneath the overpass, the tears on Echizen’s cheeks. Since then it’s felt like they’re chasing one another in circles.
Echizen has been guarding his dinner from Momoshiro’s pillaging hands, but it only takes him a moment to notice Tezuka’s gaze. He stares back at Tezuka with huge golden eyes, making his way over to their table in time to hear Tezuka make a noise of agreement in response.
“What are we talking about?” Echizen asks suspiciously as he settles on his knees across the table from Tezuka. There’s a faint smudge on his chin that might be a bruise; Tezuka had seen him wrestling Kikumaru for the last grape Ponta earlier in the evening. Even now he looks oddly young and dishevelled, all rumpled clothes and messy hair.
“Our captain was just praising my improvement,” Fuji informs him cheerfully. “Perhaps I shall even be able to beat him soon.”
There’s a moment when Echizen’s eyes widen and Tezuka can almost hear the words mada mada dane tumbling from his lips, but he hasn’t said that in years.
“Not yet, Fuji-senpai,” he huffs finally, his voice low and disgruntled against the cheerful clamour of his team mates. “Probably not ever.”
--
The first time Tezuka remembers dreaming about kissing Echizen he wakes up hard and scandalised in the middle of the night. In his dream Echizen is in his Thursday afternoon English class and the teacher is drawing tiny animals on the blackboard in clouds of rainbow coloured chalk.
“The duck-billed platypus is only found in particular regions of Australia,” the teacher says in German.
“I hate this lesson,” Echizen says. Ich hasse diese lektion. He’s sprawled in his chair with longer legs than Tezuka remembers and the buttons on his blazer undone. His white school shirt is crisp and thin and Tezuka can see the faint peach of skin beneath.
“Pay attention,” Tezuka says. “This could be important.”
“I know.”
Somehow Echizen is right next to him now, all humid breath against Tezuka’s cheek. Tezuka waits for the teacher to reprimand them, but he’s paused with his chalk pointing at their bodies. “Please, continue, Tezuka-kun.”
“Pardon?”
Echizen kisses him and the teacher is still watching, poised with his short pink stick of chalk between outstretched fingers. Echizen tastes strongly of Strawberry Pocky and faintly of spearmint, and his hands are small and hard on Tezuka’s shoulders.
“Pay attention, Buchou,” Echizen says against his lips. “This could be important.”
--
The next morning Tezuka wakes and carefully prepares for school. He wonders if his mother can see his shame written in the dark circles beneath his eyes, in the tense set of his shoulders.
“Have a good day at school, Kunimitsu,” she says, and kisses his cheek when he leaves.
At morning practice, Echizen is playing with Kaidoh, easily deflecting the sharp bite of the Boomerang Snake. Tezuka watches the slide of his fingers on the racquet grip, the thick shifting of muscles in his forearms, and feels uneasy.
It’s not the ache of his body upon waking that bothers Tezuka, or the memory of the sweaty drag of his sheets against his skin. It’s the familiarity of the dream, the familiarity of that kiss. Watching Echizen on the courts now, Tezuka tries to remember when he has had it before.
This may become a problem.
--
Tezuka Kunimitsu has never been especially interested in girls, and this is why it is particularly irritating when they follow him around school giggling and asking him what his favourite colour is.
“Green,” he says finally, when a pair of junior girls corner him by the clubhouse. He can see Echizen and Kikumaru snickering at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Look, Ochibi-chan,” Kikumaru whispers, loudly. “Tezuka is a ladies man.”
The girls burst into a fresh fit of giggles and Tezuka growls, “Kikumaru, 20 laps.”
Echizen falls into step beside Tezuka when he walks briskly away. Tezuka is conscious of their elbows knocking together and the slight pink flush of Echizen’s skin.
“Buchou,” he says when they pass through the clubhouse door. “Those girls were ugly.”
--
Suddenly, it seems like the world is conspiring to throw Echizen in his path everywhere he goes. This is a paranoid thought that he cannot dispel. Though he realises that he is seeing Echizen no more or less than he has for months, he is oddly conscious, now, of every meeting. The few words they exchange in the dull morning sun seem loaded with secret code. When he warms up with Echizen, waiting for the others to arrive, the solid weight of the ball against his racquet feels inappropriate.
Sometimes Echizen will look at him strangely, his gaze lingering heavy on Tezuka’s face, and he wonders if he knows. Sometimes, Fuji will look at him strangely, eyes open and smile sharp over his lips, and Tezuka knows: Fuji Syuusuke knows everything.
Oishi comes to him at home one evening and tells him that he’d caught Echizen and Fuji in the locker rooms long after everybody else had gone home. He doesn’t have to elaborate beyond the word caught, Tezuka can read the details in the rising blush on Oishi’s neck, in the awkward, stammering spasms of his words.
He cannot help but picture them: smooth, small bodies, open mouthed kisses, Echizen’s moans like tennis grunts. Half out of their clothes, Fuji’s graceful, accurate hands. It hurts.
“I - I thought you should know,” Oishi says.
Tezuka already knew. He’s seen them leaving school together, sometimes, or returning after a mysterious absence. He’s seen Echizen’s rumpled clothing and the tiny fingerprint bruises on Fuji’s neck. As Captain he should probably say something to Fuji, but he never has. He can’t even imagine raising the subject with Ryoma.
“I’ll take care of it,” Tezuka tells Oishi, but he doesn’t.
--
They play matches. They win matches. This year, Seigaku is unbeatable, the name spoken in a hush at the start of every tournament. There are all kinds of scouts at every practice. Tezuka sees them salivating every time he serves.
At home, his father speaks the words Tokyo University with a kind of gleam in his eye. When his father looks at him, he sees small children and a pretty young wife, a gleaming family car and a house with four bedrooms. He sees security in his son’s future, a life just like his own.
At night, Tezuka dreams about fucking Echizen on the grass courts at Wimbledon.
--
Fuji brings Echizen to their Sunday afternoon match. When they show up Echizen looks sleepy and rumpled, soft and grumpy around the eyes.
“Fuji-senpai woke me up,” he sulks, throwing himself onto the coach’s bench by Tezuka’s side of the court. “I don’t know why you want me to see you lose so badly,” he calls out to Fuji.
“Incentive,” Fuji calls back, and serves the first ball. He’s on the offensive the whole match, the slice of his racquet sharp and precise like a surgeon’s knife. Tezuka returns with force, but with every movement of Fuji’s hand he feels as if he should bleed.
Tezuka barely wins. He hasn’t played this seriously in months.
“Maybe next time,” Fuji says pleasantly when he grips Tezuka’s hand over the net. Behind them, Echizen snorts. Throughout the match he’d looked tense and white, hands gripped to fists and ankles jiggling. Now, he’s slumped on the bench with his arms spread along the back, the tension bleeding out of his body beneath his baggy street clothes. To Tezuka, he looks like a delinquent.
“When are we going to play?” he asks Tezuka as they walk back to the bus stop. “I keep waiting for you to ask me.”
Tezuka swallows and looks away from Fuji’s suddenly open eyes, at the passing traffic on the street. Across the road there’s a little girl with a small brown dog. Beneath his cap, Echizen is staring at them, the dog’s excited circles around her feet. Tezuka can tell from the tilt of his head. When he takes too long to answer, though, Echizen looks up, craning his neck and squinting in the late afternoon sun. “Buchou?”
“Soon,” Tezuka replies, and hopes that it is true.
--
The week before the finals of the Kantou tournament, the Seigaku regulars spend a few days in the mountains. They sleepwalk onto a bus at five in the morning, considerably less enthusiastic than they had been when the trip had been announced. Tezuka is the only one who remains awake as they wind concentric circles up the mountain. He surveys the strong, jagged planes of rock that stretch up to the next level of the mountain, finding the footholds and ledges. He imagines heaving himself up, step by step. He hasn’t been climbing since before he hurt his shoulder. He loves the mountain, but he loves tennis more.
An hour into the trip, Echizen stumbles to the front of the bus and collapses into the seat across the aisle from Tezuka.
“Oishi-senpai is snoring,” he explains, throat husky from overnight disuse. Tezuka detects the faint grumble of Oishi’s snoring drifting from the back of the bus, but after a while he can no longer hear it above the low whine of Echizen’s sleeping breath.
--
Running, it seems like the mountain gets steeper beneath his feet. He can feel the body heat of his team mates around him, their competitive cluster creating a moving cloud of moisture, mingled breath and sweat. Kaidoh and Momoshiro are in the lead, elbow to elbow and shoving. Behind them and trying to break through, Tezuka feels the growing claustrophobia, his throbbing lungs and burning muscles. If he could just get in front of them, he thinks, he could get some clean, fresh air.
He shatters through the solid wall of their shoulders, and Echizen tumbles out after him, his heat on Tezuka’s back and gaining ground fast.
In the end, Fuji gets there first.
