FicAlert! PoT> Square Root of Pride (Yagyuu/Niou) NC-17 Pt1
Title: Square Root of Pride
Writer: Everlind
Wordcount: 11 811
Pairing: Yagyuu/Niou (Platinum Pair/D1)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Attempts at algebra (and failing at), bra theft and watermelons.
Summary: Love is like an algebra equation. It may look like nonsense, but is always has one and only one solution.
Disclaimer: The Prince of Tennis belongs to Konomi Takeshi. This story is based on characters and the universe of The Prince of Tennis, no money is being made from it.
Author's Notes: For shay_nekochan/turkeyimposter at switching_it_up 2009-2010.
Square Root of Pride
Irony is a bitch.
Niou likes Maths. He loves Maths. He's really good at Maths. Maths have always made sense to him. So it would figure that all his problems would start with Maths.
To be honest, the root of the problem is probably Yagyuu. But he kinda brought Yagyuu upon himself, an unpredictable variable in the ever tangled formula of his life. Or something like that. Had he known what bugging Yagyuu had meant, he'd have left the dorkwad puttering about with his golf sticks.
But, nooo. Niou always has to push. Like poking a lion suffering from a toothache with a sharp stick.
Only the lion is all metaphorical and on the inside.
Anyway.
Maths.
He's good at that.
Fuck, he's the best out of his whole year. He aced them all in middle school and is still acing them all in high school.
So why do they pick Yagyuu to tutor her?
Huh?
"Lucky bastard," Marui says, as he unwraps a stick of gum and stuffs it into his mouth. "Why do you get to tutor her, huh?"
Yagyuu looks over at him, before using the the tip of his index to nudge his glasses higher up his nose. His lips curve, but they don't smile. He doesn't answer.
Niou rolls his eyes.
"Maybe if you actually weren't a complete failure at Maths, Bunta," Jackal says, "you'd have had a chance."
Blowing a bubble that sends a waft of apple through the changing rooms, Marui considers this. Then he pops it and says, "But why Yagyuu? Again. He always gets to tutor the hot chicks. I mean, Niou's better at Maths than he is, but they still pick him. It's not fair."
"Suuuure. Because Niou obviously is the better choice and all," Jackal mutters, shaking his head.
Kicking at his ankle, Niou asks, "Yeah? And why wouldn't I be?"
"Because the chances of you showing up, let alone actually tutoring her, are as likely as Akaya scoring an A on his English," Yanagi answers.
"Eh?" the kid goes somewhere on the other side of the changing room. He bangs his head on the open door of his locker. Yanagi sighs.
"I would," Niou says. "Show up."
Yanagi, Jackal, Marui and Yagyuu all turn to look at him. Simultaneously. All four of them with looks of clear skepticism on their faces, though in varying degrees. Yagyuu's is kind of an arched eyebrow above opaque gleaming glasses.
"I would," Niou lies.
"But would you tutor her?" Yanagi asks. "If you showed up."
"I would be charming and chivalrous in equal measures," Niou responds, as he zips up his pants.
"But not tutor her," Yanagi points out.
"You'd probably take pictures of her cleavage with your mobile phone," Marui snorts.
"I'm too much of a gentleman for that," he answers, tossing back his head and smirking.
There's another pause. Even Yagyuu is frowning now. Then he opens his mouth. "Clearly that is why they call you the Trickster and me the Gentleman, isn't it, Niou-kun?" he says.
Jackal chuckles.
"Clearly, they don't know any better, do they, eh? Yaaaagyuu?" he drawls back.
Yagyuu barely spares him a glance as he slings his bag over his shoulder. "Clearly," he responds dryly. "I have to leave or I will be late for a certain tutoring session."
And with that winning parting-note on the subject, he's off.
Niou scowls after him, long after he's gone through the door.
Marui slings an arm around his shoulder conspiratorially. Pops a bubble. "I would've preferred for it to be you, man. Honest. No hopes for Yagyuu being of any help. And I would so die for a good shot of Tatsuki-chan's mighty bosom."
Shrugging him off, Niou elbows him and hisses into his ear, "Promise?"
Marui scowls.
***
"…fuck!" he groans under his breath and lets out a heavy sigh of satiation. Short-lived though it might be. At his feet, his come swirls down the drain. As always, post-coital, his stomach shivers. It's weird, but a good orgasm causes the skin on his belly to tremble. And this was a very good orgasm.
Marui isn't wrong.
But he isn't right for the correct reasons.
Alright, yes, he totally would take a picture of Kikutake Tatsuki's bosom. Just because. Probably enlarge it, write 'Got Milk?' on it and make a hundred or so photocopies of it, which he would spread throughout the school.
With tits like that, leaving your blouse unbuttoned at the top is asking for it, really.
But he doesn't want to tutor Kikutake with the globular rack of wondrousness because of Kikutake's generous assets.
Really.
He doesn't want Yagyuu tutoring her and possibly taking notice of said assets, which might lead him to try and figure out what the radius of those semi-spherical attachments would be. Kinda moot, since the whole male population has been in a frenzy about it since she made an re-appearance in high school with a cup-size three times the one she had in middle school and have been attempting to guess the true size and weight of those suckers ever since.
Point being?
Niou doesn't want Yagyuu to notice her.
He wants Yagyuu to notice-
"A-ni-ki!" his brother hollers through the door, pounding on it. "It's my turn! Hurry up or I'll tell okaa-san!"
Niou sighs, mouths 'puri' under his breath. He runs his hands through his hair one last time to get the last of the suds out of it. It's fried enough from all the bleaching and it probably won't help to leave in half of the soap bottle to fester at his roots.
He dries off, lets the sodden towel drop on the floor, kicks open the door and walks out naked.
"Eeew! Gross!" his brother yowls, covering both eyes with his hands. "What took you so long?"
"What do you think?" he returns. Wags his eyebrows at the confused look.
"EEEEW!" his brother shrieks, shaking his head in denial as he lacks any more appendages to cover up his brain to protect it from the mental image. "GROSS!"
"Don't slip on anything," he adds, before sauntering into his room.
There's a howl of dismay that might translate to oooo-kaaaaaa-saaaaaaaaa-haaaaaa-aaaaan, but Niou shuts his door on it halfway through.
Idiot.
