Coping Methods Arc #2: Kumokasumi (Haze): Part 1
Title: Kumokasumi (Haze)
Part: 1/3
Pairing: Hiyo/Mari (and, of course, all the normal Hyotei Roommates gang)
Rating: Lime. Yes, this is HET, please read at your own discretion...
Notes: So why, you might ask, am I posting this, rather than the rest of the Hyotei Roommates? Because I realized that it, much to my annoyance, actually managed to worm itself into Roommates #15. While #15 is probably quite readable without this, hey, if anyone's interested and wants to be less confused... thank you again, typhoid_mary for looking this over... and being such a part of it.
Disclaimer: Much to my surprise, Mari is still mine, and so are the fangirls; the rest, however, are their own Konomi-sensei's.
Kumokasumi (Haze)
Sometimes, Mari wondered if, perhaps, the last year had been the longest year of her life-or the shortest.
Then again, considering that she really only had fifteen other years to compare it to, and only genuinely remembered about half of them, it really was likely moot to consider these things. Planning Atobe’s high-school debut, such as it was, really had taken up the majority of her time. Well, high school was a time to discover new talents, and Mari’d discovered that she was reasonably decent at riot control-one would have thought that the high school girls had never even seen a boy before, from the way they’d reacted. Advertisement would have likely been similar to giving vodka to a drunken man-escalator schools being what they were, and for all that Hyotei certainly had its… disadvantages, there really was no denying that most of the students were bright enough to realise that it was one of Tokyo’s best schools and continue on from middle school (or, like her, were just too stubborn to quit.)
Any girl who didn’t know Atobe’s name by the end of his first week at the high school was trying very, very hard to live inside a chemically-induced bubble… and Mari would know; she’d spent her first week at Hyotei trying to the best of her ability not to give him the pleasure of knowing his name. If she hadn’t succeeded, the only way anyone was going to was with the help of some drug or another.
She chuckled, and glanced down at her club membership notebook-covered with tiny, surprisingly cute little doodles, because Jirou, ah, drew in his sleep, especially when he was flopped on her lap with her notebook and pencil in front of his nose; the little sketch of Atobe flopped asleep on the outer edge on the paper, with a little smile flirting across the corner of his mouth, had to be her favourite. Admittedly, the art was a little rough-and a little blurred where Jirou’s thumb had smudged across the pencil markings-but there was something about the mocking little smile…
Any girl who didn’t know by the end of the month that Atobe, whether he knew it or not, belonged to his little blonde roommate was perfectly welcome to follow him around going ‘baaa…’ though such a person ought to count her blessings in the fact that Jirou liked sheep. The new club members, not yet accustomed to the novelty of having a warm, living, floppy doll to play with, were especially bad about it. It was probably a good thing that he played tennis, because with all the sweets they brought him… well, then again, he really was so cute when he woke up to someone dandling a Pocky stick over his nose, and stretched up for it with a sleepy little “Sankyuuu…”
Now, for example, since the little flirt had literally ended his (mostly for show) match in all of ten minutes, if that, and was at present sprawled across three laps, mumbling, “Laps are so much nicer than the bleachers…”
As far as Mari could tell, he genuinely did appreciate the fangirls more than their supposed light-of-worship, most of the time, which always had mystified her-but fangirls had never brought her choice bits of chocolate and patted her back and rubbed her head while she was sleeping, either.
Also, she didn’t sleep in random locations, was trying to cut down on chocolate, and no matter how much weight she lost, was never going to be as cute as one Akutagawa Jirou, so, really, that was all for the best.
All things considered, if being as cute as Akutagawa Jirou got her the focused and denial-filled attention of one Atobe Keigo-and she was willing to bet that Atobe, on the coaching bench, wasn’t even sure why he was scowling so hard-he was perfectly welcome to be the most adorable, sleepy boy she’d ever laid eyes on.
If she had to make a fair spot judgement, it hadn’t been a bad year, not at all. True, she didn’t see her father until dinnertime, most days, and it would have been… difficult… for her to answer if asked who her best friend was, because she’d definitely come to appreciate the difference between the person one spent the most of one’s time with (Atobe, the fangirls, and the newly freshman Regulars, in just that order) and one’s best friend. Oshitari, Gakuto, and Shishido were definitely some of her favorite people in the world, if only for pure entertainment value, but… rather too wrapped up in being Gay and In Love and Tennis Players and all of that, not necessarily in that order, most of the time. Jirou was a sweetheart, but… well, a Gay, In Love, Tennis Player who just happened to be asleep. The fangirls weren’t bad sorts, true, but there were just so many of them, and how was she supposed to tell them apart when they all had the same haircut, the same cute button noses, and the same names ending with ‘-ko?’
And Atobe, the gods help his shrivelled little pickled brain, was Atobe.
There was, however, something to be said about being the president of the school’s largest and most popular club (not excluding the tennis club.) Really, she didn’t mind people coming to her for favors. It did occasionally mean that she didn’t have a great deal of free time, but it wasn’t as if she had anyone she wanted to spend long hours talking on the phone with, or anything. People always wanted such little things, right? Besides, even though some of the the fangirls and the tennis club non-Regulars really did sometimes have all the personality of plain white curtains, well… sometimes plain white curtains matched well with things. Occasionally other people with plain white curtain personalities.
And considering that she wouldn’t have wished Atobe on her worst enemy, much less on a very innocent, bland piece of fangirl fluff, it really did make her ridiculously happy to have one of the fangirls offering a little satchel of Valentine’s chocolate to a pre-Regular that Mari had delicately suggested she might want to watch.
There was also something nice about having everyone in the tennis club, from first-years upwards, know to call her ‘Mari,’ rather than ‘Taira-san,’ before she even had to mention it.
Almost everyone.
Maybe she’d forgotten him. Maybe she’d let herself live inside her head, in the memory of grace and stubborn pride and irritating whininess and all the things she’d never have known about him if she hadn’t seen him on the courts as well as in a temple garden, but a year was a long time when she was only sixteen years old. And for all that she secretly poked fun at the fangirls for their entirely illusory image of Atobe, well… it was all too easy to build glass skyscrapers inside her own head.
She’d watched Hiyoshi for a year-an entire year, what kind of idiot was she, really?-but she’d never really known him, after all-never exchanged more than a word, or two, never wanted to.
She was Taira Mari, and she, of all people, knew better than to think that it was actually possible to stay in love with someone she didn’t actually know, over the course of an entire year without even seeing him through the fence mesh. Right? In all honesty, she’d always prided herself in being just a little more mature. What with her father being out of the house so much, and the stress of realising just how awful she really was at math, and poring over a kanji dictionary for hours after a single session of literature class before she thought to mention it to Jirou (and ending up knowing far more about the nuances and preferences of a certain dramatis persona than she’d ever, ever wanted to know) well… she hadn’t had the time in her first year of high school to really consider what Hiyoshi Wakashi was doing for more than an instant.
Yes, of course, and that was why there were frissons working their way slowly, with the gentle warm force of inevitability, down her spine as she tried very hard not to think about when his turn in the ranking matches might be, since she hadn’t dared look at the assigned schedules; that was why her knuckles were knobbly, ugly lumps of white over hands clenched tightly enough to the balustrade to wrench it from its freshly painted and newly set foundation.
Maybe she was over him, and that was why she wanted so badly to see him, and wanted so badly to run away, fast enough to overtake Shishido on one of his famous dashes.
If this is what smokers felt like, glimpsing their favorite brand of cigarette after a year of not having touched one, she definitely had to consider having a little more sympathy for them.
…or maybe this was closer to drug withdrawal.
There were most certainly times when she wished for Jirou’s miraculous wrists, just so she could get full use out of a certain mental flyswatter that was, at present, thwapping happily and very ineffectually at her head.
“Mari-san! Mari-san, it’s been so long!”
Mari blinked, and-thank goodness-her eyes unglued themselves from the empty court. Well, someone needed her for something, because, really, why else would someone be calling her with such… enthusiasm, otherwise? “It’s… only been the spring break…” much to her surprise, she didn’t have to think particularly hard to recall the girl’s name; she was one of the smarter girls, and never forgot to say hello even when Atobe was in the same hallway with them, “…Kimura. Is there something you need? How is-”
Mari paused. Kimura Koyuki, much to her surprise, was beaming at her, hands clasped in front of her skirt and rumpling the plaid’s straight, if hideous, lines, the wind tousling lightly at her streaked black hair. She’d never been one of the flashiest girls in the club. Those, Mari mostly left to their own devices and their schemings, because they had eyes, they knew how they looked, though Mari honestly didn’t understand why they felt they needed to reassure themselves of the fact in little hand-mirror compacts every few minutes. But the highlights in Kimura’s chin-length bob did suit her, and she truly was quite pretty when she smiled, with eyes that tilted just a little mournfully at the corners. Prettier when she was beaming, in fact, widely enough to have done a fair impression of Jirou during a game with Atobe, really.
…with something that looked suspiciously like a hickey just underneath her right ear.
Mari cleared her throat, and revised the thought bubbles popping through her brain with a bright red mental pen. “Ah. I guess it’s been long enough. Are congratulations in order?” Iwasaki Keita, now a junior, wasn’t fabulously exciting by any means, really, and he wasn’t ever going to make the Regular team, she was fairly sure, but… well, she’d noticed him mostly because he was almost as tall as Ootori, but without Ootori’s serve. And, thankfully, without Ootori’s partner, but from all appearances, he was a fairly good sort. While the fact that he wouldn’t let the pre-Regular seniors bully the freshmen had been what had kept her attention on him, anyone who helped one of the girls down from the bleachers by offering her a hand, and smiled at the shyer ones, well…
Though if he was leaving hickeys on Kimura, he was a touch more exciting than she’d thought he might be.
THWAP went the flyswatter on the brief, harsh surge of envy when Kimura started to blush, and her hands clenched again in the fabric of her skirt. “You never miss anything, Mari.”
She had to laugh, just a little. “Isn’t that my job?” And oh, the irony of the fact that this particular conversation was conveniently allowing her to miss the beginning of what, from the squealing, was definitely the beginning of Iwasaki’s match. Against Hiyoshi. “But yes, congratulations, Kimura. That’s wonderful-I’m so happy for you.” And it was terribly nice of the girl to come and tell her, so, really, her smile only felt just a touch strained around the edges. “And Iwasaki-kun. He’s good to you?”
“He bought me hanadango on our first date, in pink and white and green,” the girl was blushing brightly enough to have given Ootori fair competition. “And… I’m going to the last hanami of the season with his family, up in Hokkaido, next week. He says that when I smile, my lips look softer than the sakura petals.”