--
Five freshman have accompanied them to help out. Slaves, Momoshiro calls them affectionately, his booming, friendly voice demanding food the moment the regulars walk through the door. Echizen ignores them completely. Tezuka has always been ashamed that he can never quite remember the fifth freshman’s name; it’s something with a Y. Tezuka comforts himself with the thought that Oishi probably knows what it is. Tezuka’s strength has always been in silence. Oishi has always been better with people. He depends on Oishi more than most people realise. More than Oishi seems to realise.
Lately, he’s been thinking a lot about what life will be like when he won’t see these people every day.
--
Tezuka goes to bed early. They’re all sleeping in one room, two neat rows of beds with scratchy sheets and lumpy pillows. He takes the bed on the far end and listens, for a while, to Kikumaru’s muffled voice telling a story about shopping with Oishi’s mother. There’s a constant buzz of laughter in the regular’s voices now; morale is high. They seem happy. Every now and then there’s a slight pause that seems to be Fuji talking, or maybe Echizen, a frequency Tezuka can’t register through the walls. He lies on his back and feels the tension seeping out of his shoulders, and then he’s half asleep, Kikumaru’s voice settling on the edges of his exhaustion.
He’s woken by a slight rustling. Tezuka has never been a deep sleeper, which is why he retires early by routine. Sometimes he’ll wake four or five times in the space of one night, pulled gently from sleep by the rumble of his grandfather’s voice or the bleating of his sister’s phone. Sometimes he is awakened and doesn’t know why, as the sudden noise or burst of light has already faded away into nothing.
“Hey,” Echizen says when Tezuka’s eyes slide open. “Sorry.”
Echizen is a bundle of blurry blue and gold shapes kneeling on the bed beside Tezuka’s. He reaches for his glasses. As he slides them on the watery blobs of colour harden into solid geometric shapes, the firm, clean lines of Echizen’s tanned arms and worn navy t-shirt.
“What time is it?” Tezuka asks. The room is still empty and Echizen’s hair is wet.
“Ten.”
Tezuka pretends not to watch as Echizen settles into bed, tugging and twisting at the sheets until they’re up around his knees. They lie on their backs in silence, breathing and staring at the ceiling. Tezuka doesn’t take off his glasses. He counts the tiles in the ceiling. His hands are cold beneath the blanket.
When Ryoma rolls onto his side, eyes open and searching Tezuka’s face, Tezuka turns his head to stare back. It would be so easy, he thinks, to reach out and touch Echizen’s mouth, to tug his shoulders against Tezuka’s chest. From this angle, with their matching pillows and identical brown blankets, it looks like they’re sharing a bed. Tezuka could lean over and kiss Ryoma’s forehead. He could scratch the small of Ryoma’s back.
“Goodnight, Buchou,” Echizen says, and closes his eyes.
Tezuka can’t sleep.
--
The next day after endurance training they go swimming in the river. Tezuka sits stretched out on the bank beside a jumbled pile of discarded t-shirts and shoes. The soil is cool beneath his fingers and the sun slowly bakes his bare shoulders golden brown.
He watches Kikumaru and Echizen latch onto Momoshiro’s broad shoulders, hollering and shoving as they try to wrestle him into submission.
“Stop resisting, Momo!” Kikumaru yells. “Don’t be a baby!”
“He doesn’t want to mess up his pretty hair,” Echizen says. Tezuka is amused by Echizen’s ability to remain deadpan even as he’s jostling and pushing for dominance. His words float along the water’s surface without inflection, their quiet obnoxiousness barely even rippling the surface.
Momoshiro’s squawk is like a tidal wave in comparison. “I will never be defeated,” he screams, even as his face disappears underwater. At the last moment his arms shoot free and he drags Kikumaru and Echizen with him. They reappear separately, coughing and spluttering with tangled hair. Echizen smoothes his hands back over his head, slicking wet hair back over his skull. Away from his face. Water drips from his chin, from his hair at the nape of his neck, and rolls over the contours of his chest. This is what he’d look like in the shower. He smiles when he sees Tezuka watching.
“I think he’d like you to join them,” Fuji says, dropping to sprawl at Tezuka’s side. He’s just come from the water and his skin makes mud wherever it touches the ground.
“Maybe soon,” Tezuka replies. Echizen is still looking at him, though his expression has settled into something vaguely suspicious. He turns his gaze from Tezuka to Fuji, and then Kikumaru blindsides him with a tackle.
“But if you wait too long it’ll get cold.”
They watch the boys in silence, but Tezuka is aware of Fuji’s continued attention. He waits.
“You should join them, Tezuka,” Fuji says. Tezuka has never been very good at reading Fuji, but then, nobody has. That is Fuji Syuusuke’s greatest strength. Sometimes, he makes Tezuka nervous.
Tezuka stares out at the river beyond the thrashing bodies by the shore. Fuji is a niggling thought at his side, a distraction that he tries to dispel.
“You wanted me to be your one great rival,” Fuji says. When Tezuka turns to him blue eyes are open over rows of black lashes and he looks annoyed. “I’ve been playing for months and you’ve yet to even hit the ball.”
From the water, Echizen is looking at Tezuka again.
“You should hurry up,” Fuji says. “I’m getting bored.”
The sun has begun to fade, glowing warm and orange in the places where it is reflected in the surface of the river. It might get cold soon. The thought causes a slight edge of panic to push into his carefully preserved calm, and he curses Fuji.
Echizen smiles and ducks out from beneath Momoshiro’s arm as Tezuka slides into the river. The ice cold surface cracks and crashes against his skin, and Tezuka waits for his body to adjust before moving to stand at Oishi’s side. The mud of the riverbed squelches between his toes. He wonders if there are fish here.
“Hn, Buchou,” Ryoma says. “I was beginning to think you were afraid to swim.”
“I dare you, Ochibi,” Kikumaru calls out.
“He’ll never do it,” Momoshiro says.
Echizen’s mouth twists with grim amusement. “Sorry, Buchou,” he says, and then strong hands are on Tezuka’s shoulders and cool water is rushing over his head.
--
Tezuka takes walks in the evenings to escape, for a while, the colour and noise of his teammates. He hasn’t been sleeping well, waking every night at midnight to the pale glow of moonlight on Echizen’s skin, to Kikumaru’s sleeptalking, to the murmuring that goes on between Inui and Kaidoh. He sits for a while in the cool, peaceful damp of the forest, reading in the fading light.
Their fourth night at the retreat he returns to floodlights on the tennis court and the sounds of a match. The bounce, the thwack, the grunt. Echizen’s muffled cursing. The regulars are lined up along the chain link fence, heads swivelling as they follow the ball. It is Fuji’s serve. The ball soars in clean, perfect lines across the court.
At first, nobody notices Tezuka’s return. Kachiro is calling the match. He announces, “Game, Fuji. One game to two.”
As they change courts, Echizen meets Tezuka’s eye and touches his cap. He wins the next game; a perfect sequence of service aces.
Kikumaru stands with one hand clasping his elbow and the other on his chin, lips pursed in contemplation. “Ochibi’s never beat Fuji before.”
“He’s never lost, either,” Momoshiro says. Tezuka can see the pride in the slight smirk of his lips and the sudden puffing of his chest. “Fuji-senpai never lets him finish the game.”
There is new seriousness in the force of Fuji’s swing; Tezuka can see the shifting and bunching of the muscles in his forearm as the racquet makes impact. He does not taunt Echizen with easy lobs and chance balls. He is playing, finally, with his eyes open.
Echizen takes the match. When he approaches the net to shake hands, Fuji loops one elegant arm around Ryoma’s shoulders and kisses his cheek in front of everybody.
“You’re all grown up, Ryoma-kun,” Fuji says. Echizen wipes his cheek with the back of his hand and mutters something that makes Fuji laugh, his brow furrowed and grumpy in the way that he uses to conceal strong bursts of emotion.
Then Echizen says, “Thankyou, Fuji-senpai,” and walks away.
--
Tezuka cannot sleep. He leaves his bed at two a.m. and moves silently to the kitchen, listening to the muffled sounds of his sleeping team mates. As he passes Kikumaru’s feet he mumbles, “Moon volley,” and Oishi makes a noise in his chest in seeming reply. When Tezuka reaches the hall the floorboards gleam in the moonlight and he follows their glow to the kitchen door.
He makes a pot of tea and reads a week-old paper. Up here in the mountain it’s like the rest of the world only exists as history. No new papers, no mobile phones. They could return to Tokyo and find it a ghost town, wiped out by bombs or diseases in their absence.
A week ago, a woman was murdered in her apartment late in the afternoon, a truck plummeted off an overpass, a European princess was married and a new hospital was opened in Osaka. A week ago there was a recipe for French bread in the culture section.
Tezuka drinks a second cup of tea.
“Buchou?”
It is Echizen, of course, his voice settling into the stillness that Tezuka has carefully nurtured. He stands bleary-eyed in the doorway, blinking into the bright white kitchen lights. He has messy bed hair, it sticks up in back. Tezuka’s heart throbs painfully.
“Echizen,” Tezuka says. “You should be asleep.”
