Happy spring, unrequitedangst!
Title: Trick for The Trickster
Recipient's name: unrequitedangst
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Platinum Pair (Niou/Yagyuu)
Warnings: Um... yaoi?
Author's notes: Thanks to my beta! (who will know who she is if or when she reads this) :P And I hope you like it!
“Say, Yagyuu,” The addressed person looked up. “Let’s switch.”
“Why?”
“For fun.”
Yagyuu was in a relatively unquestioning mood that day. “Okay. Tomorrow, then?”
The only answer he got was a nod and an impish grin.
---------------------------------
Niou looked at Yagyuu out of the corner of his eye. His partner did look eerily like him, he had to admit. Yagyuu had done a really good job of impersonating him. He grinned. That would make his plan a whole lot easier.
And he saw the perfect opportunity to add the finishing touch to his plan.
He nudged the dictionary just the slightest bit, causing it to fall from his locker.
“Whoops…” He said a moment too late.
Yagyuu looked up just in time to see the huge bulk of knowledge dropping like a stone onto his head.
“OUCH!”
------------------------------
“Niou?” A bespectacled pair of eyes looked down at him. “Niou, are you alright?”
“But I’m Yagyuu!”
“No, I’m Yagyuu.” The self-proclaimed Yagyuu bent to retrieve his dictionary.
“Niou.” He growled. “Stop. This. Nonsense.”
The other boy looked up. “Are you sure you’re alright, Niou? That knock was pretty nasty.” He felt the other’s forehead. “Perhaps you should go see the nurse.”
“No, it’s alright,” He automatically replied. He was thoroughly confused by now. He was Yagyuu, he was quite sure of it. But there was no denying the fact that there was Yagyuu Hiroshi reading a book right under his nose, plain as day!
Maybe he was Niou after all…
Niou could hardly suppress a grin as he watched the adorably confused look on the other boy’s face.
“See you later, Niou,”
And he walked away, smirking inwardly. Oh, this is going to be such fun…
---------------------------
“Yagyuu-sempai?”
Niou looked up, remembering just in time that he was impersonating Yagyuu. He put on his most polished tone. “Yes?”
“Anou…” The girl blushed. “Could you help me with this please?”
Niou frowned slightly. “Let me see that.” He took the book from her hand. Maths?! Oh, darn it! I can’t remember a single thing about algebra!
The girl was still waiting for him, big eyes shining with hope. He sighed, and wondered how Yagyuu ever managed to stand the little pest. Was she trying to ruin his plan or something?
“Ah-h-h…”
“Yagyuu! Over here a moment!”
Yes! Salvation! He handed the book back to the girl. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”
He was out of there before the stunned girl could even react.
--------------------------------
“Hey.” He addressed his fuku-buchou casually, resisting the urge to thank him profusely for getting him out of a scrape. But then again, it was a little funny to think of Sanada as a saviour.
Wait, scratch that. Make it very freaky.
“Yagyuu, we’ll be having a meeting during the break.”
“Sure.” He smiled, as Yagyuu was sometimes apt to do, and turned back to his seat - only to find two girls in his way.
If he were Niou, he would simply have pushed them out of the way. As it was, he was being Yagyuu. He gritted his teeth. “Excuse me, please.”
“Yagyuu-sempai…”
Was Yagyuu a babe magnet or something? This was starting to get old.
“What is it?” He asked rather curtly.
“What’s ‘inept’?”
Oh, English. He could handle that.
“Inept…” He frowned, trying to remember where he’d heard that word from.
“Teacher wrote it on my essay, and when I asked her what it meant, she told me to ask you.”
That’s it! He’d heard Yagyuu use it before. So he could just ask Yagyuu, and…
Oh, right. He was Yagyuu now.
This was so not working.
“It means… uh… stupid!” He said the first thing that came to his mind. “Yes, stupid!”
The girl looked at him uncertainly. “Teacher called my essay… stupid?”
He had only a moment’s warning before the girl flung herself at him, sobbing hard. “Yagyuu-sempai! How could sensei be so cruel?”
He was beginning to regret ever making the switch in the first place.
“There now, don’t cry…” He offered the girl a handkerchief, but absolutely refused to pat her on the back. Niou Masaharu simply didn’t do such things - even if he was masquerading as a certain Gentleman.
