FIC: The Great Rikkai Camping Adventure (Rikkai ensemble + D1) Part 2/3
Title: The Great Rikkai Camping Adventure: Or, he who finds the hole first, wins (Part 2/3)
Author: Ociwen
Wordcount: 19000
Pairing/Characters: Rikkai ensemble + D1
Rating: NC17
Warnings: Potential poor taste in humour.
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: A fractured fairytale about the perils of camping with one’s teammates before the Nationals…
Author's Notes: Written for 0rien in rikkai_exchange. Thank you to my friends for feedback and advice.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
Fires don’t start in puddles.
Yagyuu could have told them that. So could Yanagi, but it was more amusing to watch the rest of his teammates struggle with tinder (wet leaves, green twigs) and end up with mostly a lot of rank smoke.
Instead, they ate the beef jerky Sanada brought. Kirihara threaded his onto the end of a stick, agonizingly trying to cook it over the smoking pile of brush they’d collected. “Come on, you fucker,” he snapped. “Cook!! I’ll burn the shit out of you-”
“Akaya!” Sanada yelled.
Kirihara swung his stick around, smacking Jackal in the head. “Sorry, fukubuchou,” Kirihara said with a pout to his lips. “I meant, I’ll burn the crap out of- HEY! Where’s my meat?”
Jackal swallowed. There was a shred of beef at the side of his mouth as he smiled and shrugged. Kirihara tackled him to the ground. Marui, seeing their struggling- or rather, Kirihara’s attempts to pry Jackal’s jaw open with his fists- dropped his bag of potato chips and shouted “Piggy Pile!” before throwing himself on top of both of them.
Niou swiped the bag of chips off the ground.
Yagyuu frowned. He was about to say, “That’s disgusting” when Niou smiled and said, “Ten second rule.”
Yagyuu wasn’t about to eat nothing but this junk. He liked to be regular. He needed to be regular. He peeled off the lid of his jelly with glee, thankful he’d packed some real food of his own. Yanagi sat down beside him on the damp log with his own food: o-den in a can that he was slurping away at.
“You brought food too, Yanagi-kun?” Yagyuu asked. He picked at his jelly as neatly as he could (he was a teenage boy after all, and although he might be bright enough to bring his own food, he’d forgotten a spoon), but the heat made it melt and ooze through his fingers almost faster than he could shovel it into his mouth.
“I got it from Akaya,” Yanagi said.
“Kirihara-kun brought food to share?”
Yanagi hummed. “I got it from his suitcase.”
“Aa.”
No wonder Kirihara complained that all his senpai were mean to him.
The afternoon was a steamy haze. The trees seemed to ooze moisture, even though the rain had stopped completely. Yagyuu peeled off his rain suit and rubber boots, setting them beside the tent. He could smell the BO off his body- gross, but there was no shower here. Everyone else smelled at least as bad as him.
Yukimura had the brilliant idea not to go and find this shrine immediately, but to instead hike in the opposite direction.
“We need to work on our endurance!” he yelled from the top of a hill. His body was almost lost in the ripples of heat rising up from the forest floor.
“This is punishment for them losing,” Jackal muttered.
Sanada stopped in his tracks, just behind Yukimura. When he turned around, the glower he gave Jackal was enough to petrify even Medusa. Before he could yell, Yukimura did first.
“Don’t stop, Sanada! No time for lazy asses if we are going to win!” Yukimura started to cackle. Kirihara joined in. They sounded like demons, mwah hah hahing at the top of their lungs. By the time Yagyuu thought it was over and safe to plod up the hill in wheezing silence, the hills echoed the noise back three times more.
He looked at Marui, who looked at Jackal, who looked at Niou, who looked right back at him. All four of them cringed.
It was too hot for this. Yagyuu’s calves burned. His lungs were on fire. His face was so hot it had gone numb. His clothes were soaking wet and his toes felt like they had started to grow a fungus in the cracks between them. The heat was a film over his skin: sticky sweat damp that made him feel even nastier.
“Yukimura-kun,” Yagyuu gasped, “could we…maybe…”
“Take a break?” Niou finished for him.
Yukimura stomped through the bushes and ascended another hill, using the tree roots as steps. He was so far ahead that Yagyuu had to follow Sanada to know where they were going. Which seemed to be the middle of nowhere.
They were being punished for the singles’ losses to Seigaku. It wasn’t fair. Yagyuu gnashed his teeth and forced himself to slog on. Surely Yukimura would drop dead of exhaustion soon enough and they could take a break.
Yanagi, though, had to spoil everything. He adjusted his tilly-hat (why oh why hadn’t Yagyuu thought to bring a hat? His hair was so hot it was searing his scalp. Or better yet, maybe Jackal had a razor and Yagyuu could shave off his crawling, wet hair…) and turned around, pausing at a fat tree stump. “We’ve only gone 500m. There’s still five more kilometers before we get there.”
“Get where?” Marui snapped. “I thought the whole point of this was to appease gods so we can win and not waste our time in the mountains on some gay hike-”
“MARUI!” Sanada yelled.
No one said a word after that. Except Yukimura. He seemed to derive immense satisfaction out of watching his entire team sweat their way through the steaming forest, winding down pathways and ascending through bush so thick Yagyuu wasn’t sure if it was streams of sweat or streams of blood running down his legs.
And then there was the swamp.
It was an innocent stretch of forest- well, not really, there were no trees in it except some knotted dead ones covered in hanging moss and vines. The place teemed with the bellowing of frogs and the crackling sounds of their footsteps, down down the slope of the hill towards the clearing. Yagyuu’s sneakers slid through the trampled mud. Ahead of him, Jackal tripped over a root and landed on his knees in the wet leaves and sludge. He didn’t even bother to wipe himself off when he got up, he just kept moving to keep pace.
Yukimura darted and dashed, sometimes turning around with a little skip to yell at them to hurry up. Yagyuu could hear Niou’s grumbling. And then he started to hear the distinct sound of a hundred
A thousand
A million
Little insects all droning. All around them. Clouds of black swarmed in the air around their heads. Yagyuu flailed his arms. Niou flailed. Everyone started flailing. If it wasn’t so noisy and gross and ew bugs shit I don’t have bug spray!! Yagyuu would have laughed at the sight of them flapping around like they were having epileptic attacks in the forest.
All except Sanada. Sanada was the noble fukubuchou and waved a few token bugs away from Yukimura’s head, not his own, with his cap. Yagyuu just wanted to get out as soon as he could. In spite of his limbs being limp and overheated, in spite of being lightheaded from the heat, in spite of his muscles that twitched and barely allowed him to walk in a straight line without tripping over Niou’s loose shoelaces, Yagyuu pushed himself into a jog to get to the other side of the swamp, by the next hill where Yukimura was waiting.
Yagyuu crumpled to the ground at Yukimura’s feet. Dirt got up his nose. It smelled like worms. And mold. Yagyuu didn’t care.
Marui was the last to make it. He gave one last wheeze, then fell to his knees. Yagyuu might have been hallucinating at that point, but it looked like a little spirit flew up out of Marui’s mouth and withered into the atmosphere.
“Just over this next hill,” Yukimura announced. He checked his wristwatch and frowned at Yanagi, who was sitting down on a muddy tree root, looking awfully red with exertion. Sanada sweated bullets, but he didn’t complain. He suffered like a man.
Or like a moron.
Frankly, after all this hiking, Yagyuu wasn’t feeling all that nice.
Like dead men they carried themselves up to the top of the hill. The sound of bugs started to grow fainter and fainter, eclipsed not by their gasping and plodding cement feet, but instead by the sound of-
“A WATERFALL!”
For all that Kirihara had gone into a zombie-red-eyed-mode from walking, he was stripped to the underpants and bounding down the hill into the little pool in a flash. He canon-balled into the water, splashing hard enough to spray water onto Yagyuu’s glasses.
If he wasn’t so hot and sweaty and tired and dead, he might have scowled. Instead, Yagyuu started to pull his own clothes off too.
