PoT: revolving doors
In retrospect, for bookshop, and the budding TezuRyo Revolution, which caught me with my back turned.
In Ryoma's final year of junior high, the day before he graduates, Ryoma asks Tezuka to fuck him. He is 15, taller, with slightly broader shoulders and stronger legs and larger hands, and there are bold lines where he has grown more muscle, but Tezuka still sees the precocious, painfully young 12-year-old he met three years ago. The face has not changed at all: insolent but subdued, sharp but smooth, every bit as beautiful as Tezuka remembers. Ryoma's eyes are still large, a muddy gray-brown-green, and to Tezuka they are the most terrifyingly earnest things in the world.
Tezuka says no immediately, but something betrays him, a shiver where he responds to that hunger and sex Ryoma is emitting, and so before Tezuka registers it, Ryoma is leaning close, right against Tezuka's body. Ryoma has grown but he is still not tall enough, and his lips barely brush Tezuka's earlobe when he whispers, "You can pretend I'm Fuji-senpai, if you like."
It freezes Tezuka, a stab of horror and disgust and appeal, and he whispers back, "Oh Ryoma," hurtful and in so much pain he could almost cry, wondering if this is the first time Ryoma has ever heard him say his name out loud.
That doesn't change the fact that that is exactly what Tezuka does. Ryoma's pale, almost translucent legs are wrapped like vices around Tezuka's waist, and there is this frightening moment when Tezuka realizes with sudden clarity that he is inside, and that this insane warmth is all around him, and it's like junior year of junior high all over again, in the back of the locker rooms, so he grits out, "God, Fuji--" because that is the only reflex he has to fall back on.
Tezuka doesn't process what happened until Ryoma's gone. Tezuka's sitting on the bus commuting home when it hits him, and he panics, accidentally pulling the wire signaling for the bus to stop. When the driver gives him the evil eye because he doesn't get off, he crazily considers confessing to the cold, sardonic, lifeless man that he has just managed to fuck up what should have been the most excruciatingly, beautiful moment of his life, that his junior high kohai came to him and begged him for highly immoral and illegal acts of intimacy, and instead of acting like a responsible semi-adult he obliged, because in the deepest, darkest recesses of his heart he had been craving for it for three years, and now he's afraid, he's running scared, he's just done the stupidest thing, it's unforgivable, he's complicated it so much when it should be so simple, the best thing he could do to remedy the situation is to jump off a cliff and hope the impact kills him instantaneously, or maybe--
He blinks, and the moment passes. He is home, with a textbook in front of him, and he is studying for his physics exam. If he crumpled up his shirt and shoved it under his nose, he could maybe still smell Ryoma, but he doesn't, he can't, he shouldn't.
He says to himself, tomorrow, when I'm sitting with a pencil in one hand and an exam in the other, Ryoma will be standing in front of an audience of his peers and his peers' parents. He will be getting his graduation certificate. He might be smiling, oblivious to that fact that each day, from the very moment I met him and for the rest of my life, I die a little, knowing how much I--
That night is almost sleepless. Tezuka's body, though, is a well-maintained schedule, and eventually a combination of responsibility, mental exhaustion, and physical stimulation forces him under. Tezuka chokes out the thought of Ryoma standing under a mess of green leaves and spring branches, waving with his ribboned certificate at the other graduating seniors, of Ryoma that afternoon, shirt open, fingers clawing viciously against Tezuka's clothed back, mouth twisted in an awful triumphant grimace. He closes his eyes, lets it all drain away from him, quick and brutal and momentarily painless, like a bullet to the head.
*
Momo has kissed Ryoma twice. The first time was at the end of Momo's junior year in junior high--summer, the two of them sneaking into the school swimming pool at midnight. They had stripped and went swimming in their boxers, and there was this perfect moment where Ryoma emerged from the water with his hair slicked back, his eyes closed, and the moon sleek on his skin, when the only thing Momo could do was grab Ryoma's shoulders and kiss him wildly, desperately, and afterwards he had roughly dunked Ryoma's head in the water to pretend it was all a bad joke.
They did not talk about it afterwards. Ryoma in his infinite generosity and general prudence had, the next day and the day after and so on, pretended it never happened, a good, smart, correct thing that reinforced the foundations of a friendship Momo had almost recklessly destroyed.
But despite it all Momo knows what that first kiss was: rejection.
The second time happened the next year, the end of Momo's last year in junior high, in the wholesome healthy darkness of the tennis locker rooms where they had escaped to after a sudden rainstorm. Ryoma had been buttoning his white shirt, his sleeves rolled up so that Momo could see his red and white terry wrist band, and there was some insane welling of fear, hurt, pain that made Momo lightly touch their lips together. It was masochistic, it was stupid. Ryoma said to him, "Should we go home now?" and Momo had replied, "I'm a moron," and there was a lot of apologizing and Momo refusing to look at Ryoma, but he knew then that it was love. What had hurt him was definitely love. He was probably most definitely in love with Ryoma and Ryoma probably most definitely didn't love him back, but as they stepped out into the dying sprinkle, he thought that in any case it might as well be all right because there was nothing he could do to change it.
Loving Ryoma, he has since then decided, is not a good thing or a bad thing, more like an occupational hazard associated with being Momoshiro Takeshi, and since then they've been just fine, in the sense that Momo manages to be platonic most of the time and Ryoma manages to ignore the occasional touch, the occasional involuntary moan of longing during a particularly active elbow jostling accompanying a video game, and in between all that Momo discovers there is a thing in Ryoma too, a similar occupational hazard of being Ryoma, that is even bigger to Ryoma than the occupational hazard of loving Ryoma is to Momo, that it is so big it eclipses this love Momo has for Ryoma. It is a more severe, incurable disease, but he doesn't know what it is, or what it means.