She’d have been highly tempted to die of embarrassment in the girl’s place, really, if Kimura hadn’t looked so… well… happy about the rather, ah, flowery metaphor. So she hadn’t been wrong about the fact that if he treated random clumsy and Atobe-struck fangirls with such courtesy, he’d likely treat his potential girlfriend like a princess. A rare sort of duck, indeed.
He and Kimura would make an adorable pair of true-love mandarins.
“Thank you, Mari-san. I… thank you.”
Mari had to blink, just a little. Kimura looked like she was either going to hug her or cry, and the fact that she’d spent the spring with her very huggy Hawai’i cousins aside, either of the possibilities was somewhat alarming. “For what?” All she’d done was mention carefully to Iwasaki-kun-she’d suspected he had a crush on one of the fangirls, since he always did seem to be looking in the general direction of the bleachers-that Kimura Koyuki was doing very well in the honors literature class, and he might think of asking her for some tutoring. “And what are you doing talking to me when you should be cheering him on?”
Never mind that there was no way he was going to win against Hiyoshi; the boy definitely deserved full brownie points and lots of girlfriend support if he’d worked out the guts to ask her out all on his own.
She, of all the people, would know about that, and her eyes tried to slant towards the court again, where there was a hint of heartbreaking grace out of the corner of her eyes, or perhaps her heart was the only one that ever broke with it.
Well, no matter.
“Um…” Kimura’s face looked like she’d bitten into a sakura leaf. Which, Mari would know-though gods knew she wouldn’t tell anyone, because falling asleep with her mouth open just wasn’t something Taira Mari did-tasted downright awful, no matter how pretty they were.
Mari blinked. Problem. She could spot a problem from a hundred paces. “Yes?”
But the girl’s hands were making an unholy crinkled zigzag of the orderly plaid lines of her skirt, and Mari blinked when those mournful eyes met hers. “He… Keita-kun Liked you, you know, Mari. All last school year, almost.”
“…what?” She definitely needed time away from Japan, if she could hear the Capital Letters in that. Maybe the boy’s head needed examining for a very questionable sense of taste, considering that while Kimura Koyuki was far from being a star of their notoriously pretty Hyotei sky, between the two of them, the girl most definitely put her in the shade, better day or not. Why in the world would he? It wasn’t as if he’d ever exchanged more than a word or two with her…
“He did, ” and those eyes were insistent, and firm; Mari wondered if Iwasaki ever commented on the fact that Kimura really did have lovely eyes, tea-hued with fine, darker flecks. “But… well, you’re… you’re very… I don’t know. You always seem like you’re going somewhere. Doing something.” She was not going to stare hard enough at the girl to scare her; she was not going to stare hard enough at the girl to scare her. It was, well, fairly true, and she was busy a lot of the time, but… it was strange to hear someone actually say so. “You don’t… you know, date.”
Well… she’d considered it, but she wasn’t going to tell the girl that. Once, or twice, and probably some of the boys might have been willing to accommodate her, but really, she wasn’t all that close to anyone, and past that… well, what would have been the point? “That’s true enough.” Plus poor Kimura looked so scared and hopeful… poor dear. “Don’t worry, dear, he’s all yours. Iwasaki’s not my type.”
Type. Right. That’s funny. Hah.
He didn’t date, either, and perhaps that was the only thing that made her believe that perhaps the fox god was feeling just a little bit sorry for her. Not that she held any illusions about Hiyoshi Wakashi dating her, because, frankly, gekokujou being what it was, she suspected that the middle school tennis club’s former buchou would end up snagging the most popular girl in school some day, probably out from under some outraged student president’s nose. Nowadays, all she was hoping for was that he’d at least wait until he was a senior, and she didn’t have to watch it happening.
It was still a shock to watch Kimura’s shoulders relax, just a little, and smooth the zigzag of her plaid skirt out with her soft, white hands. The girl hadn’t seriously needed reassurance that Mari wasn’t going to try to take away Iwasaki, had she…?
But there was something that looked a lot like gratitude in those lovely eyes, a hint of a tremor in her voice-just a touch nasal, but ah, well, couldn’t have everything. “I… I shouldn’t be glad, Mari-san, but… I really like him. Th-thank you, okay?”
Mari had to chuckle, just under her breath-it took so little to reassure someone, sometimes, and the fact that Kimura had even thought… “Trust me, it’s enough of a reward to have one less voice screaming ‘Atobe!’ at me.” True. Definitely true. “Though if Iwasaki starts slacking off at practice to come moon over you, Atobe will shriek my ear off, so keep a strict eye on your boy, all right? Atobe’ll only try to take bits out of me, but it’s still annoying.”
Well, likely as not Atobe would be too busy frothing at the mouth and bashing the poor boy over the head about not going mist-headed about girls to get mad at her. Hypocrite that he was. Okay, not quite a hypocrite, because Atobe, for all his faults, had never waxed fluffy about… girls. Unless he was commenting idly on a particularly ruffled mop of blonde curls-an instant before he noted with distaste that dye and perms really did give hair such an unpleasant plastic texture, and he was certain it didn’t feel natural and silky at all.
Kimura was quite pretty when she giggled, too-she didn’t bother to cover her mouth when she did, and her teeth were… straight, which, all things considered, was rather unusual. “You do really like Atobe-buchou, don’t you.”
One of these days, she really had to learn how to lie.
Today had been one of Atobe’s better days, and Jirou looked happy enough to be virtually floating-er, bouncing-after the mildly irritated team captain who’d dislodged him from his fangirl bed, so, yes, this was one of the benefit-of-the-doubt days, but… well, she had the rest of the year to want to bash his head into a wall, anyway. “I’ll like him better when someone makes him go to therapy,” she retorted. Honestly. Though, after two years, she was starting to wonder if Atobe ran on denial the way most people ran on calories. “Until then, he’s on my waiting list.”
“You’re silly, Mari.” Yes, well, the girl could believe that she was joking all she liked; Mari just smiled, a little. “He’s not having you do anything today? Are you busy?” Kimura’s eyes caught the light, almost gold when they went wide and anxious. “Later tonight?”
It figured. Well, she wasn’t, and it wasn’t as if she actually minded doing things for people-they were such little things, anyway. She was good at figuring things out, and it would’ve gone to utter waste if she’d only had her own problems to work out. The most stubborn of which was winning, four to nothing, with his shoulder taut, and a hint of wind teasing at his bangs, licking the edge of his jersey upwards in ineffably lovely fangirl fanservice-wait, she’d told herself she wasn’t going to watch. “Hm? No, I think the Regulars are having the secret initiation party that no-one’s supposed to know about.”
Which, of course, every single one of the girls in the fanclub did know about, and stayed away from for the sake of letting Atobe and his boys play having their little clandestine meeting for a night, and for a second, she felt her smile match Kimura’s. This was one of the things she hadn’t even needed to arrange; it was Hyotei fangirl tradition, she’d been informed.
“I thought that was tonight…” Well, boyfriend or not, Kimura wouldn’t have been an Atobe fanclub girl if she hadn’t known. Mari grinned, even as Kimura smiled at her, just a little tentatively. “Some of the girls are going out for dinner later. Do you… do you want to come?”
It was… well, more than a little of a surprise, but… Mari blinked. And looked through her mental schedule book, finding it empty of reasonably true excuses. It wasn’t that she minded being with them-she’d gotten far too used to most of the club’s girls, and in return, most of them knew better than to squeal directly into her ear or hug her when Atobe got a point-but, really, she hadn’t thought… and the excuse ‘I don’t fit’ just didn’t fly in Japan, did it? Or anywhere, really. “Well… ah. Sure, let me just call my dad to make sure he eats dinner…”
Of course her dad wasn’t home. The answering machine, however, was. Well, there was rice in the cooker and she’d let the Tokyo National Hospital gastroenterologist get away with having the frozen gyoza he loved so much, for dinner, just this once.
“Oh, good!” dear gods, if the girl bounced, the wind was going to do rather unpleasant things to her skirt… Mari let out her breath when Kimura reached out and… took her hands? “You like garlic, right?”
…Garlic?
The restaurant was non-smoking-thank the gods-and definitely smelled enough like… garlic… that she blinked. The place was trying to live up to the name Ninnikuya, because, seriously, because the tang of it in her nose and on the tip of her tongue was strong enough that her mouth watered-she’d had to skip lunch, helping… who’d it been? Kanehira, right, she’d been having problems working out a proposal for the girls’ archery club.
It wasn’t just Kimura. Higashi, sporting glasses and a new haircut that dipped just below her chin. Shibata, with her pointed nose and feline, slanted eyes, wearing just a little too much makeup. Hasegawa, her round, friendly tanuki face just a little pink with the illicit can of chuuhi sitting in front of her. Tanimoto, with her full, pouting lips, playing lightly with the cross that she probably wore in imitation of Ootori-well, she’d been one of Shishido’s stronger supporters, back in the day before Shishido’d come running out of the closet fast enough to knock half the fangirls over.
It surprised her, just a little, that she knew their names-a little more that they laughed and waved her over when she walked into the restaurant with just a little trepidation, the delicate fluttery edges on their sleeves, very fashionable nowadays, dipping and soaring.
She noted, with just the faintest touch of envy, that they all looked passing lovely in the crinkled, poufy layered style that she so despised, mostly because she really didn’t need the extra ten kilos it gave her.
“What did you think of the matches today, Mari-san?” Shibata had come into Hyotei as a new freshman last year, and it did show-sometimes, at least. Well, she wasn’t quite as jaded towards the expertise of the tennis club as the rest of them probably were, by this point. She also… fluttered, especially when Jirou plopped down into her lap, but that probably couldn’t be helped, and Jirou’s weight on her kept her mostly settled. “The new Regulars? That tall one with the silver hair-he’s so… so… I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone that…”
It really was very, very bad of her, but… she couldn’t help herself. “…gay?” she grinned.
Shibata blinked-once, twice, before moaning, “Oh, no. Not him, too?”
Tanimoto’s eyebrow quirked upwards, across the table from Mari-she did actually rather like Tanimoto. For her sense of humour, at least. And the fact that she didn’t bother using girls’ speech. “Are you serious? How could you not know about Hyotei’s famous Doubles One ShishiTori Fuufu? You mean you missed Shishido dragging his darling down by the collar for a victory kiss after Ootori-kun won his ranking match?”
And how it was Shibata had missed the kiss was honestly beyond her, when it had made about two hundred tennis club members groan and freak, and five hundred fangirls squeal and faint and nosebleed in quick succession (and she couldn’t really blame them; no matter how crimson Ootori-kun’s cheeks had been, there’d most definitely been two very, very happy boys involved, as well as a distinctly generous dose of tongue…)
Shibata, even in the dim, orange-tinted lights, was blushing, just a little. “I was too busy watching… well, his tennis was very weird, but he’s gorgeous, and he beat your boyfriend six to love, Koyuki-chan! He’s… straight, right?”