☆ ☆ ☆
The pool was fed, Niou assumed, by underground springs. And the waterfall that tinkled from an outcropping overhead, spraying wonderfully cool mineral water onto his hair. The tension in his muscles loosened. The cramps in his legs dissipated. The birds kept chirping- or maybe cawing, more like, since the crows hovered in the thick tree branches, staring at them, waiting to steal shiny things from their piles of clothes. Like Yanagi’s Rolex.
Niou dunked his head under the water again. He could stay in the water forever, cool and comfortable. It didn’t matter if his fingers were wrinklier than Yagyuu’s grandma’s ass, he was going to stay here until the sun set. And then Yagyuu could stay with him and they could make out and do it in the water or something, because Yagyuu would be slipperier then and it’d be easy and it made Niou hard thinking about it.
He’d be a Casanova.
Yukimura and Kirihara splashed around the pool: cannonballs and pencil-dives until Kirihara touched bottom and shrieked “GROSS! SLIME!” when he surfaced. Marui floated like a log, belly-up and bobbing as Jackal swam circles around him, his hand up like a shark fin above his head. Sanada and Yanagi sat on a rock, only their torsos above the surface, placid and stoic and just taking in the splashes every time Niou sent claps of water their way.
Yagyuu bobbed around behind the waterfall with Niou. Niou had stolen his glasses enough times to know that Yagyuu was blind as a bat without them. So far Yagyuu had managed to not swim into a rock: that was a good sign.
Yagyuu paddled around, dunked his head, then paddled some more. His eyes were naked without his glasses- the almond shape so much more apparent. It was a good thing Niou wore his boxers into the water, otherwise his erection would be even more obvious. The bubbling rush of the waterfall between the rest of the team and Yagyuu and him hid his dick.
But Yagyuu probably knew already.
Every time Niou swam into him, he’d run his hands under the water, up nice and close to Yagyuu’s thigh, feeling the bunching fabric of his underpants floating around. “Not here,” Yagyuu would mumble. “Masa- Niou-kun!”
Voices bubbled from the other side of the waterfall. The water rippled. Kirihara must have jumped in again.
Yagyuu’s hands pushed at the first bit of Niou he could see, which happened to be his nose. Index finger up his nostril was not something that most people would consider sexy, but Niou had always been a bit weird. He smirked.
“Yeah yeah yeah,” he said. “Those three probably would be pissed if we messed around back here, right?”
“We’re not that desperate,” Yagyuu said.
Not yet, Niou thought. But I’ll probably have blue balls all tonight thinking about you…
“OH GROSS! JACKAL YOU PEED IN THE WATER!”
Nothing could have drowned out Marui’s yelling, not even an earthquake. Niou rolled his eyes. He’d peed behind a tree right after they left the campsite. Piss happens. Marui didn’t need to freak out about it.
Still, all things considered, his hands were pruney and his feet even worse. Niou dove under the water, swimming through the waterfall slowly to feel the rush of water bubbles over his back and legs, then he popped back out. Yagyuu took the longer route, navigating around the rocks with his hands, blind man that he was.
Yukimura didn’t drag them back to the campsite, it was their stomachs. The sun hovered low in the west, streams of amber filtering through the steaming forest canopy. Niou shook his hair out as best he could and tied it back. Without his hair wax, it tended to be a bit…flaccid, only bleached. Now Yagyuu wouldn’t be able to say anything about getting hair product on his hands if they made out later.
Niou stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled a theme song as they walked. This time, they walked clumped together and slower, taking the time to walk around the swamp rather than straight through it. Yukimura stopped constantly, oohing and ahing over this weed or that flower. Sanada got the job of carrying all the flowers Yukimura picked. He looked like a bride, with a baseball cap on.
It made Niou snicker.
And Marui too.
“Hydrangea!” Yukimura would say. Then he’d traipse off their pathway into some bush and come out with some plant half-ripped out from the ground. They’d walk a bit further, mocked by crows, then Yukimura would stoop down, dig around in the dirt and produce a handful of mushrooms.
“We could have these for supper,” he told Sanada.
Yagyuu looked at Niou.
Sanada’s eyes widened. He stared at Yukimura with his mouth hanging open for a second. “Yukimura, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Don’t you trust my judgment?” Yukimura said, punching Sanada in the arm. “Do you think I don’t know my mushrooms? Are you doubting me, Sanada?”
Sanada didn’t move for a long time. Kirihara sneezed. Yanagi shifted his weight. Niou scratched the back of his neck- damn mosquitoes!
Suddenly, Yagyuu walked over to Yukimura. He took the mushrooms from Sanada, turned them around and over in his palm, then chucked them into the woods. The mushrooms landed five feet away. Yagyuu had always thrown like a girl.
“I believe those were poisonous, Yukimura-kun,” Yagyuu said.
Marui and Jackal breathed a sigh of relief. Sanada might have too if he wasn’t busy itching the back of his knee. He must’ve had sweet blood like Niou.
Of course, before they got back to the campsite, Yukimura stopped again. And again. And again. And he found new mushrooms, equally questionable- maybe even more, because these next ones had red spots on them and looked more like cutesie toadstools out of an anime.
Niou couldn’t blame Sanada for accidentally trying to lose some of the toadstools out of his pockets.
But he couldn’t deny that hearing Yukimura yell at Sanada and insist he go pick them right back up was funny.
Supper was…
Tricky.
They got back to the campsite and Yukimura disappeared into his and Marui’s tent. Sanada disappeared, too, scratching at his stomach before Niou heard the rustling sounds of him moving around in his and Yanagi’s tent. Kirihara and Jackal started a game of Who Can Piss Marui Off the Most by Throwing His Umaibo Around So He Can’t Catch It. Niou waved his arms- he was wide open, but no one bothered to include him.
He sniffed. Screw them.
Yukimura interrupted everything. He shoved a pot into Yanagi’s hands and said, “You can make us dinner, Yanagi.”
Yanagi blinked. Then he opened his eyes just a fraction enough for Niou to get a peek of them- they looked scary: all demonic and pink-tinged, kinda like Kirihara, only creepier.
“No thank you,” he said. “I think Genichirou still has some beef jerky left over.”
“I’ve got food!” Marui shouted. He hopped up and tried to grab his snack from Jackal. “I have- ugh, Jackal!- gummy bears and another can of Pringles and- JACKAL!”
“I’ve got food, too,” Jackal said. He tossed the umaibo back to Kirihara. “A can of beans.”
Niou had polished off his bento at lunch. He shrugged. “I got nothing.”
Yagyuu looked around frantically. He bit his lip, then his eyes darted around some more. “I’ll do it!” he said, all in a rush. He grabbed the pot from Yanagi’s hands. “I’ll do it, everyone!”
“I’ll start the fire,” Niou offered.
He pulled a zippo from his pocket and flicked it. The little flame danced, as hot as the humid forest. He bounced the lighter around, grinning from ear to ear.
Really, it was the least he could do.
☆ ☆ ☆
It looked like paste.
Wallpaper paste.
Baby formula.
Maybe come, at a stretch.
It had distinctive paste-like properties, regardless.
Marui took one sniff and backed off. Throwing his hands up in the air, he said, “No way in hell does that look edible, Hiroshi. Nas~tay!”
One by one, his teammates came up to the pot, took one look (or one whiff, though, really, Yagyuu couldn’t smell anything other than a bit of burned rice and the warm aroma of yuba, or he so thought) and backed away from the fire pit.
“I’ll just have some gummy bears,” Yukimura said.
Yagyuu’s smile fell.
“I’ll have some…shrimp…chips…” Kirihara said, forcing himself to laugh.
Yagyuu frowned.
“I’ll just…pass,” Jackal said.
Shame poked Yagyuu in the gut. His paste bubbled away. Did it matter if he stirred it more so it wouldn’t burn?
Yagyuu sighed. With the oven mitt, he took the pot off the fire and set it down on the ground. He sighed again. So cooking wasn’t his strong point! At least he’d cooked something healthier than the junk food Marui was stuffing his face with.