Momo is the last to see Ryoma before he leaves for America. He is in the airport with Ryoma, sitting with a can of lukewarm soda cupped in his hands, and next to him Nanjiroh is snoring loud enough to get sidelong glances from the other people in the lobby. Ryoma smiles up at Momo with this look of deep hidden anxiety, so well protected that it's only because Momo knows him well that he can see it, and says, "Momo-senpai, I'm moving, not dying," and Momo can only nod curtly.
In a perverse fashion, Momo thinks he would feel better if they were at someone's house or maybe Takashi's sushi restaurant, giving Ryoma a proper goodbye party. That would finalize something, bring a sense of completeness to the situation, and maybe then he wouldn't feel like Ryoma was cheating them, slipping off into the distance where they couldn't see him, eloping with this future he has without them.
When it is finally time for them to board Momo doesn't resist the urge to fervently grab onto Ryoma in an awkward part handshake, part one-armed hug, bringing Ryoma's head close to his and closing his eyes so he can smell Ryoma's skin one last time. He wants to ask if Ryoma's sure he knows what he is doing, if he even has a clue what this means, and he wants to tell Ryoma that there is still hope, there is still faith, and that he can still hold on, that this going to America thing is totally unnecessary, but he can't manage to say anything except "Don't eat too much airplane food" and "Make sure to write."
Ryoma briefly gives him a tight squeeze in return. He says out loud, "Thank you for everything you've done for me" and he whispers in Momo's ear, "I'm sorry."
They both have a love in them that is almost the same, a harmful, hurtful thing that does not give way, and so Momo understands that Ryoma is not apologizing for all the times he said no. He understands that Ryoma knows he knows he has the right to say no, the right to refuse Momo, and that Momo will love him for that all the same.
Instead, he's apologizing for having pretended, sometimes, that he could say 'yes'.
*
In their last summer before college, Fuji and Tezuka are invited to go to America for a study trip. Tezuka says no without hesitation, and it makes Fuji, for the hundredth time, want to ask Tezuka what he would have said some three years ago if Fuji had told him "Don't go, I need you here with me." Would Tezuka have stayed? Would it have made a difference? He doesn't ask, of course--never has managed to, because that was sacred ground. They won't ever talk of Germany or Tezuka's shoulder or Tezuka's past sacrifices or, in particular, the people who have left without saying goodbye.
He does not ask, "What if I were him, and he asked you to stay?" He does not ask, "Would that have made a difference?"
Fuji accepts the invitation, and the next day Inui gives Fuji Ryoma's address in America and says, "Like always--"
"Chicken?" Fuji finishes, which is their code for "Don't tell Tezuka, because he'll kill me."
"No," Inui says, and he grins a little, a completely mirthless smile that he's perfected over the years to be calm and disappointed. Fuji folds the piece of paper into halves, fourths, than eighths. "Duck," says Inui, before closing his notebook with a sharp thwack and walking off.
Which is their code for "Don't tell Tezuka, because he'll kill both of us."
And sometimes, "Don't tell Tezuka, because he'll kill himself."
Fuji laughs, but secretly he's thinking of Ryoma's address that he tucks away in his schoolbag between a mechanical pencil and a pen with a broken nib. He wonders what Tezuka would do in his situation. He wonders if Tezuka would do anything at all. He wonders what Tezuka would say if he marched up to his house right now, jerked open the door, and shoved this scrap of paper in Tezuka's face, and maybe he would say something like, "I know you better than you think I do," or "Whatever you do, I'm okay with it" or "I hate you", except he thinks that a lie of such magnitude requires a type of peerless, confidential courage, which he doesn't have.
And because he's not Tezuka, he calls up Inui that evening and asks for Ryoma's home phone number in America as well.
Fuji gets permission from the group leaders to stay with Ryoma for three days and to shadow him during class; it just so happens that Ryoma's in his last few days before his school year ends when Fuji comes. He goes to meet Ryoma at school, mid-day, where the administration shuffle him to Ryoma's class. The teacher waves him in. Ryoma half stands up at his desk, eyes wide, and says, "Fuji-senpai," and "You really came," in Japanese, and breaks into a hesitant, blazing smile.
Fuji answers, in English, "It's good to see you again", and is surprised how true that really is.
Later Ryoma introduces him to his gaggle of friends, almost evenly divided between boys who Fuji knows would like to screw Ryoma silly and boys who Fuji knows are probably already screwing Ryoma silly. They are for the most part in the school tennis team with Ryoma. Fuji smiles when he shakes their hands, and doesn't realize that he's giving the smile he gives people like Mizuki--the thing that says for him, "Try it and die."
On the bus home Ryoma sits in the front, and Fuji sits with him, his feet in the aisle and feeling young even among the freshmen. The windows are open, but it's crowded and noisy, with so many conversations happening at one time that Fuji almost doesn't catch Ryoma's voice when he says, "You haven't changed."
"You have," Fuji says. A girl turns her head to look at them, probably less because they're having a Really Important Conversation than because they're speaking in Japanese.
"Sorry," Ryoma says casually, and goes back to staring out the window.
Nanjiroh demands a game with Fuji as soon as they step in the front door of Ryoma's house. "Old man," Ryoma says, truly irritated, but Fuji gives him a mollifying smile. There's a tennis court in the back of the house, which doesn't surprise Fuji the least. He handicaps himself mentally when playing Nanjiroh, but soon figures out that that wasn't really necessary. Nanjiroh catches on. When he neatly trounces Fuji, he tells him that he's a good kid. "But I'm not that old," he adds, and Fuji has to agree--Nanjiroh doesn't come off as old at all, he's in enviable shape.
Ryoma shows Fuji how to work the taps when he comes back in. He accidentally turns the shower on and curses when the hot water spits all over him. Fuji starts laughing uncontrollably, and before he knows it they're standing under the warm shower spray, the curtain drawn, both of them still completely clothed, their mouths fused together in the most bizarrely hot fashion, and Ryoma's reaching for the zipper of Fuji's pants.