With a huff, he flops down on his bed. He frowns and sticks out his tongue at the ceiling. The room is in shadows. His hair falls down around his face with the wax and the gel washed out of it and it tickles at his nose. His sheets smell musty -no surprise there- and somewhere in the distance a train rattles by. His Maths book lies open on page 82.
He's not in the mood for Maths.
Even though he should really just knuckle down and jot down the solutions -it would only take him fifteen minutes- instead of rushing through them and make a messy scrawl as he does them on the bus tomorrow morning. But his mind is elsewhere.
It takes him long enough that the shadows turn to night before he fishes out his mobile phone and types out a quick text:
How was the tutoring session?
Send.
Maybe Yagyuu has already gone to bed, it's past ten and a school day tomorrow. Niou's feet touch the ground and he stands up to walk a tight circle, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. Then he opens up the window. Heavy, thick summer air rolls inside, with just the tiniest hint of chill of the oncoming night in its wake. Curtains billow gently inwards, brushing against his naked skin, before the circulation in his room reverses and spills out, fluttering them outwards. There's sea and pollution in the air, and freshly mown grass.
He wonders if anybody sees him now: a lanky teenager stark, buck naked behind a sheet of gauzy fabric. A pale silhouette, at most.
His phone beeps.
Niou grabs at it so violently he knocks it off his bedside cabinet. It slides under his bed. Amidst dustbunnies, used matches, thumbtacks and moldy socks he tracks it down.
Satisfactory.
That's it.
Niou closes his eyes, lets his head drop to his bed.
It probably means that it went well, just that. But it could also mean that Kikutake Tatsuki let him calculate the actual volume of her breasts or even how those things manage to defy gravity the way they do. But with Yagyuu? It's hard to tell.
He's so screwed.
And only figuratively at that.
Dammit.
***
Niou watches Yagyuu watch Kikutake.
It's a Thursday. No practice. Yukimura might act like it, but he's not captain yet. If he had been, they would've had practice every single day. Yukimura will not stand for another loss. Not to Seigaku, not to Hyotei, not to anyone else.
But he's not captain.
So he and Yagyuu are walking home after school.
Kikutake is to talking to friends over by the water fountain. She might talk as politely as Yagyuu does, but her skirt hitches up higher and higher by the second and her uniform shirt strains over her bosom.
Five or so guys pass her. They stare. One of them trips over his own feet and ends up with a face-full of dirt and scraped knees. And a ridiculously obvious stiffy. His friends laugh. Kikutake makes a concerned face, asks if he is alright. Her chest heaves.
Niou rolls his eyes, slouches.
"No tutoring session today?" he mutters, feigning unholy glee as he smirks at the idiot who's scrambling to his feet, erection wilting under the onslaught of ridicule.
"Only on Wednesdays," Yagyuu answers. He lifts up his wrist, checks the time. "I have to hurry. See you tomorrow at practice, Niou-kun."
With that, he walks off. Briskly. Back straight, hair straight, tie straight.
Niou watches him, slouched with hands deep in his pockets, hair gelled into orderly chaos, shirt untucked and tie at half-mast.
"Yagyuu!" he yells after him.
Yagyuu turns half around, looks at him.
"Tutor me!" he shouts.
"What?!" Yagyuu shouts back.
"Tutor me!" Niou repeats.
"Niou-kun," Yagyuu shakes his head. Looks over his shoulder. He yells something back, something Niou doesn't get and then he's a retreating form into the distance.
Later, when Niou rides the bus home, he gets a text:
You're better at maths than me.
***
"Show me your notes!" Niou says.
Yagyuu looks up. Blinks. "Why?"
"Because. Show them to me," he repeats, through clenched teeth.
Yagyuu doesn't roll his eyes. It's not his style. If it had been, they'd have rotated out of his skull by now. But he does hand Niou the notes.
Grabbing them, paper crackling and protesting under his clawed fingers, Niou sits down with them.
They're having lunch together in an empty classroom. Niou makes sure to get sauce from the cafeteria's mystery special all over the notes and he doesn't straighten out the paper.
Yagyuu frowns.
Troublesome fellow, his expression hides, but doesn't express.
Niou knows anyway. He smirks.
It's algebra. Not the hardest of equations either, at that. But Yagyuu goes on to write the xes between the coefficient and variables in the next step and then by expanding through the FOIL method, nice and easily working open his monomials and polynomials. Sometimes he even makes one separate line just to clear away a minus or plus before parenthesis, chipping at the equations like a bird pecking at a corncob.
That chick must be really dumb, Niou scoffs inwardly, if she can't even get through the obvious.
His eyes scan down, sixteen painstaking steps before reaching the actual conclusion. It's something Niou hardly needs to write out four steps for, maybe less if he had time to think about it.
y = 82.
The conclusion is 82.
"Wrong," he sneers, tossing the papers back into Yagyuu's lap.
Yagyuu picks them up, wipes his palm over them to smooth them out. "How so?"
"The answer is 28," he says.
A small pause. Yagyuu goes over the equation, re-calculates the whole of it. "How can it possibly be 28?" he wants to know.
Niou nudges invisible frames up his nose. "How can it possibly be 82?" he mimics. The upside of having studied Yagyuu's mannerisms down to the last detail: the inflection of his voice, the manner in which the words roll of his tongue, the very curve and flex of his lips… all Yagyuu's.
Anybody else would be disturbed.
Yagyuu isn't just anybody else. He smirks, leers. "Obvious, right?" he says, in Niou's voice.
Puri, his expression says.
They study the problem together. Step by step, by addition, by subtraction, by multiplication, by division, with exponents and variables scattered throughout, they solve in tandem, until there is nothing left.
"2882?" Niou goes, scratching at his hair.
Yagyuu coughs. "8228." he says.
A shared look.
The rest of lunch they are bend over the algebra equation together, arguing and muttering and offering possible solutions. A school bench isn't very big and their thighs are touching when they shift or their arms might brush. Niou is caught between frustration over the exercise and frustration between his legs. Sometimes he breathes in really deep and feels the skin on their forearms catch, the hairs tickle.
Yagyuu is warm.
Everybody always says how cold he can be, but Niou knows it is not true. Yagyuu always is impossibly warm, as though his blood runs just a few degrees hotter than it should be. He can't be all ice and aloofness if he can put on a wig, contacts, draw on a mole, hit a ball with his left hand and be him down to the core.
It's not a complete act for Yagyuu, to be Niou. Maybe almost more of a release. Or indulgence.
