PoT Fic: "A Modern Yuletide Carol" 1/2 (R) - Akazawa/Kaneda, St. Rudolph Ensemble
Title: "A Modern Yuletide Carol" 1/2 
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: Team ensemble featuring Akazawa/Kaneda, with some Mizuki/Yuuta, one-sided Nomura/Catherine, and a little Yanagisawa/Kisarazu.
Rating: R
Word Count: 12,836
Spoilers/Warnings: Some boys doing the usual naughty things when left alone in their dorm rooms.
Summary: The week before Christmas, Kaneda faces off against puberty, Akazawa’s habit of wearing far too little clothing, three separate brilliant master plans by Mizuki, and St. Rudolph’s surly sub-regular tennis team, yet somehow still manages to come out on top.
Notes: Originally written for crowitched for strudy_exchange here. Broken into two parts due to length.
A Modern Yuletide Carol
by Kantayra
The week before Christmas, Kaneda woke up, went to the bathroom, and screamed.
“Will you keep it down in there?” Kisarazu banged on the paper-thin wall. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
Kaneda yelped, but it came out of his mouth as a weird squeak. He wanted to cover his mouth with his hands, but that was unsanitary, and he was standing in the middle of a dorm bathroom by the urinal, where anyone could walk in at any time, and there was hair in his crotch.
Kaneda felt a bit dizzy and staggered into the shower. The hot water helped, and the shower curtain at least gave him privacy while he stared at his body’s latest bizarre innovation. His body’s latest bizarre innovation stared right back up at him. It was weird and kind of nubbly when Kaneda touched it, and Kaneda tried not to touch it too much, because then the previous twist-spin puberty had thrown at him would rear its ugly head, too.
At that moment, the bathroom door opened, and deep-voiced humming reverberated nicely throughout the bathroom. Kaneda froze in the shower.
“Saru, gorilla, chimpanzee!” Akazawa’s bass rumbled through the bathroom. It was that same stupid song that had been stuck in everyone’s heads since Nationals.
Kaneda tried really, really hard not to be turned on by it, but he just ended up really, really hard. Kaneda reached over and turned the shower nozzle to freezing cold. That helped a little. Mentally, he cursed his idiotic body, while Akazawa fussed around at the sink on the other side of the bathroom. Kaneda’s only saving grace was that at least Akazawa didn’t know it was him.
“Who’s up already?” Akazawa finally asked, entering the shower area. Kaneda imagined he could hear the padding of Akazawa’s bare feet on the wet tile, even though that was technically impossible with the shower on.
It left Kaneda in a predicament. He really didn’t want to face Akazawa right now, especially since Akazawa seemed to have absolutely no shame when it came to boys in locker rooms. On the other hand, they had all conspired (okay, Mizuki had conspired) to get the whole team on the same floor, so Akazawa knew whoever was in the shower was on the team. In the end, there was really nothing Kaneda could do to hide.
“It’s me.” Kaneda’s voice broke on the last word, and it came out as a squeak. He blushed and was infinitely grateful that the shower curtain concealed his embarrassment.
“Ah, Kaneda,” Akazawa’s voice rolled rhythmically over Kaneda’s name, making it sound like pure sin. Kaneda turned the water colder. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?”
The sky was overcast and intermittently sputtering out a depressing raining/sleeting mess. Kaneda was faced with the recurring horror that he was getting a hard-on from an incurable morning person. It just added insult to injury.
“Just fine!” Kaneda squeaked. He’d debated once asking Mizuki to gather data on whether Kaneda’s voice really broke more often when Akazawa was nearby, or it just felt that way because it was twice as embarrassing.
“Mizuki’s called for a team meeting at breakfast,” Akazawa commented with a hint of annoyance in his voice.
“I, uh, got the e-mail last night.” Mizuki’s e-mail had been brief, to the point, and designed to purposefully challenge Akazawa’s authority: Breakfast 7:30 sharp. I wish to discuss the team’s future with you all.
“Hmm,” Akazawa acknowledged, “good.”
Kaneda heard the water turn on the next shower over. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned his own water off. He reached blindly for his towel, rubbed it through his hair, and stepped out of the shower.
Akazawa stood just outside, wearing nothing but the tiniest white towel around his waist, bronzed skin rippling with muscle everywhere.
Kaneda froze, gaped, and instantly brought his towel down to cover his crotch. Thankfully, the move could be interpreted as modesty, rather than a pathetic attempt to cover his instant, painfully hard erection. “W-Why aren’t you in the shower?” Kaneda stuttered helplessly.
Akazawa looked completely baffled as to what could possibly be bothering Kaneda. “I’m waiting for the water to heat up.” Already billows of steam were rising from Akazawa’s empty shower. Akazawa liked things hot, Kaneda was reminded. Hot and sweaty and naked…
“I, uh, forgot to wash my hair!” Kaneda squawked, dashed back into his own shower, and turned the cold water on full blast again. It wasn’t a promising start to his day.
***
“For Christmas,” Mizuki announced at their ‘official’ team meeting at the breakfast table, “we will finally defeat our eternal rivals once and for all!” He sat back with a satisfied smile on his face.
Everyone else blinked at him.
“Our eternal rivals?” Yanagisawa asked. “Who’s that this week, huh?”
“Hyotei?” Nomura guessed.
“No,” Mizuki glared at him. “Hyotei were our eternal rivals last week.”
Akazawa snorted. “What changed? Atobe finally block your cell number?”
Mizuki fixed him with an icy stare. “And all the landlines originating from this school building, if you must know,” he answered breezily. “But that is beside the point. Hyotei were never worthy rivals, anyway.”
“Really?” Yanagisawa frowned. “Because they were the ones who eliminated us at Prefecturals…”
Yuta paused for one moment in shoveling his plate of food directly into his mouth to scowl. He still hadn’t forgiven Akutagawa for his defeat, as he would tell anyone who was stupid enough to let the topic of conversation drift that way in his presence.
Kaneda was nowhere near that stupid. “So who are our eternal rivals, then?” he asked curiously.
“It better not be Ginka again,” Akazawa taunted Mizuki.
Kisarazu was falling asleep in his seat. Kaneda watched as his chin dipped lower, inch by inch, ever closer to his potatoes.
“Not Ginka,” Mizuki shuddered. “That was merely an experiment. Their captain offered, so I thought I’d give it a try. Now, let us never speak of it again.”
Akazawa grunted. Everyone was more than happy to go along with that last command.
“No,” Mizuki continued, “I’m talking about our true eternal rivals, the originals. Hyotei was just a distraction from our real goal.”
Everyone blinked at him again.
“Seigaku!” Mizuki finally exclaimed, frustrated.
“Oh,” Akazawa rolled his eyes.
“Uh, they did win Nationals, you know,” Nomura ventured. “Maybe they’re just a bit out of our league?”
“I would’ve thought that Seigaku’s rivals were Rikkaidai,” Yanagisawa said thoughtfully. “Or maybe Hyotei, huh?”
Kisarazu’s head dipped another inch lower. It caused the ribbon in his hair to fall forward. It landed so close to the pool of gravy on his plate. Kaneda watched with rapt, morbid fascination.
“We played Seigaku first,” Mizuki huffed, “so they’re our eternal rivals.”
“By that logic, they should be Fudomine’s eternal rivals,” Yanagisawa pointed out.
“Shinya?” Mizuki glared at him.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
Yanagisawa let out a growling sound, and his hand clenched around his bun, squishing it into a pasty semi-liquid. Akazawa’s palm caught him in the center of the chest and pushed him back down into his seat before breakfast could erupt into yet another food fight.
“Even if Seigaku were our eternal rivals,” Akazawa pointed out evilly, “it wouldn’t matter. Didn’t Tezuka block your cell number, too?”
Mizuki gave him a sour look, which then turned to a wicked smirk. “It doesn’t matter,” Mizuki said proudly. “We have a secret weapon.”
“We do?” Nomura blinked.
Mizuki slung a comradely arm around Yuta’s shoulders. Yuta paused in cramming food down his throat to look up and blink in surprise when he discovered that there was an actual team meeting taking place around his food.
“Fuji won’t block Yuta’s number,” Mizuki announced. “Heh-heh-heh…”
“Huh?” Yuta looked around, confused. “What?”
Akazawa favored Yuta with a level look. “Mizuki wants you to call your brother and harass him into making Seigaku play us for a Christmas match.”
Yuta groaned. “Oh, hell no. And Shusuke told me not to relay any more messages from you,” Yuta told Mizuki. “He says you’re annoying.”
Mizuki sputtered. Akazawa chuckled. Yanagisawa snorted and choked on his milk. Kaneda slapped him on the back. Kisarazu’s face finally fell forward just as Yuta realized that Kisarazu wasn’t eating anyway and snatched his plate right out from under him.
“Thanks, Atsushi-senpai,” Yuta said with half the contents of Kisarazu’s plate already in his mouth.
Kisarazu’s forehead hit the table harmlessly, and he let out an epic snore.
“Oh my God!” Nomura checked his watch. “Hurry up, guys! We’re going to be late for choir practice!”
For Nomura, that was pretty much the end of the world.
***
Kaneda sat at the far back and watched Sister Sakamoto yell at the boys in the bass section, including Akazawa, for intentionally parodying the hymn lyrics. In the meantime, Sister Catherine worried her hands together and fumbled over sheet music. Nomura was trying to help her, but he seemed to be putting everything in the wrong place. Sister Catherine smiled at him gratefully anyway, and then Nomura tripped over his own feet. Kaneda sighed and picked at the scab on his wrist.
“This is boring,” Yuta complained, yawning. He and Kaneda had both been relegated to the ‘Dear God, their voices are changing! Hide them at the back of the choir and hope no one can hear them!’ section for the Christmas recital.
“Why don’t you call your brother?” Mizuki suggested unhelpfully. Mizuki was supposed to be in the tenor section (even though he was technically a countertenor and had been swearing his revenge ever since that designation had been bestowed upon him), but he’d come over to bother Yuta when it became apparent that Sister Sakamoto wasn’t going to succeed in stopping the bass section from making farting noises any time soon.
“No,” Yuta scowled at him. “I’m not losing to my brother at tennis on Christmas.”
“Fine, then I’ll play him.”
“You’re not losing to my brother at tennis on Christmas, either,” Yuta smirked.
Mizuki huffed. “Me? Lose? It’s unthinkable!”
Yuta smirked more.
“If you don’t call him,” Mizuki threatened, “I’ll go over to Seigaku myself.”
“Like that will help.” Yuta rolled his eyes.
“And I’ll tell him you’re in choir and that we have a performance on Christmas Eve.”
Yuta’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t!”
Mizuki smiled evilly.
Yuta scowled. “Fine, fine, I’ll call him. But he’ll still say no.”
“I just need you to call,” Mizuki insisted. “Leave everything else up to me.”
“Fine, whatever,” Yuta grumbled.
“Excellent.” Mizuki steepled his fingers before him. “Everything is falling into place.”
Kaneda sighed and watched Sister Sakamoto turn her back on the bass section, freeze, and then turn sharply back around to glare at them again. This time they managed not to make any obscene noises, although Akazawa was obviously trying very hard not to laugh. He had very white teeth, Kaneda noticed, not for the first time. They perfectly set off the deep tan of his skin, making it look so smooth, rich, delicious…
“Oh, stop ogling him already,” Mizuki let out a put-upon sigh. “I’m getting cavities just looking at you.”
Kaneda turned to look at where Mizuki’s hand had crept to within an inch of Yuta’s thigh. He wisely didn’t say anything, although really that was mostly because he didn’t want his voice to crack and embarrass him again.