Ah. Yes. That was how.
Let the subject die, let’s talk about how cute Kimura and Iwasaki are when she runs out onto the courts with a towel and a sports drink for him after a match, pretty, pretty please…
Her psychic powers were, apparently, as nonexistent as ever.
Kimura’s eyes were bright with laughter, and Mari, oddly, liked her a little better for not taking the insult-that-wasn’t to heart. “Well… he’s never gone out with anyone,” and thank the gods for that, because Mari didn’t know how she’d have dealt with Hiyoshi having a girlfriend, “But… I know, I know. It’s… I mean, it’s awful of me, because I should have been cheering Keita-kun on, but… it’s hard, you know?” Yes, Mari did know, when she… really couldn’t remember the faces, much less the names, of everyone she’d seen standing across the courts from that martial arts tennis and that soaring, swift grace, but she didn’t think she’d ever forget the way she’d stared, the first time he’d slipped his thumb over his lips to wipe away a drop of sweat… “When he’s playing against Hiyoshi, and Hiyoshi’s just… well, he’s just so amazing to watch. So graceful. Don’t you think so, Mari? I’m awfully sorry you missed the match…”
Of all the people sitting around the table whose opinion she could have asked…
She definitely needed a more effective flyswatter. Or perhaps an electric mental mosquito zapper. Because somewhere, a little bandanna-wearing fox with dog envy was laughing in a high, annoyingly yippy voice… “It’s honestly all right. I don’t mind.” Well, the part of Taira Mari that was a thinking, rational being rather than a slavering, quivering, knee-trembling idiot didn’t mind, anyway. “I guess he’s rather pretty, isn’t he?”
She got that out with a completely straight face, so today was one of the better days.
Tanimoto lifted her glass of cold tea, and blinked; gracious, her eyelashes looked enourmous and heavy with all that mascara on them, and… was that glitter? “I don’t know, Mari-I don’t think it’s the face.” She cocked her head to the other side, and the small braid in front of her ear brushed her cup, once, twice. “He’s pretty enough, but it’s sort of the same way Shishido is-there’s just something about his focus that’s so damned sexy sometimes. With Hiyoshi…” despite the heavy makeup, though, her eyes were twinkling-and it wasn’t with glitter. “It’s focus, and without the mouthing off.”
Mari definitely liked Tanimoto, on days when she didn’t want to thwap the girl over the head, and she was definitely going to occupy herself in contemplating which of the two this particular day was. It was far, far better than thinking about the alternative, because damn it, Tanimoto was right, and-
Tanimoto’s grin widened, around the edges. “And without the boyfriend so pure he’d think he’d done something wrong, and start apologising his cross off, if Shishido ever offered to spank him.”
Never mind. Yes, she definitely liked the girl-even if she was the only one who burst out laughing, when the other girls were hiding shocked titters behind their hands. Of course it would be Shibata who’d squeak out a “Rumiko, don’t-what if they-you don’t think-“
Considering that Mari had learned to knock before entering the rooms of any of the Hyotei Regular roommate-couples (or Atobe’s and Jirou’s room, which was essentially the same thing) she didn’t think, she was pretty darned sure, but she wasn’t exactly about to share that.
Higashi giggled around a mouthful of chuuhi, and even if the red lights made everyone look blushy, her eyes were really… just too bright. “Honestly, Shibata. You’re so innocent sometimes. I mean, if there were ever a time when Ootori weren’t around, even if it was just a moment… I’d jump Shishido in a second! ”
Amusingly, in the condition she was in, she probably would, too.
Mari didn’t particularly want any of the girls on her fanclub dead, really, no matter how dumb they could be. “I wouldn’t try it,” she interjected, just a little dryly. “The fact that Shishido would bite you aside, I don’t think you want to get Ootori-kun… upset.”
“Well, you know them better than anyone, Mari, but… well, why not? ” Oh. Right. Higashi whined, occasionally, and probably it became a constant whenever someone got alcohol into her. “Ootori’s really the sweetest thing, it’s not as if he’d do anything. He’d just cry and forgive his lover-boy, right? So why not?”
Well, aside from the fact that Ootori really was the sweetest thing, and definitely didn’t deserve having his boyfriend jumped by a drunk fangirl who really was much prettier when she didn’t have any alcohol in her… “Ootori’s been a regular for two years, and has just started his third year in one of the most coveted positions in the entire school.” And earned it, just as much as he’d earned Shishido’s respect as well as, er, all of Shishido; the fangirls, if anyone, would know that. “Head of the Hyotei orchestra. A mountainload of chocolate on Valentine’s, and not just because it’s his birthday. He’s so totally good no-one’s ever even tried to pin anything on him.” Mari grinned, just a little. “Still want to try stealing his boyfriend?”
Three pairs of eyes blinked at her in complete and utter confusion.
Kimura and Tanimoto, in turn, burst out laughing.
Well, if Mari ever had an urgent need for female bonding time (if that day ever came, she was likely to commit seppuku with a fork, first, but if it ever did) she knew which of the girls she was probably going to call first.
The rest of them all ordered ladies’ dinners.
Mari sighed, just a little, and ordered the regular set menu.
*_*_*_*
“Mari-senpai, would you-“
“Mari-san? Could you-“
“Mari-‘neechan, I-“
“Mari, he-“
Shishido hadn’t ever thought he’d see the day when he actually felt sorry for any president of Atobe’s fanclub, because, well, anyone mooning over Atobe damned well deserved what she got. He’d known Atobe since damned elementary school, and even then he’d had his little pack of sheep, but seriously, the way the fanclub went BOOM in middle school, he’d’ve suspected Atobe’s mom of putting pheromones in his food if he hadn’t been living in a dorm. So Shishido’d met a lot of Atobe’s fanclub presidents-before Mari, he’d gone through them at maybe one every two or three months before some new little thing scrabbled to the top, and as far as Shishido was concerned, it was hard to feel at all sorry for a waste of hair and breath.
Then again, anyone who was willing to put up with the bastard for the purpose of making this insane school of theirs a little bit of a better place to be in, well… probably deserved to be hit up for sainthood, or nomination to the position of being a bodhisattva sitting on a big old lotus flower, or something like that. Sure, it’d been semi-selfish-or she said, anyway, and the girl had a bad habit of never saying anything really good about herself-but what the Hell, Mari’d done it, and he wouldn’t have thought that was possible. There must’ve been more than one time he’d wished she was a guy, just so she could tie the same collar and bell around the tennis club that she’d put on the Atobe fanclub monster.
Which was probably why he felt pretty sorry for Taira Mari every time someone went skittering past him in the hallway, or on the way to club practice, or on the way from club practice, flagging down a long, thick ponytail that trailed a fair ways down Mari’s back-she had longer hair than any other girl he’d ever bothered to notice, a lot longer than his had ever been.
People skittering past him trying to flag down Mari happened a lot.
Yeah, Atobe’s fanclub was feckin’ huge, and it was natural for them to go skittering after what they thought was their alpha wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, or something like that. But he was pretty damned sure that the members of the fanclub didn’t include, people like, say, the (male) vice-president of the chemistry club, the (lesbian) head of the girls’ archery club, and… wait, was that Mukahi?
Shishido wasn’t really sure when it’d happened-maybe sometime between winter their senior year of middle school and their freshman spring, he hadn’t really been paying attention-but somehow the entire damned school, from freshmen all the way to seniors who should have had a little more pride, had figured out that if there was anything that needed hammering into place, Taira Mari was the one holding the toolbox.
He liked her even better knowing that she whacked people who came to her with problems that they could have damned well fixed themselves.
“Yo. Mari.”
“Shishido?” damn, but the girl looked… tired, when she turned. Just a little. Maybe just a little tight around the edges of her eyes and the corners of her smile, and he had to blink; he didn’t really make a habit of really checking, but that strain definitely hadn’t been there at the end of last year. “What’s up? Oh, right, I said I’d fix you up with a music tutor less… distracting… than Ootori-kun. Can it wait until tomorrow?”
Oh, right. Well, actually, he’d completely forgotten about it, but… Shishido frowned, and eyed the little crinkles at the edges of her eyes, the thick dark pads underneath them. He might not have known or really cared anything about girls, but he was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to crinkle like that at age sixteen. “Don’t worry ‘bout it, it’s fine.” And besides, he liked the way Ootori distracted him-or got distracted-in the middle of a music lesson. “Mari, do you ever, you know, breathe?” Because now that he had a closer look at her, she… looked like Jirou had, the last time Atobe’d given him a hundred laps for falling asleep in the middle of his game against some kid who wasn’t even a pre-Regular. Sure, her hair was as strangled into that painfully neat ponytail as ever, there wasn’t a crease anywhere on her uniform, much less any dirt, but… gods, the girl looked like she needed some sleep. Pretty frickin’ badly. And he wasn’t going to take any bets on the possibility that Jirou was contagious. “When’s the last time you took a day off?”
“Took a day off?” For all that she did look like someone’d stuck her through a washing machine, her smile was still all sass. He’d probably have liked her for that alone, and the fact that she’d kicked Atobe in the shins her first year in the school, Hell, he’d probably have proposed to her on the spot if he hadn’t been… well, so stupid in love with his Choutarou. (Though, somehow, it really didn’t seem like a good idea to put it just that way to his roommate when he mentioned Taira Mari…) “Shishido, skipping school, while occasionally an idea that I look at with a lot of longing, just isn’t something I do.”
Had the little idiot honestly thought he’d been talking about school? Figured. He snorted, and reached out to mock-punch her cheek. “Dummy. You’re as bad as Choutarou, sometimes.”
Uh-oh, he knew that smile-the one that licked at just the corners of her mouth, crinkled her eyes in a good way; Mari wasn’t really pretty-pretty, he didn’t have to be straight to be able to figure that one out, and sure as Hell she wasn’t snotty-pretty, but there was something about the mischief in her eyes that either made him want to take a step back and take a better look at her-or made him want to run fast as he could around the nearest corner. Luckily, normally the look was aimed at Oshitari. “From you, that’s a compliment of the highest degree, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
He knew there was a reason he didn’t like girls. They were difficult. “Do you ever say ‘no’ to anyone who comes running to you for help?!” Seriously, he kind of had no right to talk, considering all the stuff she’d pulled out of her invisible hat for him over the past two years, but… well, the difference was that he’d never asked for any of it, right…? “Give it a try, sometime! I mean, Hell, the whole damn school thinks you’re some kind of help desk!”
