Hyoutei Roommates: Coping Methods #9: Ongaeshi (Favors)
Title: Ongaeshi (Favours)
Characters: Oshitari, Mari
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: rather PG
Disclaimer: Nope, nope, nope.
For: aishuu, who thought that Oshitari might be a nicely objective observer. Well, we'll see.
Notes: This kind of started as a gratuitous blurb so I could finally figure out what Mari looks like... and, well, it kind of turned into a gratuitous story so I could figure out what Mari looks like. ^^;
Ongaeshi (Favours)
Oshitari often thought, looking down on that dark head, with its long, rumpled ponytail and half-watchful, half-amused expression, that going to the mall with Mari was always an edifying experience, and not simply because her stride was long enough that he didn’t have to slow down and wait for her. It meant that they got watched as if they were the circus come to town, and the populace in their pressed school uniforms and their little knee-socks were just waiting for the punch line-contrast indeed from the way they were watched in Hyoutei with wary respect or outright adoration, depending on the gender of the watcher.
He didn’t mind putting on a show, of course-and to his delight, she didn’t seem to notice that anything was awry.
Mari should have, of course, known better than to find herself alone with him in a public forum-true, they spent a fair bit of time alone together in school, but everyone knew them there, and his relationship with Gakuto was quite… delightfully public. But one of the best things about Mari-and probably one of the reasons that she was liked by most of the fangirls instead of universally envied-was that she had the bad habit of letting her desire to be helpful overwhelm her formidable common sense.
There were very few ways in which he could call her ‘cute,’ but that particular fallibility was definitely one of them.
He had quite a few female acquaintances, but very few close female friends: while it was endearing when women decided that they were in love with him, it tended to put a bit of a damper on the friendship when they decided to pine after him-from afar or otherwise. Did they really think that boys didn’t find anything odd about the sudden appearance of bentou boxes and shoebox letters, to say nothing of neat little pink-wrapped bags of Valentine chocolate in a familiar script? Even the Purity Pair, while unabashedly gay and embarrassingly attached at the hip, wrinkled their collective nose at sharing bentou boxes and anything involving pink.
Even after all these years, he still found fangirl culture, while fascinating, rather counterproductive.
Female fawning was amusing, the blushing adorable, and the attention perhaps even flattering now and again, but really. Even if most of the Regulars hadn’t been gay, Oshitari had a hard time imagining that any of them would have spent any time long-term with someone who crumbled under the first sharp comment like a fresh cookie, and that was twice as true for Atobe, the original fangirl idol himself. No matter how tasty the little creature was.
From the way people around them glanced in their direction, eyebrows crooked in puzzlement or lips pursed in consideration, none of them were mistaking Mari for being a cookie… or, well, particularly edible, for that matter. The people who knew him could never figure out what game he was playing, strolling along with a well-known fangirl; the people who didn’t know him could never figure out why he was walking with this particular girl, his attention fixed firmly on her.
No-one would ever call Mari anything more flattering than forgettably pretty, not upon first meeting her-she wasn’t beautiful, but she wasn’t unattractive enough to be memorable, either. Her mouth was too full, her grin too wide, and her face was just a little too narrow to be really good-looking. There was something odd and mischievous and unsuitable about the quirk of her eyebrows, too, compared with the elegant, tilted eyes and perfect little nose that she didn’t quite have the cheekbones to pull off.
Her face didn’t quite fit itself all the time, but it definitely fit her, as contradictory and quirky as she was-he’d always thought that she underestimated her own invisibility in the Hyoutei crowd, even outside her position. Once one got to actually know Mari, she was the sort of girl who slipped out of one’s field of vision only to wreak total havoc when she returned.
The people who knew both of them would, if they had any sense, vanish from the blast radius as fast as their legs could take them.
After that happened a time or two, well, not noticing her would have been a bit like not noticing a large badger curled up in a basket at one’s feet. The fact that the creature was peacefully sleeping most of the time almost-almost-explained how Atobe had remained so utterly oblivious to the fact that he’d practically grown dependent on carrying said basket of badger around with him.
Oshitari rather approved. Friends close and enemies closer besides, Atobe could be extremely useful if one knew exactly how to deal with him-almost as useful as the fangirl president herself. The difference was that while Atobe’s ire resulted in laps and physical training, the anticipation of Mari’s version of revenge kept him, at least, on his mental toes. Anyone who wanted to believe that the fact that she hadn’t inflicted anything overt on any of them quite yet meant that she wasn’t going to could remain happily oblivious; he, at least, wasn’t going to be caught unawares.
Besides, if he kept annoying her, they’d have graduated by the time she worked out something extreme enough to count as justifiable punishment.
The looks following him and Mari changed to smug male understanding, female shock and envy, when he reached out for her hand, sliding his fingers through her slack ones. She actually did have nicely graceful, feminine hands-she gestured with them quite a lot when she talked-and delicate wrists, but her palms slid against his with a callused rasp.
Well, it was understandable-she didn’t have Gakuto to nag her into using hand cream.
Mari looked down at their joined fingers, then up at him, raising her eyebrows expectantly. A few seconds later, her eyebrows crinkled inwards, as if she’d grown tired of waiting for his explanation-ah, their impatient Mari never did change. Then the corners of her eyes twitched in suspicion. Then her lips pursed, as if she’d sucked on a yuzu.
When she tugged her hand away with something just short of violence after just a single, perfectly still moment, the expression on her face was rather like he’d handed her a wad of chewed-up bubble gum.
“You are seriously wrong in the head, you know that?” she hissed.
“People are looking at us strangely, you know, a boy and a girl of high school age walking together and not clinging to each other,” he informed her, cheerfully. He wasn’t one to keep score, of course-he didn’t need to, not when her inherent prudishness meant that she would inevitably lose most confrontations, and only won others by dint of her friendship with Jirou and Atobe-but it wasn’t often that he got to completely slip through her guard.
“Uh-huh. Funny. Too many movies and not enough straightness, Oshitari,” she replied, her eyes narrowing; they were the exact hue of oversteeped Chinese tea when she was sparring with him. “They’re probably thinking that you’re a host for hire.”
“A host for hire?” he did so love her backhanded compliments. When his mouth tilted upwards, a pair of girls from St. Rudolph-poor sheltered things-started trying to catch their breath. Mari, he noted with amusement, was not in the least breathless-he’d never established if that was because she’d always known he was gay, or simply because there was no-one who made Taira Mari catch her breath. “My. You must have a lot of money, to pay for an escort like me. Or perhaps you’re extraordinarily good in bed?”
Her eyes sparked like coffee splattering to a white tablecloth, but she smiled with perfectly sweet malice. “Or maybe you’re just not good enough?”
She would have almost managed to pull it off if the corners of her eyes hadn’t squeezed tight for just an instant beforehand, like she was trying very, very hard not to wince. She almost succeeded, at that. He tapped a finger on his chin thoughtfully-after all these years, it was endearing that she still wasn’t quite immune. “Gakuto would beg to disagree, I think,” he purred. The St. Rudolph girls weren’t even close enough to hear the conversation, but they were blushing already, the poor things.
Mari didn’t blush-but her eyes did narrow at the girls’ expressions. “Gakuto would beg-wait. No. No, never mind, I don’t want to know where I was going with that,” this time, she did grimace, and he laughed. She really did crinkle in very funny ways when discomfited. “Ew. Ugh. Perish the thought. Have I mentioned lately that you’re the worst influence I know?”
“Oh, am I?” He cocked his head at her, and grinned as her eyes narrowed again, just a little. “I’m flattered. Worse than Atobe?”
“The day Atobe influences me at all is the day you can chop me up and feed me to the fangirls,” she retorted, but this time, she was laughing despite herself, her deep voice shaking a little at the end. Well, he thought that she was partly right, at least-what similarities she did have to Atobe-and there were more than she liked to admit-had already been well-established by the time she’d moved to Japan. “By the way, since when do you care about whether or not people think you’re heteronormal?”
“I don’t,” he raised his eyebrows back at her. Most people outside of the atmosphere of the Hyoutei tennis club simply assumed he was, which was very convenient-especially as that population included his parents.
“So basically, you’re trying to get one of your oblivious worshippers from the other schools to shoot me down with her death glare?” Mari snorted, not quite under her breath. “Very nice, but I am, er, privileged enough to hang out with Atobe, remember. If I had a shoe for every time a girl gave me a dirty look, I’d make Imelda Marcos jealous.”
“Hmmm. I wouldn’t have thought you’d notice,” he observed.
Her eyebrows tilted upwards, and she eyed him down her perfect little nose-that was one of his favourite tricks of hers, when she was significantly shorter than all of the Regulars but Gakuto. “The looks might be small individually, but in aggregate, that would be like not noticing a nuclear warhead, don’t you think?”
So she had noticed, she simply hadn’t cared.
Oshitari smiled. She was fun to deal with, especially when she didn’t feel like she had the entire known world to organise-smart enough to fight back, and stubborn enough that she would never admit the futility of fighting against him. “Ah, but Mari, you’re missing the other looks.” She learned quickly, he had to admit-she was a fast, gliding step away before his finger had even traversed half the distance to her cheek. “It’s very ungrateful of you, you know, when I’m working so hard to get you a boyfriend.”
“That hand comes near me again, and it’s going back without fingers,” she warned, her tone disturbingly amiable against her quelling expression. It was, apparently, his day to make her crinkle at him. “And you’re what? You know, I could have sworn that what you were supposed to be doing is looking for a club retirement gift for your so-illustrious captain.” She stopped in front of a Paul Smith shop, as if to punctuate her point, before dismissing a sleek black shirt with rainbow accents at the cuffs with a flip of her hand. “Trust me, finding me a boyfriend-even if you were capable of it-would not make him a very happy bundle of neuroses.”
He smiled at her over the edge of his glasses. She still underestimated his… ‘capabilities,’ as she called them. “Multitasking, Mari, multitasking. First of all, since when do you care about making Atobe happy?”
Her gaze on him was steady, this time. Well, she wasn’t a beauty queen, no, and the entire package wasn’t remarkable. Her eyes, though, were particularly lovely-several shades lighter than Ootori’s chocolate brown, but flecked with darker spots like tea leaves, just a shade too dark to be considered gold. Bronze, perhaps, in the right light, and paler when she laughed. And the fact that there was absolutely nothing coy about her truly did make a person feel like they had all of her attention, every last bit of it. “Seeing as how I’m the first one after Jirou in his line of fire, it’s in my best interests to keep Atobe happy.”
Perhaps true, but considering that Atobe-even after having dated Jirou for any number of months-still believed Mari firmly in love with him, he would probably succeed in denying away his fanclub president having a boyfriend. “One would think you’d have learned to dodge the bullets by now,” he observed, dryly.
