FicAlert! PoT> Dependence (Silver Pair) PG Pt1
Title: Dependence
Writer: Everlind
Wordcount: 13 300
Pairing: Silver Pair
Rating: PG
Warnings: LOTS of tennis (possibly of the inaccurately written kind). Atobe's conniving. Ohtori over-thinking. Shishido being thick. Oshitari being… you know.
Summary: The Kantou Tournament is near. How do you learn to play doubles with someone in four days?
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: So much tennis and so little boy touching. Goodness.
Thank you nerdish for all the encouragement and support!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHISHIDO RYOU!!!
*Special:* Number 026 'Teammates' for the Big Table of Doom
PLEASE VISIT SHISHIDO'S BIRTHDAY FEST AT tori_shishi!!!
Dependence
Monday mornings are always the worst.
After all it is the first day of the week. Of a whole week of school and classes and tests.
Ohtori, for all his dedication to his education, doesn't like Mondays any better than the rest of his peers. This one is particularly bad, though. Heavier and more stifled than all others to have gone by this year. Sunday, yesterday, has left him feeling like a washcloth that's been wrung out too tightly. Too much emotion and stress, followed by yet another night of harsh, tearing pangs stabbing into his body.
Absentmindedly he reaches down and rubs his shins through his track-pants. Please, please let it just be pains from all the extra exercise past two weeks have been filled with. Anything. But not growing pains. Not that. He's one hundred eighty-five centimeters tall. He's thirteen.
Really now.
Anything but growing pains.
The bus jostles through the streets. They're deserted.
Quarter to seven. There will be morning practice for the rest of the week. After all, the Kantou Tournament is this Friday. Less than five days left. They have to win. Have to. Or it ends there and then.
Ohtori knows he should start feeling nervous, but he's tired and preoccupied and only slightly worried about his lack of a doubles partner. He wonders what Atobe will do with him now.
The loss of Taki-san is a doubled edged presence taking up residence in his chest. Yes, he does feel awful. Taki was a good senpai, a good doubles partner and a good person. And, indirectly, Ohtori stabbed him in the back.
But how can he truly feel guilty when Shishido-san is back on the team?
He did the impossible.
Thinking about that victory, though technically not his own, makes him feel quite the opposite of awful.
The bus shudders to a stop and Ohtori struggles with arranging two bags and a violin case in the narrow space. Where his tennis bag rests, his skin grows damp instantly.
It's so hot. Even this early.
On the courts there's the sound of tennis balls being passed back and forth already. He hears a haughty rap of a command and voices chiming a loud 'haaaaaai'. Even Atobe-san has come early. He wants to win more badly than all of them combined. Ohtori resolves to give it his everything this Friday. If he is allowed to play. After all, what is a doubles player without a partner?
There's a slight flutter in his chest, but not much more. The true panic will probably settle in a day before the Tournament.
He walks into the clubhouse right as Shishido-san walks out.
They both freeze.
Ohtori doesn't know what to say.
Sunday, though only yesterday, is an entirely different era. The bond he formed with Shishido-san over the past two weeks was severed precisely and finally so yesterday. Shishido did what he set out to do, the thing he asked Ohtori to help him with. There is no need for him anymore. That aside, Shishido-san is his senpai and they have never really taken much notice of each other before. Alright, he does admit to having been in quite some awe of Shishido (and, ah, okay, his hair) when he first joined. Maybe even admired him; his thoughtless bravery (saving babies like he did it every day) and rough-edged manner of being. But that quickly changed when Shishido turned out to be just another person on the team with a serious attitude problem.
But.
After what happened… he kind of wants to be friends with him.
His mouth opens but there's no words. What does he say?
He's never been a social butterfly, someone who easily makes friends, like Mukahi-san. He doesn't brim with witty commentary as Oshitari-senpai does. His best friend is, and has been for years, Hiyoshi. He knows a lot of people and gets along with them just fine. If Hiyoshi is doing work for the school newspaper, he doesn't lack any company to sit with during lunch. But there it ends.
Shishido-san is so vastly different and so interesting that Ohtori has a hard time letting go now he's seen a little glimpse of that other, kinder, side.
Yesterday they did go out after practice together to get Shishido-san a cap. It had been sort of awkward, but not bad, and Ohtori had tried to work up the courage to ask his senpai whether he wanted to go for ramen with him. His treat. To celebrate. But it sounded all so wrong and childish and desperate in his head that he chewed much too long on the words. Shishido left sooner than Ohtori had wanted him to, but his senpai had been so tired and had still seemed dazed with the knowledge that he was back on the team.
So he stands there, a stutter caught in his throat, with all those thoughts rattling through his skull, when Shishido-san tilts his head and quirks a little grin at him.
"You look like you just crawled out from under a rock," he says.
Ohtori breathes. Blinks. Looks at his senpai. He looks just as bruised and battered as he did yesterday. Not as bad as when they first started out, but beaten up all the same. At least there's a clean bandage on his eyebrow. He looks like a whole different person, back in his regular's shirt, hair shorn. And yet still him. Ohtori doesn't think there is anything out there that can make Shishido-san be any less… well, Shishido-san. He's bit like a force of nature, in that regard.
"Your hair-" Ohtori manages uselessly, after groping vainly for something more intelligent to say."It's more even."
Shishido's eyes veer up as he runs his fingers through it. "Yeah," he snorts. "My mother freaked out. She was at it all evening to try and fix it. Didn't really work though." He turns his head showing a big chunk of hair that Shishido's scissors sheared off with barely a finger's length spared.
He grins and starts towards the courts, but pauses to elbow Ohtori lightly. "But I got this now, don't I?" he says and puts on the blue cap they got yesterday. "Still not used to the bill though. Can't see anything coming from high up."
"Wait-" Ohtori reaches for the bill and tugs it around, backwards.
"Hah!" Shishido chuckles ruefully. "That I didn't think of that earlier. Thanks- ah, go get ready, Atobe is giving us the evil eye."
And indeed he is. Ohtori is surprised neither of them turn to stone. With that, both of them go their separate ways.
Ohtori tries his best to find his old rhythm, but the whole regular's team is still recovering from the sudden over-haul. There's Hiyoshi in his bright new regular's shirt and Shishido back in his old one. And, amazingly, there's Taki.
"Taki-san!" he exclaims, confused.
Taki smiles. "I know, right?" he tugs at the hem of a blue sleeve. "Won't be included in the Tournament line-up, though, Atobe said. Looks like you're on your own, Choutarou-kun."
Ohtori feels his own smile falter. "Oh."
"Don't worry," Taki hastens to assure him. "You're too valuable to be used as a reserve. They're just trying to give you a new place. Probably in doubles two."
He nods, cracks a tense smile and starts on his laps. He should be grateful. He should be. But he's a defect unit now. He's no good as a singles player. At least not with so many other, better, choices for singles.
Practice ends with everybody tugging at their shirt collars and groaning as they pile into the showers. Ohtori has a glimpse of Shishido-san whipping off his shirt and revealing his torso covered in fist-sized, yellow-brownish bruises. He winces and looks away to pick out a stall. As the showers shut off one by one, leaving everything steamy and smelling of wet boy, the clubhouse tickles empty in no time. Everybody hurries off towards their first class.