Then again, being Yagyuu? Biggest damn turn-on, ever. To part his hair just so, to nudge those glasses up his nose -precise, neat- and to nod and say, 'Yes, sensei, or course sensei'. A release, too. Sometimes a rather literal one at that.
There's no reason to be Yagyuu these days, the mindfucking in their game has become a little too subtle for that and the switch only works so many times. What is fun is making people think they've switched, when they haven't, which is a switch upon a switch and the most delightful mind game ever. Still, maybe some day again. A switch over a switch over a switch? Just blending over into each other until the boundaries are one smudge of YagyuuNiouYagyuuNiouthem.
But he kinda misses it.
Sometimes he puts on the glasses, the ones with plain glass, when he does his homework. He tucks in his shirt and straightens his back. No gel or wax. Neat, precise kanji. Almost Yagyuu but not really.
Sitting here, with Yagyuu next to him and the smell of marker, tip-ex and the leftovers from their lunch in the air, is good enough for now.
Niou forgets about how he lies in bed at night with his own hand around his dick and Yagyuu's name rolling of his tongue and in the mornings, too, or sometimes even in the showers after practice, because he'd been sneaking looks at Yagyuu's ass in those white shorts. Or you know, when he was out those shorts to change.
It's just him and Yagyuu, leaning in over the same problem, blending together just a little.
And then the bell rings and classes start and Yagyuu says:
"Maybe I shouldn't pose Kikutake this one before we've figured it out ourselves."
Niou looks up, then looks away. Shrugs. He scratches at his hair, tousles it and looks disinterestedly out through the window. "Yeah. Whatever."
Yagyuu nods, tells him he'll see him at practice. Leaves.
When he's gone, Niou sighs rubs at his face.
Dammit.
***
It's when Niou finds himself, a week later, at his desk with the glasses on, the impossible algebra exercise before him and his hand down his pants that he realizes he needs to do something about his 'situation'.
Besides grabbing tissues to clean off, of course.
He needs to do something to make Yagyuu… notice him.
That way.
However, easier said than done.
Cause 1) they're both guys and 2) he doesn't want to go and say it. Like that. It's gay enough as it is, with his hand still smelling of come and the fake glasses on his nose. If he goes up to Yagyuu and says 'I like you. Will you be my boyfriend?' he'll probably die from overload of gayness. And he'd throw himself under a train to be done with it anyway.
Niou Masaharu doesn't confess.
That and he kinda doesn't dare to. Yagyuu will probably lift an eyebrow and say: "Excuse me, Niou-kun? I think I misheard, but it sounded as though you just made a completely homo-sounding confession to me."
Yeah.
Not an option.
But how is he going to make Yagyuu notice him next to Kikutake Tatsuki's ginormous bosom and magically fluttering-up-in-the-nonexistent-wind skirt?
Besides, Yagyuu has seen him naked.
What more can he do?
Solve this problem, perhaps.
But his latest attempt just got him 282, right after he got 828 and 822 before that. There's probably something fundamentally wrong with the whole equation which makes it unsolvable, but he hasn't been able to pin it down yet.
Making an angry, fat X over his latest result, Niou scowls and throws his pencil down.
If all else fails he could always put on a skirt himself. Stuff two watermelons down the front of his shirt.
Niou laughs wryly, shaking his head at himself.
Yeah right.
***
Everything seems hell-bent on failing.
Then again Yagyuu is used to him hanging all over him and drawling 'Yaaaaaagyuuuu' in his ear when he wants something (Yagyuu, specifically, in this case), he's used to Niou being naked in the change rooms and doesn't seem to care if he walks around naked, either. He's used to scribbled nonsense in the margin in his notes and Niou stealing the prawns out of his bento. He's used to having to call on Niou as a member of the disciplinary committee.
Besides confessing (no way) and kissing Yagyuu (no fucking way), Niou doesn't know how to express himself. Or how to show it.
It messes with his tennis. It messes with his head.
Yagyuu is right there, on the other side of the net. A straight-backed, almost polite presence. "Let's have a good game, Niou-kun," he says.
Throwing up his racket, watching spin twice before returning on the down-arc, he catches it. Right-handed.
Yagyuu lifts a brow. Niou clucks his tongue, winks.
Slowly and deliberately, Yagyuu switches hands. Nods.
"Want to play, do you?" Niou calls out to him as he bounces the ball. "I can do that."
It's his serve. He makes it sharp and fast, angles it into a corner, nothing Yagyuu can't handle, but it's nice to see him run for it. You know. See his butt clench and shift when he moves. See him plant his foot, his left arm swing and move with confident grace as he returns the serve.
With a little grunt Niou hits it back, precise, calculated, fast. His shoulders are straight, as is his back.
Yagyuu makes it a lazy lob, as slouched and easy as he is.
Up against the blue the ball travels, a high arc that blots out the sun, impostor-like, before coming down.
Niou steps back, calm and cool. Returns it. "That all you got, Yaaaaagyuuuu?" he calls.
Yagyuu hitches up an eyebrow. And hits the laser beam.
Viciously precise. Hypnotic, if it hadn't been as beautifully fast as it is. Surprise, surprise: because they're being each other and the laser should be a trick up his sleeve now, but Yagyuu doesn't seem to want to play nice.
One thing can be said for having had Yukimura as a captain. He might be surprised, but his legs and body move despite that, feet making a one-two-three-four, like flying, before his right hand moves to cradle the ball on the face of his racket. The impact shivers up his arm, bends the strings, and then he's slugging it back as equally fast and vicious. It snaps into the clay precisely against the baseline, before slamming into the chain-link fence with a hideous clatter.
15-0
"Oi, Yagyuu!" he calls back. "If ya wanna play dirty, you should play seriously."
They rally furiously over the next point, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, the yellow blurring, Niou's eyes narrowing and Yagyuu's lips whitening, waiting to see who will break the pattern, or will fumble a return. Niou messes around a little, sending the ball back lower and lower and lower until they're brushing the net as the ball passes over it, making it flutter like a leaf in the wind. Then Yagyuu starts to angle it up and up and up and up, making them both back up a step on each return to get it, until Niou finds himself pinned against the baseline.
"Puri."
On the other hand, that's where Yagyuu is, too.
Where they tested the limits vertically, they now do horizontally.
