PoT: a lack thereof

[two_if_by_sea]

a lack thereof

a. [in the basement]

A week or so before he leaves for Germany, Tezuka decides to take a visit to the Echizen residence. He asks Ryuuzaki-sensei for permission to take leave an hour or so before school's officially over. She agrees; after all, this is Seigaku's star pupil and athlete, paying a visit to Seigaku's star alum.

Tezuka asks Ryuuzaki not to tell Ryoma about it. She gives him an odd look, like she's trying to figure out what kind of crazy plan this is and how this might lead to another personal phone call to Nanjiroh, but in the end she just smiles her crooked old smile and sighs. How they do grow up, she seems to say. How they do roll out of the nest, half in their eggshells. Tezuka thanks her. The term he thinks of is "stoically", and wonders if maybe this third person vantage point isn't the best way to view himself.

This is not Tezuka's first time going to Ryoma's house, and in a way, it's not his first time meeting Echizen Nanjiroh either, but when he rings the bell for the third time and gets a bellowed "Coming! Hold your horses!" in return, the person who opens the door is still a stranger. Nanjiroh is in black monk's robe, unshaved and ungroomed, eyeing Tezuka with all the welcome of an intruder, thief, or policeman. Tezuka bows and asks apprehensively, "Are you Ryoma's father?"

Nanjiroh leans against the doorframe, holding the door open with a deft foot. "And who are you?"

"Tezuka Kunimitsu. The ah--captain of Echizen's tennis team."

For a moment Tezuka wonders if Nanjiroh is going to shut the door on him. It seems like a very likely possibility, for some reason. Nanjiroh's eyes narrow in a familiar way, crossing midway to an expression of disgust, then mingling with amused surprise. Suddenly Tezuka can see the resemblance: the eyes, for one, and the shape of the face. The rough-hewn unafraid voice, the curve of the nose and the softness of the jaw.

"Oh, so you're him. The one he's in love with," Nanjiroh says dismissively, whirling around and just barely keeping the door open to let Tezuka in.

Tezuka can feel his heart stop. "Sorry?" he says, mouth dry, almost giving into the pressure to lick his lips nervously. Nanjiroh looks over his shoulder, nudging a ball of fluff and paws away from a spot of sunlight on the floor, and smiles wickedly.

"You are, aren't you? The one he likes." Nanjiroh makes expansive gestures with his hands and then tucks them back into his sleeves, yawning. "The one he obsesses over. That took him out for a date."

"Not quite," Tezuka says, flustered and trying to reign it in. Nanjiroh spreads himself out on the floor, leaning on one elbow and opening what Tezuka can just barely tell is a soft-porn magazine. Tezuka sits at the low table, his bags still slung over his shoulder (his shoulder, he thinks briefly, before forcing his train of thought away). He holds his breath experimentally, counting his heartbeat, and then lets it out again, satisfied that his heart isn't going any faster than usual. Nanjiroh doesn't say another word. It's as if, Tezuka realizes, he's giving Tezuka the option to walk out or stay here for the rest of the afternoon, listening to the thin glossy pages flip and the beer in Nanjiroh's hand fizz away until flatness, and that either choice is perfectly okay with him. Caring is below him.

Tezuka wants to be older, an adult, grown-up, but Nanjiroh makes him feel like he's all of about seven years old and probably still wetting his bed at night, secretly. It's not even anything Nanjiroh says or does. It's the way he carries himself, or moves, or even reclines on the floor. Powerful in the lines of his thighs and his arms, reducing Tezuka's preconceptions of Nanjiroh that he had gotten from Momo to ashes. Tezuka's played enough tennis to know what a person looks like when they keep in shape, and that's Nanjiroh. Fit enough to take on even younger athletes though he's been out of practice, technically, for at least 12 years. This is the man that beats Ryoma every night, Tezuka has to remind himself, despite his audacity to read porn magazines with a junior high student sitting in his house.

Tezuka clears his throat. "I'm sorry for coming over unannounced."

It's ages, it seems to Tezuka, before Nanjiroh says, "Ryoma's not home yet."

"I know," Tezuka answers, folding his hands on the table. "I was hoping you would have some time to talk to me." Adjusts his glasses again, which is something he doesn't normally do. Behind him Nanjiroh turns another page and Tezuka wonders absently what's so interesting or profound about a soft porn magazine that requires such a long time between pages.

"I'm not interested." Nanjiroh's voice is firm and rough, the way it should be, Tezuka supposes, when discussing one's utter lack of regard for one's genius son. The cat that was kicked out earlier comes back in, settling next to Tezuka's feet and meowing politely, rubbing his head against Tezuka's calves. Tezuka watches it curiously, the way it looks with large, begging eyes, and reaches out a hand to pat it between the ears. It shies away, meowing some more, and then runs over to Nanjiroh, where it sniffs experimentally at the beer can. "Go away," Nanjiroh says, small shooing motions with his hands. "Not for you. Unless you want to get drunk. Then your boy will be on my ass about it, and we can't have that, can we?"

The cat meows again, a little louder, and flauntingly walks over Nanjiroh's magazine. Tezuka tries not to smile.

Interesting, maybe, that Nanjiroh spent more words on the cat than on his disinterest about Ryoma. "As we both know, you're a big influence on Ryoma's life," Tezuka begins slowly, drawing from the recesses of his mind the practiced speech he had prepared for this occasion, the one he had started ever since the Fudomine match. That day he had stood in the sidelines and, watching Ryoma playing half blind and injured, thought up broken sentence after broken sentence of what to say to Nanjiroh in case Ryoma lost. Ultimately he hadn't needed to do anything, because Ryoma won, obviously, but the phrases are still in Tezuka's mind, floating, untethered to the real image of Nanjiroh before him, this slightly immature man who reeks of masculinity and adult flamboyance.

"What he does is what he does," Nanjiroh says, yawning again. The cat has curled up against his chest, purring madly, no doubt demanding food. Nanjiroh ignores it, turns another page, to a spread less covered with dirty paw prints. "It's not my problem."

"But you must realize how much of an effect you have on him," Tezuka insists, almost irritated.

"Hey, buchou," and Tezuka supposes this is deja vu or jamais vu, one of them, it has to be, the familiarity that tone of voice has for him, "how 'bout a game, huh? Let's see how good Seigaku's program is these days and skip all that boring stuff about that kid."