Over the next two days they have sex too many times to count, mostly in Ryoma's room when he's supposed to be studying for his final exams. At school they eat lunch in the library, where Fuji finds the cleverest ways to get Ryoma so hard he can't even swallow. It's really easy, because they're both teenagers after all, pumped up to their eyes with hormones, and Fuji knows they're doing their own equivalent of dealing with the problems between them. Neither one of them is great at this concept of communication. Fuji's not complaining; he didn't come to Ryoma or America for this, but when he never had a Plan A to begin with, any kind of Plan B suits him just fine.
Tezuka calls on the last day. Ryoma is taking a shower and Fuji is absently perusing Ryoma's literature textbook, cataloguing in his head the number of obscene English phrases he's learned are usable during sex. Fuji picks up and says, "If you're asking about the weather, it's wonderful," without preamble.
"How is he?" Tezuka asks tersely.
"The world is a cruel and unusual place, Tezuka," Fuji answers almost pleasantly. He pauses and adds, "You should have come yourself."
Silence on the other end. Fuji flips a page (O'Henry becomes Hemingway). Tezuka's breathing doesn't register through the line at all, and he might as well be dead for all Fuji's getting out of this conversation. Finally, Tezuka asks, "When are you coming back?"
"Tomorrow." Then Ryoma enters the room, so Fuji says, "Thanks for calling," and hangs up.
"Who was that?" Ryoma is drying his hair, scrunching his face up like a cat getting rubbed down, and Fuji spends priceless seconds watching the flex of Ryoma's mostly naked body, the movement of the water and muscles and hair and skin.
"Yumiko," Fuji lies easily. "She wanted to know how you were. I told her you were fine and that we had lots of fun catching up." Ryoma grins evilly and squats down next to where Fuji is sitting. "She told me that she's glad I'm enjoying myself." Fuji kisses Ryoma then, one hand on the back of Ryoma's damp hair, the other tugging the towel away from Ryoma's neck. Ryoma moves closer, sighing, and he is heat and steam and warm, so warm, and envelops Fuji in that completely.
Fuji knows: there are simple things and there are complicated things. Sex is simple. Tezuka loving Ryoma is simple. Ryoma craving Tezuka is simple. The concept of Fuji being with Tezuka has always been simple by sheer force of habit. But Fuji wanting this even though he wants Tezuka is complicated. Ryoma needing Fuji when Tezuka isn't there is complicated. Tezuka's fear of losing them both is complicated. Other people complicate things.
"We are so stupid," he does not tell Ryoma. "Would you have not gone to America if I told you not to?" he does not ask Ryoma. "Would you have stayed if he asked you to?" he does not ask. "If it could just be the three of us in a vacuum, so far removed from everything else that we were safe, if--" he does not begin.
*
When Ryoma wins Wimbledon, Sakuno is out there with her press pass, in the back of the crowd, only halfheartedly pushing to get a better view. Mostly she's thinking that it's good luck that this, of all things, is her first foray into sports journalism in America. It's something close to home and close to her, and she hasn't seen Ryoma for years, though she knew, of course, of his success.
Ryoma looks the same and not the same. He's filled in nicely, with a wiry strong build, well rounded out, that tennis players develop. His hair is still a sullen mess, hanging in his eyes, but he's replaced his Fila cap with an Adidas one now--he does TV advertisements for them--and he's, of course, taller. Still, she can recognize him without problem. A smile she could identify miles away, and flat, uninterested answers to the questions he's being bombarded with.
She wonders if Ryoma could recognize her now. She doesn't think she's changed much inside, but she's cut her hair to upper back and has it knotted in a bun. She's wearing nice slacks, a polo shirt, none of that cute, shaky schoolgirl skirt and hair tie. She's grown up, maybe more than he has, and Ryoma was never very good with attaching names to faces, faces to people, people to his own memory.
Sakuno raises her hand, and Ryoma--luck again--happens to pick her. She takes a deep breath and almost hollers across the crowd to him, "You spent part of your childhood in Japan and your father was once a national favorite there as well. Do you think this has affected your tennis at all?"
Ryoma waits a long time before ducking slightly against the microphone. "You," he says, and then a smile emerges. "I know you, don't I."
That night Ryoma takes Sakuno out to a high-class, strangely private restaurant. They don't talk or eat much, and Sakuno is reminded of the uncomfortable period in the junior year of their junior high when they had "dated", to the chagrin of Seigaku's female population. Sakuno had suspected back then that Ryoma had done it simply because Ryoma was always a nice boy, and probably Horio had pulled Ryoma into a conspiratorial huddle and explained to him what Sakuno meant when she blushed instead of talking. It was embarrassing for Sakuno as well, because Ryoma would alternate between not noticing her existence at all and being intensely inquisitive about things like whether she wanted chocolate for Valentine's Day ("Really?" and he would give her this wide-eyed shocked look, "What kind?").
Sakuno's right in suspecting that Ryoma has not really moved much past that point in his life, at least socially speaking. She registers the lack of a wedding ring; he tells her that he doesn't have a steady romantic interest--except for tennis, she amends for him, and they laugh. Sakuno feels older, though, and maybe that's why when they've both relaxed, and Ryoma looks at her warily, she tells him that she doesn't expect anything out of him.
"We're almost strangers now," she says, clinking their glasses together. "I haven't seen you for years. We were junior high students." He nods, and there is a surge of some sisterly instinct to hug him, to thank him for remembering anything at all about her.
Pro-Tennis, still run by Inoue, though it has expanded in recent years and reaches far more readers than the Kantou region it covered when Ryoma was still in Japan, stations Sakuno rather permanently in America afterwards. Sakuno rents a rather nice, though tiny, house on the East Coast. She makes a couple of friends, most of whom are journalists as well, none of whom are sports fans. Every month or so she still calls Tomoko, who's married and living in Kyoto raising her baby boy. She sends a photo of Ryoma labeled "Ryoma-sama~!!" on the back, with hearts, and the next time she talks to Tomoko, the conversation is dominated by Tomoko's frequent exclamations of how wonderful it was that Sakuno saw Ryoma again, and how handsome he still was, and of course Ryoma is still playing tennis again, would he still remember her?