Hiyoshi accompanies him towards the building. "You look troubled," he says.
Lifting his shoulders in a shrug, Ohtori realizes that the panic is starting to settle in now. Likely because he's more awake to realize the profound change that has just wracked the regular's team, with emphasis on his own position in it. "It is nothing, Hiyoshi-kun. I hope we will win this Friday," is what he tells his friend. No use in whining about it.
"We will," Hiyoshi says. "See you at lunch?"
"Ah, no," Ohtori smiles apologetically. "Music practice during lunch."
"Right then," Hiyoshi nods. "See you in the regular's clubhouse then." The way 'regular's' rolls of his tongue is as though he's savoring the word, tasting the sensation of the significance it carries.
Ohtori smothers a little grin. Hiyoshi is much more elated at being a regular than he initially showed. Now that it isn't truly on the back of Shishido's hard work anymore, Ohtori is happy for him.
He deserves to be there.
Ohtori himself though... as one part of a pair without another half.
He sighs again and heads towards his first class.
***
It feels good to pour some of the frustration into the piano. His violin lies on a desk behind him, but right now he just needs to bite his way through a particularly difficult symphony, leaning on the keys with more force than necessary.
Vaguely he hears the rest of the orchestra try and keep up with him, but the aggressive torrent of his music sweeps over the feebler strains. Ohtori is always as unapologetically good as he can be at music. The rest should be able to keep up, they are on the orchestra for a reason, but today his passion leaves them cowed and timid.
Sakaki says as much to them as they pack up with barely enough time to stomp down their lunches. "This was a weak performance. You play with all your heart, or not at all."
Murmurs of agreement and apology. Some of the members give Ohtori looks, resentful ones.
"Ohtori-kun," Sakaki continues. "Less dominant. Let the others breathe."
Ohtori deflates some. "Aa. Sorry, sensei." He reaches for his violin.
"Ohtori-kun."
He stops breathing. "Yes, sensei?" he asks softly.
"Stay," Sakaki tells him.
Ohtori curses inwardly, closes his eyes for a moment. He knew this was coming. There was no way that he would have gotten away with helping Shishido-san the way he did with no repercussions. So he stays, having to watch all the others flee, bentos already tucked under their arms. His stomach growls.
"Ohtori-kun."
"Yes?"
"I have decided not to drop Taki off the regulars," Sakaki says.
Ohtori doesn't say anything, just feels something inside of him knot itself into a cold lump. Behind him is the piano. He brushes his palm over its glowing surface and breathes.
"He won't be your doubles partner again. Ever," Sakaki continues.
In the significant pause, Ohtori looks back steadily and wishes Sakaki wouldn't play with him like a cat teases a mouse. Nevertheless, he refuses to break his facade. Polite smile, attentive look.
Sakaki's eyes narrow. "Shishido will be your new doubles partner now."
Ohtori's expression doesn't falter, but he leans bodily back against the piano, thrown off balance so badly he sways from it physically.
"You have the privilege to inform him of this," Sakaki adds. The corner of his mouth tugs up the slightest fraction.
Ohtori smiles, nods. "Yes, coach," he says and turns to leave.
As he walks out of the music room he thinks: Oh god, no.
Sakaki did have the last word after all.
The bell rings.
Ohtori goes to class, bento untouched.
He's not hungry anyway.
***
You have the privilege to inform him of this.
Ohtori abandons all hope and angsts.
Just when he thought of trying to reach out to Shishido-san and try to be friends, maybe, he has to go and tell him that sorry, Shishido-senpai, but your singles 3 spot? The one you fought so hard to regain? The one because of which you're covered in bruises and probably permanently scarred in your face? That one? Yeah, you can kiss it goodbye. Because you're stuck with me.
In doubles.
He hears not a word the teachers say to him in class. More than once he's asked whether he's feeling alright, he looks rather pale, maybe he should visit the sick-bay.
Ohtori waves it off with more smiles and profusely apologizes.
Then he spends the rest of his classes staring at the board without truly seeing anything. He's always respected Sakaki. Always, before, Ohtori was able to glean a shimmer of the actual reason behind his actions. There is a logic, a method, to his seemingly cold tactics and decisions.
Now that he's been drawn into one such a tactic himself, Ohtori can't see a valid, reassuring base to back-up this new decision. Not to mention there's more than a little indignation on Shishido's behalf, too.
He doesn't care that Atobe probably has had a hand in Taki's continued membership on the regular's team.
What he cares about is that Shishido-san got kicked off, was left to fight until bruised and scarred, all but humiliated, rejected and then finally re-accepted with what was cool disinterest.
Alright. Yes, it's true. Shishido's attitude problem? Fixed.
It should have ended there. Instead, he gets knocked down a notch on top of it. Dumped in doubles. With him, no less.
Clever way to tie up loose ends, though.
And why keep Taki and not use him?
Shishido is a singles player. Has been in that slot for a better part of his first, his whole second and the beginning of his third year. What he has seen from Shishido's abilities in doubles recently is meagre. Casual face-offs, with some random partner. Never serious.
He can't even remember whether Shishido is bad at it, or just adept.
He's never had to care.
Ohtori's pencil makes furious doodles in the margins of his book, randomness, dark, jagged lines. In less than five days they have to make a solid combination.
With Shishido's track record they. can't. loose.
And Ohtori doesn't want to lose. At all. He wouldn't have made it to the regulars if he didn't care about winning so much. Would Sakaki kick them both off, if they did?
Ohtori doesn't know.
Worse? These are all the worries clamoring for attention, but loudest of all is the roar of: what do I tell Shishido-san?
***
Ohtori doesn't tell him when he sees him in the clubhouse.
He doesn't tell him, or call out to him, as they run laps.
He doesn't offer to help him with his stretches and whisper it to him furiously under his breath.
And most of all he doesn't suggest they team up for a game of doubles, even though Atobe has randomly decided that today they'll practice formations.
And no, Atobe-san can glare and twitch his eyebrow as much as he wants at Ohtori, but he's not telling Shishido anything now.
Makes only sense that Atobe has had a hand in this, actually.
Do you want him to hate me? Ohtori wants to yell as he furiously slams balls into his opponents' court. His partner, a pre-regular, runs around flapping his arms like a goose, being completely useless. Not that he needs his help, anyway.
When he can, he observes Shishido playing with Oshitari, but the latter is making more a game out of teasing Shishido, than of the tennis itself. Eventually Shishido snatches a ball out of mid-air and hurls it at Oshitari (instead of their opponents), hitting him on the back of his head and the both of them get disqualified.
Ohtori rubs his temples.
Atobe is doing much the same. "Alright, dismissed," he calls out, pinching the bridge of his nose.
With relieved groans, everybody rushes off towards the showers, wanting to claim the best stalls, steal each other's driest and less smelliest towels.
"We lost," Oshitari points out, his smile entirely in discord with the statement. He trails after Shishido, rubbing at the back of his head.
"It's your fault," Shishido hisses back over his shoulder. "Should've left me alone."
"But I missed you while you were gone," Oshitari says.