Tezuka turns and looks at Nanjiroh in what he hopes is a direct, intense, serious gaze. Softly, he says, "Your son is an important part of our tennis team." 'Our'. Like somehow Nanjiroh was involved, which he is, but the way it sounds, a co-conspirator in a plot against Ryoma. Or maybe for him. Tezuka doesn't know anymore at this point, what kind of person Nanjiroh is.

"Yes, and I bet he couldn't care less," Nanjiroh retorts. He stands up abruptly, straightening his robe, adjusting his belt minutely, not enough to cover his mostly naked upper torso. "Do you want something to drink? Soda? Ponta? I think it's the only kids' drink we have around here," he adds, grinning. "Unless you want, like, water or something."

"Water's fine," Tezuka says, so quiet it's almost a whisper. As Nanjiroh leaves, he mouths to himself, "and he does care."

Of course Nanjiroh does not respond.

Suddenly the cat sits up straight, flicking its ears lazily. It bounds out of the room and disappears, abandoning Tezuka to his own devices. Moments later Tezuka hears the door open, then slam shut. Low murmuring, the sound of shoes shuffling, something rattling, the cat's high-pitched meowing.

He knows. Ryoma's come home.

Tezuka gets to his feet awkwardly, hands in automatic motions reaching for the tennis bag slipped over his shoulder. Ryoma calls out to his dad, berating him for something or the other, and then there's a stream of quickly articulated words that sounds like fluid English. A long pause, and then Ryoma is entering the room just as he's saying, now in Japanese, "All the same it's annoying-- Buchou," he finishes, stunned.

"Echizen," Tezuka says with a small degree of difficulty, as if Ryoma walked in on him doing something faintly unethical.

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting me," Nanjiroh says, carrying a metallic white and purple can and a cup of water. "Jealous?" He smirks wide, all the way from ear to ear, as he asks, handing Tezuka his water and then throwing the can half way across the room at Ryoma's head.

Ryoma doesn't even blink, just catches the can with practiced ease and, looking at it dubiously, grimaces. "Ch'. Now it's going to explode again." He opens it cautiously, one eye on Nanjiroh the entire time. Tezuka doesn't think he's ever seen that face outside of a tennis game before, half-threatened and half-bored but somehow more alive and sensitive than Tezuka's ever seen it. Ryoma trades silent glares with his dad, then turns his eyes on Tezuka instead, staring openly, almost incredulous that Tezuka's really in his house, making him even more uncomfortable. Tezuka makes motions of walking forward and leaving.

Nanjiroh grabs Tezuka by the shoulder, holding him in close in a false, jocular move. "We're best of friends now, aren't we, buchou?"

Tezuka jerks away right as Ryoma viciously presses a crease into his can with a tinny clunk. The glass in Tezuka's hand shakes, spilling some water on his uniform, but he brushes it off hollowly, clearing his throat. "I should be going," he says, to Ryoma, and "I should like to continue our conversation some other time," he says, to Nanjiroh, but all in vain, because Ryoma and Nanjiroh are eyeing each other, enemies across a chessboard, metaphoric guns to their heads. Deadlock.

"You should walk with your captain out, boy."

Tezuka is starting to protest, but Ryoma, still watching Nanjiroh, says, "Okay."

"It's really unnecessary," Tezuka says dimly, in a strange way meaning for only Ryoma to hear him. Ryoma mentally adjusts to concentrating on Tezuka again, and smiles a little with the corners of his mouth, looking so much like a small version of his dad that Tezuka goes cold.

"No, really. It's okay. Let me."

Tezuka can't refuse. The cat trails Ryoma's ankles as he walks out of the room. Tezuka puts his glass of water on the table next to Ryoma's soda can. Nanjiroh is lying on the ground again, reading his magazine, the sunset falling on his shoulders in a ridiculously majestic fashion, illuminating his short cropped hair and the blackness of his clothes. "I apologize for the trouble," he says, proper to the end. Nanjiroh ignores him. He turns another page, grunting, and Tezuka slips out, relieved and strangely disappointed.

Outside, Ryoma stands in front of the house. The cat is waiting patiently in the yard for Ryoma to come back. Ryoma is kicking a pebble or something, moving his foot in a small sway. His head snaps up when he sees Tezuka approach. Tezuka realizes, with a small shock, that Ryoma's hat is in the house, and there's nothing shadowing Ryoma's eyes now. He thinks of Ryoma's hat a lot like his own glasses these days. A completely unfair comparison, in reality, but hard to get rid of.

"Which direction?" Ryoma asks, his hands in his pockets.

"You don't have to," Tezuka says, and feels like a shocked, traumatized broken record which can only play scratchy variations of the same theme over again.

"I'll just walk you out of the neighborhood," Ryoma says. Tezuka can pick up the indignant tone of stubborn children in his voice, so he lets Ryoma be and firmly takes the first few steps toward his house.

The silence that follows them is not unusual. Ryoma breaks it when they're nearing the end of the block. He stands in the corner as Tezuka crosses a street, and Ryoma says across the manufactured chasm, "I'm sorry my old man's such a jerk."

Tezuka turns around to say something, anything, most probably something trite like "It's my fault" or "Work hard" or "I'm sorry too", but a car passes just at that moment, blocking their view, and when it's gone, Tezuka can only mutely watch Ryoma's back recede slowly and casually away from him.

A few days later Tezuka announces that he's leaving for Germany, and then plays a game right-handed with Ryoma. Ryoma doesn't ask why Tezuka didn't tell him earlier about the arranged absence, does nothing to give Tezuka's visit away to anybody else, not even to Ryuuzaki-sensei. Afterwards on the plane to Germany, Tezuka spares a moment to think about Ryoma, all by himself, walking home, opening the door and being greeted by the image of his dad sprawled on the ground, in general being an indecent role model. In the evening perhaps, Nanjiroh would play a game with Ryoma, after which he'll insult Ryoma thoroughly and then go inside to watch bad TV dramas with Ryoma's mother. And Tezuka wonders distractedly how Ryoma feels, or whether he, like Nanjiroh, is beyond caring.

He's always regretted letting Ryoma turn him into that kind of quasi-father figure, that impossibly paternal savior.

b. [in the sky]

A week after the visit, Nanjiroh bangs pebbles against Ryoma's window and, in lieu of real conversation, shouts at his son, "How's your buchou?"