Sakuno tells Tomoko that she doesn't know, and doesn't tell her about that thrill Ryoma caused at the Wimbledon press conference when he recognized her.
The next year Ryoma loses the final match at Wimbledon but wins the US Open. Several days later he drops by Sakuno's home. She makes them both dinner, as traditionally Japanese as possible, and smiles at him bewilderedly throughout it. She starts to explain that it's been hard making dishes the way she was brought up to do so because of the Asian Marts around here don't have everything, but when he raises his head to look at her over his rice bowl, she realizes he's not really there with her at all. He's somewhere else entirely, only going through the motions of eating and breathing and moving with her.
He gets her to pull out her back issues of Pro-Tennis, even the ones she collected when she was a student in high school. He spreads them out on the kitchen table and devours each one, cover to cover, running his fingers absently over their fragile pages over and over again as he reads. Sakuno watches him until he finishes a full year's worth, and then leaves to a finish an article about a local tennis organization she had promised to send to Inoue.
It's a long time before Sakuno creeps downstairs to see how Ryoma's doing. He's standing at her front door. Outside it is raining; it started about an hour ago. The front door has been yanked open so that the only thing between Ryoma and the rain is the thin quivering screen door. She calls his name hesitantly, then again, then "Echizen-san", and then Ryoma has his hands on her face, kissing her fiercely, like he was trying to revive her from drowning, like he was trying to give his breath to her. She makes a little sound of surprise into his mouth, before relaxing, and soon she's putting her hands on his to steady him when he's unbuttoning her shirt, him shaking so much his fingers slip. When he presses his forehead against hers, she can feel where the rain came in like mist through the gaps of the screen and dampened his skin.
She doesn't see the magazines on the kitchen table until the next morning. Most of them are stacked in neat piles on the floor, but there are quite a few spread out on the table, their glossy centerfolds winking in the early morning sunlight. She only needs to glance at them briefly to know why. She makes breakfast, sets the table, reorganizes the magazines on their shelf, watches Ryoma sleeping on her bed with his face cradled by the pillow, his back bared.
Sakuno thinks, some things never change.
*
Sometimes it is hard for Ryoma to get up in the mornings.
*
That night he dreams they are back in the Seigaku tennis courts again. He is sitting down on the courtside bench, watching the net blow in the wind, and suddenly he can sense without turning around that Ryoma is standing next to him. Ryoma is some indeterminable age, maybe 12 or maybe 15 or maybe 18, or maybe as ageless and as precocious as he's always been. He waits for Ryoma to say something, but Ryoma is silent, and he realizes that it is up to him to start the conversation.
And he wants to tell Ryoma, "Why don't you sit down here next to me, on this bench, where there is cold metal between us and underneath us, and it will be just like it's always been, it'll be beautiful, and we would love each other like we used to, loving and not loving. We can forget about the pain just for a minute and when we wake up and walk away it will be like none of that ever happened and you never met me here and we never ended when we ended, where we ended, how we ended. We will be without the bitterness, without the hurt, with only the love, and this pain never existed, just the love, the absence of the love, that shadow of it, please, Ryoma, wouldn't you, for me, for me?"
He wants to tell him, "It's true, I have always loved you."
He wants to say that, because it is Ryoma and it is a dream, because it should not matter that he tells the truth here, after so long, even if he is inadequate at expressing it.
But he doesn't.
He turns his head. Ryoma pulls his cap down on his forehead and smiles ruefully, that quirky almost sad smile he had on the last time they had seen each other (the smell of the classroom, of Ryoma, of the imminent goodbye). He opens his mouth, still waiting, but nothing comes out, and eventually Ryoma turns to go, and the moment has ended, there will be no more chances, he has ruined it for the last time.
He thinks, he knows, that if Ryoma just turned around, put a hand on his shoulder, kissed him, touched him, said his name, or just even said "buchou" like they were in junior high again, he would fall apart, paper on water, would just crumble, and there would be nothing left of this person he thinks he is. He lets Ryoma walk away, step by step, and he sits on that bench by himself, not looking at Ryoma's retreating back, instead looking out at the tennis court, the lines which have made lines for him for so long, for so much of his life, for so much of their life, giving and taking and restraining and making.
He wakes up with his palms pressed against his eyes, face dry, neck aching. Why was he dreaming about things like this again, he wants to know. Why did this come back now? There is no answer. His mouth tastes sour, it is too early, and he reaches for his glasses, for the place where he keeps himself, stored away, whole and unfragmented, like he does every morning.
Inside, just like always, he is dying a little bit at a time.
REALLY LONG PRETENTIOUS AUTHOR'S NOTES: "Ryoma asks Tezuka to fuck him" is actually an idea between BP and me. I was telling her she should draw a DJ, and she told me write one, and she'll draw it, and that was the idea I started with. The original was a bit different. Tezuka is actually the one graduating; the original idea goes on to Ryoma watching Tezuka's graduation ceremony, and out there in the school yards Momo starts crying and Kaidou is all "WHY ARE YOU CRYING? YOU'RE NOT LEAVING" except he's crying too. Then there's a whole scene where Fuji steals the top button of Tezuka's uniform and gives it to Ryoma, pressing his finger against his lips. A couple years later Ryoma sends the thing back to Tezuka with a letter that says, "This belongs to you." The Fuji episode used to be an entire Fuji/Ryoma story all by itself, with that exact set up, and was going to be written for Susan, except oops! Ended up here instead. A significant portion of it was actually chopped out. Sakuno/Ryoma was supposed to be a simple het drabble (HAH bet you didn't see that one coming) which didn't have anything to do with Tezuka but does end up with Ryoma getting rain all over her magazines. And because I can, Rise, by Azure Ray. If you want to know what inspired it. ♥
edit 10/07>> happy birthday buchou.