Shishido kicks him and the two of them end up in a tussle of elbowing and light shoving. Mostly they succeed in blocking the door for the rest of regulars.
"Idiots, the whole lot of them," Hiyoshi speaks up, popping up next to him out of nowhere. He shakes his head after them and then looks up at Ohtori. "What's the matter with you? You're as white as chalk."
Ohtori shakes his head. "Later," he says.
Hiyoshi arches a brow.
"It's a little complicated," Ohtori elaborates reluctantly. "Tell you about it when it's resolved."
"Fair enough," Hiyoshi agrees. "As long as you aren't in some sort of trouble."
The smile that tugs at his lips is wry and empty at best. "Not yet."
***
The shower doesn't help to ease the nerves. He takes it ice-cold to clear his head, but just ends up shivering and more wound up. Almost he stalls too long, some part of him hoping that Shishido will have left already by the time he emerges.
Instead Shishido is still there wrapped up some sort of enthusiastic conversation with Mukahi that seems to involve a lot of arm-waving.
Ohtori even has time to dry himself properly, dress, take time with his buttons, laces and tie and generally fidget and try to avoid the inevitable. Eventually the whole clubhouse is deserted but for him, Shishido-san, Mukahi and Atobe, who does his eyebrow-twitch at him again while he talks on one of his phones with someone.
Ohtori takes a deep breath, clenches his hands into fists and then consciously relaxes them. He walks up to Shishido.
He's still not completely dressed, barefoot and shirtless and of course that means that Ohtori gets a nice, good close-up from all the bruises, scrapes and scabs that make a macabre patch-work quilt out of Shishido's otherwise smooth skin. Somehow his eyes are drawn to the nape of his neck, an area significantly paler than the rest of him, as it was previously protected from the sun by the tassel of his ponytail. As he sidles closer from behind, Shishido makes a sort of exploding noise, arms outlining what could be the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. Ohtori has to smile, even though he is reminded how different they are from one another.
Mukahi is nodding thoughtfully as though he's pondering one of life's deepest mysteries, and then he catches sight of Ohtori looming awkwardly behind Shishido.
"Ohtori-kun," he says, blinking.
Shishido turns and looks at him, too.
The bandage is gone from his eyebrow, washed away by the spray of the shower, probably. The wound is horrid: a gaping split, scabbing at the edges and blue spreading outwards from it into Shishido's short hair.
Ohtori swallows. "Shishido-san," he mumbles. "Could I speak to you for a moment?"
Shishido looks surprised, but the corner of his mouth hitches up a little. "Sure, I'll just get dressed."
Avoiding Mukahi's frankly curious looks and Atobe's smug eyebrow tilt, Ohtori shuffles his feet and waits for Shishido to finish. Shishido's shirt is only half-buttoned and sticks to his damp skin as they walk together out of the clubhouse. Almost unconsciously they orbit towards the sakura tree behind the clubhouse, where they had another serious conversation not so long ago.
At last Shishido steps up in front of him, blocking his path. "Okay, what's up? Who died?"
"What?"
"Just," Shishido makes vague motions at his face. "Everything. Is something wrong?"
Ohtori sucks in a shuddering breath. "Well. I. This afternoon. I-"
"Yeees?" Shishido prompts, eyeing him with curiosity.
"Sakaki-san. He wanted to talk to me- We. He said. I-"
Ohtori staggers back a few steps as Shishido all but lunges forwards, hands clamping over his shoulders. He staggers even more when he gets the full-frontal treatment of Shishido's burning, dark gaze. "Fuck. No. No!" he growls, hands painfully tight on Ohtori's body. "That asshole."
Ohtori reels. Did Sakaki already tell him? Did Atobe? Is Shishido psychic?
"I'm so sorry," he goes on, confusing Ohtori. "I thought it was safe. That it was okay. I'll- I'll go talk to him. Tell him to take me instead."
"What?" Ohtori asks, completely befuddled.
"What what?" Shishido counters, genuinely furious. "He can't kick you off the team! I knew he was up to something; it was too easy. But not like this. I'll make him see that it's better for me to go-"
Ohtori interrupts, "Shishido-san."
"-damned stuck-up arsehole, probably has the handle of a racket up his- er. Yes. Sorry. Yes?"
"I'm not off the regulars," Ohtori tells him, touched at Shishido's vehement reaction, though slightly outraged at his foul-worded litany.
"Oh." Shishido-san lets him go rather sheepishly, rocks back on his heels.
"And neither are you," Ohtori follows up, before he gets blasted with another outburst.
"Oh," Shishido goes again and grimaces. "So we are here because…?"
"Sakaki-san. He said we, that Taki and I-" Ohtori trails off, bites his lips. Why is this so hard to say? He can't do this.
"Choutarou."
Ohtori's attentions snaps towards his senpai like an elastic band being released. Choutarou.
"Just tell me," Shishido goes on reassuringly. Then he smirks. "I don't bite. Often."
That does draw a little chuckle out of Ohtori and suddenly he's able to say it as it is. "Sakaki wants us to play doubles together." He swallows. "I'm so sorry, senpai."
There's no crushing disappointment on Shishido's face the way he expected there to be, nor a vicious curl of his lip. Instead he's perfectly still for a moment, a rare occasion indeed, absorbing the information. Even though he is rolling the information over in his head like a mouthful of something foreign, his gaze turned inwards, Ohtori has time to re-affirm to himself that yes, the look in Shishido-san's eyes is always like this.
It was probably the most prominent thing that set him on edge around Shishido, before. That look. No matter what, when or why. No matter the topic of the conversation, the circumstances, Shishido has this way of looking as though he's constantly challenging you. Ohtori hadn't liked that at all, before. When Shishido has looked at him, he'd felt put on the spot, deemed feeble, and then felt as though Shishido demanded why Ohtori wasn't doing the full hundred percent plus then some.
It is a look that, before, had seemed to say: is that it? The best you can do?
After Shishido's own considerable humiliating defeat, it had made Ohtori feel defensive and prickled.
Now he knows that Shishido just always has that look. Intense, almost hungry, and bordering on shamelessly invasive. Aggressive.
And now he's also able to read better all the emotions that seep through that initial impression. Such as now.
Shishido has already accepted the idea. And he confirms this by saying, "Guess that makes sense."
Despite being relieved of walking out of this encounter with his nose still attached, Ohtori feels all the other worries wash it away. "Shishido-san," he says, and his voice cracks a little in his desperation. "We've only got four evenings."
Shishido's mouth forms a strange shape and his eyes dart up to meet his.
And that's a look he's become intimately familiar with, too. Determination. Ohtori almost groans in dismay. And he definitely knows what's coming now.
"Then we had better start practicing, don't you think?" he says.
This time the look in his eyes is most certainly a challenge.
Ohtori knows they've been handed Mission Impossible in the most base form of the meaning. But when Shishido-san looks at him like that? For some reason it makes Ohtori respond with, "Today."
"Today," Shishido confirms and holds out his fist, knuckles forward.
For a moment he blinks at the gesture, the hand extended towards him like a fist-punch paused in mid-motion. Then he gets it. He's never done stuff like this with Taki-san, either, but Ohtori thinks he could get used to this newness.