It was damned irritating when she reached out and patted his cheek. From her smile, she knew it, too, shrimp that she was-well, okay, so he wasn’t all that much taller than her, but he’d grown more than she had in the past year. “Sweet of you, Shishido. Careful, you shouldn’t make that sweet puppy of yours jealous when you’ve only been reunited a week…”
If she thought she was going to annoy him off the issue… well, Hell, the girl probably could, she’d done it before, but mentioning his partner and roommate… heh. “Trust me, Mari,” he grinned, just a little. “You don’t want me to tell Choutarou about this.”
He’d made her blink. Twice. Score. And go a little white around the corners of her mouth when she raised both hands towards him, laughing. “No, thank you, I really don’t. I know the both of you. You’d blow everything out of proportion, and Ootori-kun would try to drag me to the nurse’s, if not the nearest hospital.” Well, yeah, and yeah, but she definitely didn’t have to say it like that… but Hell, it was Mari, she wouldn’t bother saying it any other way, and his scowl tried its best to become a smile. “It’s okay, Shishido, really. I like being busy.”
He blinked. “This busy?”
She just blinked back at him and smiled, just a little, that knowing little smile that flirted around the corner of her mouth. “I get bored when I’m not.”
O-kay. Right. So apparently she was weird.
Shishido’d always thought there was something a little different about her-pretty damned good at most of her classes, from what he’d heard, yeah, with the organisational skills that could have had her up there with most company heads, and if there was a problem she couldn’t fix, well, pretty much the only way out of it was likely to be praying, or something, but… he’d never heard of someone who called any time when she wasn’t busy “being bored.”
It was the first time he wondered if, perhaps… just maybe, there was something that was bothering her. Had been bothering her awhile. And maybe she didn’t know it, but seriously, with all the things the girl had on her back, especially this time of the year… saying she did favors because she got bored was kind of like saying she liked being run down by a mack truck because it got her pulse going.
What did he know, though, right? If he was going to be really honest, he didn’t know her all that well-well, who did, really? Atobe was too wrapped up in himself and Jirou; Mari was way too smart to stay anywhere near Oshitari and Mukahi; the fangirls? Hell, the thought alone made him snort-but he knew, just a little, what desperation felt like. And what it looked like.
He’d had crinkles around his eyes, too, those weeks after he’d been dropped from the Hyotei tennis team.
He also had no frickin’ idea what in the world could possibly bother Taira Mari.
Sure, she was annoyed, sometimes, (a lot of the time, and Shishido couldn’t blame her) but… there was definitely something in her face, just under her skin, that he didn’t like the look of. The eyebags weren’t helping. “Hey, Mari?” Oh, geez, he was definitely no good at this stuff; he scratched just under his short, functional little ponytail. “You know if you’ve ever got anything on your mind, Choutarou and me, well, okay, we’re a little far out…” it was a little bit of a shock to realise that he’d known her two years, and he really… had no idea where she lived in the Tokyo area. “…but, anyway, we’ve got a phone, right?”
Never mind that if there was a problem she couldn’t fix, Hell, he didn’t know how he could possibly help, but… but the crinkles went out of her eyes for just a second when she chuckled at him, and cocked her head, ponytail flopping over her shoulder. “You do. Don’t ever show that kind of face to any of the fangirls, Shishido. Ootori or no Ootori, they’ll start hitting on you again.”
Which, for Mari, was ‘Thank you,’ sort of.
“You say that like they ever stopped,” he snorted, and reached out to punch her shoulder again, gently. “Can’t you keep a better leash on your puppies, girl?”
Which, for him, was ‘You’re welcome.’
It was only later that night, watching Ootori sleep-because okay, yeah, weird, sappy, sure, but if his roommate looked sweet awake, there was nothing like the way he canted his head and sighed so happily in his sleep, with that tiny little wisp of a smile at the corners of his mouth that made him look like he’d gotten everything he’d ever wanted-that Shishido blinked, and realised that Mari might have said ‘Thank you,’ Mari-style, but… she hadn’t said she’d call.
Taira Mari was sort of close to last on his list of people to ever ask personal questions to, because he was sure that the girl had a snappy answer for every inappropriate question-and geez, Choutarou was definitely rubbing off on him, if he even thought of asking it, but…
But. But watching the way his boyfriend breathed slow and even, smiling even in his sleep because-because his Choutarou said that there wasn’t anything that made him as happy as being able to live with his Shishido-san again, and when he smiled like that, Shishido could believe that he meant it…
Mari, are you happy?
*_*_*_*
She was going to kill Atobe. Kill him. Why it was imperative that she come down and be officially introduced to the new members on the Regular team, over her protests that damn it, she knew all of them, all the way down to the backup player, a certain mountain called Kabaji…
Still, though, she had to admit it was a cute ceremony, rather surprisingly free of pomp and a certain coach informing the newly admitted pre-Regulars that the Regulars were their enemy, to be defeated at all costs… she missed some things about middle school, but Sakaki definitely wasn’t one of them. On the other hand, there really were times when she just wished that Omi-kantoku would forget that the fanclub’s support was as much a part of the tennis club’s success, rather than dragging her down to bow to each of the new Regulars.
Even if it made her smile, a little, when Ootori reached down to pat her shoulder, awkwardly, and she looked up to realise that his bow was definitely at a lower angle than hers and his eyes were teary, the sap that he was-and Kabaji almost knocked her off her feet when he patted her other shoulder, probably in imitation of Ootori… but that little smile that hovered around his edges was all him.
She managed to look at nothing but Hiyoshi’s knees when she bowed-but there really wasn’t anything she could do once she straightened, and found herself looking at his…
…chin.
“Taira-san.” She watched his chin move as he nodded, slightly, in greeting; formal as ever. Funny. Funny, he was the only one who still called her that. Oh, sure, ha ha ha, really funny. “You’re still here.”
He was looking down at her. Not down on her, down at her.
It had been a year, apparently someone had been eating his veggies and drinking his milk because he hadn’t topped her by more than a centimetre, and most of that fluffy hair, when she’d graduated middle school, but oh gods she couldn’t have come all that much higher than his chin by now. Did the boy even know he had a little blot of a mole-someone a little more fanciful might have called it a beauty mark-just where the stubborn angle of his jaw met his throat?
Wasn’t a growth spurt supposed to make someone more… clumsy, less beautiful, or something? A pile of gekokujou arms and legs (actually, considering that it was probably true, she’d have likely found the thought a good deal funnier in any other situation except actually having to look at him) but… of course, if he’d been the buchou of the Hyotei tennis club a year, a pile of gangly arms and legs wouldn’t have lasted very long. And perhaps being buchou had done him some good, because his arms were wired with bands of sleek muscle, and if his eyes had been intense before-in a face that was just a little thinner, framed by surprisingly delicate cheekbones rather than soft, round cheeks… gods, he could have definitely felled stronger girls than her with that gaze.
And the fact that she had to look up to look him in the eyes was making her stomach do the strangest little fluttery thing, because she always looked everyone in the eyes, and she wasn’t going to turn into the kind of coquette who avoided people’s gazes anytime soon, if she could help it, no matter who it was with…
Ohgodbreathebreathebreathe, the Jell-o you had after dinner last night did not migrate straight to your knees, that’s really not biologically possible- “Hi, Hiyoshi-kun.”
She’d actually intended to ask him how his spring break had been, but that particular sentence had been scrapped the moment she’d realised that her voice had actually come out just one step shy of a stammer, metaphorical toes poking into the realm of ‘breathy.’
Kill me now. Because I just know if I throw myself off a cliff, there will be some kind of miraculous rescue, and I’ll find myself waking up in a hospital bed with him in the next bed over, having torn a ligament or something in a freak accident on the tennis courts…
And it was just sick that the first thing she thought after that was to hope he didn’t tear a ligament because of some very amused fox-god’s whimsy.
“Do I have something on my face, Taira-san?” he simply tilted an eyebrow, the same sun-softened bronze as his hair, down at her. “You’re staring.”
She was just vexed enough at the world in general that she managed to get out a “When did you get tall?” with just the right amount of exasperation in her voice.
It was a rhetorical question. Really, it was.
She didn’t expect the faintest touch of something that might have almost, almost been a smile flirting-and the use of ‘flirting’ in the same thought as Hiyoshi was just so utterly wrong-around the corners of his eyes when he murmured, “Gekokujou. ”
Ootori’s hand on her shoulder when he chirruped, “It’s so good to see you again, Mari-san-you never came to visit us! We missed you!” was just about the only thing that kept her upright, because as far as she knew, she’d never seen anything even resembling a sense of humor in Hiyoshi Wakashi before-but most of the time, she tried her absolute best to not stand this close to him…
Well, actually, she had passed by the middle school-which was why poor, defenseless, Shishido-less Ootori had only been gently molested, rather than mangled and devoured by enthusiastic, shrieking classmates, on his birthday. He truly was lucky that obedience did come very easily to her little fangirls-but, well, the good thing about them was that if she told one clump of them, well… it wasn’t very long before the rest of them knew. She hadn’t needed to go near class 3-B at all.
She wasn’t about to tell Ootori that. And normally she tried to keep from teasing him, because it really was just too easy, but… Mari winked, once, and reached out-and up-to tap his rather well-loved cross, once, with a forefinger. “You should really be careful when you say things like that, Ootori-kun, or people will start thinking you’re straight. And while you might like it when Shishido bites you, I’ll pass, thank you.”
Blush went the boy-a deep velvet crimson that started just under where his cross touched skin and crept to just above his cheeks, “Mari-san! ” He really was preposterously cute for someone who could have passed as the Big Friendly Giant.
Well, all right, that was either a small, relatively distant earthquake, or Kabaji was chuckling. And she really was trying not to look at Hiyoshi, but no doubt the boy hadn’t cracked a smile, and if anything, his eyebrows were somewhere in that ridiculous straight hairline of his.
Her traitorous eyeballs slid over in his direction just about the time he rolled his eyes in something that looked almost like exasperation, but could have been amusement.
A moment later-Saved! -the rush of girls around her pushed her back into the direction of the bleachers-and the utter disgruntled expression on Hiyoshi’s face when someone clung to his elbow, poor thing, really did make her feel just a little sorry for both him and the freshman girl who was about to get her arm frozen off. Well, and good; she wasn’t the only member (sort of) of the Atobe-and-his-Regulars fanclub, and the rest of the girls had to be given their chance to ‘congratulate’ (gently maul) the new Regulars. They’d shut Shishido in the clubroom for just that reason, but she’d been sure that that wasn’t supposed to happen until Omi-kantoku let them out of their little holding pen…
Mari blinked, just a little, to find someone smiling at her, just a little sleepily, from the direction of the creaking, and rather badly-abused, gate that separated the spectator bleachers from the courts. “Oops? Is it still too early? But I woke up, so it can’t be that early…”
What… in the world?
Jirou?