“Boys, return to your places!” Sister Sakamoto ordered with an authoritative flick of her wrist.
“Go ahead, dear,” Sister Catherine encouraged Nomura, taking the stack of sheet music from his hands. “Sister Sakamoto is starting.”
Nomura’s entire face turned red, and he stumbled over his feet again on the way back to the tenor section.
Mizuki sighed wearily and reluctantly separated himself from Yuta’s side. “During lunch break,” he decided.
Yuta just grunted sullenly and crossed his arms over his chest.
Mizuki somehow interpreted that as an encouraging sign and returned to his spot.
“Now, everybody,” Sister Sakamoto stood at the front of the choir, her hands held out in a way that was probably supposed to look like a conductor but ended up more like a deranged chicken. “On three. One, two…”
Sister Catherine’s fingers glided over the piano keys for the opening refrain, and then Sister Sakamoto’s hands danced in the air, indicating for them to start.
“Oh, we like sheep!” bellowed the bass section.
Sister Catherine’s hands faltered, and Sister Sakamoto snarled in their direction. “How many times do I have to tell you?” she snapped. “It’s ‘All we, like sheep, have gone astray’!”
Akazawa snickered.
Kaneda propped his chin up on one hand and sighed longingly. He was starting to agree with Nomura: he wished choir practice would never end.
***
Unfortunately, choir practice did end, all too quickly, but morning classes seemed like they were never going to. Kaneda doodled absentmindedly on the back of his notebook, while Sister Josephine told them how they were all going to Hell.
“Wait,” Fukuoka was confused, as usual, “so you go to Hell for even thinking about girls?”
Kaneda buried his face deeper into his notebook and tried not to blush too much. The notebook page he’d randomly flipped to happened to have ‘Akazawa Ichiro’ written all over it in big, loopy letters. That really didn’t help things.
“Lust is a Cardinal Sin,” Sister Josephine informed him solemnly. She was a horrible, grumpy old woman who had once told Yuta that he was going to Hell for chewing gum, since gluttony was a sin. As a result, everyone had made fun of her behind her back by draping sheets over their heads like nuns’ habits and condemning each other to Hell, until Sister Josephine caught them at it one day and made the whole second-year class copy Bible pages for an entire weekend. In Latin. No one had dared to cross her since, even though she was still a horrible, grumpy old woman.
“But you wouldn’t even be doing anything,” Fukuoka insisted. “You’d just see some girl and think she was cute.”
“Sins of thought are still Sins,” Sister Josephine countered. “They take you further away from God.”
“But that’s not fair!” Fukuoka protested.
“It is fair to the genuinely virtuous,” Sister Josephine proclaimed.
“No one is that virtuous,” Fukuoka grumbled, and it was clear that this would be another of their debates that dragged on all class.
Kaneda tuned them out. He wondered what Sister Josephine would say if she knew he’d just written ‘Kaneda Yoshiro’ all over his notebook page in pen, so that it overlapped with the ‘Akazawa Ichiro’ from before. Was it worse that he wanted to take Akazawa’s name, or that he wanted Akazawa to take his? Or would he just go to Hell for thinking of the question in the first place?
Knowing Sister Josephine, it was probably the last one.
***
“Team meeting! Team meeting!” Mizuki whispered at them all in a voice that wasn’t very hushed at all. “Secret team meeting!” Students from all the nearby tables looked over, curious at Mizuki’s very ill-kept secret.
Kisarazu groaned and poked at his rice with a chopstick. “Can’t you call Seigaku from here? It’s cold and raining outside.”
“You’re such a wimp,” Yanagisawa teased him.
Kisarazu glared at him. “At least I didn’t fall asleep in history class.”
“Yeah, well, who fell asleep at breakfast, huh?”
Kisarazu just snorted and returned to poking his rice. It was a weird, gooey-gray color today. At least it wasn’t blue. Kaneda still had nightmares about the time the rice was blue.
“I can’t believe this,” Mizuki sighed dramatically. “None of you take this team seriously.”
“The season’s already over,” Akazawa pointed out. “Technically, we’re not even really part of the team anymore.”
“It’s not over until it’s over,” Mizuki glared at him. “Now, we are going to finally beat Seigaku and have our revenge.”
“But we are not going outside in the rain in the middle of lunch,” Akazawa insisted sternly, arms crossed over his broad chest.
Mizuki scowled at him, then looked at Kaneda, who was having a really hard time not staring at Akazawa’s biceps. Mizuki sighed, met Kisarazu and Yanagisawa’s insistent looks, and gave up. “Fine,” he grumbled. “We’ll do it here. Give me your phone, Yuta.”
Yuta was shoveling his food again. Kaneda wondered sometimes where all that food went. Yuta never got fat, but he didn’t seem to be growing, either. Kaneda didn’t think Yuta spent many more hours in the gym than he did, so it was one of the great mysteries of the universe.
“Yuta,” Mizuki pressed, nudging him in the shoulder.
“Huh?” Yuta looked up at him and blinked.
Mizuki sighed wearily. “Our comeback match?” he reminded Yuta.
Yuta snorted and pulled out his cell phone. “Good luck.” He tossed it into Mizuki’s lap. “You’ll need it.”
Mizuki shoved Yuta in the shoulder. Yuta shoved him back, just for good measure. That meant that Mizuki crashed into Nomura, who in turn crashed into Akazawa, who crashed right into Kaneda, just as Kaneda had been debating the lickability of Akazawa’s neck, right where it joined to his ear.
Kaneda realized, with a sudden, confusing mixture of lust and alarm, that his lap was full of Akazawa, and that smooth, honeyed skin was just inches away from his lips. Akazawa glared back over his shoulder at Nomura, and Kaneda was treated to a whiff of lemon-scented soap and raw, masculine scent. Akazawa’s hand had landed on the far side of Kaneda’s lap, propping Akazawa up over him. Instinctively, Kaneda shifted so that his thigh was pressed up against Akazawa’s wrist. He shut his eyes for one perfect moment, absorbing the heat of Akazawa’s body into his memory to replay in his head over and over again that night while he lay in bed.
Akazawa belatedly realized his precarious position and gave Kaneda a sheepish smile. “My apologies.” His voice rumbled its way down straight to Kaneda’s newly-hairy groin.
Kaneda opened his mouth to say something stupid like, “Take me now, Akazawa-senpai!” but fortunately his voice cracked in a way that sounded like a violin dying, and he was spared the humiliating rejection.
Akazawa crawled back off his lap and was staring down Nomura, who was apologizing and pointing accusing fingers at Mizuki and Yuta. Kaneda felt as though a part of him had been ripped away.
“Why do I have to do it?” Yuta whined in the meantime.
“Because he’ll just hang up on me,” Mizuki insisted.
“This is stupid.”
“You promised,” Mizuki reminded him. Possibly he fluttered his eyelashes; Kaneda really couldn’t see.
In any case, Yuta wasn’t impressed. “You do it.” He shoved his phone back into Mizuki’s lap.
Mizuki smirked, twirled a lock of hair around his finger, and picked up the phone. “Fine. I’ll prove it to you.” He flipped through Yuta’s phone to find the right number and hit the call button.
Everyone watched curiously while Mizuki drummed his fingers impatiently on the dining-hall table. Then, a vicious little spark glinted in Mizuki’s eyes. “Ah, Seigaku’s Fuji,” Mizuki’s voice turned downright diabolical. “Heh-heh, it is I, your-” He didn’t get any further than that. Mizuki scowled down at the phone.
Yuta snorted into his soup.
“See?” Mizuki said smugly. “He hung up on me.”
“No, duh!” Yuta rolled his eyes. “Now, can we forget about this stupid rival thing and-”
“Stupid?” Mizuki sputtered. “Well, excuse me for thinking that preparing this team for next year is stupid!” He got up and stalked off in a huff.
Yuta stared longingly down at his food. Then, he looked hopefully up at the rest of the team.
“I’m not going after him, huh,” Yanagisawa helpfully provided what they were all thinking.
Yuta sighed wearily and slouched off after Mizuki.
Kisarazu blinked and watched them go. “Those two are very strange,” he decided and poked his rice some more.
Kaneda bit his lip and looked over at Akazawa.
Akazawa sighed. “I suppose Mizuki only wants to preserve St. Rudolph’s legacy for next year,” he concluded bitterly, like it caused him actual, physical pain to say something nice about Mizuki like that. “It’s…hard, with high school coming up. We only have a couple of months left together.” He sipped his juice.
Kaneda felt a twist of panic in his stomach, because he tried really hard not to think about those things, about how, come April, he wouldn’t have Akazawa to look forward to anymore: nearly nude in the bathroom every morning, and horsing around all through choir practice, and sweaty and furious and taking the tennis team to task at practice.
“This is gross,” Kisarazu said and poked his gooey, gray rice some more.
“It’s always gross, huh,” Yanagisawa teased him. “You’re such a priss.”
Kisarazu glared at him prissily.
Yanagisawa flicked a bit of his own rice onto Kisarazu’s cheek.
Kisarazu sputtered in outrage, grabbed a spare shrimp, and flung it ‘splat!’ into the direct center of Yanagisawa’s forehead.
Chaos ensued at that point, and all of the St. Rudolph tennis team (sans Mizuki and Yuta, for once) got written up for food-fighting for the fourth time that month.
“Next year,” Akazawa sighed wearily after Father Tsukui finally finished chewing them out and let them go, “this is one team ritual that you should probably get rid of.”
Kaneda felt a lot sicker at that thought than he had the entire time the headmaster had been yelling at them.
***
Afternoon classes were as boring as ever, but by the time they were out, Mizuki and Yuta seemed to have made up somehow. Mizuki shuffled them all into a vacant club room, which hadn’t been so vacant after all, if the glares the astronomy club were giving them were any indication. Mizuki just smirked at them and twirled a lock of hair around his finger, though. Kaneda really didn’t want to know how Mizuki had blackmailed them.
Mizuki then slammed the door on the forlorn astronomy club and informed them all, “Yuta has an important announcement to make.”
Yuta sulked at his desk in the corner and finally mumbled out, “So I talked to my brother.”
Apparently, that was all the announcing Yuta got to do, because Mizuki cut in then. “He refused, naturally. Of course, he must be terrified of what would happen should such a nationally-ranked team face a humiliating defeat at the hand of their arch-rivals.”
Yanagisawa groaned, expressing a sentiment they were all feeling just then: Dear God, Mizuki’s insanity is never going to end!
Kisarazu scrunched up his nose in distaste. “I’m sure that’s not what Seigaku’s Fuji actually said,” he insisted.
“Well, it was implied.” Mizuki waved one hand airily.
“Mizuki,” Akazawa practically growled.
Kaneda shifted in his pants pointedly at that low rumble, trying to alleviate any potential friction on certain portions of his anatomy, which foolishly wished that Akazawa would growl out his name like that.
“Tell us what actually happened,” Akazawa demanded.
Mizuki pouted, crossed his arms over his chest, and sat down atop Yuta’s desk. Yuta blinked in surprise that his view had suddenly become Mizuki’s ass in tight jeans. “Fine,” Mizuki huffed wearily. “He said that Tezuka was in Germany, Echizen in the United States, Oishi was cramming to get into some science school, Kikumaru was vacationing with his family, and Kawamura had quit tennis to become a sushi chef or something else equally ridiculous. It was obviously just an excuse.”
“It sounds like,” Akazawa cut in with a nasty smile, “Seigaku realizes that the season is over and is moving on with their lives.”
Mizuki scowled at him, and he did a little bit of growling of his own. Only, after Akazawa’s beautiful demonstration of what a real manly growl should sound like earlier, Mizuki came off sounding unfortunately like an irritated little kitten.