Ryoma is slow to come to the window. When he does, he shouts back, "Dad, stop doing that. You're going to break the glass."

"Come play a game with me!" Nanjiroh demands, waving his old racket around wildly, like a crazy hermit.

"I'm doing my homework."

"You'll get the same grades anyway. Stop wasting your time and come down."

Ryoma's face turns a faint shade of red. He closes the window and turns away, disappearing from Nanjiroh's sight, and Nanjiroh makes his way around to the back of the house, sitting down on the right side of the tennis courts, the dirt lazily drifting around him as he moves. He waits for a while, balancing between giving up and hanging on. Just as he's about to go back inside, Ryoma comes out, his bright red racket slung over one shoulder, scratching his back.

"Well?" Ryoma says, razing a lazy eyebrow. "Are you going to play me seriously?"

"I'll play you the way I always do," Nanjiroh promises, grinning and beckoning as he stands up. "Serious or not, I'll kick your ass."

Ryoma picks up a tennis ball from the sidelines, bounces it experimentally, and then tucks the bill of his cap a little lower. "So noisy," he grumbles softly, and serves to Nanjiroh, a smooth seamless motion that Nanjiroh knows all too well.

Of course Nanjiroh wins. They don't keep score because Nanjiroh's too lazy and Ryoma's too stubborn, but Ryoma only gets two or three balls past Nanjiroh, mostly by sheer luck and perseverance than skill. He's better than he used to be. That much is at least true. But he's still not good enough, after all, and Nanjiroh easily wins game after game, the whole set, some nameless anger inside of him working itself out stroke after stroke. After all a while, instead of hitting it back, Ryoma catches the ball and takes his hat off, shaking out his hair. His breath comes out a little ragged. There's sweat rimmed around his forehead.

"What, tired already?" Nanjiroh taunts, bending his knees and swaying a little, side to side. "Against an old man like me?"

Ryoma gives him a condescending look. "I have homework," he says, and, throwing the tennis ball to one side, where Karupin is watching them both, he leaves, knocking the racket gently against his back. Nanjiroh straightens up as well, watching Karupin alternate between running around the tennis ball and batting at it.

Finally, he follows Ryoma, tracing the footprints his son has made in the dirt all the way back to the house. Karupin rushes in front of him, swishing its tail. Nanjiroh swats at it with his racket, causing the cat to meow angrily before bounding into the house.

Once inside, Nanjiroh is bored again, and voices this very vocally even though Ryoma, upstairs and doing his homework, can't hear him. He flips aimlessly through some magazines, both serious and not, his eyes not really seeing anything at all, and eventually he gives up. Turning on the TV, he reclines on the ground, scratching his neck. The air is dry and warm, though not oppressively hot, and Nanjiroh considers taking a nap. The TV volume is down low, a mere droning sound in the background that Nanjiroh doesn't even lend half an ear to. He rolls over, sighs, and then rolls back onto his spine.

Nanjiroh has a picture of Ryoma and him, taken when Ryoma was about four, tucked into the lapels of his robe. During the warmer seasons the photo is cool, smooth, and occasionally blotched by his sweat, a constant reminder, flat against his chest. Nanjiroh doesn't mind it getting ruined. He keeps it with him as a symbol of all the things that children can do to betray their parents, growing up being the number one thing. Nanjiroh can still remember Ryoma when Ryoma was very very young, holding on babyishly to a racket and tugging on Nanjiroh's sleeve to play with him, please.

Now Ryoma is older and much less inclined to do any kind of begging. Even when he asks, he acts like he's obliging Nanjiroh to play with him.

But it's the same when they play, still like the olden days. Ryoma wants to beat everyone he meets across the net; Ryoma has always wanted to dominate. It's easy to see the person Nanjiroh wanted to Ryoma to be, when they're standing opposite each other, racket in hand, a bright yellow ball between them. It's easy to see himself, and all the things he wished he could have been.

"Mada mada dane," Nanjiroh says to himself, doing his best to echo Ryoma's voice and failing miserably at the same time. Karupin is upstairs with Ryoma, probably doing a very good impression of a lump of fur on Ryoma's bed. Nanjiroh feels inexplicably lonely sprawled on the floor like he is. He closes his eyes, heaves a great sigh, and makes a semi-conscious decision to take a nap. He forgets to turn off the TV.

When it's dinnertime, Ryoma steps on his chest lightly, kicking the remote off. "What's that for?" Nanjiroh sputters indignantly, trying to grab his son's foot. Ryoma turns around swiftly, not even cracking a grin, and Nanjiroh sits up with a huff, massaging his chest in a facetious manner.

"I don't care if you starve but Mom wants you at the dinner table."

"You should respect your elders! You could have damaged something!"

Ryoma scoffs. Nanjiroh can almost hear him roll his eyes. "Come eat dinner, honey," his wife calls out, and Nanjiroh is forced to get to his feet and go.

During a pause in the conversation (Rinko's job, Nanako's school, Ryoma's teachers, Nanjiroh's not having anything worth having a conversation about), Nanjiroh leans across the table, pointing his chopsticks dangerously at the level of Ryoma's eyes. "How is your buchou?" Nanjiroh makes the world sound strangely intimate and special. Ryoma looks at him for a long time, then shrugs, reaching over for something out of a dish under Nanjiroh's outstretched hand.

"In Germany," he says, and pops a piece of vegetable into his mouth, chewing methodically, then swallowing.

Shocked, Nanjiroh puts his bowl and chopsticks down, staring across at Ryoma. Ryoma doesn't seem to notice, continuing to eat more in his slow, picky fashion. "What's that boy doing in Germany?"

"Shoulder," Ryoma says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He raises his eyes across the rim of his rice bowl to look at Nanjiroh suspiciously. Swallowing whatever else he has in his mouth, he concludes, "I'm done. Thank you for the meal."

The chair scratching sound is very final.

Rinko looks over at Nanjiroh, puzzled. "What did you do that for?" she asks, knitting her eyebrows. She's about to launch into one of her "the boy is growing, you should let him have some space" lectures before Nanjiroh interrupts.

"His captain is in Germany and he just-- doesn't care?"