He fist-bumps Shishido back.
***
"Okay," Shishido-san is saying. "We'll meet up after dinner. Here's my cell number, y'know, in case…" he trails off.
Ohtori flushes guiltily at the memory of leaving Shishido hanging before, on a most crucial moment. The paper he receives is obviously been torn out of a school-issued textbook, the numbers are scrawled in hasty pencil. Just like that, he's got his senpai's cellphone number. He folds it carefully, slips it into his pocket.
"Where should we meet?" Ohtori asks.
"Erm," Shishido goes, eyes darting back and forth restlessly.
"Right here, naturally," a cultured voice speaks up.
Shishido jumps about a mile, knocking Ohtori sideways per accident. "Atobe!"
"Atobe-san," Ohtori echoes and wonders how much he's heard from their conversation.
"I'm quite certain you have a key to the courts, have you not, Shishido?" Atobe says as he walks up to them, mouth curled into a secret smile.
Shishido goes red. Ohtori notices that when he blushes, it's a smudge over his nose and cheekbones, his ears and a gradient flush over his neck and collarbone, too. Now that he thinks about it, how did Shishido get a key to the courts when he was dropped off the regulars? Nobody has one, but Atobe. Use of the spare key has to be granted by explicit, written permission. Ohtori is quite certain that Shishido did not come by the key by asking Atobe nicely for it.
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Shishido growls low, but he's an awful liar. The blush if even more pronounced and his frown quite epic.
Shishido-san, Ohtori groans inwardly and closes his eyes.
Atobe looks as though he's enjoying himself. His eyes shine with amusement. "Oh, come on now, Shishido," he says, chuckling throatily, "you did not honestly believe that Ore-sama would do something as absentminded as leaving the spare key unattended in the middle of my desk, do you now?"
Shishido makes an incoherent noise of anger.
"Let me spell it out for you," Atobe continues, but rather seriously this time. "I knew what you would do. From the moment I dropped you off the team. So I let you find the key. I let you bully Ohtori into helping you. I let Ohtori help you. I let you defeat Taki. I let you run after Sakaki. I let Ohtori follow you. And here you are. Both of you."
Of all things, it is obvious Shishido did not expect this. It's also clear that he cannot understand why Atobe did what he did.
Ohtori, in some secluded corner at the back of his mind, but most prominently in his heart, starts to understand.
"And now I have made it so that the both of you will see it out to the end. Together." Atobe finishes, his smooth voice almost as softly tuned as the orange wash of the early evening settling in. "And Shishido? Don't screw up," he adds. With that he turns smartly on his heel, strides off.
The two of them stand there, flabbergasted.
Shishido looks as though he's been whacked over the head by a sledgehammer, the way he stands there gaping in the general direction Atobe stalked off in.
"Together," Ohtori echoes. Then something dawns on him. "You stole the key, senpai?"
Shishido starts. "Uhm," he goes and runs a hand through his hair. "Well, not really. Atobe wanted me to find it, didn't he?"
"Shishido-san…"
"Well, he did!" Shishido says defensively. Suddenly his jaw drops in the light of sudden realization. "Atobe let me cut my damn hair off! That fucker! I'll get him back!"
That's it. That does it.
Ohtori starts to laugh.
Shishido stares at him for a few heartbeats, watching him get tears in his eyes and gasp for breath as he laughs it off, and then he starts laughing too.
***
It hardly surprises Ohtori to find his senpai already warming up when he returns to the courts. The back of Shishido's shirt is already soaked. Setting down his bag, he joins him. He's a little late because his parents weren't exactly happy with his going out again, even hinting he was little young to have 'special lady friend'.
Muscles flex against his palms as he helps Shishido with his stretches. If only they knew.
They never took Ohtori's tennis very seriously. And they certainly do not appreciate how much time he is prepared to invest in the sport. Certainly they would not approve that he even let his grades slip for a moment because he was investing so much time into someone else's tennis. But it seems that Shishido's tennis will also be his now.
"Alright," Shishido says, rolling his shoulders. "Doubles."
Ohtori looks at his senpai and hopes he's not expecting Ohtori to offer great insights on how to proceed. Taki was always the one who controlled their combination, who guided him, the gamemaker. He's used to taking clues from him.
"I say we play each other first," Shishido continues, carefully looking him up and down.
"Each other?" Ohtori repeats.
"Yeah, well," Shishido flaps his racket vaguely at the other side of the court. "I've seen you play, of course. And we've done a few matches over the years. Not to mention last week I did nothing but watch you play and… and serve. But I didn't really think of you other than an opponent. I'd like to play you and think of how we'd best…" he trails off.
"Find a combo that brings out our strengths?" Ohtori offers tentatively. It's what he feels most doubles pairs do.
A small smile runs around the edges of Shishido's lips. He makes a sort of shrug with a shoulder that means neither yes or no. "… play in perfect balance." he murmurs instead.
Ohtori blinks.
"You're right. To a certain extend," Shishido goes on. "It'd be stupid not to use your serve as trump card, nor your height. And it's a good thing we don't have to squabble for territory. So that's good."
"Don't forget your speed," Ohtori points out, feeling his cheeks redden under the matter-of-fact praise he's receiving.
Another little lop-sided twist of the lips. "Hn," he goes and then moves on, a very new and modest something. "Thing is, it's not just doing the things we're good at and doing them on the same court without getting in each other's way. It's not singles."
"I… suppose," Ohtori concedes. He never expected Shishido, who's happily wallowed in his singles 3 spot for quite some time, to display a subtler grasp of the doubles play than himself.
He remembers a few doubles games of his, of course. Like the very first time he saw Shishido play tennis, it was with Mukahi-senpai against Atobe. But that wasn't so much doubles as what Shishido just described: two players doing what they do best on the same court. But… he remembers that Atobe often made Shishido play with promising pre-regulars in doubles games, because he's good at being… being a gamemaker.
Huh. Ohtori thinks as he realizes that this is true. The more he thinks about Shishido in doubles, the more he remembers him being… a sort of positive guiding force.
It's odd to conclude this in retrospect.
It's just that… Well. He looked up to Shishido for a while, before he joined and for a while longer after he did, true. He was brave and gallant and just… so cool. But then he became down-right arrogant and what used to be a flippant and tough remark seemed to him to become rather condescending at times. And so boastful of his own competence (and unlike Atobe, not likely to be able to back it up all the time). Not to mention his way of looking, always, always as though he thought you came up short to his grand expectations.
He knows better now, of course.
During that period he never quite understood why all the all the other younger members liked him so. Especially after he, himself, had felt thwarted that Shishido wasn't brave and off-handedly kind and and… everything he'd imagined him to be.
Turns out that the person Ohtori looked up to never quite left. Perhaps he knew this, on some level, when he said yes when all this began. He most certainly did this Sunday, when he offered to give up his regular's spot for Shishido-san. He looks up to Shishido more than he ever did when he was in grade school. But the person who stands before him today is more worth it than ever.
Shishido is right when he refers to 'balance', but Ohtori knows in his bones that between them it'll be about trust.
He decides to start right away.