A sneaker poked him in the leg. “Is it done?” Niou asked. He handed Yagyuu a bowl. Chopsticks stuck out of his rat tail tie behind his neck. “Let’s eat!” he said and he clapped his hands together.
Yagyuu beamed.
They ate in front of the fire, which should have been uncomfortably hot, but with Niou beside him on the large stump they’d dragged over, it wasn’t. Yagyuu stirred his bowl with the large spoon. It was too soupy- like congee, only not so much- to eat with chopsticks, though Niou tried.
He slurped and winced. “Yummy!” he said through his teeth.
Yagyuu looked at his bowl, cupped between his hands. “You don’t have to eat it,” he mumbled. “You can go eat their food.”
Across the crackling fire, Marui made airplane motions with his food. “Open wide, Akaya!” he said, waving a chip around in the air. “Zoom! Fsssssh!”
Yagyuu blinked. Since when was Marui making the same noises as Kaidoh Kaoru? He narrowed his eyes and glared through the smoke. The rustle of wind shifted the plumes out of the way. No, no, Marui was too short to have switched with Kaidoh. Rikkai wasn’t infiltrated.
Besides, no one except Marui could ever slather a jar of nacho cheese all over beef jerky and shrimp chips to make a sandwich.
Yagyuu went back to eating his paste. It might have had no taste. He might have overcooked everything and had mystery black bits that weren’t nori floating in it, Niou might have been making gagging noises when Yagyuu wasn’t watching, but his food was better.
“Yagyuu?” Niou asked.
Yagyuu set his spoon down. It slid into his bowl, all the way down in. Great.
“I don’t mind your cooking,” Niou said. “Just maybe stick to reheating bentos from Familymart, ne?”
Although the temptation was there, Yagyuu did not dump the rest of the pot of paste onto Niou’s head. Instead, he picked it up by the handle and walked past the tents. Sanada had never emerged from his own tent, so Yagyuu, feeling charitable, cleared his throat. “Sanada-kun?” he asked.
There was a moan from inside; it sounded low enough and miserable enough to be Sanada. Then, it was followed by the distinct noise of scratching fingernails on skin.
Yagyuu shrugged. He set the pot on the ground beside the zipper flap.
Being eight teenage boys, camping in the middle of the woods sans parents, no one bothered to clean up. “Look what I can do!” Kirihara said, right before he threw a chip bag into the fire. It wriggled and crinkled and collapsed to the sound of “Cool!”s. It also made a stink, burning plastic and food crumbs. Yagyuu wrinkled his nose.
Yanagi threw in the jar of nacho cheese sauce. “Noooo!” Marui shrieked, food spraying out of his mouth. He moaned in agony as his beloved cheese started to bubble and hiss and turn black and putrid.
They kept the fire burning because it gave them something to do. Every little while Niou would trudge off into the semi-dark forest and come back with a new stick, which he’d use to poke at embers and move logs around, smirking when the sparks flew up and sizzled on the damp leaves of the ground.
Yagyuu squirmed on the log. He had to piss, but he didn’t have his flashlight. The bathrooms were too far away to walk in the dark- and by now, it was dark. The barest sliver of deep blue lined what must have been the western direction and the moon shone bright above them. There were so many pinpricks of starlight starting to twinkle that Yagyuu had to take a moment. Stars were never this visible back home. It was a little breath-taking.
But not enough to dissipate the feeling of I have to go! Yagyuu crossed his legs. He wiggled. He crossed his legs the other way. Nothing worked. Dammit!
Niou would say Puri!
Yagyuu looked over his shoulder. In the distance, up the next hill, the bathrooms stood, beckoning him. A single floodlight lit up the exterior and even from this far away, Yagyuu knew it’d be swarming with flies and gross things he didn’t want to deal with.
Finally, he gave up.
Yagyuu stood up. Niou stopped trying to flip a smouldering log over with his twig. Yukimura looked up from the book of ghost stories he and Marui had been snickering over. “Yagyuu?”
“Excuse me,” Yagyuu said stiffly. He started to walk away when Niou called out.
“Don’t go near the tents!”
Yanagi followed with “Genichirou would not want us attracting animals with the scent of our-”
“Stop it you guys! I’m trying to eat here and you’re being sick!” Marui snapped.
Yagyuu made sure to walk in the direction away from the tents. In the dark, it was hard to walk more than a foot or two without stepping on something suspiciously squishy or stumbling on a root. He shuffled far enough away that he could only see the faces of his teammates glowing in the firelight, then he unzipped his shorts, pulled his dick out and started to piss.
Ah…bliss!
It might have been behind a tree. It might have been into a patch of leaves: it didn’t matter. All that mattered was hearing that streaming sound and feeling the piss leave his body oh so nice and relieved. A little uncouth, maybe, but they were camping, after all.
Yagyuu shook his dick off, stuffed it back into his underpants, zipped his shorts up and wiped his hands on his sides. Maybe Yanagi had some sort of hand sanitizer he could borrow. First, though, he wanted his flashlight.
Luckily, the tents were near enough the fire that Yagyuu could see their outlines dancing in the dark. His and Niou’s was obvious- the lopsided, leaning one furthest away from everyone else. Yagyuu walked over and unzipped the flap before crawling inside.
He climbed across the sleeping bag Niou had gotten out earlier, then he took his shoes off. Dirt was not something he wanted to be rolling around on later. His own bags should have been on the right side and he had to pat the ground, completely blind, until he felt something suitably duffel-bag like. Back pocket, underneath his favourite Asics jacket, right. Yagyuu felt around for the zipper, then yanked it open.
A second person unzipped the tent flap. It was black out, but Yagyuu knew who it was immediately. He knew that smell- of sweat and name brand deodorant and paste supper, too.
“Hey, I think I’m gonna go to bed soon,” Niou said. His voice was low and quiet. Yagyuu could hear the smile on his lips, though. Niou zipped the tent flap up and the team sitting around the fire was lost into a faint blur of light through the tent door.
Outside, he could hear Marui say, “Man, I think it’s time for smores!”
Then, Kirihara’s “What’s a smore?”
“Only the most delicious thing you’ve never had, Akaya…” Marui might have been saying more, but Yagyuu couldn’t hear anything except the rustling sound of Niou moving around the tent and whispering his name.
☆ ☆ ☆
It started off well.
Niou didn’t need to see to be able to kiss Yagyuu. He ran his hands down Yagyuu’s sides, then up again, fisting them in his hair as Yagyuu kissed him back, hard and hungry. He didn’t need to be able to see to yank Yagyuu’s t-shirt over his head and to shove his hands down Yagyuu’s waistband. Yagyuu moaned and fell back on the sleeping bag. It rustled under their weight as legs shifted and they kept kissing: necks, shoulders, jaws, ears. Niou could taste Yagyuu’s salty sweat on his upper lip, on the dip of his collarbone.
It was intoxicating.
Almost as much as the little noises Yagyuu made when Niou bit his chest, nipples hard in his mouth as he sucked. His hands pushed down the last vestiges of their clothing. The night was hot and his body was on fire as Yagyuu clung to him and arched his back.
“Masa- haru…ngh!”
Niou shivered. Yagyuu’s skin was slick and slippery and his dick dripping as Niou squeezed harder. He pushed his own cock between Yagyuu’s legs, rubbing their bodies together. He groaned. Yagyuu tugged at his hair, freeing the tie and messing it up with his fingers.
“Do you- mmph- have it?” Yagyuu kissed him again and Niou could feel a wet, hot trail from Yagyuu’s tongue sear his neck.
“What?” Niou asked. He panted into Yagyuu’s stomach and kissed his bellybutton. The skin under his mouth shivered as Yagyuu sucked in his stomach.
“The- you know!” he hissed.
Niou rubbed his thumb over Yagyuu’s balls. It made him smile when Yagyuu moaned and hissed that he was being a tease, torturing him like this.
“Just…just fuck me,” he whispered.