Yuta put a hand on Mizuki’s arm to quiet him, nonetheless, and instantly Mizuki relaxed and the smug smile returned to his face. “And that,” Mizuki concluded with finality, “is why St. Rudolph is going to annihilate them next year.”
“Next year?” Nomura squeaked. “We won’t even be here!”
“No,” Mizuki agreed, “but Yuta here will, and so will Kaneda.”
Kaneda jerked up in sudden alarm at finding himself the center of Mizuki’s latest plan. “Huh?”
“New plan,” Mizuki announced triumphantly. “Seigaku will never suspect us of attacking after their team has already disbanded. It’s perfect.”
Yanagisawa blinked at him. “It’s insane, huh,” he complained. “They won’t even think it’s us, because it won’t be, so what’s the point?”
“It’s perfect,” Mizuki insisted. “We will know about our legacy’s stunning victory.”
Yuta gurgled a bit where his cheek was propped up on one elbow. He looked supremely bored. “Great,” he said wearily, “can we go now? Kaneda and I still have to run practice, you know.”
“You won’t have time for that,” Mizuki assured him. “I need your help to create our ultimate weapon for next year.”
Yuta gurgled some more.
Kisarazu made a gurgling noise, too, but that was his stomach growling. Given that he hadn’t eaten much of anything for breakfast or lunch, Kaneda wasn’t surprised. “Is that it, then?” he complained. “’Cause I want to go out for real lunch.”
“This wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t too prissy to eat the cafeteria food,” Yanagisawa taunted him.
Kisarazu glared.
“Priss, priss, priss!” Yanagisawa teased.
Kisarazu shoved him half out of his desk. Soon, chalk and erasers were flying across the room.
“Can I go start practice, then?” Kaneda asked hopefully.
Mizuki blinked at him like he had forgotten anybody but Yuta existed. “Hmm, yes, go ahead.” He shoved another notebook, detailing his brilliant master plan, under Yuta’s nose. Yuta gurgled yet again.
Kaneda got up.
Akazawa got up a second behind him. “I’ll go with you. I could use some practice with the back-up ball machine.”
Kaneda felt his face go warm and tried to fight back the reaction.
“Nomura, coming?” Akazawa inquired.
Say no, say no… Kaneda’s inner voice chanted.
“I promised Sister Catherine that I’d help her copy all the beginner sentences onto the board for this afternoon’s prep class,” Nomura sighed dreamily.
Akazawa made a face and pressed his hand against the small of Kaneda’s back to guide him out the door.
Kaneda tried very hard not to come on the spot.
It was turning out to be a wonderful day.
***
The problem with going to practice with Akazawa was that Kaneda had no clue what to do with his hands. The pockets in his tennis shorts were too low to stick his hands in them comfortably without lumbering like a big, dumb, klutzy dinosaur. If he swung them back and forth, 1) he looked like a moron, and 2) he might put out another first-year’s eye. He could always fist them at his sides, but then they got all sweaty and clammy and gross.
The worst part was that, beside him, Akazawa hummed under his breath and clearly wasn’t worrying about what to do with his hands at all.
Needless to say, Kaneda didn’t get up the guts to say anything, let alone, “You’re so dreamy, Akazawa-senpai! Make me yours!” Instead, he acted like a complete mute while Akazawa commented on some of the younger players’ weaknesses, and then nodded idiotically when Akazawa wished him well with practice and went off to train on his own.
Kaneda was still standing there nodding when the sub-regulars arrived.
“Kaneda-senpai?” Morino asked, puzzled.
Kaneda blinked out of his trance and frowned. He was never going to get used to being called ‘senpai.’ “Twenty laps around the gym,” he ordered, “and then swing practice.”
There were some groans, but eventually everyone filed out along the perimeter of the gymnasium, all jogging along at different paces. Kaneda picked up the rear and got the first-years at the back of the line to pick up the pace. It was a pretty thankless job. The only saving grace was that, at the top end of the gym, Kaneda could just see into the indoor practice courts where Akazawa was sweating, panting, and returning the balls from the machine at a frantic pace.
“Kaneda-senpai, I’m going to die!” Tsurumi whined.
“Only three more laps,” Kaneda pushed him. Three more blissful glimpses of Akazawa-senpai’s ass.
He didn’t say that last part out loud.
***
Nagging a bunch of unruly first- and second-years into running laps, doing drills, and actually playing their practice matches was frustrating enough to make Kaneda want to scream. Kaneda vaguely recalled that it had been like this the winter of his first year, too, except then it had been Akazawa running the practice, and Kaneda (and only Kaneda) had been more than eager to do everything Akazawa said.
It was a lot different when Kaneda was the one in charge. For one, the view wasn’t as nice (except the rare glimpses Kaneda managed to snatch of Akazawa on the far court). For another, he didn’t have Akazawa to fall back on anymore.
“You all need to work on your footwork,” Kaneda wearily informed the group of first-years who were only halfheartedly playing their practice doubles match anyway. “A hundred squats each.”
Kamata (whom Kaneda inwardly called Little Whiner) whined. “But Kaneda-senpai,” he complained, “it’s almost Christmas. Why do we even have to have practice if-?”
“Would you prefer to do those squats outside in the cold?” a delicious, low, rumbling voice came from behind Kaneda’s shoulder.
“C-Captain Akazawa!” Kamata squeaked. “No, sir! We’ll get to them right now!” The first-years leapt to their feet with incredible vigor.
Kaneda slumped as he watched them go. “Thanks, Akazawa-senpai,” he said tiredly.
Akazawa slung a comradely arm around Kaneda’s shoulders, and Kaneda’s face ended up in roughly the vicinity of Akazawa’s armpit. Kaneda knew there was something wrong with him because there was nowhere in the world he’d rather be than in Akazawa’s sweaty, hairy armpit right then. Clearly, hormones were the exact same thing as insanity.
“You’ll have to look out for them when I’m gone,” Akazawa said soberly.
It was almost enough to ruin Kaneda’s joy at smelling Akazawa’s tennis musk. “That’s not for a while yet.”
“Hmm, but soon.” Akazawa surveyed the practice around them. “This team could do great things.”
“Unless Mizuki recruits another team right out from under their noses,” Kaneda retorted.
Akazawa chuckled to himself. “Mizuki does tend to do that. It’s up to you to make this team good enough to stand up to them.”
Kaneda’s stomach felt a little queasy at the thought.
Akazawa graced him with a secretive little smile. “I have faith in you,” he informed Kaneda and walked back to his court.
Kaneda watched him go with dreamy, star-struck eyes.
“Kaneda-senpai?” a voice sounded beside him.
“Our captain’s so inspirational, isn’t he?” Kaneda breathed longingly and watched Akazawa miss his backhand by mere inches.
“Goddamn son of a bitch, arrrrrrgh!” Akazawa growled at the top of his lungs and smashed the next ball right back into the ball machine.
Kaneda sighed.
“Sure thing, Kaneda-senpai,” the voice sounded slightly confused. “But can you help us with our serves? Nothing wants to go in today.”
Kaneda forced himself to look away from Akazawa to where Morino blinked hopefully up at him. “Of course,” he agreed. It was encouraging, in a way. At least all the first-years weren’t hopeless.
Or that was what Kaneda thought before he saw their serves.
***
That night, things were tense at dinner. Whatever expedition Mizuki and Yuta had been on obviously hadn’t gone well, and they weren’t talking to each other for whatever reason. Yanagisawa and Kisarazu had eaten enough out that they didn’t even show up at dinner, so their bickering wasn’t present to break up the icy silence between Mizuki and Yuta. The only one who did feel like talking was Nomura, and all he wanted to talk about was how sweet and smart and funny Sister Catherine was. Akazawa had left early.
So Kaneda left early, too, returned to his room, and flopped back on his bed with a sigh. Tomorrow was the last day of school before break. Usually that would be good: no classes, more tennis practice for those who stayed over the vacation (including Kaneda), and the general chaos that teenage boys with too much free time naturally provided.
However, today Kaneda’s mind was weighed down with too many thoughts. They really only had a few months left together, and then the team would scatter. Akazawa was going to St. Sebastian, which was the recommended high school for good St. Rudolph Catholics, as was Nomura. But Kaneda doubted that any of Mizuki’s other recruits were. And, even if Kaneda wanted to follow Akazawa to St. Sebastian, there was still a year apart in the middle.
It was depressing.
So Kaneda did what he always did when things were too depressing: masturbated to thoughts of Akazawa in a Speedo. Actually, that was pretty much what Kaneda did no matter what his mood, whenever he was left alone in his dorm room this past year.
It worked like a charm for distracting Kaneda from everything else in the known universe, and today Kaneda had a wonderful, recent vision of Akazawa nearly naked and waiting for the shower to jerk off to.
Casting a quick glance at the door to make sure it was locked, Kaneda pushed down his boxers, pulled the blanket up over his chest (just in case), and began to run his hand idly up and down his erection.
Kaneda squeezed his eyes shut tight, and he was back in the shower, only this time he let the water run as hot as he could. As hot at Akazawa liked it. The steam billowed up around him, and then Akazawa’s deep voice purred behind him.
“Kaneda…”
Kaneda let out a little gasp and a squeak, and his hand beneath the covers doubled its speed. There were days when just imagining Akazawa saying his name made Kaneda come. Today, he held himself back just enough, though, and he let the fantasy continue.
The rumble of Kaneda’s name was followed by a hot breath against the back of his neck, and then tanned, muscular arms were encircling Kaneda’s slighter frame from behind.
“Let me take care of you,” Fantasy Akazawa breathed against Kaneda’s ear.
Kaneda gave in, let powerful, calloused hands take him, stroking longer, harder, faster… Kaneda leaned back into Akazawa’s naked body, felt slick, toned flesh all around him, cradling him perfectly, and then if he pushed back with his ass just so, he’d feel…
“Akazawa-senpai!” Kaneda cried out with an anguished moan and came all over his stomach.
He gasped in the aftermath, sweaty and sticky on his bed, before he groaned and reached over for some tissues to clean himself off.
As he was doing so, he heard through the wall, “Sister Catherine!” in the exact same tone Kaneda was sure he’d just exclaimed Akazawa’s name. Kaneda made a face. Sometimes, living in a dorm really sucked.
***
Kaneda always slept amazingly well after jerking off to Akazawa. He woke up from a deep, warm haze to the sound of knocking on his door.
“Kaneda? Kaneda, are you in there?” Nomura’s voice came, followed by more vigorous rapping. “You’re going to miss breakfast if you don’t get up right now.”
Kaneda grumbled into his pillow, his sleep-hazed brain still half convinced it was Akazawa’s chest.
“Kaneda?” Nomura’s voice sounded again. “Get up. Captain Akazawa wanted to talk to you before choir practice. He said it was important.”
That got Kaneda out of bed and dressed, lightning-fast. Kaneda made a face at not getting to shower before school, but at least he’d mostly wiped off last night, so he wasn’t disgustingly sticky.
“Did Akazawa-senpai say what he wanted?” Kaneda demanded, slipping on his jacket and toeing the door closed behind him.
Nomura shrugged. “Mizuki wants to talk to us all, too.”
Kaneda bit back a groan, even more so when they got to the dining hall, and Mizuki sat at the end of the table with a cat-who-ate-the-canary smirk on his face. Kaneda really didn’t want to know.
“Team meeting,” Mizuki announced and elbowed Kisarazu, who had propped himself up on one arm, half-asleep, and was poking slowly at his soup with a spare set of chopsticks.
“M’awake,” Kisarazu insisted.