"Everyone deals with their things their own way, honey," Rinko says, mollifying.

"Our son is a cold-hearted guy," Nanjiroh says into his rice bowl, miffed. He shakes his head. Rinko throws him worried glances, opens her mouth as if to say something, then shuts it again and asks Nanako helplessly, for the third time, how her classes are going.

After dinner Nanjiroh wastes fifteen minutes flipping through the channels of the TV without any real purpose in mind. Rinko gets upset and asks him if he doesn't have anything else to do than give them all a headache. He relinquishes his hold on the remote with a scornful laugh and, watching the news, considers his next move with silent self-degradation and aggrandization until it becomes ridiculous.

So he takes the steps upstairs, to Ryoma's room, as slowly as possible, dragging it out for the sheer dramatics of it, but out of impatience takes the last two steps in quick succession. Ryoma's door is closed, the light spilling into the into the unlit hallway like coins or knives. Nanjiroh pauses outside, taking deep breath after deep breath, just nearly missing out on getting hiccups.

When he opens the door, Ryoma says firmly, "Karupin, stop it--"

"Not Karupin," Nanjiroh says, sitting down on the bed heavily. Ryoma gives a start and turns around in his swivel chair, pencil in his hand. Left hand, Nanjiroh notes absently, as if he's already forgotten that his son really is left-handed. Ryoma's face is dark because he's being lit behind by the solitary lamp on Ryoma's desk. He scowls.

"What do you want, old man?"

"How's the--the homework? Coming along?" Nanjiroh asks gruffly. He doesn't recall ever asking Ryoma questions like that--well, maybe when Ryoma was six or something, or when Ryoma was much younger, but not recently. The words are forced and uncomfortable for the both of them.

Ryoma turns around halfway, squinting at his homework. Quickly he switches his glance back to Nanjiroh. "Fine," he mutters, eyeing Karupin who has settled itself in Nanjiroh's lap. In Ryoma's microcosmic room view, Nanjiroh is potentially dangerous virus that spreads. Nanjiroh notes that and flops backwards onto the bed, picking Karupin up and jostling him in his hands, the furry paws batting at his arms in indignation.

"Good. Um. Great."

A pause. "What do you want, dad?"

Nanjiroh sets Karupin down on the bed and, staring up at the ceiling, asks, "What's your buchou doing in Germany? His shoulder rotted off or something?"

"I don't know," Ryoma says stoically, which is a lie, Nanjiroh's sure, but he doesn't feel like pressing any further into that tone of voice. "Is that all?"

"Er." Nanjiroh turns over on his side, elbow propping up his head. Ryoma has his right arm slung along the back of his chair, looking at Nanjiroh from over his shoulder. His face is haughty and familiar, older than Nanjiroh remembers (twelve, he thinks, mentally kicking himself). Ryoma's left hand is holding the pencil to his mouth, the end of it barely protruding against his tongue, resting against his bottom lip. Nanjiroh has to pause, inexplicably dry-mouthed, and he says roughly, "You know that if you have any problems. You know. Problems. You could always--"

"I'm fine," Ryoma says quickly, stressing 'fine', petulant and just a little angry.

"I mean, I'm your dad and everything. Uh. I'll understand? Even if it's weird." Nanjiroh nods, remembers vaguely from a parenting book he had read a long time ago that positive motions facilitate open conversations.

Ryoma's eyes are a curious shade of brown, almost green sometimes, and don't resemble Rinko's much, and just barely Nanjiroh's. When he has nothing to say to Nanjiroh, Nanjiroh always knows, because there is a visible shut-down mechanism that blanks out their expression. It's a body language tactic Nanjiroh is barely aware of himself doing, but seeing it, with Ryoma in front of him, it is frighteningly impersonal, almost cruel, and Nanjiroh wonders if maybe, after all, everything is his fault.

Ryoma looks away, turning his entire body towards his desk and away from Nanjiroh. After a few minutes during which Ryoma fiddles with his eraser, he finally says, "I'll always owe you something, won't I? That'll never change."

The nonsequitur quality of the statements bothers Nanjiroh. He almost walks over to touch Ryoma's shoulder, to force Ryoma to turn around and ask him if maybe he should have taken Rinko's advice and hugged Ryoma more as a child. He doesn't, though. Instead Nanjiroh pats Karupin on the head once, a tad bit more forcefully than he means to, and walks out, closing the door behind him completely shut. Not slamming, because that would be immature.

Rinko is watching a drama again, something to do with a mistaken identity that could have been sorted out within a matter of seconds, but Nanjiroh doesn't point that out. He settles on the floor again, to the side of the TV, and says nothing at all to Rinko when she asks what's wrong, just smiles and asks her if she'll get him a beer.

One morning, at least a week later, Ryoma doesn't come down for breakfast. He's not sleeping late in bed when Rinko checks either, and one of Nanjiroh's credit cards is missing, along with a change of clothing and Ryoma's backpack. The strangest thing, though, Nanjiroh thinks, is that Ryoma leaves his tennis equipment behind.

c. [hold your breath]

Tezuka tells himself not to jump to conclusions, because he is far away, after all, but as he nears the door to his room it's hard for him to deny the fact that the person slouched against the wall, waiting for him, is indeed Ryoma.

What he wants to ask is, "What are you doing here?"

What comes out of his mouth is, "I hope you haven't been here long."

Ryoma shrugs casually, smiling up at Tezuka from under his hat, as always. His voice is louder than Tezuka remembers it being, made fainter by distance and memory, now coming back to him fresh and strong, unadulterated. "Not long," he says, pushing his backpack up with a small nudge of his arm.

"You're not skipping school for this, are you?" Tezuka asks, opening the door, giving Ryoma furtive anxious looks, and Ryoma laughs. Tezuka entertains the delirious thought of 'good, at least I'm acting normal.'

Normal, he has to remind himself, and in Germany, with a traumatized shoulder, and having abandoned all of them in Japan to fend for themselves without him.

And of course Ryoma is skipping school. Tezuka mulls on this for a while, herding Ryoma in with a gentle sweep of his hand. "You should call me when you come, next time," Tezuka says, before he can think about what he's saying. Ryoma peers at him doubtfully behind slightly lowered eyelids, and Tezuka manages to suppress the urge to chew on the inside of his mouth. "I'd be able to clean this place up."