*_*_*_*
Tsuzuku (To Be Continued)
Part: 1/3
Pairing: Hiyo/Mari (and, of course, all the normal Hyotei Roommates gang)
Rating: Lime. Yes, this is HET, please read at your own discretion...
Notes: So why, you might ask, am I posting this, rather than the rest of the Hyotei Roommates? Because I realized that it, much to my annoyance, actually managed to worm itself into Roommates #15. While #15 is probably quite readable without this, hey, if anyone's interested and wants to be less confused... thank you again, typhoid_mary for looking this over... and being such a part of it.
Disclaimer: Much to my surprise, Mari is still mine, and so are the fangirls; the rest, however, are their own Konomi-sensei's.
Kumokasumi (Haze)
Sometimes, Mari wondered if, perhaps, the last year had been the longest year of her life-or the shortest.
Then again, considering that she really only had fifteen other years to compare it to, and only genuinely remembered about half of them, it really was likely moot to consider these things. Planning Atobe’s high-school debut, such as it was, really had taken up the majority of her time. Well, high school was a time to discover new talents, and Mari’d discovered that she was reasonably decent at riot control-one would have thought that the high school girls had never even seen a boy before, from the way they’d reacted. Advertisement would have likely been similar to giving vodka to a drunken man-escalator schools being what they were, and for all that Hyotei certainly had its… disadvantages, there really was no denying that most of the students were bright enough to realise that it was one of Tokyo’s best schools and continue on from middle school (or, like her, were just too stubborn to quit.)
Any girl who didn’t know Atobe’s name by the end of his first week at the high school was trying very, very hard to live inside a chemically-induced bubble… and Mari would know; she’d spent her first week at Hyotei trying to the best of her ability not to give him the pleasure of knowing his name. If she hadn’t succeeded, the only way anyone was going to was with the help of some drug or another.
She chuckled, and glanced down at her club membership notebook-covered with tiny, surprisingly cute little doodles, because Jirou, ah, drew in his sleep, especially when he was flopped on her lap with her notebook and pencil in front of his nose; the little sketch of Atobe flopped asleep on the outer edge on the paper, with a little smile flirting across the corner of his mouth, had to be her favourite. Admittedly, the art was a little rough-and a little blurred where Jirou’s thumb had smudged across the pencil markings-but there was something about the mocking little smile…
Any girl who didn’t know by the end of the month that Atobe, whether he knew it or not, belonged to his little blonde roommate was perfectly welcome to follow him around going ‘baaa…’ though such a person ought to count her blessings in the fact that Jirou liked sheep. The new club members, not yet accustomed to the novelty of having a warm, living, floppy doll to play with, were especially bad about it. It was probably a good thing that he played tennis, because with all the sweets they brought him… well, then again, he really was so cute when he woke up to someone dandling a Pocky stick over his nose, and stretched up for it with a sleepy little “Sankyuuu…”
Now, for example, since the little flirt had literally ended his (mostly for show) match in all of ten minutes, if that, and was at present sprawled across three laps, mumbling, “Laps are so much nicer than the bleachers…”
As far as Mari could tell, he genuinely did appreciate the fangirls more than their supposed light-of-worship, most of the time, which always had mystified her-but fangirls had never brought her choice bits of chocolate and patted her back and rubbed her head while she was sleeping, either.
Also, she didn’t sleep in random locations, was trying to cut down on chocolate, and no matter how much weight she lost, was never going to be as cute as one Akutagawa Jirou, so, really, that was all for the best.
All things considered, if being as cute as Akutagawa Jirou got her the focused and denial-filled attention of one Atobe Keigo-and she was willing to bet that Atobe, on the coaching bench, wasn’t even sure why he was scowling so hard-he was perfectly welcome to be the most adorable, sleepy boy she’d ever laid eyes on.
If she had to make a fair spot judgement, it hadn’t been a bad year, not at all. True, she didn’t see her father until dinnertime, most days, and it would have been… difficult… for her to answer if asked who her best friend was, because she’d definitely come to appreciate the difference between the person one spent the most of one’s time with (Atobe, the fangirls, and the newly freshman Regulars, in just that order) and one’s best friend. Oshitari, Gakuto, and Shishido were definitely some of her favorite people in the world, if only for pure entertainment value, but… rather too wrapped up in being Gay and In Love and Tennis Players and all of that, not necessarily in that order, most of the time. Jirou was a sweetheart, but… well, a Gay, In Love, Tennis Player who just happened to be asleep. The fangirls weren’t bad sorts, true, but there were just so many of them, and how was she supposed to tell them apart when they all had the same haircut, the same cute button noses, and the same names ending with ‘-ko?’
And Atobe, the gods help his shrivelled little pickled brain, was Atobe.
There was, however, something to be said about being the president of the school’s largest and most popular club (not excluding the tennis club.) Really, she didn’t mind people coming to her for favors. It did occasionally mean that she didn’t have a great deal of free time, but it wasn’t as if she had anyone she wanted to spend long hours talking on the phone with, or anything. People always wanted such little things, right? Besides, even though some of the the fangirls and the tennis club non-Regulars really did sometimes have all the personality of plain white curtains, well… sometimes plain white curtains matched well with things. Occasionally other people with plain white curtain personalities.
And considering that she wouldn’t have wished Atobe on her worst enemy, much less on a very innocent, bland piece of fangirl fluff, it really did make her ridiculously happy to have one of the fangirls offering a little satchel of Valentine’s chocolate to a pre-Regular that Mari had delicately suggested she might want to watch.
There was also something nice about having everyone in the tennis club, from first-years upwards, know to call her ‘Mari,’ rather than ‘Taira-san,’ before she even had to mention it.
Almost everyone.
Maybe she’d forgotten him. Maybe she’d let herself live inside her head, in the memory of grace and stubborn pride and irritating whininess and all the things she’d never have known about him if she hadn’t seen him on the courts as well as in a temple garden, but a year was a long time when she was only sixteen years old. And for all that she secretly poked fun at the fangirls for their entirely illusory image of Atobe, well… it was all too easy to build glass skyscrapers inside her own head.
She’d watched Hiyoshi for a year-an entire year, what kind of idiot was she, really?-but she’d never really known him, after all-never exchanged more than a word, or two, never wanted to.
She was Taira Mari, and she, of all people, knew better than to think that it was actually possible to stay in love with someone she didn’t actually know, over the course of an entire year without even seeing him through the fence mesh. Right? In all honesty, she’d always prided herself in being just a little more mature. What with her father being out of the house so much, and the stress of realising just how awful she really was at math, and poring over a kanji dictionary for hours after a single session of literature class before she thought to mention it to Jirou (and ending up knowing far more about the nuances and preferences of a certain dramatis persona than she’d ever, ever wanted to know) well… she hadn’t had the time in her first year of high school to really consider what Hiyoshi Wakashi was doing for more than an instant.
Yes, of course, and that was why there were frissons working their way slowly, with the gentle warm force of inevitability, down her spine as she tried very hard not to think about when his turn in the ranking matches might be, since she hadn’t dared look at the assigned schedules; that was why her knuckles were knobbly, ugly lumps of white over hands clenched tightly enough to the balustrade to wrench it from its freshly painted and newly set foundation.
Maybe she was over him, and that was why she wanted so badly to see him, and wanted so badly to run away, fast enough to overtake Shishido on one of his famous dashes.
If this is what smokers felt like, glimpsing their favorite brand of cigarette after a year of not having touched one, she definitely had to consider having a little more sympathy for them.
…or maybe this was closer to drug withdrawal.
There were most certainly times when she wished for Jirou’s miraculous wrists, just so she could get full use out of a certain mental flyswatter that was, at present, thwapping happily and very ineffectually at her head.
“Mari-san! Mari-san, it’s been so long!”
Mari blinked, and-thank goodness-her eyes unglued themselves from the empty court. Well, someone needed her for something, because, really, why else would someone be calling her with such… enthusiasm, otherwise? “It’s… only been the spring break…” much to her surprise, she didn’t have to think particularly hard to recall the girl’s name; she was one of the smarter girls, and never forgot to say hello even when Atobe was in the same hallway with them, “…Kimura. Is there something you need? How is-”
Mari paused. Kimura Koyuki, much to her surprise, was beaming at her, hands clasped in front of her skirt and rumpling the plaid’s straight, if hideous, lines, the wind tousling lightly at her streaked black hair. She’d never been one of the flashiest girls in the club. Those, Mari mostly left to their own devices and their schemings, because they had eyes, they knew how they looked, though Mari honestly didn’t understand why they felt they needed to reassure themselves of the fact in little hand-mirror compacts every few minutes. But the highlights in Kimura’s chin-length bob did suit her, and she truly was quite pretty when she smiled, with eyes that tilted just a little mournfully at the corners. Prettier when she was beaming, in fact, widely enough to have done a fair impression of Jirou during a game with Atobe, really.
…with something that looked suspiciously like a hickey just underneath her right ear.
Mari cleared her throat, and revised the thought bubbles popping through her brain with a bright red mental pen. “Ah. I guess it’s been long enough. Are congratulations in order?” Iwasaki Keita, now a junior, wasn’t fabulously exciting by any means, really, and he wasn’t ever going to make the Regular team, she was fairly sure, but… well, she’d noticed him mostly because he was almost as tall as Ootori, but without Ootori’s serve. And, thankfully, without Ootori’s partner, but from all appearances, he was a fairly good sort. While the fact that he wouldn’t let the pre-Regular seniors bully the freshmen had been what had kept her attention on him, anyone who helped one of the girls down from the bleachers by offering her a hand, and smiled at the shyer ones, well…
Though if he was leaving hickeys on Kimura, he was a touch more exciting than she’d thought he might be.
THWAP went the flyswatter on the brief, harsh surge of envy when Kimura started to blush, and her hands clenched again in the fabric of her skirt. “You never miss anything, Mari.”
She had to laugh, just a little. “Isn’t that my job?” And oh, the irony of the fact that this particular conversation was conveniently allowing her to miss the beginning of what, from the squealing, was definitely the beginning of Iwasaki’s match. Against Hiyoshi. “But yes, congratulations, Kimura. That’s wonderful-I’m so happy for you.” And it was terribly nice of the girl to come and tell her, so, really, her smile only felt just a touch strained around the edges. “And Iwasaki-kun. He’s good to you?”
“He bought me hanadango on our first date, in pink and white and green,” the girl was blushing brightly enough to have given Ootori fair competition. “And… I’m going to the last hanami of the season with his family, up in Hokkaido, next week. He says that when I smile, my lips look softer than the sakura petals.”