Yanagisawa snickered and flicked a ball of torn-up napkin into Kisarazu’s soup. Kisarazu didn’t so much blink in response, proving to one and all that, even though Kisarazu’s eyes were open, his brain was still very much absent.
“Yesterday,” Mizuki announced smugly, lounging back in his seat and twirling one lock of hair delicately around his fingers, “Yuta and I gathered important information on our mortal enemy.”
“That stalking them from the bushes is a waste of time, huh?” Yanagisawa taunted him.
Mizuki froze and glared at Yanagisawa in the iciest manner imaginable. “No,” he hissed under his breath, “I’ve uncovered next year’s secret weapon for defeating Seigaku once and for all.”
Akazawa’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” he said sarcastically. “Do tell.”
“Seigaku’s captain next year will be Kaidoh,” Mizuki continued smugly. “Unfortunately, all of my efforts to recruit him to St. Rudolph have been thwarted…” Mizuki stared wistfully off into the distance.
“That’s it?” Nomura scratched his head. “That Kaidoh’s the new captain? I mean, didn’t you already know that? Doesn’t pretty much everyone know that?”
“That’s old news,” Mizuki agreed. “I was merely reminding everyone of that, so the importance of my new information can fully sink in.” He paused dramatically.
Akazawa ground his teeth but refused to take the bait.
“So, apparently Kaidoh’s got a younger brother who will be starting middle school next spring,” Yuta cut in. “Mizuki wants to recruit him.”
Mizuki’s smug look fell at Yuta’s announcement. “You were supposed to let me tell them!” he hissed.
Yuta blinked at him. “Well, you weren’t saying anything, so I thought you weren’t going to.” He returned to inhaling an entire egg in one bite with frighteningly little chewing.
Mizuki crossed his arms over his chest in a huff. “I was building up to it.”
“Oh,” Yuta blinked and guzzled a glass of milk, “sorry.”
Mizuki’s eye twitched, and he and Yuta would probably have gotten into another fight if Akazawa hadn’t cut in.
“You were taking far too long,” he insisted. “Thank you, Yuta.”
“Mou’re mewcome,” Yuta tried talking and chewing at the same time and failed at both.
Mizuki glared at Akazawa before he remembered his own unquestionable brilliance and couldn’t help but smirk again. “In any case, it’s a flawless plan. We will recruit the younger Kaidoh and cripple Seigaku psychologically for the upcoming season! Heh-heh-heh…”
“What is your obsession with little brothers, huh?” Yanagisawa blinked at him curiously. “What, did you always want one yourself or something?”
Kisarazu muttered something like agreement into his soup.
Mizuki huffed. “Are you questioning the brilliance of my plan?” he countered.
“I’m questioning your brilliance in distracting Yuta from practice, when the team is going to need him in top form next season,” Akazawa countered.
Mizuki scowled at him. “I assure you, Yuta and I have been doing plenty of training together.”
Akazawa grinned evilly. “Oh, I bet you have…” he teased.
Mizuki huffed. “I can’t imagine what you mean. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Yuta and I have to stalk the Kaidoh household from the bushes.”
Akazawa rolled his eyes.
“B-But… Now?” Nomura’s eyes widened. “That means you’ll miss choir practice!”
“Whatever. We have choir practice every day, anyway,” Mizuki said breezily.
“Uh, aren’t we doing the chorus where you have your solo today?” Yanagisawa pointed out.
“Yes! Yes, we are,” Nomura fretted.
“Ah, right,” Akazawa said evilly. “That soprano solo of Mizuki’s…” He flashed Mizuki a nasty grin.
Mizuki gave him an outraged look. “Oh, shut it,” he snapped and dragged a still-eating Yuta along after him.
***
The last day before vacation was, thankfully, not too much work. Mizuki and Yuta weren’t the only students playing hooky, and the teachers all seemed too preoccupied to really care. Kaneda got out of his history class early that afternoon, and Father Ito had clearly been itching to get out of there for quite some time before he actually let them go. As a result, Kaneda arrived at tennis practice early and set to warming up by taking several slow laps around the gym.
Kaneda expected practice to be lax today with half the team fleeing the campus for vacation and the other half probably not all that excited about attending an optional practice anyway. He’d heard plenty of his classmates planning to spend the afternoon at the arcade or the movies or the mall. A part of him even wished he were doing something like that, but he knew that Akazawa was busy, and going out alone would be no fun. Akazawa was always busy on Friday afternoons, which was the day he devoted to diving, even during the tennis season. That meant he wouldn’t come to practice today, which just made Kaneda’s mood even sourer.
The echoing of his footfalls through the empty gym was just making him morose, and Kaneda was debating just giving up on practice and tracking Akazawa down to see what he’d wanted from Kaneda that morning before Mizuki’s latest hissy fit had distracted them all. Then two of the first-years turned up, however, and Kaneda was forced to admit that practice really would happen that day.
In the end, only five people besides Kaneda showed up, and he had them all play practice matches against each other since it was officially Christmas break and drills were no fun.
Morino still couldn’t serve worth a damn, but Kaneda went easy on him, and at least the kid had decent volleys. Kaneda won every match he played, no contest, but the match between Hayashi and Yasuda turned out to be pretty close and intense. It wasn’t bad for two second-years who hadn’t had a dream of making regulars this past season.
Kaneda, following the proud tradition formed by all his teachers that day, let everyone out early and spent the rest of the time cleaning out the clubroom, during one of the rare instances when there weren’t twenty teenage boys in there ruining any progress he made faster than he could clean. After an hour of that, even Kaneda decided to call it quits and found himself wandering over in the direction of the pool.
The secret to going to the pool, Kaneda had long since discovered, was always to bring a textbook of some sort with him. That way, when he saw Akazawa in nothing but the skimpiest of bathing suits, water glistening over his bronzed, muscled flesh, Kaneda had something to hold in front of him to hide his erection.
Kaneda gulped now and clutched his math book in front of him so tightly that his knuckles went white.
Akazawa stood on his toes at the tip of the diving board, facing backwards. He bounced twice, causing his ass muscles to go tight and firm, and then leapt into the air, doing some sort of somersault as he went. His body twisted in perfect, lithe motions that nearly caused Kaneda to hyperventilate, and then he stretched out - a graceful, lean ideal of the human form - and pierced the surface of the water.
Kaneda caught his breath and forced himself to calm down while Akazawa was below the surface.
Finally, Akazawa emerged once more, throwing his head back so that pure, crystalline drops of water flew from his hair like some kind of elemental halo. He dipped back down into the water and climbed up the ladder by the side of the pool, and that was when he saw Kaneda.
“Ah, Kaneda, I was hoping to catch you before dinner.” Akazawa emerged from the water, and Kaneda tried not to stare at his naked, wet chest or the bulge at the front of his tiny, black Speedo.
“A-Akazawa-senpai,” Kaneda squeaked and held his math book tighter against his body. “Um, good… I mean, good dive. I mean…” Kaneda gave up; it was simply impossible to speak in coherent sentences when Akazawa was this naked.
Akazawa reached for his towel and began rubbing it all over his body. Kaneda fought down his instinctive urge to take it from Akazawa’s hands at pat down all those glorious muscles himself. “How was practice today?” Akazawa asked, seemingly oblivious to Kaneda’s dilemma.
“Fine,” Kaneda managed to get out. “Great.”
“Mizuki and Yuta were absent?”
Kaneda had to think about that really hard. “Um, yes. I-I was the only regular there.”
Akazawa bent over at the waist and began drying his legs. Kaneda stared in awe at the perfect curve of Akazawa’s ass, on full display before him. “Humph,” Akazawa said to himself. “We didn’t turn out to be so much of a team this year after all, eh, Kaneda?”
Kaneda nodded longingly at Akazawa’s ass, then turned sheepish when he realized what he was agreeing to. “Given the situation,” meaning Mizuki, of course, “you did the best you could, Akazawa-senpai.”
“Hmm,” Akazawa agreed. “And next year?”
Kaneda bit his lip. Akazawa had fought tooth and nail to keep the club from falling entirely into Mizuki’s hands this season, and even he’d barely succeeded. Given that, what chance did someone like Kaneda have, who wasn’t half as strong or talented or confident? Kaneda’s shoulders slumped with the foreknowledge that he was going to fail Akazawa, no matter what.
“I need to shower,” Akazawa said. “Come with me to the locker room?”
That certainly short-circuited Kaneda’s brain in all the wrong ways. He followed eagerly on Akazawa’s heels, math book clutched firmly before him, and it took him embarrassingly long to realize that Akazawa just wanted to be able to talk to Kaneda further.
“The team’s weakness this year,” Akazawa announced as he slipped into one of the shower stalls and pulled the clear, plastic shower curtain closed behind him, “was a lack of unity.”
Kaneda knew he should turn away, but he just couldn’t. He could only see the vague shape of Akazawa’s body, but it was enough. Some tanned, blobby things that had to be Akazawa’s arms paused around the blobby section that was Akazawa’s waist, and then pushed down to Akazawa’s feet as Akazawa bent over.
Akazawa-senpai just stripped off his Speedo, a blissful voice rang in the back of Kaneda’s mind. Kaneda felt dizzy from a sudden lack of blood to his brain.
The shower water turned on, and Akazawa continued on, oblivious. “Mizuki and I never did reconcile our differences, to the team’s detriment. It was my greatest failure as captain.”
Kaneda shook his head to clear it. “I thought you were a brilliant captain, Akazawa-senpai,” he insisted. “You inspired us all.” Although, if Kaneda thought about it too much, it was possible that Akazawa had mostly just inspired him.
Akazawa chuckled to himself as if he realized this as well, and his outline began moving in a way that indicated he was soaping himself up. “I don’t know what I would have done this year without you, Kaneda. Probably strangled Mizuki.”
Kaneda gulped, and his cheeks blushed bright red. “I d-didn’t do anything,” he insisted.
“No?” Akazawa considered. “I can think of a few times when you held me back when I was hurting the team.”
Kaneda didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t that he didn’t like praise; he just never had any idea how to respond. Mostly, it just made him embarrassed and awkward.
“You have done for me what Yuta has done for Mizuki, I think,” Akazawa continued. “Mizuki realizes that our…differences in style have hurt the team, as well. I believe that is why he refuses to give up, even now. He doesn’t want to admit his mistake.”
“Are you giving up on us, then, Akazawa-senpai?” Kaneda asked. The thought made him queasy. Things were already hard enough with Akazawa mostly gone. If he withdrew entirely, Kaneda would be all alone, and that thought was terrifying.
“Not giving up,” Akazawa insisting. “Passing the team into younger, more capable hands.” The water turned off.
Kaneda sputtered. “Wh-What?”
“You, Kaneda.” The curtain flung open, and Kaneda got a brief glimpse of way too much before Akazawa retrieved his towel and wrapped it around his waist.
Akazawa had hair in his crotch, too. Dark, thick hair. Lots of it. It made something inside Kaneda’s chest feel like it was burning. “Me?” Kaneda squeaked in disbelief.
Akazawa stepped in close, and the steam from his shower billowed all around him, and Kaneda got that stupid vision of the naked chick on the seashell, except it was Akazawa instead of a naked chick, and…
“My last - and perhaps most important - decision as captain is to choose next year’s captain,” Akazawa informed him. “And I choose you.”
Kaneda nodded numbly for several minutes, and his eyelids fluttered shut in anticipation of where his fantasies were going with this scenario.
“Good,” Akazawa nodded to himself. “I’m glad you agree. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go change.” He left Kaneda standing numbly by the showers, his math book held impotently before him.
It took Kaneda several more minutes to realize what Akazawa just told him.