"Buchou," Ryoma says, and Tezuka is swept away by the feeling of it, the sound of it, even though it has only been two weeks at the most. It's overpowering, this sense of closeness and tightness the word inspires in him. He turns away to smooth a fold on his bed so he doesn't have to look at Ryoma as he finishes, "I doubt your room is ever messy."

Tezuka glances around the room. Ryoma is probably right.

He takes long appraisals of Ryoma as Ryoma wanders around his rather small room, taking in the bed, the books on the desk, the view outside, even the unassuming wardrobe with Tezuka's clothes inside. Ryoma hasn't changed much, which is what Tezuka had been expecting. The last he had heard from Ryoma was Oishi's e-mail, the one he sent weekly to Tezuka with attachments from all the third years. Fuji's email had rambled on for a couple of pages with recipes for apple strudels with paprika and German chocolate cakes fried tempura style, but midway down, stuck behind a step demanding Tezuka mix all ingredients in one bowl, was the sentence "Ryoma misses you." Simplistic, and typical Fuji speculation tied in with meddling, so Tezuka had ignored it then.

Tezuka looks over at Ryoma again, the sparse luggage and the almost accidental nature of this visit, and he considers it carefully again. 'Ryoma misses you'.

"Have you-- called your parents yet?" Tezuka asks awkwardly, moving to the window and, with a strategic placement of his body, forcing Ryoma to look at him.

"No. They probably don't even know I'm here." Ryoma sits down on the bed, bounces once like a little boy, and grins. "As to be expected of buchou. A hard bed." Ryoma drops his backpack on the bed and then gets up, almost restlessly circling the room again before looking at Tezuka. He hesitates. "Are you going to tell them?" he asks, wary.

Tezuka tells himself firmly not to feel like he's in kindergarten again, tattling on some other kid. This is real responsibility, and Ryoma could seriously get in trouble for this, and it would be stupid and careless of him not to tell Ryoma's parents and probably Ryuuzaki as well, although she, of all people, would be used to things like this coming from them (he thinks of an afternoon spent on clay courts next to a train station, of sunsets, of a tennis game played in semi-secrecy). "Yes," he says, moving towards the phone and pulling out a phone card from his desk's first drawer. "What's your home phone number?"

"No fun at all, buchou," Ryoma says, sighing and flopping dramatically back onto the bed before reciting, dry and litany-like, his phone number. Tezuka writes it on a piece of paper on the desk, but halfway through dialing the number on the phone card, he hangs up and puts the receiver of the phone against his shoulder.

"Your ticket," Tezuka begins, mind racing. "Your plane ticket, I mean. When did you get here?"

"An hour or so ago," Ryoma says, muffled because he's turned away. "I can't speak German. Taxi didn't understand me. I gave them the address on paper instead, and spoke pigeon English. " Ryoma turns over onto his stomach, kicking his legs up, quite at home on Tezuka's bed, and Tezuka orders himself to swallow. Ryoma's ankles, swinging.

"Is your ticket a round trip?"

A lazy stare from Ryoma who rests his cheek against his crossed arms. It seems to Tezuka that they wait a long, long time for Ryoma to finally answer, "Yes. For tomorrow morning."

"How--" Ryoma, in a quick spastic movement, gets up and pulls a card out of his pocket, all the while locking his eyes directly with Tezuka. It's a silver slim thing, and it takes Tezuka a while to register what it is. "Is that your dad's credit card?" he asks, even though he knows. Ryoma, the teenage delinquent-- except Tezuka has to remember, twelve years old. A whole two years younger than he is. Only two years younger than he is, actually.

The question, evidently, doesn't deserve an answer. Ryoma falls back onto Tezuka's bed, on his back this time, one wrist dangling off the edge of the bed. It's the hand that has the credit card, and as Tezuka dials Ryoma's number, the light catches the silver numbers, distracting Tezuka.

Nanjiroh doesn't sound very surprised on the other end, which in turn surprises Tezuka, and they fumble through the conversation with long pauses, awkward polite phrasing on Tezuka's part, and noncommittal half-hearted answers on Nanjiroh's part. Ryoma doesn't seem to care either. He's almost dozing by the end of the phone call. Tezuka hangs up a few seconds after Nanjiroh does, questioning himself as he does so, expecting Nanjiroh to call back any minute and be properly shocked about the whole debacle. After a few minutes, he walks over to his bed and very carefully, an archeologist dusting off an artifact, touches Ryoma's shoulder.

Ryoma's eyes are a strange green-brown color Tezuka's seen before but suddenly doesn't recall anymore. They open very slowly, blinking, and the half-smile Ryoma gives him doesn't at all reach them.

Since he's here anyway, Tezuka shows Ryoma around the place. Ryoma doesn't say much and nods a lot, watching. It's unfair, Tezuka realizes soon enough, to compare Ryoma now to Ryoma in Japan, because there's jetlag and all that traveling time, but Tezuka remembers the childish gesture he had given Fuji when he benchcoached: hands around his eyes to say that he sees everything.

He forgets that comparison soon enough. Excusing himself briefly to check with a nurse about letting Ryoma stay over, he returns only to find Ryoma sitting on a bench, sleeping, just an exhausted junior high student after all.

Over dinner Tezuka, having chewed and swallowed, then methodically repeated the same actions, all the while contemplating, asks Ryoma, "Why are you here, anyway?"

Ryoma takes something off of Tezuka's tray, a mischievous dart and escape movement of his fork that Tezuka suspects he learned from Momo. "I guess you can't play a game against me," Ryoma says, a little bit moody, and eats whatever he stole from Tezuka.

"You're right. I can't."

Nodding, Ryoma looks down into his plate, and then back up at Tezuka. Finally he asks where the nearest vending machine for soda is. He disappears, then reappears with a can of something Tezuka assumes is grape soda. He's bought Tezuka a bottle of water too, which Tezuka accepts gravely, taking great care not to touch Ryoma's hand as he takes it.

At night Ryoma refuses Tezuka's offer of the bed and takes the cot the nurse has dug out of some unknown hinterlands for Ryoma. Tezuka turns off the lights and doesn't sleep for a good ten minutes, wondering if there is something he should say. He can hear Ryoma rustle under the blankets, moving his head around on his pillow. Ryoma sleeps with his hair wet, Tezuka has found out, an inconsequential thing that Tezuka holds onto greedily.