...on to part 2!
Comment on part 2, please.
Writer: Everlind
Wordcount: 13 300
Pairing: Silver Pair
Rating: PG
Warnings: LOTS of tennis (possibly of the inaccurately written kind). Atobe's conniving. Ohtori over-thinking. Shishido being thick. Oshitari being… you know.
Summary: The Kantou Tournament is near. How do you learn to play doubles with someone in four days?
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: So much tennis and so little boy touching. Goodness.
Thank you nerdish for all the encouragement and support!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHISHIDO RYOU!!!
*Special:* Number 026 'Teammates' for the Big Table of Doom
PLEASE VISIT SHISHIDO'S BIRTHDAY FEST AT tori_shishi!!!
Dependence
Monday mornings are always the worst.
After all it is the first day of the week. Of a whole week of school and classes and tests.
Ohtori, for all his dedication to his education, doesn't like Mondays any better than the rest of his peers. This one is particularly bad, though. Heavier and more stifled than all others to have gone by this year. Sunday, yesterday, has left him feeling like a washcloth that's been wrung out too tightly. Too much emotion and stress, followed by yet another night of harsh, tearing pangs stabbing into his body.
Absentmindedly he reaches down and rubs his shins through his track-pants. Please, please let it just be pains from all the extra exercise past two weeks have been filled with. Anything. But not growing pains. Not that. He's one hundred eighty-five centimeters tall. He's thirteen.
Really now.
Anything but growing pains.
The bus jostles through the streets. They're deserted.
Quarter to seven. There will be morning practice for the rest of the week. After all, the Kantou Tournament is this Friday. Less than five days left. They have to win. Have to. Or it ends there and then.
Ohtori knows he should start feeling nervous, but he's tired and preoccupied and only slightly worried about his lack of a doubles partner. He wonders what Atobe will do with him now.
The loss of Taki-san is a doubled edged presence taking up residence in his chest. Yes, he does feel awful. Taki was a good senpai, a good doubles partner and a good person. And, indirectly, Ohtori stabbed him in the back.
But how can he truly feel guilty when Shishido-san is back on the team?
He did the impossible.
Thinking about that victory, though technically not his own, makes him feel quite the opposite of awful.
The bus shudders to a stop and Ohtori struggles with arranging two bags and a violin case in the narrow space. Where his tennis bag rests, his skin grows damp instantly.
It's so hot. Even this early.
On the courts there's the sound of tennis balls being passed back and forth already. He hears a haughty rap of a command and voices chiming a loud 'haaaaaai'. Even Atobe-san has come early. He wants to win more badly than all of them combined. Ohtori resolves to give it his everything this Friday. If he is allowed to play. After all, what is a doubles player without a partner?
There's a slight flutter in his chest, but not much more. The true panic will probably settle in a day before the Tournament.
He walks into the clubhouse right as Shishido-san walks out.
They both freeze.
Ohtori doesn't know what to say.
Sunday, though only yesterday, is an entirely different era. The bond he formed with Shishido-san over the past two weeks was severed precisely and finally so yesterday. Shishido did what he set out to do, the thing he asked Ohtori to help him with. There is no need for him anymore. That aside, Shishido-san is his senpai and they have never really taken much notice of each other before. Alright, he does admit to having been in quite some awe of Shishido (and, ah, okay, his hair) when he first joined. Maybe even admired him; his thoughtless bravery (saving babies like he did it every day) and rough-edged manner of being. But that quickly changed when Shishido turned out to be just another person on the team with a serious attitude problem.
But.
After what happened… he kind of wants to be friends with him.
His mouth opens but there's no words. What does he say?
He's never been a social butterfly, someone who easily makes friends, like Mukahi-san. He doesn't brim with witty commentary as Oshitari-senpai does. His best friend is, and has been for years, Hiyoshi. He knows a lot of people and gets along with them just fine. If Hiyoshi is doing work for the school newspaper, he doesn't lack any company to sit with during lunch. But there it ends.
Shishido-san is so vastly different and so interesting that Ohtori has a hard time letting go now he's seen a little glimpse of that other, kinder, side.
Yesterday they did go out after practice together to get Shishido-san a cap. It had been sort of awkward, but not bad, and Ohtori had tried to work up the courage to ask his senpai whether he wanted to go for ramen with him. His treat. To celebrate. But it sounded all so wrong and childish and desperate in his head that he chewed much too long on the words. Shishido left sooner than Ohtori had wanted him to, but his senpai had been so tired and had still seemed dazed with the knowledge that he was back on the team.
So he stands there, a stutter caught in his throat, with all those thoughts rattling through his skull, when Shishido-san tilts his head and quirks a little grin at him.
"You look like you just crawled out from under a rock," he says.
Ohtori breathes. Blinks. Looks at his senpai. He looks just as bruised and battered as he did yesterday. Not as bad as when they first started out, but beaten up all the same. At least there's a clean bandage on his eyebrow. He looks like a whole different person, back in his regular's shirt, hair shorn. And yet still him. Ohtori doesn't think there is anything out there that can make Shishido-san be any less… well, Shishido-san. He's bit like a force of nature, in that regard.
"Your hair-" Ohtori manages uselessly, after groping vainly for something more intelligent to say."It's more even."
Shishido's eyes veer up as he runs his fingers through it. "Yeah," he snorts. "My mother freaked out. She was at it all evening to try and fix it. Didn't really work though." He turns his head showing a big chunk of hair that Shishido's scissors sheared off with barely a finger's length spared.
He grins and starts towards the courts, but pauses to elbow Ohtori lightly. "But I got this now, don't I?" he says and puts on the blue cap they got yesterday. "Still not used to the bill though. Can't see anything coming from high up."
"Wait-" Ohtori reaches for the bill and tugs it around, backwards.
"Hah!" Shishido chuckles ruefully. "That I didn't think of that earlier. Thanks- ah, go get ready, Atobe is giving us the evil eye."
And indeed he is. Ohtori is surprised neither of them turn to stone. With that, both of them go their separate ways.
Ohtori tries his best to find his old rhythm, but the whole regular's team is still recovering from the sudden over-haul. There's Hiyoshi in his bright new regular's shirt and Shishido back in his old one. And, amazingly, there's Taki.
"Taki-san!" he exclaims, confused.
Taki smiles. "I know, right?" he tugs at the hem of a blue sleeve. "Won't be included in the Tournament line-up, though, Atobe said. Looks like you're on your own, Choutarou-kun."
Ohtori feels his own smile falter. "Oh."
"Don't worry," Taki hastens to assure him. "You're too valuable to be used as a reserve. They're just trying to give you a new place. Probably in doubles two."
He nods, cracks a tense smile and starts on his laps. He should be grateful. He should be. But he's a defect unit now. He's no good as a singles player. At least not with so many other, better, choices for singles.
Practice ends with everybody tugging at their shirt collars and groaning as they pile into the showers. Ohtori has a glimpse of Shishido-san whipping off his shirt and revealing his torso covered in fist-sized, yellow-brownish bruises. He winces and looks away to pick out a stall. As the showers shut off one by one, leaving everything steamy and smelling of wet boy, the clubhouse tickles empty in no time. Everybody hurries off towards their first class.