“So should you,” Echizen replies disapprovingly. Tezuka is not used to being chastised by his team. The vague criticism in Echizen’s tone settles uncomfortably against his skin.
“Aa,” Tezuka says, because he cannot think of anything else.
“Can I have some tea?” Ryoma asks. He walks further into the kitchen, the cuffs of his soft, striped cotton pyjamas dragging on the floor beneath his slippers. Tezuka pours him a cup from the still warm teapot, handing it to him as he settles into the seat at Tezuka’s side.
“Is there a sports section?”
A week ago, an Italian soccer player scored his hundredth goal and Roger Federer beat Andy Roddick in straight sets. Tezuka hands Echizen the sports pages.
“Che,” Ryoma says, upon seeing the front page. “This is old. Why bother reading it?”
Tezuka doesn’t bother replying. He takes his cup and saucer to the sink and washes them, letting the hot water run on his hands to distract himself from the slope of Ryoma’s shoulders beneath his thin blue t-shirt, from the impossibly large eyes that are now, as always, following his every movement.
“Buchou,” Echizen says. His voice makes Tezuka nervous. It’s deeper than usual, and gentle, like he’s about to tell Tezuka a secret they’ve been avoiding for months.
Tezuka can’t turn around. He stares out the window into the dark grounds, seeing the gleam of the chain link fence in the moonlight. “Yes?”
Ryoma’s hands fist in the back of Tezuka’s t-shirt, pulling it taught across his chest. His knuckles graze against the knotted muscles in Tezuka’s back through the worn fabric.
“I want us to start playing again,” Echizen says. “Matches, I mean.”
“Aa.”
“You keep blowing me off,” Ryoma takes Tezuka’s arm and tugs until they are facing one another. Echizen stares up at him from inches closer than he used to three years ago. With every passing day he seems older. “Why?”
“I worry about you,” Tezuka says awkwardly, though this is only the barest fragment of the truth. Tezuka worries about Ryoma, but he worries most about the two of them together, and all the things they should not mean to one another.
“Oh,” Ryoma says. “Don’t,” and kisses him.
Ryoma does not taste like Strawberry Pocky. He tastes strongly of Jasmine tea and a little like Listerine, with something mysterious and bodily beneath. Their mouths mash awkwardly together until Echizen reaches up and into Tezuka’s hair and forcefully guides his head around his own. Ryoma’s tongue touches the roof of his mouth, and Tezuka feels dizzy.
Tezuka has been kissed once before, by the daughter of a family friend who had sought his help in her studies. That had been warm and moist and slightly nauseating, her body soft and terrifyingly fragile against his own. Later, she’d stared at him awkwardly and he wondered what she’d seen in his eyes, what she’d felt in that kiss. She’d never sought him out again.
Echizen’s body is thin and hard and reassuringly solid and Tezuka can’t help but slide his arms around that narrow waist, beneath the soft cotton t-shirt. He can feel the lines of muscle in Ryoma’s back and he wonders what they feel like, shifting as Ryoma serves.
They kiss pressed up against the kitchen bench for twenty minutes, until Tezuka’s hair is tangled around the spaces where Echizen’s fingers have been and his lips tingle from exertion. When they’re done he stares at Ryoma’s smirking, beautiful face, and feels the faint ugliness of shame welling up in his chest, but then Ryoma threads his fingers through Tezuka’s and leads him quietly back to the bedrooms, stepping over their friends in the darkness.
They slide into their separate beds and look at one another across the divide. They’ll have to be up in an hour and a half and Tezuka suddenly feels exhausted, bones heavy and liquid inside his body. Echizen looks happy.
He thinks Ryoma might be asleep when he leans over to kiss his hair and the curve of his cheek, when he whispers, “Goodnight, Echizen,” in the dark.
--
By the time he wakes Tezuka’s shame has mutated into a painful ulcer in his gut. He knows Echizen is by no means innocent but he looks it when he sleeps. In the bed beside Tezuka’s he is all sweeping lashes on soft cheeks, messy hair on his clear young face. He is so much younger than his tennis makes him seem.
Tezuka gets out of bed and avoids him for the rest of the day, or tries to. He throws himself into their training, ignoring the occasional heat of Echizen’s body at his elbow, the way that Tezuka’s silence seems to amuse him. He manages not to speak to Ryoma all day, until Inui announces that they are to be paired together for doubles training.
For a moment, Tezuka thinks this is mere coincidence, until he sees Inui and Fuji’s suspiciously matched smiles, the foreboding gleam of sunlight against Inui’s glasses.
“Good luck,” Fuji says as they walk onto the court. It’s a one set match against the Kaidoh/Momoshiro pair. Tezuka tries to collect himself as he stares at them over the net. He cannot be careless. They have the Kantou finals to think about, and Nationals after that. For the team’s sake, he cannot lose this match.
“How does the zone work when you’re playing doubles?” Echizen asks, spinning his racquet in his fist.
“I don’t know,” Tezuka replies.
He watches Kaidoh and Momoshiro murmur to one another and knock fists before they take their positions. He thinks about the movement of Echizen’s body on the court nearby, the way his back will bend and his legs will flex as he serves.
We can do this, he thinks, but they lose the first three games. They are playing awkwardly, cautiously. Their formation is polite. They lose three points when Echizen unexpectedly stands aside to let Tezuka have the chance ball; after each ball has bounced out of play he turns and stares at Tezuka like he’s rejected a precious gift. To Echizen, that’s probably what a chance ball is.
After the third game, Tezuka has had enough. He grabs Echizen’s elbow as he passes and tries to think of something to say. Echizen blinks at him and makes a noise low in his throat, touches the brim of his cap.
“Let’s go, Buchou,” he says, and they take the next two games. Tezuka can’t use the zone when Ryoma is potentially in the way of the ball, but he does manage, through trial and error, to manipulate the spin so that the ball flies from the opponent’s racquets to Echizen’s general vicinity. It is a good match, though not a perfect match. They lose another game to Momoshiro’s dunk smash and Kaidoh’s sheer perseverance, but it’s a satisfying win at six games to four. As they shake hands over the net Tezuka can feel the tension bleeding out of his shoulders, out of his wrists. Doubles has never been his game.
They don’t knock fists like Kaidoh and Momoshiro but as they walk away Tezuka says, “Good work, Echizen.”
“I hate doubles,” Ryoma grumbles. There’s a slight flush in his cheeks and he doesn’t look up at Tezuka, just straight ahead at the path before them. “At least this time I didn’t have to play with Momo-senpai.”
“I once had to play with Inui,” Tezuka reveals. His second year of junior high, in practice against the Golden Pair. They hadn’t been keeping score but at the end of the afternoon Tezuka had felt the shame of losing anyway. At thirteen he hadn’t been able to come to terms with Inui’s data, and Inui wouldn’t allow Tezuka to take over the match. Tezuka had gone home that night with stains on his white tennis shorts, where their fumbling had sent them both sprawling to the ground.
Echizen grimaces and says, “I can’t imagine that.”
“We were disgraceful.” The sun is setting over the lodge and Tezuka realises he has forgotten that he has to avoid Ryoma, that he should not be so casual. He walks more briskly, long steps with long legs. Echizen matches his pace without comment.
When they reach the lodge Echizen smiles slyly up at him and says, “Fuji-senpai said you’d try to get away.”
Tezuka stops just inside the door and says, “Echizen.”
The challenge is in Echizen’s shoulders and the cocky slant of his jaw. “I told him I wouldn’t let you.”
Echizen moves close and for a minute Tezuka thinks he’s going to kiss him again, but Ryoma just says, “You won’t beat me in this, Buchou,” and swaggers away.
Tezuka is still standing in the lobby when the rest of the team arrive, struggling to catch his breath.
--
Fuji-senpai said.
He seeks Fuji out after dinner, indicating with a slight inclination of his head that he wants him to follow when he leaves the lodge. They walk to the picnic area not far from the courts and sit at a table. The night sky here is brighter than in Tokyo, where the only stars are the streetlights and windows in distant buildings. Fuji stares up at the sky while Tezuka tries to figure out what to say.
He asks finally, “Have you been giving Echizen lessons on how to seduce me?” He tries to sound foreboding but Fuji has never been particularly afraid of him, and just turns to him with that same faint, unsettling smile.
“Oh Tezuka,” Fuji says, as if Tezuka is being embarrassingly simple. “Echizen seduced you a long time ago.”
“Fuji,” Tezuka says impatiently.
Fuji laughs, obviously pleased by whatever it is that he hears in Tezuka’s voice. Tezuka wonders if Fuji can detect the tremor. If he can hear the panic. “I may have told him a few things.”
“Please do me the courtesy of staying out of my business,” Tezuka says stiffly, and stands to leave.
Fuji stays seated, hands politely folded in his lap. “I am merely trying to be a good senpai. By helping a kohai attain a cherished goal.”
“He’s too young to -“ Tezuka starts, but Fuji cuts him off.
“At the moment, he’s the adult. He’s not running away like a frightened child.”
Fuji is rarely so direct with Tezuka.