“What?” Niou asked. He pressed his lips to the line of Yagyuu’s hips and dragged his hands, horribly and meanly, slow over Yagyuu’s balls and onto his thigh, where there was a patch of smooth, bald skin. Yagyuu shuddered. “You need to be a bit more clear with your needs, Hiroshi,” he said.
“Just-” Yagyuu panted, so hot and heavy Niou felt like he could come right then, all over Yagyuu’s knee. “Just fuck me!”
Niou left him panting and hard on top of the nylon sleeping bag. He rummaged around in the dark for the condoms and lube he brought. It was hard opening the damn thing in the dark; he should have practiced so he didn’t look like a n00b in front of Yagyuu. If Yagyuu noticed, though, he said nothing.
Yagyuu just moaned. “Hurry…” A hand touched Niou’s ass and grazed his butt cheek. Yagyuu’s fingers curled over his skin, insisting with their burning touch.
Niou ripped the stupid package open and rolled the condom on. He felt like a stud like this. The lube was cold in his palm, especially with the summer heat of night. “Flip over,” he murmured into Yagyuu’s ear.
Yagyuu purred. There was no other way to describe the noise. It was a purr.
Shivers made every hair on Niou’s body stand up. God, this was hot. They were finally going to do it.
And that was when everything went horribly wrong.
It was supposed to be easy. Lube Yagyuu up, stick a couple fingers up his ass, wiggle his hole loose and then shove his dick in. Poof, sex!
Instead, it was more like this:
“Ow!”
“Well, hold still!”
“That’s supposed to help, not hurt!”
“Stop clenching then!”
“I’m not! I’m relaxed!”
“No, you’re not!”
“Yes, I am!”
“Then how come I can’t find it?”
“Find what?”
Niou facepalmed.
“Find the hole! I can’t find the hole!”
“I’m not a girl! There’s only one there!”
“Yeah, well…I can’t find it.”
They tried again. And again. A valiant, hard effort for what seemed like ages. The fire had gone dark and flashlight beams shot around the campsite when their teammates went to bed, and still they tried. Yagyuu clenched. Niou poked his fingers around more. Yagyuu clenched harder. Niou squeezed more of the lube out and ended up getting the lube onto the sleeping bag instead.
Eventually, Yagyuu rolled onto his other side, away from Niou. “I’m not in the mood anymore,” he snarled.
Niou had to check. Sure enough, Yagyuu was as limp as he was now. Puri.
He was hot and miserable and horny, but not. Niou wiped his hands on the first duffelbag he felt, peeled the condom off, chucked it somewhere in the tent and slid down onto the sleeping bag beside Yagyuu. Wriggling over, he spooned himself against Yagyuu’s back. It was hot and sticky and filmy in a not good way, but damned if he was sleeping alone tonight.
Yagyuu grunted. “We can try again tomorrow night,” he said.
“Tonight doesn’t count,” Niou said. “It was…practice, or something.” He buried his face in the back of Yagyuu’s neck, flung his arm over Yagyuu’s naked hip and let himself zonk out.
☆ ☆ ☆
If Yagyuu had hickies, he was going to have to find some good excuse to explain them. Like insect bites.
His ass hurt. Niou had poked around and it felt like someone had tried to shove a tennis racket handle up him. If that’s what failed sex felt like, Yagyuu wasn’t entirely sure anymore he wanted to have real sex after all.
He was sticky. He was hot. His stomach growled. His hair was a mess. And there was no place to shower. Or take a morning shit in peace.
Grudgingly, he rolled off the sleeping bag and pushed Niou’s hopeful arm off himself. He opened his duffelbag, which felt a bit…suspiciously and disgusting…damp, and pulled out his ziplock bag containing Saturday’s clothes, dry and nicely pressed inside.
He was the first one awake. The sun was warm and subtle. The tent was damp with dew and slugs. His sneakers were just as damp, but Yagyuu didn’t have a spare pair with him. He shuffled to the bathroom, plugged his nose with his hands and chose the least gross stall. It would have to do.
At least Yukimura had set rolls of nice, three-ply toilet paper on top of the grungy holders. Yagyuu polished off half the roll with relish.
By the time he got back to the campsite, Yukimura was awake and yawning widely. He sat on a fold-away lawn chair beside Kirihara, whose hair was worse than ever: a gross matted seaweed mess. Yagyuu patted his hair down out of disgust at the kid.
“Sleep well?” Yukimura asked.
Yagyuu flushed, so he faked a yawn and covered his face with his hand. “Yes, Yukimura-kun,” he lied.
On cue, Marui popped through a tent flap, holding a can of coffee milk in one hand and a yogurt in the other. His eyes were bloodshot and he glared at Yagyuu.
Yagyuu looked away, blushing harder.
Only, Kirihara’s eyes were red, too. Red eye mode. Or pink eye. He rubbed his eyes with his fists and said, “Yagyuu-senpai, what the hell were you and Niou-senpai doing last night?”
Yagyuu couldn’t face anyone in the eye over breakfast. He stared at his feet and wished his skin would peel off his face so no one else would have to see his perpetual blush.
Niou patted him on the shoulder. “No one’s making fun of you, Yagyuu,” he said.
His snicker wasn’t reassuring.
Neither was Jackal or Marui’s. Or Yanagi’s little bemused smile.
Kirihara had the decency to keep scratching his head and asking what. It looked like he had lice, the amount of itching he did.
Sanada was nowhere in sight. Yanagi had come out of their tent, dressed in nothing but health sandals and his checkered boxers. Yanagi ate breakfast (cans of fanta and packaged pastries, fished from inside Marui’s tent, of course). Yukimura sat and waited and scowled and finally got so impatient that he stomped over Sanada’s tent and ripped the door open.
“Sanada where the hell are you? We have some appeasing today to do and- oh. Oh…”
“Oh?” Marui asked.
Yanagi shrugged.
The rest of them were curious enough- or stupid enough- to creep over and see for themselves. Yukimura’s yells had died off, instead replaced with indeterminate murmuring.
“You first,” Marui told Jackal.
Niou poked Jackal in the side.
Yagyuu and Kirihara nodded.
Jackal sighed heavily and looked inside. Then he sighed again and wiped his sweating head with the palm of his head.
Coast was clear.
Inside, Sanada was lying on top of his futon (“Who the hell brings a futon camping?” Marui hissed. Yagyuu was inclined to agree). Seeing as he was wearing nothing but a pair of capri pajama pants (“Who the hell wears capris to bed?” Marui hissed. Yagyuu was inclined to agree about that too), it was extremely evident that he was covered head to toe in a series of red bumps and rashes, some of which were scabbed over with blood from scratching.
Yanagi popped his head in between the group of them, looking at Sanada, then nodding sagely. “I suspect it is an allergic reaction to either Toxicodendron orientale or Toxicodendron vernicifluum. Or, if not, it could be bugs.”
“Er…” Kirihara gave Yanagi a blank look.
“Crabs?” Niou asked.
“Those tend to stick to the pubic region,” Yanagi said. His lips quirked.
Yukimura must not have been listening to their conversation. He sat by Sanada’s head, placing a wet cloth over his forehead and looking sad. Ish. Yukimura also wore heavy-duty industrial gloves and made sure his skin didn’t come into contact with Sanada’s, although he did say, “Poor Genchi. Sei-sei will get you something for the itchy-scratchy, ne? You stay here and don’t die before the Nationals or we’ll kill you, okay? Don’t screw over Sei-sei’s plans, Genchi-boo…”
Beside Yagyuu, Niou heaved.
Yagyuu patted him on the shoulder this time. His stomach was churning too. Gross was the very tip of the iceberg that he was feeling right now.
“All right!” Yukimura said suddenly. “Everyone! Let’s get our asses in gear and go appease!” He chucked his gloves off behind himself as he slid through the tent door. One smacked Sanada square in the face. He groaned, but Yukimura didn’t notice.
“Three minutes!” he yelled. “We’re leaving in three minutes or your ass is off the team!”