Niou makes sharp slices, having send the first one over ever so slightly diagonally. Yagyuu didn't have to move, just stretch out his left hand a little further to return it. Also angled, but in the opposite direction. They repeat this, once, twice, the motion thickening like an out of control pendulum, until first Yagyuu and then Niou have to step sideways to get it.
Like before they rally, back and forth at top-speed, until they hit the limit of the court and have to run the width of it to reach their returns.
The continued repetition makes the muscles burn in his shoulders, his calves ache.
It's glorious.
Until Yagyuu abruptly decides he's had enough and hits another laser beam.
Niou is at the other side, alert enough to react, but not possibly fast enough to run down a shot of such speed.
15-15
"Better?" Yagyuu asks, nudging his glasses into place.
"Not shabby." Niou acknowledges, grinning.
They play with patterns until first Niou and then Yagyuu takes a game with it. Even after this, Yagyuu is still playing as a southpaw and Niou continues to hit right handed, though their playing styles have started to slip into one big amalgamation of being each other. Laser beams are hit by both sides while tricks, traps are set up and sprung left and right.
At one point Sanada stops to watch their game and after a few minutes of it he's muttering 'tarundoru' and 'playing around' under his breath, but he can't do jack shit, Niou knows, because nobody's died and made him fuku-buchou yet. Though that is undoubtedly Yukimura's master plan.
Sanada doesn't get it, Niou thinks and bares his teeth through a smash. They are.
Their way.
At 5-4 for him, Niou decides to mirror Yagyuu, which is in and upon himself not as easy as it sounds, though he can switch back to his left hand to make the mirror-image illusion work. Not just Yagyuu's volleys and lobs and slices does he copy, but his expression and the pace of his breathing, the little grunts he makes.
Yagyuu frowns when he sees what Niou is doing, so Niou frowns as disapprovingly and annoyed right back.
It's not a little delightful to know that Yagyuu is facing himself over the net now, even though he of all people knows exactly who and what he is facing.
On top of that, it freezes the game. Yagyuu would have to break through the illusion or lose a point deliberately to make Niou lose one. But the sun is sinking orange and heavy, reflecting off the windows of the school, covering everything in a honey-hued layer and most matches have ended some time ago, while they are still stuck at 5-4. The cicadas chirp, endless, and they return each other's balls, endless.
Despite the glee at the situation, the delight to see Yagyuu's frustration but also his secret enjoyment of the challenge, Niou is starting to become uncomfortable. Having a solid hard-on is not exactly a welcome addition.
Usually, when he immerses himself into being Yagyuu as he is now, not to mention for as long as he's been keeping it up, he usually ends with his hand down his boxers. It's his kind of being close to Yagyuu, in a way, as bodily realistic as he can manage though there's only one person, which never truly is Yagyuu. Still, anything will do. Anything to feel a little closer to Yagyuu.
But now Yagyuu is across the net - not to mention sweaty and flushed- and it adds a bad factor to the already fucked up situation.
Yagyuu's luck, because he manages to take a point when he hits a laser beam, but not before announcing it by a loud and clear: "Adieu."
Niou shudders and feels numb desire pound between his legs and fumbles with getting the word past his lips. The illusion cracks along with his voice on the unfamiliar vowels.
15-0 Yagyuu.
"Distracted, Niou-kun?" Yagyuu asks, as he rolls his shoulders.
Niou's eyes widen, just a fraction, but hopefully not enough for Yagyuu to see from where he's standing. Does he suspect…? No.
But Yagyuu goes on. "Shall we play as you now?"
And damn, why does that sound so erotic and filthy when Yagyuu says it like that? If only there was some way to adjust himself so it wouldn't hurt being trapped in his shorts like that. And thank God his shirt was bought for him to grow into, with currently still room to spare, so it covers the tent.
Damn you, Yagyuu.
Already Yagyuu is becoming him. The slouch, the tilt of his head, the vague insolence on his face. He stands with his feet planted, racket over his shoulder. Niou sees himself there, how sloppy he looks, but then Yagyuu launches into a furious battle for the next point and Niou sees him glide with a certain smooth elegance through the game.
Like he does, Niou supposes.
They volley and wrangle, their shorts sharp and tricksy, mirrored still and Niou wonders if Yagyuu can beat Niou by being Niou.
That would be fucked up.
He smirks and Yagyuu smirks back. They both laugh and change a smash into a drop shot, arms moving at sudden, unexpected angles. Yagyuu laughs, or Niou does, they're both him anyway, because this is so much fun, so good and right and something that is theirs.
"Yagyuu-san!"
Niou fumbles his return.
30-0 Yagyuu.
The ball rolls towards the net and Niou feels his erection wilt at the anticlimactic sensation of that point, not to mention when he realizes that the game -the true, real game- is over. A game, behind the game in their game, one that Yagyuu didn't know about. A tennis game not about tennis.
"Tatsuki-chan," Yagyuu responds. He seems slightly baffled when he realizes he's completely forgotten about her.
There's not a shred of arousal left in Niou's shorts. He sighs, jaw clenching.
Stupid bitch.
It would've worked. It was working. Yagyuu was there, was him even, and playing with him, instead of tutoring Kikutake after Wednesday's practice.
"Yagyuu-san?" she asks breathily, eyes doe-like and blinking. "I was waiting for you, but… but you didn't show up."
"Please, excuse me." Yagyuu says, walking off the court briskly to grab his bag. "I shall be there immediately. My apologies."
"Alright," she murmurs and nods. With a toss she sends the demure braid over her shoulder, but not without leveling a look at Niou. Niou smiles, waggles his fingers. She huffs. With a whirl of her skirt she flounces off, back towards the building.
"Niou-kun!" Yagyuu he says in a low voice, as he zips his racket up, "why didn't you say anything?"
Niou makes a show of pulling the elastic out of his rat-tail. The longer hair comes loose and then proceeds with sticking into the sweat on his neck. "I forgot," he drawls. He scratches his stomach, shrugs. "You did, too."
Yagyuu tsks, but doesn't comment any further. He leaves, too.
Alone, Niou stand on the court, waiting for Yagyuu to storm back out of the clubhouse so he can hurry after Kikutake and her heaving chest. With Yagyuu's shadow retreating in the distance, Niou stands there even longer until the sweat on his body dries. Detached from his skin, his hair floats around his face. Niou stands on his side of the court, his game failed and unfinished and only leaves when the captain makes him.
After his shower, he goes home.