“I have. Jirou hasn’t.” She shrugged. “What are best friends for, and all that. Trust me, between the both of us having to handle his boyfriend, I’ve definitely got my hands too full to want someone else tagging along for the ride.”
Well, he’d heard the occasional snide comment around school about Mari having to be a lesbian, too, but that, too, was more green-eyed monsters than anything actually plausible. Her annoyance at herself every time she allowed her gaze to linger on Hiyoshi’s butt, when he was stretching, or doing his laps around the courts, was almost tangible, some days. “You might not want a boyfriend now, but it’s always nice to have… options?”
“Oh, is that why you keep flirting with my fangirls?” she was trying to look annoyed-and she was exceptionally good at being annoyed-but her eyes were lighter, smiling at the corners. “’Options?’”
“The fangirls aren’t an option,” he waved a casual hand. “I think it does them good to keep them guessing, though, don’t you? Atobe can’t have all the fun.”
“Gods, my poor girls. Remind me, later,” she retorted, dryly, “that I need to get the recording of you saying that onto my computer.”
She would, too, and he didn’t trust that she didn’t have a tape recorder in that tiny, useless-seeming little purse she was carting around with her. Still, it was entirely too paranoid to imagine that she’d have the thing on. “I am just saying,” he replied, patiently, “that you need to get a better handle on straight male psychology.”
“Oh, of course. Because you know the whole world about wanting T and A rather than just plain A?” her smile was crooked, her eyebrows up and mischievous.
“Because even you have to admit that I know a little something about possessing a C, and me and straight men have that in common. You’re the one always saying that that’s all we think with, after all.” She dipped her chin in a barely visible acknowledgement, and closed the distance again until she was striding beside him. He quashed his smile-he could count on the fingers of zero hands the number of other women he knew who would find such a statement reassuring. “Believe me, Mari. Being seen with me will make you unattainable and irresistible.”
The snort she aimed across the distance between them, this time, was loud enough to make a security guard turn and blink at her… though unlike Shishido, she did duck her chin just a little sheepishly afterwards. “Let me get this straight. You think that hanging around you, a very attractive and very attached gay man, is magically going to make me, large-and-in-charge Mari, irresistible to the straight folk. Right. Channeling Atobe, now, are we?”
It was, he thought, a very Mari answer, all backhanded compliments… but the tone made him blink. It wasn’t chagrin, or amusement, or teasing, or even self-deprecation in her voice-simply, well… a very firm, unshakeable certainty. “Large and in charge? That’s… new.”
He’d heard it mentioned-and Shishido had given new definition to the expression ‘bitch fight’ when he’d growled, “Damn, you pay a lot of attention to Mari-what, you got a crush on her, or something?” to a girl who’d started expounding on the ‘large’ theme-but… it certainly wasn’t anything he’d expected to hear out of Mari’s mouth.
“Hardly. If I’m not mistaken, that’s what they call me around school, isn’t it?” When he cocked his head and stopped walking, she rolled her eyes at him, and gave him a disgusted glance. “Come on, Oshitari, I’m busy, not deaf. Besides, I will go on believing I’m in charge until someone drags me off my little denial podium kicking and screaming, thank you.”
Though the difference between her version of denial and Atobe’s was that Oshitari was fairly sure that at least half the school would have agreed with her. His eyebrows tilted upwards. “It doesn’t… bother you?” Most of the slander aimed at the Hyoutei Regulars-that they were temperamental, that they were egotistical, that they were gay-was true enough: some of them were more temperamental than others, they had justification for their pride, thank you, and the majority of them were gay. It was only to everyone’s benefit that Kabaji was so totally even-tempered, and Hiyoshi thought himself quite above listening to gossip.
Personally, Oshitari thought that anyone who believed gossip was a fool, but anyone who didn’t listen to gossip was missing out on an entire culture.
She laughed, all the same. “Of course I don’t like it, but it would be far too Atobe-like to assume that everyone likes me, you know. Besides, it’s not a nice thing to say, but it’s the truth-you’re definitely not gay enough to not have noticed that I could probably fit two standard-size fangirls inside my uniform, Oshitari.”
No, actually, he hadn’t noticed any such thing. This time, he did stare. She was larger than most of the girls that she presided over-significantly so-but that was true in any number of ways, since she had some few inches on most of them, and the way she carried herself made her look taller still. She’d always struck him as being, well, solid, physically, mentally. Sturdy. Shishido had once joked that she wouldn’t have been a Hyoutei Regular, if she’d been male-she’d have been on the rugby team, because if anyone could take a hit and keep on running hard, it was Taira Mari.
As far as Oshitari could tell, Shishido really had meant it as a compliment-after all, he truly hadn’t understood why Ootori had looked aghast and annoyed at him afterwards, and why Jirou had fallen asleep on his favourite racquet, with said racquet lying across Shishido’s boyfriend’s lap.
She’d always seemed like such an atypical Japanese girl in so many ways that, after all these years, Oshitari had come to the conclusion that her sins were temper and pride and a freakish need for control… anything except a lack of confidence.
Well. This would make his job… somewhat more difficult, wouldn’t it.
“Good gods, Mari.” Oshitari knew his voice was too careful-could see it in the way her eyebrows tilted at him, her mouth quirking in faint surprise. “You don’t actually believe you’re… fat… do you?”
He could have joked about it-it was anyone’s guess whether Mari would attempt bodily harm on him for poking fun, or whether she’d laugh. And he wasn’t entirely sure if that ambiguity was a good thing.
She’d never be thin by any means, not with her bone structure and those entirely unfeminine muscles, but perhaps she was spending a little too much time around the fanclub, he thought, for accurate self-comparison. There was nothing delicate about her, to be certain, and she certainly wasn’t small, but he tended to roll his eyes when he heard girls whispering about how they couldn’t understand why Atobe wanted a fat fanclub president. Sometimes, when they thought they were being kind, they murmured that she was built like the girls in the field hockey club-well, that wasn’t much better than calling her fat; Oshitari imagined that some of those field hockey girls could have made sun-baked street courts look positively plush.
Jealousy in girls was, he thought, even less attractive than in men-at least Shishido was amusing when he hissed and spat.
Of course, such malediction didn’t come as any surprise-it likely would have been far worse if she had been gorgeous. After all, Taira Mari was closer to Hyoutei’s tennis team Regulars than anyone not in possession of a tennis racquet and physiological balls… and despite Gakuto’s protests, many straight men did find breasts quite fascinating. He might not have had a personal interest in T, as she put it, but he did have working eyes: Mari might have been intimidatingly competent, but she was also endowed with enough on top to fill any two fangirls’ bras. There was no way that the somewhat more straight preregulars, as typical high school boys, wouldn’t have noticed. There was no way they hadn’t noticed.
Her mouth quirked, and there was real amusement there, not hurt. “You know, there’s this saying about ponies and gazelles… er, never mind. I’m not saying that I’m fat, Oshitari. I’m just saying that girls around here tend to be smaller than I am. Which is true. I do sports and normally eat as much as I want; it happens. And other than that, I’m pretty ordinary-looking. Why do I need to keep having this conversation with people?”
Oshitari studied her, carefully-whoever she’d had this particular conversation with before had to have been either extraordinarily smart or extraordinarily ballsy, though it was anyone’s bet on whether they’d still possess those balls after Mari was done tearing into them. He’d always been just a bit curious about exactly why she’d never acquired herself a boyfriend to bully from amongst the ranks of the Pre-Regs-after all, if she could arrange Atobe’s schedule in a way that suited everyone, she was certainly capable of doing so to her own, her protests that she was too busy to date aside.
The girl really didn’t have a clue how many of the non-Regular tennis team boys, despite her ‘ordinary’ looks, alternated between being terrified of her and thoroughly smitten with her, did she?
“’Ordinary’ is not a word I’d ever associate with you, Taira Mari,” he replied, dryly. For better or for worse. In any way, shape, or form. For a girl who prided herself on her perspicacity, she certainly missed quite a lot.
Mari laughed, at that, tossing her head. “Of course not. If you did, I wouldn’t help you play matchmaker for your chemistry club boys.”
She was still missing the point; this time, he’d let her. Trying to explain someone’s value to them was a little like trying to explain cumin to a stew. “You’d be a great deal less ordinary if you’d help me shop for Gakuto’s birthday presents, you know.” He raised his eyebrows in silent invitation.
The sound that she made in her throat was halfway between a grumble and ‘gah.’ “I think not. I’ve got personality, not perversion.”
“Hmmm.” Well, at least she knew that much about herself. Truthfully, “she’s got personality” had always sounded like fairly damning faint praise to his ears, something like “oh, he’s a good backup player” or “he’s an okay fuck.” Then again, saying that Mari had personality was rather like saying that a natural disaster caused damage-it was something that everyone knew, and it was true, but anyone who got hit with it was likely to find themselves flat on the ground. “A pity. You’d find it… educational.”
“That’s what they say about living in sensory deprivation, too.” Her eyebrows tilted upwards at him, but she’d started to grin. “Want to guess which of the two I would choose?”
Oshitari smiled back. Ah, there it was. What she lacked in prettiness, she made up for by having an absolutely lethal smile: when she grinned, and the mischief in her eyes hit like a hurricane, the reactions of the boys always amused him-the way that the ones around them had stopped to double-take was mild compared to the way people reacted after they’d actually seen her subvert Atobe and make the rest of the Regulars laugh. Wonderful irony, really. It was Mari, for crying out loud; she was the original anti-fangirl, and she wasn’t a beauty, but that crooked, totally genuine smile from her could make half of the boys in the club catch their breath. Or bite down on their bottom lips.
Or, on one notable occasion, sit down hard and cross their legs.
Though, admittedly, that had been the one day Gakuto had improved on the decidedly unflattering length of her skirt.
Then again, their reaction to her might have had as much to do with the fact that many of the lesser tennis club boys had an unhealthy infatuation with things like competence, authority, and confidence, all of which Mari possessed by the bushel. After all, he’d seen pre-regulars cross their legs when Atobe was particularly good on the courts, too, and it wasn’t even statistically possible that all of the ones that did so were gay.
“I would say that shopping for Gakuto’s gifts is actually the opposite of sensory deprivation, so I don’t see why you would choose to leave such holes in your education.” He shrugged as she made a sound that was definitely a ‘gah.’ “Ah-here we are.”
She stopped and looked at the glossy, pink-and-white mannequinned storefront for a long, long moment before turning back to him, the smile a memory, both her eyebrows dark punctuation marks high on her forehead. “Hmmm. Are you boys planning to dress Jirou up as a girl again? ” when she propped her hands on her hips that way, she actually did succeed in looking authoritative-and, indeed, quite intimidatingly large, despite the fact that he had any number of inches on her. “Might I remind you how many laps the lot of you got for it last time?”
He smiled, gently, at that. From her scowl, she didn’t find it particularly soothing, but she knew better than to find any expression on his face soothing. “Mari. Only Ootori-kun and Shishido got laps. You know that.”