Yagyuu sighed. Then, to Yanagi, he asked, “Do you have a spare hat, Yanagi-kun?”
Author: Ociwen
Wordcount: 19000
Pairing/Characters: Rikkai ensemble + D1
Rating: NC17
Warnings: Potential poor taste in humour.
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: A fractured fairytale about the perils of camping with one’s teammates before the Nationals…
Author's Notes: Written for 0rien in rikkai_exchange. Thank you to my friends for feedback and advice.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
Fires don’t start in puddles.
Yagyuu could have told them that. So could Yanagi, but it was more amusing to watch the rest of his teammates struggle with tinder (wet leaves, green twigs) and end up with mostly a lot of rank smoke.
Instead, they ate the beef jerky Sanada brought. Kirihara threaded his onto the end of a stick, agonizingly trying to cook it over the smoking pile of brush they’d collected. “Come on, you fucker,” he snapped. “Cook!! I’ll burn the shit out of you-”
“Akaya!” Sanada yelled.
Kirihara swung his stick around, smacking Jackal in the head. “Sorry, fukubuchou,” Kirihara said with a pout to his lips. “I meant, I’ll burn the crap out of- HEY! Where’s my meat?”
Jackal swallowed. There was a shred of beef at the side of his mouth as he smiled and shrugged. Kirihara tackled him to the ground. Marui, seeing their struggling- or rather, Kirihara’s attempts to pry Jackal’s jaw open with his fists- dropped his bag of potato chips and shouted “Piggy Pile!” before throwing himself on top of both of them.
Niou swiped the bag of chips off the ground.
Yagyuu frowned. He was about to say, “That’s disgusting” when Niou smiled and said, “Ten second rule.”
Yagyuu wasn’t about to eat nothing but this junk. He liked to be regular. He needed to be regular. He peeled off the lid of his jelly with glee, thankful he’d packed some real food of his own. Yanagi sat down beside him on the damp log with his own food: o-den in a can that he was slurping away at.
“You brought food too, Yanagi-kun?” Yagyuu asked. He picked at his jelly as neatly as he could (he was a teenage boy after all, and although he might be bright enough to bring his own food, he’d forgotten a spoon), but the heat made it melt and ooze through his fingers almost faster than he could shovel it into his mouth.
“I got it from Akaya,” Yanagi said.
“Kirihara-kun brought food to share?”
Yanagi hummed. “I got it from his suitcase.”
“Aa.”
No wonder Kirihara complained that all his senpai were mean to him.
The afternoon was a steamy haze. The trees seemed to ooze moisture, even though the rain had stopped completely. Yagyuu peeled off his rain suit and rubber boots, setting them beside the tent. He could smell the BO off his body- gross, but there was no shower here. Everyone else smelled at least as bad as him.
Yukimura had the brilliant idea not to go and find this shrine immediately, but to instead hike in the opposite direction.
“We need to work on our endurance!” he yelled from the top of a hill. His body was almost lost in the ripples of heat rising up from the forest floor.
“This is punishment for them losing,” Jackal muttered.
Sanada stopped in his tracks, just behind Yukimura. When he turned around, the glower he gave Jackal was enough to petrify even Medusa. Before he could yell, Yukimura did first.
“Don’t stop, Sanada! No time for lazy asses if we are going to win!” Yukimura started to cackle. Kirihara joined in. They sounded like demons, mwah hah hahing at the top of their lungs. By the time Yagyuu thought it was over and safe to plod up the hill in wheezing silence, the hills echoed the noise back three times more.
He looked at Marui, who looked at Jackal, who looked at Niou, who looked right back at him. All four of them cringed.
It was too hot for this. Yagyuu’s calves burned. His lungs were on fire. His face was so hot it had gone numb. His clothes were soaking wet and his toes felt like they had started to grow a fungus in the cracks between them. The heat was a film over his skin: sticky sweat damp that made him feel even nastier.
“Yukimura-kun,” Yagyuu gasped, “could we…maybe…”
“Take a break?” Niou finished for him.
Yukimura stomped through the bushes and ascended another hill, using the tree roots as steps. He was so far ahead that Yagyuu had to follow Sanada to know where they were going. Which seemed to be the middle of nowhere.
They were being punished for the singles’ losses to Seigaku. It wasn’t fair. Yagyuu gnashed his teeth and forced himself to slog on. Surely Yukimura would drop dead of exhaustion soon enough and they could take a break.
Yanagi, though, had to spoil everything. He adjusted his tilly-hat (why oh why hadn’t Yagyuu thought to bring a hat? His hair was so hot it was searing his scalp. Or better yet, maybe Jackal had a razor and Yagyuu could shave off his crawling, wet hair…) and turned around, pausing at a fat tree stump. “We’ve only gone 500m. There’s still five more kilometers before we get there.”
“Get where?” Marui snapped. “I thought the whole point of this was to appease gods so we can win and not waste our time in the mountains on some gay hike-”
“MARUI!” Sanada yelled.
No one said a word after that. Except Yukimura. He seemed to derive immense satisfaction out of watching his entire team sweat their way through the steaming forest, winding down pathways and ascending through bush so thick Yagyuu wasn’t sure if it was streams of sweat or streams of blood running down his legs.
And then there was the swamp.
It was an innocent stretch of forest- well, not really, there were no trees in it except some knotted dead ones covered in hanging moss and vines. The place teemed with the bellowing of frogs and the crackling sounds of their footsteps, down down the slope of the hill towards the clearing. Yagyuu’s sneakers slid through the trampled mud. Ahead of him, Jackal tripped over a root and landed on his knees in the wet leaves and sludge. He didn’t even bother to wipe himself off when he got up, he just kept moving to keep pace.
Yukimura darted and dashed, sometimes turning around with a little skip to yell at them to hurry up. Yagyuu could hear Niou’s grumbling. And then he started to hear the distinct sound of a hundred
A thousand
A million
Little insects all droning. All around them. Clouds of black swarmed in the air around their heads. Yagyuu flailed his arms. Niou flailed. Everyone started flailing. If it wasn’t so noisy and gross and ew bugs shit I don’t have bug spray!! Yagyuu would have laughed at the sight of them flapping around like they were having epileptic attacks in the forest.
All except Sanada. Sanada was the noble fukubuchou and waved a few token bugs away from Yukimura’s head, not his own, with his cap. Yagyuu just wanted to get out as soon as he could. In spite of his limbs being limp and overheated, in spite of being lightheaded from the heat, in spite of his muscles that twitched and barely allowed him to walk in a straight line without tripping over Niou’s loose shoelaces, Yagyuu pushed himself into a jog to get to the other side of the swamp, by the next hill where Yukimura was waiting.
Yagyuu crumpled to the ground at Yukimura’s feet. Dirt got up his nose. It smelled like worms. And mold. Yagyuu didn’t care.
Marui was the last to make it. He gave one last wheeze, then fell to his knees. Yagyuu might have been hallucinating at that point, but it looked like a little spirit flew up out of Marui’s mouth and withered into the atmosphere.
“Just over this next hill,” Yukimura announced. He checked his wristwatch and frowned at Yanagi, who was sitting down on a muddy tree root, looking awfully red with exertion. Sanada sweated bullets, but he didn’t complain. He suffered like a man.
Or like a moron.
Frankly, after all this hiking, Yagyuu wasn’t feeling all that nice.
Like dead men they carried themselves up to the top of the hill. The sound of bugs started to grow fainter and fainter, eclipsed not by their gasping and plodding cement feet, but instead by the sound of-
“A WATERFALL!”
For all that Kirihara had gone into a zombie-red-eyed-mode from walking, he was stripped to the underpants and bounding down the hill into the little pool in a flash. He canon-balled into the water, splashing hard enough to spray water onto Yagyuu’s glasses.
If he wasn’t so hot and sweaty and tired and dead, he might have scowled. Instead, Yagyuu started to pull his own clothes off too.