“Maybe,” Fuji says, with a tremor of genuine humour in his lips, “you need to behave with a little more maturity. Everybody falls in love at some point, Tezuka. Even you.”
Tezuka walks off and leaves Fuji sitting alone in the dark. He feels the burn of Fuji’s smirk against the nape of his neck all the way back to the Lodge.
--
Tezuka wonders if Fuji is right. He wonders if he is acting like a child. He thinks of Echizen’s confident fingers against his skin, how brave he was, how brave he always is. Tezuka wonders if he is in love.
( continue.)
Pairings: Tezuka/Ryoma, some Fuji/Ryoma.
Rating: Soft R.
Word Count: 15,770. Split into two posts for length.
Summary: Tezuka assumes he has been forgotten.
Timeline: Future-fic; spoilers for entire Anime series.
Disclaimer: All belongs to Konomi. No infringement intended.
Thanks to bookshop, thewhiteprophet, and annafreud for everything.
Every now and then Tezuka will get phone calls first thing in the morning. Over breakfast or on the way to school, he’ll listen to Echizen’s subdued voice as he says, Buchou, and asks for advice. Sometimes Echizen just wants to tell him something, about the courts or the sponsors or the opponent he has to face in the semi-finals. Tezuka never tells anybody about these calls. He’s not sure why, but it feels like a secret.
Echizen doesn’t call for a while, and Tezuka assumes he has been forgotten.
--
In Tezuka’s first year of high school he’s not captain anymore and his protégé is off conquering the universe, so he seems to have a lot more free time. He doubles his practice load and spends a lot of time studying. He jogs in the half-light every morning, passing Kaidoh by the park. Sometimes at night he tries to watch television with his older sister, but he can’t understand these Americans with their tiny Californian lives. Sometimes he watches the news with his grandfather. He prefers the paper, which he reads cover to cover alone in his room at night.
On Sundays he plays tennis with Fuji and the matches last for hours. He feels himself growing stronger. There is new force in the slice of his racquet through air, new grace in his feet against the clay. Sometimes Fuji will come close to beating him, and it makes Tezuka work harder. He imagines facing Fuji at Wimbledon. He imagines facing Echizen.
The year passes slowly. Sometimes he’ll drop by the junior high to see how Momoshiro and Kaidoh are faring with the new regulars. Oishi comes with him and they drink tea with Ryuzaki-sensei in her office. He worries about her. The lines around her eyes are deep and jagged now, and it seems like she’s aged ten years in six months. He can see it in the dead weight of her serve, the way it seems to fall more than it flies. He tries not to watch when she’s on the courts.
In August Echizen Nanjiroh sends Ryuzaki-sensei a video of Ryoma playing the US national championships, and the old team gathers at Kawamura Sushi to watch. Echizen is taller since the last time Tezuka really looked at him, and when he speaks to the camera after he takes the match (6-3 with a close final game) his voice crumbles and breaks over the words he speaks in English. He’ll be fourteen in three months. Tezuka watches his broad new shoulders flex as he serves, his long new legs stretch as he wins, and feels restless.
--
In Tezuka’s second year of high school, he’s not captain and there seem to be photos of Echizen all over Tokyo. Echizen stares at him from newspapers and tennis magazines, from the bottle of juice he pours in the morning. Even in advertising Echizen looks grumpy and slightly bored, like he’d rather be posing on a can of Ponta.
The new captain is Kugimiya Shizuka, and he doesn’t really like Tezuka much. In first year Tezuka had crushed him in the finals of the intra-school ranking tournament. Sometimes Tezuka can still feel that victory in the clipped tone with which Kugimaya addresses him. In first year, only Tezuka and Fuji had made the regulars.
Two months into the new school year, Echizen drops into practice. Tezuka doesn’t notice him at first, the unfamiliar new line of his body not registering in the corner of his eye. It’s not until he hears Momoshiro and Kikumaru’s mingled hollering that he sees him standing behind the chain link fence, faltering under the combined weight of his friends.
“Oi, Echizen, you sneaky little shit!” Momoshiro squawks, his knuckle rubbing Echizen’s crisp white cap askew. “Showing up without telling anybody.”
“That hurts,” Echizen says, wrenching his skull from Momoshiro’s grasp. Kikumaru is writhing with excitement, bouncing at Momoshiro’s side and clutching Echizen’s shoulder.
“Ochibi,” Kikumaru starts, “What are you -“
“Momoshiro, Kikumaru, twenty laps!” The captain calls. Tezuka feels a little like he’s fallen a year and a half into the past, like if he turns around to look the irritated figure shouting at Momoshiro and Kikumaru will be his fourteen year old self, long and stern in his old uniform.
He doesn’t look. He meets Echizen’s steady gaze for a moment before turning back to his game with Oishi. After practice everybody converges on Echizen. He’s in Tokyo for his cousin’s wedding. He’ll be gone again by morning.
--
In August, Tezuka is chosen as part of the team that will be sent to the US for a junior goodwill tournament. He sits beside Tachibana on the plane and tries to focus on the match ahead. Echizen Ryoma is the star of the American side, and when Tezuka closes his eyes he can see those huge eyes across the net, goading him.
“I imagine Echizen will play first singles,” Fuji says quietly, standing beside Tezuka at the baggage carousel. “How exciting.”
The Japanese line up has yet to be decided. Atobe might play first singles, or Kirihara. Fuji or Yukimura might take the position from him. Probably the only person that doesn’t want to play first singles is Kikumaru Eiji, who is unusually subdued in the face of Oishi’s absence. Tezuka tries not to think too hard about the line up, because they’re supposed to be a team. His ambition is selfish.
Still, as they pile into taxis at the airport he remembers Echizen’s victory on the clay courts by the train tracks and thinks, please. Please let me.
--
It’s awkward when the teams meet the day before the tournament. Echizen sits on the other side of the room with Kevin Smith and looks like he’d like to get up and take a seat next to Kikumaru. The teams bow and shake hands and afterward Echizen follows Fuji and Kikumaru to dinner. They eat in a pizza place Echizen must frequent. The waiters all seem to know his name.
“Nya, superstar!” Kikumaru says, bumping Echizen’s shoulder with his own. “You’re on my juicebox!”
“Shut up,” Echizen says, and pulls his cap low over his face. “They have a deal with the school.”
Tezuka doesn’t understand what kind of school would sell their students to advertisers, but Echizen has the best coaches and gets to play tennis half the day. Tezuka had been offered a place at the academy that Echizen attends. He wonders how life would have been different had he taken it.
“I hope you have not been neglecting your studies,” Tezuka says. He can’t eat the pizza in front of him, with its grease and clusters of mysterious meat.
Echizen swallows a mouthful of pizza. Tezuka imagines it forcing its way through Echizen’s body and congealing in his stomach. “Don’t worry, Buchou,” Echizen says. “I won’t be careless.”
--
When the coach announces that Tezuka will play first singles, his heart thumps once hard inside his chest. Beside him Kirihara is all muttered curses, while Yukimura just smiles serenely. When the positions are announced Tezuka thinks he sees Echizen smiling beneath his cap, but he’s on the other side of the room and doesn’t even know if the boy is listening.
--
They play so hard that Tezuka thinks he feels the ghost of his old shoulder injury burning and screaming in his muscles. Echizen has changed since the last time they played, but then so has Tezuka. They match one another point for point, and whenever he has a moment to look Tezuka can see Echizen grinning in exhilaration.
Tezuka takes the match, 7 games to 6.
--
Echizen Ryoma tries to come back quietly. The first Tezuka hears of it is Echizen’s name on the list of new club members he’s given on his first day as Captain. Then Echizen just shows up to practice and tries to help gather the scattered yellow tennis balls like all the other freshmen. Tezuka watches him and wonders if it’s easy for him to ignore the whispers that follow the movement of his body around the court. He remembers Echizen as a twelve year old, his unfathomable ability to ignore everyone and everything around him.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Tezuka says later. Practice is over and almost everybody has gone home, but when Tezuka left the clubhouse Echizen had been lingering around the entrance, waiting for him.
Echizen blinks at him, and Tezuka doesn’t think he’s going to answer. “My mother thought that school was warping my social development,” he reveals finally. “She said that if you’re always on the court and never in the classroom, you never learn to deal with anybody.”
“Oh,” Tezuka says.
They walk toward the exit together, and a little beyond the gates. “Besides,” Echizen says finally. “All the best players are here.” He doesn’t meet Tezuka’s eyes. “Bye, Buchou.”
He watches Echizen walk away and thinks, this year we’ll take Nationals.
--
The day before the first intra-school tournament is scheduled to begin, Tezuka is leaving a bookshop when he sees Echizen standing awkwardly on the corner with Momoshiro and Tachibana An. The couple are all tangled arms against Echizen’s blank face. Tezuka takes a step towards them and can hear their voices, muffled in the cracks between the sounds of the busy city street.
“We’re heading over to the public courts,” Momoshiro is saying, “I have to practice before the big day tomorrow! Are you going to come?”