“Right, of course,” she nodded, sagely, her thick ponytail bobbing with her enthusiasm, “But remember, Atobe’s withdrawn at least some of his head from his metaphorical butt… and they tell me that there’s a working set of brains somewhere in there.” Ah, she did have such a way with imagery. “Yes, of course, Shishido thought up the idea of putting the sleepy sheepy in a girls’ uniform all on his own lovesick lonesome. I believe that. Mmhmm.”
“He’d be insulted at you undermining his intelligence,” Oshitari observed. Truthfully, he’d thought that Shishido had the common sense to not take any of Gakuto’s suggestions seriously, no matter how amusing the image had been initially… but then, Ootori hadn’t yet been putting out then, and frustration had its way of playing havoc with common sense.
Mari snorted again-though softer, this time. “Yes, well, I’m insulted at you underestimating mine.” She gestured with one hand towards the exceedingly female shop front with just a little too much emphasis. “What’s this about, Oshitari? I don’t think Atobe’s going to go for little lacy panties and a C-cup bra.”
She was different when it was just the two of them-perhaps because she didn’t have to avoid looking at him and Gakuto. Without the rest of the Regulars as a buffer for her annoyance or her tongue, this was a bit like fencing with a champion with a wickedly sharpened rapier and just enough temper that she couldn’t win, but she could certainly make it a challenge.
Oshitari shrugged… though admittedly the image of either Jirou or Atobe bedecked in ladies’ lingerie was rather… ghoulish. “I’m not underestimating your intelligence.” Which was why he wasn’t going to point out that the store sold party clothing, not underwear. “I am telling you, however, that my team captain has entrusted me with the solemn duty,” her eyes were oversteeped tea again when he adjusted his glasses, quelled his smile, and rested his fingertips against his heart, “of seeing that you look, in his words, ‘presentable,’ during the tennis club mixer in two weeks.”
Oh, she hadn’t seen that coming.
He could have made that up, of course, and they both knew it… but it was entirely too plausible that Atobe Keigo, who routinely gifted her with clothing that she’d never worn and likely couldn’t even fit into, would assign Oshitari Yuushi to the task of making sure she fit into the Atobe mold. It was, after all, the last mixer Atobe Keigo would preside over as the tennis club captain… and he couldn’t very well assign her the task.
Oshitari had it on excellent authority that Atobe had, however, considered it-before Jirou had hastily convinced him out of it by means best not examined too closely.
Plausibility won… though, considering the murderous expression on her face, it might have been a Pyrrhic victory. “We came all the way to this expensive monstrosity of a mall to get Atobe a gift,” she told him in a voice that, in its own flat way, had the kind of lethal intensity that Shishido’s growls only ever aspired to. “If you’re handing me to him as a layered and frilled present, gods help me, I’m taking all of you down with me. Every last one of you. There will be no survivors.”
Oshitari believed her. Fortunately, that wasn’t a problem. “No, of course not. I was planning on your advice in getting Atobe a separate gift.” He smiled, slowly. “Multitasking, Mari. Multitasking.”
“I am not asking you to get anything,” he pointed out, before she opened her mouth and made the unflattering verbal connection between multitasking and the XX genotype that he could see glittering in her eyes. “I am asking you to try on a few objects. Then I will return to Atobe with my recommendations, he will ignore them, send his personal shopper to buy you something expensive and ill-fitting, and you can pack it away with all the rest of the things he gives you.”
“Uh-huh. ” She could come across distinctly like a snake when she blinked that slowly. “So we need to go through the whole rigmarole of me even walking into that store… why?”
Most girls, he was fairly certain, would have leapt at the idea of trying on hideously overpriced clothing, rather than looking at him as if he’d blown out the candles on her birthday cake. He shrugged. “Because you owe me in laps for allowing Atobe to sneak up behind me on Jirou’s birthday, and this is very entertaining?”
A cat would have cringed underneath her stare. “Hah. Hah. Look, see how entertained I am.” Her chin was very high, and her eyes smiled at him, smugly. “Forget it. I’m going shopping with some of the girls next weekend.”
True, she did have some close friends among the fangirl ladies-all of whom were, in her own words, about half her size, and rather inclined towards frills and layering. He’d seen Mari occasionally in her own outfits, and she preferred jeans and sleeveless tank tops-simple, sporty things, not veils on top of tunics on top of bubble skirts on top of leggings. Oshitari chuckled, softly. She wasn’t quite as clever as she thought she was-or rather, she was, but unluckily for her, he’d had time to plan… and Tanimoto’s boyfriend in his chemistry club. “Well, that certainly saves me time.” He spread his hands innocently. “I can entrust them with the task.”
The defiant look she was turning on him faded as the blood ran, slowly, from her face, leaving her eyes a rather unattractive shade of dried-leaf brown without the colour of her cheeks. “You wouldn’t. No, you wouldn’t. ” If it had been anyone but her, he’d have called the new look piteous… though the way she was biting her lip bloodless seemed a bit painful. “What have I ever done to you to deserve that?”
“Well.” He nudged his glasses upwards, and smiled. He had her. The fact that she would choose him as the lesser of two evils was flattering, and probably the correct decision as far as her sanity was concerned, but ultimately… still a bit foolish. “It is by Atobe’s solemn command, and he is my buchou, you know.”
Gakuto was right-even after all the years she’d spent in Japan, she still did have an impressive command of English. “Oh, how convenient. May you laugh with lizards, lepers, and lice, Oshitari,” wouldn’t have had quite the same alliterative pungency in Japanese.
Despite her stiff-legged, entirely too fast strides, though, she still smiled pleasantly at the salesladies when she walked in, and, much to their obvious bemusement, apologised for the ‘discussion’ they’d had outside the storefront.
He shook his head and followed her in. Those small, unthinking courtesies, her smart mouth and never-say-die attitude aside, were more likely than not what had gotten her Hiyoshi’s attention in the first place… and the fact that she was the sort who would shut up and kick Atobe in the shins when it was necessary was probably why she’d kept Hiyoshi’s respect. There weren’t many who’d had it in the first place.
It really was a pity that Hiyoshi Wakashi couldn’t see a good thing when it was staring appreciatively at his ass, though. Despite Gakuto’s propensity to see sex in everything, Oshitari had come to the sad conclusion that the only way Mari would manage to wrench herself out of Hiyoshi’s friend zone would be if she started dating someone whom Hiyoshi couldn’t beat in tennis. No-one really bought the idea of her ‘belonging’ to Atobe because she was his fanclub president anymore, but her actually going out with someone strong enough for Hiyoshi to notice… that had potential.
However, seeing as how Atobe himself was the only one whom their resident martial artist hadn’t beaten at least once, Oshitari could just imagine what Mari would have to say about that.
Jirou would be devastatingly enthusiastic at the idea, though, if he could be woken up for long enough to hear it through; he’d have to mention it.
Still, there had to be at least one pre-Regular who, even if he wasn’t as tennis-talented as Hiyoshi, had enough balls and sass to give Mari at least token appreciative pause. The idea of her going their entire high school life without even a token fling was, as Gakuto put it, ‘just too celibate for words, Yuushi.’
Finding her an outfit that would give the straight men in the tennis club nosebleeds would be easy… she’d been half-joking when she grumbled about males thinking with their penises, but boys could be very predictable. There was little that brought out balls and sass like a touch of skin, and even stone-cold Hiyoshi had stopped what he was doing for a moment when Mari’s newly shortened skirt had flashed her tan lines in the wind. Oshitari hadn’t been able to read anything so clear as dismay or lust in the expression, it had simply flickered too quickly-and Hiyoshi, unlike Shishido, was boringly stoic and simply didn’t play along when teased-but it had been something.
Actually getting her to wear something nosebleed-inducing in public would be another matter entirely-they’d worn significant holes in her prudishness already, over the years, but he hadn’t anticipated having to get around a self-image issue. But with college entrance exams already over, he was rather bored… and where would the challenge have been if it had been easy from both sides, after all?
“Three things. I’ll put on three things. Then we really should get going,” she warned, but her voice sounded a good deal more resigned than it had.
“Hmmm.” He could have bargained for the battle-but then he’d likely have lost the war. Big guns first, then. “Agreed-provided, of course, that you come out and show them to us.”
“Oh, how payback is going to be sweet…” he probably wasn’t supposed to understand that, but then, he’d never admitted even to his teachers just how much spoken English he understood-even Gakuto thought that he watched his romantic movies without subtitles simply because he knew the dialogue so well already. “Fine. Do your worst.”
All it took was a quick, murmured comment to one of the salesladies that Mari had so considerately buttered up, and the pretty young lady cheerfully agreed to select Mari’s size from the rack. Mari wasn’t normally given to being downright sneaky, but he wouldn’t put it past her to circumvent plans by simply picking up the wrong size of whatever he chose… and while he understood ‘small,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘large,’ this whole business of female clothing and their totally unintuitive numbering system was a field of landmines.
He had to give her credit-her eyes didn’t so much as flicker when he held up her two options, one in either hand, and murmured, “Here. They have this one in two colours.” Then again, if Gakuto had been responsible for the shortening of her skirt, she was very capable of connecting the dots-nothing ever happened in isolation in the tennis team, really.
“Oshitari,” she gave him a very level look, instead, over the bridge of her nose. Glasses would have been an interesting foil for her intensity-especially since he couldn’t imagine her being vain enough for contacts-but she had near-perfect vision; there was nothing between the look in her eyes and the person she was looking at. “I think you’re trying to be helpful-I think-but I am not wearing a miniskirt to a tennis team mixer. I can’t dance in a miniskirt.”
He disagreed-she was graceful enough, and a martial artist besides. With what he’d seen of those legs, Mari dancing in a miniskirt would probably prompt a rush for the men’s room. Of course, she wouldn’t dance in a miniskirt, but that was a separate issue. “I very much doubt you’re going to be dancing; you’re going to be walking around and making certain that everything is going precisely the way it’s supposed to,” he replied, dryly. “You might as well look good doing it. And you did tell me to do my worst.”
This time, though, she eyed him through her lashes… then sighed. “Drat. I did say that. Fine. I’ll try on one.” She gestured vaguely to the dark navy one he’d picked out-personally, he thought the red would have gone very nicely with her tan, but it figured that she’d pick the understated one.
Silently, he held out the matching navy-blue blouse.
“Sure-but you understand that that’ll make two pieces?” she noted, smugly.
A riposte-he’d have expected nothing less from her, but he had come ready with foil and parry. “Ah, but it’s only one outfit. You didn’t specify what you meant by ‘things.’”
To her credit, she didn’t point out to him that they’d both known exactly what she’d meant. “You’re pushing it,” she warned.