Alone.
...on to part 2!
Comment on part 2, please.
Writer: Everlind
Wordcount: 11 811
Pairing: Yagyuu/Niou (Platinum Pair/D1)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Attempts at algebra (and failing at), bra theft and watermelons.
Summary: Love is like an algebra equation. It may look like nonsense, but is always has one and only one solution.
Disclaimer: The Prince of Tennis belongs to Konomi Takeshi. This story is based on characters and the universe of The Prince of Tennis, no money is being made from it.
Author's Notes: For shay_nekochan/turkeyimposter at switching_it_up 2009-2010.
Square Root of Pride
Irony is a bitch.
Niou likes Maths. He loves Maths. He's really good at Maths. Maths have always made sense to him. So it would figure that all his problems would start with Maths.
To be honest, the root of the problem is probably Yagyuu. But he kinda brought Yagyuu upon himself, an unpredictable variable in the ever tangled formula of his life. Or something like that. Had he known what bugging Yagyuu had meant, he'd have left the dorkwad puttering about with his golf sticks.
But, nooo. Niou always has to push. Like poking a lion suffering from a toothache with a sharp stick.
Only the lion is all metaphorical and on the inside.
Anyway.
Maths.
He's good at that.
Fuck, he's the best out of his whole year. He aced them all in middle school and is still acing them all in high school.
So why do they pick Yagyuu to tutor her?
Huh?
"Lucky bastard," Marui says, as he unwraps a stick of gum and stuffs it into his mouth. "Why do you get to tutor her, huh?"
Yagyuu looks over at him, before using the the tip of his index to nudge his glasses higher up his nose. His lips curve, but they don't smile. He doesn't answer.
Niou rolls his eyes.
"Maybe if you actually weren't a complete failure at Maths, Bunta," Jackal says, "you'd have had a chance."
Blowing a bubble that sends a waft of apple through the changing rooms, Marui considers this. Then he pops it and says, "But why Yagyuu? Again. He always gets to tutor the hot chicks. I mean, Niou's better at Maths than he is, but they still pick him. It's not fair."
"Suuuure. Because Niou obviously is the better choice and all," Jackal mutters, shaking his head.
Kicking at his ankle, Niou asks, "Yeah? And why wouldn't I be?"
"Because the chances of you showing up, let alone actually tutoring her, are as likely as Akaya scoring an A on his English," Yanagi answers.
"Eh?" the kid goes somewhere on the other side of the changing room. He bangs his head on the open door of his locker. Yanagi sighs.
"I would," Niou says. "Show up."
Yanagi, Jackal, Marui and Yagyuu all turn to look at him. Simultaneously. All four of them with looks of clear skepticism on their faces, though in varying degrees. Yagyuu's is kind of an arched eyebrow above opaque gleaming glasses.
"I would," Niou lies.
"But would you tutor her?" Yanagi asks. "If you showed up."
"I would be charming and chivalrous in equal measures," Niou responds, as he zips up his pants.
"But not tutor her," Yanagi points out.
"You'd probably take pictures of her cleavage with your mobile phone," Marui snorts.
"I'm too much of a gentleman for that," he answers, tossing back his head and smirking.
There's another pause. Even Yagyuu is frowning now. Then he opens his mouth. "Clearly that is why they call you the Trickster and me the Gentleman, isn't it, Niou-kun?" he says.
Jackal chuckles.
"Clearly, they don't know any better, do they, eh? Yaaaagyuu?" he drawls back.
Yagyuu barely spares him a glance as he slings his bag over his shoulder. "Clearly," he responds dryly. "I have to leave or I will be late for a certain tutoring session."
And with that winning parting-note on the subject, he's off.
Niou scowls after him, long after he's gone through the door.
Marui slings an arm around his shoulder conspiratorially. Pops a bubble. "I would've preferred for it to be you, man. Honest. No hopes for Yagyuu being of any help. And I would so die for a good shot of Tatsuki-chan's mighty bosom."
Shrugging him off, Niou elbows him and hisses into his ear, "Promise?"
Marui scowls.
***
"…fuck!" he groans under his breath and lets out a heavy sigh of satiation. Short-lived though it might be. At his feet, his come swirls down the drain. As always, post-coital, his stomach shivers. It's weird, but a good orgasm causes the skin on his belly to tremble. And this was a very good orgasm.
Marui isn't wrong.
But he isn't right for the correct reasons.
Alright, yes, he totally would take a picture of Kikutake Tatsuki's bosom. Just because. Probably enlarge it, write 'Got Milk?' on it and make a hundred or so photocopies of it, which he would spread throughout the school.
With tits like that, leaving your blouse unbuttoned at the top is asking for it, really.
But he doesn't want to tutor Kikutake with the globular rack of wondrousness because of Kikutake's generous assets.
Really.
He doesn't want Yagyuu tutoring her and possibly taking notice of said assets, which might lead him to try and figure out what the radius of those semi-spherical attachments would be. Kinda moot, since the whole male population has been in a frenzy about it since she made an re-appearance in high school with a cup-size three times the one she had in middle school and have been attempting to guess the true size and weight of those suckers ever since.
Point being?
Niou doesn't want Yagyuu to notice her.
He wants Yagyuu to notice-
"A-ni-ki!" his brother hollers through the door, pounding on it. "It's my turn! Hurry up or I'll tell okaa-san!"
Niou sighs, mouths 'puri' under his breath. He runs his hands through his hair one last time to get the last of the suds out of it. It's fried enough from all the bleaching and it probably won't help to leave in half of the soap bottle to fester at his roots.
He dries off, lets the sodden towel drop on the floor, kicks open the door and walks out naked.
"Eeew! Gross!" his brother yowls, covering both eyes with his hands. "What took you so long?"
"What do you think?" he returns. Wags his eyebrows at the confused look.
"EEEEW!" his brother shrieks, shaking his head in denial as he lacks any more appendages to cover up his brain to protect it from the mental image. "GROSS!"
"Don't slip on anything," he adds, before sauntering into his room.
There's a howl of dismay that might translate to oooo-kaaaaaa-saaaaaaaaa-haaaaaa-aaaaan, but Niou shuts his door on it halfway through.
Idiot.
With a huff, he flops down on his bed. He frowns and sticks out his tongue at the ceiling. The room is in shadows. His hair falls down around his face with the wax and the gel washed out of it and it tickles at his nose. His sheets smell musty -no surprise there- and somewhere in the distance a train rattles by. His Maths book lies open on page 82.