She’d have been highly tempted to die of embarrassment in the girl’s place, really, if Kimura hadn’t looked so… well… happy about the rather, ah, flowery metaphor. So she hadn’t been wrong about the fact that if he treated random clumsy and Atobe-struck fangirls with such courtesy, he’d likely treat his potential girlfriend like a princess. A rare sort of duck, indeed.
He and Kimura would make an adorable pair of true-love mandarins.
“Thank you, Mari-san. I… thank you.”
Mari had to blink, just a little. Kimura looked like she was either going to hug her or cry, and the fact that she’d spent the spring with her very huggy Hawai’i cousins aside, either of the possibilities was somewhat alarming. “For what?” All she’d done was mention carefully to Iwasaki-kun-she’d suspected he had a crush on one of the fangirls, since he always did seem to be looking in the general direction of the bleachers-that Kimura Koyuki was doing very well in the honors literature class, and he might think of asking her for some tutoring. “And what are you doing talking to me when you should be cheering him on?”
Never mind that there was no way he was going to win against Hiyoshi; the boy definitely deserved full brownie points and lots of girlfriend support if he’d worked out the guts to ask her out all on his own.
She, of all the people, would know about that, and her eyes tried to slant towards the court again, where there was a hint of heartbreaking grace out of the corner of her eyes, or perhaps her heart was the only one that ever broke with it.
Well, no matter.
“Um…” Kimura’s face looked like she’d bitten into a sakura leaf. Which, Mari would know-though gods knew she wouldn’t tell anyone, because falling asleep with her mouth open just wasn’t something Taira Mari did-tasted downright awful, no matter how pretty they were.
Mari blinked. Problem. She could spot a problem from a hundred paces. “Yes?”
But the girl’s hands were making an unholy crinkled zigzag of the orderly plaid lines of her skirt, and Mari blinked when those mournful eyes met hers. “He… Keita-kun Liked you, you know, Mari. All last school year, almost.”
“…what?” She definitely needed time away from Japan, if she could hear the Capital Letters in that. Maybe the boy’s head needed examining for a very questionable sense of taste, considering that while Kimura Koyuki was far from being a star of their notoriously pretty Hyotei sky, between the two of them, the girl most definitely put her in the shade, better day or not. Why in the world would he? It wasn’t as if he’d ever exchanged more than a word or two with her…
“He did, ” and those eyes were insistent, and firm; Mari wondered if Iwasaki ever commented on the fact that Kimura really did have lovely eyes, tea-hued with fine, darker flecks. “But… well, you’re… you’re very… I don’t know. You always seem like you’re going somewhere. Doing something.” She was not going to stare hard enough at the girl to scare her; she was not going to stare hard enough at the girl to scare her. It was, well, fairly true, and she was busy a lot of the time, but… it was strange to hear someone actually say so. “You don’t… you know, date.”
Well… she’d considered it, but she wasn’t going to tell the girl that. Once, or twice, and probably some of the boys might have been willing to accommodate her, but really, she wasn’t all that close to anyone, and past that… well, what would have been the point? “That’s true enough.” Plus poor Kimura looked so scared and hopeful… poor dear. “Don’t worry, dear, he’s all yours. Iwasaki’s not my type.”
Type. Right. That’s funny. Hah.
He didn’t date, either, and perhaps that was the only thing that made her believe that perhaps the fox god was feeling just a little bit sorry for her. Not that she held any illusions about Hiyoshi Wakashi dating her, because, frankly, gekokujou being what it was, she suspected that the middle school tennis club’s former buchou would end up snagging the most popular girl in school some day, probably out from under some outraged student president’s nose. Nowadays, all she was hoping for was that he’d at least wait until he was a senior, and she didn’t have to watch it happening.
It was still a shock to watch Kimura’s shoulders relax, just a little, and smooth the zigzag of her plaid skirt out with her soft, white hands. The girl hadn’t seriously needed reassurance that Mari wasn’t going to try to take away Iwasaki, had she…?
But there was something that looked a lot like gratitude in those lovely eyes, a hint of a tremor in her voice-just a touch nasal, but ah, well, couldn’t have everything. “I… I shouldn’t be glad, Mari-san, but… I really like him. Th-thank you, okay?”
Mari had to chuckle, just under her breath-it took so little to reassure someone, sometimes, and the fact that Kimura had even thought… “Trust me, it’s enough of a reward to have one less voice screaming ‘Atobe!’ at me.” True. Definitely true. “Though if Iwasaki starts slacking off at practice to come moon over you, Atobe will shriek my ear off, so keep a strict eye on your boy, all right? Atobe’ll only try to take bits out of me, but it’s still annoying.”
Well, likely as not Atobe would be too busy frothing at the mouth and bashing the poor boy over the head about not going mist-headed about girls to get mad at her. Hypocrite that he was. Okay, not quite a hypocrite, because Atobe, for all his faults, had never waxed fluffy about… girls. Unless he was commenting idly on a particularly ruffled mop of blonde curls-an instant before he noted with distaste that dye and perms really did give hair such an unpleasant plastic texture, and he was certain it didn’t feel natural and silky at all.
Kimura was quite pretty when she giggled, too-she didn’t bother to cover her mouth when she did, and her teeth were… straight, which, all things considered, was rather unusual. “You do really like Atobe-buchou, don’t you.”
One of these days, she really had to learn how to lie.
Today had been one of Atobe’s better days, and Jirou looked happy enough to be virtually floating-er, bouncing-after the mildly irritated team captain who’d dislodged him from his fangirl bed, so, yes, this was one of the benefit-of-the-doubt days, but… well, she had the rest of the year to want to bash his head into a wall, anyway. “I’ll like him better when someone makes him go to therapy,” she retorted. Honestly. Though, after two years, she was starting to wonder if Atobe ran on denial the way most people ran on calories. “Until then, he’s on my waiting list.”
“You’re silly, Mari.” Yes, well, the girl could believe that she was joking all she liked; Mari just smiled, a little. “He’s not having you do anything today? Are you busy?” Kimura’s eyes caught the light, almost gold when they went wide and anxious. “Later tonight?”
It figured. Well, she wasn’t, and it wasn’t as if she actually minded doing things for people-they were such little things, anyway. She was good at figuring things out, and it would’ve gone to utter waste if she’d only had her own problems to work out. The most stubborn of which was winning, four to nothing, with his shoulder taut, and a hint of wind teasing at his bangs, licking the edge of his jersey upwards in ineffably lovely fangirl fanservice-wait, she’d told herself she wasn’t going to watch. “Hm? No, I think the Regulars are having the secret initiation party that no-one’s supposed to know about.”
Which, of course, every single one of the girls in the fanclub did know about, and stayed away from for the sake of letting Atobe and his boys play having their little clandestine meeting for a night, and for a second, she felt her smile match Kimura’s. This was one of the things she hadn’t even needed to arrange; it was Hyotei fangirl tradition, she’d been informed.
“I thought that was tonight…” Well, boyfriend or not, Kimura wouldn’t have been an Atobe fanclub girl if she hadn’t known. Mari grinned, even as Kimura smiled at her, just a little tentatively. “Some of the girls are going out for dinner later. Do you… do you want to come?”
It was… well, more than a little of a surprise, but… Mari blinked. And looked through her mental schedule book, finding it empty of reasonably true excuses. It wasn’t that she minded being with them-she’d gotten far too used to most of the club’s girls, and in return, most of them knew better than to squeal directly into her ear or hug her when Atobe got a point-but, really, she hadn’t thought… and the excuse ‘I don’t fit’ just didn’t fly in Japan, did it? Or anywhere, really. “Well… ah. Sure, let me just call my dad to make sure he eats dinner…”
Of course her dad wasn’t home. The answering machine, however, was. Well, there was rice in the cooker and she’d let the Tokyo National Hospital gastroenterologist get away with having the frozen gyoza he loved so much, for dinner, just this once.
“Oh, good!” dear gods, if the girl bounced, the wind was going to do rather unpleasant things to her skirt… Mari let out her breath when Kimura reached out and… took her hands? “You like garlic, right?”
…Garlic?
The restaurant was non-smoking-thank the gods-and definitely smelled enough like… garlic… that she blinked. The place was trying to live up to the name Ninnikuya, because, seriously, because the tang of it in her nose and on the tip of her tongue was strong enough that her mouth watered-she’d had to skip lunch, helping… who’d it been? Kanehira, right, she’d been having problems working out a proposal for the girls’ archery club.
It wasn’t just Kimura. Higashi, sporting glasses and a new haircut that dipped just below her chin. Shibata, with her pointed nose and feline, slanted eyes, wearing just a little too much makeup. Hasegawa, her round, friendly tanuki face just a little pink with the illicit can of chuuhi sitting in front of her. Tanimoto, with her full, pouting lips, playing lightly with the cross that she probably wore in imitation of Ootori-well, she’d been one of Shishido’s stronger supporters, back in the day before Shishido’d come running out of the closet fast enough to knock half the fangirls over.
It surprised her, just a little, that she knew their names-a little more that they laughed and waved her over when she walked into the restaurant with just a little trepidation, the delicate fluttery edges on their sleeves, very fashionable nowadays, dipping and soaring.
She noted, with just the faintest touch of envy, that they all looked passing lovely in the crinkled, poufy layered style that she so despised, mostly because she really didn’t need the extra ten kilos it gave her.
“What did you think of the matches today, Mari-san?” Shibata had come into Hyotei as a new freshman last year, and it did show-sometimes, at least. Well, she wasn’t quite as jaded towards the expertise of the tennis club as the rest of them probably were, by this point. She also… fluttered, especially when Jirou plopped down into her lap, but that probably couldn’t be helped, and Jirou’s weight on her kept her mostly settled. “The new Regulars? That tall one with the silver hair-he’s so… so… I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone that…”
It really was very, very bad of her, but… she couldn’t help herself. “…gay?” she grinned.
Shibata blinked-once, twice, before moaning, “Oh, no. Not him, too?”
Tanimoto’s eyebrow quirked upwards, across the table from Mari-she did actually rather like Tanimoto. For her sense of humour, at least. And the fact that she didn’t bother using girls’ speech. “Are you serious? How could you not know about Hyotei’s famous Doubles One ShishiTori Fuufu? You mean you missed Shishido dragging his darling down by the collar for a victory kiss after Ootori-kun won his ranking match?”
And how it was Shibata had missed the kiss was honestly beyond her, when it had made about two hundred tennis club members groan and freak, and five hundred fangirls squeal and faint and nosebleed in quick succession (and she couldn’t really blame them; no matter how crimson Ootori-kun’s cheeks had been, there’d most definitely been two very, very happy boys involved, as well as a distinctly generous dose of tongue…)
Shibata, even in the dim, orange-tinted lights, was blushing, just a little. “I was too busy watching… well, his tennis was very weird, but he’s gorgeous, and he beat your boyfriend six to love, Koyuki-chan! He’s… straight, right?”