☆ ☆ ☆
The pool was fed, Niou assumed, by underground springs. And the waterfall that tinkled from an outcropping overhead, spraying wonderfully cool mineral water onto his hair. The tension in his muscles loosened. The cramps in his legs dissipated. The birds kept chirping- or maybe cawing, more like, since the crows hovered in the thick tree branches, staring at them, waiting to steal shiny things from their piles of clothes. Like Yanagi’s Rolex.
Niou dunked his head under the water again. He could stay in the water forever, cool and comfortable. It didn’t matter if his fingers were wrinklier than Yagyuu’s grandma’s ass, he was going to stay here until the sun set. And then Yagyuu could stay with him and they could make out and do it in the water or something, because Yagyuu would be slipperier then and it’d be easy and it made Niou hard thinking about it.
He’d be a Casanova.
Yukimura and Kirihara splashed around the pool: cannonballs and pencil-dives until Kirihara touched bottom and shrieked “GROSS! SLIME!” when he surfaced. Marui floated like a log, belly-up and bobbing as Jackal swam circles around him, his hand up like a shark fin above his head. Sanada and Yanagi sat on a rock, only their torsos above the surface, placid and stoic and just taking in the splashes every time Niou sent claps of water their way.
Yagyuu bobbed around behind the waterfall with Niou. Niou had stolen his glasses enough times to know that Yagyuu was blind as a bat without them. So far Yagyuu had managed to not swim into a rock: that was a good sign.
Yagyuu paddled around, dunked his head, then paddled some more. His eyes were naked without his glasses- the almond shape so much more apparent. It was a good thing Niou wore his boxers into the water, otherwise his erection would be even more obvious. The bubbling rush of the waterfall between the rest of the team and Yagyuu and him hid his dick.
But Yagyuu probably knew already.
Every time Niou swam into him, he’d run his hands under the water, up nice and close to Yagyuu’s thigh, feeling the bunching fabric of his underpants floating around. “Not here,” Yagyuu would mumble. “Masa- Niou-kun!”
Voices bubbled from the other side of the waterfall. The water rippled. Kirihara must have jumped in again.
Yagyuu’s hands pushed at the first bit of Niou he could see, which happened to be his nose. Index finger up his nostril was not something that most people would consider sexy, but Niou had always been a bit weird. He smirked.
“Yeah yeah yeah,” he said. “Those three probably would be pissed if we messed around back here, right?”
“We’re not that desperate,” Yagyuu said.
Not yet, Niou thought. But I’ll probably have blue balls all tonight thinking about you…
“OH GROSS! JACKAL YOU PEED IN THE WATER!”
Nothing could have drowned out Marui’s yelling, not even an earthquake. Niou rolled his eyes. He’d peed behind a tree right after they left the campsite. Piss happens. Marui didn’t need to freak out about it.
Still, all things considered, his hands were pruney and his feet even worse. Niou dove under the water, swimming through the waterfall slowly to feel the rush of water bubbles over his back and legs, then he popped back out. Yagyuu took the longer route, navigating around the rocks with his hands, blind man that he was.
Yukimura didn’t drag them back to the campsite, it was their stomachs. The sun hovered low in the west, streams of amber filtering through the steaming forest canopy. Niou shook his hair out as best he could and tied it back. Without his hair wax, it tended to be a bit…flaccid, only bleached. Now Yagyuu wouldn’t be able to say anything about getting hair product on his hands if they made out later.
Niou stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled a theme song as they walked. This time, they walked clumped together and slower, taking the time to walk around the swamp rather than straight through it. Yukimura stopped constantly, oohing and ahing over this weed or that flower. Sanada got the job of carrying all the flowers Yukimura picked. He looked like a bride, with a baseball cap on.
It made Niou snicker.
And Marui too.
“Hydrangea!” Yukimura would say. Then he’d traipse off their pathway into some bush and come out with some plant half-ripped out from the ground. They’d walk a bit further, mocked by crows, then Yukimura would stoop down, dig around in the dirt and produce a handful of mushrooms.
“We could have these for supper,” he told Sanada.
Yagyuu looked at Niou.
Sanada’s eyes widened. He stared at Yukimura with his mouth hanging open for a second. “Yukimura, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Don’t you trust my judgment?” Yukimura said, punching Sanada in the arm. “Do you think I don’t know my mushrooms? Are you doubting me, Sanada?”
Sanada didn’t move for a long time. Kirihara sneezed. Yanagi shifted his weight. Niou scratched the back of his neck- damn mosquitoes!
Suddenly, Yagyuu walked over to Yukimura. He took the mushrooms from Sanada, turned them around and over in his palm, then chucked them into the woods. The mushrooms landed five feet away. Yagyuu had always thrown like a girl.
“I believe those were poisonous, Yukimura-kun,” Yagyuu said.
Marui and Jackal breathed a sigh of relief. Sanada might have too if he wasn’t busy itching the back of his knee. He must’ve had sweet blood like Niou.
Of course, before they got back to the campsite, Yukimura stopped again. And again. And again. And he found new mushrooms, equally questionable- maybe even more, because these next ones had red spots on them and looked more like cutesie toadstools out of an anime.
Niou couldn’t blame Sanada for accidentally trying to lose some of the toadstools out of his pockets.
But he couldn’t deny that hearing Yukimura yell at Sanada and insist he go pick them right back up was funny.
Supper was…
Tricky.
They got back to the campsite and Yukimura disappeared into his and Marui’s tent. Sanada disappeared, too, scratching at his stomach before Niou heard the rustling sounds of him moving around in his and Yanagi’s tent. Kirihara and Jackal started a game of Who Can Piss Marui Off the Most by Throwing His Umaibo Around So He Can’t Catch It. Niou waved his arms- he was wide open, but no one bothered to include him.
He sniffed. Screw them.
Yukimura interrupted everything. He shoved a pot into Yanagi’s hands and said, “You can make us dinner, Yanagi.”
Yanagi blinked. Then he opened his eyes just a fraction enough for Niou to get a peek of them- they looked scary: all demonic and pink-tinged, kinda like Kirihara, only creepier.
“No thank you,” he said. “I think Genichirou still has some beef jerky left over.”
“I’ve got food!” Marui shouted. He hopped up and tried to grab his snack from Jackal. “I have- ugh, Jackal!- gummy bears and another can of Pringles and- JACKAL!”
“I’ve got food, too,” Jackal said. He tossed the umaibo back to Kirihara. “A can of beans.”
Niou had polished off his bento at lunch. He shrugged. “I got nothing.”
Yagyuu looked around frantically. He bit his lip, then his eyes darted around some more. “I’ll do it!” he said, all in a rush. He grabbed the pot from Yanagi’s hands. “I’ll do it, everyone!”
“I’ll start the fire,” Niou offered.
He pulled a zippo from his pocket and flicked it. The little flame danced, as hot as the humid forest. He bounced the lighter around, grinning from ear to ear.
Really, it was the least he could do.
☆ ☆ ☆
It looked like paste.
Wallpaper paste.
Baby formula.
Maybe come, at a stretch.
It had distinctive paste-like properties, regardless.
Marui took one sniff and backed off. Throwing his hands up in the air, he said, “No way in hell does that look edible, Hiroshi. Nas~tay!”
One by one, his teammates came up to the pot, took one look (or one whiff, though, really, Yagyuu couldn’t smell anything other than a bit of burned rice and the warm aroma of yuba, or he so thought) and backed away from the fire pit.
“I’ll just have some gummy bears,” Yukimura said.
Yagyuu’s smile fell.
“I’ll have some…shrimp…chips…” Kirihara said, forcing himself to laugh.
Yagyuu frowned.
“I’ll just…pass,” Jackal said.
Shame poked Yagyuu in the gut. His paste bubbled away. Did it matter if he stirred it more so it wouldn’t burn?
Yagyuu sighed. With the oven mitt, he took the pot off the fire and set it down on the ground. He sighed again. So cooking wasn’t his strong point! At least he’d cooked something healthier than the junk food Marui was stuffing his face with.