It's about an hour later, and when Tezuka is very nearly falling asleep, that he feels a shift in the weight of the bed. He's frozen for a few seconds, heart pounding, and when he finally turns around to face Ryoma, who's straddling Tezuka's stomach, close to his hip, as if it were absolutely normal, he feels like his heartbeat should be loud enough for even Ryoma to hear.

"Let me sleep with you, buchou," Ryoma says, and Tezuka thinks it sounds sort of like a joke coming from Ryoma's mouth.

"Echizen, get off," Tezuka demands. He's glad his voice isn't shaking as much as his hand is, the one that's ineffectively pushing on Ryoma's arm. Ryoma's eyes are luminous in the dark, but Tezuka can't see that clearly without his glasses, so he can just barely make out the pale forms of Ryoma's face, his shoulders, his arms. The skin under his fingers is warm, tingling almost, and Tezuka wants badly to draw back but for some reason can't.

"Hey." Ryoma's voice is suddenly quieter but so much nearer, a soft whisper right above Tezuka. "Will you?"

“What?”

“Let me sleep with you.”

This is the second time today that Tezuka forces himself to swallow. "Why?"

"My cat usually sleeps with me," Ryoma says, calm enough to be a reason by voice alone, and Tezuka decides that even if he had his glasses, Ryoma would probably still not be blushing.

“Echizen-“

“Please-“

"But," Tezuka says and then stops abruptly. He takes his hand away, feeling Ryoma move across his thighs, curling up on the cold unoccupied sliver on the other side of Tezuka's bed, his back to Tezuka's, a solid warm weight. "I suppose so," Tezuka says, trembling. He wants to ask, 'Are you sure?', but the words only make themselves out as silent vocalizations against his lips.

Ryoma says thanks in a quiet hidden voice, coming from somewhere dark and claustrophobic inside of his small body, a voice Tezuka doesn’t recognize.

Sometime during the night Ryoma turns around and Tezuka wakes up again because of the way the bed moves. Ryoma's shirt has slid up to his stomach; though Tezuka's shirt is still determinedly in place, he can feel the ridge of Ryoma's shirt pressed against his back. A couple more minutes, and then Ryoma has his hand gently circled around Tezuka's shoulder, his nose digging into Tezuka's shoulder blades. Tezuka draws his breath in frightened, choked inhalations, a counterpoint to Ryoma's slumbering breathing against him. It can't be this hard for everyone, he thinks, desperate.

But it doesn't help, because it is, for them.

In the morning, when Tezuka steps out of the bathroom, a towel around his neck catching water, the fog clears from his glasses, and he sees that Ryoma's moved into the spot that Tezuka occupied on the bed earlier. The blanket is gathered up from up between Ryoma's legs into a small bundle between Ryoma's hands and chest, like Ryoma's a conjurer, hands full of cotton. Ryoma's hair is a mess, in his eyes and across his nose, spread out on Tezuka's pillow.

He walks over the bed, leaning over Ryoma’s sleeping face, opens his hand as if he’s going to touch--something. Maybe Ryoma’s hair, or the skin, still translucent and petal-like because of how young, how heartbreakingly young Ryoma really is, though really Tezuka shouldn’t be surprised as he really isn’t much older. Maybe Ryoma’s hair, something in truth inanimate and unfeeling, something he can touch with consequence, heat, or feeling. He wants to leave Ryoma sleeping like that forever, or he wants to gather Ryoma up and have him play in the sunlight forever, serving crisp Twist Serves into the other court like an artist. Maybe what he really wants is his shoulder to be okay again. He puts his hand on his shoulder instead, massaging it gently, rotating his arm so he can feel the joints move under the skin. The cooled water from his hair is dripping down, about to fall on Ryoma or the bed, so he backs away silently, drying his hair again.

Tezuka remembers, so as not to forget: sleeps with cats.

d. [then start again]

Ryoma comes home on his own around noon. Nanjiroh has just come back from the nearby convenience store. He had bought some cat food and random junk food snacks Rinko won't buy for him and catches sight of Ryoma stepping out of a flashy red car that drives away before Nanjiroh can see who's driving it. When the car leaves, Ryoma shuffles the bag on his shoulder. Nanjiroh is standing on the sidewalk across the street from Ryoma. For a moment he weighs his bag in his hand, waiting for something to happen. Ryoma is about to go in but he stops, turns around, and spots Nanjiroh.

The two of them watch each other, gateline enemies by eyesight. It's as if Ryoma isn't even the slightest bit curious as to why Nanjiroh might be there. He cocks his head to one side, considering, leaving Nanjiroh to wonder if he should start preparing to be angry at Ryoma, if he knows enough parental-sounding things to vocally hurl at Ryoma.

He crosses the road after Ryoma has gone into the house.

Ryoma's nowhere to be found inside once Nanjiroh's entered. He drops the food off in the kitchen, not bothering to unpack, and goes off to search for Ryoma. It ends up Ryoma's outside, sitting cross-legged on the sidelines of the dirt tennis court with Karupin on his lap and a can of soda meditatively in his hand. He has his back towards Nanjiroh, like he doesn't care, which he probably doesn't. Nanjiroh runs through all the opening lines he can think of, and settles instead on, "Well, kid? What do you have to say for yourself?" Ryoma says nothing, doesn't even turn around. "Are you going back to school?" Nanjiroh asks, planting his bare foot on Ryoma's back, pressing just a little with the tips of his toes.

"Are you going to make me?" Ryoma responds, still not turning around. Karupin meows, pawing slightly at Ryoma's shoulder with wiggling, furry feet, and Ryoma buries his face down into the top of Karupin's head.

Nanjiroh pauses, partially for the dramatic effect and partially because he really doesn't know. Then he sighs, taking his foot off, and says, "Probably not. I've never cared, anyway." Ryoma nods, just once, completely unnecessarily.