-----------------------------------------
So Yagyuu was apparently a comforter too. There were, it turned out, a whole lot of things he never knew about his doubles partner.
Such as how hordes of girls liked to chase his partner during recess, forcing him to stow away in their secret hideout. It would sort of explain why Yagyuu always took the trouble to walk in on tiptoes, (no matter how dignified he appeared to be, Niou knew better) and why his eyes were always looking behind him as he entered.
In short, his doubles partner led a very stressful life.
He was not surprised when someone else crawled into the cramped space beside him. After all, they always ate together - unless Niou was being held up by some teacher for detention, of course. That normally happened about once a week. The rest of the time he was simply too slick for the teacher.
Yagyuu-turned-Niou had obviously been a good boy today, though.
He turned to look at his friend, and quite nearly got the shock of his life. Yagyuu’s face was only a matter of inches away from his, and it seemed to be coming closer and closer and closer…
“AUGHH!!!”
The last thing he felt was a sudden pressure falling onto his body and a sharp pain shooting through his head. Then silence.
And the world went black.
---------------------------
After the extraordinarily long time of ten seconds, Niou recovered his consciousness to find a heavy weight pressing on him.
“Um… Yagyuu?” He asked tentatively.
His doubles partner groaned slightly, eyes not quite open yet. “Ouch… I think he’s passed out… who’s there?”
“Yagyuu, it’s me. Niou.”
“Niou?” Yagyuu repeated in amazement. “But I thought I was Niou?!”
“Oh, right.” He had forgotten that he was playing a trick on his beloved doubles partner. But he had enough of being Yagyuu Hiroshi. It was just too… too… much.
“Yagyuu,” His voice was unusually trite.
“Niou.” Yagyuu interrupted him.
Niou rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. Niou. I want to confess something.”
He looked up, and was immediately distracted by the sight of the other boy’s intense eyes, usually hidden away behind wire-rimmed spectacles.
“I like your eyes.”
“WHAT?!” Yagyuu’s reaction exactly mirrored Niou’s mental reaction. Except, of course, that Yagyuu must have been really getting into the role of Niou, because the proper Yagyuu would just have said, “I beg your pardon?” in a slightly incredulous tone.
But all this psychoanalysing wasn’t going to help him explain what he had just said.
“Ah-h, I meant… I mean…” He trailed off awkwardly, twiddling his thumbs.
They sat there in silence for a few minutes.
Finally, Yagyuu cleared his throat. “Was that all you wanted to say?”
“Well, no! Actually I didn’t even mean to say that, but it just accidentally - “ Niou stopped himself mid-ramble. “I wanted to say that I’ve been playing a trick on you.”
“Oh.” The exceptionally encouraging reply came.
-----------------------
“Oh,” Yagyuu let a little curiousity and puzzlement diffuse into his tone. “But shouldn’t I be the one playing the tricks? I’m the Trickster, after all.”
Niou was starting to get really scared. What if the knock had really caused Yagyuu to have partial amnesia…?
No! I don’t want to become Yagyuu for the rest of my life!
“Never!”
“But you are Yagyuu,” Yagyuu pointed out mildly. “And - “
He was cut off by a panicky Niou. “Come on, Yagyuu. Let’s go to the school nurse now!”
Yagyuu had to repress a small smirk as he let himself be led away by a frantic Niou.
Time for a dose of his own medicine…
---------------------------
“There’s nothing wrong with Niou-kun.” The school nurse informed him.
“Are you sure?” Niou was quite close to tearing his hair out. “He seems to have amnesia, because just this morning - “
The school nurse looked at him sharply. “Are you sure you don’t need a mental examination, Yagyuu-kun?”
That stopped him in his tracks. If there was anything he hated more than exams, it was a clinical check-up. “N-no, it’s alright. Ah, I just remembered! We need to see Rin-sensei now!”
He muttered a hurried, “Shitsurei shimasu,” before dragging an extraordinarily amused Yagyuu out of the room.
This is going to be such fun…
-----------------------------
In the space of less than half an hour, Yagyuu had managed to drive Niou practically nuts. His acting was really rather brilliant, he thought absently as he watched his doubles partner bury his head in his hands, bemoaning the fact that he’d have to be Yagyuu forever.