Echizen seems to be staring at their tightly clasped fingers; when Tachibana An calls Momoshiro Momo-chan, his face flickers a little in disgust.
“No,” Echizen says. “You go on ahead without me.”
Tezuka stands on the street and watches Echizen watch Momoshiro walk away. He moves in Echizen’s direction, but a group of tittering schoolkids intercepts him. When his vision clears Echizen is gone.
--
The regulars are as follows: Echizen Ryoma (1st year), Kaidoh Kaoru (2nd year), Momoshiro Takeshi (2nd year), Fuji Syuusuke (3rd year), Inui Sadaharu (3rd year), Kikumaru Eiji (3rd year), Oishi Shuichiro (3rd year), and Tezuka Kunimitsu (3rd year).
Just looking at the list makes Tezuka’s fingers tingle in anticipation. When they walk onto the grounds at the district tournament, he thinks he sees mouths dropping.
--
He dreams that he’s having tea with Fuji Yuuta and Echizen’s mother in a hotel he stayed at in London when he was thirteen. They’re eating tiny white biscuits and their teacups are full of wine, and at the end of the dream Yuuta becomes Ryoma and his mother disappears.
--
Atobe Keigo throws a party and invites all the Seigaku regulars, along with everybody Tezuka has ever met. When he arrives Atobe touches his shoulder with his perfectly manicured hand and offers him a glass of champagne.
“What are we celebrating?” Tezuka asks.
“My inevitable triumph at Nationals,” Atobe says, sliding long, cool fingers against Tezuka’s wrist before he walks away.
Tezuka leaves the champagne on the table in the hall and tries to find his team. He finds Oishi first, standing by the pool full of half-naked kids, wrestling and tumbling in the water. Oishi stares at them with his wide, wobbling eyes, and Tezuka knows he’s worrying about the effects of alcohol on a person’s reflexes, imagining a drowning, spluttering teenage girl, the arrival of an ambulance, her funeral and the articles in the paper.
“Come on,” Tezuka says, and goes inside. Atobe’s house has about a thousand rooms with ceilings a hundred years above their heads, but Tezuka hates it. Every time he comes here all he sees are the giant floral sofas swelling and mutating into monsters before his eyes, the gilded corners and polished marble blinding him with their reflected light. He hates the hundreds of strangers that flood these affairs, dwelling like parasites on every surface, their voices buzzing like locusts.
He wanders the halls with Oishi for a while, stopping to talk now and then to the boys they know from years of tournaments or the girls that approach with their lip gloss and sweet perfume. Eventually Oishi breaks away to find Kikumaru and Tezuka is left to join the poker game that has started in the half-lit library. He sits to Fuji’s left while he shuffles the cards, as he deals. Tezuka wins two hands and then loses a third when Yanagi joins the game. Kawamura is bent over his cards with a frazzled expression. He’d probably play better if someone would hand him a racquet.
Sometime during the fourth round, when Tezuka has just thrown a handful of chips into the kitty, Echizen wanders in. He’s drinking from a heavy glass tumbler full of a liquid that looks suspiciously unlike Ponta and ignoring Ibu Shinji. He stands behind Tezuka’s chair and looks over his shoulder. Tezuka can smell the fabric softener on his t-shirt and the faint scent of sweat beneath.
“Join the game, Echizen,” Fuji says.
“I’ll just bench coach,” Echizen replies. He leans closer to see Tezuka’s cards and says, “I don’t want to play against Buchou’s poker face.”
Echizen is close enough that Tezuka can feel his words stirring against his cheek and taste the faint edge of whiskey in his breath.
“Echizen!” Tezuka says. “What are you drinking?”
“I don’t know,” Echizen puts the glass down by Tezuka’s elbow. The light refracts through the tumbler and makes a kaleidoscope against the timber. “Atobe gave it to me. I think it’s Scotch.”
“Fifty laps on Monday. Don’t drink anymore.”
“I only had a sip.” Echizen pulls away to stand at Tezuka’s side. He looks the same way he always has when Tezuka rebukes him, half rebellious and half repentant. He’s always wanted Tezuka’s forgiveness, always stared at him with that unhappy smirk until it’s granted.
Fuji picks up the glass. “I’ll have this,” he says. “We can run those laps together.”
Fuji smiles at them over the rim of the glass, and Tezuka feels an acid burst of worry bloom in his stomach. When Echizen follows Fuji out of the room an hour and a half later, Tezuka wants to grab his wrist and force him to stay.
--
When Tezuka meets Fuji at the courts on Sunday he tries not to notice the malice in Fuji’s smile or the odd red marks that disturb the pale skin of his neck. Tezuka serves with force and takes the match six games to one.
Fuji watches him serenely and says, “You seem stressed, Tezuka.”
--
His father begins to initiate weekly discussions about Tezuka’s future. They are serious, solemn talks after dinner or over Tezuka’s homework. He could be a doctor or a lawyer or an orthodontist and that would please his father. It’s Tezuka’s mother that tilts her head to the side and says, “But what about his tennis?”
Tezuka tries to imagine a career that would make him happy.
--
The library in the evenings is calm and quiet and Tezuka likes hearing the crisp sound of turning pages almost as much as he likes the thwack of balls on racquets. Sometimes he studies here at night to avoid the weight of his father’s expectations hanging heavy in the air at home. Sometimes he just needs the extra resources.
He’s so used to being alone here that one night when he hears Echizen’s voice soft voice call Buchou, it stuns him. For a moment he thinks he’s dreaming. He looks up from his notes to see Echizen standing across the table in a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, a hefty pile of books in his hands.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” Echizen asks. Tezuka consents and Echizen arranges himself in the seat opposite, opening his books and scratching out notes right away. Every now and then Tezuka will look up to see Echizen diligently making his way through a Japanese History textbook, distracted for a minute by Echizen’s serious golden eyes and the grace of his fingers as they turn the pages. Echizen’s handwriting is tiny and neat and the notes are all in English. Tezuka knows that Echizen performs well in all of his subjects, but he doesn’t know if he finds it difficult.
Echizen begins to pack up first and Tezuka looks at his watch and decides to follow. When they step out into the cool night air he sees Echizen’s cheeks flush slightly pink from the cold. From this part of town their homes are in the same direction and they walk quietly without saying much. Every now and then Echizen’s phone rings and he ignores it.
“What if that’s important?” Tezuka asks after the fourth or fifth time Echizen doesn’t answer the phone.
“Che,” Echizen says. “It’s not, I can tell from the ringtones. It’s just Momo-senpai.” He pauses for a moment, his eyes searching Tezuka’s face and shifting away. “And Fuji-senpai.”
“I see,” Tezuka says. He wants to tell Echizen not to be careless with Fuji, that Fuji’s motives are often suspect, that when his motive is pure his method is usually not. He wants Echizen to be careful. To be safe.
“I just don’t feel like talking to anybody,” Echizen says. “I’ll call them back later.” He gasps suddenly and says, “I didn’t mean you, Buchou, you’re not annoying like other people.”
Tezuka smiles at him faintly, touched. “I see,” he repeats.
Echizen smiles at him broadly. “Sometimes you’re annoying in your own way.”
“Ah.”
“But not usually.”
They’ve reached the corner of Echizen’s street. They stand in the light of the flickering television that pours out of his neighbour’s window. There are lines of red and yellow light on Echizen’s face, flashing blue and then green on his pale skin.
“Goodnight, Echizen,” Tezuka says, and walks the rest of the way home alone.
--
When Seigaku meet St Rudolph Tezuka lets Fuji play against his younger brother for the first time in tournament history. Fuji thanks him and touches Tezuka’s elbow as he walks out onto the court, but is moody and uncommunicative when he wins. He watches Echizen’s singles two match in silence and sits alone on the bus back to Seigaku, picking at his racquet strings one by one.
They celebrate at Kawamura Sushi and he sits soberly by Tezuka’s side, barely touching the wasabi rolls Kawamura has specially prepared for him. He waits until Kikumaru wanders off and they are alone before he says, “He should have improved by now.”
Tezuka considers this. “It is not that he has not improved,” he tells Fuji finally, “but that your own skills have also developed.”
“I would not mind it if he were to catch up.”
He understands Fuji on this point. Tezuka remembers the first year he had known Echizen; watching from the sidelines as his tennis improved, refusing his increasingly impassioned pleas for a match. Knowing that soon the day would come when Echizen would surpass him. He remembers that day beneath the overpass, the tears on Echizen’s cheeks. Since then it’s felt like they’re chasing one another in circles.
Echizen has been guarding his dinner from Momoshiro’s pillaging hands, but it only takes him a moment to notice Tezuka’s gaze. He stares back at Tezuka with huge golden eyes, making his way over to their table in time to hear Tezuka make a noise of agreement in response.
“What are we talking about?” Echizen asks suspiciously as he settles on his knees across the table from Tezuka. There’s a faint smudge on his chin that might be a bruise; Tezuka had seen him wrestling Kikumaru for the last grape Ponta earlier in the evening. Even now he looks oddly young and dishevelled, all rumpled clothes and messy hair.
