PoT: One-Shot: Tetsuya (All-Nighter)
Title: Tetsuya (All-Nighter)
Pairing: Silver Pair... sort of.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: quite innocently PG
For: mousapelli... you got me again, dear. ^^
Disclaimer: *insert standard disclaimer*
Notes: ...yes, I was in fact too lazy to come up with a better title, how could you tell? ^^; Um, ah, yeah, this one's a bit on the weird and wordy and completely and totally plotless side of things, so, uh...
Tetsuya (All-Nighter)
It had always struck Shishido as just a little bit unfair that even when Ootori was in a rush, he never managed to do things like button up his shirts wrong or have his shoelaces come undone on the courts because he hadn’t tied them tight enough. Sure, he left stuff behind when he was running out the door, but he always looked put together-which was just short of criminal, when by consensus of just about everyone who’d ever laid eyes on him, Ootori Choutarou had gone from being a tall, pretty middle schooler to a tall, sun-scorchingly hot twenty-year-old. With his button-down shirts and smooth long stride, the years and all the tennis having shaved any hint of baby fat and uncertainty from his high cheekbones, Shishido sometimes-grudgingly-thought that his former doubles partner looked like someone who should have been on a Shibuya billboard, not killing his eyes in the Waseda pre-law department.
It was definitely the first time in their seven years of being friends that Shishido’d ever seen Ootori looking… rumpled.
In fact, he had to jog up behind him just to make absolutely sure that it was his former doubles partner, not some other tall, silverhaired guy with straight shoulders and slim hips just taking a tour of the Waseda campus.
Oh, he’d seen Ootori sweat, for sure-after all, they’d played tennis together basically until they’d graduated high school. Flustering him was still easier by half than it should’ve been-and, Shishido had to admit, more fun than a basket of puppies, when Ootori only ever got flustered by close friends. But Ootori had mentioned, once, that he only really felt like himself when he was… ‘presentable.’
Shishido wasn’t going to lie to himself-at this moment, Ootori probably wouldn’t have considered himself ‘presentable,’ whatever that meant… but the sight of his former doubles partner plodding down the footpath between their university’s buildings with his hair standing up in tufts rather than in its neatly ordered little curls, and looking very carefully down at where he was putting his feet, was cute as all Hell.
Shishido was also pretty sure that Ootori didn’t know that he had a puff of silver hair trying to defy gravity by standing almost perpendicular from the back of his head.
He nudged Ootori’s leg with a hip, and grinned at the way his best friend almost leaped off the footpath and right into one of the benches. Yup, that was him, all right-smooth as whiskey moving on the courts, klutzy as a fish on the ground when startled. Shishido reached out a hand, laughing, to steady Ootori’s elbow when he actually wobbled. “Man, you look like a car crash. Wild night out? On a weeknight? Good going!”
Well, he hadn’t known that Ootori Choutarou could look evil when he tugged his elbow out from under Shishido’s hand and glared. Mostly, when he was giving someone the stink-eye of doom, it involved him looked a little hurt underneath the pissed-off, and in general made the target of those eyes feel like something that’d crawled up from under the ground. But then, Shishido’d never seen those warm brown eyes genuinely bloodshot, either, and there were dark circles underneath the glare. “Very funny, Shishido-san. Don’t mistake me for yourself, please.”
It probably would have been more intimidating if Ootori hadn’t had almost all his hair standing on end, a little cloud-puff of it curling right smack dab over the centre of his forehead.
“Yeah, like that’d ever happen.” Shishido raised an eyebrow, more fascinated than taken aback-he’d known Ootori too long to assume that he was a pushover, but it wasn’t like him to actually take a joke seriously. Well. That’s weird. If he hadn’t known that Ootori shaved religiously every morning, he’d have thought Ootori was incapable of growing facial hair, too, because there had never been so much as a hint of prickle on that chin before… but the afternoon sun was definitely glinting off just a little bit of silvery something. He reached out and squeezed Ootori’s arm. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yes… it’s…” his former partner’s broad shoulders heaved in a sigh, and he brought a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes tight-shut. “I stayed up all night finishing a paper for my Writing in Law class, that’s all. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.”
Shishido shook his head with something like relief. That, right there, was so much more typical then the hint of snippiness in Ootori’s voice had been. He always wondered if the guy knew just how good he was at making the really guilty party feel really, really guilty, whenever he started apologising for some tiny little imagined slight against etiquette… when he figured that out, Hell, opposition lawyers of the world would start hiding under their desks. “Choutarou. If you think I’m going to be offended by something like that, you don’t know me at all.”
“Shishido-san. If you actually thought I was out drinking on a weeknight, you don’t know me at all,” but he’d started smiling again, a little sheepishly, his dimples dipping just at the corners of his mouth. People sometimes assumed that Ootori didn’t go near alcohol, but there was a reason for that-Ootori didn’t touch beer, it was true, but he was pretty damned good at hiding the fact that he liked girly drinks from all but his close friends. “I don’t suppose that pulling an all-nighter is like me, either, though,” Ootori admitted. “Do you mind if we walk? I’m afraid I’m going to fall asleep on my feet if I don’t-I actually dozed off during class for a second. I think.”
“Dozing off in class? You? Wow, you are in a bad way,” Shishido grinned at Ootori’s narrow-eyed look at him, but they fell into step together automatically-even before he’d hit his growth spurt, he’d always had a long stride for someone his height. They’d never had a problem walking together, even despite Ootori’s retardedly long legs. “I mean, what happened?”
“Well, I turned in the first draft in to my primary reader last week,” Ootori sighed, and reached up to rub his temples between his fingers, the way he always did when he was annoyed. “He didn’t get back to me until I got home yesterday afternoon. Only to tell me that he thought that I should rewrite the whole thing.”
His mouth tightened at the corners to match Ootori’s. Neither of them were naïve enough to think that Ootori’s reader had just ‘accidentally’ gotten back to him late enough to give him a hard time-this was the first time something like this had happened this year, but it definitely wasn’t the first time it’d happened at all. It’d been happening, in fact, once the news got out that Ootori Choutarou, valedictorian of Hyoutei High, had passed over TouDai in favour of Waseda… never mind that Waseda’s law program was supposed to be better. “Oh, geez. Damn. You couldn’t just… you know, not, or something like that?”
“I could have, but he’s the favourite graduate student of our professor, and…” Ootori’s shoulders tensed, almost invisible but for the streak of strain that Shishido’d gotten pretty damned good at picking out in the line of his best friend’s jaw. “…I’m willing to bet that word would have gotten back to Professor Matsuoka eventually, if I had.”
Ah, Hell. Now and again, when he managed to think that Ootori had it easy, being at the top of his class… Ootori reminded him just how tough it was, and just how tough he had to be, to stay there. Considering that Waseda law school politics made the Hyoutei tennis club look like the Girl Scouts, it still amazed him that there was still sweet-and a lot of it-wrapping around Ootori’s core of silver and steel. “Ah, fuck, ” he kicked at a loose bit of stone, and knocked it neatly in front of Ootori. “That just sucks, Choutarou.”
Ootori nudged it back towards him with a flick of his toe-or tried, anyway. “That’s exactly the right way to put it, Shishido-san,” he agreed with a sigh. “It does, in fact, suck. But it doesn’t matter, I suppose-I won’t be asking him to proof any important papers anymore, that’s for sure. There are other readers available. I’ll ask around.”
He’d ask around, too. He’d never had many friends amongst the snobby bastards in the law department, and his being Ootori’s buddy definitely hadn’t helped that… but he had an ex who was TAing some class on analytical writing, and there were a couple of folk in the Gov school who he still played tennis matches with. They wouldn’t have an axe to grind with Ootori-and as a bonus, they’d probably be better than he was at figuring out what the Hell was going on in those papers the law kids had to write. The one time he’d offered to proofread, he’d been dizzy by the time he’d finished the first paragraph.