He wasn’t quite sure whether to be insulted that Niou found his life so uninspiring, or to be amused at the other’s gullibility.
…I like your eyes.
Yagyuu jumped. Where had that voice come from?
Niou always had a knack for saying the weirdest things to unnerve people. But such attacks were usually planned. He should know, he had been involved in many of such schemes. What bothered him so much was that that sentence hadn’t been planned. He could see it on Niou’s face - the shock and realization that dawned on his best friend’s features. Had he really meant it?
Flashback
“You know, Yagyuu, you’re not all that bad-looking.”
“Well, I’m not exactly model stuff either…” Yagyuu disagreed.
“Nope,” Niou grinned devilishly. “Because that spot’s already occupied by me.”
End Flashback
He hadn’t thought much about it then, but Niou was a lot handsomer than him. It was a fact of life.
He let his gaze wander to his doubles partner, from the messy hair, to the high cheekbones and the chiseled profile… he reached Niou’s eyes, only to be made aware that Niou was looking at him.
He’d been caught staring. Damn.
“Yagyuu?”
This game has gone on long enough. Abruptly he said, “Niou - “
He was interrupted by Niou, who was grinning like a madman. “You remember that I’m Niou! Oh, gosh! For a moment there I thought you’d lost your memory!”
“I was just turning the tables on you.” Yagyuu replied calmly, not missing a beat. “Say, Niou?”
But Niou was not listening to him. “You - you played a trick on me?!”
Yagyuu had to smirk at the horrified expression on his doubles partner’s face. “Why, I do believe so.”
“A trick?! On me?!” Niou was obviously having some problems digesting that fact. “On me!”
----------------------
Later that evening, at the end of their celebration (or rather, Yagyuu’s celebration) of being able to outwit the Trickster, they were standing outside Niou’s gate - why Yagyuu had even bothered to walk him home was a mystery, after all, he wasn’t a girl - Yagyuu turned and looked at him for a long moment.
Just when Niou started to fidget under his inscrutable gaze, Yagyuu opened his mouth to speak.
“… I like your eyes too, Niou.”
-------------------------------
~owari~
Recipient's name: unrequitedangst
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Platinum Pair (Niou/Yagyuu)
Warnings: Um... yaoi?
Author's notes: Thanks to my beta! (who will know who she is if or when she reads this) :P And I hope you like it!
“Say, Yagyuu,” The addressed person looked up. “Let’s switch.”
“Why?”
“For fun.”
Yagyuu was in a relatively unquestioning mood that day. “Okay. Tomorrow, then?”
The only answer he got was a nod and an impish grin.
---------------------------------
Niou looked at Yagyuu out of the corner of his eye. His partner did look eerily like him, he had to admit. Yagyuu had done a really good job of impersonating him. He grinned. That would make his plan a whole lot easier.
And he saw the perfect opportunity to add the finishing touch to his plan.
He nudged the dictionary just the slightest bit, causing it to fall from his locker.
“Whoops…” He said a moment too late.
Yagyuu looked up just in time to see the huge bulk of knowledge dropping like a stone onto his head.
“OUCH!”
------------------------------
“Niou?” A bespectacled pair of eyes looked down at him. “Niou, are you alright?”
“But I’m Yagyuu!”
“No, I’m Yagyuu.” The self-proclaimed Yagyuu bent to retrieve his dictionary.
“Niou.” He growled. “Stop. This. Nonsense.”
The other boy looked up. “Are you sure you’re alright, Niou? That knock was pretty nasty.” He felt the other’s forehead. “Perhaps you should go see the nurse.”
“No, it’s alright,” He automatically replied. He was thoroughly confused by now. He was Yagyuu, he was quite sure of it. But there was no denying the fact that there was Yagyuu Hiroshi reading a book right under his nose, plain as day!
Maybe he was Niou after all…
Niou could hardly suppress a grin as he watched the adorably confused look on the other boy’s face.
“See you later, Niou,”
And he walked away, smirking inwardly. Oh, this is going to be such fun…
---------------------------
“Yagyuu-sempai?”
Niou looked up, remembering just in time that he was impersonating Yagyuu. He put on his most polished tone. “Yes?”