“Our captain was just praising my improvement,” Fuji informs him cheerfully. “Perhaps I shall even be able to beat him soon.”
There’s a moment when Echizen’s eyes widen and Tezuka can almost hear the words mada mada dane tumbling from his lips, but he hasn’t said that in years.
“Not yet, Fuji-senpai,” he huffs finally, his voice low and disgruntled against the cheerful clamour of his team mates. “Probably not ever.”
--
The first time Tezuka remembers dreaming about kissing Echizen he wakes up hard and scandalised in the middle of the night. In his dream Echizen is in his Thursday afternoon English class and the teacher is drawing tiny animals on the blackboard in clouds of rainbow coloured chalk.
“The duck-billed platypus is only found in particular regions of Australia,” the teacher says in German.
“I hate this lesson,” Echizen says. Ich hasse diese lektion. He’s sprawled in his chair with longer legs than Tezuka remembers and the buttons on his blazer undone. His white school shirt is crisp and thin and Tezuka can see the faint peach of skin beneath.
“Pay attention,” Tezuka says. “This could be important.”
“I know.”
Somehow Echizen is right next to him now, all humid breath against Tezuka’s cheek. Tezuka waits for the teacher to reprimand them, but he’s paused with his chalk pointing at their bodies. “Please, continue, Tezuka-kun.”
“Pardon?”
Echizen kisses him and the teacher is still watching, poised with his short pink stick of chalk between outstretched fingers. Echizen tastes strongly of Strawberry Pocky and faintly of spearmint, and his hands are small and hard on Tezuka’s shoulders.
“Pay attention, Buchou,” Echizen says against his lips. “This could be important.”
--
The next morning Tezuka wakes and carefully prepares for school. He wonders if his mother can see his shame written in the dark circles beneath his eyes, in the tense set of his shoulders.
“Have a good day at school, Kunimitsu,” she says, and kisses his cheek when he leaves.
At morning practice, Echizen is playing with Kaidoh, easily deflecting the sharp bite of the Boomerang Snake. Tezuka watches the slide of his fingers on the racquet grip, the thick shifting of muscles in his forearms, and feels uneasy.
It’s not the ache of his body upon waking that bothers Tezuka, or the memory of the sweaty drag of his sheets against his skin. It’s the familiarity of the dream, the familiarity of that kiss. Watching Echizen on the courts now, Tezuka tries to remember when he has had it before.
This may become a problem.
--
Tezuka Kunimitsu has never been especially interested in girls, and this is why it is particularly irritating when they follow him around school giggling and asking him what his favourite colour is.
“Green,” he says finally, when a pair of junior girls corner him by the clubhouse. He can see Echizen and Kikumaru snickering at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Look, Ochibi-chan,” Kikumaru whispers, loudly. “Tezuka is a ladies man.”
The girls burst into a fresh fit of giggles and Tezuka growls, “Kikumaru, 20 laps.”
Echizen falls into step beside Tezuka when he walks briskly away. Tezuka is conscious of their elbows knocking together and the slight pink flush of Echizen’s skin.
“Buchou,” he says when they pass through the clubhouse door. “Those girls were ugly.”
--
Suddenly, it seems like the world is conspiring to throw Echizen in his path everywhere he goes. This is a paranoid thought that he cannot dispel. Though he realises that he is seeing Echizen no more or less than he has for months, he is oddly conscious, now, of every meeting. The few words they exchange in the dull morning sun seem loaded with secret code. When he warms up with Echizen, waiting for the others to arrive, the solid weight of the ball against his racquet feels inappropriate.
Sometimes Echizen will look at him strangely, his gaze lingering heavy on Tezuka’s face, and he wonders if he knows. Sometimes, Fuji will look at him strangely, eyes open and smile sharp over his lips, and Tezuka knows: Fuji Syuusuke knows everything.
Oishi comes to him at home one evening and tells him that he’d caught Echizen and Fuji in the locker rooms long after everybody else had gone home. He doesn’t have to elaborate beyond the word caught, Tezuka can read the details in the rising blush on Oishi’s neck, in the awkward, stammering spasms of his words.
He cannot help but picture them: smooth, small bodies, open mouthed kisses, Echizen’s moans like tennis grunts. Half out of their clothes, Fuji’s graceful, accurate hands. It hurts.
“I - I thought you should know,” Oishi says.
Tezuka already knew. He’s seen them leaving school together, sometimes, or returning after a mysterious absence. He’s seen Echizen’s rumpled clothing and the tiny fingerprint bruises on Fuji’s neck. As Captain he should probably say something to Fuji, but he never has. He can’t even imagine raising the subject with Ryoma.
“I’ll take care of it,” Tezuka tells Oishi, but he doesn’t.
--
They play matches. They win matches. This year, Seigaku is unbeatable, the name spoken in a hush at the start of every tournament. There are all kinds of scouts at every practice. Tezuka sees them salivating every time he serves.
At home, his father speaks the words Tokyo University with a kind of gleam in his eye. When his father looks at him, he sees small children and a pretty young wife, a gleaming family car and a house with four bedrooms. He sees security in his son’s future, a life just like his own.
At night, Tezuka dreams about fucking Echizen on the grass courts at Wimbledon.
--
Fuji brings Echizen to their Sunday afternoon match. When they show up Echizen looks sleepy and rumpled, soft and grumpy around the eyes.
“Fuji-senpai woke me up,” he sulks, throwing himself onto the coach’s bench by Tezuka’s side of the court. “I don’t know why you want me to see you lose so badly,” he calls out to Fuji.
“Incentive,” Fuji calls back, and serves the first ball. He’s on the offensive the whole match, the slice of his racquet sharp and precise like a surgeon’s knife. Tezuka returns with force, but with every movement of Fuji’s hand he feels as if he should bleed.
Tezuka barely wins. He hasn’t played this seriously in months.
“Maybe next time,” Fuji says pleasantly when he grips Tezuka’s hand over the net. Behind them, Echizen snorts. Throughout the match he’d looked tense and white, hands gripped to fists and ankles jiggling. Now, he’s slumped on the bench with his arms spread along the back, the tension bleeding out of his body beneath his baggy street clothes. To Tezuka, he looks like a delinquent.
“When are we going to play?” he asks Tezuka as they walk back to the bus stop. “I keep waiting for you to ask me.”
Tezuka swallows and looks away from Fuji’s suddenly open eyes, at the passing traffic on the street. Across the road there’s a little girl with a small brown dog. Beneath his cap, Echizen is staring at them, the dog’s excited circles around her feet. Tezuka can tell from the tilt of his head. When he takes too long to answer, though, Echizen looks up, craning his neck and squinting in the late afternoon sun. “Buchou?”
“Soon,” Tezuka replies, and hopes that it is true.
--
The week before the finals of the Kantou tournament, the Seigaku regulars spend a few days in the mountains. They sleepwalk onto a bus at five in the morning, considerably less enthusiastic than they had been when the trip had been announced. Tezuka is the only one who remains awake as they wind concentric circles up the mountain. He surveys the strong, jagged planes of rock that stretch up to the next level of the mountain, finding the footholds and ledges. He imagines heaving himself up, step by step. He hasn’t been climbing since before he hurt his shoulder. He loves the mountain, but he loves tennis more.
An hour into the trip, Echizen stumbles to the front of the bus and collapses into the seat across the aisle from Tezuka.
“Oishi-senpai is snoring,” he explains, throat husky from overnight disuse. Tezuka detects the faint grumble of Oishi’s snoring drifting from the back of the bus, but after a while he can no longer hear it above the low whine of Echizen’s sleeping breath.
--
Running, it seems like the mountain gets steeper beneath his feet. He can feel the body heat of his team mates around him, their competitive cluster creating a moving cloud of moisture, mingled breath and sweat. Kaidoh and Momoshiro are in the lead, elbow to elbow and shoving. Behind them and trying to break through, Tezuka feels the growing claustrophobia, his throbbing lungs and burning muscles. If he could just get in front of them, he thinks, he could get some clean, fresh air.
He shatters through the solid wall of their shoulders, and Echizen tumbles out after him, his heat on Tezuka’s back and gaining ground fast.
In the end, Fuji gets there first.
--
Five freshman have accompanied them to help out. Slaves, Momoshiro calls them affectionately, his booming, friendly voice demanding food the moment the regulars walk through the door. Echizen ignores them completely. Tezuka has always been ashamed that he can never quite remember the fifth freshman’s name; it’s something with a Y. Tezuka comforts himself with the thought that Oishi probably knows what it is. Tezuka’s strength has always been in silence. Oishi has always been better with people. He depends on Oishi more than most people realise. More than Oishi seems to realise.
Lately, he’s been thinking a lot about what life will be like when he won’t see these people every day.