Shishido grunted, under his breath. Sometimes, he didn’t know how Ootori put up with this whole constructive, solution-based thinking nonsense. It really wasn’t very satisfying. At all. But they weren’t in high school anymore, and he doubted that he could get away with introducing the snotty grad student to his fist, even if it would made him feel better-and Ootori, too, even if he’d never admit it.
“I could beat him up,” he offered, anyway.
Ootori frowned down at him, brows creasing inwards-but his dimples were peeking out at the corners of his mouth, like a secret. “One day, I’m going to take you up on that, and then where’ll you be, Shishido-san?”
Shishido grinned. Ootori trying to swallow his smile and look reproachful at the same time kind of made him look like he was trying to puff on an invisible trumpet. “Expelled, probably. Hey, you wanna hit some balls? Get some stress out?”
Except the moment he said it, the alarm bells in his head went off, and if he could have sworn without looking like something was wrong with him, he probably would have. He always called Ootori before he headed to the courts, always-unless he had some reason to think that Ootori was going to be busy.
It was more flattering than it had any right to be when Ootori actually thought it over, nibbling on his well-chewed thumbnail before Shishido nudged his friend’s hand away from his mouth. “No… I think I might just… I don’t know.” He offered a small, apologetic smile. “It’s tempting, but I don’t want to get hit on the nose with a ball because I was dozing on my feet. I might just go home and sleep until class time tomorrow.”
Shishido was tempted to let Ootori do just that, for one blinding second-like really, really tempted, even though he knew just what a totally lame human being it made him. Maybe he’d actually be able to convince himself that Ootori needed sleep more than he needed to be out baby-talking his girlfriend on that date he’d been talking about last week. Maybe.
Yeah, right.
Instead, he reached up and thwapped his best friend on the back of the head-open-handed, of course, but hard enough to knock Ootori just a step forward. The stubborn puff of silver hair at the back of his former partner’s head sprang right back up. “Dumbass! Wrong answer.”
“Ow! What? What was that for?” Ootori frowned at him, lips pursing. He wasn’t terribly good at being mad, but he was really, really good at looking surprisingly disapproving, for someone with such sweet eyes. “Shishido-san, you can’t possibly want to practice that badly-”
Shishido scowled, and propped his hands on his hips, lifting his chin. He wasn’t Ootori’s height, but he was closer than most of their classmates-close enough to look him in the eyes. “Man, if this is what your first all-nighter does to you, you totally need to take harder classes and pull a couple more, Choutarou. What kind of university student are you, anyway?”
“Shishido-san, if you feel anything after an all-nighter like I feel today, you would start planning your papers weeks in advance.” And he didn’t say anything more than that, even though those brown eyes were glittering dangerously behind lowered lids and thick grey lashes, because he didn’t need to be snide to be right. Ootori Choutarou normally did plan his papers weeks in advance. Outlines and all. He’d been doing it since they’d been in middle school.
Shishido was never sure if that made Ootori a nerd, a dork, or kind of terrifyingly organised, because who did that and still had time for two clubs and student government?!
“Hey, I pass all my classes, don’t I?” and did pretty damned well in most of them, if he did say so himself. Not as good as Ootori, of course, but well enough that his parents still looked insultingly shocked every time he brought home a grade printout. “Besides. All-nighters don’t make me forget that I promised to take my girlfriend out to dinner tonight.”
Gods. Sometimes, he didn’t know if he did this because he liked Ootori more than he dared admit to anyone but himself, or because he was punishing himself for being in love with a straight man, or because he was just a bloody frigging idiot.
Ootori blinked at him twice-very, very slowly, like he was actually trying to fall asleep on his feet, the annoyed glitter fading into confusion. “But… you’re… you don’t have a-“
“Duh I don’t have a girlfriend.” The day he’d date some poor girl just to convince the world he wasn’t gay was the day he’d voluntarily agree to have his balls cut off. Some of the guys he’d been out with called that kind of girl a ‘beard;’ Shishido’d retorted that he was better off clean-shaven. He growled under his breath in exasperation as Ootori’s expression remained blinkety and blank-no, it never got any easier, throwing his Choutarou to his Choutarou’s girlfriends, where he belonged. “Am I going to have to hit you again, Choutarou?! She’ll kill you if you flake out on her!”
Ootori blinked just one more time before he stopped walking, eyes widening completely awake for the first time since Shishido’d bumped into him. “Wait-what-OH!”
Just for good measure, he punched Ootori in the shoulder-but it was hard not to laugh again, even through the feeling of his life closing around his throat, when his former partner looked so totally surprised by his own forgetfulness. And chagrined. “Yeah. Oh. Remember? Aki? Date? Thursday? Any of this ringing a bell?”
“Oh, gods! Thank you, Shishido-san. If you hadn’t said something, I would’ve… I didn’t forget, I just…” Ootori grimaced, and knuckled at his eyes with both hands-when he did that, he looked as much like a little boy as one of the tallest kids in their university possibly could, Shishido thought. “I think I was convincing myself that it was still Wednesday.”
Shishido rolled his eyes. It was a good thing that lawyers got paid well enough to get a full eight hours of down-time a night, because if this was what Ootori was like after just one night of sleep deprivation, he’d have been a wreck as a writer or a doctor or something. “Yeah, don’t do that too often. Just you watch. One o’ these days, I’m gonna snatch you right out from under her nose.”
He was joking. Of course he was joking. Biggest joke of his life, really.
Ootori still flamed a hot, gorgeous scarlet every time he blushed, though, and that alone would have made Shishido’s day, every single time. “Shishido-san!” he protested, but he was laughing even through his face going bright enough to rival the sunset. “Don’t say things like that!”
“What? Just for a couple of practice matches on the street courts. Law school’s playing Hell on your game.” He smirked as the blush spread, purple, down the sides of Ootori’s neck. “Why, what were you thinking about?”
Ootori gave him a shove that almost sent Shishido flying right off the path, and grumbled, “You’re not at all funny.”
“Says you, but you’re smiling,” he pointed out, grinning as he sauntered back to his best friend’s side. It wasn’t the million-watt smile, but sleepy Ootori giving him a sweet little unintentional tilt of the lips, like he couldn’t help but smile… yeah, that was the kind of thing a guy could die happy on. “Might want to fix your collar before you go looking for your girl, though.”
“It’s crooked? Damn it, I really am a mess today, aren’t I?” now Choutarou really did sound flustered, and not in the good way, when he reached upwards to adjust the lines of his shirt so the collar wasn’t folded in lopsided lumps-he didn’t swear all that often, when they weren’t playing tennis. “I didn’t bring anything nice to wear, either-“
Shishido gave him a quick, wry once-over. Ootori’s nice blue shirt wasn’t fancy, and it didn’t have the perfectly straight creases in it that it normally did, but it certainly wasn’t the same one he’d been wearing the day before-which was more than Shishido could say after an all-nighter. Besides, the colour and that soft-looking material made Ootori’s skin and hair look even paler, and he was wearing khakis, not jeans. And nice shoes, because even on the worst of days, Ootori didn’t wear sneakers to university.
“You’re fine,” he shook his head, exasperated. Well, he was fine in so many ways, but… yeah. How the moron could never lack for a girlfriend and still manage to be so blind to his own attractiveness still went right over Shishido’s head, most days. “You’re dressier than most of us are on normal days, anyhow. Undo like one more button, and she’ll be all over you. It’s just dinner, right, not a special occasion or anything?”
Ootori shook his head, mouth curving, wry and soft. “Not unless I’ve somehow managed to forget the month as well as the day.” Yeah, well, Shishido knew when their one-year anniversary was probably as well as Choutarou did. “Thank goodness I withdrew some money from the bank yesterday afternoon.”
“You did?” Shishido raised an eyebrow. Ootori, for all his responsibility about his classes and his duties and all that junk, was notorious for having an empty wallet just when he needed cash. He’d have offered to lend him some if his own wallet hadn’t been pretty wiped from last weekend’s visit to a beer garden-he definitely couldn’t spare any for a serious date. “Why?”