Of course he was-what would have been the fun if he hadn’t been? “Do you really want to see how that looks with the Hyoutei uniform top?” he noted, wryly eyeing the crisp, neatly pressed and stupefyingly proper white blouse. She had to be extraordinarily diligent with an iron, to always look as neat as she did.
“I don’t want to see how it looks at all,” she muttered-but she took the blouse from him gently enough not to stretch it, at least. Riposte, parry, and point. “Thank you.”
Oshitari chuckled. “That’s quite a talent you have, you know. I expect you practice on Atobe quite a lot?”
“Hmmm?” she was examining the blouse and skirt in her hands with something halfway between open distaste and quiet resignation.
“Saying ‘thank you’ in a tone that makes it seem like you’re saying ‘Thank you, and, if you wouldn’t mind, please go to Hell.’”
He could see her huffing and muttering indignantly all the way to the dressing room, and the amused, intrigued looks that the pair of salesladies were giving him when he settled on a pouffy, round black thing. That was the one advantage of women’s clothing stores-seats for the use of long-suffering significant others were well-disguised, but at least they existed.
“You’re a… rare couple,” the younger saleslady ventured, after the soft growling and creative English invective from the dressing room grew somewhat more muffled.
Whether she was referring to the way they looked together or the way they interacted together, it was true, even if not in the way that they were assuming; Oshitari just smiled. Even Gakuto couldn’t argue with that.
When Mari came out of the dressing room, though, his eyebrows tilted upwards. The red would have gone nicely with her tan, it was true, but the dark colour of her selection, combined with her tan line, was slimming, and definitely made her legs seem longer than was strictly… proper. She’d already worked that out on her own, though, considering the way she was tugging at her hemline with some distinct chagrin-a futile proposition, considering the flow of the material, and the way the little wraparound simply stretched with her efforts. Ah, Mari. The devil will have his due, it seems.
No, it hadn’t been his imagination-she did have very finely sculpted runner’s legs, and they went nicely indeed with the strong line of her shoulders. The sleeveless little matching top bared the smooth, shallow curves of deltoids, biceps, the way tendons moved in her forearms when she fiddled with the skirt. The straight cut of the Hyoutei uniform blouses and winter vests hadn’t been particularly flattering to her shape, but Gakuto was correct in claiming that a little stretch in the blend would do her wonders-the navy blue shirt slid slender over a smooth, flat stomach and tight waist, rounding over the slope of bust and gliding into the line of the skirt where it crested her hips. That deep, dark V-neck wouldn’t have been anywhere near as flattering if she hadn’t already had the hint of cleavage to flash through it, after all.
With those curves and the strong contrast of skin and silky, flowing cloth, she looked, well, not particularly feminine or frilly… but very distinctly female. Solid, yes, but under the fluid lines and delicate fall of cloth, soft in all the right places. A pleasant armful to hold, if he’d been into that sort of thing-and a very nice eyeful for just about anyone.
He certainly knew enough about straight men to know that with legs and breasts like that on display, well, half of their gazes would never even make it to her face for long enough to recognise her… but their hormones leading to Mari giving them a piece of her mind was not his concern.
“It suits you, you know,” he nodded, appreciatively. Especially since, once she gave up on her skirt, she’d started standing defiantly straight in true Mari fashion, shoulders back and chest-and breasts-out, no matter how much she obviously wanted to hunch over and hide herself. If she’d had her long, long hair down, it would have framed her, softened her narrow face, but the suggestion coming from him would guarantee that she’d chop off the whole mass of it tomorrow. “A pair of heels, perhaps an anklet… or maybe a set of boots?” though her bare feet against the miniskirt were cute; a bit summery. “Turn around, will you?”
The saleslady behind him cooed. The other tittered. They were very lucky that Mari saved her venom for her friends, and that both he and Mari were well aware that there had been no need whatsoever for him to ask her to spin around so he could take a look at her from behind-she had the choice between looking absolutely ridiculous backing into the dressing room or turning around to walk back in.
Dignity, he was willing to wager, only won by a small margin. She propped her hands on her hips-the girl didn’t have a clue that in that skirt, that little sassy cock of her leg and her hips was far more fetching than intimidating. “You’re too smart to be wasted on fashion,” she grumbled, her deep voice almost a growl. “That’s not a compliment, by the way.” The sleek sensuality of the skirt really didn’t go with the thoroughly annoyed expression on her face.
He chuckled. “Really? I would say the same about you… and yet here you are, Mari-tan.”
The silence, even from the salesladies, lasted a long moment after that.
“Are you satisfied?” she finally muttered, tugging uncomfortably at her hem. “Something longer at the hem next time, if it would suit your royal bastardness?”
“Mmm. As you like,” he nodded, smiling-and headed back to the rack the moment she snarled her way into the dressing room.
She didn’t tug on the hem of the dark gold one-piece dress that he put her into next, and she didn’t cross her arms over the neckline-soft, open folds of cloth dipping between her breasts, baring skin-and, yes, nothing but sleek, pale skin; dignity had won again, so she must have removed her bra-clear to her solar plexus. Her expression was cool and still, and she didn’t so much as flinch when the salesladies clustered about her, tugging and adjusting…. though her eyebrows did twitch when they complimenting her on how she filled out the top.
Well, she couldn’t very well complain about the hemline, when the dress actually did flow to a stop just a little above her knees.
“No?” he queried, innocently, grinning. It wasn’t as impressive as the miniskirt, but there was something about the long lines of it, the smooth bare strip of white, white skin contrasted with the relatively long skirt and the tan of her face and her arms, that was very… sensual.
Those tea-eyes of hers were very eloquent when she was dreaming of someone’s demise. She opened her mouth, then closed it, her expression flowing from heat into cool precision. “If, as you say, I’m going to be walking around and making sure that things go precisely the way they should be,” the syllables were crisp and chilly in her mouth, “I refuse to flash the world the moment I bend over the refreshments table.”
“Would you really?” he blinked, slowly. Women’s clothing really was interesting and counterintuitive-one would have thought that they would put in stitches or something such to prevent that very eventuality-but now that she mentioned it… Oshitari cocked his head. “Hm. Would you mind-“
She was already halfway inside the dressing room a flurry of movement later, with her hand and her head poking out, and the curtain wrapped protectively around the rest of her. “Next and last, Oshitari.”
He chuckled and held out a scrap of soft, dark cloth. She looked at it as if it were about to bite her. “That is not a skirt. Or a dress. There’s not enough cloth to it.”
Well, he’d found that he could fold it up into a ball just large enough for his palm, so it was compact… but from what he’d seen of female clubbing clothing, she was speaking in denial. “It’s not a skirt or a dress,” he agreed. “It’s a shirt. You can wear it with jeans.”
“Jeans?” he saw her eyebrows leap, and for a moment she looked almost hopeful-before her eyes narrowed. Smart girl. “I doubt that’s what Atobe had in mind.”
Oshitari shrugged. “He’s going to ignore anything I say in any case, so I might as well amuse myself.”
She took the blouse from him, and her eyes were almost black, narrowed to slits, when her fingers found the strategically placed little straps and, well, the slinky, slippery cloth of the tiny little bundle. “Oh. Gods. You are going to suffer for this.”
“Thank you for that warning, Mari-tan, ” he replied, dryly.
“Don’t thank me yet…” this time, when her eyes flashed, the glitter came with a rather stunning, particularly malevolent smile. “…darling.”
Oh. Well. The threats were one thing, but that, he had to say, did not bode well for him.
But he chuckled and settled back onto his seat when she muttered, “Okay, these straps had better go in back, else you will find yourself fangirled tomorrow, Oshitari,” from the dressing room, and one of the salesladies bustled happily over to help her.
The saleslady was smiling wider when she slipped out, and Mari was in the dressing room for a long, long time.
Mari was in the quiet, invective-free, dressing room for a long, long time.
He raised an eyebrow at the saleslady who’d helped her-and felt his eyebrows tilt upwards when the woman winked and nodded in the direction of the dressing room. “She’s lucky; you’ve got very good taste,” she whispered, edging in his direction. “Though…” her lips pursed in a hint of surprise, “Sir, it isn’t very revealing, compared to the other ones.”
Oshitari adjusted his tie and smiled. No, it wasn’t.
He was only half-surprised when Mari came out dressed in her habitual Hyoutei uniform, the pleats in her knee-length plaid skirt razor-straight, sneakers in perfect white bows. She wouldn’t look at him when she tugged her thick ponytail out from the collar until it cascaded over her back, adjusting her tie until it was a perfectly straight exclamation point over her front. There was a hint of something that was almost a flush on her cheeks when she finally glanced over at him, and lifted her chin high.
“Well?” he raised an eyebrow. “Ah, don’t tell me. You actually liked it, and you want to surprise me when you wear it?”
She gave him a look that could have flayed the dye from Gakuto’s hair, and her voice was very steady, and very crisp. “I’ll take my chances with the girls. Come on, Oshitari. Wasting daylight and all that. Thank you,” she nodded once to the salesladies… and strode out the door, dropping the shirt on the settee on her way out, her back very straight, her hips steadily swinging with the length of her stride.
Oshitari glanced after the fanclub president, and chuckled. When Taira Mari simply, well, dropped something in a messy little pile like that… well, he had it on very good authority that she even filed her notes in order, and probably arranged her closet by colour. And she’d put every other article of clothing carefully back onto the hanger before handing it out the dressing room door.
He nodded at the puzzled salesladies, and gestured with his chin at the blouse she’d so carelessly tossed to the seat before passing his cellphone in a smooth sweep over the swipe pad. These bank-card cellphone chips really were the best things invented for covert purchases-and from the way one of the salesladies smiled, scooped up the blouse, and started heading for the register as he strode out, he thought that they’d gotten the hint.
Mari would give him the silent treatment for awhile, all dagger glances and pursed lips-he was patient. He could wait. Considering her, he’d only have to wait until they reached one of Atobe’s favourite shops-where, no doubt, she’d choose to act as if this entire pleasant little interlude had never happened. With her habitual efficiency, they’d probably have Atobe’s gift found within the hour.
He’d come back for his little package later, after he’d sent her home, and before he met Gakuto for dinner-his roommate would definitely want to see the purchase.
It had been a bit dearer than he’d expected-girls’ clothes always interested him that way, when they required so little cloth-but he thought that there was enough left in the budget for some trinkets to go with the outfit. They’d claimed that they trusted his sense, after all, and he didn’t think that Kimura, Hasegawa, and the rest of the fangirls would mind the extra cost after they saw their fearless fanclub president wearing a shirt that was only conservative in comparison to the other things he’d had her trying on.
After all, the Hyoutei Regulars hadn’t been the only ones who’d felt that their leader deserved a nice retirement present.
~owari~
Start: June 26, 2007
End: July 9, 2007
Urk. It's been a long time since I wrote Oshitari. It shows. *sheepish grin* I promise, there's actually a point to this story (maybe)... or at least, there will be when I finally get around to finishing the story that comes after this. ^^;
Characters: Oshitari, Mari
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: rather PG
Disclaimer: Nope, nope, nope.