He's not in the mood for Maths.
Even though he should really just knuckle down and jot down the solutions -it would only take him fifteen minutes- instead of rushing through them and make a messy scrawl as he does them on the bus tomorrow morning. But his mind is elsewhere.
It takes him long enough that the shadows turn to night before he fishes out his mobile phone and types out a quick text:
How was the tutoring session?
Send.
Maybe Yagyuu has already gone to bed, it's past ten and a school day tomorrow. Niou's feet touch the ground and he stands up to walk a tight circle, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. Then he opens up the window. Heavy, thick summer air rolls inside, with just the tiniest hint of chill of the oncoming night in its wake. Curtains billow gently inwards, brushing against his naked skin, before the circulation in his room reverses and spills out, fluttering them outwards. There's sea and pollution in the air, and freshly mown grass.
He wonders if anybody sees him now: a lanky teenager stark, buck naked behind a sheet of gauzy fabric. A pale silhouette, at most.
His phone beeps.
Niou grabs at it so violently he knocks it off his bedside cabinet. It slides under his bed. Amidst dustbunnies, used matches, thumbtacks and moldy socks he tracks it down.
Satisfactory.
That's it.
Niou closes his eyes, lets his head drop to his bed.
It probably means that it went well, just that. But it could also mean that Kikutake Tatsuki let him calculate the actual volume of her breasts or even how those things manage to defy gravity the way they do. But with Yagyuu? It's hard to tell.
He's so screwed.
And only figuratively at that.
Dammit.
***
Niou watches Yagyuu watch Kikutake.
It's a Thursday. No practice. Yukimura might act like it, but he's not captain yet. If he had been, they would've had practice every single day. Yukimura will not stand for another loss. Not to Seigaku, not to Hyotei, not to anyone else.
But he's not captain.
So he and Yagyuu are walking home after school.
Kikutake is to talking to friends over by the water fountain. She might talk as politely as Yagyuu does, but her skirt hitches up higher and higher by the second and her uniform shirt strains over her bosom.
Five or so guys pass her. They stare. One of them trips over his own feet and ends up with a face-full of dirt and scraped knees. And a ridiculously obvious stiffy. His friends laugh. Kikutake makes a concerned face, asks if he is alright. Her chest heaves.
Niou rolls his eyes, slouches.
"No tutoring session today?" he mutters, feigning unholy glee as he smirks at the idiot who's scrambling to his feet, erection wilting under the onslaught of ridicule.
"Only on Wednesdays," Yagyuu answers. He lifts up his wrist, checks the time. "I have to hurry. See you tomorrow at practice, Niou-kun."
With that, he walks off. Briskly. Back straight, hair straight, tie straight.
Niou watches him, slouched with hands deep in his pockets, hair gelled into orderly chaos, shirt untucked and tie at half-mast.
"Yagyuu!" he yells after him.
Yagyuu turns half around, looks at him.
"Tutor me!" he shouts.
"What?!" Yagyuu shouts back.
"Tutor me!" Niou repeats.
"Niou-kun," Yagyuu shakes his head. Looks over his shoulder. He yells something back, something Niou doesn't get and then he's a retreating form into the distance.
Later, when Niou rides the bus home, he gets a text:
You're better at maths than me.
***
"Show me your notes!" Niou says.
Yagyuu looks up. Blinks. "Why?"
"Because. Show them to me," he repeats, through clenched teeth.
Yagyuu doesn't roll his eyes. It's not his style. If it had been, they'd have rotated out of his skull by now. But he does hand Niou the notes.
Grabbing them, paper crackling and protesting under his clawed fingers, Niou sits down with them.
They're having lunch together in an empty classroom. Niou makes sure to get sauce from the cafeteria's mystery special all over the notes and he doesn't straighten out the paper.
Yagyuu frowns.
Troublesome fellow, his expression hides, but doesn't express.
Niou knows anyway. He smirks.
It's algebra. Not the hardest of equations either, at that. But Yagyuu goes on to write the xes between the coefficient and variables in the next step and then by expanding through the FOIL method, nice and easily working open his monomials and polynomials. Sometimes he even makes one separate line just to clear away a minus or plus before parenthesis, chipping at the equations like a bird pecking at a corncob.
That chick must be really dumb, Niou scoffs inwardly, if she can't even get through the obvious.
His eyes scan down, sixteen painstaking steps before reaching the actual conclusion. It's something Niou hardly needs to write out four steps for, maybe less if he had time to think about it.
y = 82.
The conclusion is 82.
"Wrong," he sneers, tossing the papers back into Yagyuu's lap.
Yagyuu picks them up, wipes his palm over them to smooth them out. "How so?"
"The answer is 28," he says.
A small pause. Yagyuu goes over the equation, re-calculates the whole of it. "How can it possibly be 28?" he wants to know.
Niou nudges invisible frames up his nose. "How can it possibly be 82?" he mimics. The upside of having studied Yagyuu's mannerisms down to the last detail: the inflection of his voice, the manner in which the words roll of his tongue, the very curve and flex of his lips… all Yagyuu's.
Anybody else would be disturbed.
Yagyuu isn't just anybody else. He smirks, leers. "Obvious, right?" he says, in Niou's voice.
Puri, his expression says.
They study the problem together. Step by step, by addition, by subtraction, by multiplication, by division, with exponents and variables scattered throughout, they solve in tandem, until there is nothing left.
"2882?" Niou goes, scratching at his hair.
Yagyuu coughs. "8228." he says.
A shared look.
The rest of lunch they are bend over the algebra equation together, arguing and muttering and offering possible solutions. A school bench isn't very big and their thighs are touching when they shift or their arms might brush. Niou is caught between frustration over the exercise and frustration between his legs. Sometimes he breathes in really deep and feels the skin on their forearms catch, the hairs tickle.
Yagyuu is warm.
Everybody always says how cold he can be, but Niou knows it is not true. Yagyuu always is impossibly warm, as though his blood runs just a few degrees hotter than it should be. He can't be all ice and aloofness if he can put on a wig, contacts, draw on a mole, hit a ball with his left hand and be him down to the core.
It's not a complete act for Yagyuu, to be Niou. Maybe almost more of a release. Or indulgence.