“Oh, well.” Ootori gave him a smile that was all easy innocence, but he was blinking entirely too much. “No particular reason. Do you want to do anything special for your birthday next week, by the way?”
By the way. Right. Cute, he was-subtle, he wasn’t. “Uh… nah, it’s fine.” He chuckled around the lump in his throat. Ah, Hell. He still remembered the time he’d gotten piss-ass drunk and actually said, ‘Of course it was a happy birthday, Choutarou! I got to spend it with you, didn’t I?’ “We’ll talk about it later. D’you even remember what time you’re supposed to meet Aki-chan, or did you forget that, too?”
In their younger days, Ootori would have stuck his tongue out at him-Shishido’d never been able to decide if that was more or less hazardous to his mental health than a slow, dangerous smile that made it clear that Ootori’d heard the slight, and he wasn’t going to forget it. But all he said was, “She gets out of class in half an hour; there’s time to walk over there.” He smiled, genuine this time, all hope and light and summer even though it was late into September. “Why don’t you come along and say hello? It’s only a little out of the way to the courts, after all.”
He’d have sworn that Ootori was saying that sort of thing just to get back at him, if he hadn’t known better.
“Uh…” Aki wasn’t a bad sort, and she kind of cracked him up on good days, but as a general rule, he tried to keep away from Ootori’s girlfriends. Ironically enough, it wasn’t just because it gave him a serious case of heartburn watching his former doubles partner smile at them. “Nah, s’okay. I’ll pass.”
“Really?” the smile on Ootori’s face, all teasing pleasure, could have charmed a mangaka out of his lucky pencils. The first, like, half-dozen times, Shishido hadn’t even realised it was being turned on him before he’d crumpled under it like a paper bag after lunch. “But you could tell her what a failure I am as a boyfriend-you’d know, wouldn’t you?”
Ah, Hell. Sometimes, he thought that Choutarou managed to forget that Shishido wasn’t straight-that really was the only explanation for him saying something that sounded so fricking suggestive. Even though there’d been more than one story running around their high school about them being so married that all they needed were the rings, Ootori definitely wasn’t the kind to bring up that kind of lame joke.
Thank all the gods.
Besides, Shishido didn’t think that his best friend had ever been a failure at anything in all twenty years of his life-some of Ootori’s ex-girlfriends were still claiming that being with him had just about spoiled them for any other guy. He knew the feeling.
“Me and girls don’t get along, Choutarou, you know that,” Shishido grumbled. He did try to behave around his best buddy’s girlfriends-honestly, he did. The gods only knew he wasn’t sure he’d have forgiven himself if he was consciously an ass to any of Ootori’s chickadees. But while he was okay with toning down his mouth some in front of them, he wasn’t going to pretend to be straight or anything, and after that whole mess with Sachiko flipping out had blown over… well. Shishido rolled his eyes as Ootori’s hopeful expression collapsed like a card tower. “Yeah, I know, gay men are supposed to like talking fashion and all that crap, but I’ll take the courts any day.”
Plus, when she greeted him, sometimes there was a slow, steady glitter in Aki-chan’s gaze that bothered him with just how, well, knowing she looked.
But there was that odd, deliberate light in Ootori’s eyes-even sleep-deprived, Ootori certainly wasn’t stupid. “She’s not like Sachiko, Shishido-san.” Shishido barely managed to hide his wince-it worried him a little, just how often Ootori could read his mind still. If he kept doing it, the gods only knew what he’d figure out someday. “You don’t have to worry about her being… unreasonable, you know that.” Yeah, well, ‘unreasonable’ hadn’t been a strong enough word for Osegawa Sachiko-the girl had been batshit insane. “Besides, Aki-chan likes you.”
That, in and of itself, freaked him out a little.
“Worry more about where you stand with her, not me,” he retorted. There needed to be a change of topic, like, yesterday, because he really didn’t want to go into how wrong it was, Aki liking him when he’d spent the past five or so years crushing on her perfectly straight boyfriend. “She’s a stylish chick, and she’s so going to dump you if she sees your hair like that.”
Though if she was stupid enough to do that, Shishido really was going to give up on the future of the human race.
“Oh. Is it bad? I didn’t have time to fix it this morning-“ Shishido reached up and back, and tugged on the floating puff of hair, the way he’d been wanting to do since he’d first seen the thing bobbing as Ootori walked. “Oh!” Ootori reached behind his head, and Shishido yanked his hand away before their fingers could brush. “Oh no, it’s doing it again. Why couldn’t I have been born with straight hair?”
Shishido managed a laugh, then discovered that he actually meant it. “’Cause then your girlfriends wouldn’t be able to go gaga over your curls?” They’d certainly been one of the first things that had attracted his eyes-and he hadn’t even admitted to himself that he wasn’t straight yet, then. “Hey, wait up a sec.”
He’d always kept a small bottle of gel rattling around in the pocket of his tennis bag-just for nostalgia’s sake, more than anything, now that his hair was long again. Kind of, well, good luck, and it fit that he’d be giving it to Ootori-it wasn’t like they could ever go back to those days in middle school when he’d had that ugly-ass haircut, and there hadn’t been any girls or anything standing between them. “Here.” He tossed it-and it almost clocked Ootori on the nose before his hand came up, just a little slower than normal. Oops. “Uh, sorry. It’s not that fancy mousse stuff you use, but it should keep your hair down.”
Ootori looked at the bottle he was holding for just long enough that Shishido almost started to worry that it wasn’t just because Ootori’s brain was working at fifty percent. Nothing got the baby lawyer’s antennae up and waving faster than him being defensive, but he still had to bite down his lip to keep from blurting out about how it’d just been there and he hadn’t bothered to take it out of his bag, it didn’t matter or anything.
But, thank the gods, Ootori didn’t say anything more than, “This will work? Really?”
Shishido shrugged. “It’s pretty strong stuff. Probably?” Hey, he was proud of himself, he’d managed to keep from looking away from the awkward moment-Atobe’d told him once that that was pretty telltale, too. “Hey, if it doesn’t keep your hair flat, you could always put it in spikes.” He grinned at the thought, despite everything. “You can tell her you’re trying out a new look.”
Ootori gave him a wry glance, just down his nose. “I don’t think so. I remember when you all decided to try that on my hair in high school. I looked like an albino porcupine wilting in the heat.”
Well, yeah, but he’d looked like a cute albino porcupine… especially with the nonplussed expression he’d worn the rest of the day. Shishido laughed, and clapped him on the shoulder-this time, he didn’t wobble. “Just saying. Get going, you idiot, or you’ll ruin your perfect record for never being late.”
“Mmm. I suppose.” Ootori cocked an eyebrow at him, lips quirking in that hint of a knowing smile that turned Shishido Ryou’s knees to jelly. Yeah, Ootori at fourteen had been cute and sweet and just a little naïve, still-Ootori at twenty, just naïve enough to be underestimated, and with that sweetness honed to a knife-edge, really was dangerous for his mental health. “Don’t think I forgot about doing something for your birthday, though.”
But he’d had seven years of practice at keeping his knees stiff and his smile casual when he shrugged. “You kidding? I’d have been pissed if you’d forgotten.”
The slightly bemused look that Ootori gave him over his shoulder when he looked at the bottle of gel in his hand again made the hair at the nape of his neck prickle for a second-but he kept his grin on and at full wattage until his best friend turned around and strode off. Only after he was sure Ootori wouldn’t be looking back did Shishido let himself plop down on one of the benches by the side of the pathway and squeeze his eyes shut.
He didn’t say goodbye, but they never did.
The truth was, he wouldn’t have much minded going to say hello to Aki, but… well, better safe than sorry, and all that. He and Aki did the pretty in front of Ootori, sure. She was a bit of a sassy, sweet thing, and Shishido didn’t dislike her… the gods only knew she was better than some of the others. Shishido’d been kind of shocked when he’d found out that Ootori had dumped (“broken up with”) Sachiko, his freshman year girlfriend, because she’d wanted him to cut off ties with ‘certain people.’ Or, at least, that was the story he’d weaseled out of Ootori after being totally unsatisfied with the “It just wasn’t working.”