In Ryoma's final year of junior high, the day before he graduates, Ryoma asks Tezuka to fuck him. He is 15, taller, with slightly broader shoulders and stronger legs and larger hands, and there are bold lines where he has grown more muscle, but Tezuka still sees the precocious, painfully young 12-year-old he met three years ago. The face has not changed at all: insolent but subdued, sharp but smooth, every bit as beautiful as Tezuka remembers. Ryoma's eyes are still large, a muddy gray-brown-green, and to Tezuka they are the most terrifyingly earnest things in the world.
Tezuka says no immediately, but something betrays him, a shiver where he responds to that hunger and sex Ryoma is emitting, and so before Tezuka registers it, Ryoma is leaning close, right against Tezuka's body. Ryoma has grown but he is still not tall enough, and his lips barely brush Tezuka's earlobe when he whispers, "You can pretend I'm Fuji-senpai, if you like."
It freezes Tezuka, a stab of horror and disgust and appeal, and he whispers back, "Oh Ryoma," hurtful and in so much pain he could almost cry, wondering if this is the first time Ryoma has ever heard him say his name out loud.
That doesn't change the fact that that is exactly what Tezuka does. Ryoma's pale, almost translucent legs are wrapped like vices around Tezuka's waist, and there is this frightening moment when Tezuka realizes with sudden clarity that he is inside, and that this insane warmth is all around him, and it's like junior year of junior high all over again, in the back of the locker rooms, so he grits out, "God, Fuji--" because that is the only reflex he has to fall back on.
Tezuka doesn't process what happened until Ryoma's gone. Tezuka's sitting on the bus commuting home when it hits him, and he panics, accidentally pulling the wire signaling for the bus to stop. When the driver gives him the evil eye because he doesn't get off, he crazily considers confessing to the cold, sardonic, lifeless man that he has just managed to fuck up what should have been the most excruciatingly, beautiful moment of his life, that his junior high kohai came to him and begged him for highly immoral and illegal acts of intimacy, and instead of acting like a responsible semi-adult he obliged, because in the deepest, darkest recesses of his heart he had been craving for it for three years, and now he's afraid, he's running scared, he's just done the stupidest thing, it's unforgivable, he's complicated it so much when it should be so simple, the best thing he could do to remedy the situation is to jump off a cliff and hope the impact kills him instantaneously, or maybe--
He blinks, and the moment passes. He is home, with a textbook in front of him, and he is studying for his physics exam. If he crumpled up his shirt and shoved it under his nose, he could maybe still smell Ryoma, but he doesn't, he can't, he shouldn't.
He says to himself, tomorrow, when I'm sitting with a pencil in one hand and an exam in the other, Ryoma will be standing in front of an audience of his peers and his peers' parents. He will be getting his graduation certificate. He might be smiling, oblivious to that fact that each day, from the very moment I met him and for the rest of my life, I die a little, knowing how much I--
That night is almost sleepless. Tezuka's body, though, is a well-maintained schedule, and eventually a combination of responsibility, mental exhaustion, and physical stimulation forces him under. Tezuka chokes out the thought of Ryoma standing under a mess of green leaves and spring branches, waving with his ribboned certificate at the other graduating seniors, of Ryoma that afternoon, shirt open, fingers clawing viciously against Tezuka's clothed back, mouth twisted in an awful triumphant grimace. He closes his eyes, lets it all drain away from him, quick and brutal and momentarily painless, like a bullet to the head.
*
Momo has kissed Ryoma twice. The first time was at the end of Momo's junior year in junior high--summer, the two of them sneaking into the school swimming pool at midnight. They had stripped and went swimming in their boxers, and there was this perfect moment where Ryoma emerged from the water with his hair slicked back, his eyes closed, and the moon sleek on his skin, when the only thing Momo could do was grab Ryoma's shoulders and kiss him wildly, desperately, and afterwards he had roughly dunked Ryoma's head in the water to pretend it was all a bad joke.
They did not talk about it afterwards. Ryoma in his infinite generosity and general prudence had, the next day and the day after and so on, pretended it never happened, a good, smart, correct thing that reinforced the foundations of a friendship Momo had almost recklessly destroyed.
But despite it all Momo knows what that first kiss was: rejection.
The second time happened the next year, the end of Momo's last year in junior high, in the wholesome healthy darkness of the tennis locker rooms where they had escaped to after a sudden rainstorm. Ryoma had been buttoning his white shirt, his sleeves rolled up so that Momo could see his red and white terry wrist band, and there was some insane welling of fear, hurt, pain that made Momo lightly touch their lips together. It was masochistic, it was stupid. Ryoma said to him, "Should we go home now?" and Momo had replied, "I'm a moron," and there was a lot of apologizing and Momo refusing to look at Ryoma, but he knew then that it was love. What had hurt him was definitely love. He was probably most definitely in love with Ryoma and Ryoma probably most definitely didn't love him back, but as they stepped out into the dying sprinkle, he thought that in any case it might as well be all right because there was nothing he could do to change it.
Loving Ryoma, he has since then decided, is not a good thing or a bad thing, more like an occupational hazard associated with being Momoshiro Takeshi, and since then they've been just fine, in the sense that Momo manages to be platonic most of the time and Ryoma manages to ignore the occasional touch, the occasional involuntary moan of longing during a particularly active elbow jostling accompanying a video game, and in between all that Momo discovers there is a thing in Ryoma too, a similar occupational hazard of being Ryoma, that is even bigger to Ryoma than the occupational hazard of loving Ryoma is to Momo, that it is so big it eclipses this love Momo has for Ryoma. It is a more severe, incurable disease, but he doesn't know what it is, or what it means.