Ah. Yes. That was how.
Let the subject die, let’s talk about how cute Kimura and Iwasaki are when she runs out onto the courts with a towel and a sports drink for him after a match, pretty, pretty please…
Her psychic powers were, apparently, as nonexistent as ever.
Kimura’s eyes were bright with laughter, and Mari, oddly, liked her a little better for not taking the insult-that-wasn’t to heart. “Well… he’s never gone out with anyone,” and thank the gods for that, because Mari didn’t know how she’d have dealt with Hiyoshi having a girlfriend, “But… I know, I know. It’s… I mean, it’s awful of me, because I should have been cheering Keita-kun on, but… it’s hard, you know?” Yes, Mari did know, when she… really couldn’t remember the faces, much less the names, of everyone she’d seen standing across the courts from that martial arts tennis and that soaring, swift grace, but she didn’t think she’d ever forget the way she’d stared, the first time he’d slipped his thumb over his lips to wipe away a drop of sweat… “When he’s playing against Hiyoshi, and Hiyoshi’s just… well, he’s just so amazing to watch. So graceful. Don’t you think so, Mari? I’m awfully sorry you missed the match…”
Of all the people sitting around the table whose opinion she could have asked…
She definitely needed a more effective flyswatter. Or perhaps an electric mental mosquito zapper. Because somewhere, a little bandanna-wearing fox with dog envy was laughing in a high, annoyingly yippy voice… “It’s honestly all right. I don’t mind.” Well, the part of Taira Mari that was a thinking, rational being rather than a slavering, quivering, knee-trembling idiot didn’t mind, anyway. “I guess he’s rather pretty, isn’t he?”
She got that out with a completely straight face, so today was one of the better days.
Tanimoto lifted her glass of cold tea, and blinked; gracious, her eyelashes looked enourmous and heavy with all that mascara on them, and… was that glitter? “I don’t know, Mari-I don’t think it’s the face.” She cocked her head to the other side, and the small braid in front of her ear brushed her cup, once, twice. “He’s pretty enough, but it’s sort of the same way Shishido is-there’s just something about his focus that’s so damned sexy sometimes. With Hiyoshi…” despite the heavy makeup, though, her eyes were twinkling-and it wasn’t with glitter. “It’s focus, and without the mouthing off.”
Mari definitely liked Tanimoto, on days when she didn’t want to thwap the girl over the head, and she was definitely going to occupy herself in contemplating which of the two this particular day was. It was far, far better than thinking about the alternative, because damn it, Tanimoto was right, and-
Tanimoto’s grin widened, around the edges. “And without the boyfriend so pure he’d think he’d done something wrong, and start apologising his cross off, if Shishido ever offered to spank him.”
Never mind. Yes, she definitely liked the girl-even if she was the only one who burst out laughing, when the other girls were hiding shocked titters behind their hands. Of course it would be Shibata who’d squeak out a “Rumiko, don’t-what if they-you don’t think-“
Considering that Mari had learned to knock before entering the rooms of any of the Hyotei Regular roommate-couples (or Atobe’s and Jirou’s room, which was essentially the same thing) she didn’t think, she was pretty darned sure, but she wasn’t exactly about to share that.
Higashi giggled around a mouthful of chuuhi, and even if the red lights made everyone look blushy, her eyes were really… just too bright. “Honestly, Shibata. You’re so innocent sometimes. I mean, if there were ever a time when Ootori weren’t around, even if it was just a moment… I’d jump Shishido in a second! ”
Amusingly, in the condition she was in, she probably would, too.
Mari didn’t particularly want any of the girls on her fanclub dead, really, no matter how dumb they could be. “I wouldn’t try it,” she interjected, just a little dryly. “The fact that Shishido would bite you aside, I don’t think you want to get Ootori-kun… upset.”
“Well, you know them better than anyone, Mari, but… well, why not? ” Oh. Right. Higashi whined, occasionally, and probably it became a constant whenever someone got alcohol into her. “Ootori’s really the sweetest thing, it’s not as if he’d do anything. He’d just cry and forgive his lover-boy, right? So why not?”
Well, aside from the fact that Ootori really was the sweetest thing, and definitely didn’t deserve having his boyfriend jumped by a drunk fangirl who really was much prettier when she didn’t have any alcohol in her… “Ootori’s been a regular for two years, and has just started his third year in one of the most coveted positions in the entire school.” And earned it, just as much as he’d earned Shishido’s respect as well as, er, all of Shishido; the fangirls, if anyone, would know that. “Head of the Hyotei orchestra. A mountainload of chocolate on Valentine’s, and not just because it’s his birthday. He’s so totally good no-one’s ever even tried to pin anything on him.” Mari grinned, just a little. “Still want to try stealing his boyfriend?”
Three pairs of eyes blinked at her in complete and utter confusion.
Kimura and Tanimoto, in turn, burst out laughing.
Well, if Mari ever had an urgent need for female bonding time (if that day ever came, she was likely to commit seppuku with a fork, first, but if it ever did) she knew which of the girls she was probably going to call first.
The rest of them all ordered ladies’ dinners.
Mari sighed, just a little, and ordered the regular set menu.
*_*_*_*
“Mari-senpai, would you-“
“Mari-san? Could you-“
“Mari-‘neechan, I-“
“Mari, he-“
Shishido hadn’t ever thought he’d see the day when he actually felt sorry for any president of Atobe’s fanclub, because, well, anyone mooning over Atobe damned well deserved what she got. He’d known Atobe since damned elementary school, and even then he’d had his little pack of sheep, but seriously, the way the fanclub went BOOM in middle school, he’d’ve suspected Atobe’s mom of putting pheromones in his food if he hadn’t been living in a dorm. So Shishido’d met a lot of Atobe’s fanclub presidents-before Mari, he’d gone through them at maybe one every two or three months before some new little thing scrabbled to the top, and as far as Shishido was concerned, it was hard to feel at all sorry for a waste of hair and breath.
Then again, anyone who was willing to put up with the bastard for the purpose of making this insane school of theirs a little bit of a better place to be in, well… probably deserved to be hit up for sainthood, or nomination to the position of being a bodhisattva sitting on a big old lotus flower, or something like that. Sure, it’d been semi-selfish-or she said, anyway, and the girl had a bad habit of never saying anything really good about herself-but what the Hell, Mari’d done it, and he wouldn’t have thought that was possible. There must’ve been more than one time he’d wished she was a guy, just so she could tie the same collar and bell around the tennis club that she’d put on the Atobe fanclub monster.
Which was probably why he felt pretty sorry for Taira Mari every time someone went skittering past him in the hallway, or on the way to club practice, or on the way from club practice, flagging down a long, thick ponytail that trailed a fair ways down Mari’s back-she had longer hair than any other girl he’d ever bothered to notice, a lot longer than his had ever been.
People skittering past him trying to flag down Mari happened a lot.
Yeah, Atobe’s fanclub was feckin’ huge, and it was natural for them to go skittering after what they thought was their alpha wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, or something like that. But he was pretty damned sure that the members of the fanclub didn’t include, people like, say, the (male) vice-president of the chemistry club, the (lesbian) head of the girls’ archery club, and… wait, was that Mukahi?
Shishido wasn’t really sure when it’d happened-maybe sometime between winter their senior year of middle school and their freshman spring, he hadn’t really been paying attention-but somehow the entire damned school, from freshmen all the way to seniors who should have had a little more pride, had figured out that if there was anything that needed hammering into place, Taira Mari was the one holding the toolbox.
He liked her even better knowing that she whacked people who came to her with problems that they could have damned well fixed themselves.
“Yo. Mari.”
“Shishido?” damn, but the girl looked… tired, when she turned. Just a little. Maybe just a little tight around the edges of her eyes and the corners of her smile, and he had to blink; he didn’t really make a habit of really checking, but that strain definitely hadn’t been there at the end of last year. “What’s up? Oh, right, I said I’d fix you up with a music tutor less… distracting… than Ootori-kun. Can it wait until tomorrow?”
Oh, right. Well, actually, he’d completely forgotten about it, but… Shishido frowned, and eyed the little crinkles at the edges of her eyes, the thick dark pads underneath them. He might not have known or really cared anything about girls, but he was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to crinkle like that at age sixteen. “Don’t worry ‘bout it, it’s fine.” And besides, he liked the way Ootori distracted him-or got distracted-in the middle of a music lesson. “Mari, do you ever, you know, breathe?” Because now that he had a closer look at her, she… looked like Jirou had, the last time Atobe’d given him a hundred laps for falling asleep in the middle of his game against some kid who wasn’t even a pre-Regular. Sure, her hair was as strangled into that painfully neat ponytail as ever, there wasn’t a crease anywhere on her uniform, much less any dirt, but… gods, the girl looked like she needed some sleep. Pretty frickin’ badly. And he wasn’t going to take any bets on the possibility that Jirou was contagious. “When’s the last time you took a day off?”
“Took a day off?” For all that she did look like someone’d stuck her through a washing machine, her smile was still all sass. He’d probably have liked her for that alone, and the fact that she’d kicked Atobe in the shins her first year in the school, Hell, he’d probably have proposed to her on the spot if he hadn’t been… well, so stupid in love with his Choutarou. (Though, somehow, it really didn’t seem like a good idea to put it just that way to his roommate when he mentioned Taira Mari…) “Shishido, skipping school, while occasionally an idea that I look at with a lot of longing, just isn’t something I do.”
Had the little idiot honestly thought he’d been talking about school? Figured. He snorted, and reached out to mock-punch her cheek. “Dummy. You’re as bad as Choutarou, sometimes.”
Uh-oh, he knew that smile-the one that licked at just the corners of her mouth, crinkled her eyes in a good way; Mari wasn’t really pretty-pretty, he didn’t have to be straight to be able to figure that one out, and sure as Hell she wasn’t snotty-pretty, but there was something about the mischief in her eyes that either made him want to take a step back and take a better look at her-or made him want to run fast as he could around the nearest corner. Luckily, normally the look was aimed at Oshitari. “From you, that’s a compliment of the highest degree, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
He knew there was a reason he didn’t like girls. They were difficult. “Do you ever say ‘no’ to anyone who comes running to you for help?!” Seriously, he kind of had no right to talk, considering all the stuff she’d pulled out of her invisible hat for him over the past two years, but… well, the difference was that he’d never asked for any of it, right…? “Give it a try, sometime! I mean, Hell, the whole damn school thinks you’re some kind of help desk!”
