The Voice (Yagyuu Hiroshi, Niou Masaharu, Kirihara Akaya)
Title: The Voice
Characters: Yagyuu Hiroshi (Niou Masaharu, Kirihara Akaya)
Challenge: Challenge Seventeen Special challenge; to improve writing technique.
Notes: I started this three times and I still don't like it, not really :/. But it's okay. 627 words. About the switch.
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Niou's voice haunts Yagyuu all night: it is there when he is attempting to complete his homework, forcing it's way over the thoughts of math (which just makes Yagyuu think even more about the person who was his doubles partner and who had slowly become his closest friend); it interrupts the essay he had to do for English (which reminded him that he had to make sure Niou had completed the assignment); the words even push out the history facts he attempts to memorize (which, luckily, did not make him think about Niou, but it did make him think of tennis and tennis would forever be connected to Niou in Yagyuu's mind).
The demand is the first thing on his mind over dinner, and quiet questions of how life proceeds: school, and tennis, and the future, and that friend of his, how was he? Yagyuu answers in the same tone he always uses, the fact that he is distracted not obvious, but he is all the same. He thinks about what it will mean, that demand.
The demand is actually simple: think about it. It is what Yagyuu is thinking about that is complex, what Niou has suggested that makes Yagyuu pause in the middle of a book and murmur "would it work?"
he thinks it will, Niou has insisted it will, but still there are those lingering doubts that have been with him for almost a day.
-
It starts like this: Niou calls Yagyuu at an insane hour of the morning, two or three, it doesn't matter because the facts remain the same: Yagyuu is in bed, asleep, and Niou should be too, but he's not, and therefore wakes up Yagyuu.
Yagyuu is disorientated and still half-asleep when he answers the phone, already knowing it is Niou for Niou is the only one who would dare to wake him up at such a late hour, and he listens to Niou's ramble with only half a mind.
Yagyuu tells him no and hangs up. When he wakes up in the morning, there are three messages left for him.
He ignores them.
And he would have ignored Niou himself if such a thing were possible, but Niou is nothing if not persistent, and used to getting his way; in the locker room, Niou corners him and makes his demand. They are close, pressed against each other and looking as if they are doing something else, something more personal than talking, when Kirihara bursts in and tells them that, "Buchou wants you on the courts now."
All through practice, Yagyuu feels Kirihara's eye on him, only to watch the boy's eyes slid away when he tries to capture Kirihara's gaze. It's vaguely amusing and he almost thinks that Niou has the right of it.
-
Yagyuu is still distracted by his partner's voice when he attempts to sleep and there is nothing that will let him free his mind from the voice long enough for slumber to overtake his body.
Until he realizes that it is not his friend's suggestion that he is thinking over by then, but the demand itself: he isn't brooding over whether it will work or what the results will be, but the demand to think it over.
By then it is late, and he wants nothing more than to sleep - there are only a few hours left for him to actually rest. There is a test the following morning, he knows he is prepared for, but Yagyuu is smart enough to know the importance of sleep.
He calls Niou back, twenty-four hours after that first call, and Yagyuu feels a thrill of something in him when he realizes he woke up his friend.
"We're doing it," he tells Niou, and hangs up.
Characters: Yagyuu Hiroshi (Niou Masaharu, Kirihara Akaya)
Challenge: Challenge Seventeen Special challenge; to improve writing technique.
Notes: I started this three times and I still don't like it, not really :/. But it's okay. 627 words. About the switch.
-
Niou's voice haunts Yagyuu all night: it is there when he is attempting to complete his homework, forcing it's way over the thoughts of math (which just makes Yagyuu think even more about the person who was his doubles partner and who had slowly become his closest friend); it interrupts the essay he had to do for English (which reminded him that he had to make sure Niou had completed the assignment); the words even push out the history facts he attempts to memorize (which, luckily, did not make him think about Niou, but it did make him think of tennis and tennis would forever be connected to Niou in Yagyuu's mind).
The demand is the first thing on his mind over dinner, and quiet questions of how life proceeds: school, and tennis, and the future, and that friend of his, how was he? Yagyuu answers in the same tone he always uses, the fact that he is distracted not obvious, but he is all the same. He thinks about what it will mean, that demand.
The demand is actually simple: think about it. It is what Yagyuu is thinking about that is complex, what Niou has suggested that makes Yagyuu pause in the middle of a book and murmur "would it work?"
he thinks it will, Niou has insisted it will, but still there are those lingering doubts that have been with him for almost a day.
-
It starts like this: Niou calls Yagyuu at an insane hour of the morning, two or three, it doesn't matter because the facts remain the same: Yagyuu is in bed, asleep, and Niou should be too, but he's not, and therefore wakes up Yagyuu.
Yagyuu is disorientated and still half-asleep when he answers the phone, already knowing it is Niou for Niou is the only one who would dare to wake him up at such a late hour, and he listens to Niou's ramble with only half a mind.
Yagyuu tells him no and hangs up. When he wakes up in the morning, there are three messages left for him.
He ignores them.
And he would have ignored Niou himself if such a thing were possible, but Niou is nothing if not persistent, and used to getting his way; in the locker room, Niou corners him and makes his demand. They are close, pressed against each other and looking as if they are doing something else, something more personal than talking, when Kirihara bursts in and tells them that, "Buchou wants you on the courts now."
All through practice, Yagyuu feels Kirihara's eye on him, only to watch the boy's eyes slid away when he tries to capture Kirihara's gaze. It's vaguely amusing and he almost thinks that Niou has the right of it.
-
Yagyuu is still distracted by his partner's voice when he attempts to sleep and there is nothing that will let him free his mind from the voice long enough for slumber to overtake his body.
Until he realizes that it is not his friend's suggestion that he is thinking over by then, but the demand itself: he isn't brooding over whether it will work or what the results will be, but the demand to think it over.
By then it is late, and he wants nothing more than to sleep - there are only a few hours left for him to actually rest. There is a test the following morning, he knows he is prepared for, but Yagyuu is smart enough to know the importance of sleep.
He calls Niou back, twenty-four hours after that first call, and Yagyuu feels a thrill of something in him when he realizes he woke up his friend.
"We're doing it," he tells Niou, and hangs up.