Momo is the last to see Ryoma before he leaves for America. He is in the airport with Ryoma, sitting with a can of lukewarm soda cupped in his hands, and next to him Nanjiroh is snoring loud enough to get sidelong glances from the other people in the lobby. Ryoma smiles up at Momo with this look of deep hidden anxiety, so well protected that it's only because Momo knows him well that he can see it, and says, "Momo-senpai, I'm moving, not dying," and Momo can only nod curtly.
In a perverse fashion, Momo thinks he would feel better if they were at someone's house or maybe Takashi's sushi restaurant, giving Ryoma a proper goodbye party. That would finalize something, bring a sense of completeness to the situation, and maybe then he wouldn't feel like Ryoma was cheating them, slipping off into the distance where they couldn't see him, eloping with this future he has without them.
When it is finally time for them to board Momo doesn't resist the urge to fervently grab onto Ryoma in an awkward part handshake, part one-armed hug, bringing Ryoma's head close to his and closing his eyes so he can smell Ryoma's skin one last time. He wants to ask if Ryoma's sure he knows what he is doing, if he even has a clue what this means, and he wants to tell Ryoma that there is still hope, there is still faith, and that he can still hold on, that this going to America thing is totally unnecessary, but he can't manage to say anything except "Don't eat too much airplane food" and "Make sure to write."
Ryoma briefly gives him a tight squeeze in return. He says out loud, "Thank you for everything you've done for me" and he whispers in Momo's ear, "I'm sorry."
They both have a love in them that is almost the same, a harmful, hurtful thing that does not give way, and so Momo understands that Ryoma is not apologizing for all the times he said no. He understands that Ryoma knows he knows he has the right to say no, the right to refuse Momo, and that Momo will love him for that all the same.
Instead, he's apologizing for having pretended, sometimes, that he could say 'yes'.
*
In their last summer before college, Fuji and Tezuka are invited to go to America for a study trip. Tezuka says no without hesitation, and it makes Fuji, for the hundredth time, want to ask Tezuka what he would have said some three years ago if Fuji had told him "Don't go, I need you here with me." Would Tezuka have stayed? Would it have made a difference? He doesn't ask, of course--never has managed to, because that was sacred ground. They won't ever talk of Germany or Tezuka's shoulder or Tezuka's past sacrifices or, in particular, the people who have left without saying goodbye.
He does not ask, "What if I were him, and he asked you to stay?" He does not ask, "Would that have made a difference?"
Fuji accepts the invitation, and the next day Inui gives Fuji Ryoma's address in America and says, "Like always--"
"Chicken?" Fuji finishes, which is their code for "Don't tell Tezuka, because he'll kill me."
"No," Inui says, and he grins a little, a completely mirthless smile that he's perfected over the years to be calm and disappointed. Fuji folds the piece of paper into halves, fourths, than eighths. "Duck," says Inui, before closing his notebook with a sharp thwack and walking off.
Which is their code for "Don't tell Tezuka, because he'll kill both of us."
And sometimes, "Don't tell Tezuka, because he'll kill himself."
Fuji laughs, but secretly he's thinking of Ryoma's address that he tucks away in his schoolbag between a mechanical pencil and a pen with a broken nib. He wonders what Tezuka would do in his situation. He wonders if Tezuka would do anything at all. He wonders what Tezuka would say if he marched up to his house right now, jerked open the door, and shoved this scrap of paper in Tezuka's face, and maybe he would say something like, "I know you better than you think I do," or "Whatever you do, I'm okay with it" or "I hate you", except he thinks that a lie of such magnitude requires a type of peerless, confidential courage, which he doesn't have.
And because he's not Tezuka, he calls up Inui that evening and asks for Ryoma's home phone number in America as well.
Fuji gets permission from the group leaders to stay with Ryoma for three days and to shadow him during class; it just so happens that Ryoma's in his last few days before his school year ends when Fuji comes. He goes to meet Ryoma at school, mid-day, where the administration shuffle him to Ryoma's class. The teacher waves him in. Ryoma half stands up at his desk, eyes wide, and says, "Fuji-senpai," and "You really came," in Japanese, and breaks into a hesitant, blazing smile.
Fuji answers, in English, "It's good to see you again", and is surprised how true that really is.
Later Ryoma introduces him to his gaggle of friends, almost evenly divided between boys who Fuji knows would like to screw Ryoma silly and boys who Fuji knows are probably already screwing Ryoma silly. They are for the most part in the school tennis team with Ryoma. Fuji smiles when he shakes their hands, and doesn't realize that he's giving the smile he gives people like Mizuki--the thing that says for him, "Try it and die."
On the bus home Ryoma sits in the front, and Fuji sits with him, his feet in the aisle and feeling young even among the freshmen. The windows are open, but it's crowded and noisy, with so many conversations happening at one time that Fuji almost doesn't catch Ryoma's voice when he says, "You haven't changed."
"You have," Fuji says. A girl turns her head to look at them, probably less because they're having a Really Important Conversation than because they're speaking in Japanese.
"Sorry," Ryoma says casually, and goes back to staring out the window.
Nanjiroh demands a game with Fuji as soon as they step in the front door of Ryoma's house. "Old man," Ryoma says, truly irritated, but Fuji gives him a mollifying smile. There's a tennis court in the back of the house, which doesn't surprise Fuji the least. He handicaps himself mentally when playing Nanjiroh, but soon figures out that that wasn't really necessary. Nanjiroh catches on. When he neatly trounces Fuji, he tells him that he's a good kid. "But I'm not that old," he adds, and Fuji has to agree--Nanjiroh doesn't come off as old at all, he's in enviable shape.
Ryoma shows Fuji how to work the taps when he comes back in. He accidentally turns the shower on and curses when the hot water spits all over him. Fuji starts laughing uncontrollably, and before he knows it they're standing under the warm shower spray, the curtain drawn, both of them still completely clothed, their mouths fused together in the most bizarrely hot fashion, and Ryoma's reaching for the zipper of Fuji's pants.