“What?” he finally exclaimed. “Why?”
But, by then, Akazawa was long gone.
Part Two
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: Team ensemble featuring Akazawa/Kaneda, with some Mizuki/Yuuta, one-sided Nomura/Catherine, and a little Yanagisawa/Kisarazu.
Rating: R
Word Count: 12,836
Spoilers/Warnings: Some boys doing the usual naughty things when left alone in their dorm rooms.
Summary: The week before Christmas, Kaneda faces off against puberty, Akazawa’s habit of wearing far too little clothing, three separate brilliant master plans by Mizuki, and St. Rudolph’s surly sub-regular tennis team, yet somehow still manages to come out on top.
Notes: Originally written for crowitched for strudy_exchange here. Broken into two parts due to length.
A Modern Yuletide Carol
by Kantayra
The week before Christmas, Kaneda woke up, went to the bathroom, and screamed.
“Will you keep it down in there?” Kisarazu banged on the paper-thin wall. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
Kaneda yelped, but it came out of his mouth as a weird squeak. He wanted to cover his mouth with his hands, but that was unsanitary, and he was standing in the middle of a dorm bathroom by the urinal, where anyone could walk in at any time, and there was hair in his crotch.
Kaneda felt a bit dizzy and staggered into the shower. The hot water helped, and the shower curtain at least gave him privacy while he stared at his body’s latest bizarre innovation. His body’s latest bizarre innovation stared right back up at him. It was weird and kind of nubbly when Kaneda touched it, and Kaneda tried not to touch it too much, because then the previous twist-spin puberty had thrown at him would rear its ugly head, too.
At that moment, the bathroom door opened, and deep-voiced humming reverberated nicely throughout the bathroom. Kaneda froze in the shower.
“Saru, gorilla, chimpanzee!” Akazawa’s bass rumbled through the bathroom. It was that same stupid song that had been stuck in everyone’s heads since Nationals.
Kaneda tried really, really hard not to be turned on by it, but he just ended up really, really hard. Kaneda reached over and turned the shower nozzle to freezing cold. That helped a little. Mentally, he cursed his idiotic body, while Akazawa fussed around at the sink on the other side of the bathroom. Kaneda’s only saving grace was that at least Akazawa didn’t know it was him.
“Who’s up already?” Akazawa finally asked, entering the shower area. Kaneda imagined he could hear the padding of Akazawa’s bare feet on the wet tile, even though that was technically impossible with the shower on.
It left Kaneda in a predicament. He really didn’t want to face Akazawa right now, especially since Akazawa seemed to have absolutely no shame when it came to boys in locker rooms. On the other hand, they had all conspired (okay, Mizuki had conspired) to get the whole team on the same floor, so Akazawa knew whoever was in the shower was on the team. In the end, there was really nothing Kaneda could do to hide.
“It’s me.” Kaneda’s voice broke on the last word, and it came out as a squeak. He blushed and was infinitely grateful that the shower curtain concealed his embarrassment.
“Ah, Kaneda,” Akazawa’s voice rolled rhythmically over Kaneda’s name, making it sound like pure sin. Kaneda turned the water colder. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?”
The sky was overcast and intermittently sputtering out a depressing raining/sleeting mess. Kaneda was faced with the recurring horror that he was getting a hard-on from an incurable morning person. It just added insult to injury.
“Just fine!” Kaneda squeaked. He’d debated once asking Mizuki to gather data on whether Kaneda’s voice really broke more often when Akazawa was nearby, or it just felt that way because it was twice as embarrassing.
“Mizuki’s called for a team meeting at breakfast,” Akazawa commented with a hint of annoyance in his voice.
“I, uh, got the e-mail last night.” Mizuki’s e-mail had been brief, to the point, and designed to purposefully challenge Akazawa’s authority: Breakfast 7:30 sharp. I wish to discuss the team’s future with you all.
“Hmm,” Akazawa acknowledged, “good.”
Kaneda heard the water turn on the next shower over. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned his own water off. He reached blindly for his towel, rubbed it through his hair, and stepped out of the shower.
Akazawa stood just outside, wearing nothing but the tiniest white towel around his waist, bronzed skin rippling with muscle everywhere.
Kaneda froze, gaped, and instantly brought his towel down to cover his crotch. Thankfully, the move could be interpreted as modesty, rather than a pathetic attempt to cover his instant, painfully hard erection. “W-Why aren’t you in the shower?” Kaneda stuttered helplessly.
Akazawa looked completely baffled as to what could possibly be bothering Kaneda. “I’m waiting for the water to heat up.” Already billows of steam were rising from Akazawa’s empty shower. Akazawa liked things hot, Kaneda was reminded. Hot and sweaty and naked…
“I, uh, forgot to wash my hair!” Kaneda squawked, dashed back into his own shower, and turned the cold water on full blast again. It wasn’t a promising start to his day.
***
“For Christmas,” Mizuki announced at their ‘official’ team meeting at the breakfast table, “we will finally defeat our eternal rivals once and for all!” He sat back with a satisfied smile on his face.
Everyone else blinked at him.
“Our eternal rivals?” Yanagisawa asked. “Who’s that this week, huh?”
“Hyotei?” Nomura guessed.
“No,” Mizuki glared at him. “Hyotei were our eternal rivals last week.”
Akazawa snorted. “What changed? Atobe finally block your cell number?”
Mizuki fixed him with an icy stare. “And all the landlines originating from this school building, if you must know,” he answered breezily. “But that is beside the point. Hyotei were never worthy rivals, anyway.”
“Really?” Yanagisawa frowned. “Because they were the ones who eliminated us at Prefecturals…”
Yuta paused for one moment in shoveling his plate of food directly into his mouth to scowl. He still hadn’t forgiven Akutagawa for his defeat, as he would tell anyone who was stupid enough to let the topic of conversation drift that way in his presence.
Kaneda was nowhere near that stupid. “So who are our eternal rivals, then?” he asked curiously.
“It better not be Ginka again,” Akazawa taunted Mizuki.
Kisarazu was falling asleep in his seat. Kaneda watched as his chin dipped lower, inch by inch, ever closer to his potatoes.
“Not Ginka,” Mizuki shuddered. “That was merely an experiment. Their captain offered, so I thought I’d give it a try. Now, let us never speak of it again.”
Akazawa grunted. Everyone was more than happy to go along with that last command.
“No,” Mizuki continued, “I’m talking about our true eternal rivals, the originals. Hyotei was just a distraction from our real goal.”
Everyone blinked at him again.
“Seigaku!” Mizuki finally exclaimed, frustrated.
“Oh,” Akazawa rolled his eyes.
“Uh, they did win Nationals, you know,” Nomura ventured. “Maybe they’re just a bit out of our league?”
“I would’ve thought that Seigaku’s rivals were Rikkaidai,” Yanagisawa said thoughtfully. “Or maybe Hyotei, huh?”
Kisarazu’s head dipped another inch lower. It caused the ribbon in his hair to fall forward. It landed so close to the pool of gravy on his plate. Kaneda watched with rapt, morbid fascination.
“We played Seigaku first,” Mizuki huffed, “so they’re our eternal rivals.”
“By that logic, they should be Fudomine’s eternal rivals,” Yanagisawa pointed out.
“Shinya?” Mizuki glared at him.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
Yanagisawa let out a growling sound, and his hand clenched around his bun, squishing it into a pasty semi-liquid. Akazawa’s palm caught him in the center of the chest and pushed him back down into his seat before breakfast could erupt into yet another food fight.
“Even if Seigaku were our eternal rivals,” Akazawa pointed out evilly, “it wouldn’t matter. Didn’t Tezuka block your cell number, too?”
Mizuki gave him a sour look, which then turned to a wicked smirk. “It doesn’t matter,” Mizuki said proudly. “We have a secret weapon.”
“We do?” Nomura blinked.
Mizuki slung a comradely arm around Yuta’s shoulders. Yuta paused in cramming food down his throat to look up and blink in surprise when he discovered that there was an actual team meeting taking place around his food.
“Fuji won’t block Yuta’s number,” Mizuki announced. “Heh-heh-heh…”
“Huh?” Yuta looked around, confused. “What?”
Akazawa favored Yuta with a level look. “Mizuki wants you to call your brother and harass him into making Seigaku play us for a Christmas match.”
Yuta groaned. “Oh, hell no. And Shusuke told me not to relay any more messages from you,” Yuta told Mizuki. “He says you’re annoying.”
Mizuki sputtered. Akazawa chuckled. Yanagisawa snorted and choked on his milk. Kaneda slapped him on the back. Kisarazu’s face finally fell forward just as Yuta realized that Kisarazu wasn’t eating anyway and snatched his plate right out from under him.
“Thanks, Atsushi-senpai,” Yuta said with half the contents of Kisarazu’s plate already in his mouth.
Kisarazu’s forehead hit the table harmlessly, and he let out an epic snore.
“Oh my God!” Nomura checked his watch. “Hurry up, guys! We’re going to be late for choir practice!”
For Nomura, that was pretty much the end of the world.
***
Kaneda sat at the far back and watched Sister Sakamoto yell at the boys in the bass section, including Akazawa, for intentionally parodying the hymn lyrics. In the meantime, Sister Catherine worried her hands together and fumbled over sheet music. Nomura was trying to help her, but he seemed to be putting everything in the wrong place. Sister Catherine smiled at him gratefully anyway, and then Nomura tripped over his own feet. Kaneda sighed and picked at the scab on his wrist.
“This is boring,” Yuta complained, yawning. He and Kaneda had both been relegated to the ‘Dear God, their voices are changing! Hide them at the back of the choir and hope no one can hear them!’ section for the Christmas recital.
“Why don’t you call your brother?” Mizuki suggested unhelpfully. Mizuki was supposed to be in the tenor section (even though he was technically a countertenor and had been swearing his revenge ever since that designation had been bestowed upon him), but he’d come over to bother Yuta when it became apparent that Sister Sakamoto wasn’t going to succeed in stopping the bass section from making farting noises any time soon.
“No,” Yuta scowled at him. “I’m not losing to my brother at tennis on Christmas.”
“Fine, then I’ll play him.”
“You’re not losing to my brother at tennis on Christmas, either,” Yuta smirked.
Mizuki huffed. “Me? Lose? It’s unthinkable!”
Yuta smirked more.
“If you don’t call him,” Mizuki threatened, “I’ll go over to Seigaku myself.”
“Like that will help.” Yuta rolled his eyes.
“And I’ll tell him you’re in choir and that we have a performance on Christmas Eve.”
Yuta’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t!”
Mizuki smiled evilly.
Yuta scowled. “Fine, fine, I’ll call him. But he’ll still say no.”
“I just need you to call,” Mizuki insisted. “Leave everything else up to me.”
“Fine, whatever,” Yuta grumbled.
“Excellent.” Mizuki steepled his fingers before him. “Everything is falling into place.”
Kaneda sighed and watched Sister Sakamoto turn her back on the bass section, freeze, and then turn sharply back around to glare at them again. This time they managed not to make any obscene noises, although Akazawa was obviously trying very hard not to laugh. He had very white teeth, Kaneda noticed, not for the first time. They perfectly set off the deep tan of his skin, making it look so smooth, rich, delicious…
“Oh, stop ogling him already,” Mizuki let out a put-upon sigh. “I’m getting cavities just looking at you.”
Kaneda turned to look at where Mizuki’s hand had crept to within an inch of Yuta’s thigh. He wisely didn’t say anything, although really that was mostly because he didn’t want his voice to crack and embarrass him again.
“Boys, return to your places!” Sister Sakamoto ordered with an authoritative flick of her wrist.