“Anou…” The girl blushed. “Could you help me with this please?”
Niou frowned slightly. “Let me see that.” He took the book from her hand. Maths?! Oh, darn it! I can’t remember a single thing about algebra!
The girl was still waiting for him, big eyes shining with hope. He sighed, and wondered how Yagyuu ever managed to stand the little pest. Was she trying to ruin his plan or something?
“Ah-h-h…”
“Yagyuu! Over here a moment!”
Yes! Salvation! He handed the book back to the girl. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”
He was out of there before the stunned girl could even react.
--------------------------------
“Hey.” He addressed his fuku-buchou casually, resisting the urge to thank him profusely for getting him out of a scrape. But then again, it was a little funny to think of Sanada as a saviour.
Wait, scratch that. Make it very freaky.
“Yagyuu, we’ll be having a meeting during the break.”
“Sure.” He smiled, as Yagyuu was sometimes apt to do, and turned back to his seat - only to find two girls in his way.
If he were Niou, he would simply have pushed them out of the way. As it was, he was being Yagyuu. He gritted his teeth. “Excuse me, please.”
“Yagyuu-sempai…”
Was Yagyuu a babe magnet or something? This was starting to get old.
“What is it?” He asked rather curtly.
“What’s ‘inept’?”
Oh, English. He could handle that.
“Inept…” He frowned, trying to remember where he’d heard that word from.
“Teacher wrote it on my essay, and when I asked her what it meant, she told me to ask you.”
That’s it! He’d heard Yagyuu use it before. So he could just ask Yagyuu, and…
Oh, right. He was Yagyuu now.
This was so not working.
“It means… uh… stupid!” He said the first thing that came to his mind. “Yes, stupid!”
The girl looked at him uncertainly. “Teacher called my essay… stupid?”
He had only a moment’s warning before the girl flung herself at him, sobbing hard. “Yagyuu-sempai! How could sensei be so cruel?”
He was beginning to regret ever making the switch in the first place.
“There now, don’t cry…” He offered the girl a handkerchief, but absolutely refused to pat her on the back. Niou Masaharu simply didn’t do such things - even if he was masquerading as a certain Gentleman.
-----------------------------------------
So Yagyuu was apparently a comforter too. There were, it turned out, a whole lot of things he never knew about his doubles partner.
Such as how hordes of girls liked to chase his partner during recess, forcing him to stow away in their secret hideout. It would sort of explain why Yagyuu always took the trouble to walk in on tiptoes, (no matter how dignified he appeared to be, Niou knew better) and why his eyes were always looking behind him as he entered.
In short, his doubles partner led a very stressful life.
He was not surprised when someone else crawled into the cramped space beside him. After all, they always ate together - unless Niou was being held up by some teacher for detention, of course. That normally happened about once a week. The rest of the time he was simply too slick for the teacher.
Yagyuu-turned-Niou had obviously been a good boy today, though.
He turned to look at his friend, and quite nearly got the shock of his life. Yagyuu’s face was only a matter of inches away from his, and it seemed to be coming closer and closer and closer…
“AUGHH!!!”
The last thing he felt was a sudden pressure falling onto his body and a sharp pain shooting through his head. Then silence.
And the world went black.
---------------------------
After the extraordinarily long time of ten seconds, Niou recovered his consciousness to find a heavy weight pressing on him.
“Um… Yagyuu?” He asked tentatively.
His doubles partner groaned slightly, eyes not quite open yet. “Ouch… I think he’s passed out… who’s there?”
“Yagyuu, it’s me. Niou.”
“Niou?” Yagyuu repeated in amazement. “But I thought I was Niou?!”
“Oh, right.” He had forgotten that he was playing a trick on his beloved doubles partner. But he had enough of being Yagyuu Hiroshi. It was just too… too… much.
“Yagyuu,” His voice was unusually trite.
“Niou.” Yagyuu interrupted him.
Niou rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. Niou. I want to confess something.”
He looked up, and was immediately distracted by the sight of the other boy’s intense eyes, usually hidden away behind wire-rimmed spectacles.
“I like your eyes.”
“WHAT?!” Yagyuu’s reaction exactly mirrored Niou’s mental reaction. Except, of course, that Yagyuu must have been really getting into the role of Niou, because the proper Yagyuu would just have said, “I beg your pardon?” in a slightly incredulous tone.