A sneaker poked him in the leg. “Is it done?” Niou asked. He handed Yagyuu a bowl. Chopsticks stuck out of his rat tail tie behind his neck. “Let’s eat!” he said and he clapped his hands together.
Yagyuu beamed.
They ate in front of the fire, which should have been uncomfortably hot, but with Niou beside him on the large stump they’d dragged over, it wasn’t. Yagyuu stirred his bowl with the large spoon. It was too soupy- like congee, only not so much- to eat with chopsticks, though Niou tried.
He slurped and winced. “Yummy!” he said through his teeth.
Yagyuu looked at his bowl, cupped between his hands. “You don’t have to eat it,” he mumbled. “You can go eat their food.”
Across the crackling fire, Marui made airplane motions with his food. “Open wide, Akaya!” he said, waving a chip around in the air. “Zoom! Fsssssh!”
Yagyuu blinked. Since when was Marui making the same noises as Kaidoh Kaoru? He narrowed his eyes and glared through the smoke. The rustle of wind shifted the plumes out of the way. No, no, Marui was too short to have switched with Kaidoh. Rikkai wasn’t infiltrated.
Besides, no one except Marui could ever slather a jar of nacho cheese all over beef jerky and shrimp chips to make a sandwich.
Yagyuu went back to eating his paste. It might have had no taste. He might have overcooked everything and had mystery black bits that weren’t nori floating in it, Niou might have been making gagging noises when Yagyuu wasn’t watching, but his food was better.
“Yagyuu?” Niou asked.
Yagyuu set his spoon down. It slid into his bowl, all the way down in. Great.
“I don’t mind your cooking,” Niou said. “Just maybe stick to reheating bentos from Familymart, ne?”
Although the temptation was there, Yagyuu did not dump the rest of the pot of paste onto Niou’s head. Instead, he picked it up by the handle and walked past the tents. Sanada had never emerged from his own tent, so Yagyuu, feeling charitable, cleared his throat. “Sanada-kun?” he asked.
There was a moan from inside; it sounded low enough and miserable enough to be Sanada. Then, it was followed by the distinct noise of scratching fingernails on skin.
Yagyuu shrugged. He set the pot on the ground beside the zipper flap.
Being eight teenage boys, camping in the middle of the woods sans parents, no one bothered to clean up. “Look what I can do!” Kirihara said, right before he threw a chip bag into the fire. It wriggled and crinkled and collapsed to the sound of “Cool!”s. It also made a stink, burning plastic and food crumbs. Yagyuu wrinkled his nose.
Yanagi threw in the jar of nacho cheese sauce. “Noooo!” Marui shrieked, food spraying out of his mouth. He moaned in agony as his beloved cheese started to bubble and hiss and turn black and putrid.
They kept the fire burning because it gave them something to do. Every little while Niou would trudge off into the semi-dark forest and come back with a new stick, which he’d use to poke at embers and move logs around, smirking when the sparks flew up and sizzled on the damp leaves of the ground.
Yagyuu squirmed on the log. He had to piss, but he didn’t have his flashlight. The bathrooms were too far away to walk in the dark- and by now, it was dark. The barest sliver of deep blue lined what must have been the western direction and the moon shone bright above them. There were so many pinpricks of starlight starting to twinkle that Yagyuu had to take a moment. Stars were never this visible back home. It was a little breath-taking.
But not enough to dissipate the feeling of I have to go! Yagyuu crossed his legs. He wiggled. He crossed his legs the other way. Nothing worked. Dammit!
Niou would say Puri!
Yagyuu looked over his shoulder. In the distance, up the next hill, the bathrooms stood, beckoning him. A single floodlight lit up the exterior and even from this far away, Yagyuu knew it’d be swarming with flies and gross things he didn’t want to deal with.
Finally, he gave up.
Yagyuu stood up. Niou stopped trying to flip a smouldering log over with his twig. Yukimura looked up from the book of ghost stories he and Marui had been snickering over. “Yagyuu?”
“Excuse me,” Yagyuu said stiffly. He started to walk away when Niou called out.
“Don’t go near the tents!”
Yanagi followed with “Genichirou would not want us attracting animals with the scent of our-”
“Stop it you guys! I’m trying to eat here and you’re being sick!” Marui snapped.
Yagyuu made sure to walk in the direction away from the tents. In the dark, it was hard to walk more than a foot or two without stepping on something suspiciously squishy or stumbling on a root. He shuffled far enough away that he could only see the faces of his teammates glowing in the firelight, then he unzipped his shorts, pulled his dick out and started to piss.
Ah…bliss!
It might have been behind a tree. It might have been into a patch of leaves: it didn’t matter. All that mattered was hearing that streaming sound and feeling the piss leave his body oh so nice and relieved. A little uncouth, maybe, but they were camping, after all.
Yagyuu shook his dick off, stuffed it back into his underpants, zipped his shorts up and wiped his hands on his sides. Maybe Yanagi had some sort of hand sanitizer he could borrow. First, though, he wanted his flashlight.
Luckily, the tents were near enough the fire that Yagyuu could see their outlines dancing in the dark. His and Niou’s was obvious- the lopsided, leaning one furthest away from everyone else. Yagyuu walked over and unzipped the flap before crawling inside.
He climbed across the sleeping bag Niou had gotten out earlier, then he took his shoes off. Dirt was not something he wanted to be rolling around on later. His own bags should have been on the right side and he had to pat the ground, completely blind, until he felt something suitably duffel-bag like. Back pocket, underneath his favourite Asics jacket, right. Yagyuu felt around for the zipper, then yanked it open.
A second person unzipped the tent flap. It was black out, but Yagyuu knew who it was immediately. He knew that smell- of sweat and name brand deodorant and paste supper, too.
“Hey, I think I’m gonna go to bed soon,” Niou said. His voice was low and quiet. Yagyuu could hear the smile on his lips, though. Niou zipped the tent flap up and the team sitting around the fire was lost into a faint blur of light through the tent door.
Outside, he could hear Marui say, “Man, I think it’s time for smores!”
Then, Kirihara’s “What’s a smore?”
“Only the most delicious thing you’ve never had, Akaya…” Marui might have been saying more, but Yagyuu couldn’t hear anything except the rustling sound of Niou moving around the tent and whispering his name.
☆ ☆ ☆
It started off well.
Niou didn’t need to see to be able to kiss Yagyuu. He ran his hands down Yagyuu’s sides, then up again, fisting them in his hair as Yagyuu kissed him back, hard and hungry. He didn’t need to be able to see to yank Yagyuu’s t-shirt over his head and to shove his hands down Yagyuu’s waistband. Yagyuu moaned and fell back on the sleeping bag. It rustled under their weight as legs shifted and they kept kissing: necks, shoulders, jaws, ears. Niou could taste Yagyuu’s salty sweat on his upper lip, on the dip of his collarbone.
It was intoxicating.
Almost as much as the little noises Yagyuu made when Niou bit his chest, nipples hard in his mouth as he sucked. His hands pushed down the last vestiges of their clothing. The night was hot and his body was on fire as Yagyuu clung to him and arched his back.
“Masa- haru…ngh!”
Niou shivered. Yagyuu’s skin was slick and slippery and his dick dripping as Niou squeezed harder. He pushed his own cock between Yagyuu’s legs, rubbing their bodies together. He groaned. Yagyuu tugged at his hair, freeing the tie and messing it up with his fingers.
“Do you- mmph- have it?” Yagyuu kissed him again and Niou could feel a wet, hot trail from Yagyuu’s tongue sear his neck.
“What?” Niou asked. He panted into Yagyuu’s stomach and kissed his bellybutton. The skin under his mouth shivered as Yagyuu sucked in his stomach.
“The- you know!” he hissed.
Niou rubbed his thumb over Yagyuu’s balls. It made him smile when Yagyuu moaned and hissed that he was being a tease, torturing him like this.
“Just…just fuck me,” he whispered.