“Go ahead, dear,” Sister Catherine encouraged Nomura, taking the stack of sheet music from his hands. “Sister Sakamoto is starting.”
Nomura’s entire face turned red, and he stumbled over his feet again on the way back to the tenor section.
Mizuki sighed wearily and reluctantly separated himself from Yuta’s side. “During lunch break,” he decided.
Yuta just grunted sullenly and crossed his arms over his chest.
Mizuki somehow interpreted that as an encouraging sign and returned to his spot.
“Now, everybody,” Sister Sakamoto stood at the front of the choir, her hands held out in a way that was probably supposed to look like a conductor but ended up more like a deranged chicken. “On three. One, two…”
Sister Catherine’s fingers glided over the piano keys for the opening refrain, and then Sister Sakamoto’s hands danced in the air, indicating for them to start.
“Oh, we like sheep!” bellowed the bass section.
Sister Catherine’s hands faltered, and Sister Sakamoto snarled in their direction. “How many times do I have to tell you?” she snapped. “It’s ‘All we, like sheep, have gone astray’!”
Akazawa snickered.
Kaneda propped his chin up on one hand and sighed longingly. He was starting to agree with Nomura: he wished choir practice would never end.
***
Unfortunately, choir practice did end, all too quickly, but morning classes seemed like they were never going to. Kaneda doodled absentmindedly on the back of his notebook, while Sister Josephine told them how they were all going to Hell.
“Wait,” Fukuoka was confused, as usual, “so you go to Hell for even thinking about girls?”
Kaneda buried his face deeper into his notebook and tried not to blush too much. The notebook page he’d randomly flipped to happened to have ‘Akazawa Ichiro’ written all over it in big, loopy letters. That really didn’t help things.
“Lust is a Cardinal Sin,” Sister Josephine informed him solemnly. She was a horrible, grumpy old woman who had once told Yuta that he was going to Hell for chewing gum, since gluttony was a sin. As a result, everyone had made fun of her behind her back by draping sheets over their heads like nuns’ habits and condemning each other to Hell, until Sister Josephine caught them at it one day and made the whole second-year class copy Bible pages for an entire weekend. In Latin. No one had dared to cross her since, even though she was still a horrible, grumpy old woman.
“But you wouldn’t even be doing anything,” Fukuoka insisted. “You’d just see some girl and think she was cute.”
“Sins of thought are still Sins,” Sister Josephine countered. “They take you further away from God.”
“But that’s not fair!” Fukuoka protested.
“It is fair to the genuinely virtuous,” Sister Josephine proclaimed.
“No one is that virtuous,” Fukuoka grumbled, and it was clear that this would be another of their debates that dragged on all class.
Kaneda tuned them out. He wondered what Sister Josephine would say if she knew he’d just written ‘Kaneda Yoshiro’ all over his notebook page in pen, so that it overlapped with the ‘Akazawa Ichiro’ from before. Was it worse that he wanted to take Akazawa’s name, or that he wanted Akazawa to take his? Or would he just go to Hell for thinking of the question in the first place?
Knowing Sister Josephine, it was probably the last one.
***
“Team meeting! Team meeting!” Mizuki whispered at them all in a voice that wasn’t very hushed at all. “Secret team meeting!” Students from all the nearby tables looked over, curious at Mizuki’s very ill-kept secret.
Kisarazu groaned and poked at his rice with a chopstick. “Can’t you call Seigaku from here? It’s cold and raining outside.”
“You’re such a wimp,” Yanagisawa teased him.
Kisarazu glared at him. “At least I didn’t fall asleep in history class.”
“Yeah, well, who fell asleep at breakfast, huh?”
Kisarazu just snorted and returned to poking his rice. It was a weird, gooey-gray color today. At least it wasn’t blue. Kaneda still had nightmares about the time the rice was blue.
“I can’t believe this,” Mizuki sighed dramatically. “None of you take this team seriously.”
“The season’s already over,” Akazawa pointed out. “Technically, we’re not even really part of the team anymore.”
“It’s not over until it’s over,” Mizuki glared at him. “Now, we are going to finally beat Seigaku and have our revenge.”
“But we are not going outside in the rain in the middle of lunch,” Akazawa insisted sternly, arms crossed over his broad chest.
Mizuki scowled at him, then looked at Kaneda, who was having a really hard time not staring at Akazawa’s biceps. Mizuki sighed, met Kisarazu and Yanagisawa’s insistent looks, and gave up. “Fine,” he grumbled. “We’ll do it here. Give me your phone, Yuta.”
Yuta was shoveling his food again. Kaneda wondered sometimes where all that food went. Yuta never got fat, but he didn’t seem to be growing, either. Kaneda didn’t think Yuta spent many more hours in the gym than he did, so it was one of the great mysteries of the universe.
“Yuta,” Mizuki pressed, nudging him in the shoulder.
“Huh?” Yuta looked up at him and blinked.
Mizuki sighed wearily. “Our comeback match?” he reminded Yuta.
Yuta snorted and pulled out his cell phone. “Good luck.” He tossed it into Mizuki’s lap. “You’ll need it.”
Mizuki shoved Yuta in the shoulder. Yuta shoved him back, just for good measure. That meant that Mizuki crashed into Nomura, who in turn crashed into Akazawa, who crashed right into Kaneda, just as Kaneda had been debating the lickability of Akazawa’s neck, right where it joined to his ear.
Kaneda realized, with a sudden, confusing mixture of lust and alarm, that his lap was full of Akazawa, and that smooth, honeyed skin was just inches away from his lips. Akazawa glared back over his shoulder at Nomura, and Kaneda was treated to a whiff of lemon-scented soap and raw, masculine scent. Akazawa’s hand had landed on the far side of Kaneda’s lap, propping Akazawa up over him. Instinctively, Kaneda shifted so that his thigh was pressed up against Akazawa’s wrist. He shut his eyes for one perfect moment, absorbing the heat of Akazawa’s body into his memory to replay in his head over and over again that night while he lay in bed.
Akazawa belatedly realized his precarious position and gave Kaneda a sheepish smile. “My apologies.” His voice rumbled its way down straight to Kaneda’s newly-hairy groin.
Kaneda opened his mouth to say something stupid like, “Take me now, Akazawa-senpai!” but fortunately his voice cracked in a way that sounded like a violin dying, and he was spared the humiliating rejection.
Akazawa crawled back off his lap and was staring down Nomura, who was apologizing and pointing accusing fingers at Mizuki and Yuta. Kaneda felt as though a part of him had been ripped away.
“Why do I have to do it?” Yuta whined in the meantime.
“Because he’ll just hang up on me,” Mizuki insisted.
“This is stupid.”
“You promised,” Mizuki reminded him. Possibly he fluttered his eyelashes; Kaneda really couldn’t see.
In any case, Yuta wasn’t impressed. “You do it.” He shoved his phone back into Mizuki’s lap.
Mizuki smirked, twirled a lock of hair around his finger, and picked up the phone. “Fine. I’ll prove it to you.” He flipped through Yuta’s phone to find the right number and hit the call button.
Everyone watched curiously while Mizuki drummed his fingers impatiently on the dining-hall table. Then, a vicious little spark glinted in Mizuki’s eyes. “Ah, Seigaku’s Fuji,” Mizuki’s voice turned downright diabolical. “Heh-heh, it is I, your-” He didn’t get any further than that. Mizuki scowled down at the phone.
Yuta snorted into his soup.
“See?” Mizuki said smugly. “He hung up on me.”
“No, duh!” Yuta rolled his eyes. “Now, can we forget about this stupid rival thing and-”
“Stupid?” Mizuki sputtered. “Well, excuse me for thinking that preparing this team for next year is stupid!” He got up and stalked off in a huff.
Yuta stared longingly down at his food. Then, he looked hopefully up at the rest of the team.
“I’m not going after him, huh,” Yanagisawa helpfully provided what they were all thinking.
Yuta sighed wearily and slouched off after Mizuki.
Kisarazu blinked and watched them go. “Those two are very strange,” he decided and poked his rice some more.
Kaneda bit his lip and looked over at Akazawa.
Akazawa sighed. “I suppose Mizuki only wants to preserve St. Rudolph’s legacy for next year,” he concluded bitterly, like it caused him actual, physical pain to say something nice about Mizuki like that. “It’s…hard, with high school coming up. We only have a couple of months left together.” He sipped his juice.
Kaneda felt a twist of panic in his stomach, because he tried really hard not to think about those things, about how, come April, he wouldn’t have Akazawa to look forward to anymore: nearly nude in the bathroom every morning, and horsing around all through choir practice, and sweaty and furious and taking the tennis team to task at practice.
“This is gross,” Kisarazu said and poked his gooey, gray rice some more.
“It’s always gross, huh,” Yanagisawa teased him. “You’re such a priss.”
Kisarazu glared at him prissily.
Yanagisawa flicked a bit of his own rice onto Kisarazu’s cheek.
Kisarazu sputtered in outrage, grabbed a spare shrimp, and flung it ‘splat!’ into the direct center of Yanagisawa’s forehead.
Chaos ensued at that point, and all of the St. Rudolph tennis team (sans Mizuki and Yuta, for once) got written up for food-fighting for the fourth time that month.
“Next year,” Akazawa sighed wearily after Father Tsukui finally finished chewing them out and let them go, “this is one team ritual that you should probably get rid of.”
Kaneda felt a lot sicker at that thought than he had the entire time the headmaster had been yelling at them.
***
Afternoon classes were as boring as ever, but by the time they were out, Mizuki and Yuta seemed to have made up somehow. Mizuki shuffled them all into a vacant club room, which hadn’t been so vacant after all, if the glares the astronomy club were giving them were any indication. Mizuki just smirked at them and twirled a lock of hair around his finger, though. Kaneda really didn’t want to know how Mizuki had blackmailed them.
Mizuki then slammed the door on the forlorn astronomy club and informed them all, “Yuta has an important announcement to make.”
Yuta sulked at his desk in the corner and finally mumbled out, “So I talked to my brother.”
Apparently, that was all the announcing Yuta got to do, because Mizuki cut in then. “He refused, naturally. Of course, he must be terrified of what would happen should such a nationally-ranked team face a humiliating defeat at the hand of their arch-rivals.”
Yanagisawa groaned, expressing a sentiment they were all feeling just then: Dear God, Mizuki’s insanity is never going to end!
Kisarazu scrunched up his nose in distaste. “I’m sure that’s not what Seigaku’s Fuji actually said,” he insisted.
“Well, it was implied.” Mizuki waved one hand airily.
“Mizuki,” Akazawa practically growled.
Kaneda shifted in his pants pointedly at that low rumble, trying to alleviate any potential friction on certain portions of his anatomy, which foolishly wished that Akazawa would growl out his name like that.
“Tell us what actually happened,” Akazawa demanded.
Mizuki pouted, crossed his arms over his chest, and sat down atop Yuta’s desk. Yuta blinked in surprise that his view had suddenly become Mizuki’s ass in tight jeans. “Fine,” Mizuki huffed wearily. “He said that Tezuka was in Germany, Echizen in the United States, Oishi was cramming to get into some science school, Kikumaru was vacationing with his family, and Kawamura had quit tennis to become a sushi chef or something else equally ridiculous. It was obviously just an excuse.”
“It sounds like,” Akazawa cut in with a nasty smile, “Seigaku realizes that the season is over and is moving on with their lives.”
Mizuki scowled at him, and he did a little bit of growling of his own. Only, after Akazawa’s beautiful demonstration of what a real manly growl should sound like earlier, Mizuki came off sounding unfortunately like an irritated little kitten.