In one way, it totally jived with Ootori’s personality-he wouldn’t take anyone talking crap about his friends. In another way, it just didn’t, because Ootori played damned nice with his girlfriends-nicer, Shishido sometimes thought, than some of them deserved. He wouldn’t have just cut off ties, no, but he’d have found some way to make things work out-Ootori Choutarou was the kind of guy who went looking for solutions.
The whole thing made a lot more sense after he’d sniffed around campus some, and found out that Sachiko had been doing some ‘research’ on Ootori’s stellar high school tennis career… dug up the old campus fangirl newspapers and all, back when some idiots had started calling him and Ootori the Silver Pair. She’d apparently been pretty loud about wanting Ootori to stay away from Shishido- something about thinking that Shishido was going to try and jump him.
Shishido’d snorted, at that. If only she knew. She’d obviously had a weird physical image of her boyfriend, if she couldn’t see that Ootori still had both height and weight on him and could’ve probably knocked him down flat on his ass if he’d wanted to… and for another, if he was going to jump Ootori, he’d have done it sometime in the past six years already.
But Sachiko’d also told Ootori that she wanted him to keep his distance from Oshitari, Atobe, Gakuto, Jirou, Taki… it was kind of gratifying that most of the folk he’d talked to still thought that the girl’d been crazy. After all, the fact that Ootori had close high-school contacts with both the heir of the Atobe Group and TouDai’s rising star in the tech department was normally something folk looked at with awe and jealousy, not suspicion… and even if Atobe wasn’t publicly out, Oshitari was.
Yeah, there was no kind of ‘solution’ that was going to make a girl with a ‘phobe complex believe that every gay man on Hyoutei’s old tennis team wasn’t out to get her guy.
He’d felt a little guilty about the whole episode, though, because she’d probably never have had a single suspicion about straight-as-a-lane-line and stupefyingly faithful Ootori if Shishido hadn’t been his best friend in the first place. It wasn’t normal for a gorgeous, well-liked sophomore guy to have an openly gay junior for a best friend, and he knew enough people around Waseda to know that Ootori’d already dealt with flak about that. Quietly, and without saying a word to Shishido.
He felt a little guiltier about how Ootori picking his friends-picking him-over his girl had left him a little fuzzy and hot inside, because, Hell. Even on his most delusional days he knew he didn’t have the right to that.
Shishido blinked his eyes open when someone stopped by his bench, and rapped his knuckles on the armrest. “Ah, Shishido.” Oshitari’d changed his glasses since the last time they’d seen each other, but the glint of them was the same, the lingering hint of a smug smile. “I thought that might be you. Your hair’s long again, I see. Have you finally realised that you’re a bottom after all?”
Oshitari’d always set his teeth a little on edge when they’d been in middle school together-but even he had to admit that a lot of things had set his teeth on edge when he’d been fifteen. He’d take nails to his eyes before he’d admit that he was kind of grateful for the distraction of the tensai’s smart-assed mouth, for once. “Yours is short again,” he grinned up at his former teammate. With all his teeth showing. “The little woman get back at you with a pair of scissors when you were sleeping?”
Privately, he was never quite sure why Oshitari and Mukahi hadn’t ever officially gotten together-they shared an apartment out in Gotanda, and had for years. The gods only knew that they’d been caught making out enough times in high school. But, well, him asking anyone about dysfunctional doubles partner relationships was just asking for a lightning bolt to hit him upside the head on a perfectly sunny day.
“Touché,” Oshitari chuckled, leaning a hand on the armrest. “I’ve got a conference to attend, but before I forget-early happy birthday.”
“Uh… thanks.” It’d been awhile since they’d all gotten together-Ootori’d normally been the one who put that kind of thing together last year, and he’d been busier than usual this year. Oh, wait a second… he and Oshitari did have their birthdays around the same time of the year. Even if he never quite remembered when Oshitari’s was, considering it had always gotten mostly drowned out in the festivities of Atobe’s. “Happy birthday to you, too.”
“Mmm. Thank you.” Oshitari nodded in the direction of the footpath. “Was that Ootori I saw, walking off? I’ve heard he’s doing particularly well-it’s bad precedent to let your uke outdo you in school, you know. They get rather… uppity.”
It wasn’t smart to look away from Oshitari Yuushi, ever. Especially not when Oshitari’d been one of the ones he’d decked in high school for just one joke too many about how much time he spent with Ootori. “Yeah, funny, ha ha. You know him, overachiever to the core.” Shishido shrugged. “He’s off to get prettied up for a date with his girlfriend.”
Ah, shit. Shishido winced the moment the words were out of his mouth.
“His… ah.” He saw the moment realisation slipped into Oshitari’s eyes, because, Hell, in retrospect? With all the teasing he’d gotten? His guess was that the only one who hadn’t known on the Regulars had been Ootori himself. Luckily. “I see.” He paused. “I’m-“
He was sorry? Yeah, well, he probably was, and Shishido didn’t want to hear it. “Don’t,” he reached up to rake a hand through his hair. Even to his own ears, he sounded a little tired. “Don’t you fucking dare. ” There, that was better.
He got to be Ootori’s best friend-most days, that was enough. More than enough.
Oshitari stood up, and dusted off his hands. “As you like.”
But there was still pity in his old teammate’s gaze, or maybe it was sympathy. Either way, Shishido growled. “It’s fine. ”
“I’m sure it is.” Oshitari nodded, once. And that, thank the gods, was that. Atobe would have pressed the point, but luckily, the last time he’d seen Atobe, it’d been at a big group thing, and their former buchou hadn’t been able to corner him. Atobe would never admit that he was a romantic bastard way deep down under it all, and he’d probably start yelling for laps if anyone suggested it, but Hell, it was true. But then Oshitari was smiling again, out of the corner of his mouth. “Does he know that his hair is levitating in the back?”
That, despite everything-despite Aki and Choutarou and the sight of Choutarou’s sleepy smile-made Shishido chuckle. “Yeah, well. For his girl? He’ll make himself ‘presentable’” they both rolled their eyes, and Shishido almost laughed “if it kills him.”
“Now that I actually will believe,” Oshitari murmured, and Shishido kicked him, just once, for old times’ sakes.
But the bastard was still chuckling, softly, under his breath, when Shishido waved him on his way and scooped up his backpack and hefting his tennis bag back onto his shoulder.
It was true, Ootori was going to make himself presentable and attentive and darling for his date, even if he had to overdose on coffee-tab candy to do it-and no matter how he protested about what a mess he looked, Shishido was pretty sure Ootori’d be his normal smiling, sweet, impeccably neat self by the time Aki caught up with him. Curls and all. Gel was stubborn, but Ootori Choutarou was a force of nature.
It was true, too, what he’d told Oshitari. He was okay with the way things were-with Ootori’s girlfriends, with his own occasional boyfriends, with the way his heart still squeezed whenever Ootori’s hair flamed silver in the spotlights of the tennis courts. He’d mostly made his peace with the fact that Ootori Choutarou, former Doubles One partner and his best friend still, was never going to be anything but straight.
Shishido still held out hope that someday, somehow, maybe when the guy he’d been dreaming about since he’d been fifteen was no longer always standing just short of close enough to touch, he’d actually manage to get over him.
But, now, privately… with his tennis bag bouncing on his hip and his head tipped back to stare into the early autumn sky, he could admit to himself why he’d been so quick to given his gel bottle to Ootori.
The truth was, he liked being the only one who got to see Ootori Choutarou looking a little rumpled.
~owari~
Start: June 17, 2007
End: June 18, 2007
Now, I’m not normally much of one for sugary fluff that doesn’t end in happily ever after, so I’m not really sure where this came from… *hides* For some reason, the idea of a rumpled Choutarou and Shishido not being able to lay a hand on him kept me occupied through a fair bit of Hell Day, but... *frowns* the execution didn't quite come out the way I thought it would. Sigh-ness!