Hiyoshi accompanies him towards the building. "You look troubled," he says.
Lifting his shoulders in a shrug, Ohtori realizes that the panic is starting to settle in now. Likely because he's more awake to realize the profound change that has just wracked the regular's team, with emphasis on his own position in it. "It is nothing, Hiyoshi-kun. I hope we will win this Friday," is what he tells his friend. No use in whining about it.
"We will," Hiyoshi says. "See you at lunch?"
"Ah, no," Ohtori smiles apologetically. "Music practice during lunch."
"Right then," Hiyoshi nods. "See you in the regular's clubhouse then." The way 'regular's' rolls of his tongue is as though he's savoring the word, tasting the sensation of the significance it carries.
Ohtori smothers a little grin. Hiyoshi is much more elated at being a regular than he initially showed. Now that it isn't truly on the back of Shishido's hard work anymore, Ohtori is happy for him.
He deserves to be there.
Ohtori himself though... as one part of a pair without another half.
He sighs again and heads towards his first class.
***
It feels good to pour some of the frustration into the piano. His violin lies on a desk behind him, but right now he just needs to bite his way through a particularly difficult symphony, leaning on the keys with more force than necessary.
Vaguely he hears the rest of the orchestra try and keep up with him, but the aggressive torrent of his music sweeps over the feebler strains. Ohtori is always as unapologetically good as he can be at music. The rest should be able to keep up, they are on the orchestra for a reason, but today his passion leaves them cowed and timid.
Sakaki says as much to them as they pack up with barely enough time to stomp down their lunches. "This was a weak performance. You play with all your heart, or not at all."
Murmurs of agreement and apology. Some of the members give Ohtori looks, resentful ones.
"Ohtori-kun," Sakaki continues. "Less dominant. Let the others breathe."
Ohtori deflates some. "Aa. Sorry, sensei." He reaches for his violin.
"Ohtori-kun."
He stops breathing. "Yes, sensei?" he asks softly.
"Stay," Sakaki tells him.
Ohtori curses inwardly, closes his eyes for a moment. He knew this was coming. There was no way that he would have gotten away with helping Shishido-san the way he did with no repercussions. So he stays, having to watch all the others flee, bentos already tucked under their arms. His stomach growls.
"Ohtori-kun."
"Yes?"
"I have decided not to drop Taki off the regulars," Sakaki says.
Ohtori doesn't say anything, just feels something inside of him knot itself into a cold lump. Behind him is the piano. He brushes his palm over its glowing surface and breathes.
"He won't be your doubles partner again. Ever," Sakaki continues.
In the significant pause, Ohtori looks back steadily and wishes Sakaki wouldn't play with him like a cat teases a mouse. Nevertheless, he refuses to break his facade. Polite smile, attentive look.
Sakaki's eyes narrow. "Shishido will be your new doubles partner now."
Ohtori's expression doesn't falter, but he leans bodily back against the piano, thrown off balance so badly he sways from it physically.
"You have the privilege to inform him of this," Sakaki adds. The corner of his mouth tugs up the slightest fraction.
Ohtori smiles, nods. "Yes, coach," he says and turns to leave.
As he walks out of the music room he thinks: Oh god, no.
Sakaki did have the last word after all.
The bell rings.
Ohtori goes to class, bento untouched.
He's not hungry anyway.
***
You have the privilege to inform him of this.
Ohtori abandons all hope and angsts.
Just when he thought of trying to reach out to Shishido-san and try to be friends, maybe, he has to go and tell him that sorry, Shishido-senpai, but your singles 3 spot? The one you fought so hard to regain? The one because of which you're covered in bruises and probably permanently scarred in your face? That one? Yeah, you can kiss it goodbye. Because you're stuck with me.
In doubles.
He hears not a word the teachers say to him in class. More than once he's asked whether he's feeling alright, he looks rather pale, maybe he should visit the sick-bay.
Ohtori waves it off with more smiles and profusely apologizes.
Then he spends the rest of his classes staring at the board without truly seeing anything. He's always respected Sakaki. Always, before, Ohtori was able to glean a shimmer of the actual reason behind his actions. There is a logic, a method, to his seemingly cold tactics and decisions.
Now that he's been drawn into one such a tactic himself, Ohtori can't see a valid, reassuring base to back-up this new decision. Not to mention there's more than a little indignation on Shishido's behalf, too.
He doesn't care that Atobe probably has had a hand in Taki's continued membership on the regular's team.
What he cares about is that Shishido-san got kicked off, was left to fight until bruised and scarred, all but humiliated, rejected and then finally re-accepted with what was cool disinterest.
Alright. Yes, it's true. Shishido's attitude problem? Fixed.
It should have ended there. Instead, he gets knocked down a notch on top of it. Dumped in doubles. With him, no less.
Clever way to tie up loose ends, though.
And why keep Taki and not use him?
Shishido is a singles player. Has been in that slot for a better part of his first, his whole second and the beginning of his third year. What he has seen from Shishido's abilities in doubles recently is meagre. Casual face-offs, with some random partner. Never serious.
He can't even remember whether Shishido is bad at it, or just adept.
He's never had to care.
Ohtori's pencil makes furious doodles in the margins of his book, randomness, dark, jagged lines. In less than five days they have to make a solid combination.
With Shishido's track record they. can't. loose.
And Ohtori doesn't want to lose. At all. He wouldn't have made it to the regulars if he didn't care about winning so much. Would Sakaki kick them both off, if they did?
Ohtori doesn't know.
Worse? These are all the worries clamoring for attention, but loudest of all is the roar of: what do I tell Shishido-san?
***
Ohtori doesn't tell him when he sees him in the clubhouse.
He doesn't tell him, or call out to him, as they run laps.
He doesn't offer to help him with his stretches and whisper it to him furiously under his breath.
And most of all he doesn't suggest they team up for a game of doubles, even though Atobe has randomly decided that today they'll practice formations.
And no, Atobe-san can glare and twitch his eyebrow as much as he wants at Ohtori, but he's not telling Shishido anything now.
Makes only sense that Atobe has had a hand in this, actually.
Do you want him to hate me? Ohtori wants to yell as he furiously slams balls into his opponents' court. His partner, a pre-regular, runs around flapping his arms like a goose, being completely useless. Not that he needs his help, anyway.
When he can, he observes Shishido playing with Oshitari, but the latter is making more a game out of teasing Shishido, than of the tennis itself. Eventually Shishido snatches a ball out of mid-air and hurls it at Oshitari (instead of their opponents), hitting him on the back of his head and the both of them get disqualified.
Ohtori rubs his temples.
Atobe is doing much the same. "Alright, dismissed," he calls out, pinching the bridge of his nose.
With relieved groans, everybody rushes off towards the showers, wanting to claim the best stalls, steal each other's driest and less smelliest towels.
"We lost," Oshitari points out, his smile entirely in discord with the statement. He trails after Shishido, rubbing at the back of his head.
"It's your fault," Shishido hisses back over his shoulder. "Should've left me alone."
"But I missed you while you were gone," Oshitari says.