Yuta put a hand on Mizuki’s arm to quiet him, nonetheless, and instantly Mizuki relaxed and the smug smile returned to his face. “And that,” Mizuki concluded with finality, “is why St. Rudolph is going to annihilate them next year.”
“Next year?” Nomura squeaked. “We won’t even be here!”
“No,” Mizuki agreed, “but Yuta here will, and so will Kaneda.”
Kaneda jerked up in sudden alarm at finding himself the center of Mizuki’s latest plan. “Huh?”
“New plan,” Mizuki announced triumphantly. “Seigaku will never suspect us of attacking after their team has already disbanded. It’s perfect.”
Yanagisawa blinked at him. “It’s insane, huh,” he complained. “They won’t even think it’s us, because it won’t be, so what’s the point?”
“It’s perfect,” Mizuki insisted. “We will know about our legacy’s stunning victory.”
Yuta gurgled a bit where his cheek was propped up on one elbow. He looked supremely bored. “Great,” he said wearily, “can we go now? Kaneda and I still have to run practice, you know.”
“You won’t have time for that,” Mizuki assured him. “I need your help to create our ultimate weapon for next year.”
Yuta gurgled some more.
Kisarazu made a gurgling noise, too, but that was his stomach growling. Given that he hadn’t eaten much of anything for breakfast or lunch, Kaneda wasn’t surprised. “Is that it, then?” he complained. “’Cause I want to go out for real lunch.”
“This wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t too prissy to eat the cafeteria food,” Yanagisawa taunted him.
Kisarazu glared.
“Priss, priss, priss!” Yanagisawa teased.
Kisarazu shoved him half out of his desk. Soon, chalk and erasers were flying across the room.
“Can I go start practice, then?” Kaneda asked hopefully.
Mizuki blinked at him like he had forgotten anybody but Yuta existed. “Hmm, yes, go ahead.” He shoved another notebook, detailing his brilliant master plan, under Yuta’s nose. Yuta gurgled yet again.
Kaneda got up.
Akazawa got up a second behind him. “I’ll go with you. I could use some practice with the back-up ball machine.”
Kaneda felt his face go warm and tried to fight back the reaction.
“Nomura, coming?” Akazawa inquired.
Say no, say no… Kaneda’s inner voice chanted.
“I promised Sister Catherine that I’d help her copy all the beginner sentences onto the board for this afternoon’s prep class,” Nomura sighed dreamily.
Akazawa made a face and pressed his hand against the small of Kaneda’s back to guide him out the door.
Kaneda tried very hard not to come on the spot.
It was turning out to be a wonderful day.
***
The problem with going to practice with Akazawa was that Kaneda had no clue what to do with his hands. The pockets in his tennis shorts were too low to stick his hands in them comfortably without lumbering like a big, dumb, klutzy dinosaur. If he swung them back and forth, 1) he looked like a moron, and 2) he might put out another first-year’s eye. He could always fist them at his sides, but then they got all sweaty and clammy and gross.
The worst part was that, beside him, Akazawa hummed under his breath and clearly wasn’t worrying about what to do with his hands at all.
Needless to say, Kaneda didn’t get up the guts to say anything, let alone, “You’re so dreamy, Akazawa-senpai! Make me yours!” Instead, he acted like a complete mute while Akazawa commented on some of the younger players’ weaknesses, and then nodded idiotically when Akazawa wished him well with practice and went off to train on his own.
Kaneda was still standing there nodding when the sub-regulars arrived.
“Kaneda-senpai?” Morino asked, puzzled.
Kaneda blinked out of his trance and frowned. He was never going to get used to being called ‘senpai.’ “Twenty laps around the gym,” he ordered, “and then swing practice.”
There were some groans, but eventually everyone filed out along the perimeter of the gymnasium, all jogging along at different paces. Kaneda picked up the rear and got the first-years at the back of the line to pick up the pace. It was a pretty thankless job. The only saving grace was that, at the top end of the gym, Kaneda could just see into the indoor practice courts where Akazawa was sweating, panting, and returning the balls from the machine at a frantic pace.
“Kaneda-senpai, I’m going to die!” Tsurumi whined.
“Only three more laps,” Kaneda pushed him. Three more blissful glimpses of Akazawa-senpai’s ass.
He didn’t say that last part out loud.
***
Nagging a bunch of unruly first- and second-years into running laps, doing drills, and actually playing their practice matches was frustrating enough to make Kaneda want to scream. Kaneda vaguely recalled that it had been like this the winter of his first year, too, except then it had been Akazawa running the practice, and Kaneda (and only Kaneda) had been more than eager to do everything Akazawa said.
It was a lot different when Kaneda was the one in charge. For one, the view wasn’t as nice (except the rare glimpses Kaneda managed to snatch of Akazawa on the far court). For another, he didn’t have Akazawa to fall back on anymore.
“You all need to work on your footwork,” Kaneda wearily informed the group of first-years who were only halfheartedly playing their practice doubles match anyway. “A hundred squats each.”
Kamata (whom Kaneda inwardly called Little Whiner) whined. “But Kaneda-senpai,” he complained, “it’s almost Christmas. Why do we even have to have practice if-?”
“Would you prefer to do those squats outside in the cold?” a delicious, low, rumbling voice came from behind Kaneda’s shoulder.
“C-Captain Akazawa!” Kamata squeaked. “No, sir! We’ll get to them right now!” The first-years leapt to their feet with incredible vigor.
Kaneda slumped as he watched them go. “Thanks, Akazawa-senpai,” he said tiredly.
Akazawa slung a comradely arm around Kaneda’s shoulders, and Kaneda’s face ended up in roughly the vicinity of Akazawa’s armpit. Kaneda knew there was something wrong with him because there was nowhere in the world he’d rather be than in Akazawa’s sweaty, hairy armpit right then. Clearly, hormones were the exact same thing as insanity.
“You’ll have to look out for them when I’m gone,” Akazawa said soberly.
It was almost enough to ruin Kaneda’s joy at smelling Akazawa’s tennis musk. “That’s not for a while yet.”
“Hmm, but soon.” Akazawa surveyed the practice around them. “This team could do great things.”
“Unless Mizuki recruits another team right out from under their noses,” Kaneda retorted.
Akazawa chuckled to himself. “Mizuki does tend to do that. It’s up to you to make this team good enough to stand up to them.”
Kaneda’s stomach felt a little queasy at the thought.
Akazawa graced him with a secretive little smile. “I have faith in you,” he informed Kaneda and walked back to his court.
Kaneda watched him go with dreamy, star-struck eyes.
“Kaneda-senpai?” a voice sounded beside him.
“Our captain’s so inspirational, isn’t he?” Kaneda breathed longingly and watched Akazawa miss his backhand by mere inches.
“Goddamn son of a bitch, arrrrrrgh!” Akazawa growled at the top of his lungs and smashed the next ball right back into the ball machine.
Kaneda sighed.
“Sure thing, Kaneda-senpai,” the voice sounded slightly confused. “But can you help us with our serves? Nothing wants to go in today.”
Kaneda forced himself to look away from Akazawa to where Morino blinked hopefully up at him. “Of course,” he agreed. It was encouraging, in a way. At least all the first-years weren’t hopeless.
Or that was what Kaneda thought before he saw their serves.
***
That night, things were tense at dinner. Whatever expedition Mizuki and Yuta had been on obviously hadn’t gone well, and they weren’t talking to each other for whatever reason. Yanagisawa and Kisarazu had eaten enough out that they didn’t even show up at dinner, so their bickering wasn’t present to break up the icy silence between Mizuki and Yuta. The only one who did feel like talking was Nomura, and all he wanted to talk about was how sweet and smart and funny Sister Catherine was. Akazawa had left early.
So Kaneda left early, too, returned to his room, and flopped back on his bed with a sigh. Tomorrow was the last day of school before break. Usually that would be good: no classes, more tennis practice for those who stayed over the vacation (including Kaneda), and the general chaos that teenage boys with too much free time naturally provided.
However, today Kaneda’s mind was weighed down with too many thoughts. They really only had a few months left together, and then the team would scatter. Akazawa was going to St. Sebastian, which was the recommended high school for good St. Rudolph Catholics, as was Nomura. But Kaneda doubted that any of Mizuki’s other recruits were. And, even if Kaneda wanted to follow Akazawa to St. Sebastian, there was still a year apart in the middle.
It was depressing.
So Kaneda did what he always did when things were too depressing: masturbated to thoughts of Akazawa in a Speedo. Actually, that was pretty much what Kaneda did no matter what his mood, whenever he was left alone in his dorm room this past year.
It worked like a charm for distracting Kaneda from everything else in the known universe, and today Kaneda had a wonderful, recent vision of Akazawa nearly naked and waiting for the shower to jerk off to.
Casting a quick glance at the door to make sure it was locked, Kaneda pushed down his boxers, pulled the blanket up over his chest (just in case), and began to run his hand idly up and down his erection.
Kaneda squeezed his eyes shut tight, and he was back in the shower, only this time he let the water run as hot as he could. As hot at Akazawa liked it. The steam billowed up around him, and then Akazawa’s deep voice purred behind him.
“Kaneda…”
Kaneda let out a little gasp and a squeak, and his hand beneath the covers doubled its speed. There were days when just imagining Akazawa saying his name made Kaneda come. Today, he held himself back just enough, though, and he let the fantasy continue.
The rumble of Kaneda’s name was followed by a hot breath against the back of his neck, and then tanned, muscular arms were encircling Kaneda’s slighter frame from behind.
“Let me take care of you,” Fantasy Akazawa breathed against Kaneda’s ear.
Kaneda gave in, let powerful, calloused hands take him, stroking longer, harder, faster… Kaneda leaned back into Akazawa’s naked body, felt slick, toned flesh all around him, cradling him perfectly, and then if he pushed back with his ass just so, he’d feel…
“Akazawa-senpai!” Kaneda cried out with an anguished moan and came all over his stomach.
He gasped in the aftermath, sweaty and sticky on his bed, before he groaned and reached over for some tissues to clean himself off.
As he was doing so, he heard through the wall, “Sister Catherine!” in the exact same tone Kaneda was sure he’d just exclaimed Akazawa’s name. Kaneda made a face. Sometimes, living in a dorm really sucked.
***
Kaneda always slept amazingly well after jerking off to Akazawa. He woke up from a deep, warm haze to the sound of knocking on his door.
“Kaneda? Kaneda, are you in there?” Nomura’s voice came, followed by more vigorous rapping. “You’re going to miss breakfast if you don’t get up right now.”
Kaneda grumbled into his pillow, his sleep-hazed brain still half convinced it was Akazawa’s chest.
“Kaneda?” Nomura’s voice sounded again. “Get up. Captain Akazawa wanted to talk to you before choir practice. He said it was important.”
That got Kaneda out of bed and dressed, lightning-fast. Kaneda made a face at not getting to shower before school, but at least he’d mostly wiped off last night, so he wasn’t disgustingly sticky.
“Did Akazawa-senpai say what he wanted?” Kaneda demanded, slipping on his jacket and toeing the door closed behind him.
Nomura shrugged. “Mizuki wants to talk to us all, too.”
Kaneda bit back a groan, even more so when they got to the dining hall, and Mizuki sat at the end of the table with a cat-who-ate-the-canary smirk on his face. Kaneda really didn’t want to know.
“Team meeting,” Mizuki announced and elbowed Kisarazu, who had propped himself up on one arm, half-asleep, and was poking slowly at his soup with a spare set of chopsticks.
“M’awake,” Kisarazu insisted.
Yanagisawa snickered and flicked a ball of torn-up napkin into Kisarazu’s soup. Kisarazu didn’t so much blink in response, proving to one and all that, even though Kisarazu’s eyes were open, his brain was still very much absent.