Pairing: Silver Pair... sort of.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: quite innocently PG
For: mousapelli... you got me again, dear. ^^
Disclaimer: *insert standard disclaimer*
Notes: ...yes, I was in fact too lazy to come up with a better title, how could you tell? ^^; Um, ah, yeah, this one's a bit on the weird and wordy and completely and totally plotless side of things, so, uh...
Tetsuya (All-Nighter)
It had always struck Shishido as just a little bit unfair that even when Ootori was in a rush, he never managed to do things like button up his shirts wrong or have his shoelaces come undone on the courts because he hadn’t tied them tight enough. Sure, he left stuff behind when he was running out the door, but he always looked put together-which was just short of criminal, when by consensus of just about everyone who’d ever laid eyes on him, Ootori Choutarou had gone from being a tall, pretty middle schooler to a tall, sun-scorchingly hot twenty-year-old. With his button-down shirts and smooth long stride, the years and all the tennis having shaved any hint of baby fat and uncertainty from his high cheekbones, Shishido sometimes-grudgingly-thought that his former doubles partner looked like someone who should have been on a Shibuya billboard, not killing his eyes in the Waseda pre-law department.
It was definitely the first time in their seven years of being friends that Shishido’d ever seen Ootori looking… rumpled.
In fact, he had to jog up behind him just to make absolutely sure that it was his former doubles partner, not some other tall, silverhaired guy with straight shoulders and slim hips just taking a tour of the Waseda campus.
Oh, he’d seen Ootori sweat, for sure-after all, they’d played tennis together basically until they’d graduated high school. Flustering him was still easier by half than it should’ve been-and, Shishido had to admit, more fun than a basket of puppies, when Ootori only ever got flustered by close friends. But Ootori had mentioned, once, that he only really felt like himself when he was… ‘presentable.’
Shishido wasn’t going to lie to himself-at this moment, Ootori probably wouldn’t have considered himself ‘presentable,’ whatever that meant… but the sight of his former doubles partner plodding down the footpath between their university’s buildings with his hair standing up in tufts rather than in its neatly ordered little curls, and looking very carefully down at where he was putting his feet, was cute as all Hell.
Shishido was also pretty sure that Ootori didn’t know that he had a puff of silver hair trying to defy gravity by standing almost perpendicular from the back of his head.
He nudged Ootori’s leg with a hip, and grinned at the way his best friend almost leaped off the footpath and right into one of the benches. Yup, that was him, all right-smooth as whiskey moving on the courts, klutzy as a fish on the ground when startled. Shishido reached out a hand, laughing, to steady Ootori’s elbow when he actually wobbled. “Man, you look like a car crash. Wild night out? On a weeknight? Good going!”
Well, he hadn’t known that Ootori Choutarou could look evil when he tugged his elbow out from under Shishido’s hand and glared. Mostly, when he was giving someone the stink-eye of doom, it involved him looked a little hurt underneath the pissed-off, and in general made the target of those eyes feel like something that’d crawled up from under the ground. But then, Shishido’d never seen those warm brown eyes genuinely bloodshot, either, and there were dark circles underneath the glare. “Very funny, Shishido-san. Don’t mistake me for yourself, please.”
It probably would have been more intimidating if Ootori hadn’t had almost all his hair standing on end, a little cloud-puff of it curling right smack dab over the centre of his forehead.
“Yeah, like that’d ever happen.” Shishido raised an eyebrow, more fascinated than taken aback-he’d known Ootori too long to assume that he was a pushover, but it wasn’t like him to actually take a joke seriously. Well. That’s weird. If he hadn’t known that Ootori shaved religiously every morning, he’d have thought Ootori was incapable of growing facial hair, too, because there had never been so much as a hint of prickle on that chin before… but the afternoon sun was definitely glinting off just a little bit of silvery something. He reached out and squeezed Ootori’s arm. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yes… it’s…” his former partner’s broad shoulders heaved in a sigh, and he brought a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes tight-shut. “I stayed up all night finishing a paper for my Writing in Law class, that’s all. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.”
Shishido shook his head with something like relief. That, right there, was so much more typical then the hint of snippiness in Ootori’s voice had been. He always wondered if the guy knew just how good he was at making the really guilty party feel really, really guilty, whenever he started apologising for some tiny little imagined slight against etiquette… when he figured that out, Hell, opposition lawyers of the world would start hiding under their desks. “Choutarou. If you think I’m going to be offended by something like that, you don’t know me at all.”
“Shishido-san. If you actually thought I was out drinking on a weeknight, you don’t know me at all,” but he’d started smiling again, a little sheepishly, his dimples dipping just at the corners of his mouth. People sometimes assumed that Ootori didn’t go near alcohol, but there was a reason for that-Ootori didn’t touch beer, it was true, but he was pretty damned good at hiding the fact that he liked girly drinks from all but his close friends. “I don’t suppose that pulling an all-nighter is like me, either, though,” Ootori admitted. “Do you mind if we walk? I’m afraid I’m going to fall asleep on my feet if I don’t-I actually dozed off during class for a second. I think.”
“Dozing off in class? You? Wow, you are in a bad way,” Shishido grinned at Ootori’s narrow-eyed look at him, but they fell into step together automatically-even before he’d hit his growth spurt, he’d always had a long stride for someone his height. They’d never had a problem walking together, even despite Ootori’s retardedly long legs. “I mean, what happened?”
“Well, I turned in the first draft in to my primary reader last week,” Ootori sighed, and reached up to rub his temples between his fingers, the way he always did when he was annoyed. “He didn’t get back to me until I got home yesterday afternoon. Only to tell me that he thought that I should rewrite the whole thing.”
His mouth tightened at the corners to match Ootori’s. Neither of them were naïve enough to think that Ootori’s reader had just ‘accidentally’ gotten back to him late enough to give him a hard time-this was the first time something like this had happened this year, but it definitely wasn’t the first time it’d happened at all. It’d been happening, in fact, once the news got out that Ootori Choutarou, valedictorian of Hyoutei High, had passed over TouDai in favour of Waseda… never mind that Waseda’s law program was supposed to be better. “Oh, geez. Damn. You couldn’t just… you know, not, or something like that?”
“I could have, but he’s the favourite graduate student of our professor, and…” Ootori’s shoulders tensed, almost invisible but for the streak of strain that Shishido’d gotten pretty damned good at picking out in the line of his best friend’s jaw. “…I’m willing to bet that word would have gotten back to Professor Matsuoka eventually, if I had.”
Ah, Hell. Now and again, when he managed to think that Ootori had it easy, being at the top of his class… Ootori reminded him just how tough it was, and just how tough he had to be, to stay there. Considering that Waseda law school politics made the Hyoutei tennis club look like the Girl Scouts, it still amazed him that there was still sweet-and a lot of it-wrapping around Ootori’s core of silver and steel. “Ah, fuck, ” he kicked at a loose bit of stone, and knocked it neatly in front of Ootori. “That just sucks, Choutarou.”
Ootori nudged it back towards him with a flick of his toe-or tried, anyway. “That’s exactly the right way to put it, Shishido-san,” he agreed with a sigh. “It does, in fact, suck. But it doesn’t matter, I suppose-I won’t be asking him to proof any important papers anymore, that’s for sure. There are other readers available. I’ll ask around.”
He’d ask around, too. He’d never had many friends amongst the snobby bastards in the law department, and his being Ootori’s buddy definitely hadn’t helped that… but he had an ex who was TAing some class on analytical writing, and there were a couple of folk in the Gov school who he still played tennis matches with. They wouldn’t have an axe to grind with Ootori-and as a bonus, they’d probably be better than he was at figuring out what the Hell was going on in those papers the law kids had to write. The one time he’d offered to proofread, he’d been dizzy by the time he’d finished the first paragraph.