It was damned irritating when she reached out and patted his cheek. From her smile, she knew it, too, shrimp that she was-well, okay, so he wasn’t all that much taller than her, but he’d grown more than she had in the past year. “Sweet of you, Shishido. Careful, you shouldn’t make that sweet puppy of yours jealous when you’ve only been reunited a week…”
If she thought she was going to annoy him off the issue… well, Hell, the girl probably could, she’d done it before, but mentioning his partner and roommate… heh. “Trust me, Mari,” he grinned, just a little. “You don’t want me to tell Choutarou about this.”
He’d made her blink. Twice. Score. And go a little white around the corners of her mouth when she raised both hands towards him, laughing. “No, thank you, I really don’t. I know the both of you. You’d blow everything out of proportion, and Ootori-kun would try to drag me to the nurse’s, if not the nearest hospital.” Well, yeah, and yeah, but she definitely didn’t have to say it like that… but Hell, it was Mari, she wouldn’t bother saying it any other way, and his scowl tried its best to become a smile. “It’s okay, Shishido, really. I like being busy.”
He blinked. “This busy?”
She just blinked back at him and smiled, just a little, that knowing little smile that flirted around the corner of her mouth. “I get bored when I’m not.”
O-kay. Right. So apparently she was weird.
Shishido’d always thought there was something a little different about her-pretty damned good at most of her classes, from what he’d heard, yeah, with the organisational skills that could have had her up there with most company heads, and if there was a problem she couldn’t fix, well, pretty much the only way out of it was likely to be praying, or something, but… he’d never heard of someone who called any time when she wasn’t busy “being bored.”
It was the first time he wondered if, perhaps… just maybe, there was something that was bothering her. Had been bothering her awhile. And maybe she didn’t know it, but seriously, with all the things the girl had on her back, especially this time of the year… saying she did favors because she got bored was kind of like saying she liked being run down by a mack truck because it got her pulse going.
What did he know, though, right? If he was going to be really honest, he didn’t know her all that well-well, who did, really? Atobe was too wrapped up in himself and Jirou; Mari was way too smart to stay anywhere near Oshitari and Mukahi; the fangirls? Hell, the thought alone made him snort-but he knew, just a little, what desperation felt like. And what it looked like.
He’d had crinkles around his eyes, too, those weeks after he’d been dropped from the Hyotei tennis team.
He also had no frickin’ idea what in the world could possibly bother Taira Mari.
Sure, she was annoyed, sometimes, (a lot of the time, and Shishido couldn’t blame her) but… there was definitely something in her face, just under her skin, that he didn’t like the look of. The eyebags weren’t helping. “Hey, Mari?” Oh, geez, he was definitely no good at this stuff; he scratched just under his short, functional little ponytail. “You know if you’ve ever got anything on your mind, Choutarou and me, well, okay, we’re a little far out…” it was a little bit of a shock to realise that he’d known her two years, and he really… had no idea where she lived in the Tokyo area. “…but, anyway, we’ve got a phone, right?”
Never mind that if there was a problem she couldn’t fix, Hell, he didn’t know how he could possibly help, but… but the crinkles went out of her eyes for just a second when she chuckled at him, and cocked her head, ponytail flopping over her shoulder. “You do. Don’t ever show that kind of face to any of the fangirls, Shishido. Ootori or no Ootori, they’ll start hitting on you again.”
Which, for Mari, was ‘Thank you,’ sort of.
“You say that like they ever stopped,” he snorted, and reached out to punch her shoulder again, gently. “Can’t you keep a better leash on your puppies, girl?”
Which, for him, was ‘You’re welcome.’
It was only later that night, watching Ootori sleep-because okay, yeah, weird, sappy, sure, but if his roommate looked sweet awake, there was nothing like the way he canted his head and sighed so happily in his sleep, with that tiny little wisp of a smile at the corners of his mouth that made him look like he’d gotten everything he’d ever wanted-that Shishido blinked, and realised that Mari might have said ‘Thank you,’ Mari-style, but… she hadn’t said she’d call.
Taira Mari was sort of close to last on his list of people to ever ask personal questions to, because he was sure that the girl had a snappy answer for every inappropriate question-and geez, Choutarou was definitely rubbing off on him, if he even thought of asking it, but…
But. But watching the way his boyfriend breathed slow and even, smiling even in his sleep because-because his Choutarou said that there wasn’t anything that made him as happy as being able to live with his Shishido-san again, and when he smiled like that, Shishido could believe that he meant it…
Mari, are you happy?
*_*_*_*
She was going to kill Atobe. Kill him. Why it was imperative that she come down and be officially introduced to the new members on the Regular team, over her protests that damn it, she knew all of them, all the way down to the backup player, a certain mountain called Kabaji…
Still, though, she had to admit it was a cute ceremony, rather surprisingly free of pomp and a certain coach informing the newly admitted pre-Regulars that the Regulars were their enemy, to be defeated at all costs… she missed some things about middle school, but Sakaki definitely wasn’t one of them. On the other hand, there really were times when she just wished that Omi-kantoku would forget that the fanclub’s support was as much a part of the tennis club’s success, rather than dragging her down to bow to each of the new Regulars.
Even if it made her smile, a little, when Ootori reached down to pat her shoulder, awkwardly, and she looked up to realise that his bow was definitely at a lower angle than hers and his eyes were teary, the sap that he was-and Kabaji almost knocked her off her feet when he patted her other shoulder, probably in imitation of Ootori… but that little smile that hovered around his edges was all him.
She managed to look at nothing but Hiyoshi’s knees when she bowed-but there really wasn’t anything she could do once she straightened, and found herself looking at his…
…chin.
“Taira-san.” She watched his chin move as he nodded, slightly, in greeting; formal as ever. Funny. Funny, he was the only one who still called her that. Oh, sure, ha ha ha, really funny. “You’re still here.”
He was looking down at her. Not down on her, down at her.
It had been a year, apparently someone had been eating his veggies and drinking his milk because he hadn’t topped her by more than a centimetre, and most of that fluffy hair, when she’d graduated middle school, but oh gods she couldn’t have come all that much higher than his chin by now. Did the boy even know he had a little blot of a mole-someone a little more fanciful might have called it a beauty mark-just where the stubborn angle of his jaw met his throat?
Wasn’t a growth spurt supposed to make someone more… clumsy, less beautiful, or something? A pile of gekokujou arms and legs (actually, considering that it was probably true, she’d have likely found the thought a good deal funnier in any other situation except actually having to look at him) but… of course, if he’d been the buchou of the Hyotei tennis club a year, a pile of gangly arms and legs wouldn’t have lasted very long. And perhaps being buchou had done him some good, because his arms were wired with bands of sleek muscle, and if his eyes had been intense before-in a face that was just a little thinner, framed by surprisingly delicate cheekbones rather than soft, round cheeks… gods, he could have definitely felled stronger girls than her with that gaze.
And the fact that she had to look up to look him in the eyes was making her stomach do the strangest little fluttery thing, because she always looked everyone in the eyes, and she wasn’t going to turn into the kind of coquette who avoided people’s gazes anytime soon, if she could help it, no matter who it was with…
Ohgodbreathebreathebreathe, the Jell-o you had after dinner last night did not migrate straight to your knees, that’s really not biologically possible- “Hi, Hiyoshi-kun.”
She’d actually intended to ask him how his spring break had been, but that particular sentence had been scrapped the moment she’d realised that her voice had actually come out just one step shy of a stammer, metaphorical toes poking into the realm of ‘breathy.’
Kill me now. Because I just know if I throw myself off a cliff, there will be some kind of miraculous rescue, and I’ll find myself waking up in a hospital bed with him in the next bed over, having torn a ligament or something in a freak accident on the tennis courts…
And it was just sick that the first thing she thought after that was to hope he didn’t tear a ligament because of some very amused fox-god’s whimsy.
“Do I have something on my face, Taira-san?” he simply tilted an eyebrow, the same sun-softened bronze as his hair, down at her. “You’re staring.”
She was just vexed enough at the world in general that she managed to get out a “When did you get tall?” with just the right amount of exasperation in her voice.
It was a rhetorical question. Really, it was.
She didn’t expect the faintest touch of something that might have almost, almost been a smile flirting-and the use of ‘flirting’ in the same thought as Hiyoshi was just so utterly wrong-around the corners of his eyes when he murmured, “Gekokujou. ”
Ootori’s hand on her shoulder when he chirruped, “It’s so good to see you again, Mari-san-you never came to visit us! We missed you!” was just about the only thing that kept her upright, because as far as she knew, she’d never seen anything even resembling a sense of humor in Hiyoshi Wakashi before-but most of the time, she tried her absolute best to not stand this close to him…
Well, actually, she had passed by the middle school-which was why poor, defenseless, Shishido-less Ootori had only been gently molested, rather than mangled and devoured by enthusiastic, shrieking classmates, on his birthday. He truly was lucky that obedience did come very easily to her little fangirls-but, well, the good thing about them was that if she told one clump of them, well… it wasn’t very long before the rest of them knew. She hadn’t needed to go near class 3-B at all.
She wasn’t about to tell Ootori that. And normally she tried to keep from teasing him, because it really was just too easy, but… Mari winked, once, and reached out-and up-to tap his rather well-loved cross, once, with a forefinger. “You should really be careful when you say things like that, Ootori-kun, or people will start thinking you’re straight. And while you might like it when Shishido bites you, I’ll pass, thank you.”
Blush went the boy-a deep velvet crimson that started just under where his cross touched skin and crept to just above his cheeks, “Mari-san! ” He really was preposterously cute for someone who could have passed as the Big Friendly Giant.
Well, all right, that was either a small, relatively distant earthquake, or Kabaji was chuckling. And she really was trying not to look at Hiyoshi, but no doubt the boy hadn’t cracked a smile, and if anything, his eyebrows were somewhere in that ridiculous straight hairline of his.
Her traitorous eyeballs slid over in his direction just about the time he rolled his eyes in something that looked almost like exasperation, but could have been amusement.
A moment later-Saved! -the rush of girls around her pushed her back into the direction of the bleachers-and the utter disgruntled expression on Hiyoshi’s face when someone clung to his elbow, poor thing, really did make her feel just a little sorry for both him and the freshman girl who was about to get her arm frozen off. Well, and good; she wasn’t the only member (sort of) of the Atobe-and-his-Regulars fanclub, and the rest of the girls had to be given their chance to ‘congratulate’ (gently maul) the new Regulars. They’d shut Shishido in the clubroom for just that reason, but she’d been sure that that wasn’t supposed to happen until Omi-kantoku let them out of their little holding pen…
Mari blinked, just a little, to find someone smiling at her, just a little sleepily, from the direction of the creaking, and rather badly-abused, gate that separated the spectator bleachers from the courts. “Oops? Is it still too early? But I woke up, so it can’t be that early…”
What… in the world?
Jirou?
*_*_*_*
Tsuzuku (To Be Continued)