--
Tezuka goes to bed early. They’re all sleeping in one room, two neat rows of beds with scratchy sheets and lumpy pillows. He takes the bed on the far end and listens, for a while, to Kikumaru’s muffled voice telling a story about shopping with Oishi’s mother. There’s a constant buzz of laughter in the regular’s voices now; morale is high. They seem happy. Every now and then there’s a slight pause that seems to be Fuji talking, or maybe Echizen, a frequency Tezuka can’t register through the walls. He lies on his back and feels the tension seeping out of his shoulders, and then he’s half asleep, Kikumaru’s voice settling on the edges of his exhaustion.
He’s woken by a slight rustling. Tezuka has never been a deep sleeper, which is why he retires early by routine. Sometimes he’ll wake four or five times in the space of one night, pulled gently from sleep by the rumble of his grandfather’s voice or the bleating of his sister’s phone. Sometimes he is awakened and doesn’t know why, as the sudden noise or burst of light has already faded away into nothing.
“Hey,” Echizen says when Tezuka’s eyes slide open. “Sorry.”
Echizen is a bundle of blurry blue and gold shapes kneeling on the bed beside Tezuka’s. He reaches for his glasses. As he slides them on the watery blobs of colour harden into solid geometric shapes, the firm, clean lines of Echizen’s tanned arms and worn navy t-shirt.
“What time is it?” Tezuka asks. The room is still empty and Echizen’s hair is wet.
“Ten.”
Tezuka pretends not to watch as Echizen settles into bed, tugging and twisting at the sheets until they’re up around his knees. They lie on their backs in silence, breathing and staring at the ceiling. Tezuka doesn’t take off his glasses. He counts the tiles in the ceiling. His hands are cold beneath the blanket.
When Ryoma rolls onto his side, eyes open and searching Tezuka’s face, Tezuka turns his head to stare back. It would be so easy, he thinks, to reach out and touch Echizen’s mouth, to tug his shoulders against Tezuka’s chest. From this angle, with their matching pillows and identical brown blankets, it looks like they’re sharing a bed. Tezuka could lean over and kiss Ryoma’s forehead. He could scratch the small of Ryoma’s back.
“Goodnight, Buchou,” Echizen says, and closes his eyes.
Tezuka can’t sleep.
--
The next day after endurance training they go swimming in the river. Tezuka sits stretched out on the bank beside a jumbled pile of discarded t-shirts and shoes. The soil is cool beneath his fingers and the sun slowly bakes his bare shoulders golden brown.
He watches Kikumaru and Echizen latch onto Momoshiro’s broad shoulders, hollering and shoving as they try to wrestle him into submission.
“Stop resisting, Momo!” Kikumaru yells. “Don’t be a baby!”
“He doesn’t want to mess up his pretty hair,” Echizen says. Tezuka is amused by Echizen’s ability to remain deadpan even as he’s jostling and pushing for dominance. His words float along the water’s surface without inflection, their quiet obnoxiousness barely even rippling the surface.
Momoshiro’s squawk is like a tidal wave in comparison. “I will never be defeated,” he screams, even as his face disappears underwater. At the last moment his arms shoot free and he drags Kikumaru and Echizen with him. They reappear separately, coughing and spluttering with tangled hair. Echizen smoothes his hands back over his head, slicking wet hair back over his skull. Away from his face. Water drips from his chin, from his hair at the nape of his neck, and rolls over the contours of his chest. This is what he’d look like in the shower. He smiles when he sees Tezuka watching.
“I think he’d like you to join them,” Fuji says, dropping to sprawl at Tezuka’s side. He’s just come from the water and his skin makes mud wherever it touches the ground.
“Maybe soon,” Tezuka replies. Echizen is still looking at him, though his expression has settled into something vaguely suspicious. He turns his gaze from Tezuka to Fuji, and then Kikumaru blindsides him with a tackle.
“But if you wait too long it’ll get cold.”
They watch the boys in silence, but Tezuka is aware of Fuji’s continued attention. He waits.
“You should join them, Tezuka,” Fuji says. Tezuka has never been very good at reading Fuji, but then, nobody has. That is Fuji Syuusuke’s greatest strength. Sometimes, he makes Tezuka nervous.
Tezuka stares out at the river beyond the thrashing bodies by the shore. Fuji is a niggling thought at his side, a distraction that he tries to dispel.
“You wanted me to be your one great rival,” Fuji says. When Tezuka turns to him blue eyes are open over rows of black lashes and he looks annoyed. “I’ve been playing for months and you’ve yet to even hit the ball.”
From the water, Echizen is looking at Tezuka again.
“You should hurry up,” Fuji says. “I’m getting bored.”
The sun has begun to fade, glowing warm and orange in the places where it is reflected in the surface of the river. It might get cold soon. The thought causes a slight edge of panic to push into his carefully preserved calm, and he curses Fuji.
Echizen smiles and ducks out from beneath Momoshiro’s arm as Tezuka slides into the river. The ice cold surface cracks and crashes against his skin, and Tezuka waits for his body to adjust before moving to stand at Oishi’s side. The mud of the riverbed squelches between his toes. He wonders if there are fish here.
“Hn, Buchou,” Ryoma says. “I was beginning to think you were afraid to swim.”
“I dare you, Ochibi,” Kikumaru calls out.
“He’ll never do it,” Momoshiro says.
Echizen’s mouth twists with grim amusement. “Sorry, Buchou,” he says, and then strong hands are on Tezuka’s shoulders and cool water is rushing over his head.
--
Tezuka takes walks in the evenings to escape, for a while, the colour and noise of his teammates. He hasn’t been sleeping well, waking every night at midnight to the pale glow of moonlight on Echizen’s skin, to Kikumaru’s sleeptalking, to the murmuring that goes on between Inui and Kaidoh. He sits for a while in the cool, peaceful damp of the forest, reading in the fading light.
Their fourth night at the retreat he returns to floodlights on the tennis court and the sounds of a match. The bounce, the thwack, the grunt. Echizen’s muffled cursing. The regulars are lined up along the chain link fence, heads swivelling as they follow the ball. It is Fuji’s serve. The ball soars in clean, perfect lines across the court.
At first, nobody notices Tezuka’s return. Kachiro is calling the match. He announces, “Game, Fuji. One game to two.”
As they change courts, Echizen meets Tezuka’s eye and touches his cap. He wins the next game; a perfect sequence of service aces.
Kikumaru stands with one hand clasping his elbow and the other on his chin, lips pursed in contemplation. “Ochibi’s never beat Fuji before.”
“He’s never lost, either,” Momoshiro says. Tezuka can see the pride in the slight smirk of his lips and the sudden puffing of his chest. “Fuji-senpai never lets him finish the game.”
There is new seriousness in the force of Fuji’s swing; Tezuka can see the shifting and bunching of the muscles in his forearm as the racquet makes impact. He does not taunt Echizen with easy lobs and chance balls. He is playing, finally, with his eyes open.
Echizen takes the match. When he approaches the net to shake hands, Fuji loops one elegant arm around Ryoma’s shoulders and kisses his cheek in front of everybody.
“You’re all grown up, Ryoma-kun,” Fuji says. Echizen wipes his cheek with the back of his hand and mutters something that makes Fuji laugh, his brow furrowed and grumpy in the way that he uses to conceal strong bursts of emotion.
Then Echizen says, “Thankyou, Fuji-senpai,” and walks away.
--
Tezuka cannot sleep. He leaves his bed at two a.m. and moves silently to the kitchen, listening to the muffled sounds of his sleeping team mates. As he passes Kikumaru’s feet he mumbles, “Moon volley,” and Oishi makes a noise in his chest in seeming reply. When Tezuka reaches the hall the floorboards gleam in the moonlight and he follows their glow to the kitchen door.
He makes a pot of tea and reads a week-old paper. Up here in the mountain it’s like the rest of the world only exists as history. No new papers, no mobile phones. They could return to Tokyo and find it a ghost town, wiped out by bombs or diseases in their absence.
A week ago, a woman was murdered in her apartment late in the afternoon, a truck plummeted off an overpass, a European princess was married and a new hospital was opened in Osaka. A week ago there was a recipe for French bread in the culture section.
Tezuka drinks a second cup of tea.
“Buchou?”
It is Echizen, of course, his voice settling into the stillness that Tezuka has carefully nurtured. He stands bleary-eyed in the doorway, blinking into the bright white kitchen lights. He has messy bed hair, it sticks up in back. Tezuka’s heart throbs painfully.
“Echizen,” Tezuka says. “You should be asleep.”
“So should you,” Echizen replies disapprovingly. Tezuka is not used to being chastised by his team. The vague criticism in Echizen’s tone settles uncomfortably against his skin.
“Aa,” Tezuka says, because he cannot think of anything else.
“Can I have some tea?” Ryoma asks. He walks further into the kitchen, the cuffs of his soft, striped cotton pyjamas dragging on the floor beneath his slippers. Tezuka pours him a cup from the still warm teapot, handing it to him as he settles into the seat at Tezuka’s side.
“Is there a sports section?”