Shishido kicks him and the two of them end up in a tussle of elbowing and light shoving. Mostly they succeed in blocking the door for the rest of regulars.
"Idiots, the whole lot of them," Hiyoshi speaks up, popping up next to him out of nowhere. He shakes his head after them and then looks up at Ohtori. "What's the matter with you? You're as white as chalk."
Ohtori shakes his head. "Later," he says.
Hiyoshi arches a brow.
"It's a little complicated," Ohtori elaborates reluctantly. "Tell you about it when it's resolved."
"Fair enough," Hiyoshi agrees. "As long as you aren't in some sort of trouble."
The smile that tugs at his lips is wry and empty at best. "Not yet."
***
The shower doesn't help to ease the nerves. He takes it ice-cold to clear his head, but just ends up shivering and more wound up. Almost he stalls too long, some part of him hoping that Shishido will have left already by the time he emerges.
Instead Shishido is still there wrapped up some sort of enthusiastic conversation with Mukahi that seems to involve a lot of arm-waving.
Ohtori even has time to dry himself properly, dress, take time with his buttons, laces and tie and generally fidget and try to avoid the inevitable. Eventually the whole clubhouse is deserted but for him, Shishido-san, Mukahi and Atobe, who does his eyebrow-twitch at him again while he talks on one of his phones with someone.
Ohtori takes a deep breath, clenches his hands into fists and then consciously relaxes them. He walks up to Shishido.
He's still not completely dressed, barefoot and shirtless and of course that means that Ohtori gets a nice, good close-up from all the bruises, scrapes and scabs that make a macabre patch-work quilt out of Shishido's otherwise smooth skin. Somehow his eyes are drawn to the nape of his neck, an area significantly paler than the rest of him, as it was previously protected from the sun by the tassel of his ponytail. As he sidles closer from behind, Shishido makes a sort of exploding noise, arms outlining what could be the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. Ohtori has to smile, even though he is reminded how different they are from one another.
Mukahi is nodding thoughtfully as though he's pondering one of life's deepest mysteries, and then he catches sight of Ohtori looming awkwardly behind Shishido.
"Ohtori-kun," he says, blinking.
Shishido turns and looks at him, too.
The bandage is gone from his eyebrow, washed away by the spray of the shower, probably. The wound is horrid: a gaping split, scabbing at the edges and blue spreading outwards from it into Shishido's short hair.
Ohtori swallows. "Shishido-san," he mumbles. "Could I speak to you for a moment?"
Shishido looks surprised, but the corner of his mouth hitches up a little. "Sure, I'll just get dressed."
Avoiding Mukahi's frankly curious looks and Atobe's smug eyebrow tilt, Ohtori shuffles his feet and waits for Shishido to finish. Shishido's shirt is only half-buttoned and sticks to his damp skin as they walk together out of the clubhouse. Almost unconsciously they orbit towards the sakura tree behind the clubhouse, where they had another serious conversation not so long ago.
At last Shishido steps up in front of him, blocking his path. "Okay, what's up? Who died?"
"What?"
"Just," Shishido makes vague motions at his face. "Everything. Is something wrong?"
Ohtori sucks in a shuddering breath. "Well. I. This afternoon. I-"
"Yeees?" Shishido prompts, eyeing him with curiosity.
"Sakaki-san. He wanted to talk to me- We. He said. I-"
Ohtori staggers back a few steps as Shishido all but lunges forwards, hands clamping over his shoulders. He staggers even more when he gets the full-frontal treatment of Shishido's burning, dark gaze. "Fuck. No. No!" he growls, hands painfully tight on Ohtori's body. "That asshole."
Ohtori reels. Did Sakaki already tell him? Did Atobe? Is Shishido psychic?
"I'm so sorry," he goes on, confusing Ohtori. "I thought it was safe. That it was okay. I'll- I'll go talk to him. Tell him to take me instead."
"What?" Ohtori asks, completely befuddled.
"What what?" Shishido counters, genuinely furious. "He can't kick you off the team! I knew he was up to something; it was too easy. But not like this. I'll make him see that it's better for me to go-"
Ohtori interrupts, "Shishido-san."
"-damned stuck-up arsehole, probably has the handle of a racket up his- er. Yes. Sorry. Yes?"
"I'm not off the regulars," Ohtori tells him, touched at Shishido's vehement reaction, though slightly outraged at his foul-worded litany.
"Oh." Shishido-san lets him go rather sheepishly, rocks back on his heels.
"And neither are you," Ohtori follows up, before he gets blasted with another outburst.
"Oh," Shishido goes again and grimaces. "So we are here because…?"
"Sakaki-san. He said we, that Taki and I-" Ohtori trails off, bites his lips. Why is this so hard to say? He can't do this.
"Choutarou."
Ohtori's attentions snaps towards his senpai like an elastic band being released. Choutarou.
"Just tell me," Shishido goes on reassuringly. Then he smirks. "I don't bite. Often."
That does draw a little chuckle out of Ohtori and suddenly he's able to say it as it is. "Sakaki wants us to play doubles together." He swallows. "I'm so sorry, senpai."
There's no crushing disappointment on Shishido's face the way he expected there to be, nor a vicious curl of his lip. Instead he's perfectly still for a moment, a rare occasion indeed, absorbing the information. Even though he is rolling the information over in his head like a mouthful of something foreign, his gaze turned inwards, Ohtori has time to re-affirm to himself that yes, the look in Shishido-san's eyes is always like this.
It was probably the most prominent thing that set him on edge around Shishido, before. That look. No matter what, when or why. No matter the topic of the conversation, the circumstances, Shishido has this way of looking as though he's constantly challenging you. Ohtori hadn't liked that at all, before. When Shishido has looked at him, he'd felt put on the spot, deemed feeble, and then felt as though Shishido demanded why Ohtori wasn't doing the full hundred percent plus then some.
It is a look that, before, had seemed to say: is that it? The best you can do?
After Shishido's own considerable humiliating defeat, it had made Ohtori feel defensive and prickled.
Now he knows that Shishido just always has that look. Intense, almost hungry, and bordering on shamelessly invasive. Aggressive.
And now he's also able to read better all the emotions that seep through that initial impression. Such as now.
Shishido has already accepted the idea. And he confirms this by saying, "Guess that makes sense."
Despite being relieved of walking out of this encounter with his nose still attached, Ohtori feels all the other worries wash it away. "Shishido-san," he says, and his voice cracks a little in his desperation. "We've only got four evenings."
Shishido's mouth forms a strange shape and his eyes dart up to meet his.
And that's a look he's become intimately familiar with, too. Determination. Ohtori almost groans in dismay. And he definitely knows what's coming now.
"Then we had better start practicing, don't you think?" he says.
This time the look in his eyes is most certainly a challenge.
Ohtori knows they've been handed Mission Impossible in the most base form of the meaning. But when Shishido-san looks at him like that? For some reason it makes Ohtori respond with, "Today."
"Today," Shishido confirms and holds out his fist, knuckles forward.
For a moment he blinks at the gesture, the hand extended towards him like a fist-punch paused in mid-motion. Then he gets it. He's never done stuff like this with Taki-san, either, but Ohtori thinks he could get used to this newness.