Then again, being Yagyuu? Biggest damn turn-on, ever. To part his hair just so, to nudge those glasses up his nose -precise, neat- and to nod and say, 'Yes, sensei, or course sensei'. A release, too. Sometimes a rather literal one at that.
There's no reason to be Yagyuu these days, the mindfucking in their game has become a little too subtle for that and the switch only works so many times. What is fun is making people think they've switched, when they haven't, which is a switch upon a switch and the most delightful mind game ever. Still, maybe some day again. A switch over a switch over a switch? Just blending over into each other until the boundaries are one smudge of YagyuuNiouYagyuuNiouthem.
But he kinda misses it.
Sometimes he puts on the glasses, the ones with plain glass, when he does his homework. He tucks in his shirt and straightens his back. No gel or wax. Neat, precise kanji. Almost Yagyuu but not really.
Sitting here, with Yagyuu next to him and the smell of marker, tip-ex and the leftovers from their lunch in the air, is good enough for now.
Niou forgets about how he lies in bed at night with his own hand around his dick and Yagyuu's name rolling of his tongue and in the mornings, too, or sometimes even in the showers after practice, because he'd been sneaking looks at Yagyuu's ass in those white shorts. Or you know, when he was out those shorts to change.
It's just him and Yagyuu, leaning in over the same problem, blending together just a little.
And then the bell rings and classes start and Yagyuu says:
"Maybe I shouldn't pose Kikutake this one before we've figured it out ourselves."
Niou looks up, then looks away. Shrugs. He scratches at his hair, tousles it and looks disinterestedly out through the window. "Yeah. Whatever."
Yagyuu nods, tells him he'll see him at practice. Leaves.
When he's gone, Niou sighs rubs at his face.
Dammit.
***
It's when Niou finds himself, a week later, at his desk with the glasses on, the impossible algebra exercise before him and his hand down his pants that he realizes he needs to do something about his 'situation'.
Besides grabbing tissues to clean off, of course.
He needs to do something to make Yagyuu… notice him.
That way.
However, easier said than done.
Cause 1) they're both guys and 2) he doesn't want to go and say it. Like that. It's gay enough as it is, with his hand still smelling of come and the fake glasses on his nose. If he goes up to Yagyuu and says 'I like you. Will you be my boyfriend?' he'll probably die from overload of gayness. And he'd throw himself under a train to be done with it anyway.
Niou Masaharu doesn't confess.
That and he kinda doesn't dare to. Yagyuu will probably lift an eyebrow and say: "Excuse me, Niou-kun? I think I misheard, but it sounded as though you just made a completely homo-sounding confession to me."
Yeah.
Not an option.
But how is he going to make Yagyuu notice him next to Kikutake Tatsuki's ginormous bosom and magically fluttering-up-in-the-nonexistent-wind skirt?
Besides, Yagyuu has seen him naked.
What more can he do?
Solve this problem, perhaps.
But his latest attempt just got him 282, right after he got 828 and 822 before that. There's probably something fundamentally wrong with the whole equation which makes it unsolvable, but he hasn't been able to pin it down yet.
Making an angry, fat X over his latest result, Niou scowls and throws his pencil down.
If all else fails he could always put on a skirt himself. Stuff two watermelons down the front of his shirt.
Niou laughs wryly, shaking his head at himself.
Yeah right.
***
Everything seems hell-bent on failing.
Then again Yagyuu is used to him hanging all over him and drawling 'Yaaaaaagyuuuu' in his ear when he wants something (Yagyuu, specifically, in this case), he's used to Niou being naked in the change rooms and doesn't seem to care if he walks around naked, either. He's used to scribbled nonsense in the margin in his notes and Niou stealing the prawns out of his bento. He's used to having to call on Niou as a member of the disciplinary committee.
Besides confessing (no way) and kissing Yagyuu (no fucking way), Niou doesn't know how to express himself. Or how to show it.
It messes with his tennis. It messes with his head.
Yagyuu is right there, on the other side of the net. A straight-backed, almost polite presence. "Let's have a good game, Niou-kun," he says.
Throwing up his racket, watching spin twice before returning on the down-arc, he catches it. Right-handed.
Yagyuu lifts a brow. Niou clucks his tongue, winks.
Slowly and deliberately, Yagyuu switches hands. Nods.
"Want to play, do you?" Niou calls out to him as he bounces the ball. "I can do that."
It's his serve. He makes it sharp and fast, angles it into a corner, nothing Yagyuu can't handle, but it's nice to see him run for it. You know. See his butt clench and shift when he moves. See him plant his foot, his left arm swing and move with confident grace as he returns the serve.
With a little grunt Niou hits it back, precise, calculated, fast. His shoulders are straight, as is his back.
Yagyuu makes it a lazy lob, as slouched and easy as he is.
Up against the blue the ball travels, a high arc that blots out the sun, impostor-like, before coming down.
Niou steps back, calm and cool. Returns it. "That all you got, Yaaaaagyuuuu?" he calls.
Yagyuu hitches up an eyebrow. And hits the laser beam.
Viciously precise. Hypnotic, if it hadn't been as beautifully fast as it is. Surprise, surprise: because they're being each other and the laser should be a trick up his sleeve now, but Yagyuu doesn't seem to want to play nice.
One thing can be said for having had Yukimura as a captain. He might be surprised, but his legs and body move despite that, feet making a one-two-three-four, like flying, before his right hand moves to cradle the ball on the face of his racket. The impact shivers up his arm, bends the strings, and then he's slugging it back as equally fast and vicious. It snaps into the clay precisely against the baseline, before slamming into the chain-link fence with a hideous clatter.
15-0
"Oi, Yagyuu!" he calls back. "If ya wanna play dirty, you should play seriously."
They rally furiously over the next point, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, the yellow blurring, Niou's eyes narrowing and Yagyuu's lips whitening, waiting to see who will break the pattern, or will fumble a return. Niou messes around a little, sending the ball back lower and lower and lower until they're brushing the net as the ball passes over it, making it flutter like a leaf in the wind. Then Yagyuu starts to angle it up and up and up and up, making them both back up a step on each return to get it, until Niou finds himself pinned against the baseline.
"Puri."
On the other hand, that's where Yagyuu is, too.
Where they tested the limits vertically, they now do horizontally.