Over the next two days they have sex too many times to count, mostly in Ryoma's room when he's supposed to be studying for his final exams. At school they eat lunch in the library, where Fuji finds the cleverest ways to get Ryoma so hard he can't even swallow. It's really easy, because they're both teenagers after all, pumped up to their eyes with hormones, and Fuji knows they're doing their own equivalent of dealing with the problems between them. Neither one of them is great at this concept of communication. Fuji's not complaining; he didn't come to Ryoma or America for this, but when he never had a Plan A to begin with, any kind of Plan B suits him just fine.
Tezuka calls on the last day. Ryoma is taking a shower and Fuji is absently perusing Ryoma's literature textbook, cataloguing in his head the number of obscene English phrases he's learned are usable during sex. Fuji picks up and says, "If you're asking about the weather, it's wonderful," without preamble.
"How is he?" Tezuka asks tersely.
"The world is a cruel and unusual place, Tezuka," Fuji answers almost pleasantly. He pauses and adds, "You should have come yourself."
Silence on the other end. Fuji flips a page (O'Henry becomes Hemingway). Tezuka's breathing doesn't register through the line at all, and he might as well be dead for all Fuji's getting out of this conversation. Finally, Tezuka asks, "When are you coming back?"
"Tomorrow." Then Ryoma enters the room, so Fuji says, "Thanks for calling," and hangs up.
"Who was that?" Ryoma is drying his hair, scrunching his face up like a cat getting rubbed down, and Fuji spends priceless seconds watching the flex of Ryoma's mostly naked body, the movement of the water and muscles and hair and skin.
"Yumiko," Fuji lies easily. "She wanted to know how you were. I told her you were fine and that we had lots of fun catching up." Ryoma grins evilly and squats down next to where Fuji is sitting. "She told me that she's glad I'm enjoying myself." Fuji kisses Ryoma then, one hand on the back of Ryoma's damp hair, the other tugging the towel away from Ryoma's neck. Ryoma moves closer, sighing, and he is heat and steam and warm, so warm, and envelops Fuji in that completely.
Fuji knows: there are simple things and there are complicated things. Sex is simple. Tezuka loving Ryoma is simple. Ryoma craving Tezuka is simple. The concept of Fuji being with Tezuka has always been simple by sheer force of habit. But Fuji wanting this even though he wants Tezuka is complicated. Ryoma needing Fuji when Tezuka isn't there is complicated. Tezuka's fear of losing them both is complicated. Other people complicate things.
"We are so stupid," he does not tell Ryoma. "Would you have not gone to America if I told you not to?" he does not ask Ryoma. "Would you have stayed if he asked you to?" he does not ask. "If it could just be the three of us in a vacuum, so far removed from everything else that we were safe, if--" he does not begin.
*
When Ryoma wins Wimbledon, Sakuno is out there with her press pass, in the back of the crowd, only halfheartedly pushing to get a better view. Mostly she's thinking that it's good luck that this, of all things, is her first foray into sports journalism in America. It's something close to home and close to her, and she hasn't seen Ryoma for years, though she knew, of course, of his success.
Ryoma looks the same and not the same. He's filled in nicely, with a wiry strong build, well rounded out, that tennis players develop. His hair is still a sullen mess, hanging in his eyes, but he's replaced his Fila cap with an Adidas one now--he does TV advertisements for them--and he's, of course, taller. Still, she can recognize him without problem. A smile she could identify miles away, and flat, uninterested answers to the questions he's being bombarded with.
She wonders if Ryoma could recognize her now. She doesn't think she's changed much inside, but she's cut her hair to upper back and has it knotted in a bun. She's wearing nice slacks, a polo shirt, none of that cute, shaky schoolgirl skirt and hair tie. She's grown up, maybe more than he has, and Ryoma was never very good with attaching names to faces, faces to people, people to his own memory.
Sakuno raises her hand, and Ryoma--luck again--happens to pick her. She takes a deep breath and almost hollers across the crowd to him, "You spent part of your childhood in Japan and your father was once a national favorite there as well. Do you think this has affected your tennis at all?"
Ryoma waits a long time before ducking slightly against the microphone. "You," he says, and then a smile emerges. "I know you, don't I."
That night Ryoma takes Sakuno out to a high-class, strangely private restaurant. They don't talk or eat much, and Sakuno is reminded of the uncomfortable period in the junior year of their junior high when they had "dated", to the chagrin of Seigaku's female population. Sakuno had suspected back then that Ryoma had done it simply because Ryoma was always a nice boy, and probably Horio had pulled Ryoma into a conspiratorial huddle and explained to him what Sakuno meant when she blushed instead of talking. It was embarrassing for Sakuno as well, because Ryoma would alternate between not noticing her existence at all and being intensely inquisitive about things like whether she wanted chocolate for Valentine's Day ("Really?" and he would give her this wide-eyed shocked look, "What kind?").
Sakuno's right in suspecting that Ryoma has not really moved much past that point in his life, at least socially speaking. She registers the lack of a wedding ring; he tells her that he doesn't have a steady romantic interest--except for tennis, she amends for him, and they laugh. Sakuno feels older, though, and maybe that's why when they've both relaxed, and Ryoma looks at her warily, she tells him that she doesn't expect anything out of him.
"We're almost strangers now," she says, clinking their glasses together. "I haven't seen you for years. We were junior high students." He nods, and there is a surge of some sisterly instinct to hug him, to thank him for remembering anything at all about her.
Pro-Tennis, still run by Inoue, though it has expanded in recent years and reaches far more readers than the Kantou region it covered when Ryoma was still in Japan, stations Sakuno rather permanently in America afterwards. Sakuno rents a rather nice, though tiny, house on the East Coast. She makes a couple of friends, most of whom are journalists as well, none of whom are sports fans. Every month or so she still calls Tomoko, who's married and living in Kyoto raising her baby boy. She sends a photo of Ryoma labeled "Ryoma-sama~!!" on the back, with hearts, and the next time she talks to Tomoko, the conversation is dominated by Tomoko's frequent exclamations of how wonderful it was that Sakuno saw Ryoma again, and how handsome he still was, and of course Ryoma is still playing tennis again, would he still remember her?