The scene they're gazing at, the two of them in a sort of absolute still silence, makes Nanjiroh wonder if Ryoma remembers the house they had when they were in California, the one they had before they moved coast to coast to New York. Ryoma has a horrible memory, which Nanjiroh thinks may be not entirely genetic and possibly a result of Nanjiroh accidentally hitting him on the head with a racket or a ball when he was younger. But that house should be important, somehow, with an expansive backyard Nanjiroh also made into a tennis court. It's where Ryoma first learned tennis, hand to hand from Nanjiroh who was fresh off the professional tennis circuits. Then when Ryoma went to school, Nanjiroh had to entrust him to other coaches who regarded Ryoma like a freak of nature and were intimidated all the time, and Nanjiroh thinks that was probably when Ryoma developed his habit of saying "Mada mada dane," because the coaches couldn't understand him.

Nanjiroh remembers one of the school coaches had asked him for a conference before an inter-school game. He had sat Nanjiroh down, surprisingly refrained from asking for an autograph, and with a serious, worried face, told Nanjiroh, "Your son thinks of tennis courts as prisons."

Pinning the coach, a slightly older man with a hunch in his shoulders to his posture, with a vicious look, Nanjiroh had said, "My son loves tennis."

"Well, Mr. Echizen," the coach had answered, and Nanjiroh hated the way he said it, the accents all wrong, hadn't hated someone saying his name like that ever before, "for Ryoma's and your sake, I hope you're right."

Ryoma had gone on to win with three sets of 6-0 against his opponent at the tournament. Then Rinko had to relocate to New York for her job, and they followed her, and in New York Ryoma announced to Nanjiroh that he was bored and wasn't there something else he could do besides go to tournaments all the time where all the people were boring and winning wasn't any fun?

That night Nanjiroh said to his wife, "Let's move back to Japan."

Now Nanjiroh isn't sure what Ryoma was saying that day. Was he bored with New York, with America? Was he bored of his life in general? After all he said that he wanted something else to do, not just somewhere else to live. Maybe he was even bored with his father, with his incompetent coach, with his teachers, with everyone and everything except Karupin, whom they had bought for Ryoma when they were still in California, a birthday and a Christmas present both. And tennis, of course, because tennis was never boring.

Nanjiroh wonders sometimes if he brought Ryoma up wrong, not hugging him enough or not praising him more. Maybe they should have touched more, besides Nanjiroh adjusting Ryoma's grip or through the plastic, occasionally wood, and string concoctions they knew as rackets. Maybe they should have talked more, connected more, Sunday picnics at the park. Their communication consists of rough projectiles they bounced off of one another, of competition like an underground fraternal society, exclusive and inpenetratable.

He knows nothing about his son besides tennis, but that part of him, tennis, Nanjiroh knows all about.

Ryoma turns around and gives him an enigmatic smile, one that doesn't reach his eyes in the least. Karupin crawls out of Ryoma's lap, circling Nanjiroh's legs softly, mewing. Karupin's not a kitten anymore, Nanjiroh realizes. It's been a long time since they've gotten that cat for Ryoma, and he wonders if maybe, strangely, the cat knows more about Ryoma than he does. Ryoma puts the soda can down beside him, causing Nanjiroh to reach for it and take a swig, grimacing.

"How the hell do you manage to drink this stuff?" Nanjiroh coughs, the carbonation getting into his eyes and tickling his nose. "Too much sugar!" He gropes at the lapels of his robe, searching for his pounding heartbeat, and exclaims, "My chest, my chest!"

Ryoma grabs the can back from him and glares. "Ew, old man germs," he says, making a childish face and laughs, drinking from the exact spot Nanjiroh did. Nanjiroh wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, turning around back towards the house, Karupin swatting at the hem of his robe. He can feel the aluminum of can warming under his lips, the slick cold taste of the soda still in his mouth.

He cannot help thinking that he is not young anymore.

Rinko of course throws a fit when she comes home. She has her hands on Ryoma's head, musing his hair, alternatively scolding him for daring to do something so outrageous--and it is outrageous, even Nanjiroh wouldn't have ever though of doing such a thing at that age--and kissing him affectionately all over his face and forehead, happy that the plane hasn’t crashed, or that Ryoma didn’t get mugged or lost or killed, or that the world didn’t just end when he stepped on the plane all by himself. Ryoma stands there passively, as if he was subjecting himself to some absolutely necessary but ridiculous physical examination, but he hugs her back, tightening his grip on her back, two cluttered white hands against her violently blue shirt, still a child.

Finally Rinko starts cooking dinner. Nanako asks Ryoma in her polite learned way about Germany, and Ryoma, twelve year old boy and sullen, mutters some anecdote about taxi drivers. His voice is droll, his expression set somewhere between amusement and boredom. Out of the blue, lounging on the floor with a magazine spread out against his chest, Nanjiroh is overcome by an unspeakable tenderness for Ryoma, for his baby sweet face, his strange colored eyes, especially his awkward and unintended tendency towards isolation. He feels as paternal as he had been the very first moment he had laid eyes on Ryoma. It was Christmas, so the hospitals were staffed by only reluctant staff members who offered the most minimal of services. Nanjiroh had been even more worried about the birth than Rinko was. Some passing fans swarmed Nanjiroh in the hallway corridor on his way to see his newborn. He had shoved the door in their faces and, flustered, turned to see a little pile of pink and soft lying in Rinko’s arms, just asleep. Babies are always ugly when they are young, little shrunken old men in blotchy skin bags, but Nanjiroh had thought just how beautiful, how gorgeous Ryoma was, that little thing with dark tufts of hair and closed wrinkled eyelids.

Ryoma is still beautiful, still gorgeous, though no longer little or pink or splotchy. Nanjiroh knows that Ryoma will probably grow up beautiful and gorgeous, a boy with nothing to worry about, no braces, no adjustments, no lanky disfiguring growth, because Nanjiroh knows in the way fathers know, feels it in his body, sees it in the way strangers sometimes linger on Ryoma, the way Sakuno stares. Ryuzaki, the old hag, even said so once to him. She had smiled ruefully, perhaps harkening back to when she was young and Nanjiroh was young and Ryoma was nonexistent; she leaned over to Nanjiroh, in a low confidential voice, saying, “Your boy’s handsome, kid. Just like you were.” Nanjiroh remembers being a teenager in Seigaku and how easy things came to him, then and even now. The girls liked him, his tennis was good, his grades were enough to pull him through with some decency, and nothing troubled him. He did not care about the outside world. He doubts Ryoma cares very much now, either.

“Good ol’ Seishun Gakuen,” Nanjiroh says over dinner, dramatically and significantly looking at Ryoma. “Still so lax, letting their kids go off to Germany without a second thought.”