“Yesterday,” Mizuki announced smugly, lounging back in his seat and twirling one lock of hair delicately around his fingers, “Yuta and I gathered important information on our mortal enemy.”
“That stalking them from the bushes is a waste of time, huh?” Yanagisawa taunted him.
Mizuki froze and glared at Yanagisawa in the iciest manner imaginable. “No,” he hissed under his breath, “I’ve uncovered next year’s secret weapon for defeating Seigaku once and for all.”
Akazawa’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” he said sarcastically. “Do tell.”
“Seigaku’s captain next year will be Kaidoh,” Mizuki continued smugly. “Unfortunately, all of my efforts to recruit him to St. Rudolph have been thwarted…” Mizuki stared wistfully off into the distance.
“That’s it?” Nomura scratched his head. “That Kaidoh’s the new captain? I mean, didn’t you already know that? Doesn’t pretty much everyone know that?”
“That’s old news,” Mizuki agreed. “I was merely reminding everyone of that, so the importance of my new information can fully sink in.” He paused dramatically.
Akazawa ground his teeth but refused to take the bait.
“So, apparently Kaidoh’s got a younger brother who will be starting middle school next spring,” Yuta cut in. “Mizuki wants to recruit him.”
Mizuki’s smug look fell at Yuta’s announcement. “You were supposed to let me tell them!” he hissed.
Yuta blinked at him. “Well, you weren’t saying anything, so I thought you weren’t going to.” He returned to inhaling an entire egg in one bite with frighteningly little chewing.
Mizuki crossed his arms over his chest in a huff. “I was building up to it.”
“Oh,” Yuta blinked and guzzled a glass of milk, “sorry.”
Mizuki’s eye twitched, and he and Yuta would probably have gotten into another fight if Akazawa hadn’t cut in.
“You were taking far too long,” he insisted. “Thank you, Yuta.”
“Mou’re mewcome,” Yuta tried talking and chewing at the same time and failed at both.
Mizuki glared at Akazawa before he remembered his own unquestionable brilliance and couldn’t help but smirk again. “In any case, it’s a flawless plan. We will recruit the younger Kaidoh and cripple Seigaku psychologically for the upcoming season! Heh-heh-heh…”
“What is your obsession with little brothers, huh?” Yanagisawa blinked at him curiously. “What, did you always want one yourself or something?”
Kisarazu muttered something like agreement into his soup.
Mizuki huffed. “Are you questioning the brilliance of my plan?” he countered.
“I’m questioning your brilliance in distracting Yuta from practice, when the team is going to need him in top form next season,” Akazawa countered.
Mizuki scowled at him. “I assure you, Yuta and I have been doing plenty of training together.”
Akazawa grinned evilly. “Oh, I bet you have…” he teased.
Mizuki huffed. “I can’t imagine what you mean. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Yuta and I have to stalk the Kaidoh household from the bushes.”
Akazawa rolled his eyes.
“B-But… Now?” Nomura’s eyes widened. “That means you’ll miss choir practice!”
“Whatever. We have choir practice every day, anyway,” Mizuki said breezily.
“Uh, aren’t we doing the chorus where you have your solo today?” Yanagisawa pointed out.
“Yes! Yes, we are,” Nomura fretted.
“Ah, right,” Akazawa said evilly. “That soprano solo of Mizuki’s…” He flashed Mizuki a nasty grin.
Mizuki gave him an outraged look. “Oh, shut it,” he snapped and dragged a still-eating Yuta along after him.
***
The last day before vacation was, thankfully, not too much work. Mizuki and Yuta weren’t the only students playing hooky, and the teachers all seemed too preoccupied to really care. Kaneda got out of his history class early that afternoon, and Father Ito had clearly been itching to get out of there for quite some time before he actually let them go. As a result, Kaneda arrived at tennis practice early and set to warming up by taking several slow laps around the gym.
Kaneda expected practice to be lax today with half the team fleeing the campus for vacation and the other half probably not all that excited about attending an optional practice anyway. He’d heard plenty of his classmates planning to spend the afternoon at the arcade or the movies or the mall. A part of him even wished he were doing something like that, but he knew that Akazawa was busy, and going out alone would be no fun. Akazawa was always busy on Friday afternoons, which was the day he devoted to diving, even during the tennis season. That meant he wouldn’t come to practice today, which just made Kaneda’s mood even sourer.
The echoing of his footfalls through the empty gym was just making him morose, and Kaneda was debating just giving up on practice and tracking Akazawa down to see what he’d wanted from Kaneda that morning before Mizuki’s latest hissy fit had distracted them all. Then two of the first-years turned up, however, and Kaneda was forced to admit that practice really would happen that day.
In the end, only five people besides Kaneda showed up, and he had them all play practice matches against each other since it was officially Christmas break and drills were no fun.
Morino still couldn’t serve worth a damn, but Kaneda went easy on him, and at least the kid had decent volleys. Kaneda won every match he played, no contest, but the match between Hayashi and Yasuda turned out to be pretty close and intense. It wasn’t bad for two second-years who hadn’t had a dream of making regulars this past season.
Kaneda, following the proud tradition formed by all his teachers that day, let everyone out early and spent the rest of the time cleaning out the clubroom, during one of the rare instances when there weren’t twenty teenage boys in there ruining any progress he made faster than he could clean. After an hour of that, even Kaneda decided to call it quits and found himself wandering over in the direction of the pool.
The secret to going to the pool, Kaneda had long since discovered, was always to bring a textbook of some sort with him. That way, when he saw Akazawa in nothing but the skimpiest of bathing suits, water glistening over his bronzed, muscled flesh, Kaneda had something to hold in front of him to hide his erection.
Kaneda gulped now and clutched his math book in front of him so tightly that his knuckles went white.
Akazawa stood on his toes at the tip of the diving board, facing backwards. He bounced twice, causing his ass muscles to go tight and firm, and then leapt into the air, doing some sort of somersault as he went. His body twisted in perfect, lithe motions that nearly caused Kaneda to hyperventilate, and then he stretched out - a graceful, lean ideal of the human form - and pierced the surface of the water.
Kaneda caught his breath and forced himself to calm down while Akazawa was below the surface.
Finally, Akazawa emerged once more, throwing his head back so that pure, crystalline drops of water flew from his hair like some kind of elemental halo. He dipped back down into the water and climbed up the ladder by the side of the pool, and that was when he saw Kaneda.
“Ah, Kaneda, I was hoping to catch you before dinner.” Akazawa emerged from the water, and Kaneda tried not to stare at his naked, wet chest or the bulge at the front of his tiny, black Speedo.
“A-Akazawa-senpai,” Kaneda squeaked and held his math book tighter against his body. “Um, good… I mean, good dive. I mean…” Kaneda gave up; it was simply impossible to speak in coherent sentences when Akazawa was this naked.
Akazawa reached for his towel and began rubbing it all over his body. Kaneda fought down his instinctive urge to take it from Akazawa’s hands at pat down all those glorious muscles himself. “How was practice today?” Akazawa asked, seemingly oblivious to Kaneda’s dilemma.
“Fine,” Kaneda managed to get out. “Great.”
“Mizuki and Yuta were absent?”
Kaneda had to think about that really hard. “Um, yes. I-I was the only regular there.”
Akazawa bent over at the waist and began drying his legs. Kaneda stared in awe at the perfect curve of Akazawa’s ass, on full display before him. “Humph,” Akazawa said to himself. “We didn’t turn out to be so much of a team this year after all, eh, Kaneda?”
Kaneda nodded longingly at Akazawa’s ass, then turned sheepish when he realized what he was agreeing to. “Given the situation,” meaning Mizuki, of course, “you did the best you could, Akazawa-senpai.”
“Hmm,” Akazawa agreed. “And next year?”
Kaneda bit his lip. Akazawa had fought tooth and nail to keep the club from falling entirely into Mizuki’s hands this season, and even he’d barely succeeded. Given that, what chance did someone like Kaneda have, who wasn’t half as strong or talented or confident? Kaneda’s shoulders slumped with the foreknowledge that he was going to fail Akazawa, no matter what.
“I need to shower,” Akazawa said. “Come with me to the locker room?”
That certainly short-circuited Kaneda’s brain in all the wrong ways. He followed eagerly on Akazawa’s heels, math book clutched firmly before him, and it took him embarrassingly long to realize that Akazawa just wanted to be able to talk to Kaneda further.
“The team’s weakness this year,” Akazawa announced as he slipped into one of the shower stalls and pulled the clear, plastic shower curtain closed behind him, “was a lack of unity.”
Kaneda knew he should turn away, but he just couldn’t. He could only see the vague shape of Akazawa’s body, but it was enough. Some tanned, blobby things that had to be Akazawa’s arms paused around the blobby section that was Akazawa’s waist, and then pushed down to Akazawa’s feet as Akazawa bent over.
Akazawa-senpai just stripped off his Speedo, a blissful voice rang in the back of Kaneda’s mind. Kaneda felt dizzy from a sudden lack of blood to his brain.
The shower water turned on, and Akazawa continued on, oblivious. “Mizuki and I never did reconcile our differences, to the team’s detriment. It was my greatest failure as captain.”
Kaneda shook his head to clear it. “I thought you were a brilliant captain, Akazawa-senpai,” he insisted. “You inspired us all.” Although, if Kaneda thought about it too much, it was possible that Akazawa had mostly just inspired him.
Akazawa chuckled to himself as if he realized this as well, and his outline began moving in a way that indicated he was soaping himself up. “I don’t know what I would have done this year without you, Kaneda. Probably strangled Mizuki.”
Kaneda gulped, and his cheeks blushed bright red. “I d-didn’t do anything,” he insisted.
“No?” Akazawa considered. “I can think of a few times when you held me back when I was hurting the team.”
Kaneda didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t that he didn’t like praise; he just never had any idea how to respond. Mostly, it just made him embarrassed and awkward.
“You have done for me what Yuta has done for Mizuki, I think,” Akazawa continued. “Mizuki realizes that our…differences in style have hurt the team, as well. I believe that is why he refuses to give up, even now. He doesn’t want to admit his mistake.”
“Are you giving up on us, then, Akazawa-senpai?” Kaneda asked. The thought made him queasy. Things were already hard enough with Akazawa mostly gone. If he withdrew entirely, Kaneda would be all alone, and that thought was terrifying.
“Not giving up,” Akazawa insisting. “Passing the team into younger, more capable hands.” The water turned off.
Kaneda sputtered. “Wh-What?”
“You, Kaneda.” The curtain flung open, and Kaneda got a brief glimpse of way too much before Akazawa retrieved his towel and wrapped it around his waist.
Akazawa had hair in his crotch, too. Dark, thick hair. Lots of it. It made something inside Kaneda’s chest feel like it was burning. “Me?” Kaneda squeaked in disbelief.
Akazawa stepped in close, and the steam from his shower billowed all around him, and Kaneda got that stupid vision of the naked chick on the seashell, except it was Akazawa instead of a naked chick, and…
“My last - and perhaps most important - decision as captain is to choose next year’s captain,” Akazawa informed him. “And I choose you.”
Kaneda nodded numbly for several minutes, and his eyelids fluttered shut in anticipation of where his fantasies were going with this scenario.
“Good,” Akazawa nodded to himself. “I’m glad you agree. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go change.” He left Kaneda standing numbly by the showers, his math book held impotently before him.
It took Kaneda several more minutes to realize what Akazawa just told him.
“What?” he finally exclaimed. “Why?”
But, by then, Akazawa was long gone.
Part Two