But all this psychoanalysing wasn’t going to help him explain what he had just said.
“Ah-h, I meant… I mean…” He trailed off awkwardly, twiddling his thumbs.
They sat there in silence for a few minutes.
Finally, Yagyuu cleared his throat. “Was that all you wanted to say?”
“Well, no! Actually I didn’t even mean to say that, but it just accidentally - “ Niou stopped himself mid-ramble. “I wanted to say that I’ve been playing a trick on you.”
“Oh.” The exceptionally encouraging reply came.
-----------------------
“Oh,” Yagyuu let a little curiousity and puzzlement diffuse into his tone. “But shouldn’t I be the one playing the tricks? I’m the Trickster, after all.”
Niou was starting to get really scared. What if the knock had really caused Yagyuu to have partial amnesia…?
No! I don’t want to become Yagyuu for the rest of my life!
“Never!”
“But you are Yagyuu,” Yagyuu pointed out mildly. “And - “
He was cut off by a panicky Niou. “Come on, Yagyuu. Let’s go to the school nurse now!”
Yagyuu had to repress a small smirk as he let himself be led away by a frantic Niou.
Time for a dose of his own medicine…
---------------------------
“There’s nothing wrong with Niou-kun.” The school nurse informed him.
“Are you sure?” Niou was quite close to tearing his hair out. “He seems to have amnesia, because just this morning - “
The school nurse looked at him sharply. “Are you sure you don’t need a mental examination, Yagyuu-kun?”
That stopped him in his tracks. If there was anything he hated more than exams, it was a clinical check-up. “N-no, it’s alright. Ah, I just remembered! We need to see Rin-sensei now!”
He muttered a hurried, “Shitsurei shimasu,” before dragging an extraordinarily amused Yagyuu out of the room.
This is going to be such fun…
-----------------------------
In the space of less than half an hour, Yagyuu had managed to drive Niou practically nuts. His acting was really rather brilliant, he thought absently as he watched his doubles partner bury his head in his hands, bemoaning the fact that he’d have to be Yagyuu forever.
He wasn’t quite sure whether to be insulted that Niou found his life so uninspiring, or to be amused at the other’s gullibility.
…I like your eyes.
Yagyuu jumped. Where had that voice come from?
Niou always had a knack for saying the weirdest things to unnerve people. But such attacks were usually planned. He should know, he had been involved in many of such schemes. What bothered him so much was that that sentence hadn’t been planned. He could see it on Niou’s face - the shock and realization that dawned on his best friend’s features. Had he really meant it?
Flashback
“You know, Yagyuu, you’re not all that bad-looking.”
“Well, I’m not exactly model stuff either…” Yagyuu disagreed.
“Nope,” Niou grinned devilishly. “Because that spot’s already occupied by me.”
End Flashback
He hadn’t thought much about it then, but Niou was a lot handsomer than him. It was a fact of life.
He let his gaze wander to his doubles partner, from the messy hair, to the high cheekbones and the chiseled profile… he reached Niou’s eyes, only to be made aware that Niou was looking at him.
He’d been caught staring. Damn.
“Yagyuu?”
This game has gone on long enough. Abruptly he said, “Niou - “
He was interrupted by Niou, who was grinning like a madman. “You remember that I’m Niou! Oh, gosh! For a moment there I thought you’d lost your memory!”
“I was just turning the tables on you.” Yagyuu replied calmly, not missing a beat. “Say, Niou?”
But Niou was not listening to him. “You - you played a trick on me?!”
Yagyuu had to smirk at the horrified expression on his doubles partner’s face. “Why, I do believe so.”
“A trick?! On me?!” Niou was obviously having some problems digesting that fact. “On me!”
----------------------
Later that evening, at the end of their celebration (or rather, Yagyuu’s celebration) of being able to outwit the Trickster, they were standing outside Niou’s gate - why Yagyuu had even bothered to walk him home was a mystery, after all, he wasn’t a girl - Yagyuu turned and looked at him for a long moment.
Just when Niou started to fidget under his inscrutable gaze, Yagyuu opened his mouth to speak.
“… I like your eyes too, Niou.”
-------------------------------
~owari~