Niou makes sharp slices, having send the first one over ever so slightly diagonally. Yagyuu didn't have to move, just stretch out his left hand a little further to return it. Also angled, but in the opposite direction. They repeat this, once, twice, the motion thickening like an out of control pendulum, until first Yagyuu and then Niou have to step sideways to get it.
Like before they rally, back and forth at top-speed, until they hit the limit of the court and have to run the width of it to reach their returns.
The continued repetition makes the muscles burn in his shoulders, his calves ache.
It's glorious.
Until Yagyuu abruptly decides he's had enough and hits another laser beam.
Niou is at the other side, alert enough to react, but not possibly fast enough to run down a shot of such speed.
15-15
"Better?" Yagyuu asks, nudging his glasses into place.
"Not shabby." Niou acknowledges, grinning.
They play with patterns until first Niou and then Yagyuu takes a game with it. Even after this, Yagyuu is still playing as a southpaw and Niou continues to hit right handed, though their playing styles have started to slip into one big amalgamation of being each other. Laser beams are hit by both sides while tricks, traps are set up and sprung left and right.
At one point Sanada stops to watch their game and after a few minutes of it he's muttering 'tarundoru' and 'playing around' under his breath, but he can't do jack shit, Niou knows, because nobody's died and made him fuku-buchou yet. Though that is undoubtedly Yukimura's master plan.
Sanada doesn't get it, Niou thinks and bares his teeth through a smash. They are.
Their way.
At 5-4 for him, Niou decides to mirror Yagyuu, which is in and upon himself not as easy as it sounds, though he can switch back to his left hand to make the mirror-image illusion work. Not just Yagyuu's volleys and lobs and slices does he copy, but his expression and the pace of his breathing, the little grunts he makes.
Yagyuu frowns when he sees what Niou is doing, so Niou frowns as disapprovingly and annoyed right back.
It's not a little delightful to know that Yagyuu is facing himself over the net now, even though he of all people knows exactly who and what he is facing.
On top of that, it freezes the game. Yagyuu would have to break through the illusion or lose a point deliberately to make Niou lose one. But the sun is sinking orange and heavy, reflecting off the windows of the school, covering everything in a honey-hued layer and most matches have ended some time ago, while they are still stuck at 5-4. The cicadas chirp, endless, and they return each other's balls, endless.
Despite the glee at the situation, the delight to see Yagyuu's frustration but also his secret enjoyment of the challenge, Niou is starting to become uncomfortable. Having a solid hard-on is not exactly a welcome addition.
Usually, when he immerses himself into being Yagyuu as he is now, not to mention for as long as he's been keeping it up, he usually ends with his hand down his boxers. It's his kind of being close to Yagyuu, in a way, as bodily realistic as he can manage though there's only one person, which never truly is Yagyuu. Still, anything will do. Anything to feel a little closer to Yagyuu.
But now Yagyuu is across the net - not to mention sweaty and flushed- and it adds a bad factor to the already fucked up situation.
Yagyuu's luck, because he manages to take a point when he hits a laser beam, but not before announcing it by a loud and clear: "Adieu."
Niou shudders and feels numb desire pound between his legs and fumbles with getting the word past his lips. The illusion cracks along with his voice on the unfamiliar vowels.
15-0 Yagyuu.
"Distracted, Niou-kun?" Yagyuu asks, as he rolls his shoulders.
Niou's eyes widen, just a fraction, but hopefully not enough for Yagyuu to see from where he's standing. Does he suspect…? No.
But Yagyuu goes on. "Shall we play as you now?"
And damn, why does that sound so erotic and filthy when Yagyuu says it like that? If only there was some way to adjust himself so it wouldn't hurt being trapped in his shorts like that. And thank God his shirt was bought for him to grow into, with currently still room to spare, so it covers the tent.
Damn you, Yagyuu.
Already Yagyuu is becoming him. The slouch, the tilt of his head, the vague insolence on his face. He stands with his feet planted, racket over his shoulder. Niou sees himself there, how sloppy he looks, but then Yagyuu launches into a furious battle for the next point and Niou sees him glide with a certain smooth elegance through the game.
Like he does, Niou supposes.
They volley and wrangle, their shorts sharp and tricksy, mirrored still and Niou wonders if Yagyuu can beat Niou by being Niou.
That would be fucked up.
He smirks and Yagyuu smirks back. They both laugh and change a smash into a drop shot, arms moving at sudden, unexpected angles. Yagyuu laughs, or Niou does, they're both him anyway, because this is so much fun, so good and right and something that is theirs.
"Yagyuu-san!"
Niou fumbles his return.
30-0 Yagyuu.
The ball rolls towards the net and Niou feels his erection wilt at the anticlimactic sensation of that point, not to mention when he realizes that the game -the true, real game- is over. A game, behind the game in their game, one that Yagyuu didn't know about. A tennis game not about tennis.
"Tatsuki-chan," Yagyuu responds. He seems slightly baffled when he realizes he's completely forgotten about her.
There's not a shred of arousal left in Niou's shorts. He sighs, jaw clenching.
Stupid bitch.
It would've worked. It was working. Yagyuu was there, was him even, and playing with him, instead of tutoring Kikutake after Wednesday's practice.
"Yagyuu-san?" she asks breathily, eyes doe-like and blinking. "I was waiting for you, but… but you didn't show up."
"Please, excuse me." Yagyuu says, walking off the court briskly to grab his bag. "I shall be there immediately. My apologies."
"Alright," she murmurs and nods. With a toss she sends the demure braid over her shoulder, but not without leveling a look at Niou. Niou smiles, waggles his fingers. She huffs. With a whirl of her skirt she flounces off, back towards the building.
"Niou-kun!" Yagyuu he says in a low voice, as he zips his racket up, "why didn't you say anything?"
Niou makes a show of pulling the elastic out of his rat-tail. The longer hair comes loose and then proceeds with sticking into the sweat on his neck. "I forgot," he drawls. He scratches his stomach, shrugs. "You did, too."
Yagyuu tsks, but doesn't comment any further. He leaves, too.
Alone, Niou stand on the court, waiting for Yagyuu to storm back out of the clubhouse so he can hurry after Kikutake and her heaving chest. With Yagyuu's shadow retreating in the distance, Niou stands there even longer until the sweat on his body dries. Detached from his skin, his hair floats around his face. Niou stands on his side of the court, his game failed and unfinished and only leaves when the captain makes him.
After his shower, he goes home.
Alone.
...on to part 2!
Comment on part 2, please.