“What?” Niou asked. He pressed his lips to the line of Yagyuu’s hips and dragged his hands, horribly and meanly, slow over Yagyuu’s balls and onto his thigh, where there was a patch of smooth, bald skin. Yagyuu shuddered. “You need to be a bit more clear with your needs, Hiroshi,” he said.
“Just-” Yagyuu panted, so hot and heavy Niou felt like he could come right then, all over Yagyuu’s knee. “Just fuck me!”
Niou left him panting and hard on top of the nylon sleeping bag. He rummaged around in the dark for the condoms and lube he brought. It was hard opening the damn thing in the dark; he should have practiced so he didn’t look like a n00b in front of Yagyuu. If Yagyuu noticed, though, he said nothing.
Yagyuu just moaned. “Hurry…” A hand touched Niou’s ass and grazed his butt cheek. Yagyuu’s fingers curled over his skin, insisting with their burning touch.
Niou ripped the stupid package open and rolled the condom on. He felt like a stud like this. The lube was cold in his palm, especially with the summer heat of night. “Flip over,” he murmured into Yagyuu’s ear.
Yagyuu purred. There was no other way to describe the noise. It was a purr.
Shivers made every hair on Niou’s body stand up. God, this was hot. They were finally going to do it.
And that was when everything went horribly wrong.
It was supposed to be easy. Lube Yagyuu up, stick a couple fingers up his ass, wiggle his hole loose and then shove his dick in. Poof, sex!
Instead, it was more like this:
“Ow!”
“Well, hold still!”
“That’s supposed to help, not hurt!”
“Stop clenching then!”
“I’m not! I’m relaxed!”
“No, you’re not!”
“Yes, I am!”
“Then how come I can’t find it?”
“Find what?”
Niou facepalmed.
“Find the hole! I can’t find the hole!”
“I’m not a girl! There’s only one there!”
“Yeah, well…I can’t find it.”
They tried again. And again. A valiant, hard effort for what seemed like ages. The fire had gone dark and flashlight beams shot around the campsite when their teammates went to bed, and still they tried. Yagyuu clenched. Niou poked his fingers around more. Yagyuu clenched harder. Niou squeezed more of the lube out and ended up getting the lube onto the sleeping bag instead.
Eventually, Yagyuu rolled onto his other side, away from Niou. “I’m not in the mood anymore,” he snarled.
Niou had to check. Sure enough, Yagyuu was as limp as he was now. Puri.
He was hot and miserable and horny, but not. Niou wiped his hands on the first duffelbag he felt, peeled the condom off, chucked it somewhere in the tent and slid down onto the sleeping bag beside Yagyuu. Wriggling over, he spooned himself against Yagyuu’s back. It was hot and sticky and filmy in a not good way, but damned if he was sleeping alone tonight.
Yagyuu grunted. “We can try again tomorrow night,” he said.
“Tonight doesn’t count,” Niou said. “It was…practice, or something.” He buried his face in the back of Yagyuu’s neck, flung his arm over Yagyuu’s naked hip and let himself zonk out.
☆ ☆ ☆
If Yagyuu had hickies, he was going to have to find some good excuse to explain them. Like insect bites.
His ass hurt. Niou had poked around and it felt like someone had tried to shove a tennis racket handle up him. If that’s what failed sex felt like, Yagyuu wasn’t entirely sure anymore he wanted to have real sex after all.
He was sticky. He was hot. His stomach growled. His hair was a mess. And there was no place to shower. Or take a morning shit in peace.
Grudgingly, he rolled off the sleeping bag and pushed Niou’s hopeful arm off himself. He opened his duffelbag, which felt a bit…suspiciously and disgusting…damp, and pulled out his ziplock bag containing Saturday’s clothes, dry and nicely pressed inside.
He was the first one awake. The sun was warm and subtle. The tent was damp with dew and slugs. His sneakers were just as damp, but Yagyuu didn’t have a spare pair with him. He shuffled to the bathroom, plugged his nose with his hands and chose the least gross stall. It would have to do.
At least Yukimura had set rolls of nice, three-ply toilet paper on top of the grungy holders. Yagyuu polished off half the roll with relish.
By the time he got back to the campsite, Yukimura was awake and yawning widely. He sat on a fold-away lawn chair beside Kirihara, whose hair was worse than ever: a gross matted seaweed mess. Yagyuu patted his hair down out of disgust at the kid.
“Sleep well?” Yukimura asked.
Yagyuu flushed, so he faked a yawn and covered his face with his hand. “Yes, Yukimura-kun,” he lied.
On cue, Marui popped through a tent flap, holding a can of coffee milk in one hand and a yogurt in the other. His eyes were bloodshot and he glared at Yagyuu.
Yagyuu looked away, blushing harder.
Only, Kirihara’s eyes were red, too. Red eye mode. Or pink eye. He rubbed his eyes with his fists and said, “Yagyuu-senpai, what the hell were you and Niou-senpai doing last night?”
Yagyuu couldn’t face anyone in the eye over breakfast. He stared at his feet and wished his skin would peel off his face so no one else would have to see his perpetual blush.
Niou patted him on the shoulder. “No one’s making fun of you, Yagyuu,” he said.
His snicker wasn’t reassuring.
Neither was Jackal or Marui’s. Or Yanagi’s little bemused smile.
Kirihara had the decency to keep scratching his head and asking what. It looked like he had lice, the amount of itching he did.
Sanada was nowhere in sight. Yanagi had come out of their tent, dressed in nothing but health sandals and his checkered boxers. Yanagi ate breakfast (cans of fanta and packaged pastries, fished from inside Marui’s tent, of course). Yukimura sat and waited and scowled and finally got so impatient that he stomped over Sanada’s tent and ripped the door open.
“Sanada where the hell are you? We have some appeasing today to do and- oh. Oh…”
“Oh?” Marui asked.
Yanagi shrugged.
The rest of them were curious enough- or stupid enough- to creep over and see for themselves. Yukimura’s yells had died off, instead replaced with indeterminate murmuring.
“You first,” Marui told Jackal.
Niou poked Jackal in the side.
Yagyuu and Kirihara nodded.
Jackal sighed heavily and looked inside. Then he sighed again and wiped his sweating head with the palm of his head.
Coast was clear.
Inside, Sanada was lying on top of his futon (“Who the hell brings a futon camping?” Marui hissed. Yagyuu was inclined to agree). Seeing as he was wearing nothing but a pair of capri pajama pants (“Who the hell wears capris to bed?” Marui hissed. Yagyuu was inclined to agree about that too), it was extremely evident that he was covered head to toe in a series of red bumps and rashes, some of which were scabbed over with blood from scratching.
Yanagi popped his head in between the group of them, looking at Sanada, then nodding sagely. “I suspect it is an allergic reaction to either Toxicodendron orientale or Toxicodendron vernicifluum. Or, if not, it could be bugs.”
“Er…” Kirihara gave Yanagi a blank look.
“Crabs?” Niou asked.
“Those tend to stick to the pubic region,” Yanagi said. His lips quirked.
Yukimura must not have been listening to their conversation. He sat by Sanada’s head, placing a wet cloth over his forehead and looking sad. Ish. Yukimura also wore heavy-duty industrial gloves and made sure his skin didn’t come into contact with Sanada’s, although he did say, “Poor Genchi. Sei-sei will get you something for the itchy-scratchy, ne? You stay here and don’t die before the Nationals or we’ll kill you, okay? Don’t screw over Sei-sei’s plans, Genchi-boo…”
Beside Yagyuu, Niou heaved.
Yagyuu patted him on the shoulder this time. His stomach was churning too. Gross was the very tip of the iceberg that he was feeling right now.
“All right!” Yukimura said suddenly. “Everyone! Let’s get our asses in gear and go appease!” He chucked his gloves off behind himself as he slid through the tent door. One smacked Sanada square in the face. He groaned, but Yukimura didn’t notice.
“Three minutes!” he yelled. “We’re leaving in three minutes or your ass is off the team!”
Yagyuu sighed. Then, to Yanagi, he asked, “Do you have a spare hat, Yanagi-kun?”