Shishido grunted, under his breath. Sometimes, he didn’t know how Ootori put up with this whole constructive, solution-based thinking nonsense. It really wasn’t very satisfying. At all. But they weren’t in high school anymore, and he doubted that he could get away with introducing the snotty grad student to his fist, even if it would made him feel better-and Ootori, too, even if he’d never admit it.
“I could beat him up,” he offered, anyway.
Ootori frowned down at him, brows creasing inwards-but his dimples were peeking out at the corners of his mouth, like a secret. “One day, I’m going to take you up on that, and then where’ll you be, Shishido-san?”
Shishido grinned. Ootori trying to swallow his smile and look reproachful at the same time kind of made him look like he was trying to puff on an invisible trumpet. “Expelled, probably. Hey, you wanna hit some balls? Get some stress out?”
Except the moment he said it, the alarm bells in his head went off, and if he could have sworn without looking like something was wrong with him, he probably would have. He always called Ootori before he headed to the courts, always-unless he had some reason to think that Ootori was going to be busy.
It was more flattering than it had any right to be when Ootori actually thought it over, nibbling on his well-chewed thumbnail before Shishido nudged his friend’s hand away from his mouth. “No… I think I might just… I don’t know.” He offered a small, apologetic smile. “It’s tempting, but I don’t want to get hit on the nose with a ball because I was dozing on my feet. I might just go home and sleep until class time tomorrow.”
Shishido was tempted to let Ootori do just that, for one blinding second-like really, really tempted, even though he knew just what a totally lame human being it made him. Maybe he’d actually be able to convince himself that Ootori needed sleep more than he needed to be out baby-talking his girlfriend on that date he’d been talking about last week. Maybe.
Yeah, right.
Instead, he reached up and thwapped his best friend on the back of the head-open-handed, of course, but hard enough to knock Ootori just a step forward. The stubborn puff of silver hair at the back of his former partner’s head sprang right back up. “Dumbass! Wrong answer.”
“Ow! What? What was that for?” Ootori frowned at him, lips pursing. He wasn’t terribly good at being mad, but he was really, really good at looking surprisingly disapproving, for someone with such sweet eyes. “Shishido-san, you can’t possibly want to practice that badly-”
Shishido scowled, and propped his hands on his hips, lifting his chin. He wasn’t Ootori’s height, but he was closer than most of their classmates-close enough to look him in the eyes. “Man, if this is what your first all-nighter does to you, you totally need to take harder classes and pull a couple more, Choutarou. What kind of university student are you, anyway?”
“Shishido-san, if you feel anything after an all-nighter like I feel today, you would start planning your papers weeks in advance.” And he didn’t say anything more than that, even though those brown eyes were glittering dangerously behind lowered lids and thick grey lashes, because he didn’t need to be snide to be right. Ootori Choutarou normally did plan his papers weeks in advance. Outlines and all. He’d been doing it since they’d been in middle school.
Shishido was never sure if that made Ootori a nerd, a dork, or kind of terrifyingly organised, because who did that and still had time for two clubs and student government?!
“Hey, I pass all my classes, don’t I?” and did pretty damned well in most of them, if he did say so himself. Not as good as Ootori, of course, but well enough that his parents still looked insultingly shocked every time he brought home a grade printout. “Besides. All-nighters don’t make me forget that I promised to take my girlfriend out to dinner tonight.”
Gods. Sometimes, he didn’t know if he did this because he liked Ootori more than he dared admit to anyone but himself, or because he was punishing himself for being in love with a straight man, or because he was just a bloody frigging idiot.
Ootori blinked at him twice-very, very slowly, like he was actually trying to fall asleep on his feet, the annoyed glitter fading into confusion. “But… you’re… you don’t have a-“
“Duh I don’t have a girlfriend.” The day he’d date some poor girl just to convince the world he wasn’t gay was the day he’d voluntarily agree to have his balls cut off. Some of the guys he’d been out with called that kind of girl a ‘beard;’ Shishido’d retorted that he was better off clean-shaven. He growled under his breath in exasperation as Ootori’s expression remained blinkety and blank-no, it never got any easier, throwing his Choutarou to his Choutarou’s girlfriends, where he belonged. “Am I going to have to hit you again, Choutarou?! She’ll kill you if you flake out on her!”
Ootori blinked just one more time before he stopped walking, eyes widening completely awake for the first time since Shishido’d bumped into him. “Wait-what-OH!”
Just for good measure, he punched Ootori in the shoulder-but it was hard not to laugh again, even through the feeling of his life closing around his throat, when his former partner looked so totally surprised by his own forgetfulness. And chagrined. “Yeah. Oh. Remember? Aki? Date? Thursday? Any of this ringing a bell?”
“Oh, gods! Thank you, Shishido-san. If you hadn’t said something, I would’ve… I didn’t forget, I just…” Ootori grimaced, and knuckled at his eyes with both hands-when he did that, he looked as much like a little boy as one of the tallest kids in their university possibly could, Shishido thought. “I think I was convincing myself that it was still Wednesday.”
Shishido rolled his eyes. It was a good thing that lawyers got paid well enough to get a full eight hours of down-time a night, because if this was what Ootori was like after just one night of sleep deprivation, he’d have been a wreck as a writer or a doctor or something. “Yeah, don’t do that too often. Just you watch. One o’ these days, I’m gonna snatch you right out from under her nose.”
He was joking. Of course he was joking. Biggest joke of his life, really.
Ootori still flamed a hot, gorgeous scarlet every time he blushed, though, and that alone would have made Shishido’s day, every single time. “Shishido-san!” he protested, but he was laughing even through his face going bright enough to rival the sunset. “Don’t say things like that!”
“What? Just for a couple of practice matches on the street courts. Law school’s playing Hell on your game.” He smirked as the blush spread, purple, down the sides of Ootori’s neck. “Why, what were you thinking about?”
Ootori gave him a shove that almost sent Shishido flying right off the path, and grumbled, “You’re not at all funny.”
“Says you, but you’re smiling,” he pointed out, grinning as he sauntered back to his best friend’s side. It wasn’t the million-watt smile, but sleepy Ootori giving him a sweet little unintentional tilt of the lips, like he couldn’t help but smile… yeah, that was the kind of thing a guy could die happy on. “Might want to fix your collar before you go looking for your girl, though.”
“It’s crooked? Damn it, I really am a mess today, aren’t I?” now Choutarou really did sound flustered, and not in the good way, when he reached upwards to adjust the lines of his shirt so the collar wasn’t folded in lopsided lumps-he didn’t swear all that often, when they weren’t playing tennis. “I didn’t bring anything nice to wear, either-“
Shishido gave him a quick, wry once-over. Ootori’s nice blue shirt wasn’t fancy, and it didn’t have the perfectly straight creases in it that it normally did, but it certainly wasn’t the same one he’d been wearing the day before-which was more than Shishido could say after an all-nighter. Besides, the colour and that soft-looking material made Ootori’s skin and hair look even paler, and he was wearing khakis, not jeans. And nice shoes, because even on the worst of days, Ootori didn’t wear sneakers to university.
“You’re fine,” he shook his head, exasperated. Well, he was fine in so many ways, but… yeah. How the moron could never lack for a girlfriend and still manage to be so blind to his own attractiveness still went right over Shishido’s head, most days. “You’re dressier than most of us are on normal days, anyhow. Undo like one more button, and she’ll be all over you. It’s just dinner, right, not a special occasion or anything?”
Ootori shook his head, mouth curving, wry and soft. “Not unless I’ve somehow managed to forget the month as well as the day.” Yeah, well, Shishido knew when their one-year anniversary was probably as well as Choutarou did. “Thank goodness I withdrew some money from the bank yesterday afternoon.”
“You did?” Shishido raised an eyebrow. Ootori, for all his responsibility about his classes and his duties and all that junk, was notorious for having an empty wallet just when he needed cash. He’d have offered to lend him some if his own wallet hadn’t been pretty wiped from last weekend’s visit to a beer garden-he definitely couldn’t spare any for a serious date. “Why?”