Across the table Rinko is upset and shows so by poking Nanjiroh in the hand with her chopsticks. He looks up, as if asking ‘What?’ silently, and she shakes her head, pressing her lips together, disapproving and motherly. Nanjiroh takes his food from the plate sulkily, more a scolded son than a father. He throws a glance at Ryoma, who’s eating like nothing’s happened and no one has talked to him or about him for hours. Totally and completely at peace. Nanjiroh can feel something from Ryoma that wasn’t there before, a calm maybe, like the strange forceful silence that spreads right after a hard rainstorm.

It takes him a while to realize what he feels for Ryoma, despite the tenderness and the paternal admiration, is jealousy.

Dessert is ice cream and sliced watermelon which Ryoma takes outside in the fading heat to share subversively with Karupin. Nanjiroh stays in the house for a while, listening to Rinko and Nanako chatter in their womanly fashion, about hand creams and the weather and whether or not they should go on a shopping trip this weekend. He gets fed up after a while, coughing and shuffling, occasionally chewing nosily, so Rinko shoos him outside with a plate of watermelon. Outside Ryoma is sitting just a little left of where he sat this afternoon. Karupin’s in his lap again, licking at an ice cream stain on Ryoma’s shirt, and Ryoma is spitting watermelon seeds onto the tennis court almost vindictively.

“That’s going to be painful on my feet,” Nanjiroh says, flexing his toes gingerly against the dirt, sitting down with Ryoma, just far enough away that they’re both comfortable about it.

“Wear shoes then, old man.”

“Old dogs don’t learn new tricks, just like nasty runts don’t grow,” Nanjiroh declares, almost singing, and Ryoma eyes him sharply. The swipe on his height was a little excessive, in retrospect, but Nanjiroh suspects that Ryoma is over those kinds of slights already, or if he isn’t he should be. Ryoma’s short, but not hideously so; Nanjiroh predicts he’ll grow from the size of Ryoma’s feet. In the meantime Nanjiroh will laugh at the good-hearted but busybody intentions of Inui to get Ryoma to drink milk. That’s the kind of thing one expects out of Seigaku: a familial pecking order complete with parental figures and in-laws.

“What, you played on the circuits barefoot too?” Ryoma takes another watermelon slice off the plate, spitting the seeds into his hand this time. Karupin noses its face into Ryoma’s palm, frowning at the seeds, and Ryoma scratches it behind the ear, smiling to himself.

“My feet are beautiful, kid. People love my feet. Women fawned over them.” He’s making it up as he goes along now, conversation for conversation’s sake. Ryoma doesn’t mind, nodding absently. The air smells of cut watermelon rind, green and damp despite the heat. Nanjiroh challenges Ryoma to a seed spitting contest, damn the consequences, and Ryoma demands a tennis game as a stake.

“It’s dark,” Nanjiroh says dubiously.

“No, it’s not.”

Which is true, because it’s still light outside, faintly, a blue sort of light that’s dusk, but Nanjiroh hates losing and so he says, “Well it will be.”

“How long does it take you to eat watermelon, old man?”

They spend over an hour spitting watermelon seeds, in the end digging them out of slices with their fingernails because they can’t eat anymore. They trade wins and losses, mostly ties, and sometimes Nanjiroh plays dirty by poking Ryoma on a ticklish spot on his side just as he’s about to spit. Ryoma’s good too; sometimes he’ll get Karupin to swish its tail next to Nanjiroh’s bare feet. They only stop when it gets too dark to see how far the seeds have traveled. Ryoma declares it’s his win, though Nanjiroh protests noisily, trying to argue for the opposite.

“Tough, dad,” Ryoma says, and hands him a racket. Ryoma’s smile is almost a newly discovered thing, still shaking off its cheesy childhood irresponsibility, attaching a wry detachment with the world to a lovely, lovely acceptance. Occasionally it seems to unfold on Nanjiroh like someone’s love letter mistakenly shoved in the wrong locker, something meant for someone else and unattainable but somehow personal all the same. Nanjiroh can’t, won’t, and doesn’t refuse. As he settles into his side of the court, he makes out a small fuzzy green shape in the distance. Ryoma’s bouncing the ball up and down before serving.

Nanjiroh closes his eyes. Follows the sound, returns the shot, and waits, full of patience in the semi-dark, breathing slowly and evenly. As he’s waiting for the next shot, he thinks about what he would like to tell Ryoma if he could. That he isn’t mad at him for going to Germany, that he understands. That if all inspiration costs is a roundtrip air flight to Germany, he doesn’t mind, that he’s proud in his own perverse way of all that Ryoma’s done and all that he’s yet to do. That he once had a dream, when Ryoma was two, maybe, and just learning tennis. He had dreamt of them standing on the beach, Ryoma dragging a twig along in the wet sand to draw a tennis court, the two of them throwing stones at each other in lieu of actual tennis. There was no net and later they lay on a hammock together, and the sea tides came too high in the morning, drowning the two of them, washing away their bodies and the lines of their makeshift tennis court.

It should be getting too dark to play properly, not that Nanjiroh can see it through his eyelids anyway. In the dark Nanjiroh hears Ryoma’s racket scraping against the ground, hears Ryoma inhale quickly before serving again. A quick shot to the corner that spins for Nanjiroh’s face with inhuman strength for a twelve year old, and Nanjiroh can almost see in his head the image of Ryoma across the court, crouched over his knees, the red racket gripped in his hands tightly, his eyes closed as well. To Nanjiroh it feels like the two of them in that strained darkness, listening so intently for each other, come closer to each other than they would ever have otherwise, in any other situation.

When they finally go in, Nanjiroh has to peel away a watermelon seed that has stuck to his heel.

A/N: I really should edit this fic, but I couldn't bring myself to cut out so much of the Nanjiroh bits that I think I should (because I love the man so much! you know). It's so long and drawn out and it doesn't even really have a point, so I both love it and hate it. I'm sure there's not much to say, most of it is self-explanatory. the quoted lyrics for each of the section is from-- what else?-- Placebo's "English Summer Rain", which has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the story, except I guess I like to think of Tezuka grounded while Nanjiroh is free, Tezuka catching a breath while Nanjiroh starts from scratch.