For: aishuu, who thought that Oshitari might be a nicely objective observer. Well, we'll see.
Notes: This kind of started as a gratuitous blurb so I could finally figure out what Mari looks like... and, well, it kind of turned into a gratuitous story so I could figure out what Mari looks like. ^^;
Ongaeshi (Favours)
Oshitari often thought, looking down on that dark head, with its long, rumpled ponytail and half-watchful, half-amused expression, that going to the mall with Mari was always an edifying experience, and not simply because her stride was long enough that he didn’t have to slow down and wait for her. It meant that they got watched as if they were the circus come to town, and the populace in their pressed school uniforms and their little knee-socks were just waiting for the punch line-contrast indeed from the way they were watched in Hyoutei with wary respect or outright adoration, depending on the gender of the watcher.
He didn’t mind putting on a show, of course-and to his delight, she didn’t seem to notice that anything was awry.
Mari should have, of course, known better than to find herself alone with him in a public forum-true, they spent a fair bit of time alone together in school, but everyone knew them there, and his relationship with Gakuto was quite… delightfully public. But one of the best things about Mari-and probably one of the reasons that she was liked by most of the fangirls instead of universally envied-was that she had the bad habit of letting her desire to be helpful overwhelm her formidable common sense.
There were very few ways in which he could call her ‘cute,’ but that particular fallibility was definitely one of them.
He had quite a few female acquaintances, but very few close female friends: while it was endearing when women decided that they were in love with him, it tended to put a bit of a damper on the friendship when they decided to pine after him-from afar or otherwise. Did they really think that boys didn’t find anything odd about the sudden appearance of bentou boxes and shoebox letters, to say nothing of neat little pink-wrapped bags of Valentine chocolate in a familiar script? Even the Purity Pair, while unabashedly gay and embarrassingly attached at the hip, wrinkled their collective nose at sharing bentou boxes and anything involving pink.
Even after all these years, he still found fangirl culture, while fascinating, rather counterproductive.
Female fawning was amusing, the blushing adorable, and the attention perhaps even flattering now and again, but really. Even if most of the Regulars hadn’t been gay, Oshitari had a hard time imagining that any of them would have spent any time long-term with someone who crumbled under the first sharp comment like a fresh cookie, and that was twice as true for Atobe, the original fangirl idol himself. No matter how tasty the little creature was.
From the way people around them glanced in their direction, eyebrows crooked in puzzlement or lips pursed in consideration, none of them were mistaking Mari for being a cookie… or, well, particularly edible, for that matter. The people who knew him could never figure out what game he was playing, strolling along with a well-known fangirl; the people who didn’t know him could never figure out why he was walking with this particular girl, his attention fixed firmly on her.
No-one would ever call Mari anything more flattering than forgettably pretty, not upon first meeting her-she wasn’t beautiful, but she wasn’t unattractive enough to be memorable, either. Her mouth was too full, her grin too wide, and her face was just a little too narrow to be really good-looking. There was something odd and mischievous and unsuitable about the quirk of her eyebrows, too, compared with the elegant, tilted eyes and perfect little nose that she didn’t quite have the cheekbones to pull off.
Her face didn’t quite fit itself all the time, but it definitely fit her, as contradictory and quirky as she was-he’d always thought that she underestimated her own invisibility in the Hyoutei crowd, even outside her position. Once one got to actually know Mari, she was the sort of girl who slipped out of one’s field of vision only to wreak total havoc when she returned.
The people who knew both of them would, if they had any sense, vanish from the blast radius as fast as their legs could take them.
After that happened a time or two, well, not noticing her would have been a bit like not noticing a large badger curled up in a basket at one’s feet. The fact that the creature was peacefully sleeping most of the time almost-almost-explained how Atobe had remained so utterly oblivious to the fact that he’d practically grown dependent on carrying said basket of badger around with him.
Oshitari rather approved. Friends close and enemies closer besides, Atobe could be extremely useful if one knew exactly how to deal with him-almost as useful as the fangirl president herself. The difference was that while Atobe’s ire resulted in laps and physical training, the anticipation of Mari’s version of revenge kept him, at least, on his mental toes. Anyone who wanted to believe that the fact that she hadn’t inflicted anything overt on any of them quite yet meant that she wasn’t going to could remain happily oblivious; he, at least, wasn’t going to be caught unawares.
Besides, if he kept annoying her, they’d have graduated by the time she worked out something extreme enough to count as justifiable punishment.
The looks following him and Mari changed to smug male understanding, female shock and envy, when he reached out for her hand, sliding his fingers through her slack ones. She actually did have nicely graceful, feminine hands-she gestured with them quite a lot when she talked-and delicate wrists, but her palms slid against his with a callused rasp.
Well, it was understandable-she didn’t have Gakuto to nag her into using hand cream.
Mari looked down at their joined fingers, then up at him, raising her eyebrows expectantly. A few seconds later, her eyebrows crinkled inwards, as if she’d grown tired of waiting for his explanation-ah, their impatient Mari never did change. Then the corners of her eyes twitched in suspicion. Then her lips pursed, as if she’d sucked on a yuzu.
When she tugged her hand away with something just short of violence after just a single, perfectly still moment, the expression on her face was rather like he’d handed her a wad of chewed-up bubble gum.
“You are seriously wrong in the head, you know that?” she hissed.
“People are looking at us strangely, you know, a boy and a girl of high school age walking together and not clinging to each other,” he informed her, cheerfully. He wasn’t one to keep score, of course-he didn’t need to, not when her inherent prudishness meant that she would inevitably lose most confrontations, and only won others by dint of her friendship with Jirou and Atobe-but it wasn’t often that he got to completely slip through her guard.
“Uh-huh. Funny. Too many movies and not enough straightness, Oshitari,” she replied, her eyes narrowing; they were the exact hue of oversteeped Chinese tea when she was sparring with him. “They’re probably thinking that you’re a host for hire.”
“A host for hire?” he did so love her backhanded compliments. When his mouth tilted upwards, a pair of girls from St. Rudolph-poor sheltered things-started trying to catch their breath. Mari, he noted with amusement, was not in the least breathless-he’d never established if that was because she’d always known he was gay, or simply because there was no-one who made Taira Mari catch her breath. “My. You must have a lot of money, to pay for an escort like me. Or perhaps you’re extraordinarily good in bed?”
Her eyes sparked like coffee splattering to a white tablecloth, but she smiled with perfectly sweet malice. “Or maybe you’re just not good enough?”
She would have almost managed to pull it off if the corners of her eyes hadn’t squeezed tight for just an instant beforehand, like she was trying very, very hard not to wince. She almost succeeded, at that. He tapped a finger on his chin thoughtfully-after all these years, it was endearing that she still wasn’t quite immune. “Gakuto would beg to disagree, I think,” he purred. The St. Rudolph girls weren’t even close enough to hear the conversation, but they were blushing already, the poor things.
Mari didn’t blush-but her eyes did narrow at the girls’ expressions. “Gakuto would beg-wait. No. No, never mind, I don’t want to know where I was going with that,” this time, she did grimace, and he laughed. She really did crinkle in very funny ways when discomfited. “Ew. Ugh. Perish the thought. Have I mentioned lately that you’re the worst influence I know?”
“Oh, am I?” He cocked his head at her, and grinned as her eyes narrowed again, just a little. “I’m flattered. Worse than Atobe?”
“The day Atobe influences me at all is the day you can chop me up and feed me to the fangirls,” she retorted, but this time, she was laughing despite herself, her deep voice shaking a little at the end. Well, he thought that she was partly right, at least-what similarities she did have to Atobe-and there were more than she liked to admit-had already been well-established by the time she’d moved to Japan. “By the way, since when do you care about whether or not people think you’re heteronormal?”
“I don’t,” he raised his eyebrows back at her. Most people outside of the atmosphere of the Hyoutei tennis club simply assumed he was, which was very convenient-especially as that population included his parents.
“So basically, you’re trying to get one of your oblivious worshippers from the other schools to shoot me down with her death glare?” Mari snorted, not quite under her breath. “Very nice, but I am, er, privileged enough to hang out with Atobe, remember. If I had a shoe for every time a girl gave me a dirty look, I’d make Imelda Marcos jealous.”
“Hmmm. I wouldn’t have thought you’d notice,” he observed.
Her eyebrows tilted upwards, and she eyed him down her perfect little nose-that was one of his favourite tricks of hers, when she was significantly shorter than all of the Regulars but Gakuto. “The looks might be small individually, but in aggregate, that would be like not noticing a nuclear warhead, don’t you think?”
So she had noticed, she simply hadn’t cared.
Oshitari smiled. She was fun to deal with, especially when she didn’t feel like she had the entire known world to organise-smart enough to fight back, and stubborn enough that she would never admit the futility of fighting against him. “Ah, but Mari, you’re missing the other looks.” She learned quickly, he had to admit-she was a fast, gliding step away before his finger had even traversed half the distance to her cheek. “It’s very ungrateful of you, you know, when I’m working so hard to get you a boyfriend.”
“That hand comes near me again, and it’s going back without fingers,” she warned, her tone disturbingly amiable against her quelling expression. It was, apparently, his day to make her crinkle at him. “And you’re what? You know, I could have sworn that what you were supposed to be doing is looking for a club retirement gift for your so-illustrious captain.” She stopped in front of a Paul Smith shop, as if to punctuate her point, before dismissing a sleek black shirt with rainbow accents at the cuffs with a flip of her hand. “Trust me, finding me a boyfriend-even if you were capable of it-would not make him a very happy bundle of neuroses.”
He smiled at her over the edge of his glasses. She still underestimated his… ‘capabilities,’ as she called them. “Multitasking, Mari, multitasking. First of all, since when do you care about making Atobe happy?”
Her gaze on him was steady, this time. Well, she wasn’t a beauty queen, no, and the entire package wasn’t remarkable. Her eyes, though, were particularly lovely-several shades lighter than Ootori’s chocolate brown, but flecked with darker spots like tea leaves, just a shade too dark to be considered gold. Bronze, perhaps, in the right light, and paler when she laughed. And the fact that there was absolutely nothing coy about her truly did make a person feel like they had all of her attention, every last bit of it. “Seeing as how I’m the first one after Jirou in his line of fire, it’s in my best interests to keep Atobe happy.”
Perhaps true, but considering that Atobe-even after having dated Jirou for any number of months-still believed Mari firmly in love with him, he would probably succeed in denying away his fanclub president having a boyfriend. “One would think you’d have learned to dodge the bullets by now,” he observed, dryly.
“I have. Jirou hasn’t.” She shrugged. “What are best friends for, and all that. Trust me, between the both of us having to handle his boyfriend, I’ve definitely got my hands too full to want someone else tagging along for the ride.”