“Oh, well.” Ootori gave him a smile that was all easy innocence, but he was blinking entirely too much. “No particular reason. Do you want to do anything special for your birthday next week, by the way?”
By the way. Right. Cute, he was-subtle, he wasn’t. “Uh… nah, it’s fine.” He chuckled around the lump in his throat. Ah, Hell. He still remembered the time he’d gotten piss-ass drunk and actually said, ‘Of course it was a happy birthday, Choutarou! I got to spend it with you, didn’t I?’ “We’ll talk about it later. D’you even remember what time you’re supposed to meet Aki-chan, or did you forget that, too?”
In their younger days, Ootori would have stuck his tongue out at him-Shishido’d never been able to decide if that was more or less hazardous to his mental health than a slow, dangerous smile that made it clear that Ootori’d heard the slight, and he wasn’t going to forget it. But all he said was, “She gets out of class in half an hour; there’s time to walk over there.” He smiled, genuine this time, all hope and light and summer even though it was late into September. “Why don’t you come along and say hello? It’s only a little out of the way to the courts, after all.”
He’d have sworn that Ootori was saying that sort of thing just to get back at him, if he hadn’t known better.
“Uh…” Aki wasn’t a bad sort, and she kind of cracked him up on good days, but as a general rule, he tried to keep away from Ootori’s girlfriends. Ironically enough, it wasn’t just because it gave him a serious case of heartburn watching his former doubles partner smile at them. “Nah, s’okay. I’ll pass.”
“Really?” the smile on Ootori’s face, all teasing pleasure, could have charmed a mangaka out of his lucky pencils. The first, like, half-dozen times, Shishido hadn’t even realised it was being turned on him before he’d crumpled under it like a paper bag after lunch. “But you could tell her what a failure I am as a boyfriend-you’d know, wouldn’t you?”
Ah, Hell. Sometimes, he thought that Choutarou managed to forget that Shishido wasn’t straight-that really was the only explanation for him saying something that sounded so fricking suggestive. Even though there’d been more than one story running around their high school about them being so married that all they needed were the rings, Ootori definitely wasn’t the kind to bring up that kind of lame joke.
Thank all the gods.
Besides, Shishido didn’t think that his best friend had ever been a failure at anything in all twenty years of his life-some of Ootori’s ex-girlfriends were still claiming that being with him had just about spoiled them for any other guy. He knew the feeling.
“Me and girls don’t get along, Choutarou, you know that,” Shishido grumbled. He did try to behave around his best buddy’s girlfriends-honestly, he did. The gods only knew he wasn’t sure he’d have forgiven himself if he was consciously an ass to any of Ootori’s chickadees. But while he was okay with toning down his mouth some in front of them, he wasn’t going to pretend to be straight or anything, and after that whole mess with Sachiko flipping out had blown over… well. Shishido rolled his eyes as Ootori’s hopeful expression collapsed like a card tower. “Yeah, I know, gay men are supposed to like talking fashion and all that crap, but I’ll take the courts any day.”
Plus, when she greeted him, sometimes there was a slow, steady glitter in Aki-chan’s gaze that bothered him with just how, well, knowing she looked.
But there was that odd, deliberate light in Ootori’s eyes-even sleep-deprived, Ootori certainly wasn’t stupid. “She’s not like Sachiko, Shishido-san.” Shishido barely managed to hide his wince-it worried him a little, just how often Ootori could read his mind still. If he kept doing it, the gods only knew what he’d figure out someday. “You don’t have to worry about her being… unreasonable, you know that.” Yeah, well, ‘unreasonable’ hadn’t been a strong enough word for Osegawa Sachiko-the girl had been batshit insane. “Besides, Aki-chan likes you.”
That, in and of itself, freaked him out a little.
“Worry more about where you stand with her, not me,” he retorted. There needed to be a change of topic, like, yesterday, because he really didn’t want to go into how wrong it was, Aki liking him when he’d spent the past five or so years crushing on her perfectly straight boyfriend. “She’s a stylish chick, and she’s so going to dump you if she sees your hair like that.”
Though if she was stupid enough to do that, Shishido really was going to give up on the future of the human race.
“Oh. Is it bad? I didn’t have time to fix it this morning-“ Shishido reached up and back, and tugged on the floating puff of hair, the way he’d been wanting to do since he’d first seen the thing bobbing as Ootori walked. “Oh!” Ootori reached behind his head, and Shishido yanked his hand away before their fingers could brush. “Oh no, it’s doing it again. Why couldn’t I have been born with straight hair?”
Shishido managed a laugh, then discovered that he actually meant it. “’Cause then your girlfriends wouldn’t be able to go gaga over your curls?” They’d certainly been one of the first things that had attracted his eyes-and he hadn’t even admitted to himself that he wasn’t straight yet, then. “Hey, wait up a sec.”
He’d always kept a small bottle of gel rattling around in the pocket of his tennis bag-just for nostalgia’s sake, more than anything, now that his hair was long again. Kind of, well, good luck, and it fit that he’d be giving it to Ootori-it wasn’t like they could ever go back to those days in middle school when he’d had that ugly-ass haircut, and there hadn’t been any girls or anything standing between them. “Here.” He tossed it-and it almost clocked Ootori on the nose before his hand came up, just a little slower than normal. Oops. “Uh, sorry. It’s not that fancy mousse stuff you use, but it should keep your hair down.”
Ootori looked at the bottle he was holding for just long enough that Shishido almost started to worry that it wasn’t just because Ootori’s brain was working at fifty percent. Nothing got the baby lawyer’s antennae up and waving faster than him being defensive, but he still had to bite down his lip to keep from blurting out about how it’d just been there and he hadn’t bothered to take it out of his bag, it didn’t matter or anything.
But, thank the gods, Ootori didn’t say anything more than, “This will work? Really?”
Shishido shrugged. “It’s pretty strong stuff. Probably?” Hey, he was proud of himself, he’d managed to keep from looking away from the awkward moment-Atobe’d told him once that that was pretty telltale, too. “Hey, if it doesn’t keep your hair flat, you could always put it in spikes.” He grinned at the thought, despite everything. “You can tell her you’re trying out a new look.”
Ootori gave him a wry glance, just down his nose. “I don’t think so. I remember when you all decided to try that on my hair in high school. I looked like an albino porcupine wilting in the heat.”
Well, yeah, but he’d looked like a cute albino porcupine… especially with the nonplussed expression he’d worn the rest of the day. Shishido laughed, and clapped him on the shoulder-this time, he didn’t wobble. “Just saying. Get going, you idiot, or you’ll ruin your perfect record for never being late.”
“Mmm. I suppose.” Ootori cocked an eyebrow at him, lips quirking in that hint of a knowing smile that turned Shishido Ryou’s knees to jelly. Yeah, Ootori at fourteen had been cute and sweet and just a little naïve, still-Ootori at twenty, just naïve enough to be underestimated, and with that sweetness honed to a knife-edge, really was dangerous for his mental health. “Don’t think I forgot about doing something for your birthday, though.”
But he’d had seven years of practice at keeping his knees stiff and his smile casual when he shrugged. “You kidding? I’d have been pissed if you’d forgotten.”
The slightly bemused look that Ootori gave him over his shoulder when he looked at the bottle of gel in his hand again made the hair at the nape of his neck prickle for a second-but he kept his grin on and at full wattage until his best friend turned around and strode off. Only after he was sure Ootori wouldn’t be looking back did Shishido let himself plop down on one of the benches by the side of the pathway and squeeze his eyes shut.
He didn’t say goodbye, but they never did.
The truth was, he wouldn’t have much minded going to say hello to Aki, but… well, better safe than sorry, and all that. He and Aki did the pretty in front of Ootori, sure. She was a bit of a sassy, sweet thing, and Shishido didn’t dislike her… the gods only knew she was better than some of the others. Shishido’d been kind of shocked when he’d found out that Ootori had dumped (“broken up with”) Sachiko, his freshman year girlfriend, because she’d wanted him to cut off ties with ‘certain people.’ Or, at least, that was the story he’d weaseled out of Ootori after being totally unsatisfied with the “It just wasn’t working.”