Sakuno tells Tomoko that she doesn't know, and doesn't tell her about that thrill Ryoma caused at the Wimbledon press conference when he recognized her.
The next year Ryoma loses the final match at Wimbledon but wins the US Open. Several days later he drops by Sakuno's home. She makes them both dinner, as traditionally Japanese as possible, and smiles at him bewilderedly throughout it. She starts to explain that it's been hard making dishes the way she was brought up to do so because of the Asian Marts around here don't have everything, but when he raises his head to look at her over his rice bowl, she realizes he's not really there with her at all. He's somewhere else entirely, only going through the motions of eating and breathing and moving with her.
He gets her to pull out her back issues of Pro-Tennis, even the ones she collected when she was a student in high school. He spreads them out on the kitchen table and devours each one, cover to cover, running his fingers absently over their fragile pages over and over again as he reads. Sakuno watches him until he finishes a full year's worth, and then leaves to a finish an article about a local tennis organization she had promised to send to Inoue.
It's a long time before Sakuno creeps downstairs to see how Ryoma's doing. He's standing at her front door. Outside it is raining; it started about an hour ago. The front door has been yanked open so that the only thing between Ryoma and the rain is the thin quivering screen door. She calls his name hesitantly, then again, then "Echizen-san", and then Ryoma has his hands on her face, kissing her fiercely, like he was trying to revive her from drowning, like he was trying to give his breath to her. She makes a little sound of surprise into his mouth, before relaxing, and soon she's putting her hands on his to steady him when he's unbuttoning her shirt, him shaking so much his fingers slip. When he presses his forehead against hers, she can feel where the rain came in like mist through the gaps of the screen and dampened his skin.
She doesn't see the magazines on the kitchen table until the next morning. Most of them are stacked in neat piles on the floor, but there are quite a few spread out on the table, their glossy centerfolds winking in the early morning sunlight. She only needs to glance at them briefly to know why. She makes breakfast, sets the table, reorganizes the magazines on their shelf, watches Ryoma sleeping on her bed with his face cradled by the pillow, his back bared.
Sakuno thinks, some things never change.
*
Sometimes it is hard for Ryoma to get up in the mornings.
*
That night he dreams they are back in the Seigaku tennis courts again. He is sitting down on the courtside bench, watching the net blow in the wind, and suddenly he can sense without turning around that Ryoma is standing next to him. Ryoma is some indeterminable age, maybe 12 or maybe 15 or maybe 18, or maybe as ageless and as precocious as he's always been. He waits for Ryoma to say something, but Ryoma is silent, and he realizes that it is up to him to start the conversation.
And he wants to tell Ryoma, "Why don't you sit down here next to me, on this bench, where there is cold metal between us and underneath us, and it will be just like it's always been, it'll be beautiful, and we would love each other like we used to, loving and not loving. We can forget about the pain just for a minute and when we wake up and walk away it will be like none of that ever happened and you never met me here and we never ended when we ended, where we ended, how we ended. We will be without the bitterness, without the hurt, with only the love, and this pain never existed, just the love, the absence of the love, that shadow of it, please, Ryoma, wouldn't you, for me, for me?"
He wants to tell him, "It's true, I have always loved you."
He wants to say that, because it is Ryoma and it is a dream, because it should not matter that he tells the truth here, after so long, even if he is inadequate at expressing it.
But he doesn't.
He turns his head. Ryoma pulls his cap down on his forehead and smiles ruefully, that quirky almost sad smile he had on the last time they had seen each other (the smell of the classroom, of Ryoma, of the imminent goodbye). He opens his mouth, still waiting, but nothing comes out, and eventually Ryoma turns to go, and the moment has ended, there will be no more chances, he has ruined it for the last time.
He thinks, he knows, that if Ryoma just turned around, put a hand on his shoulder, kissed him, touched him, said his name, or just even said "buchou" like they were in junior high again, he would fall apart, paper on water, would just crumble, and there would be nothing left of this person he thinks he is. He lets Ryoma walk away, step by step, and he sits on that bench by himself, not looking at Ryoma's retreating back, instead looking out at the tennis court, the lines which have made lines for him for so long, for so much of his life, for so much of their life, giving and taking and restraining and making.
He wakes up with his palms pressed against his eyes, face dry, neck aching. Why was he dreaming about things like this again, he wants to know. Why did this come back now? There is no answer. His mouth tastes sour, it is too early, and he reaches for his glasses, for the place where he keeps himself, stored away, whole and unfragmented, like he does every morning.
Inside, just like always, he is dying a little bit at a time.
REALLY LONG PRETENTIOUS AUTHOR'S NOTES: "Ryoma asks Tezuka to fuck him" is actually an idea between BP and me. I was telling her she should draw a DJ, and she told me write one, and she'll draw it, and that was the idea I started with. The original was a bit different. Tezuka is actually the one graduating; the original idea goes on to Ryoma watching Tezuka's graduation ceremony, and out there in the school yards Momo starts crying and Kaidou is all "WHY ARE YOU CRYING? YOU'RE NOT LEAVING" except he's crying too. Then there's a whole scene where Fuji steals the top button of Tezuka's uniform and gives it to Ryoma, pressing his finger against his lips. A couple years later Ryoma sends the thing back to Tezuka with a letter that says, "This belongs to you." The Fuji episode used to be an entire Fuji/Ryoma story all by itself, with that exact set up, and was going to be written for Susan, except oops! Ended up here instead. A significant portion of it was actually chopped out. Sakuno/Ryoma was supposed to be a simple het drabble (HAH bet you didn't see that one coming) which didn't have anything to do with Tezuka but does end up with Ryoma getting rain all over her magazines. And because I can, Rise, by Azure Ray. If you want to know what inspired it. ♥
edit 10/07>> happy birthday buchou.