Well, he’d heard the occasional snide comment around school about Mari having to be a lesbian, too, but that, too, was more green-eyed monsters than anything actually plausible. Her annoyance at herself every time she allowed her gaze to linger on Hiyoshi’s butt, when he was stretching, or doing his laps around the courts, was almost tangible, some days. “You might not want a boyfriend now, but it’s always nice to have… options?”
“Oh, is that why you keep flirting with my fangirls?” she was trying to look annoyed-and she was exceptionally good at being annoyed-but her eyes were lighter, smiling at the corners. “’Options?’”
“The fangirls aren’t an option,” he waved a casual hand. “I think it does them good to keep them guessing, though, don’t you? Atobe can’t have all the fun.”
“Gods, my poor girls. Remind me, later,” she retorted, dryly, “that I need to get the recording of you saying that onto my computer.”
She would, too, and he didn’t trust that she didn’t have a tape recorder in that tiny, useless-seeming little purse she was carting around with her. Still, it was entirely too paranoid to imagine that she’d have the thing on. “I am just saying,” he replied, patiently, “that you need to get a better handle on straight male psychology.”
“Oh, of course. Because you know the whole world about wanting T and A rather than just plain A?” her smile was crooked, her eyebrows up and mischievous.
“Because even you have to admit that I know a little something about possessing a C, and me and straight men have that in common. You’re the one always saying that that’s all we think with, after all.” She dipped her chin in a barely visible acknowledgement, and closed the distance again until she was striding beside him. He quashed his smile-he could count on the fingers of zero hands the number of other women he knew who would find such a statement reassuring. “Believe me, Mari. Being seen with me will make you unattainable and irresistible.”
The snort she aimed across the distance between them, this time, was loud enough to make a security guard turn and blink at her… though unlike Shishido, she did duck her chin just a little sheepishly afterwards. “Let me get this straight. You think that hanging around you, a very attractive and very attached gay man, is magically going to make me, large-and-in-charge Mari, irresistible to the straight folk. Right. Channeling Atobe, now, are we?”
It was, he thought, a very Mari answer, all backhanded compliments… but the tone made him blink. It wasn’t chagrin, or amusement, or teasing, or even self-deprecation in her voice-simply, well… a very firm, unshakeable certainty. “Large and in charge? That’s… new.”
He’d heard it mentioned-and Shishido had given new definition to the expression ‘bitch fight’ when he’d growled, “Damn, you pay a lot of attention to Mari-what, you got a crush on her, or something?” to a girl who’d started expounding on the ‘large’ theme-but… it certainly wasn’t anything he’d expected to hear out of Mari’s mouth.
“Hardly. If I’m not mistaken, that’s what they call me around school, isn’t it?” When he cocked his head and stopped walking, she rolled her eyes at him, and gave him a disgusted glance. “Come on, Oshitari, I’m busy, not deaf. Besides, I will go on believing I’m in charge until someone drags me off my little denial podium kicking and screaming, thank you.”
Though the difference between her version of denial and Atobe’s was that Oshitari was fairly sure that at least half the school would have agreed with her. His eyebrows tilted upwards. “It doesn’t… bother you?” Most of the slander aimed at the Hyoutei Regulars-that they were temperamental, that they were egotistical, that they were gay-was true enough: some of them were more temperamental than others, they had justification for their pride, thank you, and the majority of them were gay. It was only to everyone’s benefit that Kabaji was so totally even-tempered, and Hiyoshi thought himself quite above listening to gossip.
Personally, Oshitari thought that anyone who believed gossip was a fool, but anyone who didn’t listen to gossip was missing out on an entire culture.
She laughed, all the same. “Of course I don’t like it, but it would be far too Atobe-like to assume that everyone likes me, you know. Besides, it’s not a nice thing to say, but it’s the truth-you’re definitely not gay enough to not have noticed that I could probably fit two standard-size fangirls inside my uniform, Oshitari.”
No, actually, he hadn’t noticed any such thing. This time, he did stare. She was larger than most of the girls that she presided over-significantly so-but that was true in any number of ways, since she had some few inches on most of them, and the way she carried herself made her look taller still. She’d always struck him as being, well, solid, physically, mentally. Sturdy. Shishido had once joked that she wouldn’t have been a Hyoutei Regular, if she’d been male-she’d have been on the rugby team, because if anyone could take a hit and keep on running hard, it was Taira Mari.
As far as Oshitari could tell, Shishido really had meant it as a compliment-after all, he truly hadn’t understood why Ootori had looked aghast and annoyed at him afterwards, and why Jirou had fallen asleep on his favourite racquet, with said racquet lying across Shishido’s boyfriend’s lap.
She’d always seemed like such an atypical Japanese girl in so many ways that, after all these years, Oshitari had come to the conclusion that her sins were temper and pride and a freakish need for control… anything except a lack of confidence.
Well. This would make his job… somewhat more difficult, wouldn’t it.
“Good gods, Mari.” Oshitari knew his voice was too careful-could see it in the way her eyebrows tilted at him, her mouth quirking in faint surprise. “You don’t actually believe you’re… fat… do you?”
He could have joked about it-it was anyone’s guess whether Mari would attempt bodily harm on him for poking fun, or whether she’d laugh. And he wasn’t entirely sure if that ambiguity was a good thing.
She’d never be thin by any means, not with her bone structure and those entirely unfeminine muscles, but perhaps she was spending a little too much time around the fanclub, he thought, for accurate self-comparison. There was nothing delicate about her, to be certain, and she certainly wasn’t small, but he tended to roll his eyes when he heard girls whispering about how they couldn’t understand why Atobe wanted a fat fanclub president. Sometimes, when they thought they were being kind, they murmured that she was built like the girls in the field hockey club-well, that wasn’t much better than calling her fat; Oshitari imagined that some of those field hockey girls could have made sun-baked street courts look positively plush.
Jealousy in girls was, he thought, even less attractive than in men-at least Shishido was amusing when he hissed and spat.
Of course, such malediction didn’t come as any surprise-it likely would have been far worse if she had been gorgeous. After all, Taira Mari was closer to Hyoutei’s tennis team Regulars than anyone not in possession of a tennis racquet and physiological balls… and despite Gakuto’s protests, many straight men did find breasts quite fascinating. He might not have had a personal interest in T, as she put it, but he did have working eyes: Mari might have been intimidatingly competent, but she was also endowed with enough on top to fill any two fangirls’ bras. There was no way that the somewhat more straight preregulars, as typical high school boys, wouldn’t have noticed. There was no way they hadn’t noticed.
Her mouth quirked, and there was real amusement there, not hurt. “You know, there’s this saying about ponies and gazelles… er, never mind. I’m not saying that I’m fat, Oshitari. I’m just saying that girls around here tend to be smaller than I am. Which is true. I do sports and normally eat as much as I want; it happens. And other than that, I’m pretty ordinary-looking. Why do I need to keep having this conversation with people?”
Oshitari studied her, carefully-whoever she’d had this particular conversation with before had to have been either extraordinarily smart or extraordinarily ballsy, though it was anyone’s bet on whether they’d still possess those balls after Mari was done tearing into them. He’d always been just a bit curious about exactly why she’d never acquired herself a boyfriend to bully from amongst the ranks of the Pre-Regs-after all, if she could arrange Atobe’s schedule in a way that suited everyone, she was certainly capable of doing so to her own, her protests that she was too busy to date aside.
The girl really didn’t have a clue how many of the non-Regular tennis team boys, despite her ‘ordinary’ looks, alternated between being terrified of her and thoroughly smitten with her, did she?
“’Ordinary’ is not a word I’d ever associate with you, Taira Mari,” he replied, dryly. For better or for worse. In any way, shape, or form. For a girl who prided herself on her perspicacity, she certainly missed quite a lot.
Mari laughed, at that, tossing her head. “Of course not. If you did, I wouldn’t help you play matchmaker for your chemistry club boys.”
She was still missing the point; this time, he’d let her. Trying to explain someone’s value to them was a little like trying to explain cumin to a stew. “You’d be a great deal less ordinary if you’d help me shop for Gakuto’s birthday presents, you know.” He raised his eyebrows in silent invitation.
The sound that she made in her throat was halfway between a grumble and ‘gah.’ “I think not. I’ve got personality, not perversion.”
“Hmmm.” Well, at least she knew that much about herself. Truthfully, “she’s got personality” had always sounded like fairly damning faint praise to his ears, something like “oh, he’s a good backup player” or “he’s an okay fuck.” Then again, saying that Mari had personality was rather like saying that a natural disaster caused damage-it was something that everyone knew, and it was true, but anyone who got hit with it was likely to find themselves flat on the ground. “A pity. You’d find it… educational.”
“That’s what they say about living in sensory deprivation, too.” Her eyebrows tilted upwards at him, but she’d started to grin. “Want to guess which of the two I would choose?”
Oshitari smiled back. Ah, there it was. What she lacked in prettiness, she made up for by having an absolutely lethal smile: when she grinned, and the mischief in her eyes hit like a hurricane, the reactions of the boys always amused him-the way that the ones around them had stopped to double-take was mild compared to the way people reacted after they’d actually seen her subvert Atobe and make the rest of the Regulars laugh. Wonderful irony, really. It was Mari, for crying out loud; she was the original anti-fangirl, and she wasn’t a beauty, but that crooked, totally genuine smile from her could make half of the boys in the club catch their breath. Or bite down on their bottom lips.
Or, on one notable occasion, sit down hard and cross their legs.
Though, admittedly, that had been the one day Gakuto had improved on the decidedly unflattering length of her skirt.
Then again, their reaction to her might have had as much to do with the fact that many of the lesser tennis club boys had an unhealthy infatuation with things like competence, authority, and confidence, all of which Mari possessed by the bushel. After all, he’d seen pre-regulars cross their legs when Atobe was particularly good on the courts, too, and it wasn’t even statistically possible that all of the ones that did so were gay.
“I would say that shopping for Gakuto’s gifts is actually the opposite of sensory deprivation, so I don’t see why you would choose to leave such holes in your education.” He shrugged as she made a sound that was definitely a ‘gah.’ “Ah-here we are.”
She stopped and looked at the glossy, pink-and-white mannequinned storefront for a long, long moment before turning back to him, the smile a memory, both her eyebrows dark punctuation marks high on her forehead. “Hmmm. Are you boys planning to dress Jirou up as a girl again? ” when she propped her hands on her hips that way, she actually did succeed in looking authoritative-and, indeed, quite intimidatingly large, despite the fact that he had any number of inches on her. “Might I remind you how many laps the lot of you got for it last time?”
He smiled, gently, at that. From her scowl, she didn’t find it particularly soothing, but she knew better than to find any expression on his face soothing. “Mari. Only Ootori-kun and Shishido got laps. You know that.”