In one way, it totally jived with Ootori’s personality-he wouldn’t take anyone talking crap about his friends. In another way, it just didn’t, because Ootori played damned nice with his girlfriends-nicer, Shishido sometimes thought, than some of them deserved. He wouldn’t have just cut off ties, no, but he’d have found some way to make things work out-Ootori Choutarou was the kind of guy who went looking for solutions.
The whole thing made a lot more sense after he’d sniffed around campus some, and found out that Sachiko had been doing some ‘research’ on Ootori’s stellar high school tennis career… dug up the old campus fangirl newspapers and all, back when some idiots had started calling him and Ootori the Silver Pair. She’d apparently been pretty loud about wanting Ootori to stay away from Shishido- something about thinking that Shishido was going to try and jump him.
Shishido’d snorted, at that. If only she knew. She’d obviously had a weird physical image of her boyfriend, if she couldn’t see that Ootori still had both height and weight on him and could’ve probably knocked him down flat on his ass if he’d wanted to… and for another, if he was going to jump Ootori, he’d have done it sometime in the past six years already.
But Sachiko’d also told Ootori that she wanted him to keep his distance from Oshitari, Atobe, Gakuto, Jirou, Taki… it was kind of gratifying that most of the folk he’d talked to still thought that the girl’d been crazy. After all, the fact that Ootori had close high-school contacts with both the heir of the Atobe Group and TouDai’s rising star in the tech department was normally something folk looked at with awe and jealousy, not suspicion… and even if Atobe wasn’t publicly out, Oshitari was.
Yeah, there was no kind of ‘solution’ that was going to make a girl with a ‘phobe complex believe that every gay man on Hyoutei’s old tennis team wasn’t out to get her guy.
He’d felt a little guilty about the whole episode, though, because she’d probably never have had a single suspicion about straight-as-a-lane-line and stupefyingly faithful Ootori if Shishido hadn’t been his best friend in the first place. It wasn’t normal for a gorgeous, well-liked sophomore guy to have an openly gay junior for a best friend, and he knew enough people around Waseda to know that Ootori’d already dealt with flak about that. Quietly, and without saying a word to Shishido.
He felt a little guiltier about how Ootori picking his friends-picking him-over his girl had left him a little fuzzy and hot inside, because, Hell. Even on his most delusional days he knew he didn’t have the right to that.
Shishido blinked his eyes open when someone stopped by his bench, and rapped his knuckles on the armrest. “Ah, Shishido.” Oshitari’d changed his glasses since the last time they’d seen each other, but the glint of them was the same, the lingering hint of a smug smile. “I thought that might be you. Your hair’s long again, I see. Have you finally realised that you’re a bottom after all?”
Oshitari’d always set his teeth a little on edge when they’d been in middle school together-but even he had to admit that a lot of things had set his teeth on edge when he’d been fifteen. He’d take nails to his eyes before he’d admit that he was kind of grateful for the distraction of the tensai’s smart-assed mouth, for once. “Yours is short again,” he grinned up at his former teammate. With all his teeth showing. “The little woman get back at you with a pair of scissors when you were sleeping?”
Privately, he was never quite sure why Oshitari and Mukahi hadn’t ever officially gotten together-they shared an apartment out in Gotanda, and had for years. The gods only knew that they’d been caught making out enough times in high school. But, well, him asking anyone about dysfunctional doubles partner relationships was just asking for a lightning bolt to hit him upside the head on a perfectly sunny day.
“Touché,” Oshitari chuckled, leaning a hand on the armrest. “I’ve got a conference to attend, but before I forget-early happy birthday.”
“Uh… thanks.” It’d been awhile since they’d all gotten together-Ootori’d normally been the one who put that kind of thing together last year, and he’d been busier than usual this year. Oh, wait a second… he and Oshitari did have their birthdays around the same time of the year. Even if he never quite remembered when Oshitari’s was, considering it had always gotten mostly drowned out in the festivities of Atobe’s. “Happy birthday to you, too.”
“Mmm. Thank you.” Oshitari nodded in the direction of the footpath. “Was that Ootori I saw, walking off? I’ve heard he’s doing particularly well-it’s bad precedent to let your uke outdo you in school, you know. They get rather… uppity.”
It wasn’t smart to look away from Oshitari Yuushi, ever. Especially not when Oshitari’d been one of the ones he’d decked in high school for just one joke too many about how much time he spent with Ootori. “Yeah, funny, ha ha. You know him, overachiever to the core.” Shishido shrugged. “He’s off to get prettied up for a date with his girlfriend.”
Ah, shit. Shishido winced the moment the words were out of his mouth.
“His… ah.” He saw the moment realisation slipped into Oshitari’s eyes, because, Hell, in retrospect? With all the teasing he’d gotten? His guess was that the only one who hadn’t known on the Regulars had been Ootori himself. Luckily. “I see.” He paused. “I’m-“
He was sorry? Yeah, well, he probably was, and Shishido didn’t want to hear it. “Don’t,” he reached up to rake a hand through his hair. Even to his own ears, he sounded a little tired. “Don’t you fucking dare. ” There, that was better.
He got to be Ootori’s best friend-most days, that was enough. More than enough.
Oshitari stood up, and dusted off his hands. “As you like.”
But there was still pity in his old teammate’s gaze, or maybe it was sympathy. Either way, Shishido growled. “It’s fine. ”
“I’m sure it is.” Oshitari nodded, once. And that, thank the gods, was that. Atobe would have pressed the point, but luckily, the last time he’d seen Atobe, it’d been at a big group thing, and their former buchou hadn’t been able to corner him. Atobe would never admit that he was a romantic bastard way deep down under it all, and he’d probably start yelling for laps if anyone suggested it, but Hell, it was true. But then Oshitari was smiling again, out of the corner of his mouth. “Does he know that his hair is levitating in the back?”
That, despite everything-despite Aki and Choutarou and the sight of Choutarou’s sleepy smile-made Shishido chuckle. “Yeah, well. For his girl? He’ll make himself ‘presentable’” they both rolled their eyes, and Shishido almost laughed “if it kills him.”
“Now that I actually will believe,” Oshitari murmured, and Shishido kicked him, just once, for old times’ sakes.
But the bastard was still chuckling, softly, under his breath, when Shishido waved him on his way and scooped up his backpack and hefting his tennis bag back onto his shoulder.
It was true, Ootori was going to make himself presentable and attentive and darling for his date, even if he had to overdose on coffee-tab candy to do it-and no matter how he protested about what a mess he looked, Shishido was pretty sure Ootori’d be his normal smiling, sweet, impeccably neat self by the time Aki caught up with him. Curls and all. Gel was stubborn, but Ootori Choutarou was a force of nature.
It was true, too, what he’d told Oshitari. He was okay with the way things were-with Ootori’s girlfriends, with his own occasional boyfriends, with the way his heart still squeezed whenever Ootori’s hair flamed silver in the spotlights of the tennis courts. He’d mostly made his peace with the fact that Ootori Choutarou, former Doubles One partner and his best friend still, was never going to be anything but straight.
Shishido still held out hope that someday, somehow, maybe when the guy he’d been dreaming about since he’d been fifteen was no longer always standing just short of close enough to touch, he’d actually manage to get over him.
But, now, privately… with his tennis bag bouncing on his hip and his head tipped back to stare into the early autumn sky, he could admit to himself why he’d been so quick to given his gel bottle to Ootori.
The truth was, he liked being the only one who got to see Ootori Choutarou looking a little rumpled.
~owari~
Start: June 17, 2007
End: June 18, 2007
Now, I’m not normally much of one for sugary fluff that doesn’t end in happily ever after, so I’m not really sure where this came from… *hides* For some reason, the idea of a rumpled Choutarou and Shishido not being able to lay a hand on him kept me occupied through a fair bit of Hell Day, but... *frowns* the execution didn't quite come out the way I thought it would. Sigh-ness!