He fist-bumps Shishido back.
***
"Okay," Shishido-san is saying. "We'll meet up after dinner. Here's my cell number, y'know, in case…" he trails off.
Ohtori flushes guiltily at the memory of leaving Shishido hanging before, on a most crucial moment. The paper he receives is obviously been torn out of a school-issued textbook, the numbers are scrawled in hasty pencil. Just like that, he's got his senpai's cellphone number. He folds it carefully, slips it into his pocket.
"Where should we meet?" Ohtori asks.
"Erm," Shishido goes, eyes darting back and forth restlessly.
"Right here, naturally," a cultured voice speaks up.
Shishido jumps about a mile, knocking Ohtori sideways per accident. "Atobe!"
"Atobe-san," Ohtori echoes and wonders how much he's heard from their conversation.
"I'm quite certain you have a key to the courts, have you not, Shishido?" Atobe says as he walks up to them, mouth curled into a secret smile.
Shishido goes red. Ohtori notices that when he blushes, it's a smudge over his nose and cheekbones, his ears and a gradient flush over his neck and collarbone, too. Now that he thinks about it, how did Shishido get a key to the courts when he was dropped off the regulars? Nobody has one, but Atobe. Use of the spare key has to be granted by explicit, written permission. Ohtori is quite certain that Shishido did not come by the key by asking Atobe nicely for it.
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Shishido growls low, but he's an awful liar. The blush if even more pronounced and his frown quite epic.
Shishido-san, Ohtori groans inwardly and closes his eyes.
Atobe looks as though he's enjoying himself. His eyes shine with amusement. "Oh, come on now, Shishido," he says, chuckling throatily, "you did not honestly believe that Ore-sama would do something as absentminded as leaving the spare key unattended in the middle of my desk, do you now?"
Shishido makes an incoherent noise of anger.
"Let me spell it out for you," Atobe continues, but rather seriously this time. "I knew what you would do. From the moment I dropped you off the team. So I let you find the key. I let you bully Ohtori into helping you. I let Ohtori help you. I let you defeat Taki. I let you run after Sakaki. I let Ohtori follow you. And here you are. Both of you."
Of all things, it is obvious Shishido did not expect this. It's also clear that he cannot understand why Atobe did what he did.
Ohtori, in some secluded corner at the back of his mind, but most prominently in his heart, starts to understand.
"And now I have made it so that the both of you will see it out to the end. Together." Atobe finishes, his smooth voice almost as softly tuned as the orange wash of the early evening settling in. "And Shishido? Don't screw up," he adds. With that he turns smartly on his heel, strides off.
The two of them stand there, flabbergasted.
Shishido looks as though he's been whacked over the head by a sledgehammer, the way he stands there gaping in the general direction Atobe stalked off in.
"Together," Ohtori echoes. Then something dawns on him. "You stole the key, senpai?"
Shishido starts. "Uhm," he goes and runs a hand through his hair. "Well, not really. Atobe wanted me to find it, didn't he?"
"Shishido-san…"
"Well, he did!" Shishido says defensively. Suddenly his jaw drops in the light of sudden realization. "Atobe let me cut my damn hair off! That fucker! I'll get him back!"
That's it. That does it.
Ohtori starts to laugh.
Shishido stares at him for a few heartbeats, watching him get tears in his eyes and gasp for breath as he laughs it off, and then he starts laughing too.
***
It hardly surprises Ohtori to find his senpai already warming up when he returns to the courts. The back of Shishido's shirt is already soaked. Setting down his bag, he joins him. He's a little late because his parents weren't exactly happy with his going out again, even hinting he was little young to have 'special lady friend'.
Muscles flex against his palms as he helps Shishido with his stretches. If only they knew.
They never took Ohtori's tennis very seriously. And they certainly do not appreciate how much time he is prepared to invest in the sport. Certainly they would not approve that he even let his grades slip for a moment because he was investing so much time into someone else's tennis. But it seems that Shishido's tennis will also be his now.
"Alright," Shishido says, rolling his shoulders. "Doubles."
Ohtori looks at his senpai and hopes he's not expecting Ohtori to offer great insights on how to proceed. Taki was always the one who controlled their combination, who guided him, the gamemaker. He's used to taking clues from him.
"I say we play each other first," Shishido continues, carefully looking him up and down.
"Each other?" Ohtori repeats.
"Yeah, well," Shishido flaps his racket vaguely at the other side of the court. "I've seen you play, of course. And we've done a few matches over the years. Not to mention last week I did nothing but watch you play and… and serve. But I didn't really think of you other than an opponent. I'd like to play you and think of how we'd best…" he trails off.
"Find a combo that brings out our strengths?" Ohtori offers tentatively. It's what he feels most doubles pairs do.
A small smile runs around the edges of Shishido's lips. He makes a sort of shrug with a shoulder that means neither yes or no. "… play in perfect balance." he murmurs instead.
Ohtori blinks.
"You're right. To a certain extend," Shishido goes on. "It'd be stupid not to use your serve as trump card, nor your height. And it's a good thing we don't have to squabble for territory. So that's good."
"Don't forget your speed," Ohtori points out, feeling his cheeks redden under the matter-of-fact praise he's receiving.
Another little lop-sided twist of the lips. "Hn," he goes and then moves on, a very new and modest something. "Thing is, it's not just doing the things we're good at and doing them on the same court without getting in each other's way. It's not singles."
"I… suppose," Ohtori concedes. He never expected Shishido, who's happily wallowed in his singles 3 spot for quite some time, to display a subtler grasp of the doubles play than himself.
He remembers a few doubles games of his, of course. Like the very first time he saw Shishido play tennis, it was with Mukahi-senpai against Atobe. But that wasn't so much doubles as what Shishido just described: two players doing what they do best on the same court. But… he remembers that Atobe often made Shishido play with promising pre-regulars in doubles games, because he's good at being… being a gamemaker.
Huh. Ohtori thinks as he realizes that this is true. The more he thinks about Shishido in doubles, the more he remembers him being… a sort of positive guiding force.
It's odd to conclude this in retrospect.
It's just that… Well. He looked up to Shishido for a while, before he joined and for a while longer after he did, true. He was brave and gallant and just… so cool. But then he became down-right arrogant and what used to be a flippant and tough remark seemed to him to become rather condescending at times. And so boastful of his own competence (and unlike Atobe, not likely to be able to back it up all the time). Not to mention his way of looking, always, always as though he thought you came up short to his grand expectations.
He knows better now, of course.
During that period he never quite understood why all the all the other younger members liked him so. Especially after he, himself, had felt thwarted that Shishido wasn't brave and off-handedly kind and and… everything he'd imagined him to be.
Turns out that the person Ohtori looked up to never quite left. Perhaps he knew this, on some level, when he said yes when all this began. He most certainly did this Sunday, when he offered to give up his regular's spot for Shishido-san. He looks up to Shishido more than he ever did when he was in grade school. But the person who stands before him today is more worth it than ever.
Shishido is right when he refers to 'balance', but Ohtori knows in his bones that between them it'll be about trust.
He decides to start right away.
...on to part 2!
Comment on part 2, please.