“Right, of course,” she nodded, sagely, her thick ponytail bobbing with her enthusiasm, “But remember, Atobe’s withdrawn at least some of his head from his metaphorical butt… and they tell me that there’s a working set of brains somewhere in there.” Ah, she did have such a way with imagery. “Yes, of course, Shishido thought up the idea of putting the sleepy sheepy in a girls’ uniform all on his own lovesick lonesome. I believe that. Mmhmm.”
“He’d be insulted at you undermining his intelligence,” Oshitari observed. Truthfully, he’d thought that Shishido had the common sense to not take any of Gakuto’s suggestions seriously, no matter how amusing the image had been initially… but then, Ootori hadn’t yet been putting out then, and frustration had its way of playing havoc with common sense.
Mari snorted again-though softer, this time. “Yes, well, I’m insulted at you underestimating mine.” She gestured with one hand towards the exceedingly female shop front with just a little too much emphasis. “What’s this about, Oshitari? I don’t think Atobe’s going to go for little lacy panties and a C-cup bra.”
She was different when it was just the two of them-perhaps because she didn’t have to avoid looking at him and Gakuto. Without the rest of the Regulars as a buffer for her annoyance or her tongue, this was a bit like fencing with a champion with a wickedly sharpened rapier and just enough temper that she couldn’t win, but she could certainly make it a challenge.
Oshitari shrugged… though admittedly the image of either Jirou or Atobe bedecked in ladies’ lingerie was rather… ghoulish. “I’m not underestimating your intelligence.” Which was why he wasn’t going to point out that the store sold party clothing, not underwear. “I am telling you, however, that my team captain has entrusted me with the solemn duty,” her eyes were oversteeped tea again when he adjusted his glasses, quelled his smile, and rested his fingertips against his heart, “of seeing that you look, in his words, ‘presentable,’ during the tennis club mixer in two weeks.”
Oh, she hadn’t seen that coming.
He could have made that up, of course, and they both knew it… but it was entirely too plausible that Atobe Keigo, who routinely gifted her with clothing that she’d never worn and likely couldn’t even fit into, would assign Oshitari Yuushi to the task of making sure she fit into the Atobe mold. It was, after all, the last mixer Atobe Keigo would preside over as the tennis club captain… and he couldn’t very well assign her the task.
Oshitari had it on excellent authority that Atobe had, however, considered it-before Jirou had hastily convinced him out of it by means best not examined too closely.
Plausibility won… though, considering the murderous expression on her face, it might have been a Pyrrhic victory. “We came all the way to this expensive monstrosity of a mall to get Atobe a gift,” she told him in a voice that, in its own flat way, had the kind of lethal intensity that Shishido’s growls only ever aspired to. “If you’re handing me to him as a layered and frilled present, gods help me, I’m taking all of you down with me. Every last one of you. There will be no survivors.”
Oshitari believed her. Fortunately, that wasn’t a problem. “No, of course not. I was planning on your advice in getting Atobe a separate gift.” He smiled, slowly. “Multitasking, Mari. Multitasking.”
“I am not asking you to get anything,” he pointed out, before she opened her mouth and made the unflattering verbal connection between multitasking and the XX genotype that he could see glittering in her eyes. “I am asking you to try on a few objects. Then I will return to Atobe with my recommendations, he will ignore them, send his personal shopper to buy you something expensive and ill-fitting, and you can pack it away with all the rest of the things he gives you.”
“Uh-huh. ” She could come across distinctly like a snake when she blinked that slowly. “So we need to go through the whole rigmarole of me even walking into that store… why?”
Most girls, he was fairly certain, would have leapt at the idea of trying on hideously overpriced clothing, rather than looking at him as if he’d blown out the candles on her birthday cake. He shrugged. “Because you owe me in laps for allowing Atobe to sneak up behind me on Jirou’s birthday, and this is very entertaining?”
A cat would have cringed underneath her stare. “Hah. Hah. Look, see how entertained I am.” Her chin was very high, and her eyes smiled at him, smugly. “Forget it. I’m going shopping with some of the girls next weekend.”
True, she did have some close friends among the fangirl ladies-all of whom were, in her own words, about half her size, and rather inclined towards frills and layering. He’d seen Mari occasionally in her own outfits, and she preferred jeans and sleeveless tank tops-simple, sporty things, not veils on top of tunics on top of bubble skirts on top of leggings. Oshitari chuckled, softly. She wasn’t quite as clever as she thought she was-or rather, she was, but unluckily for her, he’d had time to plan… and Tanimoto’s boyfriend in his chemistry club. “Well, that certainly saves me time.” He spread his hands innocently. “I can entrust them with the task.”
The defiant look she was turning on him faded as the blood ran, slowly, from her face, leaving her eyes a rather unattractive shade of dried-leaf brown without the colour of her cheeks. “You wouldn’t. No, you wouldn’t. ” If it had been anyone but her, he’d have called the new look piteous… though the way she was biting her lip bloodless seemed a bit painful. “What have I ever done to you to deserve that?”
“Well.” He nudged his glasses upwards, and smiled. He had her. The fact that she would choose him as the lesser of two evils was flattering, and probably the correct decision as far as her sanity was concerned, but ultimately… still a bit foolish. “It is by Atobe’s solemn command, and he is my buchou, you know.”
Gakuto was right-even after all the years she’d spent in Japan, she still did have an impressive command of English. “Oh, how convenient. May you laugh with lizards, lepers, and lice, Oshitari,” wouldn’t have had quite the same alliterative pungency in Japanese.
Despite her stiff-legged, entirely too fast strides, though, she still smiled pleasantly at the salesladies when she walked in, and, much to their obvious bemusement, apologised for the ‘discussion’ they’d had outside the storefront.
He shook his head and followed her in. Those small, unthinking courtesies, her smart mouth and never-say-die attitude aside, were more likely than not what had gotten her Hiyoshi’s attention in the first place… and the fact that she was the sort who would shut up and kick Atobe in the shins when it was necessary was probably why she’d kept Hiyoshi’s respect. There weren’t many who’d had it in the first place.
It really was a pity that Hiyoshi Wakashi couldn’t see a good thing when it was staring appreciatively at his ass, though. Despite Gakuto’s propensity to see sex in everything, Oshitari had come to the sad conclusion that the only way Mari would manage to wrench herself out of Hiyoshi’s friend zone would be if she started dating someone whom Hiyoshi couldn’t beat in tennis. No-one really bought the idea of her ‘belonging’ to Atobe because she was his fanclub president anymore, but her actually going out with someone strong enough for Hiyoshi to notice… that had potential.
However, seeing as how Atobe himself was the only one whom their resident martial artist hadn’t beaten at least once, Oshitari could just imagine what Mari would have to say about that.
Jirou would be devastatingly enthusiastic at the idea, though, if he could be woken up for long enough to hear it through; he’d have to mention it.
Still, there had to be at least one pre-Regular who, even if he wasn’t as tennis-talented as Hiyoshi, had enough balls and sass to give Mari at least token appreciative pause. The idea of her going their entire high school life without even a token fling was, as Gakuto put it, ‘just too celibate for words, Yuushi.’
Finding her an outfit that would give the straight men in the tennis club nosebleeds would be easy… she’d been half-joking when she grumbled about males thinking with their penises, but boys could be very predictable. There was little that brought out balls and sass like a touch of skin, and even stone-cold Hiyoshi had stopped what he was doing for a moment when Mari’s newly shortened skirt had flashed her tan lines in the wind. Oshitari hadn’t been able to read anything so clear as dismay or lust in the expression, it had simply flickered too quickly-and Hiyoshi, unlike Shishido, was boringly stoic and simply didn’t play along when teased-but it had been something.
Actually getting her to wear something nosebleed-inducing in public would be another matter entirely-they’d worn significant holes in her prudishness already, over the years, but he hadn’t anticipated having to get around a self-image issue. But with college entrance exams already over, he was rather bored… and where would the challenge have been if it had been easy from both sides, after all?
“Three things. I’ll put on three things. Then we really should get going,” she warned, but her voice sounded a good deal more resigned than it had.
“Hmmm.” He could have bargained for the battle-but then he’d likely have lost the war. Big guns first, then. “Agreed-provided, of course, that you come out and show them to us.”
“Oh, how payback is going to be sweet…” he probably wasn’t supposed to understand that, but then, he’d never admitted even to his teachers just how much spoken English he understood-even Gakuto thought that he watched his romantic movies without subtitles simply because he knew the dialogue so well already. “Fine. Do your worst.”
All it took was a quick, murmured comment to one of the salesladies that Mari had so considerately buttered up, and the pretty young lady cheerfully agreed to select Mari’s size from the rack. Mari wasn’t normally given to being downright sneaky, but he wouldn’t put it past her to circumvent plans by simply picking up the wrong size of whatever he chose… and while he understood ‘small,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘large,’ this whole business of female clothing and their totally unintuitive numbering system was a field of landmines.
He had to give her credit-her eyes didn’t so much as flicker when he held up her two options, one in either hand, and murmured, “Here. They have this one in two colours.” Then again, if Gakuto had been responsible for the shortening of her skirt, she was very capable of connecting the dots-nothing ever happened in isolation in the tennis team, really.
“Oshitari,” she gave him a very level look, instead, over the bridge of her nose. Glasses would have been an interesting foil for her intensity-especially since he couldn’t imagine her being vain enough for contacts-but she had near-perfect vision; there was nothing between the look in her eyes and the person she was looking at. “I think you’re trying to be helpful-I think-but I am not wearing a miniskirt to a tennis team mixer. I can’t dance in a miniskirt.”
He disagreed-she was graceful enough, and a martial artist besides. With what he’d seen of those legs, Mari dancing in a miniskirt would probably prompt a rush for the men’s room. Of course, she wouldn’t dance in a miniskirt, but that was a separate issue. “I very much doubt you’re going to be dancing; you’re going to be walking around and making certain that everything is going precisely the way it’s supposed to,” he replied, dryly. “You might as well look good doing it. And you did tell me to do my worst.”
This time, though, she eyed him through her lashes… then sighed. “Drat. I did say that. Fine. I’ll try on one.” She gestured vaguely to the dark navy one he’d picked out-personally, he thought the red would have gone very nicely with her tan, but it figured that she’d pick the understated one.
Silently, he held out the matching navy-blue blouse.
“Sure-but you understand that that’ll make two pieces?” she noted, smugly.
A riposte-he’d have expected nothing less from her, but he had come ready with foil and parry. “Ah, but it’s only one outfit. You didn’t specify what you meant by ‘things.’”
To her credit, she didn’t point out to him that they’d both known exactly what she’d meant. “You’re pushing it,” she warned.
Of course he was-what would have been the fun if he hadn’t been? “Do you really want to see how that looks with the Hyoutei uniform top?” he noted, wryly eyeing the crisp, neatly pressed and stupefyingly proper white blouse. She had to be extraordinarily diligent with an iron, to always look as neat as she did.