A week ago, an Italian soccer player scored his hundredth goal and Roger Federer beat Andy Roddick in straight sets. Tezuka hands Echizen the sports pages.
“Che,” Ryoma says, upon seeing the front page. “This is old. Why bother reading it?”
Tezuka doesn’t bother replying. He takes his cup and saucer to the sink and washes them, letting the hot water run on his hands to distract himself from the slope of Ryoma’s shoulders beneath his thin blue t-shirt, from the impossibly large eyes that are now, as always, following his every movement.
“Buchou,” Echizen says. His voice makes Tezuka nervous. It’s deeper than usual, and gentle, like he’s about to tell Tezuka a secret they’ve been avoiding for months.
Tezuka can’t turn around. He stares out the window into the dark grounds, seeing the gleam of the chain link fence in the moonlight. “Yes?”
Ryoma’s hands fist in the back of Tezuka’s t-shirt, pulling it taught across his chest. His knuckles graze against the knotted muscles in Tezuka’s back through the worn fabric.
“I want us to start playing again,” Echizen says. “Matches, I mean.”
“Aa.”
“You keep blowing me off,” Ryoma takes Tezuka’s arm and tugs until they are facing one another. Echizen stares up at him from inches closer than he used to three years ago. With every passing day he seems older. “Why?”
“I worry about you,” Tezuka says awkwardly, though this is only the barest fragment of the truth. Tezuka worries about Ryoma, but he worries most about the two of them together, and all the things they should not mean to one another.
“Oh,” Ryoma says. “Don’t,” and kisses him.
Ryoma does not taste like Strawberry Pocky. He tastes strongly of Jasmine tea and a little like Listerine, with something mysterious and bodily beneath. Their mouths mash awkwardly together until Echizen reaches up and into Tezuka’s hair and forcefully guides his head around his own. Ryoma’s tongue touches the roof of his mouth, and Tezuka feels dizzy.
Tezuka has been kissed once before, by the daughter of a family friend who had sought his help in her studies. That had been warm and moist and slightly nauseating, her body soft and terrifyingly fragile against his own. Later, she’d stared at him awkwardly and he wondered what she’d seen in his eyes, what she’d felt in that kiss. She’d never sought him out again.
Echizen’s body is thin and hard and reassuringly solid and Tezuka can’t help but slide his arms around that narrow waist, beneath the soft cotton t-shirt. He can feel the lines of muscle in Ryoma’s back and he wonders what they feel like, shifting as Ryoma serves.
They kiss pressed up against the kitchen bench for twenty minutes, until Tezuka’s hair is tangled around the spaces where Echizen’s fingers have been and his lips tingle from exertion. When they’re done he stares at Ryoma’s smirking, beautiful face, and feels the faint ugliness of shame welling up in his chest, but then Ryoma threads his fingers through Tezuka’s and leads him quietly back to the bedrooms, stepping over their friends in the darkness.
They slide into their separate beds and look at one another across the divide. They’ll have to be up in an hour and a half and Tezuka suddenly feels exhausted, bones heavy and liquid inside his body. Echizen looks happy.
He thinks Ryoma might be asleep when he leans over to kiss his hair and the curve of his cheek, when he whispers, “Goodnight, Echizen,” in the dark.
--
By the time he wakes Tezuka’s shame has mutated into a painful ulcer in his gut. He knows Echizen is by no means innocent but he looks it when he sleeps. In the bed beside Tezuka’s he is all sweeping lashes on soft cheeks, messy hair on his clear young face. He is so much younger than his tennis makes him seem.
Tezuka gets out of bed and avoids him for the rest of the day, or tries to. He throws himself into their training, ignoring the occasional heat of Echizen’s body at his elbow, the way that Tezuka’s silence seems to amuse him. He manages not to speak to Ryoma all day, until Inui announces that they are to be paired together for doubles training.
For a moment, Tezuka thinks this is mere coincidence, until he sees Inui and Fuji’s suspiciously matched smiles, the foreboding gleam of sunlight against Inui’s glasses.
“Good luck,” Fuji says as they walk onto the court. It’s a one set match against the Kaidoh/Momoshiro pair. Tezuka tries to collect himself as he stares at them over the net. He cannot be careless. They have the Kantou finals to think about, and Nationals after that. For the team’s sake, he cannot lose this match.
“How does the zone work when you’re playing doubles?” Echizen asks, spinning his racquet in his fist.
“I don’t know,” Tezuka replies.
He watches Kaidoh and Momoshiro murmur to one another and knock fists before they take their positions. He thinks about the movement of Echizen’s body on the court nearby, the way his back will bend and his legs will flex as he serves.
We can do this, he thinks, but they lose the first three games. They are playing awkwardly, cautiously. Their formation is polite. They lose three points when Echizen unexpectedly stands aside to let Tezuka have the chance ball; after each ball has bounced out of play he turns and stares at Tezuka like he’s rejected a precious gift. To Echizen, that’s probably what a chance ball is.
After the third game, Tezuka has had enough. He grabs Echizen’s elbow as he passes and tries to think of something to say. Echizen blinks at him and makes a noise low in his throat, touches the brim of his cap.
“Let’s go, Buchou,” he says, and they take the next two games. Tezuka can’t use the zone when Ryoma is potentially in the way of the ball, but he does manage, through trial and error, to manipulate the spin so that the ball flies from the opponent’s racquets to Echizen’s general vicinity. It is a good match, though not a perfect match. They lose another game to Momoshiro’s dunk smash and Kaidoh’s sheer perseverance, but it’s a satisfying win at six games to four. As they shake hands over the net Tezuka can feel the tension bleeding out of his shoulders, out of his wrists. Doubles has never been his game.
They don’t knock fists like Kaidoh and Momoshiro but as they walk away Tezuka says, “Good work, Echizen.”
“I hate doubles,” Ryoma grumbles. There’s a slight flush in his cheeks and he doesn’t look up at Tezuka, just straight ahead at the path before them. “At least this time I didn’t have to play with Momo-senpai.”
“I once had to play with Inui,” Tezuka reveals. His second year of junior high, in practice against the Golden Pair. They hadn’t been keeping score but at the end of the afternoon Tezuka had felt the shame of losing anyway. At thirteen he hadn’t been able to come to terms with Inui’s data, and Inui wouldn’t allow Tezuka to take over the match. Tezuka had gone home that night with stains on his white tennis shorts, where their fumbling had sent them both sprawling to the ground.
Echizen grimaces and says, “I can’t imagine that.”
“We were disgraceful.” The sun is setting over the lodge and Tezuka realises he has forgotten that he has to avoid Ryoma, that he should not be so casual. He walks more briskly, long steps with long legs. Echizen matches his pace without comment.
When they reach the lodge Echizen smiles slyly up at him and says, “Fuji-senpai said you’d try to get away.”
Tezuka stops just inside the door and says, “Echizen.”
The challenge is in Echizen’s shoulders and the cocky slant of his jaw. “I told him I wouldn’t let you.”
Echizen moves close and for a minute Tezuka thinks he’s going to kiss him again, but Ryoma just says, “You won’t beat me in this, Buchou,” and swaggers away.
Tezuka is still standing in the lobby when the rest of the team arrive, struggling to catch his breath.
--
Fuji-senpai said.
He seeks Fuji out after dinner, indicating with a slight inclination of his head that he wants him to follow when he leaves the lodge. They walk to the picnic area not far from the courts and sit at a table. The night sky here is brighter than in Tokyo, where the only stars are the streetlights and windows in distant buildings. Fuji stares up at the sky while Tezuka tries to figure out what to say.
He asks finally, “Have you been giving Echizen lessons on how to seduce me?” He tries to sound foreboding but Fuji has never been particularly afraid of him, and just turns to him with that same faint, unsettling smile.
“Oh Tezuka,” Fuji says, as if Tezuka is being embarrassingly simple. “Echizen seduced you a long time ago.”
“Fuji,” Tezuka says impatiently.
Fuji laughs, obviously pleased by whatever it is that he hears in Tezuka’s voice. Tezuka wonders if Fuji can detect the tremor. If he can hear the panic. “I may have told him a few things.”
“Please do me the courtesy of staying out of my business,” Tezuka says stiffly, and stands to leave.
Fuji stays seated, hands politely folded in his lap. “I am merely trying to be a good senpai. By helping a kohai attain a cherished goal.”
“He’s too young to -“ Tezuka starts, but Fuji cuts him off.
“At the moment, he’s the adult. He’s not running away like a frightened child.”
Fuji is rarely so direct with Tezuka.
“Maybe,” Fuji says, with a tremor of genuine humour in his lips, “you need to behave with a little more maturity. Everybody falls in love at some point, Tezuka. Even you.”
Tezuka walks off and leaves Fuji sitting alone in the dark. He feels the burn of Fuji’s smirk against the nape of his neck all the way back to the Lodge.
--
Tezuka wonders if Fuji is right. He wonders if he is acting like a child. He thinks of Echizen’s confident fingers against his skin, how brave he was, how brave he always is. Tezuka wonders if he is in love.
( continue.)