“I don’t want to see how it looks at all,” she muttered-but she took the blouse from him gently enough not to stretch it, at least. Riposte, parry, and point. “Thank you.”
Oshitari chuckled. “That’s quite a talent you have, you know. I expect you practice on Atobe quite a lot?”
“Hmmm?” she was examining the blouse and skirt in her hands with something halfway between open distaste and quiet resignation.
“Saying ‘thank you’ in a tone that makes it seem like you’re saying ‘Thank you, and, if you wouldn’t mind, please go to Hell.’”
He could see her huffing and muttering indignantly all the way to the dressing room, and the amused, intrigued looks that the pair of salesladies were giving him when he settled on a pouffy, round black thing. That was the one advantage of women’s clothing stores-seats for the use of long-suffering significant others were well-disguised, but at least they existed.
“You’re a… rare couple,” the younger saleslady ventured, after the soft growling and creative English invective from the dressing room grew somewhat more muffled.
Whether she was referring to the way they looked together or the way they interacted together, it was true, even if not in the way that they were assuming; Oshitari just smiled. Even Gakuto couldn’t argue with that.
When Mari came out of the dressing room, though, his eyebrows tilted upwards. The red would have gone nicely with her tan, it was true, but the dark colour of her selection, combined with her tan line, was slimming, and definitely made her legs seem longer than was strictly… proper. She’d already worked that out on her own, though, considering the way she was tugging at her hemline with some distinct chagrin-a futile proposition, considering the flow of the material, and the way the little wraparound simply stretched with her efforts. Ah, Mari. The devil will have his due, it seems.
No, it hadn’t been his imagination-she did have very finely sculpted runner’s legs, and they went nicely indeed with the strong line of her shoulders. The sleeveless little matching top bared the smooth, shallow curves of deltoids, biceps, the way tendons moved in her forearms when she fiddled with the skirt. The straight cut of the Hyoutei uniform blouses and winter vests hadn’t been particularly flattering to her shape, but Gakuto was correct in claiming that a little stretch in the blend would do her wonders-the navy blue shirt slid slender over a smooth, flat stomach and tight waist, rounding over the slope of bust and gliding into the line of the skirt where it crested her hips. That deep, dark V-neck wouldn’t have been anywhere near as flattering if she hadn’t already had the hint of cleavage to flash through it, after all.
With those curves and the strong contrast of skin and silky, flowing cloth, she looked, well, not particularly feminine or frilly… but very distinctly female. Solid, yes, but under the fluid lines and delicate fall of cloth, soft in all the right places. A pleasant armful to hold, if he’d been into that sort of thing-and a very nice eyeful for just about anyone.
He certainly knew enough about straight men to know that with legs and breasts like that on display, well, half of their gazes would never even make it to her face for long enough to recognise her… but their hormones leading to Mari giving them a piece of her mind was not his concern.
“It suits you, you know,” he nodded, appreciatively. Especially since, once she gave up on her skirt, she’d started standing defiantly straight in true Mari fashion, shoulders back and chest-and breasts-out, no matter how much she obviously wanted to hunch over and hide herself. If she’d had her long, long hair down, it would have framed her, softened her narrow face, but the suggestion coming from him would guarantee that she’d chop off the whole mass of it tomorrow. “A pair of heels, perhaps an anklet… or maybe a set of boots?” though her bare feet against the miniskirt were cute; a bit summery. “Turn around, will you?”
The saleslady behind him cooed. The other tittered. They were very lucky that Mari saved her venom for her friends, and that both he and Mari were well aware that there had been no need whatsoever for him to ask her to spin around so he could take a look at her from behind-she had the choice between looking absolutely ridiculous backing into the dressing room or turning around to walk back in.
Dignity, he was willing to wager, only won by a small margin. She propped her hands on her hips-the girl didn’t have a clue that in that skirt, that little sassy cock of her leg and her hips was far more fetching than intimidating. “You’re too smart to be wasted on fashion,” she grumbled, her deep voice almost a growl. “That’s not a compliment, by the way.” The sleek sensuality of the skirt really didn’t go with the thoroughly annoyed expression on her face.
He chuckled. “Really? I would say the same about you… and yet here you are, Mari-tan.”
The silence, even from the salesladies, lasted a long moment after that.
“Are you satisfied?” she finally muttered, tugging uncomfortably at her hem. “Something longer at the hem next time, if it would suit your royal bastardness?”
“Mmm. As you like,” he nodded, smiling-and headed back to the rack the moment she snarled her way into the dressing room.
She didn’t tug on the hem of the dark gold one-piece dress that he put her into next, and she didn’t cross her arms over the neckline-soft, open folds of cloth dipping between her breasts, baring skin-and, yes, nothing but sleek, pale skin; dignity had won again, so she must have removed her bra-clear to her solar plexus. Her expression was cool and still, and she didn’t so much as flinch when the salesladies clustered about her, tugging and adjusting…. though her eyebrows did twitch when they complimenting her on how she filled out the top.
Well, she couldn’t very well complain about the hemline, when the dress actually did flow to a stop just a little above her knees.
“No?” he queried, innocently, grinning. It wasn’t as impressive as the miniskirt, but there was something about the long lines of it, the smooth bare strip of white, white skin contrasted with the relatively long skirt and the tan of her face and her arms, that was very… sensual.
Those tea-eyes of hers were very eloquent when she was dreaming of someone’s demise. She opened her mouth, then closed it, her expression flowing from heat into cool precision. “If, as you say, I’m going to be walking around and making sure that things go precisely the way they should be,” the syllables were crisp and chilly in her mouth, “I refuse to flash the world the moment I bend over the refreshments table.”
“Would you really?” he blinked, slowly. Women’s clothing really was interesting and counterintuitive-one would have thought that they would put in stitches or something such to prevent that very eventuality-but now that she mentioned it… Oshitari cocked his head. “Hm. Would you mind-“
She was already halfway inside the dressing room a flurry of movement later, with her hand and her head poking out, and the curtain wrapped protectively around the rest of her. “Next and last, Oshitari.”
He chuckled and held out a scrap of soft, dark cloth. She looked at it as if it were about to bite her. “That is not a skirt. Or a dress. There’s not enough cloth to it.”
Well, he’d found that he could fold it up into a ball just large enough for his palm, so it was compact… but from what he’d seen of female clubbing clothing, she was speaking in denial. “It’s not a skirt or a dress,” he agreed. “It’s a shirt. You can wear it with jeans.”
“Jeans?” he saw her eyebrows leap, and for a moment she looked almost hopeful-before her eyes narrowed. Smart girl. “I doubt that’s what Atobe had in mind.”
Oshitari shrugged. “He’s going to ignore anything I say in any case, so I might as well amuse myself.”
She took the blouse from him, and her eyes were almost black, narrowed to slits, when her fingers found the strategically placed little straps and, well, the slinky, slippery cloth of the tiny little bundle. “Oh. Gods. You are going to suffer for this.”
“Thank you for that warning, Mari-tan, ” he replied, dryly.
“Don’t thank me yet…” this time, when her eyes flashed, the glitter came with a rather stunning, particularly malevolent smile. “…darling.”
Oh. Well. The threats were one thing, but that, he had to say, did not bode well for him.
But he chuckled and settled back onto his seat when she muttered, “Okay, these straps had better go in back, else you will find yourself fangirled tomorrow, Oshitari,” from the dressing room, and one of the salesladies bustled happily over to help her.
The saleslady was smiling wider when she slipped out, and Mari was in the dressing room for a long, long time.
Mari was in the quiet, invective-free, dressing room for a long, long time.
He raised an eyebrow at the saleslady who’d helped her-and felt his eyebrows tilt upwards when the woman winked and nodded in the direction of the dressing room. “She’s lucky; you’ve got very good taste,” she whispered, edging in his direction. “Though…” her lips pursed in a hint of surprise, “Sir, it isn’t very revealing, compared to the other ones.”
Oshitari adjusted his tie and smiled. No, it wasn’t.
He was only half-surprised when Mari came out dressed in her habitual Hyoutei uniform, the pleats in her knee-length plaid skirt razor-straight, sneakers in perfect white bows. She wouldn’t look at him when she tugged her thick ponytail out from the collar until it cascaded over her back, adjusting her tie until it was a perfectly straight exclamation point over her front. There was a hint of something that was almost a flush on her cheeks when she finally glanced over at him, and lifted her chin high.
“Well?” he raised an eyebrow. “Ah, don’t tell me. You actually liked it, and you want to surprise me when you wear it?”
She gave him a look that could have flayed the dye from Gakuto’s hair, and her voice was very steady, and very crisp. “I’ll take my chances with the girls. Come on, Oshitari. Wasting daylight and all that. Thank you,” she nodded once to the salesladies… and strode out the door, dropping the shirt on the settee on her way out, her back very straight, her hips steadily swinging with the length of her stride.
Oshitari glanced after the fanclub president, and chuckled. When Taira Mari simply, well, dropped something in a messy little pile like that… well, he had it on very good authority that she even filed her notes in order, and probably arranged her closet by colour. And she’d put every other article of clothing carefully back onto the hanger before handing it out the dressing room door.
He nodded at the puzzled salesladies, and gestured with his chin at the blouse she’d so carelessly tossed to the seat before passing his cellphone in a smooth sweep over the swipe pad. These bank-card cellphone chips really were the best things invented for covert purchases-and from the way one of the salesladies smiled, scooped up the blouse, and started heading for the register as he strode out, he thought that they’d gotten the hint.
Mari would give him the silent treatment for awhile, all dagger glances and pursed lips-he was patient. He could wait. Considering her, he’d only have to wait until they reached one of Atobe’s favourite shops-where, no doubt, she’d choose to act as if this entire pleasant little interlude had never happened. With her habitual efficiency, they’d probably have Atobe’s gift found within the hour.
He’d come back for his little package later, after he’d sent her home, and before he met Gakuto for dinner-his roommate would definitely want to see the purchase.
It had been a bit dearer than he’d expected-girls’ clothes always interested him that way, when they required so little cloth-but he thought that there was enough left in the budget for some trinkets to go with the outfit. They’d claimed that they trusted his sense, after all, and he didn’t think that Kimura, Hasegawa, and the rest of the fangirls would mind the extra cost after they saw their fearless fanclub president wearing a shirt that was only conservative in comparison to the other things he’d had her trying on.
After all, the Hyoutei Regulars hadn’t been the only ones who’d felt that their leader deserved a nice retirement present.
~owari~
Start: June 26, 2007
End: July 9, 2007
Urk. It's been a long time since I wrote Oshitari. It shows. *sheepish grin* I promise, there's actually a point to this story (maybe)... or at least, there will be when I finally get around to finishing the story that comes after this. ^^;